Ink Is Thicker Than Water (7 page)

Kellie Brooks

After hitting send I decide to check Oliver’s profile just to verify that his status is still silly and pretentious and adorable (it is), and I am about to turn off my computer when a reply pops up in my inbox from Adelaide.

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: RE: sorry

Kellie,

There’s no need for melodramatics. Let’s spend some time brainstorming together tomorrow. I have volunteering right after school, but I’ll be free by seven. Can you meet me then at Mokabe’s for coffee? Bring your laptop (if you have one, notepad will do if you don’t) and AN OPEN MIND.

AMJ

I don’t like any of this, from spending my evening basically doing schoolwork with someone I really don’t want to be seen in public with—even if that makes me a little bit of a jerk—to that scary command. But I do want to get better at this part. So I respond with a yes before turning off my computer and setting it on the floor next to my bed.

My eyes are only shut for a few minutes when a light tapping sounds at my door. I try ignoring it. Mom will just be happy I’m asleep at a reasonable hour.

“Kellie?”

“Sara.” I bolt straight up. “You’re home?”

She creeps into my room. “Yes, I’m home, dork. Move over.”

I scoot to one side of my bed as she gets under the covers on the other side. “Are you okay?”

“She’s
amazing
.” Sara’s eyes are big in this way that doesn’t happen often to people who are so smart. It’s tough awing them. “She’s
a physicist
, Kellie.”

“Like a doctor?”

“No, not a physician. She’s a scientist.”

“‘We are not children here,’” I quote. “‘We are scientists!’”

“Are you finished?”

I feel like a jerk for being unable to keep any moment truly serious. “Sorry. And of course she’s a genius like you. Do you look alike?”

“A little. She’s not as tall, and her hair’s darker, but you can see the resemblance. Definitely. She showed me a picture of my…my biological father. He’s really tall and blond, so that makes sense.” She elbows me. “And I’m not a genius.”

“Mmm hmmm, genius, sure. So is she young? Like a lot younger than Mom and Russell and Dad?”

“She isn’t really that much younger than Mom. She was twenty-one when I was born. But she was a senior in college and already was accepted into grad school, so it wasn’t a time for her to have a baby.”

“Right,” I say. “Is she still with your…him?”

“They broke up before I was born, but they’re still friends. He lives in San Francisco now; he founded a digital startup. Camille—Camille’s her name—gave me his email address so I can talk to him. If I want.”

“Are you going to?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Was it scary?”

Sara’s silent for a few minutes but in that way where I can tell her brain is working, so I stay silent, too. “I guess so. A little.”

“Did you—”

“If it’s okay, I don’t know how much I want to talk about right now,” she says. “You know how sometimes, right after something happens, it’s like it’s so new you don’t have words for it yet?”

I want to say no, but the truth is I’ve never spoken one real word about Oliver to anyone. And obviously that whole thing is different from what’s going on with Sara, but I could connect it enough not to push her. “Yeah.”

Sara watches me for a moment before turning on the lamp on my nightstand. “Did Mom do your hair?”

“Yup, another Melanie Stone slightly sketchy creation.” I wait to hear how I should start going to a professional salon, which perhaps is true.

“It looks really good. I guess Mom’s got a backup plan if she ever gets sick of tattooing,” she says. “Well, I should probably get some sleep.”

“I know it’s late, but…could you help me with geometry?”

Sara sighs a big, dramatic sigh, which is how she always leads up to agreeing. “Of course. You should have said something earlier.”

“Earlier you were getting ready for your life to change! I couldn’t bug you with stupid theorems.”

“You can always bug me with theorems.”

We get out my textbook, and Sara guides me through the assigned problems. If Barry, my geometry teacher, explained things so well, I wouldn’t need Sara. But there’s something I love about sitting up with my sister at midnight.

Even if it’s for frigging
math
.

After we get through the whole assignment, Sara switches my light back off and walks to the door. “I should get some rest.”

“I’m really glad it went so well for you, Sara.”

Even in the darkness I see her beam at me. “Thanks, Kell. Me, too.”

Chapter Six

I spend the next day at school on full alert for any Kaitlyn changes. When she gets up at lunch to buy her usual salad, Chelsea and I watch her like hawks, if hawks were creepy little stalkers. But nothing’s out of the ordinary. If Lora and Josie are pulling her into their gravitational field, it’s not happening when I’m orbiting, or whatever correctly completes that scientific metaphor.

“What are we doing this weekend?” Kaitlyn asks when I get to my car after school. Her Jetta’s still in the shop, so I’m still her chauffeur.

“It’s only Wednesday,” I say. “Can we think about the weekend when the weekend is actually happening?”

She laughs and messes with the radio station dial. “Don’t hit me. Can we have just one time in your car without a sixties invasion?”

“Fine, fine.” I pull out of the parking lot and down the street toward Kaitlyn’s house. I start to tell her something about Oliver, since now that we’re texting, it feels like maybe something more is going to happen, but I just can’t get the words out of my mouth or the image of her talking excitedly with girls I’ve seen be
so mean
for no reason at all out of my head.

