In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (2 page)

Adam doesn’t remember this but bobs his head in agreement.

“I mean, how cool would it be to get to do so many different things?”

Then he does recall the montage, a series of costume changes for the two lead actresses, their differing hair colors—one red, one gold—standing in for character development.

He wonders if the reason those scenes didn’t stand out to him is because, since the second day of kindergarten, he’s always
been
everything to everybody in this universe. Only eighteen, and he’s already played a million different roles—class clown, class president, probably valedictorian in June. He can get high with the guys who grow pot in their basements as easily as he can make his grandmother laugh with a clean joke. Teachers are so charmed, that he’s pretty sure they don’t even look at his work anymore before stamping an A, and tourists at Sally’s Scoops always pronounce him “such a nice young man.” Nobody could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wasn’t an all-around good kid.

But apparently not everyone had that same jack-of-all-trades existence.

“It was like those girls had constant do-overs,” Molly is saying.

“You just turned twenty,” Adam says. “What do you need to do over?”

She shrugs, mumbles something about different experiences, which he assumes means not dating Kyle Dooley exclusively for centuries. “I dunno, maybe work harder in school, go away to college.”

“You can do that. Just ace a semester at community and transfer.”

“Nah, that stuff never came easy for me,” she says. “I can’t, especially now.”

He doesn’t ask what “now” means. It’s after midnight; he’s only got 265 days.

Apropos of nothing, she brightens. “You were always good at everything,” she says. “Are you headed to Gainesville next fall?”

Wouldn’t that be easier? If he went to Florida or Florida State with the other kids at CCH who actually leave town to attend school full-time? He could come home on weekends to keep his grandparents’ shop in cheap, honest labor, could still eat China One takeout with his mother and talk to her about books when she got home from her job at the hospital, could continue making sure she never looked terrified over his well-being again.

He hadn’t applied anywhere within three hundred miles.

“I actually got a scholarship to NYU.” It’s the first time he’s spoken this out loud.

Her happiness is so genuine, any annoyance he had over being dragged to the beach to
not
make out dissipates. “That’s amazing,” she says. “You’re really going to do stuff, aren’t you?”

“Molly.” He takes both her hands in his, squeezes; he’s always been good at convincing people of things that aren’t true. “You can do anything you want.”

These must be the magic words, because when he leans in to kiss her, she doesn’t stop him but opens her mouth and hooks her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans to draw him closer.

“I always thought you had a thing for me,” she says in the fractured seconds when their lips and tongues aren’t touching.

“Guess I didn’t hide it well.”

She smells like sand and strawberries and baby powder. Yards and yards of silk skin under her flimsy tank top.

“Thought you were really cute, too,” she says.

This is a bad idea.

Not because she may still be with Kyle Dooley—the Dooley brothers are the kind of overathletic assholes who pepper John Hughes films. And not because Adam has been on a few dates with Joy Keller, and Joy might not realize he’s simply marking time.

It’s a bad idea because Molly clearly wants
something
, and he’s got only 265 days. Because 265 days is still a lot of time—enough to fall in love and apply to state schools and end up a teacher at Coral Cove High, directing musicals or coaching the subpar baseball team.

But it’s
Molly Kelly.

Cock so hard it hurts, his eyes flutter closed. In the darkness the tide sounds the same as cars that pass on the highway facing his bedroom window, everyone on their way to somewhere better.

“Always liked you.” Molly’s words muffled in the ever-diminishing space between them. Words he wanted seven hundred days ago, when he was a sophomore and she was a senior, when he didn’t have the escape route mapped out yet.

Hands beneath his shirt, she runs fingers across his stomach, around his sides. He trembles as she dips below the waist of his jeans. Does he even have anything? He’s not in the habit of bringing condoms to the ice cream store.

“What the fuck, Molly!” Two hundred feet away, a shout.

Confusion.

And then Sean Dooley—who’s got four inches and fifty pounds on Adam—is yanking him apart from Molly, while Kyle Dooley, who is even bigger, is standing next to her looking as though he might cry.

