“I don’t want everything to be perfect,” I said. Just me, I thought. Somehow. “I just want—”
“Curfew,” I heard from beside me, and I looked up to see Monica standing there, blowing her bangs out of her face. She gestured to her watch, then to the kitchen, where I could see Bert and Kristy waiting for us.
“Saved by the bell,” Wes said, hopping down off the rail. I slid down too, taking my time, my last three words still hovering in my mind. Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could even exist, or what would have happened if we’d found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.
Oh, how I hated the info desk.
Before, it had been bad. Boring. Stifling. So quiet I was sure, if I listened hard enough, I could hear the blood moving through my veins, the plates of the earth shifting, time literally passing. Even if my day was going well, all it took was pushing open the doors of the library for everything to just stop. Sink. And stay that way for the full six hours I was stuck there.
One day, I was crossing to the periodical room, carrying a stack of moldy old Nature magazines. I’d just passed one of the stacks when I heard it.
“Gotcha!”
I jumped, startled. Not scared, since it had been more of a whisper, a low-key gotcha, which made sense once I stopped and leaned back, craning my neck, and saw Kristy. She was dressed in a white pleather skirt, a pink short-sleeved fuzzy sweater, and her white go-go boots, her hair pulled up high on her head. She was also wearing sunglasses, huge white ones, and carrying a fringed purse. She looked like she should be at the rodeo. Or maybe dancing in a cage. But not in fiction A-P, which is where she was.
“Hey!” she said, entirely too loudly: a man at the next shelf, whose arms were full of books, peered through at us. “How’s it going?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked her, shifting the magazines to my other arm.
“Monica needed intellectual stimulation,” she said, nodding across the library, where I could see Monica, chewing gum and looking exhausted, examining some books in nonfiction. “She’s a total bookworm, inhales them. I’m more of a magazine gal myself, but I came along to see how you spent your days.”
I glanced over at the info desk, where I could see Bethany on the phone, typing away at her keyboard. Amanda was beside her, looking at us. Or, to be more specific, at Kristy. “Well,” I said, “this is it.”
“Who’s the braid?” she asked me, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head and staring back at Amanda, who was not dissuaded. I wondered if she thought we couldn’t see her or something.
“That’s Amanda,” I said.
“Right.” Kristy raised an eyebrow. “She’s quite the starer, isn’t she?”
“Apparently so.”
Kristy crossed her eyes at Amanda, who seemed taken aback, quickly dipping her head down and opening a book in front of her. “I have to say, though, I’m digging that twin set. Is it merino wool?”
“I have no idea.”
“I bet it is.” She hitched her purse up on her shoulder. “So look, Monica and I are going to that new wrap place for lunch. You want to come?”
“Wrap place?” I asked. Now Bethany was off the phone, and she and Amanda had their heads together, talking. Every once in a while one of them would look up at us, then say something to the other.
“Yeah. It’s at the mall. They’ll put, like, anything in a tortilla for you. I mean, within reason. Can you come?”
I glanced at the clock. It was 11:45. “I don’t know,” I said, as Amanda pushed back from the info desk in her chair, sliding sideways, her eyes still on me, “I probably shouldn’t.”
“Why not? You do get lunch, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you have to eat, right?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“So what’s the problem?” she asked.
“It’s complicated,” I told her. “They don’t like it when I take lunch.”
“Who doesn’t?”
I nodded toward Amanda and Bethany.
“And you care about that because . . .” Kristy said slowly.
“They intimidate me,” I said. “I’m a loser. I don’t know, pick one.”
Kristy narrowed her eyes. “Intimidated?” she said. “Really?”
I fiddled with the magazines, embarrassed I’d even admitted this. “It’s complicated.”
“I just don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, they’re so . . . unhappy. Why would they intimidate you?”
“They’re not unhappy,” I said.
“They’re totally miserable!” She looked at them, saw them staring, and shook her head. “Look at them. Really. Look. Look right now.”
