Why Can't I Be You

by Melissa Walker

  Next to Mom’s plate I put the envelope Dad gave me last night—the child support money for the month. Sometimes I wish he’d just mail it. Or that he’d hand it to her himself.

  Mom comes out in a T-shirt and boxer shorts while I’m filling up small glasses of water.

  “Well isn’t this nice,” she says, moving the envelope to her purse. I put down the glasses and pull out her chair for her. “What’s the occasion?”

  I shrug. “I felt like being fancy this morning.”

  Mom bites into her cinnamon toast. “Mmm . . . delicious,” she says.

  I sit up on my chair and join her. It is good.

  “How’s Dad?” asks Mom. She always politely asks this question, even though if she wanted to she could talk to him herself. It annoys me how they don’t communicate directly. They’re pleasant to each other, but it’s like they own a business together, and that business is me.

  “Fine,” I say. “The same.”

  After mini golf, Dad and I got corn dogs and sat at one of the wooden picnic tables near the ninth hole. We talked about lots of things, but not about “K,” which was what was on my mind, or about Ronan’s dad, which it seemed like was on my dad’s.

  Mom yawns and stretches her arms. “I’m glad you guys had fun,” she says, and even though I didn’t tell her that specifically, she knows she can trust it—Dad and I always have fun together.

  “Hey, Mom?” I start, and then I’m not sure what I want to ask exactly, but I’m still thinking about Mr. Michaels in his bathrobe, shuffling.

  “Hmm?” She’s licking the cinnamon from her fingers.

  “Is Mr. Michaels . . . um . . . okay?”

  She tilts her head, which is how I can tell she’s going to answer carefully.

  “He’s not quite himself,” she says, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “He struggles with depression, and he’s trying to get better now, but it’s not easy.”

  “Oh.” I look down at my pretty plate and I wonder if Mr. Michaels is on medication or something, if that’s why he looks so lost sometimes.

  “He needs time,” Mom says. “Why, did Ronan say something?”

  I shake my head. “No, I was just wondering.”

  “As long as you’re wondering and not worrying,” she says. Then she claps her hands together. “So what’s your Saturday plan?”

  Mom has Sundays off, but she still works on Saturdays cleaning at the YMCA. “Ice cream,” I tell her.

  “Bus?” she asks.

  I nod my head. The bus stops pretty close to the entrance to Twin Pines, and it’s free in my town. Some kind of incentive to get people out of their cars. It goes right to Canefield Plaza, which isn’t that great, it’s just a strip of stores, but there’s a Frosty’s Ice Cream at one end.

  “With Ronan?”

  Even though the bus is safe and everything, Mom likes me to have a “buddy.” I asked her not to use that word anymore when she’s talking about me bringing a friend somewhere because it sounds so kindergarten, and she’s been good about it. I nod again.

  “Great idea,” she says. Then she leans over to the couch next to the table and gets out her wallet. She hands me a ten-dollar bill. “For both of you,” she says. “Tell Ronan it’s my treat, okay?” And then I hear her whisper “Christina has enough to worry about” under her breath.

  Mom is friends with Ronan’s mom, Christina, who’s a health aide for older people. Christina works weird hours, which is probably why she drove off at six thirty. Sometimes in the evenings she and Mom sit in chairs together in the yard between our trailers and drink beers with pieces of lime in them. But they haven’t done that since Ronan’s dad has been home.

  After Mom leaves for the YMCA, I walk outside and feel that there’s a little breeze. I go back in and pull on the army jacket Mom found at the thrift shop for me this spring—it’s the best shade of faded green and we added some patches on the arm. It always makes me feel cool, and I roll up the sleeves as I walk over to Ronan’s door. But then I remember Mr. Michaels and the shuffling. I pause, deciding to head around the back to where Ronan’s window is. I knock lightly on the rectangular glass, but he doesn’t peek out. Sometimes he sleeps in, and lately he seems more tired. I’ll wait.

  I go up the hill a little way until I get a strong signal so I can text Brianna to meet us at Frosty’s. When I walk back down, I see Mrs. Gonzalez out in her raised vegetable bed—each trailer has one, but hardly anyone plants in them—checking on the tomatoes. She wears her hair in a black-gray bun high on her head. I’ve never seen it down, but the bun is really big, so I think it’s crazy long. She has on a loose dress with big flowers on it like she always wears, and bright-blue Crocs. Those are new.

