The Rules of You and Me

by Shana Norris

  I edged closer to the unpainted truck. There were dents and scratches along the side and the back window was cracked all the way across.

  “Let me just pay you,” I said. “You look like you could use the money.”

  Now his easygoing expression disappeared, replaced by a deep scowl. “Keep your money,” he snarled at me as he slammed his door shut.

  I jumped back, blinking at the sudden change in his demeanor. The truck sputtered to life and the tires squealed as the guy put it into drive and pulled back onto the road, kicking up dirt and rocks toward me. I coughed, watching as he disappeared down the dip in the road.

  Maybe Natalie was right about hillbillies.

  I tossed my checkbook into the passenger seat as I got back into my car. I would probably never see the guy again, so it didn’t matter if I hadn’t settled the debt.

  Leaning over the console, I shoved my hand into the tiny space next to the seat and managed to fish my phone out. I drove until a signal bar finally appeared on the screen. I scrolled through my contacts, looking for the number I had stored there but had never called. Before now, all of our contact had been through a couple of short emails.

  She picked up on the second ring.

  “Aunt Lydia?” I said, feeling butterflies erupt in my stomach. “It’s Hannah. I think I’m lost.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Aunt Lydia had downsized in the last four years. The beautiful Victorian home she had owned in Willowbrook had been replaced with a small, red brick home. It was all one floor and sat nestled at the edge of the steep hill that rose behind it. Pine trees stood over the house, providing a little privacy from the neighbors.

  Aunt Lydia sat in a swing on the front porch, her feet propped up on the cracked wooden railing, as I slowly pulled into the driveway. I cut the engine off, but didn’t move from the car. I studied her through my windshield. She was older than my mom, but something about her looked younger. Aunt Lydia’s blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, with strands escaping from the sides. She wore a pink tank top and old jeans, but no shoes on her dirty feet.

  This wasn’t the Aunt Lydia I remembered in the stylish business suits she wore to run the museum.

  She stood and stepped toward the edge of the porch, giving me a hesitant smile, and I realized I looked ridiculous just sitting in the car. So I opened the door and climbed out, then made my way across the yard, my footsteps crunching on the layer of pine needles.

  “Hannah,” Aunt Lydia said, smiling warmly at me. She opened her arms and I stepped into them for a hug. I closed my eyes and inhaled. There it was, the familiar scent of the cocoa butter lotion she always used. At least one thing hadn't changed.

  “Do you have a lot of bags?”

  I followed Aunt Lydia back to my car and she opened the back door to retrieve two red suitcases, stitched with my initials in white.

  “Let me guess,” Aunt Lydia said as she looked at the bags. “Your mother bought these.”

  I grinned. “Of course.”

  Inside, the house looked even smaller than the outside did. The living room was tiny and I bumped into a table as I tried to maneuver past the couch. The walls were a soothing sage green, with paintings of mountain scenery hung on them.

  “Sorry, it’s much smaller than what you’re used to,” Aunt Lydia said as she carried my bags toward the hallway. “It’s definitely not a big house in a gated community.”

  My parents and I used to live in a smaller house, in the suburbs, where most of the people I went to school with lived. But then my dad’s bank went national and made him into a big corporate president and CEO. My parents decided our new lives in the upper class required a new house that reflected our status, with a tall iron gate to keep out the people who didn’t fit in.

  “It’s fine,” I told Aunt Lydia. She led me to a tiny bedroom in the back corner of the house. It was dark because of the trees clustered around this end of the house and so Aunt Lydia had to turn on the light even though it was two o’clock in the afternoon. The room contained just a narrow bed, with a pink and green striped blanket on it, and a door opened to reveal the tiniest closet I had ever seen.

  “I haven’t gotten around to decorating this room," Aunt Lydia said as she looked at the empty white walls. “No one ever uses it, so...” She shrugged and set my bags on the bed.

