by Jolene Perry
He blinks and scans the clipboard before meeting her too-eager eyes. “I’ll be here, yes.”
“Why weren’t you here for English?” I ask because I can be stupid and open my mouth when I shouldn’t. I sat in class expecting his blond hair, but Ms. Bellings was there instead. I should have been relieved, not disappointed.
We make eye contact again, and I wait for him to scan my face like last night, but his eyes don’t leave mine. I’m locked in this weird moment. With Mr. Kennedy.
He clears this throat. Moment broken. “She wanted a couple more days in the classroom before leaving. Any other questions?”
Elias shifts his weight forward, his grip on my hand tightening. “Are you old enough for this?”
“I graduate with my teaching degree after summer semester, and I’m halfway through my MFA at Columbia. I took this semester off aside from student teaching when my aunt said she might need my help, which is why I got the chance to be here with you. So yes.” He releases a breath. “I’m old enough for this.”
“You look too young.” Elias’s accusing tone is so totally out of character.
Mr. Kennedy’s jaw tenses, but then his shoulders relax. “I graduated from high school early. I got permission to take more credits a semester than normal, and I’ve done summer school since I graduated from high school. That’s all.”
“So, how old are you?”
I push Elias’s shoulder. “What is this, twenty questions? Interrogation of the new guy?”
Elias shrugs.
“Not important.” Mr. Kennedy stands up a little taller.
I try not to notice him. I really, really do. I try not to see he’s wearing worn Chucks with his fitted khakis. That his tie is perfectly skinny cool. That his plaid shirt looks like it was tailored to his waist and sides, and I also try not to notice how his shoulders are just slightly too wide for his shirt, even though he’s a slender guy. And I even work not to stare at the sinews in his forearms exposed by the way he has his shirt rolled up or the worn, orange band on his watch.
“Clara?” Mr. Kennedy asks as he raises his brows.
“Sorry, what?” I’m reeling, wondering how long I was lost in an imagined world I should not have been in.
“Ms. Bellings said that we were walking through Act II of Arsenic and Old Lace, and you know all the staging.”
My cheeks heat up as I frantically flip through my script. I can feel Elias staring at me, practically boring holes in my temple, which nearly makes me rip a page out when I forget to let go of it. I’m sure the whole theater group of ten is staring at me, which is exactly what I don’t need. My reactions to Rhodes make no sense.
Just a guy. Too old. Too grown up. Just a guy. Just a guy. Just a guy. And I have a guy. A great one. A nearly perfect one.
“Yes. I’m ready, but we’ve walked through it quite a few times, so hopefully everyone remembers where to be.”
“Thank you.”
When I look up, Mr. Kennedy’s leaning back on his stool, holding his book with his very nice, strong hands, watching me and waiting …
Crap.
For me to get people in places and start.
Yeah. Maybe if I could concentrate while he was in the same room.
I make it through rehearsals without sounding like an idiot and even remembering to correct staging as we walk through Act II. One day down, too many to go …
“What’s with you today?” Elias asks as he walks me to his truck. “And Mr. Kennedy? He was like … staring at you.”
“Dad invited him and Ms. Bellings over last night, so I’m probably the only person here he knows. Also, maybe he was staring at my face. I’m sure that’s all.” But is that all? The butterflies in my stomach are seriously messing with my head.
I kick the small rocks that were slowly dumped on our parking lot during the winter to help with the ice. There are so many that the paved surface is practically a dirt road right now.
“And you can’t get out of family dinner tonight?” Elias asks as his fingers tighten around mine.
“What?” I poke him in the side. “We just talked about this. You never try to get me out of family dinner.”
He jumps away smiling. That easy smile is what drew me in so fully to begin with. Elias really is gorgeous. He doesn’t look like a guy who would be in a small town—he’s more cologne ad than hick town, but he’d never think that about himself. He loves it here too much. I love it here too, just not in a forever way. We’ll work out that part of being together … when we get to the point that I’m leaving.
“You just seem distracted today.” He stops by the passenger’s side door of his truck, and I lean my back against it instead of standing aside for him to open it. I scatter some of the small rocks with my foot.
And I am distracted. I got into the school and have no idea what to do about it. My stupid heart is doing backflips over our new teacher. I want to find a way to get some time alone with Elias. That’s a lot to keep track of.
I tug on his letter jacket with a grin, bringing our bodies together. “Do I seem distracted now?”
He smiles, but his gaze pauses over the right side of my face. That twisty, sharp pang in my stomach is more familiar every day, so I shove it down, needing to be in the moment. Needing to feel loved. Needing to feel the safety and relaxed heat of Elias against me.
“In a good way.” His kiss is soft and sweet, but when I pull on his coat harder, his kiss gets deeper. I will myself to fall into feeling him, but instead I wonder again if it feels weird to kiss a girl who’s missing part of her lip.
How can I be wondering that when I’m getting exactly what I want? He’s finally pressing against me and kissing me, and I’m … My brain isn’t here. This kind of touching is supposed to shut off the noise in my head, not turn it on.
An idea for another poem taps into my brain, and I slip my hand from Elias’s waist to touch my back pocket. Still there.
