The Rules of You and Me

by Shana Norris

  “Maybe the real Hannah is a girl who climbs to the top of Chimney Rock,” Jude said.

  I glared at him, but he just grinned. He leaned back against the rail, his elbows propped up on the wood and his ankles crossed. My gaze traveled over him, taking in the casual, relaxed posture. This was a guy who had it all figured out. He could be anyone he wanted to be and didn’t care what people thought of him. I wished I could get inside his head and find out how to be that person too.

  “The one thing I do know is that the real Hannah keeps her feet on the ground.” I wiped sweat off my forehead. “I’m too tired to make it to the top anyway. It’s like a hundred degrees out here.”

  Jude straightened. “All right,” he said. “We’ll try again another day. I’ll get you up there eventually.”

  We started back down the stairs and I breathed a sigh of relief once my feet touched the parking lot. My sandals slapped across the asphalt as we walked toward Jude’s dusty gray truck. I couldn’t believe I had agreed to ride in that thing. It groaned and creaked as we had made our way up the mountain toward Chimney Rock and I was sure it would die along one of those hairpin curves. But it had miraculously made it, and I had to admit it was nice to sit back and let someone else worry about not driving off the side of the mountains.

  “What’s so great about Chimney Rock anyway?” I asked as we buckled ourselves into the truck.

  “You’d know if you ever went up to the top,” Jude said.

  “Give me a reason to go.”

  Jude eased the truck out of the parking lot and back down the narrow road away from the state park. “It’s just this place where I always feel like I’m on top of the world. Where nothing can get me, you know? Whenever I go up there, it makes me feel like all my other problems are so small and insignificant compared to the big picture.”

  I watched the trees pass by as we rumbled down the mountain. A sense of longing washed over me. That was what I needed, a place to get so far up that everything else couldn’t touch me. My parents, Yale, and the people back home would all disappear into the landscape below.

  But I couldn’t go up there. Even the idea of being so high made a cold sweat break out along my neck.

  I shifted in my seat, tugging at the belt to relieve some of the pressure in my chest.

  “So,” I said, searching for a change of subject, “what’s with your truck anyway?”

  Jude glanced at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Why is it unpainted?”

  “Oh.” Jude ran his teeth over his upper lip and adjusted the cracked rearview mirror. “It’s a work in progress. I haven’t gotten around to painting it yet.”

  “How long have you been working on it?”

  “A year,” he said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “And somewhere in that year, you never found the time to paint your truck?”

  Jude shrugged, but didn’t say anything else. His expression turned blank, like he had shut down. I shifted in my seat as the silence deepened. The tension had become thick within the small cab of the unpainted truck. We rode the rest of the way back to Aunt Lydia’s house without speaking a word.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I squished the wet clay between my fingers as I examined the lump on the table in front of me. To my left, Ashton expertly added sloping curves into her vase. Even Kate’s bowl actually looked like a bowl. Mine still looked like a lump of gray clay.

  “How do you do that?” I asked, leaning toward Ashton to whisper the question. At the front of the room, the instructor was helping an older woman with her vase. All around me, people worked hard at their pottery, barely using any effort to manipulate the clay. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself, but nothing seemed to be working as easily as the instructor had led me to believe.

  “Hold your hands like this,” Ashton said, showing me the correct posture again.

  I tried, and this time the clay rose up in a column. But then it collapsed, bending over in the middle so that it looked sad and pathetic.

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this?” I said.

  “It’s fun,” Kate answered.

  “It’s torture for the art challenged,” I said.

  “Everyone has an artist in them,” Ashton said. “Didn’t you ever draw when you were a kid?”

  “Sure, but at some point, I realized that I sucked and so I gave it up and focused on things I was actually good at.” I sighed as I looked at my clay-caked hands. “I’m going to go wash up and wait for you guys to finish.”

  Another thing I can check off the list, I thought as I scrubbed at my hands over the stained sink in the corner of the room. Mark would be happy when we resumed our sessions in the fall. Attempting to be artistic in the little pottery studio at Blue Ridge Crafts was certainly stepping far outside my comfort zone.

  Ashton and Kate were still putting the finishing touches on their works, so I wandered around the hall outside the room and studied the artwork on the walls. I had never really been into art or paid much attention to it. I used to visit Aunt Lydia’s gallery and pretend to be interested in the newest paintings she had acquired, but really, it all looked the same to me. I could look at pictures of the Mona Lisa or Starry Night in a book and understand that someone had deemed them masterpieces, but nothing really called to me in the paintings. I didn’t know what made them anymore special than any other painting by another artist.

  I stopped in front of one painting, feeling something familiar about it. It featured a small town rising out of the trees that surrounded it. The buildings weren’t very tall and there was nothing remarkable about it. But something held me there in front of it for a long time as I studied the colors and the shapes within the painting.

  I looked at the brass tag underneath the painting. “WILLOWBROOK” BY LYDIA MONTGOMERY, ASHEVILLE, NC.

  This was one of Aunt Lydia’s paintings. And not just any painting, but one of my home. Our home.

