by Rachel Vail
We were in public. Anybody could see us.
He smiled at me. “That was fun, last night.”
“Yeah, well, now it’s today.”
“I know,” he whispered. His fingers had dropped from my elbow, but he took a step closer to me. “But after we kissed, last night, I—”
“We shouldn’t have. We can’t. Ever.” I turned away and walked toward Cuppa.
“Because of George?”
“Yeah. And also, everything …”
His right shoulder shrugged microscopically as he looked past me to the window of Cuppa. “They need help.”
“What?” I turned and saw the HELP WANTED sign. “Oh. Well, don’t we all.”
“All what?”
“Want help,” I said.
He smiled at that. My heart cramped up. Damn.
“Maybe I should try for the job.”
“Don’t you have to be older?” he asked.
I yanked the door open, wondering what it would be like to be older, cooler, working at Cuppa, knowing by then how to manage all my tumbling, tumultuous, unruly emotions.
The lady behind the counter was beautiful, like someone who had just come to life out of a painting—all cascading, reddish curls and pale skin, green eyes twinkling as she watched us approach.
“We need two boxes of coffee,” Kevin said.
“Pretty thirsty,” the lady guessed. “For here?”
“No, to go,” Kevin explained.
“Okay,” she said, and smiled. There was a small silver ring through her tongue. “You sure?”
“Oh,” Kevin said. “Right. You knew that.”
“I’ve been in the business awhile.”
“You’re just like Charlie,” he said to the lady. “Two beats ahead of me at all times.”
“We girls can’t always slow down to boy speed. Hurts our engines.” She winked at me. “Right, Charlie?”
“I thought we were gonna drink it here,” I said.
Kevin’s fingers touched my back, between my shoulder blades. A shiver radiated up and down my body from that point, like ripples on a pond from a dropped pebble—or glass hit by a thrown stone.
The tongue-pierced lady watched us while that was going on, while I tried to hide the shiver and keep my face blank and unreadable. I’m not sure I succeeded, because she tilted her head slightly at me, the way cats do when yarn jiggles near their faces, then turned her back to us, to fill up two big boxes with coffee.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and step forward, away from Kevin’s lingering fingers. Stop thinking about him! Focus. Where the hell even was I?
I hadn’t been inside Cuppa for almost three years, since Tess and I discovered it is apparently not a place for middle schoolers or even ninth graders unless you were extraordinarily cool. We were taught that fact by Tess’s older sister, Lena, who had been interrupted from making out with her boyfriend in one of the two back booths. By us. She explained the rules of Cuppa while she escorted us out the door sideways, by our ponytails.
Tess and I could hardly stand up after Lena stormed back in, we were laughing so hard. We ended up holding on to each other with tears bubbling up in our eyes out there on the sidewalk.
“She evicted us!” Tess said.
“Like a couple of hoodlums!” I added, which just doubled us over more.
“Hoodlums!” Tess kept repeating. “HOODLUMS!”
It’s a miracle we didn’t pee in our pants right there. I wasn’t sure if she was mocking me or not, but it didn’t really matter; we were too in love with ourselves to care if people were staring at us. Let them stare. We were twelve and happy and best friends.
But there I was, nearly fifteen years old, and not with Tess but with Kevin. The ache of lack-of-Tess kicked my stomach. I leaned forward onto the counter.
“You okay?” Kevin whispered. “Need some water before we go home?”
“Home?” I repeated.
“What?”
“That might be the weirdest thing you ever said to me,” I answered. “Home.”
“So far,” he said. “Give me time.” He was smiling at me, calm and intense, deep into my eyes.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Meanwhile, the Cuppa lady put the two boxes of coffee on the counter, along with a cup of water. I downed it while she took the money from Kevin, rang up the sale, and gave him change.
“I was wondering about the job,” I told her.
“You were?”
“Yes,” I said. “About, if I could please apply for it.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I exaggerated, and then, when she and Kevin both looked skeptical, added, “Approximately.”
