“Your mother asked me to come home.”
“Why?” My pulse starts to race.
Dad’s brown eyes narrow. “Is there something you want to tell us about?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, wondering what they might know, if Kimmie or Ms. Beady talked to them.
“You aren’t keeping things from us again, are you, sweetie?” Mom asks.
Dad runs his fingers through his thick dark hair, the sides of which are starting to gray.
“Is it Aunt Alexia?” I ask, suspecting that it isn’t.
“It’s you,” Mom says. Her hands quiver as she retrieves a postal-wrapped package from her lap and slides it across the island toward me. “At least, it’s addressed to you. It was delivered with today’s mail.”
The package is about the size of a concrete block. My name and address are scribbled across the surface, but there’s no return address.
“Do you have any idea who it might be from?” she continues.
I shake my head, trying to appear calm, but my head starts spinning and I need to sit down.
“I don’t think she should open it,” Dad tells Mom.
“Well then, you open it for her,” Mom says, getting up from the island. She pours two mugs of dandelion tea and sets one of them in front of me.
“I’ll open it,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Dad asks.
I hesitate but then manage a nod, noticing how the package was actually mailed. There are postal marks in the corner. I reach out to take it, surprised at how light it is. Mom offers me a pair of scissors for the taped-up seams. I cut the sides open, finally unwrapping the entire package.
It’s a dark blue box.
“No card?” Mom asks, leaning closer to look.
I flip the box over in my hands, noticing the moisture in my palms. “I guess not,” I whisper, wondering who it could be from.
Slowly, I remove the cover. Wads of crumpled tissue paper collect on top. I pick through them, finally able to see the object inside.
“What is it?” Mom asks.
It appears to be a wooden box of some sort. I lift the object out, despite my dad’s protests to do it for me. Popsicle sticks have been glued together to form the model of a shop. The sign on the top reads “Camelia’s House of Clay.”
I grab the gift tag attached and flip it over to read the message, feeling a megawatt smile illuminate my face.
“Well?” Mom asks. “What does it say?”
“‘Here’s to an interesting journey,’” I say, reading the words aloud.
“And who’s it from?”
“Adam.” I flash them the card where he’s signed his name.
A huge rush of relief runs over my body as I explain to them how I told Adam I wanted to open up my own pottery shop one day. “And since he wants to be an architect . . .” I continue, marveling at the clever design. There’s a pair of double doors at the front that open, revealing a studio area and what appears to be a kiln room in the back. I lift the roof to peer inside, noting the care he took in creating tables and storage shelves for pottery pieces.
“Why didn’t he include a return address?” Mom asks. “Where does this boy live?”
“Jilly, relax,” Dad tells her. “His name isn’t Matt.”
“Not funny,” she snaps.
“You should go call him,” Dad says to me.
“Better yet, I have to work in a bit,” I say. “I think I’d rather thank him in person.”
Dad grabs the keys and tells me he’ll give me a ride. But instead of taking me straight to Knead, he pulls into the drive-through of Taco Bell for a quick side order of nachos and cheese. “You have a couple minutes, right?” he asks, turning into a parking spot.
I look toward the digital clock on the dashboard. “About twenty minutes before my shift starts.” Just enough time to fill him in on stuff.
“Well, this won’t take long,” he says, using the console as a makeshift table. “We’ll have these polished off in no time.” He peels the lid off the cheese sauce and offers me first dibs on the chips.
“So I was relieved about the package you got today,” he says, watching as I take a bite. “Adam seems like a really nice guy.”
I nod, suspecting there’s far more on Dad’s agenda than just Adam’s niceness and nachos with cheese.
“You haven’t received any other packages, have you?” he asks. “Because you know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Right,” I say, relieved that he’s brought it up.
“And I know you haven’t been sleeping the greatest lately,” he continues. “At least I’ve heard you get up a couple times in the middle of the night to go downstairs and work on your stuff. I’m assuming that can’t all be attributed to nighttime artistic inspiration. Can it?”
“I guess not,” I admit.
“But you don’t have anything to report?” He studies my expression, trying to tell if I’m lying.
“Well, there have been a lot of pranks going on at school,” I venture. “Even with me.”
“For instance?” he asks, without missing a beat.
And so I tell him about the bathroom incident and how someone hung a G.I. Jane doll in the center of the hallway. “They tied the doll in place with a jump-rope-turned noose. And then a bunch of kids were batting it back and forth like a lame-o game of handball.”
“Did the principal or anyone do anything about it?”
I shrug, vaguely remembering hearing something about how a couple of the boys got detention, but the administration couldn’t really do anything serious since no one would fess up to hanging the doll in the first place. “There’s supposed to be an assembly coming up. Ms. Beady said something about the school instituting a no-tolerance policy for pranks.”
“Well, it’d better be sooner rather than later, because obviously some jokes can get out of hand.”
I nod, thinking about Debbie and how she had said something similar.
