A Million Miles Away
Page 14
Kelsey’s face turned hot. “You mean, in general, or—”
“How was the open house weekend at the University of Kansas?”
Kelsey tried to keep her eyes locked on her best friend, but Gillian’s stare was too hard. She looked down. “I didn’t end up going.”
“What?” Gillian said, her voice lifting in mock surprise. “Did you get tired all of a sudden?”
Kelsey’s eyes snapped back to Gillian. She wasn’t even giving her a chance. She opened her mouth to speak, but Gillian interrupted her again.
“Don’t tell me that you lied? I never took you for a liar, Kelsey.”
Kelsey tightened her jaw. If Gillian wasn’t going to give her a chance to tell the truth, then she would just have to take it. “I told my parents I was going to KU because I had to tell them I was going somewhere. They would never have let me go.…” Kelsey gulped, her chest tightening. “They would never have let me go to Paris.”
“Paris, France?” Ingrid gasped.
“No. No way.” Gillian put a hand on Ingrid’s arm. “You went to Paris? Do not tell me this is about that soldier.”
“What soldier?” Ingrid asked, excited.
Gillian stared at her in disbelief. “I thought you said you were going to end it.”
Kelsey leaned toward her, trying to keep her voice low. “I messed up. I know. But I can’t end it because—”
“Yes, you can.”
“You’re not even giving me a chance to tell you why!”
“I gave you a chance!” Gillian almost shouted. “I went to your friggin’ house over spring break! I came to you!”
Kelsey felt as if she had been punched in the gut. “And I wasn’t there?”
“You weren’t…” She could see Gillian’s eyes beginning to water, but she resisted. “You’re never there anymore.”
Kelsey put her head in her hands. “I’ve had a rough year, Gil.”
“Not so rough that you couldn’t go to Paris, huh?” Gillian sat up straight and pushed back from the table, refusing to look at Kelsey.
Kelsey jumped on the silence, trying to get it out as fast as possible. “I’m so sorry—I went because he invited me—Well, not me—But I went and while I was there—”
But as she spoke, Gillian stood, leaving her tray, and walked toward the cafeteria exit.
“Ingrid,” she called from the door. “I need you.”
“She needs me,” Ingrid said, avoiding Kelsey’s eyes. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Tell her I’m sorry!” Kelsey called, and watched her walk away.
She fought the urge to bang her fist on the table. It seemed the only people who would listen to her were so far away. The only person, rather. Maybe she wasn’t saying the right things. Or maybe she just wasn’t saying them to the right people. Should she follow her friends?
No point, she decided. No point in trying to wrangle their anger into understanding.
She unwrapped the bottom of her 3 Musketeers bar and put the rest of it in her mouth in one bite, trying to savor its sticky richness until it was all gone. Michelle loved sweet things, too. Michelle and her hot chocolate. She would never tell her sister that sugar was bad for her. She would never tell her to give up something or someone she loved.
Ingrid had said it herself. It’s love, you know? If you are, you are.
She was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Weeks passed, embedded in routine. The sun got higher in the sky, up earlier, out later. As graduation grew closer, the seniors at Lawrence High School were starting to anticipate the leap they were expected to take, equally itching for it and fearing it. They flocked in the cafeteria and the courtyard like inquisitive birds around bodies of water, disseminating at the slightest ripple of responsibility.
Kelsey kept her head down. She cleaned her room. She dragged herself out of bed to practice her routine for the Rock Chalk Dancers audition. And she wrote.
She wrote to Peter as often and as deeply as if she were writing in a journal. Since the company’s loss, security had tightened, and he wasn’t able to Skype until they moved bases.
4/2
Dear Peter, I was in the locker room and I put my right shoe on my left foot because I was thinking of how the end of one of your eyebrows is somehow a shade blonder than the rest of your hair. Did you know that? Did you get a lemon in your eye at a young age?
xo
Michelle
4/20
Michelle—Abstract Expressionism is in fact the vomit of a sea creature. I mean that in a really good way. Think of it as an orca having just ate a school of angelfish, then he gets sick, and the pool of sickness is suspended in water. I’m writing that here because I don’t think Mrs. Wallace would appreciate it like you would.
Yours,
Peter
She was still Michelle in his eyes, but besides the name, she was Kelsey in every way. She would tell him the truth when his tour was over. And then, well, she didn’t know what would happen then.
Today, Kelsey was returning to the main doors of the high school from lunch, which she now opted to eat downtown. She waved at a car full of classmates and they waved back, their music fading as they squealed out of the parking lot.
She felt the itch and fear as much as anyone else, wishing she could duck out of the gymnasium doors and pile into a car bound for Clinton Lake. But she had said no for too long. There were friendly hellos from the dancers in the hallway, condolences about the breakup, and nods from the fringe of ordinary faces who used to cheer for her team at pep rallies and guzzle beer in her house.
Her phone lit up, and she grabbed for it, hoping to see Peter’s name, but it was just a text from Davis: It’s hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch, it said. Kelsey smiled. She typed, It’s hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock, then deleted it. He was always better than she was at them, comedian that he was.
