Bert was sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, scanning the crowd, and I joined him, letting my feet dangle down. Most of the faces here were new to me, which made sense, since this was more of a Talbert High crowd, while I went to Jackson, on the other side of town. Still, I did recognize a few people I knew from school. I wondered if any of them knew me.
I looked across the clearing then, and saw Wes. He was standing with a group of guys around an old Mustang, talking, and seeing him I felt that same sort of lurch in my stomach as I had the first night I’d met him, and the night he’d pulled me out of the hole, and just about every time we’d crossed paths since. I couldn’t explain it, had never felt it before: it was completely out of my control. So idiotic, I thought, and yet there I was again, staring.
After a minute or two he broke off from the group and started across the clearing. While I was making a pointed effort not to watch him—or, okay, not watch him the entire time—it was hard not to notice, as I took a quick glance around the circle, that I was not alone in my observations. I counted at least three other girls doing the same thing. I wondered if they felt as stupid as I did. Probably not.
“Hey,” he said. “What took you guys so long?”
Bert rolled his eyes, nodding toward Kristy, who was now coming back toward us with Monica. “What do you think?”
“I heard that,” she said. “You know, it takes time to look like this. You can’t just throw this sort of outfit together.”
Bert narrowed his eyes, looking at her. “No?”
Ignoring this, she said, “A fat lot of good it’s doing me here, though. There aren’t any good prospects.”
“What about that guy at the keg?” Bert asked.
“Please.” She sighed. “Can’t a girl have high standards? I don’t want an ordinary boy.”
There was bout of laughter from the jeep parked beside us, and a second later a blonde girl in a halter top suddenly stumbled over. “Hey,” she said, pointing at me. “I know you. Don’t I know you?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” I said, but I did know her. It was Rachel Newcomb: we’d run middle school track together. We hadn’t spoken in years.
“I do, I do,” she said, snapping her fingers, hardly seeming to notice everyone else looking on. Kristy raised her eyebrows.
“You know me, Rachel,” Bert said quickly. “Bert? I tutored you last summer at the Kaplan center, in math?”
Rachel looked at him briefly, then turned her attention back to me. “Oh shit, I know! We used to run together, right? In middle school? And now you date that guy, the one who’s always yelling at us about bicycling!”
It took me a second.
“Recycling?” I said.
“Right!” She clapped her hands. “That’s it!”
There was hysterical laughter from the jeep, followed by someone yelling, “Rachel, you’re so freaking stupid!”
Rachel, hardly bothered, plopped herself down between me and Bert. “God,” she said, tipping her head back and laughing, “remember how much fun we used to have at meets? And you, shit, you were fast. Weren’t you?”
“Not really,” I said, instinctively reaching to smooth my hair before realizing it wasn’t even parted. I could feel Kristy watching me, listening to this.
“You were!” she poked Bert in the arm. “You should have seen her. She was so fast, like she could . . .”
There was an awkward silence as we all waited for whatever verb was coming.
“. . . fly,” Rachel finished, and I heard Kristy snort. “Like she had freaking wings, you know? She won everything. You know, the only way anyone else ever got to win anything was when you quit.”
“Well,” I said, willing her to get up and move on, before she said anything else. Whatever anonymity I’d enjoyed so far this summer had been based on everyone from Wish not being from my school and therefore not knowing anything about me. I had been a clean slate, and now here was Rachel Newcomb, scribbling out my secrets for everyone to see.
“We were the Running Rovers,” Rachel was saying to Monica now, slurring slightly. “I always thought that name was so dumb, you know? It made us sound like dogs. Go Rovers! Woof! Woof!”
“Good God,” Kristy said, to no one in particular. Still, I felt my face burn, and that was even before I glanced up to see Wes looking at me.
“Look,” Rachel said, slapping a hand on my knee. “I want you to know something, okay?”
Even though I knew what was coming—how, I have no idea—I could think of no way to stop her. All I could do was stand off to the side and watch everything fall apart.
“And what I want you to know is,” she said earnestly, as if this was private and we didn’t have an audience, “that I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t think you’re all weird since that thing happened with your dad. I mean, that was messed up that you were there. Most people couldn’t handle that, you know? Seeing someone die like that.”
I just sat there, looking at her: at her flushed face, the sloshy cup of beer in her hand, the white of her tan line that was visible, just barely, beneath the straps of her halter top. I could not bring myself to look at the others. So much for my fairy tale, however brief, my luxury of scars that didn’t show. Somewhere, I was sure I could hear a clock chiming.
“Rachel!” someone yelled from the next car over. “Get over here or we’re leaving you!”
“Oh, gotta go!” Rachel stood up, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. “I’m going,” she said, redundantly. “But I meant what I said, okay? Remember that. Remember what I said. Okay?”
I couldn’t even nod or say a word. Rachel stumbled off to the jeep, where she was greeted with more laughter and a few bicycling jokes. Then someone turned up the radio, some Van Morrison song, and they all started singing along, off-key.