“Uh-huh,” the lady said. She handed me a pad and a pen.
I guess my look was blank.
“Give me your name and number. I’ll call you for an interview.”
“Okay.” I wrote down my information and handed the pad and pen back. “Thanks,” I said.
As I followed Kevin toward the door, holding one of the boxes, the woman said, “Charlie?”
I turned around.
“Why do you want the job?”
I stood there trying to think fast. Spending money? Sure, though I don’t have anything I’m desperate to buy.
Because if I’m behind the counter at Cuppa, I won’t have to feel abandoned when I come in here and see the table Tess and I picked out as our own and us not sitting at it? Well, yeah, that too.
I need a job here because … because I need to find someplace I can hide, since all my safe places are gone.
“A lot of reasons,” I said instead. “I … well, I’m a, interested in … want to …”
“Think about it,” the Cuppa lady said. “My name is Anya. I’ll call you.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Thanks, um, Anya.” I had already blown my chance, obviously. I opened the door and Kevin stepped through it.
“A lot of reasons?” Kevin asked, unlocking our bikes.
“Shut up,” I said. Which made him smile. Which I only let myself smile back at for two seconds. Three, tops.
four
WHEN WE GOT back with the coffee, some of my mom’s friends had shown up, and a few of our relatives, to add to the hordes of Lazarus people and some kids from school. I went up to my room and changed out of my sweaty-armpit dress into jeans and a T-shirt, then ventured down to my basement, or what used to be my basement. Now, with the Lazarus pool table there and a lot of the boy population of ninth grade, it hardly felt like mine at all.
“Hey! Charlie!” It was Darlene Greenfudder, beaming at me.
“Hey!” I said back. “How’s it going, Darlene?”
“Great,” she said brightly. “Well, except my grandfather died.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said, stopping in the middle of the stairway. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, it was weird.”
“Weird?”
“Totally. Right before he died, my grandfather, PawPaw, called me to his bedside and said, ‘If the transmission is shot, doesn’t matter how pretty the detailing is. That car is not running.’”
I was not at all sure how to respond to this. But Darlene was staring at me, impatient and expectant, her brown eyes heavily lined in sparkly purple pencil. So I said, “Wow. That’s really … profound.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, nodding. “And then he just, boom, died.”
“Oooo,” I said, praying that I would not start laughing. “Just, boom?”
Darlene nodded. “Boom.”
I took a steadying breath and said, “Well, I’m so sorry.”
A big giggle from the girls downstairs bubbled up. Darlene and I both smiled at them, by habit. Kevin caught my eye. His head tilted like a question, but what did he want, for me to go fawn all over him, too? How many of those girls were touching his arms, four? Five? Not that I was jealous. It had nothing to do with me. Obviously. I was actually scanning the room for George. And possibly Tess.
&nb
sp; I turned back to Darlene instead, who was now waving at one of the smoker girls flopped with two others on my old beanbag chairs.
“Lots more people came than last time you had a party,” Darlene pointed out.
I had to laugh a bit. You can’t even get mad at somebody who just puts it right out there like she does.
“Because of Kevin.” Darlene placed her hand consolingly on my shoulder. “You know how he is.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sort of.”
“Oh well,” Darlene said cheerfully. “He was pretty demented by then.”
“Kevin?”
“PawPaw. You know, the detailing? So, probably he was just nuts, but it sounded deep, and you’re smart. I thought maybe you’d get it.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“That’s okay. It was worth a try. He didn’t leave me anything in his will, because he was kind of a failure at everything he tried. But I thought maybe this was like a nugget of wisdom. Oh well. Like on Antiques Roadshow. Most of the time the stuff people bring in is crap, but once in a while there’s some diamond in the buff.”
“Rough,” I corrected.
“What?”
“Diamond in the rough, I think.” Jeez Louise, can I please be normal for one full frigging minute?
“Diamond in the rough? What does that mean?”
