“I know,” I said, cutting him off. “Halloween was weird—I guess he was trying to make everyone think he and I were going out, to cover up what was really going on—but there’s never been anything between us other than friendship. That kiss was basically a joke.”
“So I don’t have to hate him?”
“Not for my sake. But maybe for Michael’s?”
He shook his head. “Michael blames Crystal, not Aaron. Which I get—she was the married adult in the situation.” An enormous yawn carved a hole in his face. “God, I’m tired. If you’re fine, then I’m going to bed. To my bed. I’m so happy to be home.”
“Hold on.” I smiled my most beguiling smile. “Now that you’re back, I have a favor to ask you.”
“And fear enters his heart. . . .”
“This one’s easy.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I just need you to call Elton College on Monday and tell them they should accept both me and Heather. I mean, not in those words. You have to be diplomatic about it—just tell them that you’re . . . you know . . . who you are . . . and that your stepdaughter and her friend are both applying and then say something like you just wanted to make sure they got our applications and they’re complete—or whatever. It probably doesn’t really matter what you say—just so long as they know that Luke Weston is on the phone. And maybe mention that you’d be willing to perform if I got in there. . . .”
“Ellie . . .” he said, and I could tell from his tone he didn’t immediately love the idea. Which meant I’d have to talk him into it.
“It’ll take you five minutes,” I said. “Maybe less. They just need to hear your voice.”
“Would you even want to go to a college that only let you in because someone famous called?”
“It’s what happened with high school, right? Coral Tree let me in after they saw you—”
“You were a good candidate,” he said. “Straight As at your middle school and you rocked those ISEEs. That’s why they let you in. I didn’t ask them for any special consideration.”
“Yeah, but you went on the tour and they got excited.”
“I went on the tour because I wanted to see the school. Not to impress them.”
I clasped my hands together and shifted to my knees. I couldn’t believe he was saying no. “Please, Luke. You have to. It could make the difference between getting in and not.”
“Your scores are incredible and so’s your GPA,” he said. “You’ll get in on your own—if not there, then somewhere else—and that’s a lot better than getting in because you have a famous relative.”
I let my hands drop. “It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s Heather.”
“Why?”
“She’s just . . .” I stopped. Then I said reluctantly, “Her scores and her grades aren’t great.”
“Then maybe she shouldn’t get in,” Luke said. “If there are stronger students, is it really fair for her to get in over them because she knows me? Wouldn’t that be a lousy way for college admissions to work?”
“Oh, don’t get all idealistic on me,” I said, irritable because I did kind of agree with him. But not enough to back down. “People pull strings all the time. So why not us?”
“Because it’s wrong,” he said. “And because I have faith my brilliant girl will get in without my help. And her friend will, too—if she deserves to. Good night, Ellie.” He left.
I dropped back onto my bed, now truly worried about Heather’s chances of getting in early. I had banked so much on this one phone call, sure that Luke would make it for me. He always did what I wanted. I was in shock that he’d refused. And kind of embarrassed that I’d asked.
I was beginning to regret pushing Heather so hard to apply there with me. Now that I didn’t have any way to actually help her, I was scared I might have steered her right into the path of a painful rejection.
The next morning Mom wouldn’t stop talking about Aaron and Crystal (Luke had filled her in on the situation) until I finally lost patience and said, “You seem a little too obsessed with this whole younger-man thing. Luke getting too long in the tooth for you?”
“Stop it,” she said. “I’m not obsessed with it. I’m horrified by it.”
Grandma was in the kitchen with us, mixing some hot grain cereal at the stove and looking not unlike a witch stirring a cauldron in her long purple bathrobe. She said, “Every married woman fantasizes about sleeping with a single young man.”
“No, they don’t!” Mom said.
“They’re just not honest about it.” Grandma rapped her spoon on the side of the pot to clear it. “People aren’t truthful about their emotions. That’s what gets everyone in trouble. If we can recognize that even our worst thoughts are natural, we don’t have to act on them. Repression causes bad behavior. Everyone knows that.”
“I’m repressing something right now,” Mom muttered.
thirty-one
I fell asleep trying to get some homework done that afternoon. When I came downstairs a little while later, still groggy, Mom was searching through a kitchen drawer. “Why can’t I ever find a pen when I need one?” she said. “I buy them. And then they disappear.”
I said, “Hey, George,” with a yawn. “Didn’t know you’d be here.” He was standing near the kitchen table, where Grandma was sitting with Jacob on her lap, the two of them playing a game together on the iPad. “I thought the office was all done.”
“He’s running a couple of errands for me,” Mom said. “As soon as I make a list. Which I would do if I had a pen.”
“You could just text me the list,” George said.
“Good idea. Why don’t I ever think of that?” She glanced around. “And . . . I left my phone upstairs. Hold on.” She ran out of the kitchen.
“Efficiency is not her middle name,” I said.
He flashed a bland smile and turned to Grandma. “So when do you go back to Philadelphia?”