  I was still standing in front of the painting when Ashton and Kate finally found me.

  “How long has this painting been here?” I asked.

  “A long time,” Ashton said. “Lydia donated it after she moved here. I think it’s the last painting she actually finished.”

  Why had Aunt Lydia given this painting to the studio? Had it been too hard for her to look at it and remember home? Or did she just want to forget?

  Ashton and Kate talked as we left Blue Ridge Crafts and I followed along, still thinking about the painting. I barely noticed when they stopped, so I crashed into Ashton’s back.

  “Ouch,” I said. “Sorry.”

  But Ashton didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at the ground, her face red.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Kate nodded her head toward something down the street. “She’s too afraid to keep walking this way.”

  “Why?” I looked down the street, but just saw more shops like the others we had already passed.

  “Because Carter works at the burger place up there,” Kate explained. “She thinks that if she walks by the window, Carter will think she’s stalking him.”

  “We came by here yesterday,” Ashton said. “It would look weird if we walk by again today.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “It’s a free sidewalk, Ash. You can walk by a million times a day if you want.”

  “I don’t want him to think I’m doing it on purpose!”

  “You are doing it on purpose,” Kate said.

  “But I don’t want him to know that.” Ashton crossed her arms. “Let’s go across the street.”

  “Then we’d have to cross back once we pass,” Kate said. “That’s stupid.” She looked at me. “Grab her arm.”

  I grabbed Ashton’s left arm while Kate grabbed her right. Keeping her solidly between us, we walked down the sidewalk. Ashton’s feet dragged on the concrete as we got closer to the burger shop where Carter worked, but we managed to pass without her freaking out.

  “Was he there?” Ashton whispered. She ha
d stared straight ahead the entire time until we passed the little shop.

  “No,” Kate said. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see him.”

  “Dammit,” Ashton whispered.

  “Why are you whispering?” Kate asked.

  Ashton sighed. “I’m pathetic.”

  “Yes, you are,” Kate agreed. “But if you’d talk to him, he’d probably realize how great you are too.”

  Ashton’s shoulders slumped, her mouth turned down into a deep frown.

  “Hey,” Kate said, “let’s have a girls’ night. We’ll watch a bad movie and curl our hair and eat tons of candy.” She looked at me over Ashton’s head. “Hannah? You in?”

  “Can’t,” I said, giving her an apologetic smile. “Jude and I are going out for pizza.”

  The two girls stopped again, gawking at me with their mouths open.

  “What?” I asked, stopping and looking back at them.

  “You’re spending a lot of time with Jude,” Kate said.

  “Yeah,” Ashton agreed. “Are you two like…dating? Hooking up? What?”

  “No! We’re just friends.”

  They exchanged a look like they didn’t believe me.

  “Really,” I assured them. “Nothing is going on between us.”

  We started walking again, but I knew the conversation wasn’t done.

  “So,” Kate said after a few seconds of silence, “what do you and Jude do together?”

  “We just drive around,” I said. “Talk. Go to Chimney Rock.”

  “That’s it?” Kate asked.

  “That’s it,” I confirmed.

  “Weird.” Kate’s forehead scrunched into a confused look. “Jude hasn’t really talked to anyone in months, and now he’s talking to you? He pushed all his old friends away because he didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. We just kind of get each other.”

  Kate and Ashton exchanged another look. I scowled and tried to ignore it. What did it matter to them if I hung out with Jude?

  “Maybe he’s going back to his old self,” Kate said at last.

  “Maybe,” Ashton agreed. Her eyes lit up. “Hey, you should invite him to hang out with us sometime. Maybe it’ll bring him back into the land of the living.”

  I wasn’t sure if Jude would want to hang out with Ashton and Kate, but I agreed to ask. He would probably say no and if he did, then fine, end of discussion.

  “We should get a whole group together,” Kate said. “Syke and Nadia and Trent…and Carter.” Her eyes darted toward Ashton and she grinned.

  The tips of Ashton’s ears reddened. “You’re trying to torture me.”

  “I’m trying to help you,” Kate said. “It’s just a group of friends all hanging out. No pressure.”

  Ashton sighed, but she said, “I’ll do it if Hannah gets Jude to come.”

  “I thought it was no pressure,” I grumbled.

  #

  “Don’t you ever have to go to work like normal people?”

  Jude and I sat in the grass on his front lawn, under the tree where the shirt—a pale green polo this time—flapped in the breeze over our heads as the sun sank toward the mountains in the distance. The remains of our pizza dinner sat in the grass nearby.

  “I used to,” Jude said. He laid back in the grass, his hands behind his head.

  “Did you give up working for a living?” I asked.

  “I’m in between jobs at the moment.”

  “So you’re unemployed.”

  Jude sighed. “I got fired. Haven’t found another job since then. This economy sucks, you know.”

  I looked him over as I tore at the grass next to my leg. “How old are you anyway?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Do you always answer questions with questions?”

  Jude smiled. “I’m eighteen. I’ll be nineteen in October. You?”

  “Seventeen in two weeks,” I said.

