It was just an instinctive hunch.
On Thursday, Harry and I waited out front on our usual bench for Damien and Dwarf to pick Zia up from school. It had been only her brothers lately. Isaac was nowhere to be seen and honestly, I was thankful for that. I think.
But on this day, Isaac was in the backseat of the Jeep and the second I saw his dark hair and eyes peering carefully at me through the tiny window, my heart trembled and hardened simultaneously.
“There’s my ride,” Zia said, slinging her bag over one shoulder. I could tell right away she was trying to be nonchalant, knowing my comfort-level went down about a dozen notches upon seeing Isaac for the first time since I saw him with Rachel.
“Want a ride,” Damien waved at me from the driver’s seat.
“No thanks,” I said, warily skirting a glance at Isaac who, sure enough was looking right back at me.
I turned away and left with Harry toward the school parking lot.
It was the same on Friday. Isaac was with Zia’s brothers when they picked her up in the afternoon. And also like the day before, Isaac looked at me at least once and I looked back just before walking away without saying a word to him.
If Isaac had something to say to me, he had opportunities, but instead he kept to himself. I felt he hid some enigmatic need to say something to me each time his gaze passed over mine. It frustrated me to no end that he didn’t just speak up. That he didn’t demand Damien wait for him while he dragged me off to the side to explain himself. Isaac was way too controlled, so much so that it made him unreadable. But what I started to get from it was that maybe he was losing interest in me altogether.
Fine. I really didn’t care. Much. What I wanted was nothing more than an explanation. Closure. And I felt it was his obligation to make sure that was exactly what I got, no matter how much I avoided him.
~~~
“Hurry up!” Harry waved at me from his car window and I picked up the pace, gliding down the front porch steps. The sun was blazing, which made it feel about five degrees warmer. I took what I could get when it came to the tiny notches on that rooster temperature reader Beverlee had nailed near the front door. I was relieved I could get away with wearing my dark red jacket and just a sweater underneath. Winter clothes always made me somewhat claustrophobic.
I hopped in the passenger’s seat and shut the door fast as if trying to dodge a downpour. It wasn’t frigid out, but it was still cold and my Georgia blood wasn’t used to it.
Harry nudged me while I was preoccupied by adjusting the seatbelt. I looked over and saw Uncle Carl standing on the porch. I took a deep breath then, preparing myself to open the car door again and get hit with a cold blast of air. Really I was over exaggerating the situation. The wind was hardly blowing at all.
“What time will you be back?” Uncle Carl said from the porch as I looked over the roof of the car at him. He held a magazine low at his side; two fingers keeping his place.
“Before dinner,” I said, waving. “I told Aunt Bev.”
“Oh,” he said, “well then you have a good time.”
I smiled brightly, hoping to make him feel less awkward about always being the last to know things.
“I’m a little nervous,” Harry admitted as I shrank back inside the warm car.
He had the heat blazing inside now and it only took a few seconds before I felt suffocated by it. “Whoa, Harry,” I said, reaching over to turn it off, “way too hot even for me.”
I took off my jacket and set it on the seat between us, adjusting the seatbelt again afterwards, pulling the scratchy edge of it away from my neck.
“What’s there to be nervous about?” I said. “You’re awesome at skateboarding. A pro.”
Harry glanced over at me squeamishly.
I pursed my lips, looking at him with an incredulous upturn of my mouth. “Come on, you know you are.”
We drove away, hitting the pothole at the end of the driveway at just the right angle. My whole body jerked sideways and against the car door. Instinctively, my hand went up for the handgrip. Few people have ever missed that pothole, except Beverlee and Uncle Carl, who were so used to it that they never cared to get it filled in.
“But this is different,” Harry said, pulling onto the main road. “There will be sponsors.”
“Guess you better start sucking it up and get it together then, huh?” Like Harry, I was cruelly blunt when it came to telling him the truth.
Except when it came to Zia.
He just glared over at me and I grinned, satisfied with the result of my playful accomplishment.
When we arrived at the skate park minutes later, even I was a little nervous for him. The parking lots were packed full and we had to find a place on the grass, which clearly displayed a sign that read: NO PARKING ON GRASS. But we weren’t the only ones with the same idea, so I thought it was good Harry’s car wouldn’t be singled out for a ticket.
I got out, leaving the door open while I slipped my jacket back on and zipped it practically right up to my chin. I buried my hands deep in the pockets and bumped the car door with my butt to close it. My head was spinning there were so many people. I wouldn’t have chosen to come here on my own, but I wanted to be supportive to Harry, who had been waiting for this opportunity for two years. He said the last time they had a sponsorship skateboarding event in Hallowell; Harry was bedridden with the flu.
Harry popped the trunk and pulled out his skateboard.
“There’s Zia,” Harry said, waving at her as she walked up with Damien, Dwarf and two girls I saw once in passing at the Mayfair House. Immediately, I felt out of place, seeing Damien and Dwarf with girlfriends and then there was Harry who had a hopeless crush on Zia.
I pushed Isaac’s face out of my mind quickly. The truth was, the more I thought of Isaac, the more indignant I became. I could never forgive him for being such a jerk, but I just couldn’t let go of the whole closure-thing, either.