  “You hungry?” she asked as she turned back to me.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. Just a little tired from the drive.” It was about five hours from Willowbrook to Asheville, and I had gotten stuck in a traffic jam near Raleigh, which added another forty-five minutes.

  “Take a nap,” Aunt Lydia said. She backed toward the door, looking around as if this reunion was as awkward for her as it was for me. Things had changed in the last four years, and the close relationship we’d once had was long gone. What did she think when she looked at me? Did she think I was too much like my mother, too prim and put together? Was she disappointed in how I had turned out?

  “We can go out for dinner later. I know a great local place you’ll love.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Aunt Lydia gave me a smile before she stepped into the hall and shut the door.

  I sat down on the edge of my bed, folding my hands in my lap. I tried to remember what Mark had said. This trip would be a good opportunity for me to get away from everything that held me back. A chance to clear my head and not think about all the things my parents wanted and expected of me. A chance to forget about the application for Yale that I hadn’t yet filled out despite my mom’s insistence on early admission. This summer was my chance to not be the Hannah Cohen everyone back home expected me to be.

  Most of all, it was my escape once the news about my dad finally leaked to the media.

  #

  “You like Italian food, right?” Aunt Lydia sat close to the steering wheel of her old Land Rover, which rumbled and vibrated so much I felt it through the seat under me. The car sputtered a bit as it pulled itself up the hill away from her neighborhood.

  “Yes,” I said. “We went to Florence last summer.”

  Aunt Lydia smirked. “I’m not talking quite that Italian. This is a little mom and pop place. Spaghetti mostly, but they do have really good ravioli. It’s not even from a can!”

  She laughed, glancing over at me, and I made myself laugh too. I had changed into a white sundress and red espadrilles, and pulled my hair back with a white headband. Aunt Lydia had raised her eyebrows at my outfit when I came into the living room just before we left. She’d looked down at her ratty jeans and old tank top, then said, “Oh, I guess I’ll change.”

  Mom always insisted we look nice for dinner. Even before Dad’s bank went big, Mom made a big production out of dinner. We had to be dressed nicely, hands freshly washed, and shoes on our feet even when we were eating at home. It was one of Mom’s rules (number seventeen, in fact).

  “No, you don’t have to,” I’d told Aunt Lydia, feeling suddenly embarrassed to be so overdressed. I’d tried to go change, but she wouldn’t let me. And so we’d left just as we were: me looking like I was going on a date, and her looking like she was getting ready to dig in a garden.

  I rested my head against the cool glass of the passenger window, watching as the world passed outside. We still hadn’t gotten onto the highway, so we were driving slowly through the houses around Aunt Lydia’s neighborhood. I hadn’t been too far away from her house when I got the flat tire earlier, just a few blocks over in the opposite direction. I still wasn’t sure about my bearings though, since most of the houses looked the same: red brick and small, with grass that was drying out under the summer sun.

  A bright flash of red caught my eye as we turned a corner. A huge tree stood on the corner of a lot belonging to yet another red brick house. It looked like all the other houses around it, except for the piles of old tires leaning against the house and the bright red plaid shirt that hung from one of the lowest tree branches. The shirt swayed back and forth in the bree
ze, the sleeves flapping like an invisible man waving his arms.

  I could imagine what my mother would say if she was there. “It’s ridiculous how some people don’t care about the image they project to the rest of the world, Hannah. Aren’t you glad we know better?”

  We didn’t go all the way into Asheville. The restaurant Aunt Lydia wanted to take me to was on the outskirts of town. Tall trees half-hid the little brown building, and a bright green neon sign read “Papa Gino’s.”

  The restaurant was Italian in the way that people who have never been to Italy think it is. Red-checked tablecloths covered the little tables, and a pizza buffet was set up along one wall.

  “Lydia!” A woman’s voice boomed as we entered the dimly lit room. A gray-haired tiny woman rushed over to hug Aunt Lydia. She looked too small for the commanding voice that came out of her. “You haven’t been to see us in ages, Capretta!”