“Kristy.”
“Look.” She reached up, cupping her fingers around my chin, and turned my head. Bethany and Amanda stared back at us. “Can’t you see it? They’re all milky and uptight-looking. I mean, I like a twin set as much as the next person, but you don’t have to wear it like you have a stick up your ass. Clearly all the smarts in the world don’t translate to good fashion sense. And God, what’s with the staring?” She cleared her throat. “What,” she repeated, her voice carrying easily across the room, “is with the staring. Huh?”
Bethany’s face flushed, while Amanda’s mouth opened, then shut again.
“Shh,” someone said from the next row over.
“Oh, you shush,” Kristy said, dropping her hand from my chin. “Macy,” she said, her voice serious, “If that’s ideal, they can have it. Right?”
Hearing this, I had no idea what to say.
“Then it’s decided,” Kristy said. “You’ll take lunch, because you’re human and you’re hungry and most of all, you are not intimidated. We’ll meet you outside at . . . what, noon? Is that when you get off?”
“Yeah,” I said. Monica was walking across the library toward the front door now, a couple of books under her arm. “At noon.”
“Cool. We’ll see you in fifteen minutes.” She glanced around again before leaning in closer to me, her voice softening. “I mean, you have to get out of here, right? Even if it’s just for an hour. Too much time in a place like this could really do a person some damage. I mean, look what it’s done to them.”
But I was thinking about what it had done to me. Being here, miserable, day after day. In so many ways, I was realizing, the info desk was a lot like my life had been before Wish and Kristy and Wes. Something to be endured, never enjoyed.
“I’ll see you outside,” she said to me, dropping her sunglasses back down to her face. Then she squeezed my arm and started toward the front doors. As she passed underneath the huge central skylight, the sun hit her, and for a second, it was like she was sparkling, the light catching her hair and glinting off, winking. I saw it. Bethany and Amanda did, too. So when I came back from lunch an hour later and walked up to the info desk to find them waiting for me, chairs aligned perfectly, it didn’t bother me that they asked, haughtily, if I’d enjoyed lunch with my “friends” in such a way that I could hear the quotation marks. I didn’t care that they snickered when I answered yes, or spoke in hushed tones. Because now, I didn’t care what they thought. It wasn’t new, this realization that I would never be like them. What was different now was that I was glad.
Chapter Eleven
“You know,” I said, for what had to be the hundredth time since I’d gotten to Kristy’s house two hours earlier, “I just think maybe I’ll go home.”
“Macy.” Kristy turned around from the mirror, where she was examining the side view of her outfit: a short red skirt, a black strappy tank, and a pair of sandals that could only be described as ankle breakers. “I told you, there’s no commitment for you here. It’s just a bunch of us going out, not a big deal.”
This was her latest version of the night’s events. Every time I objected, it got more and more suspiciously innocuous. The basic gist was that
Monica and Kristy had met a couple of guys at a day catering job while I’d been at the library who were, while not extraordinary, in Kristy’s words, “promising.” Both the guys worked delivering pizzas, so they could only meet up after curfew, which meant we had to wait until Stella dozed off in front of the TV, then sneak out. I’d gotten recruited that afternoon after we’d worked a job, when Kristy invited me over to spend the night. It wasn’t until I was already there, under the impression we were actually going to stay in, that I’d been informed that the guys were bringing a third and had asked Kristy and Monica to do the same.
“I told you,” I said, “I’m not interested—”
Monica, who was sitting by the window, about to light a cigarette, turned her head. “Now,” she said, nodding out the screen at something I couldn’t see. Kristy immediately moved over to stand behind her chair, bending down to peer out as well, waving her hand to indicate I should come join them.
“What is it?” I said, looking over Monica’s head. It was barely getting dark, and all I could see was the end of the sunset and the side of Stella’s garden, several rows of lettuce and some daylilies, with a path running between them.