“What a turnout,” Zia said stepping up. She wore my favorite boots again and a leather antique bomber jacket.
“Hi Adria,” said the blond girl holding Damien’s hand. She looked at me with an enormous, toothy smile.
“Hi.” I had no idea what her name was, or why she knew mine so well. But really, that smile of hers felt out of place. It was as if she knew something about me that...
Oh great...Well, so much for a day around anyone from the Mayfair house who didn’t secretly think I was the epitome of naïve. I returned a less comfortable smile and quickly looked away.
“I’m going to head over,” Harry said, nodding in the direction of the action. I could detect the dilemma in his face: he wanted to hang out longer while Zia was standing there, but he didn’t want to be late. He looked at me then. “If I break any bones you’re driving me to the ER. I don’t do ambulances. Got it?” He dropped his car keys in my hand and I just stared at him.
“What if I can’t drive?” I said. “Did you ever think of that?”
Harry laughed. I wondered why that was so funny.
“Well then I hope you’re a fast learner,” he said, and then smiled once at Zia and walked away into the crowd.
Of course, I knew perfectly well how to drive.
“Adria, this is Paige,” Damien said about his girlfriend. He nodded at Dwarf’s girlfriend then. “And that’s Sara.”
Sara was beaming at me as awkwardly as Paige, but I continued to pretend I didn’t know what they might’ve been thinking about me.
I couldn’t be more relieved when seconds later, Damien and Dwarf went off on their own with their girlfriends. It was much easier to be around Zia.
She and I huddled together on the dead grass watching the event. Many of Harry’s skater friends were there, all showing off for the crowd, but especially for the three men standing off to the side that everyone knew as some big shot scouts from California. When it was Harry’s turn, I felt my body tense up with apprehension. All I could think about was that I hoped he wouldn’t fall, or be so ne
rvous that it got in the way of his talent. I hated this. My stomach swirled around so much that the back of my neck began to sweat.
I knew nothing about skateboarding. Absolutely nothing. But when Harry was finished, I could tell by the blushed smile on his face (and the fact that he didn’t fall) that he was happy with his performance.
I felt like I could breathe again. And that sickly feeling in my stomach finally dissolved.
“Can you see their faces?” Zia said about the scouts, while standing up from the grass. “Y’think they were impressed?”
I stood up with her, clutching onto the sleeve of her coat and trying to stay warm. “I don’t know,” I said, peering through the crowd. “I can’t see them at all.”
There were just too many people.
Harry left the skate bowl and stood off to the side with two of his friends.
Zia grabbed me by the wrist. “Let’s go talk to him,” she said.
Just when I started to follow, I noticed something far to my right that stopped me dead in my tracks.
Zia stopped too and looked at me, searching for a reason for the resistance.
“Go ahead,” I said, looking away from Isaac across the lot so that Zia wouldn’t know. “I need to get something out of the car. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Zia nodded and slipped into the crowd.
I chewed on my bottom lip angrily as I turned around again to see Isaac. Two dark-haired, beautiful girls were with him. I just stood there; my feet anchored to the ground, my whole body locked in a quiet, furious pose. But this time he didn’t see me...at least that’s what I thought at first. But as I watched him walk through the lot with both girls at his side, I could’ve sworn he knew I was watching; that somehow he could see me out of his peripheral vision. Seconds passed by like excruciatingly long minutes. Each figure that walked between our distance covered Isaac completely from my view for what felt like forever. He never looked at me. But I knew he was completely aware that I was looking right at him. I could feel it.
And this was the moment in which I began to panic inside.
I looked away from him and down at my shoes then, lost deeply in thought, inside an unforgiving bubble of realization.
“I’ve become my mom....” I said aloud to myself; resentment laced every word. I clenched my fists inside the pockets of my jacket.
On the ride home, Harry talked so much about the event and about Zia that I could get away with hardly saying anything at all. He wasn’t chosen by the scouts, but he was ecstatic that two out of three of them complimented his skill personally. “Two more years,” said one scout to Harry, “and we might be asking you to come to California.”
Harry couldn’t get over it; not that it bothered me. I was totally happy for him and proud that he didn’t let this year’s rejection get him down, but instead made him want to work harder. His face was bright with dreams of California and professional skateboarding events and trophies and probably having Zia at his side. It made me smile to see him so exultant.
“What’s on your mind?” Harry said, looking across at me from the driver’s seat.
I guess I wasn’t hiding my misery as much as I tried to.
We pulled onto my street and finally over the pothole and into the driveway. Harry put the car in park and turned fully around to see me.
“Spit it out,” he demanded.
I couldn’t look at him at first, not only because I worried what he would think when I fessed up, but I was also ashamed that I let this get in the way of his happy moment. This was supposed to be Harry’s day, not a day for my ridiculous feelings to get all of the attention.
But I knew Harry, and there was no point holding it in when his voice was that stern.
“I saw Isaac today,” I said, looking out the windshield.
Harry’s left hand slid off the steering wheel and he pressed his back firmly into the leather seat.