  “I’m sorry,” Aunt Lydia said. “I haven’t gotten out much. But my niece is staying with me, so I brought her to meet you.” She gestured toward me. “This is Hannah. Hannah, this is Rita Lagasse.”

  The old woman scowled at Aunt Lydia. “Don’t be so formal. Everyone calls me Mama Rita,” she told me just before she enveloped me in a tight hug that locked my arms at my sides. For such a small old woman, she was pretty strong.

  Mama Rita led us to a table near one of the few windows in the place. “Best seat in the house,” she said proudly.

  “Thank you, Mama,” Lydia said. Mama Rita took our orders for drinks and then hurried away, disappearing through a wooden door.

  “So,” Aunt Lydia said, resting her arms on the table and leaning forward, “what are your plans?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Plans?”

  “For your visit. Did you have something you wanted to do or see while you’re here?”

  I shrugged. “I just came to visit.” I hadn’t really thought about what I’d do here in Asheville. My sole focus had been to get away from Willowbrook.

  “Okay,” Aunt Lydia said. She said it in a way like my being there, without any specific goals, was an inconvenience to her. She furrowed her brow and tapped her fingers on the table. “Hey, you’re a good student, right? There are a lot of museums you can visit around here.”

  Visiting museums sounded exactly like something the Hannah I wasn’t supposed to be would do. She would waste away her summer learning while other seventeen-year-olds were out doing whatever it was normal seventeen-year-olds did. Steal beer? Watch R rated movies?

  “My life coach says I should expand my experiences to new things,” I said. “So I think museums are out. I’ve been to plenty of those.”

  Aunt Lydia stared at me as if I’d grown another head. “What the heck is a life coach?”

  I stared down at my hands as a burning sensation crept up my neck. Apparently, Mom had never bothered to tell Aunt Lydia about Mark. “Oh, um,” I said, stammering for an explanation that wouldn’t reveal too much. “He’s someone who helps me figure out what step would be best to take in my life. You know, like when I’m confused about something or having a problem. He listens and helps me figure it out.”

  “So, like a therapist?”

  I glanced around the room quickly to see if anyone had overheard her. “No, he’s a life coach. It’s different.”

  “How exactly?” Aunt Lydia asked.

  I was saved from answering by the return of Mama Rita, who placed two glasses of tea on the table between us. “Here you go, girls,” she boomed. “Now, have you decided what to eat yet?”

  I looked down at the unopened menu in my hands. I hadn’t even looked at it since we sat down.

  Aunt Lydia must have noticed my look of panic because she said, “How about if I pick something out for both of us?”

  I nodded and set the menu on the table. “Okay.”

  Aunt Lydia ordered two plates of ravioli, Caesar salads, and mozzarella sticks. After Mama Rita left, we sat at the table in silence for a few moments. The other diners around us ate and talked and laughed, bits of their conversations drifting toward me over the silence at my own table. A long time ago, Aunt Lydia and I had been so close, I used to pretend she was my older sister. She had never seemed as old as she actually was. Even when things were structured and ordered to perfection at my own house, Aunt Lydia would always let me just be a kid when I was around her.

  But now I didn’t even know what to say to her. The silence stretched on until it became uncomfortable. I sipped my tea, then carefully replaced it, wiping away the bead of condensation on the glass. I reached over to adjust the little silk rose in the glass vase in the center of the table so that the leaves were aligned evenly on each side.

  Then I realized this was something my mother would do. I let my hand drop back to my lap.

  Aunt Lydia had been watching me without speaking. She sipped her own drink, then said, “How is your father?”

  My jaw clenched as an icy chill raced down my spine. “Fine. Mom says he’s enjoying himself at the…the center.”

  Even I couldn’t say the word rehab, but I didn’t want to call it a resort like Mom did. The old Hannah would buy into Mom’s lie and paint over reality with the rainbow brush of perfection.

  Aunt Lydia nodded. “That’s good. I hope he can get the help he needs there.”

