Cornerstone (12 page)

“I don’t drink coffee.” I say and add quickly, “But thanks.”

“Not a coffee girl, huh? We’ve got tea, if you want. Are you a tea girl?”

“Sure.” I say. I don’t drink either, but I’m not going to play guess-what-I’ll-drink with him in his own kitchen. Especially since I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes and my mascara might be smeared on his couch.

Garrett microwaves the mug of water and pulls out five different boxes of tea for me to choose from. I put my finger on one, a green tea with a bear on the box, even though I have no idea if I will like it at all.

“My family’s into tea.” he says, taking out a bag for me. “If Sean was up, he’d rip open the tea bag when you were done and read your leaves for you.”

“Read...like as in fortune telling?”

“Yeah.” Garrett nods. “He’s pretty good, actually. He can tell me daily if I’ll want to eat in the cafeteria or if I’ll have to go out for lunch.”

“Wait. Does anyone ever want to eat in the cafeteria?”

Garrett laughs.

“Who’s doubting my psychic ability?” Sean asks as he walks into the kitchen. He drops a black messenger bag on a chair. He is clean and dressed and I wonder if the bathrooms here are so insulated that no one ever hears the pipes run or if I was so dead asleep that I missed it.

And I wonder if Garrett saw me sleeping. I say a quick prayer that I looked more movie-star-ish than me-ish if he saw me at all and, at the very least, that God would erase his memory if I was drooling or snoring. I peek at him, wondering this, and Garrett glances up with a grin as if he knows I’m thinking it too. His gaze makes me feel dizzy. I slide onto the bar stool across from him.

“What do you take in your tea?” Sean asks as he pulls out a mug for himself. I try to think of something to say off the top of my head and nothing comes, so I just say that.

“Nothing.”

“Ah, a purest.” Sean wiggles his eyebrows at me and I’m amazed again at how many facial similarities there are between he and Garrett. Except that when I look into Sean’s eyes, there is no wild static shooting through my veins. I think of how Jen would die if she could see me sitting in Garrett’s kitchen, with two of the Reese boys being so nice to me. I take a sip of my tea and bitter karma burns my tongue.

“So what’s on the agenda today?” Sean asks as he pulls out a toaster. Garrett pulls a dark loaf from the breadbox and hands it to his brother.

“Probably just more review for finals.” Garrett says.

“That shouldn’t be too tough.” Sean says, dumping bread in the slots and pushing them down. “Mr. Wizelli probably still has multiple choice, so if you get lost, just answer D. Wizelli always favored D.”

“That’s true.” Garrett says. The toast pops and both brothers grab for it. Sean shakes his head laughing as Garrett puts both pieces on a plate.

“One day I’ll be faster.” Sean assures him.

“Never.” Garrett winks. He puts the plate of toast in front of me.

“Always the gentleman.” Sean says, putting two more pieces in the toaster. I push the plate toward Sean.

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Oh no,” Sean says with a playful flourish. “I insist.”

Garrett gets out a jar of natural peanut butter, along with a knife.

“Gotta eat.” Garrett says, pushing the plate back in front of me. “Get the brain going so you don’t fall asleep in class. I’ll eat one if you do.”

“You see?” The toaster pops and Sean takes out the toast without interference this time. “That was probably his master plan from the beginning. Steal my toast just so you’ll give it back to him.”

“Sure was.” Garrett chuckles, biting into one of the pieces.

Garrett drops in a second round of wheat bread as Sean glances at the clock.

“I got to get out of here. I’m going to be late.” he says, pushing away from the counter. He shoots a devilish grin at Garrett, motioning to the dirty plate and cup he’s left beside ours. “You’ll get these, won’t you, brother? Considering you made me late by stealing my breakfast in the first place.”

“I was just helping you with your manners.” Garrett says, shooting back the same grin. Then he nods to the dirty dishes and adds, “I’ll take care of it...but only if you read our tea before you go.”

“Not today, bro. I’m going to be seriously late. No joke.”