And she couldn’t keep going back and forth. She remembered what Davis had last thought about their breakup: For now, he had said. She shouldn’t give him any ideas.
At her locker, she could smell Gillian before she saw her. Hair spray. She turned, finding Gillian there, trying to look at anything in the surrounding hallway but Kelsey. Next to her, Ingrid froze.
“Please ask Kelsey if she wants to have the dance team meeting at four or four thirty tomorrow,” Gillian said, her eyes locked on Ingrid.
Things between Kelsey and Gillian had turned from bad to worse. Gillian had even requested to move desks in Chemistry, the only class they had together.
Ingrid, meanwhile, was trying to remain neutral, but found herself more on Gillian’s side because Gillian was the one who, literally and physically, yanked her there.
Ingrid looked at Kelsey, saying sorry with her eyes. “Did you hear that, Kels?”
“Four,” Kelsey said. “And, Gil, please, just talk directly to me. This is so immature.”
“Tell Kelsey she doesn’t know the definition of mature.”
“Forget it,” Kelsey said, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I have to get to Art History.”
“Hear that?” Ingrid said, talking to Gillian as they walked away. “Kelsey has to go to class.”
As usual, the room was already dark when she got there, and half empty now that the year was winding down. Mrs. Wallace was bathed in the light from a slide featuring a complex orange-and-pink flower shape. Below it were the words “Feminist Visual Culture.”
“Good afternoon, Kelsey,” Mrs. Wallace said. “You’re late, but I’ll let it go this time.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Wallace,” Kelsey said, smiling sheepishly, because she was late most days. But she was always there, and never fell asleep, like she would have had this been any other year, any other time.
“The first slide is of a painting by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.”
Kelsey’s eyes followed the lines of the painting slowly, taking in every detail from top to bottom, as she had been taught.
“Pre-Raphaelites,” someone muttered.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Wallace said, pointing her remote to the projector with a dramatic wave, moving to the next slide. “The Brotherhood, as they say. Kelsey, read those names.”
Kelsey stumbled through the list.
“This is a list of people in Rossetti’s salon, one of the most exciting places to be if you were an artist at that time. They were rebelling against flat, conventional composition. People standing still in perfect portraits: boring! They wanted layers, asymmetry, backdrops, romance!” Then Mrs. Wallace smiled, pacing back and forth in her corduroy jumper. “And what do you not see?”
Kelsey’s eyes scanned the pale faces in the frame, burning to answer the question, but nothing popped into her head. She was stuck.
“Let me put it this way,” Mrs. Wallace said. “What does Rossetti’s salon and a boys’ locker room have in common?”
Kelsey cried out, “Oh! No women!”
“Bam. Right on the nose. And there’s your problem right there.…”
The rest of the class, Kelsey was riveted. Mrs. Wallace had a way of talking about the most minute details of what they were seeing so that they expanded into very big, important facts. The facts didn’t just relate to whatever time period they were studying, they were facts about the way a person looked at anything: a movie, a billboard, her mother’s decorating style. All of these types of seeing influenced one another, and they all found their root in the past.
Today Mrs. Wallace ended the class with a video clip, and as they watched, Kelsey felt something wash over her. The video was supposed to be an example of the way feminist art had evolved, to the point where the artists would use their own bodies as a canvas.
Kelsey didn’t know exactly what this meant. She imagined them painting on themselves.
And then, the artist danced. She danced in a way Kelsey had never seen before, but understood all the same. The dance awoke something in her, the same sort of feeling she would have if she had answered one of Mrs. Wallace’s questions correctly, but bigger than that. Better than that, because she could imagine herself in the artist’s shoes, losing herself to her limbs and torso and the music that played. It was as if the artist were answering a question Kelsey had asked since she was a little girl. The artist’s name was Maya. Maya Deren. She reminded Kelsey of her sister. She reminded Kelsey of herself.
When the video was over, Kelsey fought the urge to applaud.
The bell rang, but before she could gather her things, Mrs. Wallace put a hand on her arm.
“Forgetting something?”
Kelsey was still lost in thought. “Huh?”
“I graded the paper you handed in before break.” Mrs. Wallace looked at Kelsey, her eyebrows raised. “The paper on Cubism you handed in a day after the deadline? Remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kelsey said, clearing her throat. Her face burned. She was working harder, but it didn’t seem to be good enough. “Thank you. Sorry about that.”
Mrs. Wallace tapped the paper in her hands with plain, shorn fingernails. The grade wasn’t visible. “Well, you’ve never been famous among the administration for being on time for class, or present, for that matter. I didn’t expect a lot—”
“Yeah.” Kelsey sighed.
Mrs. Wallace continued, “When you gave me an A-plus paper, I was very surprised.”
She smiled as broadly as Mrs. Wallace could smile, which wasn’t very broad, and put the paper in Kelsey’s hands.
Kelsey flipped it over, her eyes wide. Sure enough, at the top near her name there was an A+. She could see small notes Mrs. Wallace had made here and here: Creative observation, she had written, and, Well said.
At first, all Kelsey could do was look back and forth between Mrs. Wallace and the paper. Breaths replaced words. It was the first A+ she had ever received.