“Okay.” Elias chuckles before pecking my cheek. “Your mind is somewhere else. You go do your thing. I’ll maybe go pick up a few hours of work in hope of taking some time off when you can.”
I blink, my fingers sliding over the notebook in my pocket. When was the last time I was the one who broke our kiss? Have I ever?
“Yeah,” I whisper before clearing my throat. “Yeah. Okay.”
5
My phone screaming Welcome to New York by Taylor Swift signals Cecily, and my smile is complete before I answer.
“Tell me you’ve downloaded the pictures,” Cecily demands.
“Oh. Crap. Just a sec.” I snatch the laptop off my desk, knocking down a collection of Salinger. I can’t seem to stop obsessing about the list of famous Columbia grads, which is probably not great for the pressure that comes from the envelope in my desk. I flip the laptop open on my bed, tapping into email.
She scoffs in mock indignation, and I picture her thin brows on her dark skin and smirky smile at my ineptness. “How do you not remember to download? You know I send you pictures every time we talk so we can discuss. And we always talk on Wednesdays.”
I don’t answer. Cecily is bound to be a famous photographer at some point. For now, she sells her photos on stock photo sites and does wicked things with Photoshop and some other photo-editing software she probably pirated. Cecily is the perfect best friend—aside from the fact she only lives close to me for half the year.
“So?” she urges. “There yet?”
“Almost … almost …here!”
Wow.
She’s done four pictures of a guy’s face, but there’s a colored pattern on all of them that I know is going to turn into some sort of image …
“See it yet?” She sucks in a breath, and I know she’ll hold it until I figure it out.
The guy’s face is in dark blues and it looks like she took like five other pictures and put them over each other. Sort of Andy Warhol looking. Oh! “It’s the Chuck Taylor star! Well done.”
A rush of air means she was, in
fact, holding her breath. “You like?”
“I love. As always. I do not get how you can put this stuff together. You need to start selling posters on one of those arty sites.”
“I totally should.”
I flip my laptop closed and roll onto my back to stare at the slanted wooden walls that come to a peak just above my bed.
“How long before you’re back in town?” I whine.
“You know the deal. One semester with Mom, one with Dad. I’ll be back just in time to watch y’all graduate, because my school ends earlier than yours.” Her Southern accent comes back a week after she leaves Alaska for Louisiana and never totally disappears while she’s here.
“That’s forever away. There’s too much going on for you not to be here.” I cross my legs as I lie on my back in the tiny room.
“Liiiike …?” She draws out the word, needing details.
“Like we got this new substitute …”
And I tell Cecily everything. I tell her about how Elias got weird over him and how Mr. Kennedy came over and touched my face in the barn, and how he’s crazy attractive to the point that my brain stops functioning when he’s around. And how she really needs to be here because someone’s going to have to start pinching me when I act moronic, which I do every. Time. I’m. Around him.
And then I tell her he goes to Columbia.
She’s laughing by the time I finish. “So, is this the end of Elias?”
My heart does a weird ka-thump, leap, making me cough. “What? No!” I can’t imagine not being with Elias. He’s been part of me for way too long.
“But aren’t you the girl who keeps telling me you’re not going to marry him, even though I keep telling you that’s exactly what he’ll want from you?”
She does say this a lot. Elias’s parents got married when his mom was seventeen and his dad was nineteen. His older brother got married at nineteen. Elias is exactly the kind of super-faithful guy who would jump into being married as part of his life plan of stability. Even though I know this about him, I still argue against it because my brain just can’t go there right now.
“Nah. He’s going to be working to take over so his dad can retire, and he already knows I’m going to school.”
“Does he think you’ll still be in Alaska?” Cecily lowers her voice.
Crap. Having her understand everything about me doesn’t work in my favor when I don’t want her to say things I don’t want to hear. “He might. We don’t really talk about it. Nothing’s set in stone yet anyway.”
“No. You just change the subject when he brings it up. Like you think that when you graduate, something’s going to magically change and make your life decisions easier.” I’m sure her forehead is wrinkled and the corners of her mouth are turned down.
“No. That’s ridiculous.” But as I think about her words, I’m wondering if part of me does feel that way. “I have a plan.”
Cecily snorts. “Your plan can barely be considered a plan, Clara.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your plan is to bum around Alaska while you get your scars removed and to not talk to Elias about what you really want in your life until the last possible moment. Did I leave anything out?”
I don’t answer. She’ll jump into something different like she does when I don’t have words for her.
“So …” Cecily starts slowly, and I know we’re jumping into the subject change I hoped for. But she doesn’t say anything, so maybe she’s hesitant about something.
“Oh, man.” I cringe. “Did you have news this whole time and we’ve been talking about me?”
“Yeah, but I’ve been avoiding.”
My stomach twists.
“I heard from Tisch. When I said I was putting off for a year to go to an in-state school, they upped my scholarship.”
New York. This year? My legs fall flat on my mattress, and the phone slips before I grasp it tighter.
“Clara?”
My heart pounds so loudly that I’m not sure I’ll be able to hear. “But … but we were going to be freshman together … in Alaska.”
