Chapter 10
“Here,” Kieran offers, pushing a paper container with a lone French fry swimming in a pool of processed cheese sauce over to my side of the table.
“You’re sure?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I pop the French fry into my mouth and slurp down some diet soda. Over the last three weeks, ever since the Laniers came over for dinner, Kieran and I have settled into the same after-school routine. His parents decided to ease up on their “no going out after school” policy, so now that I don’t have practice but Kayla does, Kieran and I come to the Downtown Diner every day to study and eat cheese fries until my mom’s store across the street closes at five, and then we drive him home.
“So we have a mutual birthday coming up,” he points out, wiping a smear of cheese sauce from the corner of his history textbook with a napkin. A few weeks ago when we were talking on the phone, I’d asked him when he was going to turn eighteen and was both shocked and elated to discover we share the same unfortunate birthday, April first. “I assume you’ll be getting me an appropriate present to honor my new status as an adult?”
“Which would be what? Cigarettes? A Selective Service form?”
He sits back in the booth, grinning. “No idea. I just said that.”
“Seriously, though—is there anything you really want? Kayla and I are going to the mall Saturday to look for stuff. You’re not invited, by the way.”
Kieran mock-pouts for a second before answering. “I don’t know. A halfway normal life would be amazing.”
“I don’t think they sell that at the mall.”
“Ha ha. And I have no idea what to get you, either, so feel free to give me some suggestions.”
Sighing, I lean forward and slurp down more soda. Honestly, life is good right now. I have a great family and a guy to hang out with who maybe sort of might be my boyfriend but is, at the very least, someone who’s fun to be with. Throw in a shot at a basketball title next year and I can’t complain. So maybe what I want is to freeze this part of my life in time so nothing changes.
“I want to be happy,” I tell him.
“I don’t think they sell that at the mall.”
I suck up some soda and pull the straw from my cup with my teeth in a silent threat to spit the liquid at him. “Okay, okay,” he laughs, covering his face. When he drops his hands, he asks, “So you’re not happy?”
“I’m very happy,” I say, giving him a big smile to let him know I’m not kidding. “I guess I want to make sure I stay happy.”
Kieran folds his arms over his chest and squints as if he’s giving something some serious thought. “I’ll have to see what I can do,” he tells me, as our waiter, a burly bald guy with eyes so narrow the skin around them almost seems swollen, comes up to the table and asks “Anything else for you guys?” as he wipes his hands on a stained white apron protecting a long-sleeved black t-shirt and jeans. He probably knows our answer before we say it—soda refills and the check—as he’s waited on us every time we’ve been in here lately. We give our usual response and he gathers up our soda cups as Mom walks in.
“Ready to go, guys?” she asks.
“We’re waiting for sodas,” I say. Burly Bald Waiter comes back with our drinks and the bill, which Kieran saunters over to the cash register to pay because today’s his turn.
“Who’s he?” Mom whispers after Burly Bald Waiter disappears through the double doors to the kitchen. “I don’t remember hearing about anybody else new in town. He seems a little old to be starting a career waiting tables here.”
“I asked Dewayne after the first time he waited on us,” I say back, voice lowered. “Dewayne” is Dewayne Masters, who’s owned the Downtown Diner since before my mom was eating cheese fries here as a teenager. “I didn’t get a first name, but he’s some cousin of the Dubrows’ or something.”
“The Dubrows who live out in Rainey?” Mom asks, Rainey being the bump in the road about ten miles up the highway with a church, a gas station, and five houses “in town,” the rest of Rainey consisting of farms scattered throughout the zip code.
“Yeah. The guy lost his house and moved in with them, I guess, and he’s working here until he gets back on his feet.”
“Well, he’s lucky in a way. Even food service jobs are getting scarce around here in this economy.”
I mentally add “lucky to get a food service job around here” to my list of reasons to get out of Titusville after graduation. Shaking off yet another depressing fact about this town, I elbow Mom in the ribs and tease “Bet he’s around your age, too. Want me to see if he’s single?”
“Thanks.” She grimaces at me. “I’ll pass.”
“Just looking out for you, Mom.”
Mom bumps her shoulder against mine. “What would I ever do without you?”
Kieran joins us near the door, and we head outside to the car and take off for home. When we pull into the driveway to drop him off, Kieran asks, “April, can Zip stay for dinner? My parents said she could come over any time.”
Mom glances at me and even though I have no idea what this sudden invitation is all about, I bob my head a little to let her know I’m cool with it. “How much homework do you have left?” she asks.
“I’m almost done. I’ve got three or four trig problems to finish, but I can do those when I get home or in study hall tomorrow.”
“Well, don’t stay out too late, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks, Mom.”
“Yeah. Thanks, April. I’ll make sure Kayla drives her home later,” Kieran says, sliding out of the back seat. I get out and round the car to stand next to Kieran in the driveway, waving at my mom as she turns around and heads to the road.
“Your mom kills me,” he starts. “I love how she doesn’t even think to ask if my parents are home or not.”
“Your parents aren’t home?”
“Nope. Mom’s at the Sumner Relays with Kayla and Dad’s never back from work until seven or seven-thirty.”
Kieran waves me toward the house, and so we walk up the concrete path to the front porch and go inside. He immediately heads for the stairs, which confuses me, since I assume only bedrooms and bathrooms are upstairs. “You coming?” he asks, turning around once he’s halfway up the first flight of stairs and seeing me lingering by the door. “I’ve got something in my room I want to show you.”