  “Not yet?” I ask about the tomatoes. I can see they’re still mostly green.

  She shakes her head.

  “Must be hard to wait,” I say.

  “It’s okay,” says Mrs. Gonzalez. “Change comes quickly. Sometimes overnight.” She gives me a wink and a little smile as she walks back up the steps and into her trailer.

  Chapter 6

  I look at my phone. It’s after ten a.m. Ronan must be awake by now.

  His front door is open, but the screen is shut, so I knock on that and it makes a rattling noise.

  “Hello?” I call out as I step into Ronan’s empty living room. The TV is on, the volume low, and there’s a dark spot on the couch, a deep indentation. It smells stale in here, kind of gross. I immediately want to leave, but then I hear the rumbling.

  Mr. Michaels is somewhere down the hall, talking in a low voice. I start to step backward, out of the living room, through the door and onto the porch again, but before I make it, a door slams and Mr. Michaels comes into the living room, bleary-eyed and bathrobed. He leans on the wall.

  He sees me standing in the doorway, he must, but he lurches toward the couch and sits in the dark spot, turning his eyes to the TV like I’m not even here.

  I have no idea what to say or do, so I stand there and stare at the picture of the beach that’s above the couch. There are two seagulls near the top of the frame that look like they’re holding hands. Or wings. Or whatever.

  Finally, I call out, “Ronan?” and I’ve never been so happy to see my friend’s freckled face as he emerges from the hallway and takes my hand to pull me out the door.

  We haven’t held hands this much since we were learning to cross the street.

  “What’s wrong?” I whisper to him as we walk farther and farther from his trailer.

  He drops my hand.

  “C’mon!” he says, and he takes off running. I can hear the bus coming up the street.

  I race to catch him, and we wave frantically to get the bus driver’s attention. It works and she waits for us, smiling with all her teeth as we get on. Ronan pushes past her with a frown, but I say good morning and give her a shrug to apologize for him. Mom says that it’s important to treat everyone nicely, and I’ve found that to be true.

  I follow Ronan to the back of the bus, where he sits in the very last row and turns toward the window with his arms folded over himself.

  He doesn’t even know that I have this grand ice cream plan, he just wanted to get on the bus.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  Ronan’s frown doesn’t budge.

  I bump against his shoulder. “I’ve got money for ice cream . . .” I pull out the ten-dollar bill my mom gave me. “Mom’s treat.”

  Ronan’s mouth turns up a tiny bit and that’s enough for me. The sun streams through the big bus window onto our laps, and it feels warm but not too hot yet. The bus picks up a few more people, so there’s a quiet buzz of “hello” every couple of minutes as I make a point to smile at everyone.

  Soon Ronan’s mood seems to warm up too, and by the time we get to our stop at Canefield Plaza he’s in the middle of telling me about this movie he saw where all these kids in a small town fought a monster no one could see.

  “At the end there was this huge explosion and they fo
und out the monster wasn’t even that big,” he says. Then he yells “Have a good day!” to the bus driver as we get off in the back like you’re supposed to.

  At Frosty’s, I order Chocolate Chunk in a cup and Ronan gets Vanilla Peanut Butter Swirl in a pretzel cone. I’m paying when I hear a shout from the door.

  “Claire!”

  Brianna walks into Frosty’s with her hair down, which is weird because she’s always wearing a ponytail. It looks nice, though, all shiny and fanned out over her shoulders. But even while I’m noticing Brianna, I can’t help but be distracted by the girl behind her.

  She’s really tall, with the longest legs I’ve seen outside of a magazine. She has curly black hair that rises above her head like a cloud. She’s wearing a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off and round, jet-black sunglasses. Her lipstick is frosted pink. I’m staring at the girl’s mouth, wondering what the color’s called, when she blows a big blue bubble and pops it perfectly, without getting any gum on her face.

  “Hey,” the girl says in my direction. Wait, is she with Brianna?

