Sighing, I touch my sunken cheeks and pale skin. The circles under my eyes sag lower. I pinch my cheeks, hoping to bring some life back to them. Nothing. Grabbing a ponytail holder, I twist my hair into a curly bun on my head, running downstairs, still in my dress.
Ben sits on the couch next to Ninny, chatting. I stop in my tracks halfway down the stairs.
“What are you doing here?”
“Aspen,” Ninny barks. “I taught you to be more polite than that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Ninny rolls her eyes as Ben looks me up and down. “You’re still wearing your dress,” he says.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Why are you still in your dress?”
“You never answer my questions.” I put my hands on my hips.
Ninny looks from Ben to me and back. “I think I’ll go to Salvador’s. It’s always good to see you, Benny.” She kisses him on the cheek.
“Good to see you, too.”
Ninny slips on her jacket and grabs the pot stashed in the kitchen before disappearing out the back door. Ben sits still on the couch, staring at his hands in his lap. “You left without saying anything last night. I was worried.”
“Well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but you’re a bad dancer.”
“I am?”
“No.” I press my fingers into my temples, trying to massage out my headache.
Ben walks into my kitchen like it’s his and fills a glass of water.
“Thanks.” I down half, and some water dribbles out of the corner of my mouth. Ben wipes it away with his sleeve. Yep, I still want to read him poetry on a bearskin rug.
Ben takes me in from head to toe. “You didn’t have to get so dressed up for me,” he says.
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I can go.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Just let me get changed.”
He nods and sits back down on the couch, both arms extended out on the cushions, feet up on the coffee table. I stare at him for a second.
“What are you looking at?”
“Your shoes are wet.” I point at the watermarks on the coffee table.
“Shit.” Ben sits up and wipes them with his sleeve.
I can’t help but giggle. “Ninny bought that at a dead woman’s estate sale for five dollars.”
“So you’re saying it’s an antique.” He smiles and slips off his shoes. Today, he’s wearing two different colored socks, one black and the other navy blue. No holes. I can’t take my eyes off them. And I bet they don’t even smell. I resist the urge to bend down and test the theory. “Weren’t you gonna change?” he asks.
I nod, running upstairs to my closet. Picking the first things I find, I throw on holey jeans and a red hooded sweatshirt. But when it comes to my socks, I stand in front of the drawer, debating which pair I should put on. What would tell him I feel the same way he does? I settle on socks with little pockets for each toe, like gloves. Then I splash some water on my face and brush my teeth before coming back downstairs.
Ben hasn’t moved from the couch. He sits, his feet up, playing on his phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I sit down next to him, peering over his shoulder.
“You changed quick.” He almost jumps, clutching the phone to his chest.
“Don’t get too excited. I didn’t shower or anything.” I set my feet up on the table next to his, displaying my socks. I even wiggle my toes. “You know, you’re wearing two different colored socks.”
“I am?” Ben pulls his feet up to get a better view. “Holy shit. I am. Are those glove socks?” He points at my feet.
I cross my legs, stuffing my feet under myself. “Maybe.”
“Let me see.” Ben grabs my leg, but I fight against him. “Are you ticklish?”
“No,” I lie, and scoot away.
“You are.” Ben’s eyes sparkle with deviousness. And then he dives towards me full speed, knocking me on my back on the couch. He grabs for my feet and my sides, his fingers finding all my weak spots. I laugh uncontrollably. This might be better than poetry on a bearskin rug. I can’t stop giggling and wiggling and feeling like I might explode with happiness.
“Stop,” I laugh. “Stop.”
Ben freezes on top of me. His lips are inches from mine. He stares into my eyes as the weight of his body presses on me.
Ben looks at my lips and moves an inch closer. My breath hitches in my throat—and then he sits back quickly on the couch, releasing me. I follow suit, pulling down my sweatshirt and tucking loose curls behind my ears.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“It’s okay.” I say the words, even though it’s not okay.
Ben picks up his phone. “I was actually looking up the definition of a word.”
“You were?”
“I think I have Addictive Definition Disorder.”
“I hear ADD is going around.” I smile.
“It’s more contagious than herpes,” he says, a forced smile on his face. My stomach drops at the sight of it.
“What word?” I choke out.
“What?”
“You looked up the word ‘what’?” I say, attempting to bring the mood back to where it was a moment ago.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry, that was a bad joke?”
“‘Sorry’ is the word I looked up,” Ben says.
I sit back. “Why?”
“Because I owe you an apology. I’m sorry about last night.”
“For what?” I say, trying not to let disappointment seep into my voice.
Ben looks down at his hands. “I’m still not over everything that happened. It’s so complicated, Aspen.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I do. I really do.” Ben wrings his fingers together and then stands up abruptly. “But I can’t.” He leans over to put his shoes on and picks up one of Ninny’s yoga magazines, which is lying on the ground. “Here.”
He hands it to me.
“Sorry about the mess,” I say.
I grab the magazine from Ben. An ache covers his eyes and I want to cry right here, right now. “I told you before, don’t be sorry.”
Ben walks out the front door without a look back in my direction.
My head falls to my chest as I breathe away the tears collecting in my eyes. Bending down, I rip the socks from my feet and throw them across the room.
