The Wonder of Us

by Kim Culbertson

  “Wow,” Abby breathes. “This is amazing. It’s weird to think this is where Neel grew up, you know?”

  I snuggle into the blanket, nudging Abby to do the same. “So tell me more about your day with Neel. I know you loved the scavenger hunt, but …”

  “That was fantastic, Rye—I loved it. It was so me.”

  Warmth floods me. Even if things didn’t work out the way I planned, I still think it would have been the best way to give her the news. But she knows that’s not what I’m asking. When I pressed her for details the night they got back, she’d been evasive about Neel then, too, encased in full Abby Armor. But I push again anyway. “I meant with Neel.”

  She smiles awkwardly at me. “How much do you want to know? He’s your cousin.”

  “He’s a good guy,” I tell her, meaning it. For all of our cousin stuff, I know Neel would never hurt Abby. “Was there more kissing?”

  She hides under the blanket. “Yes.”

  “Will there be more kissing in the future?”

  She peeks out from under the blanket. “I don’t think so.”

  “What? Why not?”

  She grows quiet, watching the fog curl over the buildings. “We just live too far away, Rye. It wouldn’t work. It doesn’t make sense to try to make anything out of it.”

  There she goes, tripping over her own practical self again. “Things don’t have to make sense to work,” I say. “Look at us. We don’t make the most sense, either. We’re so different. Always have been.”

  She considers this. “That’s true.”

  I lean my head against her shoulder. “I think being with someone different, someone unexpected, lets you see the world with more than one set of eyes. That’s the best part of it. But only if they love you for you. Not if they try to change you.”

  “Even if that person is super boring?” Abby’s voice is 100 percent joke, though.

  “You’re only boring if you’re bored. That was stupid of me to say. You could live in pj’s and never leave the house. I’d still love you.”

  “Thanks, Rye.” She sighs. “But I would definitely leave the house for this view. I mean, I know Neel has height issues, but his family must come up here all the time.”

  “Not exactly.” I sit up and give her what I hope is a winning smile. “It technically belongs to their upstairs neighbors.”

  “Riya!”

  “What? Neel said they’re in Greece.”

  “So they’re fine with his family using it while they’re gone?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Great. I’m going to get arrested on my last night in London,” she mumbles, looking around as if she expects the British Intelligence agents to bust through the roof door.

  “Relax. You’re not going to be arrested for sitting on someone’s bench. Especially when they’re in Greece. Just enjoy this, okay? Don’t be such an Abby right now.”

  “This is the world through my eyes, babe. You’re welcome.” She tugs the blanket closer. Of course, a siren chooses this moment somewhere on the streets below to blare out.

  I grab her arm. “Maybe that’s MI6 coming to throw you in the Tower of London!” She gives me a playful shove but doesn’t fully relax until the siren disappears into the night. Settling into the back of the bench, I inhale the wet air. Throughout our lives, Abby and I have sat together like this, curled on a couch in front of countless movies, on slabs of granite by our green river, on mountain trails, on weathered beach logs. No matter where we go, I know this will not be our last view.

  Maybe she’s reading my mind. “Seriously, though, this trip has been amazing. Riya, thank you. You’ve always been the one who can just sit with me like this and who I feel like I can say anything to.” She pauses, chewing her lip. “I’m going to miss you in Yuba Ridge.”

  I take her hand beneath the blanket. “I need to tell you something.” She looks at me sharply, and I hurry to explain. “It’s not another bomb, I promise. I think you mostly know this already, but I’m not sure I’ve ever really said it.” Abby’s breathing stills as she waits for me to continue. “Okay, here it goes. I didn’t just finish high school in Berlin because of the opportunity in London.” I swallow over a hard lump in my throat. “Abby, I loved growing up in Yuba Ridge. But if I didn’t get out of there, I was going to end up hating it. You were one of the only good things left for me there.”

  She stiffens. “How can you say that?”