“Friday,” she said. “I’ll be happy to get back to my regular routine, but I’m going to miss my time with this little girl. We’ve had fun together, haven’t we, Ellie?”
“Totally,” I said, and plunked myself down in the chair next to her. I looked up at George. “We really did.”
“I’m glad,” he said, and this time his smile was more sincere.
Mom came back into the kitchen, waving a pen. “I found one on the whatchamacallit—credenza—and saved myself a flight of stairs. Okay, now first I want you to go to Barnes and Noble—” She scribbled the words Overcoming Autism on the back of an envelope. “Look for this book—it’ll be in the special needs section for parents. If you see any other books with autism or Asperger’s in the title that look good, grab those, too.”
“Why are you buying those?” I asked.
“Because I want to read them. And then, George, I need you to go to the Apple Store—my car phone charger broke. I need a new one.” She wrote that on the list and then told him to stop at a wine store and buy a good bottle of wine for them to take as a hostess gift to some party they were going to the following night. “You need anything, Ellie? Mom?”
“I need something fun to read,” I said.
“You know what you want?” George asked.
“Not yet.”
“Text me when you do and I’ll look for it if I’m still there.”
“Or you could get it on the iPad,” Mom said.
“I like real books,” I said. “And I’m in the mood to browse. I’ll go with you to the bookstore, George.”
“I’ve got to do all these other errands . . .”
“I’ll do them with you.” I wanted to spend some time with him, figure out whether he really did like Heather or not—maybe I could get him to say something about her while we were out together.
“Okay,” he said. “If you really want to.”
In the car, I kept glancing at him. He was being very quiet. Polite and not unfriendly. But quiet.
I said, “I
t’s getting dark so early these days.”
He agreed that it was.
Then we were silent again.
His voice, when he spoke again, was surprisingly gentle. “I don’t know how to say this, but I feel like I need to say something. . . .”
“What?” Oh, God. Was he about to tell me how much he liked Heather? I’d thought I wanted to know, but now I had a sudden overwhelming desire to plug my ears and hum so I wouldn’t have to hear it.
“It’s just . . .” He glanced over at me and then back at the road. “Jonathan filled me in on the Marquand situation. Luke told him, and he knows how close I am to your family and felt I should know, too. I hope it’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” I was relieved that he wasn’t talking about Heather, but not exactly thrilled with this topic either. Why was life such a cringe-fest? “So . . . ?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Okay? Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, it’s sad that they’re separating and all that but—”
“I know the whole story,” he repeated. “Even the part about Aaron and Crystal. How they were—” He cut himself off and started again. “What he was doing to his father.” Quick glance at me again. “And to you.”
“He wasn’t doing anything to me.”
“Come on,” he said. “I know you want to defend him, but sneaking around with Crystal when he was going out with you—”
I stared at him, torn between horror and amusement. “Aaron and I were never going out! Never. We were always just friends.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“Because he was all over me at Halloween?”
“And other times.”
“It was all a mislead—so people wouldn’t notice that he and Crystal were obsessed with each other.”
His eyebrows drew together, in confusion, not anger. “But you were always together. He was always over here. Spending nights when your parents were gone—”
“Because his father had thrown him out! For sleeping with his stepmother!” I bounced in my seat, frustrated, desperate for the world—or at least George—to understand the situation. I was tired of explaining it and tired of being seen as some sort of lovesick punching-bag. “I felt sorry for him. I barely even saw him when he was here—he slept in Jacob’s room and didn’t come back until late each night. I swear to you I’m not the slightest bit heartbroken or anything like that. I just feel bad for all of them. And relieved I’m not involved.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Just gazed through the windshield, his forehead creased. Like something hadn’t computed right, and he was running new figures through his head. Then he said, “You two always seemed pretty cozy together.”
“Yeah, well, that should have been a giveaway right there—no chemistry. Just coziness.” I gave a short laugh. “Trust me, if we’d actually liked each other, there would have been a lot more awkwardness.”
“Good point.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I was pretty far off base.”
“It’s okay. Luke went there, too. It’s that stupid Halloween party—Aaron fooled everyone.” I heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I just hope this doesn’t happen to me every time a guy pretends to be in love with me to cover up the fact he’s actually sleeping with his stepmother. It could get old.”
He laughed, and things felt normal again. I was relieved that the weird tension between us had been dispelled. But also oddly let down. There had been something electric about that tension—something that made me feel like we were forging into some new territory together. But now we were back to being just plain old George and Ellie.
At least he seemed willing to talk to me again.
We split up at the bookstore. I went all the way up to the third floor to look at the fiction but I felt restless and couldn’t focus. I stared at the spines, but I couldn’t make sense out of any of the titles, so I wandered around the floor aimlessly for a little while, then rode the escalator back down.
I found George in the parenting section, searching through some shelves. “Oh, hi,” he said, standing up. “That was fast. You find anything?”
“No. I’ll get something later. Are you done?”
“I guess so.” He picked up a small stack of books.
