So, no, Mom and Dad didn’t worry about me. I was free, free in a way I took for granted. I was free to do what I wanted, to follow my heart.
Free to be an idiot.
And I was one.
The worst part is that I can’t blame Jack. He never lied to me. When he showed up that first night to see me and not Tess, he told me he liked me, but that he still had feelings for Tess.
“I just—I think that if she got to know me, she’d like me,” he said. “I know that probably sounds dumb, and obviously I like you too since I’m here, but I’m—argh! This all sounded much less stupid in my head.”
“But she doesn’t want—” I said, and then bit my lip when I saw his shoulders slump. “She doesn’t get you. I do. And we’re so alike and I—I can talk to you. I like that.”
“I can talk to you too,” he said, and smiled at me. “You don’t want me to learn how to Botox old ladies like my family does.”
“Or get face peels.” I’d heard Tess mention them to him the last time they’d talked. She was good at diverting guys that way. They’d chase, and she’d send them off to fix themselves up—and then they’d usually end up falling for another girl, one who saw the improved them emerging before Tess did.
“I brought food tonight,” Jack told me. “PB&J, with no crusts. Your favorite, right?”
I’d said it was, because he’d said it was his favorite, and so I nodded, pathetically happy that he’d noticed me, that he’d listened to me. When I was done with my sandwich, I kissed a smear of peanut butter off his mouth.
He kissed me back, and I was even happier.
I think it might have ended there—a few nighttime visits, some shared food and commiseration over having feelings for someone who liked you but didn’t like you—except it was so nice to kiss him. To have him kiss me back. He was everything I’d wanted in a guy—cute, smart, sweet, and I thought …
I thought sex would make him love me.
No, that’s a lie. I didn’t think that. I hoped it, but the bare, honest fact behind what happened is that I wanted to have sex with him. I wanted those pale arms of his wrapped around me; I wanted to see all of him. I wanted him to see all of me.
He said he didn’t think it was a good idea. He said I was only fifteen, and he was eighteen and going away to school and—I’ll never forget this—he said, “I don’t want to hurt you. I just—I like you too much. I don’t want to be the guy you look back on and wish that I’d died a hideous death. And I know you. You’d wish something really hideous on me.”
I cried. He still said no.
So the next time I saw him, I gave him Long Island Iced Tea, a drink my mother made only on summer holidays, when she and my father would share a glass and smile at each other in a slow, sleepy way that was sort of cute but also sort of gross.
Jack didn’t say sex was a bad idea with a tall glass of that flowing through him, just laughed and said he was drunk, rolling the word around in his mouth, and then added it proved his stepfather right, and that he should have gone to more parties.
“He says I don’t know how to drink. Crappy man,” he said, and smiled at me so sweetly, so sadly. “That’s what he says I’m going to be. What I am. Crappy. Crap.”
“Not you,” I said, leaning over and cupping his face in my hands, pressing myself against him. “Not ever. You’re the best person I know, and I love you.”
We had sex on a blanket by the scrubby trees that grow near the beach. He said, “I love you,” during.
Except he said, “I love you, Tess.”
He froze as soon as he said it, but it was too late. I can still remember how cold I suddenly felt, the wind prickling goose bumps all over my skin. How he pulled away from me and knelt, hunched over and silent, the perfect posture of sorrow.
He said he was sorry, that he was stupid, and that he shouldn’t have said it. He said that he knew he’d hurt me, and that he wished he could take it all back.
“They were just words,” I said, latching on to his apology. “They don’t have to mean—”
“Abby, don’t,” he said. “I just said I love your sister when you and I—you can’t come back from that. You shouldn’t want to.”
“But I—”
“I don’t want to come back from this—be this person I am now,” he said. “I can’t—I don’t want to be that kind of guy. And yet here I am, and I …” He handed me my clothes. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t get it. They were just words. I loved him and I knew he liked me. Couldn’t that be enough? It was for me.
And when I said that—and I did, to my everlasting shame—he said, “It’s not enough for me. I can’t—I won’t ever love you. Not like … not like you want me to. Not like I wish I could.”
And that was it. He said he’d come back the next night and he did, sat waiting on the beach, a paper bag in one hand. I hid and watched him until he left.
He forgot the bag, and I waited until I heard the ferry churning over the water before I went over and got it. Inside was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a note. Two words.
I’m sorry.
I sat there, feeling the wind blow sand onto me and into my clothes, feeling the night air turn the paper bag damp. I threw the bag into the river—peanut butter couldn’t be worse than the chemicals already there—and tore the note into pieces and sprinkled it onto the road as I walked home, watching the tiny bits of paper turn gray and oily as they soaked into the street.
I walked home and watched a movie about the end of the world with Tess. A few days later, she came home from work and said Jack had come in and told her he wanted to know if she’d ever go out with him.
“I felt so trapped, like I had to do something, say something,” she said. “There were all these people watching us, and I could tell he wanted me to say yes. I could tell everyone wanted me to say yes because it would be such a cute story to tell their friends and plus he would be happy and everyone else would too, but I just … I couldn’t. The weird thing was, after I said it, he said, ‘I wish I didn’t have to know your answer. I wish I didn’t even want to ask.’ I was like, ‘So why did you?’”
