Mapmaker (5 page)

I blinked up at him. He had said something so true. He probably didn’t realize it, but he was the first person in my life to actually say it out loud:
Nothing would make me better
. And the relief of someone giving me the hard truth, as painful as it might be, was so much
more refreshing than hearing the same old time-heals-all-wounds bullshit.

“You know, you’re the first person who has said something real about what happened to my dad,” I said.

Our eyes met before he looked away, as though he were embarrassed about what he might add.

“I … Sorry about that,” he stuttered. I could tell he was straining for the right words. “Sometimes stuff pops out of my mouth. When my parents split, Mom pretty much left me, too. Did you know that? She only visited me four times at Exeter, same time every year: Parent Weekend. I kept trying to do things to get her attention like get good grades or play on varsity, even in ninth grade.” His voice caught in his throat.

Of course I had known about the divorce, that his mother had moved to New York City with her boyfriend and his daughters. But I had no idea she’d abandoned him.

After he left for Exeter (
of course, only the best for Connor
), I’d assumed he thought he was better than everyone. Every report that came back was confirmation: straight A’s, amazing athlete, handsome. There was even a rumor going around that he was dating some heiress. He seemed nonhuman, a machine. And in a way he was: a machine devoted to getting his own mother to notice him.

I hesitated, but I couldn’t help ask, “Did she even come to your graduation?”

“Yeah. So, five times, I guess. But that was awkward because Dad was there, too. I haven’t seen her since, and she’s never visited me at college. She was supposed to visit but something came up, something about her new boyfriend … whatever. I’m
used to her excuses now. I never expect anything anymore.” He turned abruptly. “Come on. Look how sunny and bright it is outside. Let’s go. I’m taking you out to lunch.”

I looked up at him wearily. “Easy for you to say, you’re the boss’s son.”

“Exactly,” he said with a smirk. “I can do whatever I want.”

“Connor …” I had to laugh. “Listen, this is a shit situation for me, but I do need this job right now. We have to walk right past the receptionist to get out.”

He smiled. “Yeah, but we’re not going out the front door.”

The back fire escape shook as I stepped out onto the window ledge.

I looked down four flights of rusted iron ladders and grates to the ground below, imagining my body tumbling through the air.

“It’s fine,” Connor said. He held out his hand. “I’ll go first to prove it.”

I gripped the railing with both hands. Maybe all fire escapes wobbled? Holding my breath, I took his hand in mine. A vivid memory overcame me: doing the exact same thing when we were seven years old, behind my house. My mom had still been alive. He’d stepped onto a log in the river and reached out for me to join him …

It must have only been three or four seconds, but when he let go and turned back to the railing, it was as though I had lost something—I’d been shown a keepsake only to have it snatched away. But that wasn’t
his
fault. I made my way down the steep
and narrow steps, following his lead. At the bottom landing, he jumped on the ladder, which slid to the ground with a thud. I climbed down after him, stepping onto the gravel. After that he grabbed the bottom rung and shoved hard—and the ladder slid back into place, suspended over our heads.

“Little trick I learned a couple of days ago,” he said slyly.

Now we were at the back of the building, hidden by the scaffold, away from the parking lot. I peered around to see if Harrison’s car was still there. Across from us was a one-way road, beyond that, the bike path through the woods.

Connor signaled. We both broke into a sprint—not stopping after we’d crossed the road; all the windows of the MapOut building faced the bike path. We ducked into the woods and kept going. After a hundred yards, after the brush had gotten too thick to run, I stopped to catch my breath.

I gazed up through the branches and treetops at the clear blue sky. The air felt cooler and damp; it smelled of pine and the particular whiff of sun on wood. How many times had I looked up like this? Hundreds, thousands, but every time the sky managed to appear beautiful and new. Maybe only because I was most comfortable picturing myself up there in the clouds, staring down.

I turned to Connor. Both of us were still panting from the run. Our eyes caught and he turned away, quickly glancing down at the ground. We stood for a moment in what felt like an awkward silence.

“Tanya?” he gasped.

“Yeah.”

“Remember how we used to play together out by that river behind your house, when we were kids?”

I nodded. So he’d remembered, as well. My face flushed a little. “It feels a little like that,” I managed.

We also spent time indoors. We spied on our parents. We could be alone and together at the same time …
There was so much more I could add. Up in the attic, I’d studied atlases and globes and computer screens. He’d stayed with the toys, building robots and strange rockets with tentacles and wheels that could land on faraway planets. Whatever we’d done, we’d felt comfortable enough to spend time together without having to talk. That was what made his disappearance all the more hurtful. The silence had become permanent.

“You moved,” I said. “I wrote you a letter once … I think?” I tried to sound vague but I remembered it all so clearly: writing the address in New York City, inscribing each number of the zip code so the mailman would be able to read it. And how I sealed the envelope with my tongue and a glow-in-the-dark sticker of a star. “Did you ever get it?” My voice sounded strange even to me. High-pitched and unsure.

I waited for him to answer. I heard my heart thumping. I felt it in my throat.
So did you? Did you get the letter I spent days composing? Wasted my entire set of Crane stationery on rewrites? Did you?

Connor finally shrugged and flashed a smile like his dad’s. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I did. I was just going through a lot with the divorce and everything.”

I kept my face perfectly still.
Then why didn’t you write back? I could have been there for you. Why didn’t you ever keep in touch? Because telling me you wanted to write me about Dad but never did feels like a cop-out
.

“No big deal,” I said, using my not-caring-or-paying-attention voice.

