Underneath Everything

by Marcy Beller Paul

  CHAPTER 24

  THAT AFTERNOON IN his room, Hudson rolls out from under the flannel sheets, grabs his boxers from the floor, slides them up to his narrow hips, and runs a hand through his hair. I prop myself up on my elbow and scoot over to his side of the twin bed. I trace the curve of his spine with my eyes, the rise and fall of his sharp shoulder blades, the muscles in his arms as he reaches for and discards another disc that isn’t worthy. I pull the sheet up to my shoulders, then change my mind, let it slip down a little so when he turns around, he’ll be surprised.

  The thing about sex is, people always talk about having it. Like it’s something you can pick up and hold and hug to your chest, or stow away in a drawer for safekeeping. Like it’s something you can own. But it’s actually the opposite. Because when it’s over, you don’t have anything to take home.

  Hudson slips his middle finger through the inner circle of a disc and places it in the tray. He doesn’t turn around. I pull the sheet back up and cover myself.

  “You’re going to like this,” he says, grabbing a thermal from the floor and tugging it over his head. I watch his stomach disappear. He’s dressed, and I’m still naked. I sit up and scan the floor for my blue bra and the bed for my delicate sweater, which Hudson threw aside undelicately. I find my black tank top first and reach for it without releasing the sheet.

  “And if I don’t?” I say as I slip the thin material over my head and rake my fingers across the flannel near my feet in an attempt to find my underwear.

  “You will,” he says.

  I wriggle into my clothes underneath the sheet, then walk across the room, careful not to step on anything round and silver. I stand in front of the window, stick my hand through the opening, feel for flakes. It’s supposed to snow tonight, but so far it’s just cold.

  I find my bra on the floor and turn around so I can shimmy it up under my tank top without Hudson seeing. Then I walk over to the mirror to fix my hair. I pull my fingers through it, trying to untangle the knots, but there are too many, so I give up and gather it into a ponytail. Jolene was right; it hasn’t been this long since intermediate school.

  Hudson snakes his arms around me and kisses my neck. I watch us in the mirror: his eyes closed, his hand across the strap of my tank top, his mouth moving slowly up my neck; my head tilting to the side, my eyes wide, my hair the darkest it’s been all winter. Almost as dark as Jolene’s.

  “Do you think I should cut my hair?” I ask.

  “Definitely not,” he says into my neck.

  “You don’t think it would look good short?”

  Hudson stops, cocks his head, considers my reflection. “Nope. Looks good like this.” His arms tighten around my waist. His lips are back on my neck.

  “The last time I had it this long, Jolene used to braid it for me.”

  Hudson lifts, midkiss, from my skin. The crease in his brow deepens, folding his freckles together for a split second before they flatten again. “Really?”

  “What?” I let my hair fall to my shoulders and turn around to face him. Hudson drops his arms, steps back, shakes his head.

  “Jolene.” Her name. An accusation.

  “You say her name like it’s a dirty word.”

  He raises his ear to the air like he isn’t sure he heard me correctly. “Isn’t it?”

  A lone instrument pierces the silence, some kind of horn blowing a high note, clear and strong. Then the rest of the band picks up again, and the bold sound blends into the background.

  I lean against the dresser, even though the handle pokes the skin right above my jeans. “But you dated her for a year. You loved her.”

  I wait for him to deny it. Instead he sinks down on the edge of his bed and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Then he looks at the floor and flexes his jaw.

  “Love doesn’t just go away,” I say. There must be traces of Jolene inside him. Some internal mark to mirror the pale strip on his finger. He can’t be rid of her completely.

  “Look.” His eyes rise. I step toward the bed. Hudson grips my hips, gathers me in. “I did love her.” My breath catches, holds, coats the two words stuck in my throat: Love me. Hudson scoops a hair behind his ear, works his jaw again. “At least I tried to. But Jolene, she didn’t love me. Or maybe she tried, too. All I know is, it didn’t work.”

  Hudson pulls me down to the bed beside him. “It’s bad enough I talked about her so much. That I made you do it too. But I’m done now. For real. You know why I did what I did, and I know about whatever happened between you two. And now it’s over. Right?”

  “Right,” I say, because his voice is casual, but his eyes are hard. Because I know it’s what he needs to hear, even if it’s not the truth.

  Hudson brings his fingers to my knee and spreads them out like a starburst, but the warmth doesn’t shoot through me like it used to. It stops at the ends of his fingers, leaves when he lifts his hand.

  He ducks his head in front of me, forces me to look at him. He smiles. His eyes crinkle at the sides. I don’t tell him those stories about me and Jolene weren’t for him. I don’t tell him about the notes. But when he kisses me, I can’t help but see her words in my head.

  Remember when we used to end each note with “Love you”?

  Still do.

  J

  CHAPTER 25

  IT’S A FEW days before Hanukkah and my mom’s feeling it. Each night, dinner isn’t so much a time to eat as a catalog of possible presents. Luckily, I don’t really have to participate since my mom is pretty good at handling the conversation all by herself. But every once in a while, after she has piled the table with food, filled our plates, forgotten the napkins, fetched my dad a drink, and finally grabbed something for herself—but never a full serving—she’ll turn to me.

