Tell Me Three Things (15 page)

“You and Ethan are friends, right?” Theo asks, seemingly apropos of nothing, and yet I’m happy for the change of topic. I don’t want to think about my parents. About how little control we have over our own lives.

“Yeah, I guess. Sort of. I don’t know,” I say.

“I saw you eating lunch together.”

“We’re partners in English. The ‘Waste Land’ thingy.”

“Right. It’s just that—and not to get all big brother on you—”

“I’m pretty sure I’m older,” I say.

“Whatever. Just be careful with him. I’m not trying to throw shade or anything, but I get the sense that he’s…trouble.”

“In a Taylor Swift way? Or like, for real?” “Damaged” was the word Dri used, which makes him sound like a defective iPhone.

“I don’t know. It could just be rumors. But I think he could be into some heavy shit. Like his brother.”

“What do you mean? Like drugs?” Ethan’s brother must be older and out of the house. He’s never mentioned him. Funny how having no brothers or sisters myself, and no aunts and uncles (both of my parents were only children), I always forget about other people’s. It just seems so unnatural to me, the idea of a family being more than three, shaped in a way that is not a triangle, though come to think of it, mine is now 2-D: a line.

“Yep.”

“I don’t think Ethan’s on drugs.” Of course, I have no basis for defending him. I don’t know what he does or even where he goes. Three times this week alone, I’ve seen him leaving campus before lunch, coming back just in time for English. He arrives dazed and withdrawn, but then again, he always seems dazed and withdrawn. And onstage, he looked altogether unfamiliar, like someone who could easily spend his days and nights shooting up.

“I hope you’re right. He always looks pretty rough, though, and his family is just so screwed up. You have no idea.”

“I’m so tired of the Wood Valley learning curve,” I say, wondering how different it would be—how different
I
would be—if I’d grown up here with these people, had known their families and histories and awkward phases as well as I know my own. It’s so inefficient playing catch-up.

“I’m just saying be careful, that’s all,” Theo says.

I think of Ethan’s eyes—the pockets of shiny purple underneath, the swelling of his lids, the bright blue center—and I wonder if I’m capable of being careful. Because I think of those eyes, open and looking at me, closed and asleep at Gem’s party; I think of his hands fixing me a plate, almost touching my banged-up face, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss them: his eyes, his hands too.

All of him.

His damaged parts.

All of him.

When I come home to find Rachel in my room, I remember that this is not my room at all. This is Rachel’s guest room, and my sleeping here confirms what I already know: I am merely an interloper. I glance around, wondering if I left my laptop open. I don’t need her to see my IMs with SN, or, God forbid, my Google history, which has way too many questions that begin with “Is it normal to…” Phew, my cover is closed, tattoos visible even from the door. No, nothing for her to see here. Bras and thongs away in the drawers, the dirty ones in the wicker box Gloria has considerately provided. My tampons too are hidden. Even my toothbrush is tucked into the bathroom cabinet, banished, along with all of my makeup, so that Rachel’s counters remain empty except for her self-congratulatory soaps.

“Oh, hey,” she says, pretending she wasn’t just looking at the only thing I have on display: the photo of my mom and me. “I was waiting for you.”

“Okay,” I say, cool but not impolite. I am mad at my dad, which by extension may now include Rachel, but I don’t know how these stepparent things work. My parents were usually a single unit, had very little patience for me playing one off the other. Usually, if I was mad at one, I was mad at both. But Rachel is still a stranger. Her vows to my father have done little to change that.

“Your dad says you’re not talking to him,” she says, and sits down on my bed, or her bed, or whatever. She is sitting where I sleep, and I would prefer she didn’t.

“I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” I say, and then instantly regret it. Recent circumstances with my dad notwithstanding, I don’t do confrontation. When someone bumps into me in the hallway, my reflex is to say sorry.

But maybe I’m not sorry. Who is she to get involved in this? I didn’t marry her.

“You’re right. That’s between your dad and you. I just wanted to give you this. Well, we wanted to give it to you, but your dad thought since it was my idea, I should be the one…Just here.” Rachel hands me a folded piece of paper.

“What is it?” I ask, wondering if it’s an eviction letter or something. A quick glance makes clear it’s not a check. Damn. That could have been useful.