“C’mon. Nalena doesn’t believe you can do it.”

“I never said that!” I object. Sean laughs, picking his way around the dining room table.

“You guys just want to know the lunch menu anyway.” he says. He pulls his bag off the dining room chair and onto his shoulder.

“I’ll tell you what, you don’t even have to read mine.” Garrett bargains with him. I put down my empty mug and Garrett snatches it up, ripping open the tea bag and dumping the contents into the bottom. He does the same with his own and walks them over to Sean, handing mine out first.

“You can read mine if you can spare the twenty seconds after you’ve read Nalena’s.” Garrett says. Sean sighs, takes the mug from Garrett’s hand and peers down into the bottom.

“Huh. Very funny, Houdini.” he says, handing it back. “This is your mug. And I really have to get out of here.”

Garrett doesn’t take the mug from his brother.

“It’s not mine.” he says.

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Ladies-Go-First.” Sean says with a playful grimace. He sets the mug on the table and turns to leave. “Besides, I think you already know big things are going to happen in your life.”

“What are you talking about?” Garrett asks, picking up the mug. “It’s Nali’s mug!”

“Yeah right.” Sean just laughs as he leaves, pulling the front door closed behind him. The house is silent and the fluorescent lights hum over my head. Garrett is still standing next to the dining room table with both mugs in his hands, looking down into the well of one and then the other, his head going between them like a slow motion tennis match.

“So, is it pizza day?” I ask, going over to him. I stand close enough that I can breathe in his cologne. I inhale like the beginning of a yawn so I can fill my lungs with the heavy smell of wanting.

“This is weird.” Garrett says, his eyes still moving between the cups. I put my head in closer to see, but it is hard at first because the smell of him makes me light headed and all I want to do is breathe more deeply. When I finally give a concentrated glance into the bottom of my cup, the tea sludge looks pretty much like I thought it would anyway: like a wad of chewed up, spit out, tobacco. I try to find what is so interesting to Garrett about it and after a moment of looking and blinking, I do.

The shape in the bottom of my mug looks like flowers made of gears. The flowers have sharp petals. There are three flowers, but the top and bottom flowers are incomplete, as if they were on a sheet of paper that someone ripped to fit in the cup. On the left side of the cup, some of the petals are pointed in the wrong direction, like they’ve been torn off and stuck back on the wrong way and at wrong intervals. When I squint and stare hard, I would swear there is a design on the petals and the stuck-on petals have a different pattern than the petals that look like they belong. It’s pretty interesting for a tea glop, but when I peer into Garrett’s cup, it blows my mind.

The grounds in the bottom of Garrett’s mug are formed like geared flowers too, except that the petals on the right side of his cup match the designs of the flowers in my cup. After doing the slow, tennis-match comparison between cups myself, I can see that if we were able to lift each tea glop out of the mugs in one piece and stick them together, they would fit perfectly. The mismatched leaves wouldn’t be mismatched at all, but would be attached to the flower they belonged to. The two shapes put together would look like one perfect spinning whirlwind of flowering gears.

Or maybe I’m just crazy.

“That is so bizarre.” I say. “They kind of look the same to me.”

“They do.” he agrees. His voice is confused or unhappy, I can’t tell which.

“It looks like they fit together.” I say.

“It does.”

I try to laugh. “That’s really wild, isn’t it?”

Garrett looks up at me, his blue eyes filtering his thoughts like a fog I can’t quite see through. His eyes are wide open although they somehow seem to be squinting at me, as if there is something in the back of my head that he’s trying to see.

“It is wild.” he finally says as he puts the mugs on the counter instead of in the sink, pushing them back against the wall next to the cookie monster jar.

From upstairs, Mrs. Reese calls down, “Garrett, show Nalena where the towels are in the bathroom so she can get ready for school!”

~ * * * ~

Aside from having to dangle my cast out of the shower while I wash, using a bathroom that is still humid from Garrett’s shower is the second best thing in the world. The first best is sitting in the front seat of Garrett’s car on the drive to school. Everything is clean and polished and smells like him.