  I fidget on the bench, trying to get comfortable. “I felt like I was losing my mind there. It was always the same—the same school day, and then the weekends with the parties with the same people talking about the same things and judging each other over their clichéd red party cups.”

  “So don’t go to those parties—” she interrupts.

  “I like parties, ones where interesting people talk about things I care about and aren’t just getting drunk and hooking up and trying to act cool. People think it makes them wild and edgy to do all that stuff, but speaking of boring, I was bored out of my head.”

  Abby frowns. “I don’t think it makes them cool; I just don’t care if they’re doing it. I don’t go. They probably don’t think they’re boring. Maybe they like their red cups.”

  “I know. You’re better at that than I am. Always have been.” She has never truly understood that even if I didn’t like to hang out with certain people or go to their parties, I still had an underlying need to be a part of the place around me. Abby has always reveled in her distance from other people. “You took the good parts of Yuba Ridge and the rest didn’t matter. I struggle with that. Always will.”

  Abby watches a plane blinking across the dark sky. “Remember sophomore year when we had to do that About Me project in English?”

  I groan. Every year the sophomores at Yuba Ridge have to do a project where we take a bunch of personality tests and study careers that the tests generate for us. “My possible career list was so random I figured there must have been a system glitch or something.”

  Abby fiddles with the edge of the blanket. “Yeah, but yours showed that you’re consistently good with people, that you’re flexible and”—she hesitates—“what did they call it? Interpersonal?”

  I roll my eyes. “That’s the catchall personality for the person who talks too much in class.” Secretly, though, I liked being dubbed flexible, good with people, able to adapt, even if it suggested I pursue a career in “human services,” which sounds made up.

  The fog shifts across the building tops, glowing purple at its edges. Abby takes a moment to watch it settle before she says, “Remember, though, it said you were an extrovert and I’m an introvert.”

  Now that she mentions it, I remember it really bothered Abby for a few days after we took those tests. “Introvert in a good way, not in a weird way,” I remind her. “Just that you recharge alone and extroverts recharge with other people. It doesn’t mean you want to live in your basement like a troll person and never come out.”

  She picks lint from the blanket and rolls it between her fingers. “Thing is, though, it’s more socially acceptable to be an extrovert.”

  “Yeah, but you’re an introvert, so you think those people are idiots.”

  Her eyes gloss with tears. “Last year, I just wanted the idiots to invite me to a few things. And no one did. I haven’t been very good at making friends this year. Or ever, really. I always had you for that.”

  I give her a nudge with my shoulder. “You can invite them, too. You think I sat around and waited for people to ask me to things? I asked them. I called them. You can’t wait for other people to do things for you. Not if you want them to actually get done.” Of course, even as I’m telling her this, I know that it was Kiara who invited me to that first meeting at the Collective. It was Kiara who made that happen for me. Why is it always easier to be brave on behalf of other people?

  Abby frowns. “I think the biggest issue is that for years, I would just slip into whatever you were doing or I would do stuff by myself. And
the last couple of years, I spent so much time working at the Blue Market that I could stay busy. And you always organized enough social stuff for me. It’s like I didn’t grow any of the muscles for that, which isn’t your fault. I let you. But then last year, when I suddenly needed those muscles …”

  “And then your parents—” I squeeze her hand. “I should have come home to be with you when it happened.”

  She squeezes back. “No, see—that’s scorekeeping. And I don’t want to do that anymore because I already wrecked one year doing that. I could have told you I needed you. I should have tried harder to find other people. You’re living your own life. I have to learn how to not need you so much.” Her words prick like needles along my body. Before I can say anything, she drops her face into her hands. “I hate feeling like this. And people keep saying it will get better. Or you have to be strong. Or time heals. It’s so irritating!”

  I put my arm around her, knowing I’ve been guilty of a few of those statements. “Bumper sticker philosophy. Sounds great in theory. Rarely works on a deeper level. Sometimes, people, including me, don’t know the right thing to say.”