“Just wait,” Kristy told me, her voice a whisper. “It happens every night, right about this time.”
I expected to see a bird, or maybe some unusual flower that only bloomed at dusk. Instead, after a second of staring, I heard something. A thump, thump, thump noise that was so familiar, and yet I couldn’t quite place it. But I knew it. It was—
“Mmm-hmmm,” Monica murmured, just as Wes came into view on the path. He was running, his pace quick and steady. He was in shorts, his shirt off, staring ahead as he passed. His back was tan and gleaming with sweat.
Beside me, I heard Kristy sigh, a long one that lasted all the way until he disappeared through a row of trees and around a turn, where I could see his own house in the distance. “Good God,” she said finally, fanning her face with her hand, “I’ve seen it a million times, but it just never gets old. Never.”
“Come on,” I said, as Monica nodded, seconding this. “It’s Wes.”
“Exactly.” Kristy turned and walked back to the mirror, bending in to inspect her cleavage. “I mean, there aren’t a lot of benefits to living out here in the middle of nowhere. But that is definitely one of them.”
I shook my head, exasperated, as I went over and sat down on the bed. Monica lit her cigarette, reaching up to dangle it halfway out the window, the smoke curling up past the panes.
“Is that why you are being so difficult about tonight?” Kristy asked as she flopped down beside me, glancing through the open doorway down the hall at Stella. An hour earlier, when she’d settled in front of the TV, she’d begun dozing immediately. Now, by the looks of it, she’d moved on to full snooze.
“What?”
She nodded toward the window. “Our Wesley. I know you guys have some sort of weird thing going on, with that game you play and everything—”
“It’s called a friendship,” I said. “And no, it has nothing to do with that. I told you, I’m on a break. I’m not interested in hanging out with some new guy.”
“Unless it’s Wes,” she said, clarifying.
I just looked at her. “That’s different. He’s in a relationship, too, so it’s not weird or anything.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God!” she said, slapping a hand over her mouth. “I totally get it now.”
“Get what?”
She didn’t answer me. Instead, she leaned over the bed, rummaging beneath it for a few seconds. I could hear things clanking against each other—what did she have down there?— and glanced at Monica, who just exhaled, shrugging. Then Kristy lifted up her head.
“You and Wes,” she said, triumphant, “are just like this.”
She was holding a book, a paperback romance. The title, emblazoned in gold across the cover, was Forbidden, and the picture beneath it was of a man in a pirate outfit, eye patch and all, clutching a small, extremely busty woman to his chest. In the background, there was a deserted island surrounded by blue water.
“We’re pirates?” I said.
She tapped the book with one fingernail. “This story,” she said, “is all about two people who can’t be together because of other circumstances. But secretly, they pine and lust for each other constantly, the very fact that their love is forbidden fueling their shared passion.”
“Did you just make that up?”
“No,” she said, flipping the book over to read the back cover. “It’s right here! And it’s totally you and Wes. You can’t be together, which is exactly why you want to be. And why you can’t admit it to us, because that would make it less secret and thus less passionate.”
I rolled my eyes. Monica, across the room, said, “Hmmm,” as if all of this actually made sense.
Kristy put the book on the bed between us. “I have to admit,” she said wistfully, crossing her arms over her chest, “an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it’s perfect.”
“Nothing’s perfect,” I said.
“Nothing real,” she replied. “But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.” She sighed, the same way she’d sighed at seeing Wes running by without a shirt: with emphasis, and at length. “So romantic. No wonder you don’t want to go out with Sherman.”
I was distracted, thinking about what she’d said, until she got to this last part. “Sherman?” I said.
She nodded. “That’s John and Craig’s friend. He’s visiting from Shreveport.”
“Sherman from Shreveport?” I said. “This is the guy you’re determined I go out with?”
“You can’t judge a book by its cover!” she snapped. When I slid my eyes toward Forbidden, she grabbed it up, shoving it back under the bed. “You know what I mean. Sherman might be very nice.”
