The One Thing (14 page)

I did not.

All I found was a smattering of crowing, boastful comments about last week’s concert and a few remarks from some random jackass who called himself Cannon Dude. He gossiped like a
housewife, first claiming that, one, Mason was in dire need of a haircut, and then that, two, Carlos had left the concert without as much as a word to the rest of the band, and, most notably, that,
three, it was Gavin who held the key to the Big Secret.

I rolled my eyes. Please. Gavin—the timid kid who played bass guitar and sang backup—was far from the sort of scheming architect it would take to mastermind something like that.
Hell, he’d hardly been able to look at me when I’d met him.

When Mom stepped into my room, I was sideways on my bed with my legs dangling off, moping and grousing and generally feeling sorry for myself while listening to last week’s concert.
Hollering over the music, Mom said, “Mr. Fenstermacher called me today. He said Clarissa has been”—she sighed heavily and walked past me, turning down the
music—“trying to get in touch with you about your English paper, and you’ve been dodging her.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Talking to Mom was a bit like trying to fold a fitted sheet: no matter how hard you try, it always ends up a lumpy, crooked mess. So why
even bother? Mom sat down on my bed, her tiny frame hardly moving the mattress. I was reminded suddenly of how alike we were—both of us petite, small-boned, both of us topped with the same
riot of chestnut curls.

“Maggie,” she said tiredly, “remember our bargain with your principal to keep you from expulsion? We promised him you would stay out of trouble and pick up your grades.”
Out of nowhere something in me felt close to breaking down. She must’ve seen it in my expression because her voice became hesitant, awkward. “Look,” she said, clearing her throat,
“your father and I don’t want to ground you.”

“What would you even ground me from?” I asked. I didn’t know why I’d said it. Maybe because she was sitting so close to me. Or because I was still frustrated about
missing another concert. But for whatever reason, the question had just emerged from me, probably surprising me as much as it surprised her. And now that I’d said it, I was shocked by how
badly I wanted to hear her answer. My parents hadn’t even punished me after I’d gotten busted for my prank. They’d only spoken to me in a quiet, disappointed tone as we’d
driven home from the police station, and then they’d sent me to my room. Fact was, there hadn’t been anything for them to take away from me. I’d already lost everything that
mattered.

“Maggie,” Mom warned wearily, evading the question.

And I had my answer.

I wasn’t crying. Not exactly. But I was finding it impossible to swallow. I wrapped my arms around my torso as she went on to say, “Look, can you just promise me you’ll call
Clarissa today and get started on the project? You can’t afford any more bad grades.”

I closed my eyes and nodded once, waiting for her to leave before I dialed Clarissa’s number.

Clarissa answered on the first ring. “Hey, Clarissa,” I said.

“Maggie!
Holy crow
—I’m so glad you called!” she chirped, and suddenly my phone felt like an inflating balloon with her big, bright voice bursting out of it. I
wedged it against my ear as she went on. “It’s so nice to hear from you! How have you been? Are you mad at me?”

“Um no?” I said. Which was barely even a sentence. In fact, in long-division language, it would probably be considered a remainder. But then, sometimes trying to get a word in with
Clarissa was like attempting to leap between the ropes in a game of double Dutch—she didn’t pause long.

“Phew! I’ve probably left a hundred billion messages on your voice mail, and I never heard back,” she trilled. “Anyway: I’ve missed you! Have you been busy?
Dude
, I’ve been so, so busy—book club and cake-decorating class and Girl Scouts.” She paused for half a beat to catch her breath and possibly to scoop up another thousand
words to jam into my ear. “I’ve been hanging out at Bean and Gone Coffeehouse,” she said. “They have a new barista who’s absolutely
gorgeous
. I know what
you’re thinking”—she dusted her voice with sarcasm in an attempt to sound like me—“‘Clarissa, how do you know he’s gorgeous if you’re blind?’
And I’ll submit this to you: it’s the way he asks me whether I want extra sugar in my iced coffee.” She sighed, all dramatically. “It’s like a poem, the way he says
it. A
poem
, Maggie. Swoon. Element.”

There was a short delay in which I realized she was waiting for me to comment. “Really?” I said. Which was all I could come up with. Discounting my lack of eyesight, I didn’t
have anything in common with the students at Merchant’s. Particularly not Clarissa, who was...well, Clarissa: naturally happy, like a yellow Lab. A yellow Lab that had just chugged a
refrigerator’s worth of Red Bull. She had no problem accepting her blindness. Didn’t even have a clue what she was missing. I wondered what that sort of ignorance would feel like,
wondered what it would be like to not yearn to see the things I loved—the sky and the colors and the
life
.

“Yes,” Clarissa sang. “He works there Wednesday afternoons. You should come with me next week! Ooooo...you should totally come.” She unloaded a rather large breath in my
ear. I could hear her drumming her fingers on something. “Except, do you know what? Our project. Wednesday afternoon is the only possible time this week that I can come over to work on
it.”

“You want to come over Wednesday afternoon?” I said, stalling, my face pointed toward the ceiling.
God, I promise to be a better person and to keep my grades up and to stop
cussing and to get out of bed before noon if you could please please please give me another partner for my English paper because this one is too hyper and too bubbly and too talkative and too
everything and I’m pretty sure that my brain will melt out of my ears if I have to sit in a room with her for hours on end.

But apparently the only person listening was my mother. Because right then she cracked open my door and said, “Tell Clarissa that Wednesday will work just fine.”

I
didn’t see Mason for several days, although he might as well have been lurking over my shoulder the entire time by the way he weighed on my
mind. I spent an indecent amount of hours wishing I’d stood my ground in his room that day, wishing I’d screamed or stomped off or slammed the door or whatever, instead of slinking out
like I’d done something wrong.