  “Do you think Jake would like that? A new coat?”

  I lean over the table to grab a roll. My mom’s hand shoots across my stomach to keep my shirt from draping into the gravy. I grab my shirt myself and sit back down. She clears her throat, picks up a single green bean from the serving dish, and crunches it between her front teeth.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’m not him.”

  “Don’t be fresh,” my dad says, surveying what’s left on the table. We haven’t spoken much since The Talk. Though I’ve been home for dinner on time, so I guess there isn’t much more to say. “How are those applications coming?” he asks.

  “Great,” I lie.

  “Good,” he says, spooning some gravy over the rice on his plate. “You should have Jake take a look at them.”

  Jake used to help me with my homework. He was more patient than my parents, and better at explaining things. But that pretty much stopped when he went to college. And anyway, he can’t look at applications I haven’t written. No need to bother my father with that small detail, though.

  I push my plate away and uncross my legs, but before my feet touch the floor, my mom asks, “Is Kris coming for the holiday? We missed her at Thanksgiving.”

  My mom thinks I’ve been with Kris every afternoon for the past few weeks. I’d told her the paper had a special issue and that I had to put in some overtime with Kris in journalism. It’s not a total lie. The holiday edition is always a double issue, so usually I do help Kris out with it. At least I have in the past. This year she hasn’t asked, and I haven’t volunteered.

  I stand up, clear my plate. “She’s been here every other year, right?” I ask, as if that’s an answer. As if the past is this immutable thing that will always keep happening.

  Later that night I’m stomach down on my bed, surrounded by Spanish handouts, brain deep in the conditional tense, when I hear the slap of bare feet down the hall. They pause on the wood floor outside my door. I should have known my mom wouldn’t let the Kris thing go. I drop my pen, balance my chin on my fists, and count five breaths before the door creaks open.

  “Hi,” my mom says, peeking in. She’s changed since dinner—exchanged jeans and a blouse for plaid pajama pants and a sweat
shirt.

  “Hey,” I say.

  My mom sidesteps into the room and looks around, taking in my maps, which have been hanging in the same spots for weeks; the clothes on the floor; the book on my bed; and the sheet of loose leaf in front of me.

  “You’re still doing homework?” Her eyes skip to the digital clock above my drawers. Since I started high school, I’ve timed my nights to the minute. My mom knows this. She doesn’t knock on my door until 10 p.m. That’s when I finish my homework.

  It’s 11:15 p.m.

  “I was.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She takes a half step back. “Should I go?”

  “No—” I don’t feel like talking to her about Kris, but I know she’s just going to keep asking. Might as well get it over with. “It’s fine.”

  “Okay.” She sits down on the side of the bed, reaches behind my neck, and flips my tag inside my shirt. I shrug her off. She folds her hands in her lap.

  “So,” she says, inclining her head in my direction. She’s smiling.

  I was expecting questions. Some concern. A nostalgic story about one of her many high school friendships.

  But a smile? One she can barely contain?

  This is not what I expected. This is not good.

  I flip over my homework and start drawing—skipping the compass rose again in favor of straight lines, intersections, and streets reaching toward the corners of the lined sheet.

  “So,” I respond.

  “Sooooo. How’s Hudson?” She rocks toward me as she says his name, tilting the bed in her direction. My pen skids off the page, dashing a diagonal line across three streets.

  So this is an interrogation after all. It’s just not about Kris.

  “He’s fine.” I keep my eyes on the paper and my answers short. I know what she wants—I’m pretty sure she’s been waiting to talk boyfriends with me since freshman year—but I don’t understand why I should give it to her. She had tons of boyfriends before my dad. I only have this one. He’s mine, and I don’t want to share him.

  But my mom—she’s looking at me with this expectant, excited expression. I can’t remember the last time she looked at me like that.

  And I have to admit, it would be nice to talk about Hudson with someone who doesn’t hate him, or never dated him. I tick my eyes toward my mom. She’s still smiling.

  I smile back.

  “He’s good, I guess.”

  “Yeah?”

  I shrug. The curve in my cheeks deepens.

  “So,” she says, moving toward me on the bed, “what’s he like?”

  “I don’t know. Quiet, I guess. Different.” He was hers, I want to say, and now he’s mine. “He likes music.”

  “He plays music?”

  “No. He likes it.” I sit up and scoot back on the bed so there’s a long stretch of comforter between us. “He plays soccer.”

  “An athlete.” She nods. But that’s not who he is either.

  “No.” I shake my head. “Forget it.”

  “Well, he must be different if he’s got you wearing this.” She picks up a cut T-shirt from the floor.

  I yank it out of her hands. “I’m wearing this because I like it.”

  “Okay.” She gives me that silver stare of hers, the one that makes me feel like she can see inside my head.

  I drag my map onto my lap and try to salvage that stray mark.

  My mom sighs. “Look, I came up here because I know Dad’s been giving you a hard time, but give him a break, okay? He doesn’t know how to deal with all this. You’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “What I mean is, we think it’s good, what you’re doing. It’s what you should be doing. Making friends. Going out with boys.”