“Open it,” she says, and so I do. A flight itinerary: LAX to ORD for next weekend. Round trip.

“I don’t understand.”

“We thought you might want to go home for a visit. See Scarlett, hang out with your old friends for a few days. I heard you were homesick,” she says, and she picks up the photo, a conscious decision to look at my mom and me and to let me know she’s looking. She examines our details: how I held on to my mom’s leg, like an anchor. Or maybe Rachel is not looking at me at all but is trying to get a sense of my mother, of her husband’s first wife. I want her to put it down—I don’t like how her fingers are leaving tiny smudges.

“Who said that I was homesick?” I ask, which is a stupid question. Of course I’m homesick, the longing sometimes so overwhelming that I’ve even marveled at how accurate the word is, how the feeling comes over me like the stomach flu. Violent, unforgiving. No cure, just waiting for it to relent.

“Scarlett’s parents called your dad,” Rachel says, and finally, finally puts down my photo. It takes all my willpower not to move it so it’s facing the bed, not the door. To wipe the glass clean with some Windex. Erase her fingerprints. Reclaim it as mine. “But how could you not be? This has been a huge adjustment. For all of us.”

Is that regret flickering across her face? Does she wish she never married my father, that there was an easy way to undo their joint mistake?

“Wait, what?” Scarlett’s parents called my dad? Did they tell him about my plans for their basement? What did Scarlett tell them? I’m not sure if I should be angry or thrilled, because right now, I have in my hand a plane ticket, an actual plane ticket that will take me from here to home, to Scarlett and to a life that’s familiar, in under six hours door to door. We didn’t fly out here when we moved. Instead, Dad and I caravanned our two cars through too many states. The world flat and devoid of life: miles upon miles of nothing but dust. The occasional stop at McDonald’s to eat and pee, a gas station to refill, a cheap motel to sleep. My mind as blank and empty as the roads. As numb as SN feels playing Xbox.

We barely talked, my dad and I, on the trip. He might have tried, I don’t know. Only once did Rachel come up, over lunch at an Arby’s, as if he were answering a question I hadn’t even asked.

“Rachel’s an extraordinary woman. You’ll see. Don’t worry, you’ll see,” he said, though I hadn’t said I was worried. I hadn’t said anything at all.

“Apparently, Scarlett’s mom said she was concerned about you. And frankly, so am I,” Rachel says now. “Go. Enjoy. And then come back to us refreshed. Your dad has…well, he saved my life. He’s totally real and normal and understands what I’ve been through, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. We’re so different, but together we’re stronger. Whole. But I don’t want you to think that I don’t realize that this—all of this—has come at a cost to you.”

She’s matter-of-fact. Her voice a normal decibel for once.

“Everyone in this house understands how hard it can be to start over,” she says.

I look at my ticket. I leave Friday morning, get back Sunday night.

“What about school?”

“Theo will email you notes and stuff, and we’ll let your teachers know it’s an excused absence. You deserve this.” Rachel pats the bed next to her, invites me to sit. I’ve been pacing, I realize now, midstep, on my second lap around the room.

I sit, stare at the ticket. Coffee with SN/Caleb on Thursday, his mask unveiled, I hope, and then I’m off. I’ll miss my weekly “Waste Land” meeting with Ethan, but he’ll understand. Scarlett and I will watch bad television and pop microwave popcorn and eat real pizza, not this whole-wheat-crust crap they have in California. I will talk and she will listen, and there will be no need to explain everything or have anything explained; we’ve known each other too long for all of that. I even want to drink that green tea her mom always brews, the one I used to think tasted like pee but that now makes me think of home.

“Thank you,” I say, and force myself to look Rachel in the eye. My dad didn’t do this, I realize. Big gestures are not his style, or at least, they weren’t before he married Rachel. And a plane ticket was never something that could be so casually purchased. “I…”

My eyes water, and I stare straight ahead to get the tears under control. Not here, not now. The tears only seem to come when they are least wanted, almost never in the quiet depths of night, when the emptiness is so real, it feels like a phantom limb. When tears would actually feel something like relief.

“No problem,” Rachel says, and stands up. “But just so you know, there is one condition.”

I wait for it. What could she possibly want from me? Rent money? For me to make up with my dad?

“You have to come back.”