And then all that’s left in the house is the sound of silence.
CHAPTER 14
I go back to normal. Or whatever my life was before Ben. Before visions of toenail clipping and bearskin rugs. It’s all I can do. Kim and I get coffee and listen to music and dissect every college kid behind the counter at Moe’s. She asks me to pierce her bellybutton, which I refuse in the name of both regret and staph infections. I even sit in Dr. Brenda’s office and talk about my lack of motivation and let her tell me that going to college is important.
“You’re smart, Aspen.”
“Who knows what will happen by next year?” I say. “The future is unexpected and unintentional.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to be unexpected and unintentional.”
I nod, even though hearing her talk in her psychobabble way is as painful as slowly poking my eardrums with a sharp toothpick. But it’s better this way. That’s what I tell myself.
Olivia only accosts me once in the bathroom after homecoming, asking me what it feels like to replace a dead girl.
“What?” I ask.
She rests her butt against the sink. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
I stumble on my words and instinctually want to punch Olivia right in her big beautiful, brown eyes.
When I don’t answer, Olivia leaves, tossing her hair over her shoulder. I take it as a slap in the face, considering I can’t toss my hair anywhere. It just bounces.
On the bright side, Kim doesn’t give me any more suspicious looks, and a few weeks after homecoming, the rumors at school about
me and Ben dating or banging (depending on whether you ask a boy or a girl) actually die down.
Not having Ben so prominently in my life doesn’t hurt so badly, I find. It’s kind of like losing a kidney. If I can learn to function without it, I’ll be fine. Who needs both kidneys, anyway?
The only time it gets hard is in physics when Ben is physically next to me. I’ll stare down at his calves and wonder what they’d feel like in my hands, or remember that he told me he wears boxers, which makes my eyes drift up his legs to his—and then I have to stop myself.
One afternoon during lab, Ben asks if he can borrow a piece of paper.
“No,” I say, rolling one of the toy cars Mr. Salmon gave us back and forth across the desk.
“Okay. Sorry.”
I rip a sheet free from my spiral notebook. “You can have a piece of paper. I don’t want it back.”
Ben cracks a small smile. “I should know better,” he says. “Since I have ADD and all.”
It takes everything in me not to ask him to define a word. Next thing you know, I’ll ask if he wants to have babies.
To further the torture of my life, I have to endure a Thanksgiving with Uncle Toaster. He brings over a bag full of dented cans of cranberry sauce that he found discarded behind the grocery store.
“I’ve decided to become a freegan,” he says, setting them down on the counter.
“What the hell is that?” I ask as I mash potatoes on the stove.
“I won’t be defined by the consumerist structures set up by the wasteful American government. There are people starving all over the world, yet we discard a can for being dented.” Toaster picks one up and pets it. “It’s not the can’s fault that someone didn’t take proper care of it.”
“So you’re finally admitting you’re a Dumpster-diver?”
“Aspen,” Ninny barks. She’s pretending to watch football on the couch so that she doesn’t have to help cook.
“I prefer freegan.”
“Well, I think you’re ‘freegan’ insane.” I go back to mashing the potatoes.
Not even Ninny touches the cranberry sauce at dinner.
Later, in my room, I’m flipping through pictures of Katelyn on Facebook. I’ve looked through at least 100 photos, reading the comments on all of them. I’m not exactly sure what I’m even looking for. But I am absolutely sure I’ve become a stalker.
My computer dings with a chat notification.
Suzy Lions: I miss u
Aspen Taylor: u saw me a few days ago
Suzy Lions: school doesn’t count
Suzy Lions: we need 2 do something
Aspen Taylor: ok
Suzy Lions: shopping next week. i need a new tie-dye.
I hesitate, unsure if I should type something back. It’s been more than a month since Suzy and I hung out, and the truth is I miss her, too. She’s oddly loyal and fun.
I scan the comments below the picture of Katelyn pulled up on my screen and look for Suzy’s name. There’s a comment from Ben, but Suzy hasn’t written anything. I click to the next one. No Suzy. I go through 15 pictures, searching for a comment made my Suzy about Katelyn. She hasn’t left a single one.
The Grove rustles like a breeze is coming in my window, but it’s closed. And an odd smell wafts into my room. I turn and see Katelyn standing with one of my sketches in her hand. It’s one of Ninny sitting in our backyard, wearing a huge sunhat.
“Put that down,” I say. Katelyn shakes her head. “Put it down.”
She rips it to shreds. I run to stop her but she disappears and I fall into the wall, knocking my head. When I stand up, the sketch is back in its place.
I tell Suzy that I’d like to go shopping with her.
Suzy Lions: GREAT!
I stay up half the night, rubbing the small bump on my head and trying to find a single comment Suzy has made on Katelyn’s memorial page. I come up empty.
“Where should we go?” Suzy asks, looping her arm through mine as we walk out of physics. “I need an authentic tie-dye, not one I bought at Forever 21. I want it to smell like pot, not cheap perfume.”
“There’s this one place, but I’m not sure you can handle it,” I say.
“Oh, I can handle it.” Suzy bounces up and down.
