Paper or Plastic

by Vivi Barnes

  My thumb moved over another phone number in my contacts list. I pressed it and waited.

  My dad’s voice was cheery as ever. “Hey sweetie! How’s the pageant going? Are you surviving?”

  His voice was like a warm hug—he was exactly the kind of dad Noah deserved. Tears pricked at my eyes. “Yes. It’s great.”

  “Great? That doesn’t sound right. Everything okay?”

  I didn’t say anything. The fact was that my dad always knew when something was wrong, while Noah’s dad screamed obscenities at him. “I’m good, Dad. I just missed your voice is all.”

  “Ah.” He was silent for a moment. “You sure? Are Rory and your mom okay?”

  “Yes, everything’s good. I’m just tired. Pageant stuff, you know. How’s Grandma doing?”

  “She’s just fine. And hang in there, the pageant’s almost over.” He asked me a few more questions, mostly about how Rory was doing in the competition and stuff.

  All this time, I was worrying about stupid SmartMart, about having to attend my sister’s pageant, and how to make my mother happy with me. And the whole time, Noah had real problems. He said I didn’t know everything about him. He was right.

  I had no idea.

  After hanging up with my dad, I went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. But Noah—where was he? I finally texted him, even called him, but he didn’t respond. I had to find him.

  I walked around the lobby, the conference center, even the pool, but I couldn’t find him or his family. My mother, however, did spot me. “Where have you been?” she asked, grabbing my arm too hard. “They’re going to be doing awards soon. You okay?” She peered into my eyes. “You haven’t been crying, have you?”

  I forced a laugh. “No, of course not.” I reached out to tug on Rory’s curly wig. “Can’t you take this stupid thing off her?”

  “No, no, no!” Rory yelled, holding it with two hands. “Momma said I could wear this home tonight.”

  I glanced around the room as the judges started announcing prizes for the babies and toddlers. Against the other wall, I saw Noah talking to his mother. Their heads were close together, foreheads almost touching. His mother was frowning. Belle was spinning, watching her skirt flare around her. Her happiness was a relief. I was glad she wasn’t in the room earlier. It made me wonder, though, how often she was there.

  “Now the awards for the three-to-four-year-olds,” the judge announced. Rory complained about how long it was taking to get to hers, but I moved a few seats over to tune her out. Belle’s mother was walking her to the stage, corners of her mouth lifted high, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes. I glanced over at Noah, but his face was expressionless. He caught me staring at him but turned his attention back to his sister.

  Awards for ridiculous things like Most Beautiful and Most Talented were announced. Most Beautiful was always handed out to the girl who least looked like a child, most like a Barbie doll. The girl who won this year was four but looked more like twenty. I recognized the one for Most Talented. From what I remembered, she went onstage and proceeded to strut her stuff in an outfit that would’ve made Lady Gaga blush.

  Belle won Best Personality, which I thought was true in her case. The runner-up titles were granted, as well as the award for Queen. Belle didn’t win any of those awards, and she looked sad about it, but her grinning mother was whispering to her. I knew what she was saying. It was dumb, I always thought—if you didn’t win Queen, you won a bigger title. But little kids didn’t get that. I didn’t even get it.

  Rory did, though. When her name wasn’t called for one of the lesser awards, she beamed from ear to ear and curtsied like someone had given her the Miss America crown. My mother jumped up and down. “She’s going to get something bigger!” she said in a giggly voice, grabbing my arm.

  I shrugged her off and made my way over to Belle. Noah’s eyes narrowed as I approached, but I ignored him, dropping on a knee to congratulate his sister. She was tired, yawning and looking slightly grumpy. I didn’t blame her. I stood up and smiled at Noah’s mother, but she, too, looked warily at me. Her attention was diverted when the pageant director called the names of those contestants who won a higher title. I noticed Rory running up to the stage. Belle was also called—her mother immediately picked her up and carried her toward the other finalists.

