Tell Me Three Things (6 page)

T
heo is wearing jeans that are so tight it looks like they are thigh tattoos, and a sleeveless leather vest. I’m pretty sure he approaches getting dressed as an act in costuming. Today he’s a buff and surprisingly hot Hells Angel.

“Look at you checking out my guns,” he says, and opens the fridge. He takes out two fancy pressed juices and throws me one. “Here. This will keep you from getting rickets.”

I’m perched on one of the kitchen stools, reading. This enormous house tricked me once again: I thought I was home alone. Had I known Theo was here, I wouldn’t have left my room with my exfoliating clay mask on. Not my best look, costume or otherwise.

“What the hell is this?” I take a swig of juice, which is green and cloudy and, it turns out, revolting. I fight my gag reflex.

“Kale, ginger, cucumber, and beet juice. Probably should have started you with one more fruit-heavy. Forgot you aren’t an advanced juicer.”

“An advanced juicer? Really? You know that sometimes talking to you is like watching a reality show,” I say. “It’s amusing only because it can’t possibly be real.”

“This is all real, baby.” Theo again flashes his impressive muscles.

“Not too shabby,” I say, referring to his arms. “I dig the biker look.”

“Biker? I was going for rocker.”

“That too.”

“But healthy, muscular rocker, not strung-out, skinny rocker, right?”

“Definitely the former.”

Theo looks relieved, and for the first time, I see that maybe he isn’t all confidence all the time. Now that I know what to expect, I take another sip of my juice. There is something oddly virtuous about its grossness. I can’t decide if I love it or hate it, which, it turns out, is exactly how I feel about Theo.

“Are you going to Heather’s party tonight? It’s going to be insane. Her dad and his new girlfriend are in Thailand, and he has this huge mansion in the Hills. They have mad bank.”

Wait, SN used the expression “mad bank” recently.

Doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself.

Those words are common enough, right?

I look at Theo, point to my mask.

“What do you think?”

“Oh no. Please don’t make me have to take pity on you and take you with me,” Theo says.

“What a lovely invitation, but no thanks. I have homework to do.”

“Don’t believe you. It’s Saturday night.”

“I have nothing to wear.”

“That I believe. But I bet we could rustle something up.”

“Seriously, appreciate the pity and all that, but maybe next time?”

“Your loss,” he says, and jumps off his stool and attempts to fist-bump me. “Don’t smoke all my weed while I’m gone.”

Are you at Heather’s party?

Maybe. Are you?

If you were there, wouldn’t you know whether I was too?

don’t get all sly on me. Heather’s parties are HUGE.

You’re the one who likes to be all sly.

does this count as our first fight? ;)

OMG, did you just emoji me?

technically it was an emoticon. and you countered with an “OMG,” so i’m pretty sure we’re even. not to get all early ’00s on you, but shall we IM? this refreshing my email every two seconds is annoying. though I will miss your subject lines…

I stop writing. Feel my brow with my hands. I do have a tendency to knit my eyebrows, have always done it. My mom used to warn me that I was going to get a permanent wrinkle if I kept it up, just like she had. But hers was an exclamation point right in the middle of her forehead. It exuded enthusiasm, maybe even joy. Not worry.

Do I look sad all the time? I hope not. I don’t want to be the sad girl. That’s not who I am. Actually, that’s not true. This is truer: that’s not how I want to be known.

B
efore my mom died, Scarlett and I used to talk about the concept of the
perfect day.
What would have to happen—from the moment we woke up to the moment we went to sleep—to make that day better than all the others before it. We didn’t dream big. At least, I didn’t. My focus was mostly on the absence of things. I wanted a day during which I didn’t stub my toe or spill on my shirt or feel shy or awkward or unattractive. I wouldn’t miss the bus or forget a change of clothes for gym. When I looked in the mirror after lunch, there wouldn’t be food in my teeth or something in my nose.

Sure, it wasn’t all omissions. I’d sprinkle in a first kiss, though I couldn’t have told you who—some nameless, faceless guy who in the fantasy made me feel comfortable and known and also pretty. Maybe I imagined eating my mom’s pancakes for breakfast before school, which always came in the form of my initials long after I was too old for that sort of thing because it turns out you are never too old for that sort of thing. And her veggie lasagna for dinner. I loved her veggie lasagna.

Nothing crazy.

Who knows? Maybe it would have been pizza day at school. Our school had surprisingly good pizza.