  I waved a hand as if it didn’t matter. “He’s making a lot of friends. I’m sure he’ll come back all refreshed and ready to get back to work.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Aunt Lydia asked. “Him going back to work so quickly? Maybe all the stress of his job is what caused him to start taking the—”

  “I’d really rather not talk about this at dinner,” I said. Rule #6: No unpleasant discussions at dinner. It ruins digestion.

  Aunt Lydia pressed her lips together, but then she nodded. “If that’s what you want, Hannah. But just remember that I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

  I spotted Mama Rita walking backward through the swinging kitchen door with a tray balanced on one hand. Our appetizers and salads. Thank goodness.

  “I’m starving,” I lied as Mama Rita brought the food over. “I’m really too hungry and tired to talk. Can we just eat?”

  Aunt Lydia smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes and looked strained. “Sure. I promise, you’ll love the food.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Hannah? Can you get the door?”

  I cast a glance at the kitchen ceiling, which was marked with strange brown stains and cracks that snaked across the plaster. Aunt Lydia’s muffled voice sounded like it came from somewhere above me, but I wasn’t sure exactly where since the house had only one floor as far as I could tell.

  The doorbell rang again and I cringed as I pushed myself out of my chair. I had only been out of bed for fifteen minutes and had just settled down to a bowl of Corn Flakes at the tiny counter which served as a table in Aunt Lydia’s even tinier kitchen. I hadn’t seen Aunt Lydia since I’d gotten up, so I had assumed she’d gone somewhere. But apparently, she had hiding places in the tiny house.

  I opened the door to find a towering pile of canvases and boxes.

  “I couldn’t find the size you wanted,” said a voice behind the boxes. “So I bought the closest I could get. Sorry.”

  I stepped back as the pile, carried by two slender arms, moved over the threshold and into the house. As the canvases and boxes moved past me, I could see the back of a girl’s body. Her overalls were paint-splattered and looked four sizes too big. She wore a fitted white T-shirt that had ridden up to reveal a stretch of brown skin of her lower back.

  She dropped the collection of canvases and boxes into a chair in the living room, even though I wasn’t sure how she managed to see the chair at all, and then turned to me, blowing a lock of dyed orange hair out of her eyes.

  “You’re not Lydia,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  I shook my head. “No, sorry.”

  “Where’s Lydia?”

  I po
inted to the ceiling. “Somewhere up there, I think?”

  The girl brightened. “In her studio already? Maybe it’s a good day. Lydia!”

  “Ashton?” Aunt Lydia’s voice called back, muffled through the ceiling above us.

  “Of course it’s me,” the girl yelled back. “I got the canvases, but not the size you wanted.”

  “What?” Aunt Lydia called.

  “I got the canvases!” The girl yelled louder, cupping her hands around her mouth. “But not the right size!”

  “Bring them up and I’ll take a look!”

  The girl blew her hair out of her eyes again and then looked at me. “Do you think you could help me carry these things?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going. If Aunt Lydia had a studio in the house, I hadn’t yet seen it.

  “I’m Ashton McNeil, by the way,” the girl said, holding out a hand toward me.

  I shook her hand, firmly like my dad had taught me. Rule #7: Always have a good handshake. “Hannah Cohen,” I told her.

  “Lydia’s niece?” Ashton asked, raising her eyebrows. “She’s talked about you before, but she didn’t say you were coming.”

  I couldn't help feeling surprised that Aunt Lydia had mentioned me to this girl. They must have known each other pretty well if they had actually talked about me. I didn’t think Aunt Lydia had thought too much about me or my parents over the years.

  “It was kind of a last minute thing,” I said, shrugging. “I decided not to go to Paris.”

  Ashton snorted. “Oh, yeah, I decided not to go to Paris last week too.” She smirked as she hefted the boxes into my arms.

  They were heavier than they looked and paint fumes rose up from the cardboard, stinging my nose. Ashton picked up the stack of canvases and hefted them onto her shoulder as she walked out of the room. I followed behind, noticing how Ashton seemed to know the house well enough to know exactly where she was going.