  Her voice is breathy and I can’t tell if she’s talking to me or Ronan, so I glance over at him. His mouth is wide open, and he looks like he’s frozen in ice.

  “You guys remember my cousin Eden,” says Brianna.

  Ho-ly sneakers.

  I do, of course, remember Eden. The Eden of my memory has short black hair cropped close to her head, glasses, and bird-skinny legs. I’ve never met Brianna’s aunt and uncle, but I know Eden’s dad is black and her mom is white, so she has this smooth tan skin dotted with freckles, which is about the only thing that Old Eden and New Eden have in common. I suck in a breath.

  New Eden walks up to the counter and leans over the edge. “Do you give tastes?” she asks the ice cream guy.

  “Sure,” he says, and his face looks just like Ronan’s—gobsmacked. Does my face look like that? Does Cousin Eden make every face look like that with her jean jacket and her frosted lips and her blue bubble gum?

  Is this the same Eden from last summer? Is she really only twelve?

  When she takes the wooden tester spoon I see that her nails are a flat white color, like she painted them with wall paint or something. Cool.

  I feel a wet drop on my arm and look over to see Ronan’s ice-cream cone tilted at an angle and dripping down onto me.

  “Get a napkin!” I snap, and he finally unfreezes and clumsily tries to wipe us both. “Ugh, let’s find a booth.”

  “We’ll come sit with you guys,” says Brianna, and Eden smiles as she raises her sunglasses to reveal the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen, with thin, jet-black, cat-eye liner that curves expertly past her lashes.

  Whoa.

  Chapter 7

  Eden hasn’t stopped talking since she sat down. Last year, she lived in a small town in Tennessee. Apparently, this year her mom sold a song to a country singer, so her whole family moved to Nashville.

  “I go to the Bluebird all the time to hear music, and you should see who walks in . . . Kacey, Brad. And one night even Maren, you guys!”

  I don’t really know country music singers, but I get that last part. This girl hangs out with Maren Morris. Kind of.

  “Gah!” I say, because she has a song that I really love and that’s the noise that comes out when I don’t know what to say. “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah,” says Eden, looking pleased with my reaction. She takes a sip of her strawberry milkshake through a red-striped straw. Brianna got strawberry too, even though I know she likes vanilla best.

  Brianna and I are on the inside of the booth across from each other, and Ronan and Eden are on the outside. I’m trying to catch Brianna’s eye and give her a “what the heck, your cousin is a total goddess now” look, but Brianna is busy staring up at Eden adoringly. And I do mean up. Eden must be half a foot taller than the rest of us. Even Ronan.

  Suddenly the whole boy-girl swim party suggestion coming from Eden makes sense. I’m wishing I could see a series of pictures or a movie montage of how she went from a glasses-wearing, short-haired smarty-pants to rock-star cool girl in less than one year.

  Ronan is like a mannequin next to me. Well, a mannequin eating ice cream, because he has to finish his cone before it drips more. I bet he’s glad for the activity so he doesn’t have to keep up conversation with Eden, but as we sit there his eyes keep darting toward her and then away again.

  “Ronan, I saw your new profile,” says Brianna. “I followed you.”

  I tilt my head back and turn my eyes to Ronan. So that is what that photo was for.

  He’s smiling at Brianna and definitely not acknowledging my eyeballing as he says, “Cool.”

  “I’m Nash Queen with an underscore in the middle,” says Eden, and I fight the urge to write it down. Nash_Queen, Nash_Queen, Nash_Queen, I repeat in my head. “I post pics of life in Nashville, mostly, and some selfies.”

  “I wish you could have a profile, Claire,” says Brianna. “It’s so much fun to keep up with people over the summer.”

  “Wait, you’re not on social?” Eden looks at me.

  I shake my head. “My mom won’t let me until next year.”

  “How would she even know?” asks Eden. “You have a phone, right?”

  “She’d know,” I say. And I want to move on because I don’t like the curl of Eden’s pink upper lip. “Hey, is that a new ring?” I ask Brianna. I’ve been noticing that the pink stone matches the strawberry milkshake inching up her straw.

  “Yeah,” she says, spinning it on her finger. “Early birthday present.”

  “It’s pretty,” I say.