A perfect day didn’t have to include a fantasy trip to the Caribbean or skydiving or hugging someone’s leathered back on a motorcycle, though all of that and more was of course on Scarlett’s list.

But I’ve always liked simple things.

Now, on the other side of
everything,
I can’t wrap my head around a perfect day. Now, without my mother, what could that even look like?

I think back to before,
before before before,
and they all seem like perfect days. Who cares about a stubbed toe or the hint of a booger in my nose? I had a mother, and not just
insert generic mother here,
but
my mother,
who I loved in a way that not everyone gets to love their mom. I mean, I know on some level, everyone
loves
their mother because of the whole
she is your mother
thing, but I didn’t love my mom just because she was my mother. I loved my mom because she was cool and interesting and warm and listened to me and continued to make me pancakes in the shape of my initials because somehow, even though I didn’t, she always understood that I’d never be too old for that sort of thing. I loved my mom because she read the entire Harry Potter series out loud to me, and when we were finished, she too wanted to start all over again.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last two years, it’s that memory is fickle. When I read Harry, I can no longer hear my mother’s voice, but I picture her next to me, and when even that fails, I imagine the weight of someone against me, an arm against my arm, and pretend that’s enough.

I loved my mom because she was mine.

And I was hers.

And that belonging-to-each-other thing will never happen for me again.

Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they’re only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.

“
S
orry, we only hire Starbucks-experienced baristas,” the guy at Starbucks tells me when I inquire about an after-school job. He looks like he’s in his early twenties and spends most of his milk-steaming money on hair-modeling clay. “This is a serious job. We take it very seriously.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, because now he mouths words I can’t quite make out.

“Sorry, just practicing my lines.” He shows me a script he has hidden under the counter. “Have an audition later. I’m really an actor.”

Coffee Guy, whose name—if his tag is to be believed—is actually Guy, smiles, but it’s an insincere smile, the kind that looks like it’s doing you a favor.

“I just did a guest bit on that new show
Filthy Meter Maids.
”

“Cool,” I say, wondering if the polite thing would be to say he looks familiar. He doesn’t look familiar. “So how did you become a Starbucks-experienced barista if they only hire Starbucks-experienced baristas? Chicken, egg, right?”

“Huh?”

“I just mean, how’d you get the job?”

“Oh, right. I lied.”

“You lied?”

“I said I’d worked at Starbucks before. For years.”

“And they believed you?” I think about going home, editing my résumé, adding a line—
Starbucks Oak Park, 2013–2014
—and coming back tomorrow. But then I picture my first day as a faux-experienced Starbucks employee. No doubt I’d scald myself or get yelled at by frustrated customers. People are nasty before they’ve had their coffee.

“I guess I’m a very good actor.” Coffee Guy smiles again, and now it seems he’s saying three things all at once. The words he’s speaking out loud, the ones he’s practicing from under the counter, and the unspoken ones his smile can’t help but say, which is
You’re welcome.

After Starbucks, I get shot down at the Gap, the pressed juicery, a gluten-free vegan bakery, and Namaste Yoga. I am almost ready to give up hope when I notice a tiny bookstore called Book Out Below! tucked next to a designer kids’ clothing store. No help wanted sign, but still worth a shot.

Immediately, the smell of books greets me, and I feel at home. This is what my house in Chicago used to smell like: paper. I cross my fingers in my pocket and say a quick prayer as I make my way through the stacks to the desk in the back. Normally, I would take my time, run my hands along the spines, see if there’s anything that catches my eye to possibly borrow from the library later. But what I need right now is a job, not more reading material. As it is, even without any semblance of a social life, I’m up late every night trying to keep up with homework and PSAT studying. And though I desperately needed the caffeine today, I couldn’t even buy a Diet Coke from the stupid Wood Valley caf. (SN was right. The credit card machines have a ten-dollar minimum. I have $8.76 to my name. I was going to ask my dad for money this morning, but Rachel was there, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her reaching into her wallet and handing me a twenty.)

“Can I help you, dear?” the saleswoman asks me, and seeing her face makes me realize that since moving here, I haven’t seen a single person with wrinkles until now. The women in LA all have taut skin, the kind pumped full of injectables that render them ageless, just as believably forty as seventy. This woman, on the other hand, has bobbed gray hair and crisscrossed lines at her lips and wears the sort of linen tunic they sell in expensive hippie stores. She’s probably the same age as Rachel, though they could be different species. Where Rachel is hard, she’s soft.