Because he’d needed to know.
Because sometimes, you have to break your own heart.
I know Jack didn’t want to hurt me. But he did, and all the love I’d felt twisted into hate.
I hated Jack, but I hated myself more. I wanted someone to see me—just me—and want me, and I’d seen it wasn’t going to happen. But what had I done? Gone ahead and tried anyway. It was stupid. And I paid for it.
I don’t have to worry about that now. I’ve learned my lesson, and I don’t even want to think about trying anything with anyone again. Ever. I just want to be left alone.
And I am.
fifteen
Claire’s outside as I pass her house, picking up toys Cole’s left in the yard.
“Hey,” she says. “Wanna help me pick up this stuff?”
I get off my bike and lean it against her mailbox, then head into her yard.
“Thanks,” she says. “I swear, these things multiply. Oh, and tell your mom I said thanks for the coffee, okay? I got called away before I could say it. You’d think I was the only person in the whole damn hospital who knows how to empty a bedpan.”
“You had coffee with my mom?” I didn’t know Mom talked to Claire. She sure hadn’t back when Tess stopped talking to Claire because the one time we drove by her house and Mom waved at Claire when Tess was in the car, Tess wouldn’t talk to her for three days.
“Yeah, I ran into her when she and your dad came to see Tess. How’s your dad doing, anyway? He seemed—I don’t know. Really quiet.”
I shrug, because Dad is a pretty quiet guy, plus talking about the hospital had me thinking about my own earlier misadventures. I still didn’t get why Eli hadn’t talked more. Don’t good-looking people love to talk about themselves? Tess sure did, even though she had a way of doing it that made you feel like it was something you wa
nted.
“Why are you so quiet yourself?” Claire says. “Oh, wait. Your plan. Abby, you didn’t really think it would work, did you?”
“It’s going to work,” I say. “I just—okay, how do you get a guy to talk? What would you ask a guy if you were talking to him? What would Tess ask?”
Claire laughs, but the sound is bitter. “Tess never had to ask—”
“Exactly,” I say. “I just thought … I thought when he saw her, he’d just start talking. But he didn’t, and I don’t—I’m not good with this kind of stuff.”
Claire laughs, for real this time. “You’re full of it, and you know it. You thought the guy would see Tess and say her name and she’d wake up. I hate to break it to you, Abby, but you’re as much of a believer in that happily ever after, perfect ending stuff as Tess was.”
“Is,” I say automatically and Claire looks down at the ground. I hand her the toy I’m holding and add, “And I’m not—you know I’m not like Tess.”
Claire takes the toy and lets out a little sigh. “Ask him about himself,” she says. “What he likes to eat, does he have a car, does he play sports, whatever. Just ask lots of questions.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, I’ll try it,” I say, and hand her another toy. “I should go home.”
“Do you ever wonder what she’d think?” Claire says. “About you and me being friends, I mean?”
“Sometimes,” I say, and wave as I get back on my bike.
But I don’t. Tess would be furious, and when Claire waves back, I see she knows that too. I wonder if either of us will ever be able to do anything without Tess’s shadow looming over us.
That’s a question I can’t answer.
It’s a question I’m afraid to.
sixteen
At home, I race through my homework while I watch television in the living room, finishing it as Mom and Dad get in. Dad heads straight upstairs, pausing only to kiss the top of my head and murmur that he loves me.
“What’s wrong with Dad?”
“He’s tired,” Mom says, and gestures at my books. “How’s the homework going?”
I shrug.
“Just like your father,” she says. “He barely had to do anything and he made As. Tess was so much more like me, always having to study, always worrying about her grades …” She trails off, glancing over her shoulder at Tess’s chair at the kitchen table.
“Tess got great grades, Mom.”
“Oh, I know,” she says, turning back to me. “She just … it’s so easy for you.”
“That’s because every decent teacher fled town when the state decided Ferrisville High wasn’t meeting even minimum academic standards.”
“And not because you’re smart?” I make a face at her and she touches my hair. “Your father can’t take compliments either.”
To be honest, I think I’m about as much like Dad as the moon is like straw, no matter what Mom says. I guess she must see that, though, because she says, “You really are a lot like him, Abby. How smart you are, how determined you are to—” She clears her throat. “You even get upset like he does.”
“Dad doesn’t get upset.” He does, but in a general swearing-at-the-lawn-mower-when-it-won’t-start sort of way. There’s no way he could ever be like me. He looks like Tess, tall and blond, so how could he? I know things were hard for him, with his brother dying when he was young, but still.
I know Dad doesn’t walk around wanting to be seen and then hating himself for it. I know Dad never did anything as dumb as try to get someone who’d never really want him to love him.
“Your father used to be—he was very unhappy after John died. And I know you’re angry about Tess now, but—”
Thankfully, the phone rings then, and when she answers it I go upstairs. Angry about Tess?
I wish.
The thing is, I am sort of angry at Tess. I mean, why won’t she wake up? What is she waiting for? What does she want? I pass Mom and Dad’s room and try to be quiet because the door is closed, like Dad has gone to bed, and then walk by Tess’s.
