Seth starts to pack up the picnic basket. “Well, I don’t want you to miss it because of me.”
I feel terrible. “Don’t be like this, Seth.” I reach out to him, but he jerks his arm away from me. I can tell he’s trying not to cry.
“It’s my birthday, Reiko,” he says, his voice cracking, like he’s going through puberty all over again. I can’t look at him, not the way his chin is wobbling, because it’s my fault and I just want to get out of here.
“I brought you a cake! And a card! What more do you want?”
The words are out before I can stop them. The weight of them nearly knocks us both over. I wish I could take them back, because I didn’t mean them, not really. I just don’t want to be dealing with this right now. But it’s like I’ve handed him a loaded gun and asked him to fire.
He takes a deep breath, inhaling my question.
“What I want,” he says, and his pupils are huge. I feel like they are going to keep expanding and expanding until I’m staring into two black holes, until I’m falling into them, and I’ll never be able to get out. “What I want is for you to want to spend time with me on my birthday.”
“And I did! I spent time with you on your birthday!” My voice is high, too high. I sound like a cartoon character. My dress suddenly feels too tight − it is squeezing all the air out of me. This isn’t how it’s meant to be with us. I’m lost and I don’t like it. Because I know what he means and I wish I didn’t.
“Let’s just go,” I say, desperate to escape this situation.
Then I run down the stairs, so fast that my shoe slips off and I have to go back for it, like I’m some sort of twisted Cinderella – only instead of running from a party, I’m running to one.
The whole drive back to Seth’s place, I keep expecting him to say something to make it better.
He doesn’t.
“Have fun at your party,” he says.
He leaves what’s left of his birthday cake, and his card, behind.
I tell myself I don’t care. I tell myself that he overreacted. I tell myself that he was asking too much of me. And I ignore the feeling inside that is whispering that maybe, just maybe, it might be my fault too.
I wish we could go back to how things were between us before: just us in the desert and nothing before us and nothing behind us but sand and sky. I wish it could have stayed like that for ever.
CHAPTER 22
When I get to the old racetrack, all I can see are shadows. I can’t tell who is who, and the closer I get, the more I realize I don’t recognize anyone. It makes me feel like I really have been in a different world this summer. I can’t find Dre or Tori or anyone I know from my school. I don’t even see Peter or Michael or Zach, or any of the guys from the football team. Libby’s in Hawaii, so I know she won’t be here, but Megan and the others would never miss a big party like this.
It’s been years since the track has been used as an actual racetrack. Sometimes people come out here and race on bikes, but mostly it’s abandoned. It’s far from any houses, far from anything. It’s the perfect place for a party.
But I’m just not in a party mood after the whole thing with Seth. Partying the hardest, laughing the loudest, and living the most used to be the best way to forget about Mika. But recently, being out in the desert with Seth, driving or exploring, has been an even better balm.
Still. I don’t want everyone to think I’m some weirdo who just disappears into the desert by themselves. And I’ve got to be the best, and I don’t care what anyone tells you, part of being the best is being the most popular.
“Reiko Smith-Mori, where the hell have you been all summer?” Zach Garcia has materialized next to me. He looks good. But then again, he always looks good.
“Around,” I say. I take a step closer to him, smelling his cologne, and wondering what his letterman jacket would look like on me. Could Zach Garcia make me forget, make me feel alive the way being with Seth Rogers does?
“Rei, did you hear me?”
I blink up at Zach. I hadn’t even noticed he had said anything.
“Sorry,” I say, putting on my prettiest smile and batting my lashes. The face I put on at parties. “What was that?”
“I asked you if you’ve seen Dre? She’s been looking for you all night.”
“I just got here. I haven’t found her, and she’s not answering any of my texts.”
“Well” − Zach gives me a slow smile, the smile that has been breaking hearts since the third grade − “let’s go get you a drink and then we can find Dre.”
“Reiiiii!” Dre comes at me like a comet. “I’ve missed you so much!” she slurs, her beer sloshing out of her cup and down my dress. “What took you so long? You are slow late.” And then she laughs a great big hiccupping laugh. “Didja hear that? Slow late! Because you are late? And slow?”
“Yeah, yeah, she heard you.” Dre’s sister, Tori, takes the red cup out of Dre’s hands. “Dre, I think you’ve had too much to drink.”
“Have not!” Dre says indignantly. “And Reiko just got here!”
“Well, then, Reiko probably needs a drink, but not you.” Tori holds the cup to me.
“I’m good,” I say. “I’m driving.”
“You are better than good,” Dre declares. “You are great!” She gives me a wet kiss on the cheek. You’d think she’d been gone for months, not just two weeks.
“This is my best friend!” she shouts at anyone and everyone who passes us. “This is my best friend!” Then she hugs me again. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
“Me too!” I say, hugging her back.
And I am.
Mostly.
Mika climbs into bed with me the next morning and snuggles up next to me. I stroke her hair. Then she looks at me and frowns. “Reiko, what’s wrong?”
She can always tell when something is wrong.
“I don’t think I’m being a very good friend to Seth.”