“Hi, do you happen to be hiring?” I ask, and hear Scar in my head:
Channel your inner goddess. Be confident, strong, undeniable.
Scar’s favorite word is “undeniable,” actually, which tells you everything you need to know about her. My favorite word, on the other hand, is “waffle.” Both a delicious breakfast food and a verb.

The woman eyes me carefully, takes in my Vans and my ratty scarf and my leather motorcycle jacket and my hair, which is pulled up into a messy loop on top of my head. Maybe I should have gone more professional, not that I own a suit or anything. I even had to borrow clothes from Scarlett for my mother’s funeral. Ruined her favorite blazer by association.

“That depends. Are you a book person?” the woman asks.

I put my bag down on the counter and open it. Take out the six books I checked out of the library last week. When we moved, I got my library card. Figured it was the one thing that was guaranteed to be free.

“This is what I’m reading now. ‘The Waste Land’ and
Crime and Punishment
are for school, but the rest are for fun.”

“You’re reading a nonfiction book about Nazi Germany for fun?” she asks, pointing to
The Lost
by Daniel Mendelsohn.

“I wanted to mix it up. It looked interesting. It’s about a guy trying to learn about what happened to his family.”

“Huh. Book three of an apocalyptic YA series, which shows you are willing to follow through. Oooh, and some old-school Gloria Steinem. I like it. Eclectic taste.”

“I’ve always been a reader. It’s in my DNA,” I say, and hold my breath.

“Here’s the thing,” she says, and I can already hear the apologetic start of a rejection.

No, I need this to go my way.

“Please. Listen, I don’t need a ton of hours, unless you need someone for a lot of hours, and then I can need them. What I mean is, I’m flexible. I’m available any day after school and on weekends. I love books, I love your store, even its punny name, though I’m not sure about the exclamation point, and I just think this would be a good fit. Me. Here. I have a résumé if you need it.”

I take out my pathetic résumé, which is filled with babysitting references and a short stint at Claire’s selling barrettes to snotty seven-year-olds and, of course, my illustrious two years at the Smoothie King. My after-school activities (yearbook, newspaper, photography club, Spanish club, poetry club), my GPA at FDR, and a short section titled Interests and Hobbies: Reading. Writing. Mourning. (Okay, that’s not on there, but it should be. I’m a champ at that.)

I had to change the font to 16-point Courier so my résumé would take up a whole page.

“Where do you go to school?”

“Wood Valley?” I say it like a question. Damn you, nervous uptalking. “I mean, I’m a junior there? I just moved?”

“My son is at Wood Valley too. He’s a senior. Do you know him? Liam Sandler?”

“Sorry, I’m really new. I don’t know anyone yet.”

“I like you,” she says, and her smile is the opposite of Coffee Guy’s. Reassuring, not self-affirming. “Let me talk to Liam. He’s been complaining that he wants more time off to practice with his band. If he wants to give up his hours, they’re all yours.”

“Thanks so much. My number’s on there, so just call me. Whenever.” I’m hesitant to leave even though it’s obvious I should go. My fate is now tied to some Wood Valley senior who wants more time to bang on his drums. I hope he wants to practice every afternoon and every weekend.

I want to move out of Rachel’s house and move in here, sleep under the stacks and make Cup-a-Soup from the water cooler in the corner. I want this gray-haired woman to talk books with me and help me with my homework. I want her to tell me I’ll do okay on the PSATs even though I don’t have a tutor twice a week like Theo does. I want her to tell me everything is going to be okay.

And if not all that, I at least want her to give me a discount.

I gather my books and walk toward the door, head down. Pull out my phone to text Scar.

Her words make me feel lighter, and I find myself smiling at my phone. I am not alone. Not really. Just geographically isolated.

Don’t walk and text.
That’s my first thought when I find myself on the floor of the bookstore, right on the threshold, holding my throbbing forehead. I see stars. Not the celebrity kind my dad promised when he tried to get me excited about moving to Los Angeles, but the cartoon kind that signal a concussion. I have no idea how I got here. Why it hurts to turn my head, or how my knees buckled, or why I feel perilously close to crying for about the millionth time since I moved to this place.