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Mrs. Wallace replied, and went back to her desk.
Kelsey left the room with a fire underneath her. She couldn’t wait to tell Peter, and to tell her parents. Her mother and father had always told her she could do better. But she often wondered if any of them really thought she could, including herself. She had tried her hand at studying before, and always lost interest. What was different now?
She paused in the hallway, the faces filtering around her, remembering the person who she had done this for in the first place. She had been moved by this subject in the way her sister was probably moved by it every day. Her eyes blurred with happy tears.
I get it now, what you saw in it all, she told her sister, wherever she was. I see what you see.
4/26, 11:55 pm
From: Farrow, Peter W SPC
To: Maxfield, Michelle
Subject: A short list
The things I would rather do than go on patrol:
• Talk to you
• Take you on a date
• Make out with you
• Play music for you
• Listen to you play music for me (not on a guitar, just on the radio or something, no offense)
• Make out with you
• Read your letters
• Talk to you through a computer screen
• Make out with you
• Sit and stare off into space while thinking about you
• Stand and stare off into space while thinking about you
• Walk and stare off into space while thinking about you
• Sleep and stare off into space while thinking about you
• Bathe and stare off into space while thinking about you (sorry if that’s explicit)
Tomorrow we go out for a few days. I’ll try to email you again, but I can’t guarantee it won’t be complete gibberish. I’m having trouble making my hands or brain do anything else but… yeah. You get it already. I love you. I’m in love with you!
—P
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The mutters of fifteen members of Kelsey’s dance team echoed throughout the Lawrence High gym, but Kelsey wasn’t listening. She went in phases with the real world: Sometimes, she wanted to describe every detail in her head to Peter, just to know that he, too, had once tasted food, seen sun, tripped over a rug. But sometimes, everything in the world felt somehow unnecessary, because she didn’t need any of it if it wasn’t a part of him. The Lions Dance Team was waiting for Gillian to arrive at the last—and most important—dance practice of the year. Today, they voted on next year’s captains.
Kelsey forced herself out of a daze to look at the clock on her phone. 4:18.
“Where is she?” she asked Ingrid.
“Beats me,” Ingrid said, rotating her blonde head to look around the gym, as if Gillian were hiding in a corner. “Maybe she forgot?”
“No way,” Kelsey said dismissively, and then corrected herself. “I mean, that could be it, but I wouldn’t think so.”
She reminded herself to be nicer to Ingrid, the only real friend she had left at Lawrence High. “So,” she said, giving her an affectionate rub on the back. “How’s your mom?”
As Ingrid was about to answer, the gym doors opened with a bang.
Gillian walked, slow and deliberate, to where they were gathered on the bleachers. She stood in front of the group.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I must have gotten the time wrong.”
Kelsey scoffed and stood, taking a place next to Gillian facing the group. She muttered, “I said four o’clock yesterday. You were right there.”
“Anyway,” Gillian said, putting on a fake smile as if Kelsey wasn’t right next to her. “Let’s begin. For the freshmen unfamiliar with nominations and voting, here’s how this works.…”
As Gillian spoke, Kelsey felt her pocket vibrate. The phone lit up with a notification from Michelle�
�s email, which she had guiltily loaded onto her own phone. From Peter. “Tried calling you,” the subject read. He would have to wait. A minute later, however, her phone was lighting up again.
Kelsey glanced down. Another email from Peter, no subject. The content read “Hello?”
“Take these pieces of paper,” Gillian was saying, “and write down the name of the dancer you believe shows the most leadership, strength, and creativ—excuse me.” Gillian was looking at her. “Could you not?”
Kelsey apologized, and a minute later, her phone buzzed a third time. “Why is your phone disconnected?” Her phone? Her mind raced. Peter must have been trying to call Michelle’s old phone number for some reason. She would have to make something up later.
Her team was now voting and it was her job to collect the ballots. Kelsey went around to each dancer with a happy face, though she was composing a reason for Peter’s call in her head.
Then, a fourth email read “I’m in KS. Call me ASAP at my home #.” He had included a number with a Kansas area code.
Peter was here? Peter was home. Why was he home? Was he hurt? Kelsey’s stomach dropped, and she felt faint.
She backed away from the group, holding up her phone. “This is an emergency; I’m really sorry.”
As she left the gym, Kelsey caught a glance of Gillian’s face, knotted in concern. She sent a flicker of gratitude to her friend as she exited the school doors, dialed, and then—
“Hello?” The voice sounded like Peter, but it was his home line, so she had to be sure.
“This is K—Michelle Maxfield. May I speak with Peter?”
“Hi! Hi. It’s me.”
She put a hand to her chest. He was safe, at least safe enough to be at home, on the phone. “What happened?”
Five minutes later, she was in the Subaru on her way to El Dorado.
When he gave her the news, Kelsey tried not to sound too relieved.
Peter’s mother had had a stroke, and when his father was able to reach him in Afghanistan, he was given special dispensation to return home temporarily. The stroke turned out to be milder than they initially thought. His mother was now in stable enough condition to wake up on and off, but she was still showing symptoms, so she would be kept at the hospital for observation.