I look inside and see all the things she’s left on her desk and dresser and floor, things she thought she would be packing up. She hadn’t intended to come home to stay. She hadn’t intended any of this.
But she hasn’t come back either.
“You should wake up,” I whisper. “Mom just told me I’m like Dad. I’m not like him. I—” I take a deep breath. “I’m giving you what you want, Tess. I found you a guy, and he’s—you should see him. You have to see him. Just open your eyes, and then you can have him.”
No reply.
I walk to her desk.
“Have you ever loved anyone?” I ask the pictures on it. Her laptop is there too, plugged in and ready to go.
I look at it and tell myself I’ll get Eli to talk tomorrow. I can ask questions. Anyone can do that.
seventeen
Anyone, apparently, except me.
Things start off okay. I get to the hospital and find Eli sitting in the main waiting room, hunched over a notebook, and seeing him I’m struck all over again by … well, by him.
He looks up then, of course, and I will myself to not look away, to not act like I care that he’s caught me staring at him.
He gets up, slipping his notebook into his bag, and comes over to me. “Hey. How are you?”
“Okay,” I mumble. “Ready to see who you’ve been waiting for?”
He starts to say something, and then just nods.
As we head for the elevators, we pass Clement. He waves at me, then pulls Eli aside to talk to him. Mostly he talks and Eli shrugs, although at one point Eli shakes his head “no” once, hard.
“How are you?” Clement says, turning to me. “Did you take the ferry over?”
“Well, since I still can’t walk on water …”
He chuckles and pulls out a cough drop. “Harriet used to like to take the ferry. We’d go over and walk along the beach. It reminded her of going to the sea with her family back in England. Of course, her parents never liked the seaside there—they told her it wasn’t Jamaica and never would be—but she loved it. She used to buy this horrible-sounding stuff called rock candy when she was a girl. Ever heard of it?”
I shake my head and Clement nods. “Exactly. But she insisted I was the only person in the world who hadn’t. Stubborn, stubborn woman.” He sighs. “I miss her.”
“We should go,” Eli says, and Clement looks at him and says, “No harm in missing someone.”
“Shouldn’t we go?” Eli says to me, a hint of desperation in his voice, and maybe he just wants to get away from Clement and his stories. But maybe he also wants to see Tess.
The thought doesn’t quite lift my spirits like it should, so I make myself grin at Clement and say, “He just met Tess and look at him. When she wakes up, you’ll never get him to leave her and go back to the gift shop.”
Clement looks at Eli, and then back at me, something measured flickering in his gaze. “I suppose the gum will be safe, at least.”
I smile and wave good-bye as Eli and I get on the elevator. Eli doesn’t do either.
“You shouldn’t let Clement bother you,” I say. “He’s not that bad for an old guy, really. I wonder what his wife looked like. I had no idea she was—”
“What, black?”
“No, the kind of person who’d actually leave Milford and visit Ferrisville,” I say, my voice rising. “But thanks for assuming I’m racist.”
“I—it’s just that everyone in Milford makes a huge deal of acting like it’s not a big thing whenever someone who isn’t white shows up.”
“Oh.” I glance at him. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It sucks.”
The elevator stops, and the doors open. We get off, and when we’re almost at Tess’s unit, I turn to him. “I—sorry about yelling at you. And about Milford.”
“Me too,” he says, and when I nod and start to tur
n away he stops me, one hand on my arm. He even has beautiful fingernails—not all chewed off or jagged or anything. Mine always look like someone’s taken a rusty knife to them. “I—this must be so hard for you. Is there anything I can, you know … um, do to help you?”
I nod, acknowledging him but nothing else because if I say anything I am afraid I will start to cry. I turn away, my eyes burning, and start to punch in the code so a nurse will unlock the doors to Tess’s unit.
He touches my arm again. “You’re using your right hand,” he says. “You punched the code in with your left last time.”
“So?”
“So shouldn’t you—doesn’t it feel weird to do it with the wrong hand? Shouldn’t you start over?”
“No, it’s okay, see?” I say, and open the doors as the buzzer sounds, signaling that we can walk in.
I do, but he doesn’t. I glance back over my shoulder.
“Come on,” I say. “Tess’s waiting for you.”
He’s got his arms crossed over his chest all tight-like, and he actually looks kind of sick, but he follows me through and heads straight for Tess’s room, practically marching behind me.
I sit down, and hear him do the same, but when I glance at him, he’s tapping the fingers of one hand against his chair like he did yesterday, only harder and faster, and it’s almost as if he’s counting or something under his breath too.
“So, Eli,” I say, wondering if being around me is somehow really pissing him off before I look back at Tess’s closed eyes. “Tell me about yourself.”
Nothing. Not from Tess. Or him.
I look at him, and he’s still just sitting there tapping away.
“Seriously,” I say. “I want to know … um.” What do I want to know about Eli?
No, not going there. I don’t need to know anything about anyone. But what would Tess want to know? What college he wants to go to, what kind of car he drives, and what sports he plays. Easy. And I can always pinch myself to stay awake if he rambles on and on.