  She starts to cry. “See—I needed you there to say stuff like that! I miss that! Ugh, I just want to stop being so sad about everything, stop feeling like I’m missing a limb because you’re not five minutes away. Emo is not a good color on me.”

  I want Abby to need me, want her to know I’m her best friend, but I also know things are changing for us. We can’t always be there for each other like we were as kids. It’s not possible. But that doesn’t have to be bad. “Here’s a thought: Maybe right now, right here on this bench, we decide this change looks good on us.”

  “What?” She uses an edge of the blanket to wipe her face. “Sometimes, I think archaeologists need to find whatever Rosetta Stone works on translating you.”

  I try to sort my swirling thoughts. “Stay with me, I think I’m onto something here.” The blanket falls away from my shoulders as I turn to her. “I know we won’t ever have what we had before. It’s not realistic, but it’s not sad.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. We’ve heard about some true tragedies on this trip—this isn’t one of them. Because we have us. We’re both going on with our lives, and we’re going to do the things we’re meant to do. But the us part? That stays. We love each other. That’s never going to end. It just changes shape.” Her comment about the Rosetta Stone triggers something. “It’s like your wonders. What do archaeologists find when they know a building used to be somewhere?”

  “The foundation.”

  “That’s us.”

  A watery smile moves across her face. She’s hearing me, even if she’s not admitting it. “Ruins?”

  I pretend to strangle her. “No! The foundation! The part that will always be there.” The fog gets thicker, and soon we can’t see the lights anymore, just a thick gray glow. Clever London fog getting all metaphorical on us. In acting class, Niles taught me to say yes to what the scene presents for me. Improvise, and say yes. Even when I can’t see where something is heading, shine a light there. I can do that now, here, so I tell her, “Besides, not all of your wonders were lost, or ended up in ruins. The Great Pyramid is still standing, right?” She nods. “Then I’m your Giza Pyramid. You’re stuck with me.”

  Riya sleeps on the air mattress next to me, snoring into her pillow, her hair its usual black tangle. I can’t get comfortable, squinting into the dark of the den, too aware of an unseen ticking clock hiding somewhere. Butterflies for the flight tomorrow circle my insides like tiny vultures in training. Riya’s coming home to Yuba Ridge before she moves to London, and I keep wondering if we’ll have a temporary return to our former selves, or if the rest of the summer will be stained with her impending exit. I try to shake the worry from my head. She said we have to decide this change looks good on us. Like most things, it seems easier said than done. But I guess that’s why growing up doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a practice. Like yoga. Or memorizing vocabulary words.

  Or saying good-bye.

  A light in the kitchen snaps on, and I slide out of bed in my T-shirt and sweats, throwing on the Edinburgh sweatshirt I plan to wear on the plane tomorrow.

  I find Neel in his pajamas in the kitchen, dropping a tea bag into a blue ceramic mug. He starts when he notices me. “Oh, hey. Can’t sleep?” I shake my head. “Tea?” The British solution to almost anything.

  “That’d be great.” I slide onto one of the black leather barstools at the kitchen island. He moves around the sand-toned kitchen, collecting another mug, another peppermint tea bag, checking the kettle. I allow myself one delusional moment of fantasy where I imagine this as our apartment, our life, and this night ritual is something we do on a regular basis. Then I toss the fantasy aside. Why torture myself?

  “Thank you,” I say to his back.

  He waves me away. “I was already making some.”

  “Not just for the tea.”

  He turns from where he stands over the kettle, his face veiled. “Right. Should we, um, discuss, er—”

  I motion to where the kettle starts to steam, and he hurries to catch it before the whistle wakes Riya. “Let’s not try to figure this out, okay? Not tonight.”

  He pours hot water into our mugs, and the room fills with peppermint and steam. He sets one mug in front of me and runs his hands through his hair. “I’m just not sure—” he starts.

  “Neel.” I stop him. “Let’s just leave it at a great trip. I live in California. You live in England.” Stupid geography.