We walk out to her black SUV, and I stand at the door, holding the handle. It’s cold in my palm. The vision of Katelyn ripping my sketch to shreds makes me hesitate.
“It’s open,” Suzy says, snapping me out of my trance.
Gritting my teeth, I slide into the passenger seat. When Suzy starts the car, I roll down the window.
“It’s freezing,” she says.
“You want a new shirt, right?” I glare at Suzy. She rolls her eyes and zips her coat all the way up to her neck.
We drive, Suzy shivering in the driver’s seat. She turns up the heat and holds her hands over the vent. I hang my arm out the window, resting my face in the breeze.
We park at the Crystal Dragon, a small boutique with tapestries hanging in the window. Just walking in the door reminds me of being little. The strong smell of lavender and patchouli oil hasn’t changed. I walk up to a shirt and press it to my face. All the clothes smell like the store. You have to wash something at least ten times before you stop smelling like a Phish concert.
Along the wall is a glass case filled with colorful pipes and bongs. On top sits dangly jewelry. Clothing racks are spread around the store, and tapestries cover the walls. The far back room is filled with posters.
“This is perfect,” Suzy squeals, already flipping through a rack of shirts.
“I bought my first Grateful Dead shirt here,” I say, holding a turquoise necklace to my neck.
“How do you even know about this place?”
“When I was little, Ninny liked their black-light room.”
“Your mom?” I nod. Suzy holds up a shirt to her small body. And then she asks, “What’s a black-light room?”
I put the turquoise necklace back. “I’m not exactly sure, but Ninny always came out of it very happy.” I lean my hip against the case of bongs. “It got shut down a few years ago.”
“My parents would never!” Suzy’s eyes get big as she shakes her head.
“Ninny never says never.”
A small round woman wearing a flowing dress and an anklet that jangles as she walks comes out of the back of the store, carrying a box of clothes.
“Can I help you?” She sets the box down on the counter.
“I need the perfect tie-dye,” Suzy says.
The woman smiles warmly. She looks like an aunt. Or what I envision an aunt looking like. Someone who squishes you into her soft exterior and smells like cookies and always has gum. “You’ve come to the right place,” she says.
Suzy and the woman walk around the store, looking at each shirt, dissecting Suzy’s personality. At one point, the woman says she sees people in colors.
“Like an aura?” Suzy asks, intrigued.
“Kind of.” Suzy’s color is blue, she says. “Not a baby blue. Ocean blue.” The woman waves her hand in the air like she’s drawing the color on Suzy’s body.
“I have a color?” Suzy gets even more excited.
The woman touches her arm and smiles. “Everyone has a color, baby. It’s just most people don’t know what it is.”
They scan the racks for a tie-dye with Suzy’s “color”. I go to the back room and flip through the posters, scanning the faces I know so well. Uncle John Lennon. Uncle Jethro Tull. Uncles Simon and Garfunkel. I know them better than any man who’s walked through my front door. Uncles Crosby, Still, Nash and Young got me through the three weeks Ninny was away in Taos. I’d cry at night as I listened to “Teach Your Children,” because the song isn’t really about parents teaching kids, it’s about kids teaching parents. And I hated that I needed to teach Ninny that the people who love you don’t leave.
When I get through all the posters, I walk back to the front to find Suzy.
“What do you think?” sh
e asks, pulling a short-sleeved pastel-colored tie-dye from her bag. Her ocean blue color is speckled down the center in a large swirl.
“It’s great.”
Suzy presses the shirt to her nose. “And I got you this.” She digs to the bottom of the bag and pulls out a blue, pink and purple string-braided bracelet, like the kind kids make at summer camp. “A friendship bracelet. One for you and one for me.” Suzy grabs my wrist and ties it on me. Then she shows me her wrist, wrapped with an identical one.
“Thank you.” I smile.
“Friends.” Suzy taps her wrist against mine. Then she turns back to the counter and says, “Leona, what’s Aspen’s color?”
Leona puts her finger on her chin, scanning my body. When her brow knits and her eyes turn serious, I want to hide behind the counter.
“I can’t believe this.”
“What?” I ask.
Leona comes over to us, her anklet jangling as she walks, and grabs my shoulders. “Is everything okay, honey?” Her eyes search my face, concerned. I step back from her.
“Yes.”
“What is it, Leona?” Suzy asks, looking between the two of us.
“You have two colors. Yellow and grey. But not a light grey, a stormy grey.”
“What does that mean?” Suzy leans into me, her eyes big.
“There’s someone else here, too.” Leona looks around the store.
“Okay, thanks.” I grab Suzy’s arm, dragging her toward the exit.
Leona snaps out of her trance when the door dings. She smiles, a distant look on her face, and says, “Peace out.”
In the parking lot, Suzy stops, confused. “I didn’t see anybody else in there.”
“I think Leona spent too much time in the black light room,” I say.
“That is the coolest store I’ve ever been in.” Suzy takes her shirt out of the bag to admire it one more time. “It even smells real. I’m never washing this.”
I laugh half-heartedly. My eyes keep glancing back at the store, waiting for Katelyn to appear and show her stormy grey color. Or rip another one of my sketches.
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