Dad and I sit in silence for a few more minutes, just the sound of each other’s crunching as we finish off the remainder of chips and dip. In my mind, I try to formulate the words to tell him everything. The thing is, it all sounds so crazy inside my head. I can only imagine how it’ll sound to him.
I look toward the side of his face, confident that, crazy or not, he still deserves to know the truth, that it wasn’t fair of me to keep things from him and Mom last semester, and that part of the reason I ended up in trouble was because of those secrets.
“Dad,” I begin, my voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m really glad we had this chat,” he says, obviously not having heard me. “Sometimes I think things get a little hectic at home and we forget to take a pause.”
“Now you sound like Mom.”
“Which brings me to the next item on my agenda. If things between your mom and me seem a little intense lately, know that it has nothing to do with you.”
“Intense?” I ask, feeling the surprise on my face.
“I think therapy has been good for your mom, but it’s also brought out some unresolved issues from her childhood. Issues that I wasn’t there for and can’t understand completely . . . or at least not in the way that she wants me to. Add that to the stress she still feels about you—”
“Why me?”
“About what happened this past fall,” he clarifies.
“Oh,” I say, biting down on my tongue.
“Bottom line,” he continues, “your mom is going through some pretty tough stuff right now. And I love her more than anything. I just need to remind myself to have patience, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say, not fully sure what I’m agreeing to. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’ll be just fine.” He gives a less-than-reassuring pat to my lap. “Now, what do you say we get you to work?”
I manage a nod, and Dad puts the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot. We pull up in front of Knead not three minutes later. He gives me a quick peck on the chee
k and pulls away. Meanwhile, inside my head is a tangle of confusion.
Spencer notices. “Are you okay?” he mouths almost as soon as I come through the door. He’s teaching a group of moms how to paint using a crackle glaze.
I give him the thumbs-up and then move toward the stairwell, taking a moment at the very top. It just seems so surreal. I mean, all along I thought I was the one keeping secrets from my parents, but it seems they’ve been keeping them from me too.
A few breaths later, I move down the stairs, eager for a diversion. Adam has his back to me. He removes several thick rubber bands from a huge block of a mold, and then, using all his strength—I can see the veins in his forearms pop—separates both mold halves.
“The elephant table,” I say, recognizing the piece. The very top of the elephant’s back has a flat surface, enabling someone to affix a piece of glass, creating a tacky table.
“I’ve been pulling these since two,” he says, gesturing to the stampede of elephants collected in the corner.
“So, I got your gift in the mail today,” I say. “Thank you. It was really cute and really thoughtful.”
“Yeah well, that’s me,” he jokes, wiping his clay-covered fingers on a rag. He moves closer, a beaming smile stretched across his face. “You inspired me the other night. I had a great time.”
“Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” He reaches out to touch my hands. The residual clay on his fingers feels gritty against my skin. “So, what do you say we do it again?” he asks. “Are you free after work? We could try out the new pizza place across the street.”
“Regino’s?”
Adam inches even closer, sliding his fingers in between mine. “Yeah, I think that’s what it’s called.”
“Except it isn’t new.”
“It’s all new to me.” He smiles. There’s a smear of clay slip on his cheek. “I’ve only been here a couple weeks, remember?”
“Right.”
“So, is that a yes to the pizza?”
At the same moment, a piece of greenware catches my eye and I have to pull away. It’s a ceramic tree. Its limbs branch out in sharp angles, twisting together, and reminding me of Ben. Of the scar on his arm.
“Is everything okay?” Adam asks.
“Yeah,” I lie.
“Hey, if pizza’s not your thing, we could always do Chinese.”
“No,” I say. “Pizza’s fine. I should probably just get upstairs.” The image of Ben’s scar still vivid in my mind, I move quickly up the steps, anxious to get to work.
43
After work I call my parents to tell them I’m all set with a ride home, then Adam and I head over to Regino’s for a large cheese pizza with mushrooms. We sit at a table toward the back, the top of which is covered with a sticky vinyl tablecloth.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Adam asks. “Because you seemed a little out of it at work.”
“I guess I have a lot on my mind.” I gaze out the window beside us, where a tall barren tree branches out in our direction, all but touching the glass pane.
“That seems to be the norm with you,” he says.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s normal, but it’s definitely me.”
“Does it have something to do with that guy you were seeing? The one who went away but then came back . . . the one you were waiting for?”
“Not exactly,” I say, looking back at him.
“What’s the deal with him, anyway?” He takes a sip from his root beer mug. “You guys still have something going?”
“Not exactly,” I repeat.
His eyebrows go up, as if in surprise. “You don’t sound so sure.”
“Ben and I are just friends.” Barely friends, actually.
“But you want it to be more?”
I look over my shoulder, suddenly feeling warm.
“I mean, I don’t want to get all up-close-and-personal in your business or anything,” he continues. “It’s just that I like you. And I’d kind of like to be clear on things before I get too attached.”
