What's a Soulmate?

by Lindsey Ouimet

  “I was waiting until the nurse was free. So that… So I could ask her for directions.”

  God, even I wouldn’t believe my bullshit. He looks me over from head to toe, an assessment that leaves me to believe I’ve been found wanting, and inclines his chin toward the door.

  “Then you’d better run along to catch up.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Hello? Libby, where have you been?” Beth half-whispers, half-hisses into the phone. “I called you like, three times last night! And twice this morning.”

  It’s true. She did. I didn’t see a single missed call until I left the hospital. Well, after I left the hospital, got over the creepy-crawly feeling Officer Jordan left me with, and went home to shower it off my skin. After listening to her voicemails and reading the texts that started, most likely, the very minute she dropped off my car yesterday afternoon, and saw I wasn’t home, and didn’t stop until she walked into her first period class this morning, I figured it was time for us to talk.

  Another in-the-car-conversation, I guess.

  “I’m in the parking lot behind the gym. You have anything important going on in your last two classes?”

  She snorts and I can tell she’s already grabbing her million and one bags, getting ready to make a break for it.

  “There’s a sub in Jenkins’s class, and I think I have a quiz in trig, but I can make it up tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’m parked near the back. Close to the dumpsters.”

  “Of course you’re parked as far away as possible.” She sighs. “I’m not going to get caught. Quit worrying.”

  I want to tell her I parked here on habit alone, and how I have bigger things to worry about than being caught sneaking my best friend off school grounds, but keep my mouth shut. I crank the car back up and edge closer to the building. She tries to pretend she doesn’t worry about getting caught, but on the few occasions we’ve actually skipped an afternoon of classes, she’s turned into a sweaty, nervous mess until we’ve put at least a mile between us and the school.

  She also kind of looks like she’s trying to pull off some kind of Mission Impossible scenario as I watch her slip out the double doors and duck behind a trash can. I can’t hear it over my music, but I’m sure she makes more noise as she crashes into it than the rumble of my car’s motor. She gets in the passenger seat and throws each bag over her shoulder, into the backseat. Each one hitting me in the shoulder and face no matter how I move to avoid them.

  She turns to narrow her eyes at me, her blonde hair whipping around her face and sticking to her lips until she pushes it away.

  “Where have you been? Wait. Don’t tell me yet.” She glances around like she thinks the entirety of the school administration is going to come bursting through an exit any second now. “Drive. Then talk.”

  I nod, reverse, and then head back in the direction I came from.

  “Your house?”

  “Yeah, my mom and dad know I’m home today. It’ll be fine.”

  She leans her head back as far as it will go and bites her bottom lip. I can see her looking at me out of the corner of my eye and can’t stand it any longer. Without looking at her, I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and sigh.

  “You’ve got something to say. Go ahead and say it.”

  “Oh, you know … wondering why I get the feeling whatever you tell me is going to be something big.”

  I give her my best stink-eye and pull my mouth to one side. My ‘not terribly impressed with what you have to say’ face.

  “Because you can read me like a book and I’m honestly surprised you haven’t dragged it out of me already?”

  She laughs and relaxes back into her seat, eyes forward.

  “You’re right. That’s probably it.”

  Both of my parents are at work so we have the house to ourselves, but we hole up in my bedroom anyway. She kicks her shoes off and climbs on top of the bed, but there’s too much nervous energy thrumming through my veins for me to stand still, much less sit down.

  “Just blurt it out,” Beth says. She pulls her legs up to sit cross-legged and leans forward to rest her elbows on top of them. I would look like a preying mantis if I tried that. All knees and elbows. “I know you want to.”

  “I met my Soulmate.”

  Her mouth drops open and she sits up straight. It brings my attention to the fact she doesn’t always have the best posture in the world, but that’s neither here nor there. She starts to speak and, after a few false starts, manages to get the words out.

  “That… Is not what I was expecting.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like I was expecting it either,” I mutter, pacing from one side of the room to the other.

  “Honestly, I thought you were going to tell me something about how you didn’t think Ryan was really that into me or … I don’t know. But this! Do I know him? Wait, no. Of course I don’t. If I knew him, then you would already know him, and yeah…”

  I have no idea what my face looks like right now, but it has to be some weird mix of confusion and amusement. Is there a word for that? Conmusement? Amusion? Whatever.

  “First of all, Ryan is definitely into you. Second of all, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It’s just… Well, things are a little complicated.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Back up. We’ll come back to complicated. We’ll definitely come back to complicated.” She levels me with a stare. “But what do you mean sooner?”

  I stop pacing and bite the inside of my lip.

  “Libby.”

  “I met him a little over a month ago, and before you say anything, or flip out, let me talk.” I take a deep breath. “You know the police officer who just woke up from a coma?”

  She nods slowly, but I can tell she wants me to hurry up and get to the point.

  “You know the kid who put him in it?”

  Her current neutral expression morphs into something almost horror-filled, and my stomach drops.

  “Libby, no.”

  At this point all I can do is laugh. She doesn’t even know the half of it. She doesn’t even know that him technically being behind bars isn’t the worst part of this whole fucked-up mess by far.