“I’m sure he is,” I said. “But I’m not interested.”
She just looked at me. “Of course not,” she said finally. “Why would you be, when you have your very own sexy, misunderstood pirate Silus Branchburg Turlock to pine for?”
"Who?”
“Oh, just forget it,” she said, getting up and stomping out of the room. A second later the bathroom door swung shut with a bang. I looked at Monica, who was staring out the window, her face impassive as always.
“Sherman.” Saying it aloud, it sounded even more ludicrous. “From Shreveport.”
“Donneven?” she said slowly, exhaling.
“Exactly.”
And so it was that at ten-fifteen, when John and Craig and Sherman from Shreveport pulled into the driveway, headlights flashing just once before going dark again, I crept outside, following Kristy down the stairs. Stella didn’t stir as Monica eased the door shut behind us, then started over to the car, the guy in the passenger seat climbing out to meet her. Kristy waved at the driver, who waved back, then turned to me. There was someone else in the backseat, but I couldn’t make out a face: just a form, leaning against the window.
“Last chance to change your mind,” she said to me, her voice low.
“Sorry,” I told her. “Maybe another time.”
She shook her head, clearly not buying this, then pushed her purse up her arm. “Your loss,” she said, but she squeezed my arm as she started over to the car. “Call me tomorrow.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
As she got closer, the guy driving smiled at her, then opened the back door. “Watch out for Sherman,” he said as she started to get inside. “He started his night a few hours ago, and now he’s already out.”
“What?” Kristy said.
“Don’t worry,” the guy told her, getting back behind the wheel. “We think he puked up everything he had in him already. So you should be okay.”
Kristy looked at the slumped body beside her, then at me, and I raised my eyebrows. She shrugged before pulling the door shut and waving to me as the car slowly backed out o
f the driveway and up to the road, the engine chugging softly.
Which left me alone in the quiet of Stella’s garden. I was about to get into my car, then changed my mind, dropping my purse through my open window and instead starting down through the sunflowers and into the thick of the dark, fragrant foliage.
Everything in the garden felt so alive. From the bright white flowers that reached out like trailing fingers from dipping branches overhead all the way down to the short, squat berry bushes that lined the trail like stones, it was like you could feel everything growing, right before your eyes. I kept walking, taking in clumps of zinnias, petunias, a cluster of rosebushes, their bases flecked with white speckles of eggshells. I could see the roof of the doublewide over to my right, the road to my left, but the garden seemed thick enough to have pushed them back even farther on the periphery, as if once you entered it moved in to surround you, crowding up close to hold you there.
I could see something else up ahead, something metallic, catching the moonlight: there was a clearing around it, rimmed by bobbing rambler roses. Stepping through them, I found myself at the back of a sculpture. It was a woman; her arms were outstretched to the side, palms facing the sky, and lying across them were slim pieces of pipe, the ends curving downwards. I moved around it and stood in its shadow, looking up at the figure’s head, which was also covered in the thin, twisted pipes, and crowned with a garland made of the same. Of course this was one of Wes’s, that much was obvious. But there was something different, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then, I realized that the sculpture’s hair and those bits of pipe it was holding all ended in a washer bisected by a tiny piece of metal: every one was a flower. Looking at it from the top, where the moonlight illuminated those curling pipes, to the bottom, where the sculpture’s feet met the ground, I finally got it that this was Stella, the entire figure showing the evolution of that thick, loamy dirt moving through her hands to emerge in bloom after bloom after bloom.
“Macy?”
It was the gotcha of all gotchas. The gotcha of all time, even. Which somewhat justified the shriek that came out of my mouth, the way my heart leaped in my chest, and how these two events then repeated themselves when a flock of tiny sparrows, startled by my startling, burst forth from the sculpture’s base and flew in dizzy circles, rising over the rosebushes and disappearing into the dark.