“Are you okay?” a voice asks. I don’t look up, not yet, because I think if I move my head I might throw up, and that’s the only thing that could make this any worse. Humiliation has not kicked in, and I’d like to stave that off for as long as possible, not compound it. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Clearly,” I say, and suddenly I’m eye to eye with a guy about my age, who has squatted down to check out the damage to my face. He has longish dirty-blond hair and dark brown eyes and a hint of a pimple on his chin. A much better-looking version of Adam Kravitz: the boy next door. Sweet and distracted and probably smart and kind to his mother and will grow up to invent something like Tumblr. The kind of guy you’d probably want to kiss—especially if he made you laugh—and whose hand you definitely wouldn’t mind holding. I blink, notice his shaggy hair again. I know him from somewhere.

“What was that?” I ask.

“That was Earl.” He motions to a large object he is carrying on his back.

“Earl?”

“My guitar,” he says.

“Your guitar is named Earl?” I ask, which is probably the least relevant question to the matter at hand. I should have asked for some ice or a bag of frozen peas, at the very least a Tylenol. I can already feel a lump forming.

“Yup. Are you sure you’re okay? I whacked you hard.”

“I’ll live.” He puts out his hand and helps me stand up, and I find I’m more stable on my feet than I would have guessed.

“I’m really sorry. Totally my fault.” He pockets his phone—maybe he was walking and texting too?—and puts his guitar down against one of the stacks. There’s a WHVS sticker on his case. Ah, now I place him. Of course. He was witness to my very first, but not last, Wood Valley humiliation. The guy who interned at Google and traveled around India. He looks different in this context.

“Just thought of some lyrics and wanted to get them down before I forgot.”

“Wait, you’re Liam, right?” I ask.

“That depends on whether you’re planning to sue me,” he says. Now that I’ve put two and two together, I can see his mother in his face. The same generous grin. I wonder what kind of music his band plays. I bet it’s something folksy, and that they’re not half bad. Surely he
should
practice more.

“Nope.” I smile.

“Well then, what can I do for you? I clearly owe you one.”

I hear Scar loud and clear in my head:
Be undeniable.
And so I am.

“I got a job!” I announce when I get back to Rachel’s later. I’m so excited that I have to tell someone, even if that someone is my disinterested stepbrother, who would never lower himself to do something as mundane as work. I find him on his bed, playing with his laptop. “And before you throw another fit, it’s not at Ralph’s. It’s a place you and your friends will never, ever go. So don’t you worry.”

“I’ve never seen you so animated. It’s kind of adorable,” Theo says. “So where will I never ever go? Oh wait, let me guess.”

He puts down his laptop and puts his hands to his head, as if he’s thinking very hard.

“KFC?”

“Nope.”

“The batting cages?”

“Nope. But I like this game.”

“The ridiculously delicious pretzel place.”

“Not even close.”

Rachel sticks her head in the door, and I feel that squeeze in my stomach that always accompanies an interaction with her. I’m smart enough to know it’s not really her fault, that my feelings toward her probably have little to do with the reality of who she is, but still, I can’t help it. I don’t want to know her, don’t want this random person my father has inexplicably chosen to marry to be an integral part of my life.

“What happened? I heard happy squeals!” she says. She can’t help herself; she looks from Theo to me and me to Theo, and her smile is so emphatic that I can see the fillings in the back of her mouth. She is almost thinking out loud:
Maybe this whole thing will work after all.

“Nothing,” I say, and when her face falls, I feel guilty. I don’t mean to cut her down, but I just don’t have it in me to give her this. To hand over the one good thing that has happened since I moved here.

“Sorry. I’ll leave you guys to it!” she says, as always too loud, and continues down the hall. I wonder if I’ll hear about this later from my dad, if she’ll tell him that I was rude and he’ll ask me to be nicer.

I should be nicer.

“All right, I give up. Tell your big brother,” Theo says, not at all seeming to notice how I talked to his mother, or maybe not much caring.

“Ew, that sounds so wrong.”

“I know, right? Okay, so where?”

“Book Out Below! You know, the bookstore?”

“Ah, how appropriate. But I actually have been there, if you must know. I am highly literate.”

“I’m sure you are,” I say, which is the truth. Theo recently beat me on a physics quiz, even though I know for a fact he didn’t study the night before. The kid is smart. It seems, with the possible exception of Tweedledee and Tweedledumber, everyone at Wood Valley is smart, or at least motivated. Here it’s cool to try, which is funny, because trying is why I wasn’t particularly cool in Chicago. By the transitive property you would think I’d be cool here, but no. Then again, I casually reference things like the transitive property, so maybe there are other, more valid reasons for my lack of popularity.

“So, what the hell happened to your face?” Theo asks.