“Really?” I grin.
“Are you a heartbreaker?” He winks to be funny.
“Hardly.”
“Then what’s the deal?”
“The deal is that, yes, there’s some personal stuff going on with me right now. But no, Ben is no longer my boyfriend.” I don’t know that he ever was.
“So why did you guys break up, then?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about this?”
“It’s the third date, if you count the coffee shop; aren’t we supposed to talk about this stuff now?”
I shift uneasily, almost forgetting that this is a date, and that things are obviously starting to progress. “I didn’t know there was a handbook on when-to-talk-about-what when you’re dating,” I say to redeem myself.
“Are you kidding?” His brown eyes crinkle in a smile. “I wrote the book.”
“Well, in that case . . .”
And so I give him some vague details about Ben, including how he was homeschooled for a while, how the first time I saw him was when he saved my life, and how he hasn’t exactly been welcome at my school.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “How can somebody who saved your life not be the most popular guy in school?”
“Ben has a past.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Yeah, but his is . . . difficult. He sort of has a bad reputation.”
“Sort of?” Adam asks.
I grab my root beer mug and press it against my lips. “Maybe this is a conversation for another time.”
“Come on, now you’ve got to tell me,” Adam insists. “I mean, how bad can it be? The guy didn’t kill anyone, did he?”
My mouth drops at the irony of the remark, and I nearly choke mid-sip. Root beer burns in my throat.
“Are you okay?” Adam asks, pushing a glass of water toward me.
I nod and take a sip, trying to stifle a cough. Meanwhile, the waitress comes to deliver our pizza. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks.
I shake my head, anxious for her to leave.
Once she does, Adam takes my plate and serves me a slice. “Don’t worry about all that ex info,” he says. “I’ll weasel it out of you eventually.”
“I don’t feel right talking about Ben’s private life,” I say, my throat finally clear.
“It must be pretty bad if even saving your life doesn’t make him a hero.”
“It’s just that Ben has a lot of secrets.”
“Okay, well now you’re just being cruel.”
“Actually, I think maybe I’ve already said too much.”
“Well, let’s see,” he says, putting it all together. “The guy has a dark and secretive past, a bad reputation, and not many friends. I can definitely see the appeal.”
“You really just have to get to know him.”
“And when will that be? I’d love to meet this guy.”
“Maybe in another lifetime.” I take a bite of pizza, reluctant to say any more.
“Well, there’s one thing I already know for sure,” Adam continues. “Ben’s definitely an idiot for not wanting you back; but you’re probably better off.”
“You think?”
“I know,” he says, reaching out to touch my forearm. “And I’m better off too, because now I’m the one who gets to have pizza with you.” He smiles slightly, like he really means it—like he really cares about what’s happening between us.
“So, maybe we should talk about your ex-girlfriends now,” I say.
“I have a better idea.” He leans forward over the table as if he wants to kiss me, and part of me hopes he will. But then there’s another part that still feels conflicted, like maybe this is all happening way too soon.
Adam stares at me hard, making my heart beat fast. I’m just about to look away, when I feel his mouth brush against my lips in a tiny kiss.
“I’m so glad I bumped into Spencer that day,” he says, once the ki
ss breaks. “I may never have met you otherwise.”
“Yeah,” I say, almost tempted to kiss him back. “Me too.” I gaze out the window again, suddenly wishing I’d met him at some other, less complicated time.
A moment later, a limb snaps off the tree outside, and I flinch. The branch falls to the ground with a penetrating crack that cuts right through my core.
“Is everything okay?” Adam asks.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, unable to take my eyes off that tree. It looks so broken now, as if something’s definitely missing.
44
Adam is glowing as he drives me home.
There’s a huge grin on his face, and every few seconds he turns to look at me.
I nervously tug at my ponytail, only wishing I felt the same. It’s not that I don’t like him—right down to his quirky sense of humor and how thoughtful he is with me—it’s just that my heart really isn’t into this right now. But maybe in time it will be.
I look at his profile, wanting to tell him that, but before I can, he asks when he can see me again.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “When’s your next shift at Knead?”
“Thursday,” he says, pulling up in front of my house. He puts the car in park and inches closer. “But please don’t make me wait until then.”
A smile wriggles across my lips.
“Wait, did that just sound totally lame?” he asks.
I shake my head, flattered by his affection, but also knowing that if I want to pursue something real with him, I need to put Ben behind me. For good.
“Can I pick you up from school on Wednesday?” he asks.
I nod and he leans in even closer. “Good night,” I say, turning my head. I feel his kiss land against my cheek.
“Good night,” he whispers. There’s a disappointed look on his face.
“I just need to take things slow.”
“I get it,” he says, perhaps slightly reassured. He manages a smile and gives my hand a tiny squeeze.
“But I’ll see you Wednesday,” I continue. I close the car door behind me, then linger on the sidewalk while he pulls away and takes a turn at the end of my street.