I wanted coffee, so after he checked out, we wandered over to the store’s Starbucks.
“I’ll get us a table,” I said, taking the books from him. “Get me a vanilla Frappuccino. Extra whipped cream. And some kind of muffin.”
“You sure you don’t want to just mainline a bunch of sugar packets?” But he got in line.
I was leafing through one of the books he’d just bought when he brought his coffee and my muffin to the table. “They’re still making your Frappuccino,” he said.
I looked up. “This is unreal.”
“It always takes a few minutes.”
“Not that. This.” I held up the book. “Have you looked at this? At any of them?”
He sat down. “Just the titles and covers. Why does your mom want books on autism anyway?”
“Seriously?” I said. “You can’t guess?”
“Because of Jacob?”
I nodded.
“I kind of figured, but no one’s ever mentioned it before.”
“Did you think that Jacob might be autistic?” I asked. “Before Mom asked you to get these books?”
He hesitated, then said, “My cousin’s daughter has Asperger’s. Jacob kind of reminds me of her sometimes. But what do I know? Has he been diagnosed?”
I shook my head. “The speech therapist raised it as a possibility, that’s all. But I’m kind of freaking out here—I just picked this book up and started reading . . . and it’s like they’re describing him. Like right here, it says that some autistic kids stare at fans. I’ve seen Jacob do that a million times. Other stuff, too, like wiggling fingers in front of his eyes . . . or how he hates to make eye contact.” I shut the book and dropped it on top of the others. “I think maybe Mom’s right to be worried.”
“Maybe. But don’t panic or anything. My cousin’s daughter is totally great. She’s a little quirky, but in a good way.”
“Does she do therapy?”
“Tons of it.” He took a sip of coffee. “There’s a clinic near them that they go to that my cousin says is great. I could get the name for your mom—it’s in New York but they’d probably be willing to talk to her and they might know of a good place near here.”
“Thanks. I think Mom wants to start looking into stuff like that, but Luke’s really opposed to it.”
“Why?”
“He thinks it’s wrong to slap a label on Jacob. He says people on the Westside are way too quick to—” I stopped because George had suddenly jumped to his feet. “Um . . . did I offend you?”
“I think I heard them call your name. Hold on.” He crossed the room and came back with my Frappuccino, which he put in front of me with a wrapped straw.
I thanked him and he sat back down and took another sip of his coffee. “What do you think I should do?” I flicked at the books. “Mom and Luke are in such different places about this.”
“Maybe Luke would be willing to at least read one of the books? The more information he has, the more likely he is to see what she sees.”
“He’ll just get annoyed if Mom asks him to.”
“Then you ask him.”
“Why would that help?”
“Because no one can say no to you.”
I thought about that a moment, as I sucked sweet vanilla goo up through my straw. I swallowed and said, “Do you mean that in a you’re too charming for anyone to say no to sort of way or a you’re spoiled and they give you whatever you want sort of way?”
“Does it matter?”
“My ego says yes.”
“Then for the sake of your ego, let’s go with the charm thing.”
That wasn’t a satisfying response. I picked at the muffin, but it had blueberries in it and I d
idn’t like blueberries. I should have been more specific, but I’d kind of assumed George would know what I liked.
thirty-two
As we ran the other errands, we talked more about the Jacob situation. When we were in the car, I read bits out loud from the books we’d bought, and then in the stores, we discussed the things that reminded us of Jacob—like the delayed language—and the things that didn’t, like how a lot of these kids avoided being touched, and Jacob loved being in our arms.
Nothing seemed obvious except, we agreed, that it couldn’t hurt for Mom and Luke to bring Jakie to an expert who could evaluate him.
When we were finally heading home, I suddenly felt the full weight of what we were talking about. The books made it all seem very real. “I just want him to be okay,” I said, rolling my head sideways to look at George as he drove.
“He will be,” he said. “He is. He’s smart and adorable and sweet. What’s not okay about that? And your mom is willing to do whatever needs to be done to help him.”
“I’ll try to talk Luke into being more supportive.”
“You’ll succeed,” he said. “You could talk anyone into anything.”
“Not really. I—” My phone buzzed, interrupting me. I glanced at it. “Heather,” I said, and put the phone away without texting back.
“How’s she doing?”
“You don’t know? She said you guys text sometimes.”
He raised his eyebrows. “She did? I think we’ve exchanged one text since you took the SATs. Maybe two.”
“That’s weird. She said it was more.”
He shrugged and I studied his face for some reaction to the mention of Heather. There wasn’t any. I pushed harder, suddenly desperate to know for sure whether he was indifferent or interested in her. “It’s just . . . I think she might kind of like you.” She had told me not to say anything to him but that was when I thought she was talking about Aaron, so it didn’t count, right? “And she seemed to think you might be interested back. Are you?”
“Are you being serious?” he asked warily. “Or just finding a new way to tease me?”
“I’m serious.”
“I think she’s a nice kid,” he said slowly.