  Friends, she says. Boys. Like there are so many.

  I draw the same curve of road over and over again, digging in my pen, darkening the line.

  “Okay, I get it. You don’t want to talk about it. Fine. Just remember to call if you’re going to be late.”

  “I will.”

  “And be careful.”

  “Mom.”

  “You know. If things get serious. Use protection.”

  “Mom!”

  “Okay!” she says, getting off the bed. “Finish your homework. But don’t stay up too late.”

  CHAPTER 26

  WHEN I CLIMB into Kris’s car on Thursday, with the morning’s first flakes melting into my hair, the backseat is empty. “Where’s Bella?” I ask, dropping my backpack between my knees.

  Kris checks her mirror. “Doctor’s appointment.”

  We don’t speak as Kris passes two piles of brown and yellow leaves. They are pristine. Perfect. Dusted with a light coating of snow and begging to be flattened. Kris eyes them as we go by, but she doesn’t swerve. Up ahead at the next intersection, I see a third. The wind lifts a few leaves from the top, twirls them in a dance, tosses them aside.

  Kris taps her fingers on the wheel, tightens her ponytail, taps the wheel again. She doesn’t have a cigarette. I’m starting to think she quit. After all the shit I’ve given her, I wonder what finally did it. I open my mouth to ask and clap it shut again. I should know the answer to something so obvious about Kris. And if I don’t, is it really mine to know? Has she asked me about Hudson lately? College applications? Jolene? She doesn’t even know I lost my virginity.

  Melted snow forms dark circles on my jeans. I stare straight ahead, trying to see each individual flake that dive-bombs the windshield. It’s only as the specks of white fly by me that I realize I haven’t marked the colored divisions in my head as we drove through them. Not for at least a week. And now they’re all getting whitewashed.

  “My mom asked about the holidays,” I say. “She missed you at Thanksgiving.”

  “Of course she did.” Kris turns on the wipers. “I’m the only one who eats her themed Jell-O mold.”

  I laugh. Kris smiles. The moment fades, and there’s silence again, the soft sound of snow buckling beneath the tires. I should ask her about Hanukkah, but the idea that it’s not a sure thing, that it isn’t just assumed she’s coming, makes me hesitate.

  “How’s the holiday issue?” I ask instead. If Kris and I can’t be sleepovers and fortune-tellers anymore, surely we can be something else. . . . I swallow back the artificial taste of the word itself: friends.

  A label. Doesn’t mean anything.

  “It’s at the printer,” she says, opening the window to its usual slit. This must be it. I wait for the slip of the pack from her pocket, the slap of her hand on the bottom as she steers the Corolla with her knees. I reach for the lighter in my jacket—Jolene’s—but Kris doesn’t need it. She dangles her fingers out the window. There’s nothing between them but wind and wet flakes.

  “Nice.”

  “A deadline’s a deadline,” she says, like it’s no big thing. “Even when we don’t have help.” She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t have to. The words do what she knew they would. Guilt burns red streaks across my cheeks. “We could use some help handing them out, though. You know how it is before break.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “sure. Everybody disappears. I remember.”

  “Cool,” she says, bringing her fingers back through the window for our final turn toward school. Their tips are red from the cold. “I’ll find you later.” As she says it, the tires spin free for a second and we glide across the intersection over a slick mix of ice and snow. I can barely register the fact that we’re out of control before we hit a gritty, salted section of street and the Corolla’s rubber tires grip the ground again.

  Neither Kris nor I mention it as we pull up to school.

  Kids swarm the white lawn and gather by the doors. They lift their heads and hands to the sky with delighted smiles. They look young. I feel old watching them.

  Kris parallel parks in one of her trademark spaces: a corner spot so small nobody else even slows down to consider it. It’s not worth it to them: the attempt; the possibility they won�
��t be able to make it, especially near the front lawn before school, with everybody watching. But for Kris it’s no problem. Once the Corolla is snug in its spot, she shuts the window and kills the ignition. Neither of us reaches for the door. We watch as white flakes stick to the windshield, blotting out arms, houses, hats, jackets. Soon we won’t be able to see anything. I take off my seat belt. The click sounds loud in the silence.

  “It’s not him?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “What’s this?” She looks me up and down, raises her eyebrows, shrugs her shoulders. Explain, the motion says. Explain yourself.

  “Maybe I’ve changed.”

  “Maybe,” she says, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “But I don’t think so.”

  “What about you?” I free my hands from the straps of my backpack. They’re stiff and shaking. “You quit smoking.”

  My voice sounds strange, like when you hear yourself on a recording and don’t recognize it, because that’s not the way you sound inside your own head.

  “My mom caught me, and I promised to quit a habit that’s killing me. It’s not the same thing.” Kris sucks in a deep breath, blows it out slow, and I imagine smoke. “So, this is who you are now?”

  “What if it is?” I ask, my voice tight and rising. This voice I recognize. This is me with a full throat and wet eyes. It’s me about to cry. “Is that so terrible? If I’m different?”