“This is pretty nice for an old car.” I say.

“You’ve been in it before.”

“I wasn’t really thinking about it then though.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s hard to enjoy a car ride when you’re trying to hold your arm together.” he says. “It was an early graduation gift from friends in the community.”

“Friends?” I say. “They must be really good friends to give you something like this. I’ll be lucky if I get a trip to the Lucky Buffet with my mom.”

Garrett just laughs like I’m joking.

“The older members get the new cars and keep them up so the cars can be handed down. It’s a little thriftier than buying brand new cars for everyone.” he explains. Garrett makes Brandon and Mark sit in the back and they fight over which radio station they want until we drop them off in front of the middle school.

“Don’t slam the door!” Garrett hollers as Mark does.

Brandon and Mark slink across the parking lot, arguing. They’re oblivious to everyone around them, even though every girl they pass seems to suddenly stand straighter and smile wider. The interest, generated by the two boys as they make their way to the front doors of the school, is like watching a hair-flipping wave that rolls through the middle school’s sea of students.

“They should be cartoons.” Garrett says as we pull away from the curb.

Unfortunately, it’s only a five-minute drive from the middle school to the high school. It is exactly the amount of time it takes for my supply of happiness to run out. When we pull into the Senior parking lot, everyone seems to turn and look through the windows and over the dash of Garrett’s Riviera, and suddenly, I want to escape.

The minute Garrett cuts the engine, I hop out and shut the door. The least I can do is distance myself to save his reputation. There are kids all over the place, most of them sitting in their cars or on their cars or going between cars to talk to each other before the first bell draws us into school. I spot Jen, sitting on her hood with two other cheerleaders. I pull my backpack higher on my shoulder as Garrett comes around to my side of the car.

“Well, I’ll see you.” I grumble with a short wave. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Are you in a hurry?” he asks and when I look at him, his face blots out the girls that are glaring at me three cars away.

“Not really.” I say with a shrug. Garrett smiles and taps the hood of his car.

“Sit with me?”

“Okay.” I drop my backpack on the ground and we lean against the grille, side by side. It is hard for me to tell if the heat running through me is coming from the cooling engine or the close proximity of Garrett’s body to mine.

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” Garrett says as he scans the parking lot.

“What is?”

“Seeing who might want to make a fool of themselves.” he says and he turns his head as Kris Lukevitch saunters across the parking lot toward us. Kris is the one who first tattooed my locker with
The Waste
and he is a tree stump of a guy; he walks with a broad swing to his arms as though he’s carrying a cheerleader under each bicep. On his way over to us, he turns back once to wink at his girlfriend, Audrine, who is one of the girls giggling with Jen.

“Hey Gare,” Kris says. He stops right in front of the car and puts a fist on each hip. Like this, it’s not hard to imagine Kris in spandex tights and a cape, ready to blast off. I almost expect him to raise a fist to the sky and levitate.

“How’s it going?” Garrett asks like he doesn’t really care. Kris tips the brick of his forehead in my direction.

“See you’ve got a rider.”

“Do you mean Nalena?” Garrett asks. It all seems pleasant enough on the surface except that Kris never looks at me once and Garrett’s body is almost too relaxed. Kris cups a hand at the back of his ear like he’s having trouble hearing.

“What’d you call it?” he grimaces. “Because everybody around here calls it The Waste.”

There is not even time to blink or turn my head before Garrett lunges. He grips the front of Kris’s shirt in his fist and with one turn, Garrett brings Kris’s body crashing across the hood.

I’m frozen, inches from them. The whir in my chest begins as I imagine one of Kris’s beefy fists swinging at Garrett. But, as big as Kris is, Garrett has him pinned without any trouble. Kris thrashes but Garrett anticipates every move, keeping Kris flat on the car. Twice, Kris pauses as if it is over and then struggles in a furious burst of will, but Garrett keeps him restrained, as if it hardly takes any effort. Kris roars, but the only thing he can move is his head. He thrashes it against the metal hood, leaving a couple dents.