  That left me and Noah, who was still ignoring me. Embarrassed, maybe. I thought about going back to my seat but changed my mind and walked up to him. He stiffened visibly when I touched his wrist, but I continued, sliding my hand down to thread my fingers through his.

  Slowly, Noah’s slender fingers relaxed and wrapped around mine. The gesture was gentle and sweet, though heat flooded my veins. I wanted to wrap my arms around him as tight as I could.

  Noah shifted slightly and I gazed up at him. His blue eyes had softened and were focused on mine, his face serious in a heart-stopping way. With our hands entwined, we were no longer just two semi-normal teenagers in a room full of crazy. We simply existed in this moment, quickening heartbeats made obvious by the rising and falling of our chests. Everything outside of us was a blur. Everything else be damned, I wanted this to happen.

  Someone bumped into me as she moved past, and just like that all the surrounding noise of pageant mothers and their kids came back.

  Moment ruined. Again.

  I could hear my mother’s voice calling to me from the other side of the room. I untangled my fingers from Noah’s, shaking my head at his amused look.

  “Not funny,” I whispered.

  He grinned widely. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “I’ll catch up with you later” was becoming the tag line for this stupid pageant.

  I moved toward my mother, who also looked amused. “So he’s your boyfriend now?” she asked.

  “No, he’s just a friend,” I grumbled. I hated that I could feel my face burning. Noah was still watching me, his thoughtful expression making my heartbeat trip over itself.

  “Uh-huh,” Mom said, winking, but her attention quickly moved back to the stage to watch the announcements for the higher titles.

  The Mini Supreme turned out to be little Belle, who looked confused and sleepy as they put the crown on her head. I caught Noah’s big grin as he watched his sister try to pull the crown off. The prize was five hundred dollars. I hoped that would be enough to keep his father from screaming at him.

  Next up was the Grand Supreme title, which went to an older girl in a long purple ball gown who looked twelve or thirteen. She looked weird up there with the little kids, but she grinned proudly.

  The final award was for Ultimate Grand Supreme, which always sounded to me like the title for a pizza. I glanced at my mother, who was biting her nails and looking like she was going to spontaneously combust with nerves. Rory, on the other hand, seemed calm and confident. She knew she had it in the bag. A small, terrible part of me almost wanted her to lose, just so it would knock her down off her pedestal. She was always so cocky after winning a pageant.

  But, of course, that wasn’t going to happen today. Rory assumed the appropriate look of surprise on her face when the announcer called out “Aurora Grace” as the winner of Ultimate Grand Supreme. I clapped as my mother jumped up and down ungracefully, yelling out “Woo-hoo, Aurora!” She threw me a look as if I should be jumping up and down, too.

  Then it was over. Rory had her huge trophy, her massive crown that slipped over her forehead, and her two thousand dollar prize check that I knew Mom would put in her college account. I guess Rory was onto something. It was certainly easier than working a bazillion hours at SmartMart. I responded to texts from Syd and Court, telling them the result, and slipped my phone back into my pocket.

  As the pageant people started taking pictures of the winners, Noah came up beside me. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  “Long day.”

  “Yeah.”

  That was it for conversation, but the electricity bouncing be
tween us startled me. Had it always been there and I just was too clueless to notice? It reminded me of what my grandma had said about electricity and beating hearts. If there was ever an example of that, it was Noah and me.

  After pictures, the woman from the Pageant Moms show interviewed the winners, starting with Rory. They asked to interview Belle, too, but her mother declined, claiming Belle was too tired. As the woman set up Rory on padded blocks, Noah turned to me.

  “Guess we have to go pack,” he said as his mom motioned at him to follow her. “Maybe I’ll see you before we leave.”

  I nodded as my mother pulled me over to the cameras. I yanked my arm away. “Mom, you are crazy if you think I’m going to let them interview me for that stupid show.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to,” she whispered. “Keep your voice down.” But as she let my arm go and didn’t pay any more attention to me, I knew that’s exactly what she was planning. I wondered when she would stop trying to get me involved in the whole pageant thing. Probably never.