“You’re gonna have to go over there,” he said.
I turned to see him; a perplexed expression twisting my face.
“Confront him,” he said so convincingly. “If it’s affecting you this much then you should do something about it.”
I sighed deeply and then started to sniffle because of the cold air that I had been inhaling all day. I looked straight at him then so he could see that I wasn’t sniffling because of anything else.
“Harry,” I said, “I’m really sorry. You were awesome out there today. I—“
Harry grinned so wide and placed both hands back on the steering wheel just at the wrists, letting his fingers dangle. “You don’t have to tell me something I already know,” he said jokingly, trying to brighten my mood.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I felt my miserable, taut face break into an inevitable smile.
He was serious once more. “I don’t like the guy,” he said. “But you should confront him. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
I stared hard into the dashboard, picturing Isaac’s face in my mind. The way I saw him the day with Rachel, how cold and heartless, yet empty, his eyes were. I thought of him at the skateboarding event, walking alongside the two flawlessly gorgeous girls. His beautiful face held no emotion. He walked with his hands buried in his pockets. And I pictured every other time I had seen him; every single instance in which brought me closer and closer into his apparent, unintended snare.
I was so confused that I was furious!
I shook it off.
“Thanks Harry,” I said and leaned over to hug him tightly. “If only you weren’t so skinny, I’d be into you.”
Harry roared with laughter and reached out, rummaging his hand destructively through my hair. “And if you weren’t so brunette, I might be into you.”
It was no secret, Harry loved blonds.
“Alright,” I said, “I’ll talk to you later. And I mean it; you were awesome.”
He smiled his thanks and I got out of the car and ran to the front porch, looking back once to wave Harry goodbye. By the time I got into the den, I heard his car scrape over the pothole.
For the next two hours, I stayed in my room, thinking.
So mad at myself for letting Isaac get to me like this, I started cleaning again; anything to take my mind off it. But cleaning did not do its job as planned. I thought heavily about my mother. I wondered where I went wrong, how I allowed myself to be so besotted by a guy who was plainly bad for me. It made no sense. I was entirely the opposite of my mother, strong-minded and strong-willed.
I couldn’t get over this inexplicable weakness.
Hanging the last of my clothes up, I shut the closet door and stood there for a long moment, staring across the room at my cell phone sitting on the nightstand, taunting me.
But rather than calling Isaac, I decided to do exactly what Harry said and confront him personally.
“Hello?” Zia said on the other end of the phone.
“Hey, Zia,” I said apprehensively. “Got a minute.”
“Sure, what’s up?”
I paused and took a deep breath, trying to word it all right in my head in the few seconds that I had.
“Hello?” Zia said as if our call had dropped.
“I’m still here.”
“Is something wrong?”
I took one more deep breath.
“Do you think Isaac still wants to talk to me?” Instantly I hated how the question decided to come out. It made me sound desperate and so I quickly covered myself before she had a chance to respond. “I mean, do you think I could come over and confront him? I just need some answers so I can forget about what he did and get on with my life.”
I don’t know how, but I got the feeling Zia was smiling on the other end.
“We can come over right now and pick you up,” she said, eagerly.
I didn’t expect it to be so soon and so it took a moment to agree.
“Sure...,” I said nervously, “now would be good.”
Might as well. This needed to be over with and the sooner the
better. Though it made me feel sick to my stomach.
Zia and Damien were at my house within the hour.
“Zia,” I said from the back seat, “Maybe this is a mistake.”
She turned to see me, smiling. “Hey, I’ve got your back.”
I had only been thinking of facing Isaac. Rachel had failed to cross my mind, until now. Even more reason not to go through with this.
“No really, Zia,” I begged, “I don’t want to do this. Everybody in that house looks at me like I’m a disease.”
Truly, that fact didn’t bother me so much. I was just looking for other excuses.
“If you’re worried about Rachel,” she said, “then don’t be because she’s been dealt with; be-lieve me.”
“How—”
Zia put up her hand. “Nope. I’m not going to say anything else. This is Isaac’s deal, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said mockingly, “you don’t speak for Isaac. Well, I still don’t feel comfortable in your house.”
“That hurts my feelings.” She smiled.
“Can you blame her, Zia?” Damien said from the driver’s seat.
“I guess you’re right,” Zia agreed. “But they only look at you that way because they’re jealous of you.”
“Jealous? Why would anyone in that house be jealous of me?”
I saw Damien’s dark eyes gazing at me from the rear-view mirror. “Because you have something every one of them do not,” he said.
“I do?” Trying to figure out what that might be was a severely wasted effort. “What could I possibly have that they don’t?”
“Isaac Mayfair, of course,” Damien replied.
WHEN YOU WANT TIME to drag by slowly, it will be sure to disappoint you. We were at the Mayfair house in minutes after Damien’s absurd response. I couldn’t speak the rest of the drive. I wanted to. I had wanted to tell Damien that I didn’t appreciate his asinine jokes. I wanted to tell Zia that that was twice now she didn’t take up for me.
I was prepared only to sit outside in the Jeep and nothing else, but Zia and her recurring, bothersome persistence would not allow it.