  So I laugh. Until I start to kind of cry a little. And then I tell her the rest.

  We’re laid out across my bed, head to toe. I finish telling her about my visit to the hospital and the talk with my father that came afterward. I conveniently leave out my whereabouts for this morning because, quite frankly, I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I’m still not sure how the whole thing makes me feel or what I should do about it. If anything. I mean, I can’t be like, “Oh, I overheard snippets of a conversation in which Officer Jordan may or may not have admitted to having his son attacked. I totally think he did though because he really gave me the heebie jeebies.”

  Plus, I maybe realize now it was really stupid of me to show up this morning in the first place.

  Her fingers tangle with mine and she gives them a squeeze that says everything I need to hear right now. It’s a show of support and a sign of understanding, and all of the things that make Beth my best friend in the world.

  “You know,” she says, sitting up and pulling me with her. “Ryan’s really good with computers.”

  Okay.

  “I would assume he’d have to be. Given how he works at a place that repairs them and all.”

  “You idiot.” She rolls her eyes. I’m used to it, so I’m not offended, but I am starting to worry about how overworked the muscles behind them must be. “What I’m trying to say is Ryan is like, really good with computers. As in, good enough to maybe get his hands on information you don’t currently have access to.”

  “You think he would?”

  I shouldn’t do this. I should sit back and wait for my dad to find out whatever he can. I should be careful. Like I said I would.

  “Of course he will. The boy is practically obsessed with me. He’ll do anything I ask.”

  “You just said you weren’t
sure if he was really into you like, half an hour ago.”

  She waves her hand in the air and makes this weird face that usually means something along the lines of ‘yeah, whatever’.

  “Please. I was worried you didn’t think he was into me.” She hops off the bed and grabs her phone from her purse. “I’m going to text him to see what kind of info he needs. You want more stuff on his mom, right? I’m thinking that’s probably a good enough place to start if he can’t find anything on Officer Jordan. What did you say her name was?”

  “Um, I didn’t.” She’s talking so fast, and I feel like if I don’t make some sort of decision right this instant, I’ll regret it. “It’s Angela, though. McCormack, same as Drew’s. Of course.”

  “Got it.” She finishes her text, throws her phone back into her purse and looks up at me expectantly. “I can’t believe you met your Soulmate…”

  “I know, right?” I glance at the clock on my nightstand. “I should probably give you a ride back to school to get your car.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably something that needs to be done. I have to work at 4:00.”

  We’re halfway to the school when she grabs my arm.

  “I forgot to ask, and I know this is like, the stupidest thing to want to know given the circumstances and how important pretty much every other thing about this is, but… What’s he look like?”

  “Drew?”

  “Yes, Drew.”

  “Uh…” My face starts to get hot and I refuse to look over at her for even a second. “Grab my phone out of my purse. I saved his profile picture from FriendSpace. It’s not really big enough to tell what he actually looks like, but…”

  I could have stopped talking as soon as the words ‘grab my phone’ were out of my mouth. She’s already enlarging it to the best of her ability—I can tell from the weird flicking motions she’s making with her thumb and index finger. A second later, she’s smiling and nudging me in the ribs over the center console. “Nice.”

  She says it like I had something to do with the curly mop of dark hair on top of his head, or that stupid dimple, which is ridiculous. But, let’s face it, I can’t disagree with her.

  ****

  “It’s been a while since I’ve heard your sewing machine turn on, kid.”

  My mom is standing in the open doorway of my bedroom with a smile on her face and her arms crossed over her chest. It’s hard to believe someone almost a half a foot shorter has almost the exact same measurements as mine. I push the sheet with all of the pertinent information off to the side and turn in my chair to face her.

  “You’re not going to run out of cute skirts to twirl in, are you?” She teases, lifting one eyebrow and stepping into the room. She moves to the closet, runs a hand along the row of hangers, and glances back at me over her shoulder. “On second thought, I think you’ll be safe.”

  I drape the untouched-until-now fabric over the sewing table and snort.

  “Let’s hope so. Because I’ve pretty much vowed to have this dress finished for you before the end of the month.” I get up to slightly adjust the settings on the dress form I got for my birthday only a couple of years ago. “Or at least before your birthday. Because, you know, broke high-school student reasons.”

  As much as I wouldn’t actually mind working through the school year, my parents and I eventually settled on me only having a job during the summer months. Lest I become overwhelmed, or something. Needless to say, the small amount of money I’d had saved from last summer’s shifts at—where else—Frenchie’s, was essentially wiped out by Christmas.

  “You know we don’t expect you to get us gifts.”

  “Which is why you’re getting something I made myself.” I shrug. “Think of it like a really elaborate hand-made card.”

  She smiles, and I can feel her eyes still on me when I turn back to my work area to grab a pair of scissors and the dress pattern. I know without looking, her eyes are soft and she has about a million things she wants to say and ask. She wants me to be excited, and to be excited with me. And it’s not like I don’t want that, too. I just … I can’t talk about him right now. I can’t talk about the whole screwed-up mess. Not yet.