  On the way upstairs to the room, I called Syd, who I knew would listen to me and not judge.

  “So now what?” she asked when I told her I was falling for Noah. I didn’t say anything about his father—that wasn’t my secret to tell.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to say something to Bryce about us, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she replied. “You said Bryce freaked when he found out Noah is working at SmartMart with you. If you tell him you’re dating now, he’ll go ballistic.”

  “So? What’s he going to do, beat him up? Bryce isn’t like that.”

  “Maybe not, but he could make life back at school pretty bad for the guy. Even worse than now. And you might lose Bryce as a friend.”

  “I honestly don’t care anymore,” I told her, even though that wasn’t completely true. “Jeez, why can’t he just get over it already? It was two years ago.”

  “I know.”

  I could see my mother waving at me.

  “Gotta go. I’ll talk to you later,” I told Syd and pressed end.

  After packing up all Rory’s crap into a bell cart, we headed downstairs. I looked toward Noah’s door, but no one appeared. I really, really hoped his dad wasn’t still there.

  We were cramming our stuff in the car when I heard Noah call my name. My heart jumped into my throat at the sight of him jogging toward me. We walked a little ways from the car, and I could feel my mother’s eyes on me.

  “Everything okay?” I asked him.

  His friendly eyes became guarded, but he nodded. “So you’re back to work on Monday?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.” He reached out and twirled my long blond strands around his fingers, a half smile forming on his face. It was such a familiar yet sexy gesture. It made me want to throw my arms around him and kiss him, and screw what my mom would think.

  “Come on, Alexis, time to go,” Mom called from the car. Not helping here, Mom.

  I took a deep breath. “If my mom wasn’t looking, I’d kiss you.” The words were bold—maybe it was too much. I had to remind myself I made the first move earlier.

  His smile deepened as he placed my hair back on my shoulder, his fingers grazing my collarbone as he pulled away. “Your mom won’t always be looking.”

  Oh, sigh.

  For most of the drive back, all I could think about was Noah. Were we a “thing” now? He didn’t say as much, but I had to assume so. But on the other hand, he didn’t ask me out. Of course, my mother had been watching. And there was the issue with his father—was he going to talk to me about that?

  My phone buzzed when we were an hour from home. Already? I smiled and looked at it, but the text was from my dad. Lexie tell mom to call me.

  Him calling me Lexie via text was all it took for my heart to leap into my throat. It meant one thing.

  Grandma.

  20

  I have no memory of the conversation my mother had with my dad on the way home except for two words: “Grandma’s missing.” The remaining hour in the car felt like an eternity, and as soon as we reached the house, I jumped out of the Escalade and ran inside the house calling for my dad. He came to me immediately, his face drawn and tired.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said as he hugged me before I could say a word. “We’ll find her.”

  I knew it was pointless, but I ran upstairs to her room, to my room, to Rory’s, then to the back porch, calling for her the whole time. I could hear my mother talking with my dad, who was not sounding as composed with her as he had with me.

  “I shouldn’t have let her go for a walk. I should’ve known this would happen.”

  “You couldn’t have known anything.” My mother’s voice was calm. “She’s gone for walks before with no problem. Stop beating yourself up.”

  “How long has she been gone?” I asked, joining them.

  “Two hours now,” he said, his voice shaking slightly.

  Mom placed a hand on his arm. “Max will find her.” Max was Dad’s friend who was a police officer. But I didn’t want to wait for Max. I went out front, ignoring my father’s call not to wander off looking for her. It was almost dark and she had to be scared to death. Dad seemed certain it was a memory issue. For the first time since Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I hoped it was the memory. Otherwise it meant someone could’ve… I couldn’t finish the thought.