“Cool,” he said.

I almost felt like applauding myself. I was wasting my time with this MapOut internship. I should have been an actress.

After we’d put enough
distance between ourselves and MapOut, we found our way back to the bike path and headed toward Amherst College. It was noon and only a few cyclists were out. It felt as though we had this gorgeous day all to ourselves, that it belonged only to us.

“I saw Beth the other day,” Connor said.

“My stepmother, Beth?”

He nodded thoughtfully, his eyes on the packed dirt. “She was in the office having lunch with my dad. She’s the one who told me you’d be working here this summer.”

I stopped short. “She was at the office? Why?”

Connor turned to me. “Um, probably because she was married to your dad?” He was smiling, but his forehead was creased.

“Right.” I kept walking, not liking the way my voice had sounded. Still, I was annoyed that Beth had been hanging around the MapOut offices. Would she be there this summer? Checking up on me, like she always did? I couldn’t stop myself from asking in the exact same voice: “I guess Beth likes to trek off on her own, too, huh?”

He sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything …”

“No, I’m sorry.” I almost reached out to touch his arm, but stopped.

“You know, what I really meant to say just now is that I’m sorry I didn’t answer your letter.” He glanced at me out of
the corner of his eye. “I miss those times when we were kids. I miss when your dad and my dad would argue.”

I frowned. “You do?

Connor cracked a smile and tried to hide it. “Yeah. Your dad would put my dad in his place. Nobody really does that anymore.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know … the way your dad would try to make a case that maps should be free to whoever wanted them. ‘People can’t
own
maps any more than they can own truth!’” Connor quoted in an eerily dead-on imitation of my father. “He actually said that. Maps were just a form of truth. My dad would be like, ‘Are you crazy? Why would we share our data for free when we could sell it?’” Connor’s eyes darkened. He shook his head and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“What?” I pressed, suddenly caught up in Connor’s memory.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “You know what I liked most about your dad? He hated texting. He was always ranting to my dad about having real conversations or just not using the phone at all. I’m the same way. I hate the phone. I hate texting.”

I processed the words. There were so many ways I could have answered, so many directions I could take
this
conversation. Was Connor trying to comfort me in some way because he still felt guilty that he hadn’t reached out to me when my dad had died? Did he hate the phone because of
his
dad? Harrison’s fortune was built on phone technology. Did Connor really want to help build wells in Tanzania? Was that why he was always so weirdly coiled and distant and attentive at
the same time, as if one step away from pouncing on something? Because he truly wanted a “real” experience, like my dad? Because he knew he had to pounce on something if he got the chance?

But what popped out of my mouth was: “So where are we going, anyway?”

As we walked past
the tennis courts of Amherst College and along Main Street I felt happy, lit up inside in a way I hadn’t since Dad was alive. I knew part of it was because of Connor, but I would never admit that fully, not even to myself. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until today; I hadn’t even allowed myself to think about him. But he’d shared a part of my life no one ever would or could, the part where I’d been the third member of a family—the best part, those years before Mom died.

“Three is a magic number
,
”
she used to sing to me, even in the hospital when she was sick: an old kids’ song from her youth, about two parents with an only child.

Connor reminded me of being that number three; he brought that feeling back. Just being around him anchored me to my past. I don’t think he had any idea that I missed him when he moved away or how much I cared about him. I also guessed he really didn’t need to know. Besides, he probably wouldn’t understand even if I ever tried to tell him.

I wasn’t surprised that
he chose The Black Sheep Café, on Main Street, across from the common. It was an Amherst institution, crowded with students: pita-bread hippie-veggie sandwiches with crazy names, bottomless coffee, oversized
double chocolate cupcakes. We stood in line, reading aloud the names of sandwiches from the blackboard, debating. In the end we ordered two Herbivores and two iced coffees with milk—and a black-and-white cookie to share.

Connor insisted on paying, so I let him. Usually I would have argued and insisted on splitting the bill, thinking that’s what being an independent/​modern/​feminist type of girl was about. This time I didn’t argue too much. Besides, what did I have to prove? He was the richer of us. No doubt his dad handed him a hefty allowance. Not to mention that Harrison was now sole owner of the company—a company that had skyrocketed in value since my dad’s death and days as a partner there …

Obviously I wasn’t bitter.

We found a table for two in the back of the café. A middle-aged man with a long, brown beard, receding hair—in too-short cutoffs and tie-dyed T-shirt—played acoustic Grateful Dead covers on his guitar. All I noticed were his uncut toenails poking out of his Birkenstocks. Sometimes this town felt like a caricature of itself: a mixture of ’60s-era hippies and preppy college students wanting to be associated with … this guy.

Connor’s phone buzzed on the table. Before he could grab it, the image of a girl appeared on the screen. FaceTime. The girl had long, straight, bright blonde hair (too bright in my opinion), a perfect smile. I only glanced for a second but I saw her name,
ISABEL CHASE
, light up across the screen.

“Thinking of you ;)”

I called FaceTime “UglyTime.” That’s what it felt like whenever I used it but Isabel actually looked pretty on the screen.

He grabbed the phone, pressed
IGNORE
, and put it facedown on the table. A few seconds later, the phone buzzed again.

“Who’s Isabel?”

“How’s your sandwich?” he replied.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Connor looked up with a flash of annoyance. “Another reason I hate the phone. Are you one of those people who’ll ask about everyone who calls?”

“Why, is something wrong with that?”

“It’s about privacy, that’s all,” he said.