  I can give a little bit though.

  “This fabric you picked…” I smile through an exhale. “It’s really nice. What, what color blue is it?”

  ****

  Two days later, I’m sitting in my car, parked in front the home address for one Angela McCormack. And there’s a stack of hospital records I’m sure I’m breaking several different laws by merely being in possession of sitting in the passenger seat beside me.

  When Beth shoved them into my hands yesterday after school, I had a serious internal debate over whether I should hand them right back or immediately start plowing through all of the information that was now literally at my fingertips. I shoved them into the bottom of my bag instead and glared at it from my spot across the bedroom for at least an hour before caving and moving them to a spot on my desk. Where I could see them. And glare at them harder.

  The house looks normal enough from the outside. Not that I had concrete expectations exactly. It’s a small, brick, ranch-style home with white shutters and siding covering it in sections… I think it’s a ranch style anyway? I’m a big House Hunters fan, but could stand to brush up on my terminology.

  Regardless of what style it is, it’s a one story surrounded on each side by tall pine trees, leaving the house and its entire yard in the shade. The driveway is cracked in spots and there’s one of those basketball goals on wheels pushed off to the side of it. There’s a child’s bike leaning against the outer wall of a covered carport and an older model sedan sitting underneath.

  I hadn’t planned on being here today. I hadn’t planned on being here ever, I don’t think. Even as I cracked and thumbed through the pages of medical records Ryan obtained in ways I really, truly do not want to know about, and got progressively angrier last night, I still didn’t plan on being here.

  I woke up this morning though, and thought of last Saturday and the few before that. Then I started actually reading the papers sitting on my desk, and got even angrier. So on the day of the week I would normally be visiting Andrew at the Center, I’m here to see his mother instead.

  I glance back up at the driveway and at the bike parked in it, and take a deep breath.

  There was a hospital record at the bottom of the stack Ryan put together for me—the whole pile was in chronological order, bless his heart—dated the exact same day Andrew was arrested. Mercy Hospital, the hospital of choice for the McCormack family it seems, is two counties away. It makes sense how she wouldn’t want to use her place of employment to piece together the broken bits of her personal life. And there are a lot of broken bits.

  It takes almost an hour and a half to drive there. That’s almost an hour and a half Angela McCormack has had to drive with one broken arm, two broken noses, multiple lacerations and contusions to her back and stomach regions, and one semi-severe concussion over the last seven years. God only knows what else we could add to the list if we were able to go even further back.

  This record, the last one in the pile, didn’t list Angela McCormack as the patient though. Nope. It was Blake McCormack, eight years of age, suffering from a broken collarbone, dislocated shoulder, and two cracked ribs.

  That’s the one that had me plugging the address into my phone for directions. That’s the one that made me grab my car keys.

  That’s the one I think of as I step out of the car and cross the street. That’s the one I’m thinking about as I knock on the front door, and—

  Shit.

  On the ride over, I went over what I wanted to say a thousand times in my head. Cars are good places for these things. If someone at an intersection catches me having a conversation with myself like a crazy person, I can subtly raise my phone where it can be seen and hope they think I’m being smart and going hands-free. Although the person in the black SUV that was stuck behind me for miles before
I parallel parked in front of the McCormacks’ probably thought I was more bat-shit crazy than smart and hands-free. They actually slowed down when they passed me and, even though I couldn’t see anyone through the darkly tinted windows, I could practically feel their judgment.

  But regardless of all the practice, looking down at the kid who’s opened the door, his arm still in this complicated-looking sling, all of those words I decided on? They evaporate into thin air.

  “Hi,” I start, clearing my throat when the word gets stuck. “Is your mom home?”

  I can hear her approaching from somewhere deeper in the house already. Her footsteps are quick and she’s calling her son’s name and telling him he should always wait until she’s there with him before he opens the door. Her voice sounds worried, stressed, and on the verge of panic. She comes into view and I watch her posture visibly relax at the sight of a seventeen-year-old girl old who definitely poses zero physical threat standing in her doorway.

  She even goes as far as to smile while she greets me. There’s no visible sign she recognizes me from the hospital, so at least there’s that to be grateful for.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Libby. I, uh, I’m a friend of your son’s.”

  And the smile is gone. She leans down to tell the boy beside her lunch is ready and waiting in the kitchen, kissing his forehead before he disappears farther into the house.

  “Is that so?” She steps closer and grabs the edge of the door with what I’m sure is every intention of slamming it in my face. Or maybe on my face if I say one wrong thing. She inches it closed a bit, and gives me a tight, reserved smile. “Well, I’m sure you can understand how difficult a time it is for our family right now.”

  I don’t want to seem rude. I never want to seem rude because it’s not usually something I am. I didn’t come here to back down though. I take the tiniest step forward.

  “I do understand, but I was wondering if I could speak with you… Just for a minute.”

  She starts to shake her head from one side to the other and backs farther into the foyer.

  “I really don’t think that’s such a good idea right now, dear. I’m very busy at the moment, and—”