And, anyway, I like having thoughts of Oliver basically all to myself. (I’ll pretend the only other person who knows something’s going on isn’t
my mother
, since that kind of ruins it being some kind of sexy secret.)

“Your hair looks amazing, I meant to mention earlier,” Kaitlyn says. “Your mom?”

“Yeah, and thanks. She did better than usual this time.”

“Imagine how cute you’d look if you wore a shirt without a hole in it,” she says, and I start to get offended, but the truth is that I bought this T-shirt from a vintage shop in University City, and it does have a tiny hole where the right sleeve connects to the rest of the shirt.

After dropping Kaitlyn off, I head to The Family Ink, since I need to be in the neighborhood anyway. The shop is pretty slow, so I do my homework while sitting with Mom as she works on designs. She lets Jimmy go home early, so I keep an eye on the door like if I seem attentive enough, I still have a chance at getting a job here. The next time the door opens, I jump up and walk to the front desk. It isn’t a customer, though; it’s Adelaide.

“What time is it? Am I late?”

“I’m early, and I figured I could find you here.”

“Hi, there.” Mom jumps up and smiles at Adelaide. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”

“You did my boyfriend’s tattoo,” Adelaide says. “The passage from
The Fellowship of the Ring
, if you remember.”

“Oh man.” Russell grins up at her. “I wanted to do that one so bad, love those books. Mel’s better at text, though, couldn’t steal it from her.”

“It still looks great,” Adelaide says. “Byron loves it so much.”

“I loved doing it,” Mom says. “Kellie, have a good time, baby. Be home by ten, okay?”

I’m allotted three full hours with Adelaide
plus
time to get home? “Fine.”

I get my laptop bag and my backpack from the back room and follow Adelaide outside and down the sidewalk. Her black Mary Jane heels click the entire way; it sounds like some invisible grown-up is chasing us.

“How did you know I’d be at the shop?” I ask, the first thing I can think to say. For as all-powerful as Adelaide is during classes or newspaper, she’s almost annoyingly quiet now. I really doubt, despite our theoretical differences in social status at school (am I really
that
less geeky than Adelaide?), that she wants anything more to do with me than I do with her.

“I assumed you would be. You mentioned the other day you spent a lot of time at your mom’s shop, and I figured out from your email address what the shop was.”

“Oh. So your boyfriend got a tattoo from my mom?” It’s an even dumber question than the first. Clearly this matter has already been cleared up.

“It’s in her portfolio, so I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

“Mom’s done a lot of text work,” I say. “Maybe.”

“It’s the only quote from
Fellowship of the Ring
, I’m sure.”

I decide not to mention that I don’t read nerd. “Then I guess I’ve seen it. Where does your boyfriend go to school?”

“Wash U,” she says, which is the nickname for Washington University, the most smarty-pants school in town. Of course she dates someone from there. “Do you want coffee? My treat. My parents give me tons of cash for no reason.”

Coffee feels like a thing I’m not mature enough for yet, but I let her buy me a hot cocoa. She orders one of those crazy drinks, a two-percent Tahitian-vanilla half-caf four-shot bone-dry cappuccino. I could never work at a coffee shop because orders like that make me roll my eyes more than a little.

“So this shouldn’t be too hard,” Adelaide says once we’ve collected our drinks and settled in a booth upstairs. “Let’s come up with five to ten things you’ve been thinking about Ticknor lately, and—”

“Listen, I’m not like you. I know you’re really passionate about all this stuff, but that’s just not me. This whole thing was a mistake, Jennifer shouldn’t have—”

“So were you ‘really passionate’—” Oh my God she is actually using air quotes—“about cafeteria food? Or the Mark Twain paper Jennifer let me read? Or did you just write good pieces?”

Okay, so she has me there. But I’m kind of sick of talking about it already. “So where were you volunteering tonight?”

“Planned Parenthood,” she says. “Five to ten things, Kellie.”

“Maybe this comes easy for you, but I haven’t been working on a paper. I don’t just think in lists.”

“Fair.” Adelaide takes out her computer. “You want to do this, though, right?”

“Definitely.” It’s weird saying it out loud to her, for different reasons than I’ve avoided telling everyone else. I’m not worried Adelaide will think it’s weird I suddenly care about stuff; I’m worried Adelaide thinks my wanting to do this isn’t the greatest of ideas. “I thought it could be fun, but I’m just not sure I can be good at it.”

“You just have to get used to thinking in a different way.”

“Hey, Kellie,” says a very familiar voice.

I look up with a start and promptly knock my hot cocoa all over my laptop. Adelaide and Oliver spring into Laptop Protection Mode, Oliver hoisting it into the air and Adelaide producing a bunch of napkins with which to contain the spill. How did I go five months without seeing Oliver at all and then randomly run into him twice in less than a week?

“Looks like it’s okay.” He takes a napkin from Adelaide and dabs at the keys. “Mine’s survived worse.”