“Why?” She sounds genuinely curious. “You’re always with him. You spend even more time with him than with me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” she says in her matter-of-fact way. She doesn’t sound upset, though.
I take a deep breath. “Yesterday was his birthday and…” I pause. “I kind of ditched him.” It feels good to admit it out loud.
“Oh,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “Well … can’t you just say sorry?”
I give her a smile. She’s wise, for fourteen.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “Seth could never stay mad at you.”
She kind of has a point. And that gives me comfort. I’m in control of how me and Seth are together, and if I don’t want anything to change between us, then it won’t.
CHAPTER 23
Seth won’t look at me when I get to his place. He lets me in, and then goes and sits on the couch and stares at the wall as intently as if he were watching TV. I sit next to him, close, real close. So close that I can hear his breathing.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I don’t realize how sorry I am until the words are out.
Seth’s whole face changes, as though he was wearing his anger like a mask and now that I’ve said sorry, he can take it off.
“Go to the summer fair with me,” he says. This isn’t what I’m expecting him to say at all.
“Please? It’ll be fun,” he adds. “I really want to go to the fair with you, Reiko.” He’s looking at me now, eyes wide and hopeful.
“OK,” I say. It feels like I’m saying yes to more than the fair, especially after what happened yesterday, but I convince myself that it’s all fine, because I don’t want to hurt him again.
“What about Wednesday? I’ll have my mom’s car. I can drive us.”
“OK,” I say again.
And when he beams at me, his smile does what it always does: it makes me smile too.
When Seth picks me up for the fair, I can’t get over how strange it feels. It feels like a date. Even more than the di
nosaur picnic did. Maybe it’s because Seth has dressed up a bit. He’s wearing a collared shirt. I’ve never seen him in a collared shirt. I didn’t even know he owned one.
And he’s done something with his hair. He’s put … gel in it. Or something.
Or maybe it’s because he’s driving. Seth never drives. It feels weird to be in the passenger seat. I’m used to being the driver.
Or maybe it’s because he’s so happy. Nervous happy. Happy nervous. He’s whistling tunelessly, and keeps looking over at me, and grinning his wide, crooked grin.
His happiness is spilling out of him. It is sparkly and bright and beautiful. I bury my face in it, breathing it in, feeling it spread throughout me too, until I’m grinning back at him, and we’re just beaming like a pair of maniacs.
And then.
And then his hand is reaching over and taking mine, and he’s squeezing it and it is like my heart is in my hand because I swear it isn’t my hand he’s squeezing but my heart. Gently, so it doesn’t hurt, but it scares me all the same.
I don’t want Seth to be able to do anything to my heart.
And I feel like an idiot, because I knew this was coming and I didn’t stop it. Then the car behind us honks loudly and Seth pulls his hand away to put both hands on the steering wheel. He grins at me and everything is fine again.
We get to the fair just as the sun is dipping down behind the mountains. The sky is the same color as the cotton candy Seth insists on buying me.
“I don’t even like cotton candy,” I protest, but he doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t care, and he buys the biggest size he can. I try not to wince as a bead of sweat drips down the hand of the man swirling the pink clouds on the white cone and disappears into the fluff.
Seth holds the candy out to me like a bouquet. The sugar-sweet sticky smell mixes with the smells of the buttered popcorn and hot dogs and the sweat of all the people here. It makes me feel panicky. Makes me feel trapped.
“Aren’t you going to have any cotton candy?” Seth asks.
I don’t want to disappoint him so I take a fistful. It’s all fluff and soft and sweet, and it starts to disintegrate in my hands, the fluff giving way to sugar grit, and then I put the whole piece in my mouth, and it is so sticky-sweet it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. It isn’t disintegrating fast enough, so I start chewing chewing chewing until it is all gone.
But even then it isn’t really gone. My tongue is sugar-coated woolly.
“Do you want anything else?” Seth asks, like I was the one who wanted the cotton candy in the first place. “Popcorn? Hot dog? Ice cream?”
What I want is to be out in the desert, where all I can smell is the sky and the stars and the sand. Or even in my backyard or just back in my own car. I want to be anywhere but at the fair on what feels like a date with Seth because, for the first time since I met him, I feel out of control. I don’t know what is going to happen, and I don’t like it.
I take a deep breath, inhaling all the tastes of the fair again, and force down the panic, force my heart to calm, force my mouth to smile, and lean toward him, nudging his shoulder with my own. “Maybe some water.”
And if he’s disappointed that I don’t want him to get me something from every stand at the fairground, he doesn’t show it.
“So … want to go on the bumper cars?” he says, in the same hopeful voice he’s been using all evening.
“You really want to do this whole … fair thing, don’t you?”
He gives me a funny look. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
His words make me relax. That is why we’re here. To do fair things.
I’m being self-centered and reading into things that aren’t there. You know when someone holds out an ink blot and says what do you see? And sometimes you are supposed to see two people kissing or a unicorn or something. And sometimes it is just an ink blot. This whole day I’ve been seeing something that isn’t there: seeing a unicorn when it is just a big old ink blot.
“Let’s go on the bumper cars,” I say.