“No idea,” I admitted, and forced myself to smile up at Darlene. “Maybe he thought you should get the oil checked or something. In your car. When you get one.”
“Oh. Yeah, that’s probably it.”
She looked a little deflated, so I added, “That’s really good advice, actually. To check the oil. I think. Hey, so, speaking of … non sequiturs, is Tess coming today?”
“No, she’s still mad at you.” She smiled sweetly at me. “Anyway. Thanks, Charlie. That’s nice. Get the oil checked. Okay.” She took a step down toward the basement, away from me.
“Cool,” I said. “Thanks for coming today.”
“Oh,” said Darlene. “I figured this might be awkward, but …”
“Because of …” I tilted my head toward where Kevin stood, down in the basement. I had forgotten that she and Kevin had made out, even before I had kissed him. And he had broken up with her the next day online. He was not the nicest of guys, Kevin, which is why I had never liked him as a friend.
“Yeah,” Darlene said. “That kind of sucked, what you did to Tess.”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
She nodded sympathetically. “I decided that it would be fine for me to come over when Kevin has a party. Pretty much everybody was coming, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to boycott this, right?”
“Uhhh, I guess not.”
“Right. You understand. It’s not like I came here to hang out with you. So I’m not being, like, disloyal to Tess. Not really.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks, Charlie. You’re really nice. And, listen. Everybody’s totally over it, other than Tess, of course. It’s not like you’re a piranha or anything.”
“A piranha?”
“I’m improving my vocabulary. My mom’s making me take a class, since I practically failed English last semester. Piranha means outcast.”
I did not say, No, you dolt, a piranha is not an outcast; a piranha is a fish with teeth. You mean a pariah. I just said, “Oh.” Which, I think, should give me some cosmic points. For not being a jerk. For gritting my teeth so hard to resist uttering a necessary but jerkish vocabulary correction that I may actually have ground down my molars a bit.
“I better go in....”
“Sure. Sorry about your grandfather,” I said again, keeping my sharp piranha teeth to myself.
“Oh! Thanks,” Darlene said, smiling in a truly friendly way. “Sorry about your, you know …”
“Life,” I finished for her, and slumped down to sit on the stairs. So this is how it’s going to be, I thought. I am basically a piranha.
It did not help to know that Tess would have pretty much laughed her head off about Darlene’s earnest confusion, and then probably would have bought me a pet piranha, to celebrate my new mascot. Or at least a T-shirt with a piranha on it.
It was one of those moments when missing Tess took all my energy. I had to just slump amoeba-ishly on the stairs until the spasm passed.
The party ground on and on. I took a short break in my room but then forced myself out again. I did not want to be that much of a cliché, in my room with the door closed during a party. I mean, seriously. I am a ninth-grade girl, I admit it, but I have some pride, at least about not being completely frigging obviously a ninth-grade girl. I went back downstairs with my piranha grin showing.
People were still there, milling around. My friend Jennifer was there, over in the corner, chatting with Kevin’s best friend, Brad. Jennifer’s parents are close with Kevin’s dad, so of course, her whole family was at the party, but still I was happy to see a friendly face. No Drama Jen. She used to hang with me and Tess when me and Tess were me-and-Tess, and she has stayed good friends with both of us. I made a vow to be more like Jennifer, except athletically (lack of talent on my part would make that pretty impossible), as I smiled at her. She smiled back and lifted her hand in a friendly hey-there type of wave. Ah, Jen. You are my new role model. Gonna be like you, less lurchy and jerky and stressed. I picked some pretzels off the pool table surface and headed toward her.
As I made my way to the corner where she stood, Kevin slid by me and whispered into my neck, “You changed.”
“Just my personality,” I whispered back.
He didn’t laugh. “Your dress,” he clarified, turning away, swept up immediately into a group with Brad and other boys from the soccer team. All around us, ninth graders, some of whom I’d known since kindergarten, chatted in small groups, laughed together, smiled with braced or newly unbraced teeth at one another. I stood there alone for a moment, a rock in the rapids.