It was one of those moments that you wish you could just disappear, every particle in you shrinking. But that, I knew, was impossible. There was always an After. So I lifted my head, and looked at Kristy, seeing Bert watching me, Wes and Monica’s faces in my peripheral vision. Then I took a breath, to say what, I didn’t know. But before I could, Kristy had walked over and sat down beside me.
“That girl,” she said, wrapping her hand around mine, “is as dumb as a bag of hammers.”
“No kidding,” Bert said softly, and when I looked at him I saw not The Face, but instead a good-humored sort of disgust, not directed at me, not about me at all.
Kristy leaned across me, saying, “Wasn’t she the one you had to explain the concept of odd numbers to during that summer math tutoring thing you did?”
Bert nodded. “Twice,” he said.
“Moron.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Monica said, nodding.
Kristy rolled her eyes, then took a sip of her beer. Her palm felt warm against mine, and I realized how long it had been since anyone had held my hand. I looked at Wes, remembering his sculpture, the heart cut into the palm. He was looking at me, just as I’d thought he would be, but like Bert’s, his look was not what I expected. No pity, no sadness: nothing had changed. I realized all those times I’d felt people stare at me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, able to reflect back the expression I thought only I wore, the feelings only I felt. Until now, this moment, as our eyes met. If there was a way to recognize something you’d never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.
“Still,” Kristy said wistfully, “I did like her halter top. I have a black skirt that would look just great with that.”
We just sat there for a second, none of us talking. In the middle of the clearing, someone was playing with a flashlight, the beam moving across the trees overhead, showing bits and pieces of branches and leaves, a glimpse here and there, then darkness again. I knew that in the last few minutes everything had changed. I’d tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works for so long. Ev
entually, even the smallest fragments can’t help but make a whole.
An hour later, we were in the back of the Bertmobile on the couch, being honest. It might have been the beer.
I was not a drinker, never had been. But after what had happened with Rachel, I’d felt shaken enough to agree when Kristy offered to go get me a very small beer, which I was, she assured me, under absolutely no obligation to drink. After a few sips, we’d started talking about boys, and it just went from there.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, crossing one white boot over the other. “My last boyfriend left me for dead out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like that should be so hard to improve upon. I want a nice boy. You know?”
It was strange to me to be sitting there as if the whole thing with Rachel had never happened. But after we’d sat there for just a second, Wes said he had someone he had to find who had promised him some rebar; Bert tagged along; and Kristy, Monica, and I moved onto the couch to discuss other things. My secret, released, did not hover over like a dark cloud. Instead, it dissipated, grew fainter, until it seemed, if not forgotten, left behind for the time being.
“What I really would like,” Kristy said now, pulling me back to the present conversation, “is a smart boy. I’m sick of guys who can’t even remember my name, much less spell it. Someone really focused and brainy. That’s what I want.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, taking another sip of my beer. Only when I swallowed did I realize they were both looking at me, waiting for me to elaborate. “I had a boyfriend like that,” I explained. “Or have. Or sort of have.”
“Oh, those are the worst,” she said sympathetically, nodding.
I was confused. “What are?”
“Sort-of boyfriends.” She sighed. “You know, they sort of like you, then they sort of don’t. The only thing they’re absolutely sure of is that they want to get into your pants. I hate that.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Monica agreed adamantly.
“Actually,” I said, “it’s not like that, exactly. We’re more sort of not together, and not broken up. We’re on a break.”
“A break,” Kristy repeated, sounding out the word as if it was foreign, one she’d never heard before. “Meaning . . .” She moved her hand in a motion that meant I was supposed to jump in, anytime now.
“Meaning,” I told her, “that there were some concerns about us not wanting the same things, not having the same expectations. So we’ve agreed to not be in contact until the end of the summer, and then we’re going to see where we stand.”
She and Monica contemplated this for a moment. “That,” Kristy said finally, “is just so very mature.”
“Well, that’s Jason,” I told her. “It was his idea, really.”
“How long has this break been going on?” she asked.
I thought for a second. “Since the night I met you,” I told her, and her eyes widened, surprised. “He’d just emailed me about it, like, an hour earlier.”
“That is so funny,” she said, “because that night, I was picking up on something, like you had a boyfriend or were in some sort of situation.” She pointed at Monica. “Didn’t I say that, that night?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Monica said.
“You just looked . . .” she said, searching for the word, “taken, you know? Plus you hardly reacted to Wes. I mean, you did a little, but nothing like most girls. It was a little swoon. Not a sa-woon, you know?”
I said, “Sa-woon?”
“Oh, come on,” she said, shaking her head. “Even a blind girl could tell he’s amazing.”
Beside me, Monica sighed wistfully in agreement.
“So why haven’t you gone out with him?” I asked her.
“Can’t,” she said flatly. “He’s too much like family. I mean, after the accident, when my mom flaked out and took off to find herself and we came to live with Stella, I was crazy for him. We both were.”