“What are you doing here?” Molly sounds truly outraged, which makes Adam feel slightly less used.

“You’re going out with freaking Zoellner?” Kyle says Adam’s name as if it’s a genital fungus and reaches for Molly’s elbow. “The punk who stole third base from Sean?”

“You had your idiot brother follow me to the movies, didn’t you?” Molly bats Kyle’s hand off her arm.

“It’s not like that. I was worried—”

“Leave me alone,” she says.

“Molly—” Kyle looks monumentally sad, but Adam steps forward anyway.

“Look, she said she wants to be left alone—” he starts.

Sean cuts him off. “Zoellner, shut the fuck up!”

Adam does; 520 days ago he would have fought for Molly’s honor, staked a claim, done something
.
Tonight he tries not to sigh and waits to see how badly the situation will deteriorate.

“We’ll figure this out,” Kyle is saying to Molly.

“I already told you what I want to do,” she says, but sounds much less convinced.

“Can we just talk about it?” Kyle asks, and Molly lowers her eyes. “Lemme give you a ride home.”

The rolling of the ocean.

“I can’t.” Now she’s completely lost. “I drove, and Adam won’t have a way back.”

“Sean can take him, can’t you?” Kyle asks.

The younger Dooley offers a creepy smile. “Sure, Mol. You and Kyle go back in your car, and I’ll make sure Z gets home.”

“You would?” She looks to Sean, then seems to remember Adam is the one she needs to check in with. “No, I should take him home.”

“I’m closer to Z’s house anyway,” Sean offers.

“I don’t know,” she says again, close to tears.

“It’s fine, if that’s what you want,” Adam says, always good at convincing people of things that aren’t true.

“You’re sure?” she asks, and he nods. “Okay, I’ll give you a call tomorrow?”

Adam would bet his scholarship that he’ll never hear from her again.

With arrangements finalized and keys exchanged, the two groups start in different directions. When Molly and Kyle are no longer visible, Sean stops walking, and Adam realizes what should have been obvious ten minutes earlier.

“You’re not really giving me a ride,” he says flatly.

Sean snorts. Adam sighs.

Burst of pain as Sean’s knuckles crack across his nose.

Adam’s eyes close, and he must bring his hands to his face, because there’s nothing blocking Sean’s fists from a series of quick jabs into his left side.

Swinging back blindly, bare feet slipping in the sand, Adam fails to connect with any part of the larger boy.

The last fight he was in, ironically with Sean Dooley, was thirteen years ago, and Adam is amazed at how stunningly bad he is. Apparently he’s not good at
everything
.

“Who’s the better third baseman now?” Sean demands.

If the statement weren’t immediately followed by a fist to his cheek, Adam would find it hysterical. There was never any question of who the better third baseman was. Adam was simply the third baseman who didn’t get caught with a crib sheet during a trig exam.

By sheer serendipity, Adam manages to duck the next body blow but trips on nothing, lands flat on his ass.

He must look extraordinarily pathetic, because Sean’s anger extinguishes to cold fear, perhaps realizing that assault is more serious than cheating on a math test. It’s a moment Adam
could
take advantage of. Sure, he feels like crap, but he can tell his injuries aren’t serious. He could kick Sean’s legs from under him or spring to his feet and exploit the element of surprise.

But he’s got only 265 days; Adam doesn’t need to prove shit to Sean Dooley or anyone in Coral Cove anymore.

So he stays down.

Blood falls from his nose, darker than the surrounding sand.

“Stay away from her,” Sean says, but it seems halfhearted. He doesn’t bother kicking grit at Adam, doesn’t mumble “bastard” under his breath; he simply walks away.

Inching back on his elbows, Adam eases down until his head touches the ground. He concentrates on the throbbing pulse on the left side of his face, experimentally shifts his jaw, runs fingers over bruised ribs.

A slight chill in the air, it’s no longer hot at night. Florida
does
have seasons, but he’s never owned a winter coat, has seen snow only on TV.