And there was George. Ahh, finally. George, the nicest guy ever, the guy I’d kissed less than twenty-four hours earlier, making his way across the basement toward me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi there,” I said.
“How you holding up?”
“My head’s kind of spinning,” I whispered.
“I bet,” George said, and put his heavy arm around me. I leaned against him, took a few deep breaths, and didn’t look over to see if Kevin was noticing. I breathed in the clean laundry smell of George, rested on the solidity of him. He wasn’t grabbing at my hair, wasn’t searching my eyes with pain and vulnerability twinkling in his. He just stood there, warm and clean and patient. I closed my eyes. My pulse wasn’t racing, it was slowing. Ahhh. I could fall asleep standing there and he’d just let me doze. If the party ended and I was snoozing against him, George would stay standing there, his empty plastic cup in his hand, holding me up.
I slung my arm around his waist, opened my eyes, and smiled up at him. “Longest twenty-four hours ever,” I whispered.
“Sure,” he whispered back. “You okay?”
Damn. Why does that question make me start to spurt tears?
“You want to get some air, talk or something?”
“No,” I said. “I’m good. Everything is good.” As I flashed my piranha smile up at George, I saw Kevin turn his face toward Brad, away from me. Had he been watching me? I grabbed hold of George’s hand and squeezed. “Listen, George, I’m really glad we …”
He squeezed back. “Me too.”
So that was that, and nothing more had to be said between us. We talked to pretty much everybody, and held hands almost the entire time. When the party was petering out, I walked him to the back door. He handed me a small box. “Sorry I was late today,” he said. “I had to wait for the store to open to get you this.”
“What is it?” I asked, opening it. Inside was a pair of earbuds. “Um, wow. Okay. Thanks, George.”
“I figured you’re used to privacy, and now, with the Laza
rus family all in your space, you might need to … sometimes … retreat.”
I clutched the earbuds, pink with red polka dots, to my chest. “Yes,” I said, and hugged George without caring who saw, or if anybody did.
five
THE AWKWARDNESS OF breakfast the next day, when it was finally just the five of us left in the house, was bad enough. The fact that my mother and her new husband were glowing—seriously, emitting light you could read by, if their sheepish grins weren’t so frigging distracting—was pretty near unbearable.
Being the last one down to breakfast only added to my disorientation. I stood at the door of the kitchen, staring at all these people, a major crowd for me to confront on a Monday morning in my unshowered, unfed state. So many people in my kitchen. The parties are over! When is everybody going to leave already?
Oh, right. Never.
For the rest of my life, we were always going to have company.
It took me a minute to figure out what the conversation was. It sounded like Joe and Samantha were talking in some kind of code made of numbers. Kevin had his bio textbook out and open in front of him.
“Kevin’s next, then you, Charlie,” Joe practically sang at me.
“To … what?”
“Go over your work,” he said, like that was the most obvious thing. “Get ready for the day.”
I almost turned toward Kevin to roll my eyes at him, to check if this was standard operating procedure in his family, because it sure as hell was NOT in mine, but then, at the last second, decided that actually I was not prepared to bond with Kevin at all or especially in front of anybody, thanks.
In fact, at that moment I made what seemed to me to be a completely brilliant if obvious plan: not to look at Kevin at all. Ever again in my entire life.
It would just make things cleaner.
“No, thanks, I’m all set,” I said in what sounded to me at least like a pretty steady, respectful but definite voice, and then sat down at the table in front of my bowl full of not-cereal.
“Good way to start the day,” Joe insisted, holding a half gallon of orange juice in each hand. “Get your brain in gear. Pulp or no pulp?”
“Pulp, please. What is this?” I asked, staring down at the lumpy mess in my bowl, where raspberries, nuts, and some stray, escaped cereal were in their death throes, drowning in yogurt.