I put my hand—the one not holding my soda—on my hip in a defiant pose. “You have something you want to show me? In your room?”
Kieran takes a drink of his soda. “Yeah, okay. I guess that sounds a little sketchy, huh?”
I don’t move, and so Kieran tries once again. “I promise I won’t do anything weird—unless you want me to.” His voice rises a bit on the “want,” and he sounds almost hopeful.
“I’m not…I mean…are your parents okay with you being alone with a girl in your room?”
“Don’t know.” He shoots me his trademarked grin, and the mixture of cheese fries and diet soda does somersaults in my stomach. “Never been alone with a girl in my room before.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble. The last time I was here you ended up grounded, remember?”
“Come on,” he says. “It’s okay. I just want to show you my dream journals. That’s all.”
I let out a heavy sigh, hating myself for being such a raging dork. He takes my free hand once I’ve joined him on the stairs, and he leads me to his room to peel away another layer of the mysteries that make up Kieran Lanier.
Having never been upstairs when the McCafferys lived here, I have no idea what Kieran’s bedroom might look like until I cross the threshold for the first time. And I’m a little confused because the room doesn’t seem much like a teenage boy’s room—no sports or rock star posters, no pictures of underwear models all over the place. The off-white walls are bare, save for a few pencil sketches I’m assuming are Kieran’s work tacked up on a bulletin board over a desk near the window. The furniture is some kind of dark wood
, and a comforter in deep navy blue covers Kieran’s twin bed, matching the fabric on his desk chair and on the cushion of the window seat. Unlike my room, the place is spotless—no piles of clothes on the floor or on his desk chair, no layers of dust coating the bedside tables. The bedroom strikes me as masculine enough in its dark sparseness, and yet kind of depressing and generic, like a hotel room. Other than the drawings, nothing in here reflects Kieran’s personality.
“Nice room,” I tell him, unable to stop the involuntary twinge in my shoulders.
“My mother’s decorating preferences,” he explains, reading my lack of enthusiasm. “I call this style ‘Early Twenty-first Century Boring Male.’ You’ve probably noticed the parentals are the neat, clean, orderly types. I’m not even allowed to put holes in the wall to hang pictures.”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“Extreme is all my parents know.” Kieran rolls his eyes, a gesture that appears to be as much resignation as it is frustration. “Take a look around. No computer, no TV. Kayla and I use the computer in Dad’s study if we need it for homework. Probably the only reason we have phones is so they can keep tabs on us. Guess they figure if I’m going to be a freak, they might as well help me go all the way with it—and make sure I take Kayla down with me. But at least I control my journals.”
Kieran puts his soda on the bedside table and flops down on the floor next to his bed, sticking his hand underneath to pull out a shallow cardboard box, and then another. I join him on the rug and lean up against the comforter, noticing how one box is filled to the brim with spiral notebooks, just like the ones everyone carries around at school, while the other is only about half full.
“Wow,” I breathe.
“This is just the last two years’ worth. I have more boxes up in the attic. Whenever I finish one, I put the notebook in a box and start another.”
I pick up a notebook with a blue cover from the top of the box nearest me. When I glance over at Kieran, he nods and so I turn the pages, not reading so much as just trying to get a sense of how he organizes things. Each journal entry starts with a date and sometimes the time of day, followed by a few sentences in Kieran’s angular printing. Occasionally, the words give way to a sketch—I stumble on one entry from early January that contains what looks like a wall with Christmas lights strung across, and a table off to one side with some double doors on the other.
“Do you know what this is?” I ask, showing the entry to him. “I mean, have you seen this yet?”
Kieran shakes his head. “Not yet.” He digs in the bottom of the box closest to him and pulls out a red notebook. “This one’s from a while ago,” he says, moving the boxes aside and scooting over to sit next to me. He hands me the notebook and I start reading the first entry, dated July 12:
A girl. Her face isn’t clear. She’s sitting at a desk. Maybe in a classroom? She’s holding a paperback book.
I glance at him when I’m done. “Should I keep going?”
“Here,” he says, taking the notebook from me and flipping some pages before he starts reading aloud. “August 14. 2:30 pm. A girl in a chair. Tennis shoes. Track pants. Long-sleeved shirt. Blondish hair. Ponytail. Green eyes. Legs pulled up to her chest.”
He hands the notebook to me so I can look at the sketch he’d drawn as part of the entry, which turns out to be like gazing into a mirror and seeing a pencil-drawn version of myself staring back. I don’t know whether to cry or scream or get up and run out of the room, which I don’t think I could do anyway because I might be frozen to the floor. So I take in the beginning of the journal entry again, this time with my own eyes.
August 14. 2:30 pm.
“Kieran,” I whisper, but he takes the notebook from me and turns a few more pages before handing it back to me so I can keep reading.
September 22.
Same girl again. A doorway, like she’s floating off the ground. Black behind her. Black steps. Tears.
And there I am, drawn below the words. The sketch is of me in my heavy black coat, nothing but shadows behind me, black steps underneath my shoes, a pained expression on my face. I’m getting off the bus the night we lost Regionals. And Kieran drew the scene nearly five months before the events took place.
I look up at him, and he breaks into one of his grins. “See? I wasn’t kidding when I said you seemed familiar.”