Part of
Eons & Empires
had taken place during a nuclear winter, where survivors trekked through falling ash and dead earth, everyone bundled in scarves and boots. For all its faults, the movie did a really good job of making it look cold; the New York University brochure is full of vibrant pictures of students walking the snow-covered city campus.

She’ll understand, she’s probably known for a long time.

After high school his mother had left to model or wait tables or go to school. She’d made it as far as Atlanta, lasted four years, and returned with a two-year-old son and no explanation. Anna Zoellner moved back into her parents’ house, worked at their store, got a nursing degree and a job at the local hospital, and never talked of leaving again.

Not sure how long he lies on the beach, Adam feels water licking his fingers when the tide comes in. His nose has long stopped bleeding when he finally stands.

It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the road, another ten before he finds a sports bar with lights on. Five minutes more of holding a quarter in the phone booth before he musters the courage to dial his mother.

The restaurant is family-owned, and it’s a brother and sister a few years older than him closing up. They hand him a paper cup of crushed ice for his rapidly swelling eye and let him sit in a booth while they flip chairs up onto the tabletops and break down the soda machine.

Dagger of guilt over the ice cream shop he abandoned what seems like years ago.

Adam offers to buy something, but the siblings—both round and freckled—give him a plate of French fries, ask which school he attends.

And he wonders if his whole world would be different if his mother had ever dated anyone seriously (even with Adam, she got asked out constantly but rarely went), ever had other children. A sister to work alongside him at Sally’s Scoops? A brother to tag-team-battle the Dooley boys? Someone to stay behind so his mom won’t be all alone with her books and aging parents, with whom she rarely agrees.

In her old VW Rabbit, his mother arrives in forty minutes flat. Her full lips thin when Adam slides into the passenger seat and she sees his face. He’s again five years old with a bloody nose.

“Baby?” she asks.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says, trying not to wince as she examines his cheek.

“I can run you to work—get X-rays to be on the safe side?” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Have you been putting ice on your eye?”

Adam holds up the cup of slushy water.

“Well, keep it on for ten minutes, then off—”

“I’m okay, really, Ma, it doesn’t even hurt,” he says, as convincing at eighteen as he was at five.

She drives in silence, and he rests his arm on the door, leans out the window so he won’t have to look at her.

“Thank you for coming,” he says over the rush of air. “I’m really sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I got into a fight, dumb high school stuff.”

The car eats miles.

He shifts in the bucket seat, moans when the shoulder belt strains against his rib cage. His mother sighs.

“Sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

He shakes his head. “Do you maybe have any Advil?”

She hands over her purse, and he rummages through the contents—worn copy of
Ulysses
from the Coral Cove Library, pens without caps, dingy plastic picture holder with his Sears portrait as a toddler in denim overalls. He knows that behind that first photo is his school picture from every year. Finally, the white container with the blue label.

“If you can wait, there’s stronger stuff at home,” she says.

“This is great.” Shaking out three caplets, he starts to dry-swallow them but feels her eyes on him and takes a sip of the melted ice to wash them down.

Thirty-eight and she’s still so beautiful, even with her black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her makeup long faded.

Other than their slate-gray eyes, Adam and his mother look very little alike, his dimples and Roman nose genetic hand-me-downs from some man he’s never questioned her about; no one could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wanted more than the parent he had.

Molly Kelly is pregnant.

The realization hits so hard, he jerks upright and has to bear another worried glance from his mom.

At twenty, Molly is the same age his mother was when he was born. And he has a vision of his mom alone (or maybe not alone) in an Atlanta apartment, deciding to have him, deciding to keep him. He wonders why but knows he’ll never ask, the same way he’ll never ask why she came back to Coral Cove, a place where she probably didn’t fit in long before she was a single mother.

“Ma?” His voice wobbly.

Concerned again, she turns, clicks her tongue.

“I got into school in New York,” he says like he’s choking,
feels
like he’s choking. “And I qualify for this big scholarship—covers everything.”

“That’s wonderful.” Tone light, but now she’s the one avoiding eye contact, gaze locked on the stretch of highway ahead of her.