“Hi,” Adelaide says to him. “We met at the protest downtown the other week, remember?”

“Yeah, my friend sent me a link to your story on it, too, nicely done.” He isn’t watching Adelaide, though; he is watching me. “You look busy.”

“We’re brainstorming,” Adelaide says.

Is this what qualifies as a cock-block?

“I wouldn’t dare interrupt that,” he says. “But I’ll be here for a while; stop by my table if you finish up. Cool?”

I nod, wondering what the rules are for someone you once completely rejected in such a stupid, embarrassing way. Can you still kiss him? Five months later?

Adelaide watches me as Oliver walks back to the table he’s sharing with a few guys and girls. “What’s up with you guys?”

“Nothing.”

“Right,” she says. “Okay, back to work.”

“Five ideas and I’m talking to him.”

Adelaide agrees, and it’s sad what a motivator that is. But maybe it’s more than that, because by the time I mention the new No Laptops Policy, I also think about the dress code changes, the unending rumors of school uniforms (even though obviously none of the administration at Ticknor will ever squash our individuality or self-esteem that way), my suspicion that the focus on a supportive, noncompetitive environment will land us all in college with too many hippie ideals and not enough real-world skills, and the whole fertilizer situation. I probably could have thought of even more ideas, unbelievably, but I’ve technically fulfilled my obligations for the night. Time to stop by Oliver’s table.

“This is a good start,” Adelaide says. It’s nice to hear. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” I pack up my laptop and hesitate for only a moment. Oliver watches me as I make my way over, but unlike the day we met, when his intentions were so clear and readable, I have no idea what he’s feeling right now. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He gets up, waves to his group. “See you guys later.”

I didn’t mean for him to leave his friends or for us to leave completely, but I sort of tag along with him until we’re outside. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Are you hitting on me?” He laughs, to my horror. “‘Come here often?’ ‘What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?’”

Oh, we’re joking around. “‘Your place or mine?’” That is really the first thing that flies out of my mouth? What is
wrong
with me?

“I thought about calling you.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, leans back against the brick building. Lanky guys leaning is something I don’t really get sick of looking at. “But I didn’t know how you’d feel about—”

“I was in a weird place that night,” I say, not because I actually had been, but it seems like the kind of thing normal mature people in relationships say. I probably got it from some premium-cable show. “I’m sorry if I—”

“
I’m
sorry if I…” He looks up from the ground, grins as he runs a hand through his slightly shaggy red hair. Even though he and Dexter look nearly like twins, their smiles aren’t alike at all. Dexter’s is often too broad or too mischievous to be genuine, but Oliver’s radiates nothing but. His brown eyes are calm as if nothing could shake him, and when I look into them, I feel like their calming power extends to me. Whether or not it’s a good thing, I find it hard not to trust him. “We should hang out again. I actually was about to head out, got a paper due tomorrow and I’m still a few hundred words short. You need a ride?”

I shake my head. “I’m parked just down there.” Jerk my thumb back to indicate. Oliver takes it as a hint, and maybe subconsciously it was one, so he walks me over, and right before I’m about to get in, he’s right there. He leans in, his breath warm on my face in the cool evening, and I know we’re going to kiss again.

It’s weird to me how it’s natural and not at all at once. My feet automatically go into tiptoe mode (Oliver must be over six feet tall), and my body leans into him, but also his chin bumps my face and our hands knock into each other’s as we try to cling or grope or whatever is going to happen right here in the tiny not-dark-enough parking lot behind The Family Ink.
The ocean
, I think. Gentle, warm, pulling me in, dragging me under.
Kissing him is still like the ocean
.

“I’ll call you.” He sort of ushers me into my car. “Your stepdad’s got a really clear view of us right now.”

“Oh, crap.” I buckle in and wait for him to step back so I can slam the door. Russell is indeed at the back window, probably about to lock up for the night, and he’s grinning and laughing, and all of a sudden I wish for nothing more than for him to never, ever sway from Mom’s no-gossip rules.

Way back in May, on Memorial Day, Dexter and Oliver’s parents threw this huge barbecue for what seemed like their entire subdivision, and—probably to Sara’s horror—they’d invited all of us, not just her. Sara’s not a jerk in any way, but her image doesn’t really line up with her tattoo artist mother and stepfather chasing after a screaming kid dressed up in swim trunks and a Batman mask/cape combo. Maybe it’s some genetic default or either too much or not enough therapy, but I’ve just never been able to get embarrassed about my weirdo family.

I’d been helping hold Finn down so Mom could slather him with sunscreen when I noticed that this lanky red-haired guy—I knew he had to be Dexter’s brother—was definitely noticing me. I didn’t actually have much experience with guys, but I knew this guy was into me just from the way his gaze lingered.

Once Finn was safe from harmful UV rays, I’d walked over to the guy and made some dumb joke about pool parties being inappropriate for the true spirit of Memorial Day except for maybe the Navy. He’d laughed, while I accepted that this tall, cute, laughing guy was interested.