And it’s actually pretty fun. There isn’t anyone else in the arena, so we bump into each other over and over again, and I don’t know why it’s so funny but it is. I’m hunched over my little steering wheel, in my little car, laughing so hard I can barely catch my breath.
When the ride is over, we stumble out, our legs cramped and unsteady. I link my arm through Seth’s for balance, and it feels normal.
“What do you want to do now?” he asks.
I grin back at him “Whatever you want,” I say, and I mean it. I can make up for ditching him on his birthday by making this day his day.
“What about…” – he pauses like he’s thinking, but I can tell he already knows what he is going to say – “… the Ferris wheel?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is. It really is.” His smile is so wide it makes my own cheeks hurt just looking at him.
CHAPTER 24
We go up up up, our bright yellow chair creaking in the desert wind. The people below us shrink to dolls, and then smaller still. It’s peaceful, being so high up. We’re quiet, and it’s nice. Silence with Seth is nice. I feel like I can be quiet with him in a way that I can’t be with anyone else except for Mika.
“Rei?” Seth shatters the silence and something about the way he has just said my name makes me tense.
“Yeah?”
“I have to tell you something.”
My heart tries to jump out of my chest. I wish I was wearing sunglasses. I’m worried Seth will see the panic in my eyes.
“You probably know what I’m going to say.” Seth sounds equal parts resigned and hopeful. Oh no, please don’t say what I think you are going to say, please let everything stay how it is, please don’t—
“I’m really into you. Like really into you.” He pauses and my mouth goes dry. “I can’t just be your friend anymore. Or your night-driving buddy. Or whatever the hell we are.”
The Ferris wheel dips and my heart goes with it. Our chair is swinging high above the ground and there is nowhere for me to go. I look down and contemplate jumping off. I think I could survive the fall.
“Rei?”
Seth moves closer to me, and the movement makes our chair swing even more wildly.
“Stop!” I don’t know if I mean stop moving or stop talking or both.
“Rei?” he says again, and his voice is so soft and so small that it blows away, taking my name with it. I watch it flutter to the ground and hope nobody steps on it.
The Ferris wheel grinds to a halt as someone else gets on.
“You look like you are going to throw up.” Seth’s disappointment smells like rotting flowers.
“I’m just … I’m just processing,” I manage. “Give me a second.”
I concentrate on breathing, on taking in one breath after another. I don’t know why this has come as such a shock. I knew, on some level – of course I did – and I did nothing to stop it. Even after the disaster at the dinosaurs, I still agreed to come to the fair, and I stayed, even when it felt like a date. It’s like I was tugging at a thread in a sweater, but instead of pulling out one loose thread, I pulled too hard and the whole thing unraveled, and what was once a sweater is now a big tangled mess.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, and that stench of rotting flowers is so strong I have to hold my breath.
The Ferris wheel starts to move again, the ground coming closer and closer and we are going to get off. I’ll be able to handle this all so much better once my feet are on the ground, and then––
“One more time, kids?” The ride operator winks at us like he’s giving us a present, and before I can say NO, we’re going up again.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you,” Seth says, turning away from me.
“Don’t be sorry,” I tell the back of his head, focusing on a mole at the nape of his neck. I’m grateful he’s not looking at me. It is much easier to have this conversatio
n with a mole than with his face. I don’t want to hurt him. “Just give me some time.”
He turns back toward me, looking hesitantly happy. “Really?”
“Really,” I say.
And then as I think about it, really think about it, something strange starts to tick through me.
I can’t imagine my life without Seth.
CHAPTER 25
When we get back to my house, Koji is in the living room, watching some guy on a guitar on the TV and trying to mimic what he’s doing.
“Hey,” he calls out without looking at us as we walk in.
“Are Mom and Dad home?” I ask.
“Nah, they are at some dinner.”
“Cool.”
And then I pause. Maybe we should just go sit in the living room with Koji. Maybe we should play a round of Monopoly or Settlers of Catan with him. Hell, maybe we should even watch this guitar tutorial with him.
I feel like what Seth and I do now is going to set us on one course or another and I don’t know what I want, but it’s true that I can’t imagine my life without him. And then Seth is slyly taking my hand, and tugging me toward the stairs, and pointing up toward my room, and if I want to stop this, I know this is the moment, but there is a small part of me − no, not small, a pretty significant part of me − that is curious, that wonders where this path will go.
The stairs feel endless, like we’re trying to go up a downward escalator. Seth is breathing heavily. I wonder again if I should stop this, but I don’t, and then we’re in my room.
“So,” Seth says, leaning against my desk.
“So,” I say.
I swallow. I care about Seth, I do. But do I feel like that about him?
Only one way to find out, really.
I lean toward him, and he must know what I’m thinking because his eyes brighten and smolder in rapid succession and he leans toward me too and then his mouth is on mine. He is all tongue, so much tongue that it feels like there is no room for my own tongue in my mouth, so by default it has to go in his mouth and as soon as it does, he moans, really moans, so loudly that I’m worried Koji will hear. And he’s tightening his grip on me and he’s hard and pressed up against me.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart Page 10