  “Not logistically ideal,” he agrees, blowing across the surface of his tea, and the motion strikes me as old and comfortable. Like a favorite pair of shoes. An adorable pair. That I want to make out with. Okay, get a grip. I take a tentative taste of my tea, a ribbon of pain shooting through me that has nothing to do with how hot it is.

  Tonight’s theme seems to be realism and embracing change, so I say to him, “It’s okay. We had a great time.”

  “Yes, you could say that.” He sets down his mug. “And you and Riya?”

  “We’re figuring it out.” I sip my tea, adding, “I’m glad you turned out to be so much more than her annoying cousin.” He smiles and I feel it across the island, like fingertips brushing my face.

  Outside, it’s raining, and it spots the windows with dark drops of water. Look at me: sitting in a Bloomsbury kitchen in London, composed, adult. Even if I might throw up at any moment, I secretly congratulate myself about how mature I’m being right now. Seriously, some adult organization that specializes in awarding moments of maturity should give me a medal because what I really want to do is fling my arms around his neck and beg him to move to California, screaming, No fair, London! You don’t get to have EVERYONE! Which would be awkward. For both of us. So I put on my best accepting-my-lot-in-life face, peer over my tea mug, and ask, “We’ll stay in touch, right?”

  “Right, of course.” He nods, his hair mussed, his charcoal LSE T-shirt frayed at the neck. “Yes, quite right. That’s best, really.” He keeps nodding harder until his whole body seems to be shaking, and his tea spills, scalding his hand. “Bollocks!” He clunks the mug down on the stone counter, turning to run his hand under the cool water of the tap. I scramble out of the chair, coming alongside him at the sink to check on it. He looks sideways at me, his dark eyes rueful. “Sorry.”

  I put my hand on his back, feeling the ridge of his spine beneath my fingers. Can you miss someone’s spine? “What happened?”

  He scowls at his hand, watching the water spill over it into the sink, his shoulders slumping, but he winds his other arm around my neck and pulls me close, kissing my forehead, my eyelids, the tips of my ears. “Bloody logistics happened,” he says into my hair.

  “Do you want to take this? London can be freezing, even in the fall.” Mom holds up the ancient orange Patagonia down jacket I’ve had since eighth grade. It’s worn and covered in glossy spots where Dad patched holes so the feathers
would stop poking out. It feels like wearing a favorite childhood blankie as a coat.

  I hesitate. “It’s pretty trashed. Might be time for a new one.”

  “Right.” She holds it over a pile of tangled jeans, folded sweaters, sweatshirts, T-shirts, several pairs of shoes. “Salvation Army?”

  “No—keep it. For when I’m home at Christmas.”

  She comes in to sit on the swivel chair, resting her arm on the almost empty desk. “I thought Abby was coming over?”

  I fold a long black skirt into quarters. “She’s working. Until seven.”

  Nodding, she picks up a framed photo of us as kindergartners. It’s Halloween, and I’m dressed as an exotic winter fairy with icy wings, a sparkly dress, and elaborate blue, white, and silver face paint. Abby wears a firefighter uniform. With a Viking hat. Even then, she always added a little history flair. I’m grinning straight at the camera. Abby’s digging through her treat bag. I love that picture. Mom holds it out to me. “You should take this. You’ve always had a thing for costumes.”

  “Mom,” I groan.

  Smiling, she sets it back with all the others. I let my gaze trail over the other frames I’ve stared at a thousand times. Holidays. Vacations. Field trips. Eighth-grade graduation. A school dance photo Abby and I took freshman year together because our dates were being lame. My childhood, framed in eight neat photos. In the last few days, I’ve stripped the room bare, sending bags of clothes and toys to the Salvation Army and our local hospice, sorting photos and trinkets, carefully selecting the items that will make the trip with me to London. It’s been obvious for weeks now, but somehow it suddenly hits me that I might never actually live in this room again. Might just be a visitor when I come for winter break, or for summers. Maybe just a week here and there. Swallowing thickly, I turn back to my open suitcase.