  “An early July baby,” he said. “That makes you, what? A Cancer?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me you believe in that stuff.”

  “No,” he said. “My mom does.”

  I looked at the house behind me. It looked empty and uncared for, just as it always did. I hadn’t seen Jude’s mom yet and I wondered about her.

  “Is your mom home?” I asked.

  “Don’t think so,” Jude said.

  “You don’t know?”

  He rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “I don’t really keep up with her. Sometimes I go days without seeing her.”

  “That’s the way it is with my dad,” I said. “He works a lot. Or else he’s traveling for business. Sometimes a week or two would pass before I’d see him again.”

  “What about your mom?” Jude asked.

  I sighed. “My mom keeps track of me just to make sure I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing every second of the day. She has my calendar carefully planned out to the minute. So if she schedules me to study between three and five, I’d better be in my room studying. At six I’m allowed out to eat. Then at seven, it might be dance class or piano lessons or maybe even a pre-approved party at one of her friends’ houses. At nine, it’s back to studying again for another hour before bed at promptly ten o’clock.”

  Jude looked horrified. “You actually live like that?”

  I shrugged. “I have to be the best. I have to be valedictorian and go off to some prestigious college and make a big name for myself.”

  “What happens if you don’t do that? You’ll die?”

  I tossed a handful of grass at him. “No, it just all part of the rules.”

  “What exactly are these rules?” Jude asked.

  I crossed my legs, pulling my ankles as close to my body as I could. “The rules are everything my parents have ever taught me,” I explained. “Little things they’ve drilled into my brain so many times that they’ve stuck. One day, I just put them all into a list in my head and started calling them ‘the rules.’ Because that’s basically what they are, rules on how I should behave, who I should be friends with, what I should do. How I should live my life.”

  “Go on,” Jude said. “Let me hear them.”

  I felt a bit silly, but I dove in. “Rule number one: Maintain the image of perfection.”

  Jude wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t sound like a good rule. Things aren’t always perfect.”

  “My parents aren’t normal parents,” I said. I cleared my throat and went on. “Always have the upper hand. If reality isn’t the way you want it to be, create your own. Never ask for help. Even the score as soon as possible—”

  “That’s why you wanted to pay me for fixing your tire,” Jude interrupted. “The rules say you have to even the score.”

  “That’s one of my dad’s rules. He’s this big corporate guy who thinks everything is a negotiation.”

  “You know,” Jude said, “sometimes people do things just to be nice. Sometimes they don’t want something in return.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I’ve been brought up to believe.”

  Jude rolled back over and looked up at the shirt fluttering over us.

  “Do you want to hear more?” I asked. “Or are you horrified enough?”

  “I think that’s plenty,” he said. “I’m kind of sorry I asked. It doesn’t sound like a good way to live.”

  “Don’t you have rules?” I asked.

  “No,” Jude said. “I just do what I want. When Liam was here, he used to try to tell me what to do. And most of the time, I’d do it. Because he was my big brother, you know? He knew everything and was the coolest guy I’d ever met. He was the one who really looked after me when our dad checked out on us.”

  I stretched out on the grass, our heads only inches apart. The green polo swayed back and forth from the tree limb, as if it were dancing to a song we couldn’t hear.

  “What’s with the shirt in the tree?” I asked softly.

  Jude didn’t
say anything for a long time. Finally, he spoke again. “I thought you weren’t supposed to live by the rules this summer.”

  “I’m not,” I told him. “My lif—Mark says I use them as a crutch to hold myself back from what I really want to do. So I’m supposed to break all of them and figure out what I really want. But it’s hard. I’m so used to living by the rules, it’s hard to not fall back on them.”

  “Maybe what you need to do is replace the old rules with some new ones,” Jude suggested. “Make up your own rules to push you outside of your boundaries.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  He held up a finger. “Rule number one: don’t complicate things. Simple, honest, and straightforward is the best way to go.” He held up another finger. “Rule number two: when something scares you the most, that’s when you know you should do it.”

  “Within reason,” I added. “I’m not doing anything that will get me killed or arrested.”

  “Rule number three: always do the things that could get you arrested. But try not to get caught.” He turned his head and shot me a crooked grin.

  I laughed. “You’re insane.”

  “But brilliant,” Jude said. “Come on, let’s figure out these new rules to live by.”

  “If I have to live by them, so do you,” I said. “They’re your rules.”

  He shrugged. “Fine. I don’t mind a challenge.”

  “Rule number four,” I said as I rolled over. “Don’t be afraid to face reality.”

  Jude’s smile faded a bit, but then he nodded. “That’s a good one.”

  I didn’t know what made me brave enough to ask, but I didn’t see a better time coming along. “Hey, you want to go hang out with Ashton and Kate and their friends?”

  Jude was quiet for a long time, but then he said, “Hang out where?”

  “Papa Gino’s,” I said. “It’s like a group thing.”

  Jude scrunched up his nose. “Who will be there?”

  “Ashton and Kate and Carter and Syke and Nadia and…um…Trevor?”