  I started down the street, calling out for her. I ended up at Syd’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Her mom answered my knock and told me she hadn’t seen my grandma. Syd offered to drive me around, so for the next hour we combed our neighborhood streets. Our community was large, and by this time she could’ve gone anywhere. I checked in with my parents now and then to see if she’d been found.

  She hadn’t.

  I started crying as the rain began to fall. Every drop felt like a hammer as I thought about Grandma lost in the chilly rain. Syd reached across to take my hand. “She’s probably made her way to a neighbor’s house, Lex,” she said softly. “She’ll be okay, I promise.”

  Syd couldn’t know that for sure, but I still clung to the words like they were lifelines. All my stupid mind was doing to help was playing images of Grandma passed out on the sidewalk or huddled under some gas station awning.

  My phone buzzed as we drove slowly through the Falcon’s Run subdivision, calling through the drizzle for her. I looked at my dad’s text and sank back into the seat in relief: Grandma’s back!

  Five minutes later, I was running up the wet steps to my house, pushing past two officers to wrap my arms around my soaked grandma. She kept her hands at her sides, stiff as I hugged her. “I don’t know what everyone’s so fussed up about,” she said, her voice crisp as I released her. “I was just walking.”

  “We caught her two neighborhoods over, yelling at someone for stealing her son’s car,” the policeman said. He looked at my dad’s car. “His was a black Beemer like that one, so I’m guessing she got confused and thought she was at your house.”

  Dad nodded. “Mom gets confused easily.”

  Grandma crossed her arms. “I absolutely do not. There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “Do you want to go change?” I asked her, looking at her wet robe and hair under the towel that someone had thrown around her shoulders. She looked at me, then down at her dripping clothes.

  “I suppose so. Got caught in a storm. You know it’s storm season and all.”

  I glanced quickly at my dad. “She was just telling me the other day about it being a bad storm season,” I said hopefully.

  “It’s like that every summer,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  It meant something to me. I took Grandma’s hand. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and get dried off,” I said. She nodded and walked with me, her body bending slightly at the waist. She looked so much older right now than she had this morning. My heart, which had been so full from my weekend with Noah, was now shriveling.

  I fil
led the tub with warm water and got her a change of clothes, stood just outside the door as she took her bath, then tucked her into bed when she was done. I kissed her on the forehead as she closed her eyes. “I love you, Grandma,” I whispered. She didn’t respond, though her lips curved up slightly. She looked so shriveled all curled in the blankets, shivering. I grabbed one of her afghans from a chair and placed it over her, then turned out the lights and sat next to her on the bed, watching as her chest rose and fell. Shallow breaths, I thought. As she slept, I spoke my end of the conversation I’d wanted to have with her before I found out she was missing.

  “We just got back from Rory’s pageant, Grandma. I really wish you had been there. You would’ve been proud of her. She won. You would’ve been proud of me, too, for not actually going crazy…” I trailed off. But Grandma wasn’t crazy, just forgetful. “Anyway, I hung out with this awesome guy. Noah, remember—my hot manager?” I smiled slightly. “I think he likes me, and I like him, too, in the way you talked about with electricity and matching heartbeats.” I leaned closer to whisper, “I even kissed him.”

  Grandma didn’t stir from her sleep. My heart hurt, having this one-sided conversation when all I wanted was for her to wake up laughing and chuck me under the chin to tell me “way to go.” If that made me selfish, I didn’t care. I wanted my grandma back.

  I walked slowly back to my room, picking up my phone to send a quick text to Syd to thank her for driving me around tonight. A text that I hadn’t noticed earlier was highlighted. It was from Noah.

  Thanks for making today bearable.

  Oh, Noah. He made me feel happy and confused and petrified and tingly—all the right feelings at the wrong time.

  Thanks for being there today

  Thanks for being a good

  My grandma was

  Nobody can

  I really want

  My dead brain couldn’t even handle a simple text. I tossed my phone into my nightstand drawer and lay down on the bed, threw my arm over my tear-swollen eyes, and sobbed until I passed out.