Cecily pulls in a long breath. “I haven’t given them my final word, but …”
“But you’re going.” As weak as I felt a moment ago, now every part of me feels weighted and tight. “Of course you’re going.” This sucks. So hard. I kick my foot against the slanted roof-wall as if the kicking will somehow make this all different.
“Have you heard back from Columbia yet?” Cecily asks. “It’s weird that you haven’t heard. I think you’re supposed to get that stuff the end of March or beginning of April or something, right?”
I hold my breath. Close my eyes. Switch my phone from one hand to another. Picture the letter in my drawer.
“Holy crap, you got in, didn’t you?” she squeals.
“I did.”
Cecily’s screech vibrates my phone, and I jerk it from my ear.
“I’m not going, Cee. I can’t. I’m going to defer until next year, just like I planned. And even then … who knows.” Like we planned.
“What? How can you not go? This is like … your dream. And now we’ll get to be freshmen in New York! You cannot say no to this! Your plan is barely a plan. Readjust!”
“Next year is my year of—” But I close my mouth before letting my hope slide out in the words I desperately want to be true.
“Your year of getting your scars fixed. I totally get that, but … pleeeeease.”
“I can’t leave Alaska looking like this, Cee!”
“What are you talking about?” Her voice is slowly and genuinely incredulous. “I mean, I get it. I guess. I just think you see the scars in a very different way than I do. They’re just part of who you are to me, Clara. They’re not a big deal—”
“They are not part of me!” I yell. “They’re so gross I can barely look at myself in the mirror, and they’re going to get fixed before I even think about leaving for New York.”
The phone is quiet for so long that I check the clock.
I rub my forehead, wishing I could rub the tension out of the rest of my body. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah,” Cecily says. “It’s okay. I just meant that—”
“Can we just … Can we not talk about my face?”
There’s another long pause. How do she and my dad not understand that I don’t want to put myself through the torture of going anywhere but my hometown when I don’t have to?
“Okay. It’s late here. Like ten. At the very least, I think you should try to extend the time Columbia needs for your final answer. Just give yourself more time to think before saying no.”
I feel my lower lip push out in a pout. “Maybe.” But there’s no point in asking for a week or more to help me decide. Deferring for a year, I can do. Or ask for.
“So, I’m gonna get my beauty sleep, but I need a text if anything weird goes down tomorrow, okay?”
“Weird?” I ask.
“Just text me.” She chuckles, and with that one reaction from her, I know we’re still okay.
I close my eyes, relief relaxing my limbs until guilt at that relief tugs at my heart. I should feel guilty for yelling at Cecily when I know she’s trying to help. “Night.”
“Night.”
I roll off my bed and slide open the pocket door of my mini-bathroom.
New York. So soon. Too soon. I’m not sure I even know how I’d tell Elias if I were leaving in a few months—our relationship would change so much.
The gray-blue walls reflect the fluorescent light, and my pale skin looks almost ghostly in the mirror. Instead of keeping my long bangs halfway over my eyes, I push the strands off my face.
My finger hovers over the scar that’s destroyed the upper part of my lip. My stomach rolls. How could anyone touch this? I trace the scar that nearly touches my eye—another thing I’ve been told I’m “lucky” for. I rarely touch the purply-red slashes. I can’t imagine someone else wanting to.
Sliding my special cream of
f the shelf, I smooth the white paste over the raised edges even though I’m pretty sure it’s never done anything to help. A definition of insanity runs through my head—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
I set the cream down, turn off the light, and start downstairs for dinner.
6
All through class, Mr. Kennedy glances my way as he makes notes or something on his clipboard. It’s only been two days since dinner at my house, and I’ve managed to avoid him almost completely.
I flip my pencil over a few times and glance at Elias, who immediately smiles back. He’s doodled a few floor plans on a blank sheet of paper—obsessed with getting as much as he can into the smallest space he can. Always has been. His focus goes back to his paper as he starts marking doorways, and I stare at the wall.
My short essay is long finished, and I’m so ready to be out of class. Only five more minutes …
“Clara, I need you to stay after class, please. I won’t keep you long.” Mr. Kennedy doesn’t look up from the desk as he asks. He just continues to scribble on a sheet of paper.
What? Why? “Uh …” My heart beats faster, like I need an announcement that I’m in another incredibly awkward situation. “Okay.”
The bell rings two seconds later, which really isn’t fair because most days it takes eons for that minute hand to get where I want it to go.
Elias stands with me as I step up to Mr. Kennedy’s desk, following like he always does. In case I need him. Or want him.
“We’ll just be a minute, Elias.” Mr. Kennedy does look up this time. At my boyfriend. To excuse him.
I haven’t been able to look in Rhodes’s eyes for days because of how I reacted to him and how fluttery I’ve felt being anywhere near him since then. Is it because I know he shouldn’t feel good? Because he’s older? Goes to Columbia? Willing to talk about my writing? Is it because of the teenage hormones the school nurse always tells us could lead straight to hell?
“Um …” I start, but then remember Mr. Kennedy called this little chat, so he can figure out what to say.