“Bettaquit,” Monica said darkly.
“It’s still a sore subject,” Kristy explained, while Monica turned her head, exhaling. “Anyway, I did everything I could to get his attention, but he’d just gotten back from Myers School then, was still dealing with his mom dying and all that. So he had a lot on his mind. At least I told myself that’s why he could resist me.”
“Myers School?” I said.
Kristy nodded. “Yeah. It’s a reform school.”
I knew this. Jason had tutored out there, and I’d often ridden along with him, then sat in the car doing homework while he went inside. Delia had said Wes had gotten arrested: I supposed this was the punishment. Maybe he’d even been there those days, as I sat in the car, looking up at the loops of barbed wire along the fence, while cars whizzed by on the highway behind me.
“Okay,” Kristy said, tapping her foot to the music, “tell us about the sort-of boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I said, “we’ve been dating for a year and a half.”
I took a sip of my beer, thinking this would suffice. But they were sitting there, expectant, waiting for more. Oh, well, I thought. Here goes nothing.
“He went away for the summer,” I continued, “and a couple of weeks after he left, he decided maybe it was better that we take this break. I was really upset about it. I still am, actually.”
“So he found someone else,” Kristy said, clarifying.
“No, it’s not like that,” I said. “He’s at Brain Camp.”
“Huh?” Monica asked.
“Brain Camp,” I repeated. “It’s like a smart-kid thing.”
“Then he found someone else at Brain Camp,” Kristy said.
“No, it’s not about someone else.”
“Then what is it about?”
It just seemed wrong to be sitting here discussing this. Plus I was embarrassed enough by what had happened, what I’d done to freak him out, so embarrassed I hadn’t even told my mother, whom I should have been able to tell anything. I could only imagine what these girls would think.
“Well,” I said, “a lot of things.”
Another expectant pause.
I took a breath. “Basically, it came down to the fact that I ended an email by saying I loved him, which is, you know, big, and it made him uncomfortable. And he felt that I wasn’t focused enough on my job at the library. There’s probably more, but that’s the main stuff.”
They both just looked at me. Then Monica said, “Donneven.”
“Wait a second.” Kristy sat up against the edge of the couch, as if she needed her full height, small though it was, to say what was coming next. “You’ve been dating for a year and a half and you can’t tell the guy you love him?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.
“And,” she continued, “he broke up with you because he didn’t think you were focused enough on your job performance?”
“The library,” I said, “is very important to him.”
“Is he ninety years old?”
I looked down at my beer. “You don’t understand,” I said. “He’s been, like, my life for the last year and a half. He’s made me a better person.”
This quieted her down, at least temporarily. I ran my finger around the rim of my cup.
“How?” she said finally.
“Well,” I began, “he’s perfect, you know? Great in school, smart, all these achievements. He can do anything. And when I was with him, it was like, good for me. It made me better, too.”
“Until . . .” she said.
“Until,” I said, “I let him down. I pushed too hard, I got too attached. He has high standards.”
“And you don’t,” she said.
“Of course I do.”
Monica exhaled, shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she said adamantly.
“Sure doesn’t seem like it,” Kristy said, seconding this. She took a sip of her beer, never taking her eyes off of me.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Listen to yourself,” she said. “God! Are you actually going to sit there and s
ay he was justified in dumping you because you dared to get attached to him after a year and a half? Or because you didn’t take some stupid job at the library as seriously as he thought you should?”
I knew this was, pretty much, what I’d just said. But somehow it sounded different now, coming from her.
“Look,” she said, as I struggled with this, trying to work it out, “I don’t know you that well. I’ll admit that. But what I see is a girl any guy, especially some library nerd who’s off at Cranium Camp—”
“Brain Camp,” I muttered.
“—would totally want to hear say she loved him. You’re smart, you’re gorgeous, you’re a good person. I mean, what makes him such a catch, anyway? Who is he to judge?”
“He’s Jason,” I said, for lack of a better argument.
“Well, he’s a fuckhead.” She sucked down the rest of her beer. “And if I were you, I’d be glad to be rid of him. Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic, you know?”
“He doesn’t make me feel bad about myself,” I said, knowing even as my lips formed the words this was exactly what he did. Or what I let him do. It was hard to say.
“What you need,” Kristy said, “what you deserve, is a guy who adores you for what you are. Who doesn’t see you as a project, but a prize. You know?”
“I’m no prize,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yes,” she said, and she sounded so sure it startled me: like she could be so positive while hardly knowing me at all. “You are. What sucks is how you can’t even see it.”
I turned my head, looking back out at the clearing. It seemed no matter where I turned, someone was telling me to change.
Kristy reached over and put her hand on mine, holding it there until I had to look up at her. “I’m not picking on you.”
“No?” I said.
She shook her head. “Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn’t appreciate and value you. ”
“You said the other day life was long,” I shot back. “Which is it?”
“It’s both,” she said, shrugging. “It all depends on how you choose to live it. It’s like forever, always changing.”