  “Pink pearl,” Eden chimes in. And at the same time we both say, “Brianna’s birthstone.”

  Then Eden and I smile at each other, but my smile isn’t real and I don’t think hers looks very solid either.

  “Are you excited about the pool party?” I ask Brianna.

  But it’s her cousin who responds. “Brianna’s dad is letting us decorate the whole backyard like Hawaii, with tiki torches and floating flowers and everything,” says Eden. “It’s going to be amaze.” She draws out amaze into amaaaaaaze. Why shorten a word if you’re gonna do that?

  “I can’t wait to swim,” I say, mostly to Brianna. “My mom got me a new bathing suit. Well, it was Gemma Skyler’s, but she never wore it, so now it’s mine.” Brianna knows some of my favorite clothes come from Gemma.

  “That’s awesome,” says Brianna.

  I nod, and I can feel Eden looking at me, so I stare back at her. She purses her rosy lips. I’d call that color Pink Peeve. “Speaking of . . . Bri, we should go,” she says, not looking away from me. “We’re shopping this aft. We need new bikinis for the party.”

  All the word shortening is hard to follow, but I caught how she said new.

  “Okay,” says Brianna, nodding. She looks at me. “My mom’s picking us up outside after she runs a few errands. Eden says I need something cuter. Do you guys wanna come? We’re driving to Northridge.”

  That’s the fancy town next to ours. Ronan would never want to do that, and I don’t really have the money to buy anything.

  My shoulders droop as I shake my head. I thought Brianna would come over after ice cream and we’d hang out for the day. “We have to get back home,” I say. “But thanks.”

  “I hate that your mom has to drive us around,” says Eden. “I can’t wait till we have our own cars.”

  She talks like that’s happening soon. I don’t get this girl.

  Eden drops her shades down over her eyes as she scoots out of the booth. “Bye, Ronan,” she says with a smile. Then she looks at me. “Bye.”

  She doesn’t use my name, which annoys me because it seems like she did that on purpose.

  Brianna gives me a shrug, like she’s aware Eden is being weird, as she stands up to follow her cousin. She waves as they walk to the door. And that’s when I see Eden catch Ronan’s eye and press her lips together into a single kiss.

  Really? />
  When they leave, the bell above the door makes a sound that tinkles like Eden’s laugh.

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah,” says Ronan, and that’s how I realize I said whoa out loud.

  “Eden’s . . . different this year,” I say.

  Ronan just stands up and tosses his pile of napkins and the paper from his cone.

  “Let’s go,” he says. “I see the bus.”

  Chapter 8

  It’s funny how, in the summer, a weekend can blend in with the regular old weekdays.

  “I forgot it was Sunday,” I tell Mom when I join her on the couch in front of the TV to watch the morning news show we love that feels like it’s from the olden days but still talks about new things.

  I curl up beside her and she rests her hand on my head and I breathe her in. On Sunday mornings, she smells the most like herself, without other people’s house scents all over her. Ivory soap and sleepiness under a soft cotton nightgown.

  “It’s a luxury to forget what day it is, Claire,” says Mom. “I’m glad it happens for you.”

  “Sunday’s my favorite,” I tell her, because it’s my day with her.

  After the show we go to a few yard sales around town and Mom looks for treasures, like more puzzles she’ll glue together and frame. Puzzles are a real risk at yard sales—more often than not they’re missing a piece, even if people put a sign on the box that says All Pieces Here. I don’t think they’re lying, exactly, I just think they’re not sure and they want to make a sale. But boy does it drive Mom crazy to get a puzzle that’s missing a piece. That’s why I’m so glad I found the blue flower piece last week. In Mom’s eyes, that may be the best thing I do all summer.

  She finds a seven-hundred-piece waterfall scene that she says reminds her of a hike she went on with her mom and dad. My grandparents both died when I was really little, but Mom has good stories about them and there are photos up in our house, so I try to remember them even if my memories are part imaginary.

  I don’t mention Eden all day, but I keep picturing the way her pink frosted lips formed into a kiss shape at Ronan. Finally, right when we’re about to get back to our neighborhood, something sneaks out. “Brianna’s cousin Eden is in town,” I say.