Which I hadn’t.

For the most part.

Anyway, by the time we finally ran into each other, I had a half-dozen defensive sentences already worked out in my head. I was ready for battle. I expected fireworks, after all. Confrontations.
But what happened when we first crossed paths in the Miltons’ living room was...nothing. Mason just breezed by as though totally unaware of my presence. After he’d walked past, I turned
to stare at his back, swallowing my words. Arguing my point now would just make me appear desperate, guilty. And so I said nothing. And the next day? Nothing, nothing, and nothing some more.

And so it went, day after day: Mason and I ignored each other.

Okay, so he ignored me while I pretended to ignore him. But it was virtually the same thing. In my defense, he was hard to figure out, so he was hard to ignore. It wasn’t just the Loose
Cannons thing. It was everything about him. He always wore black T-shirts and jeans. Always. Even when it was ridiculously hot. Also, I’d noticed that there was something interesting in his
gait that suggested
I have important things to do
while at the same time said
I’m in no hurry
. Furthermore, he had this peculiar yet adorable habit of sucking on his lower
lip when he was deep in thought. Which—I was embarrassed to admit, even to myself—completely disconnected me from my brain.

Regardless of all that, there was something about the condescending set to his jaw whenever I was nearby, something about the way he always stood with his back toward me, something about the
sound of his size-Sasquatch boots slamming into the floor as he walked past that left me with the distinct impression that I’d come out on the losing side of our argument. And it grated me to
no end.

And so several days later, as Ben and I sat next to each other on his floor playing video games, I said, “I’d appreciate it if you would kindly remove the burr from Mason’s
ass,” to which Ben said, “He’s only being a jerk because he thinks you are faking your blindness,” to which I said, “You’d better tell him otherwise, Benjamin
Milton,” to which he said, “I did, like, twenty thousand times, but he doesn’t believe me.”

So that was that. Mason thought I was a pathetic, lovesick, starry-eyed fan who was using his little brother to get near him, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Naturally, Ben defended his brother. “He’ll come around to you at some point, Thera,” he said. “It just takes him longer to get to know people. He’s been a little
quiet since Dad died.” This was the first time Ben had mentioned his dad. I’d been respecting his silence. After all, I knew what it felt like to have a closet stuffed full of
skeletons. I had an entire graveyard crammed into mine. So I just sat there and let Ben talk. “It was horrible when he died,” he went on. “I cried like a volcano for
days.”

“A volcano?” I asked.

He raised his chin and straightened his posture, suddenly looking like a forty-year-old man crammed into a skinny, ten-year-old frame. “Yeah. Like, sort of explosively, you know? When
stuff like that happens, you have to get it out. So you can move on. It took me a while, but I’m okay now. I miss my dad, but I’m all right.” He sighed and stared out the window
for some time. “But Mason?” he went on, turning toward me. “He never cried. He kept his feelings inside. The only time he was a volcano was when some kid at school teased him
about failing three chemistry tests in a row, and he hauled off and punched him. Square in the jaw. Knocked him out.” Another sigh. “He got suspended for a week.”

I chewed on my lip, feeling slightly less angry with Mason, but no less irritated with him. And while I was fully aware that, yes, on one level I sort of despised him, I was also aware that on
another level I was completely infatuated with him. And it was infinitely annoying. What bothered me most was that I knew he could act like a kind, decent human being. I’d witnessed the
phenomenon. So why couldn’t he cut me a little slack?

Okay, so I wasn’t a model citizen. I didn’t always make the best decisions. I wasn’t the kindest person in the world. But still. If I were a groupie, wouldn’t I be
falling all over myself when Mason was in the room? Yes. Did I fall all over myself when Mason was in the room? No.

At least not visibly.

What Mason and I needed, I decided finally, was to clear the air a little. Talk. While it was unwise to tell him everything, I could tell him what was important—that I wasn’t using
Ben to get near him. I owed Mason that much. So a couple hours later, when Ben headed to the bathroom with an extra-thick encyclopedia, I went looking for Mason.

It wasn’t difficult to find him. I crept quietly toward a guitar riff that drifted from Mason’s bedroom, stopping short when my feet hit the doorway. I’d been hoping I
wouldn’t be able to see Mason, that maybe Ben’s light, which had swelled some over the past few days to bleed through much of the house, would not include Mason’s room—the
scene of the crime.

But it did.

And while I was cautiously optimistic about the steady growth of my eyesight, the dim outer edge of light that graced Mason’s room lent it a mysterious, dusky quality that made me nervous
for some reason. Mason was sitting on his bed, his guitar in his lap. Not reclining against his headboard, but sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed—a position shockingly childlike
and straightforward. He had a vague, tender honesty about him, an openness. He was young. Vulnerable. Simple.

He reminded me of Ben.

Clearly unaware that I was watching him, he was humming softly—using that same alluring tone that twisted my stomach into exquisite knots every time he opened his mouth, the tone that I
hated and loved with equal ferocity. Other than an occasional rustle of encyclopedia pages from the bathroom, the rest of the house was a silent audience, listening along with me. Biting my bottom
lip, I stayed right there, one hand on the doorjamb, and watched him. I’d never actually seen him play the guitar. Not like this. Sure, a few days ago he’d sat in the kitchen and
plucked absently at his guitar while Ben and I had played Would You Rather? But this was something more. Tonight his expression was lost somewhere in the space between notes. Tonight he was just
Mason. Finally I wiped my palms on my shorts, stepped into the room, and said, “Um. Mason? I was wondering if we could, you know, talk.”

The humming stopped, and Mason’s fingers hitched slightly on the guitar strings. And then, without even a glance in my direction, he continued playing.

I’d been expecting this. And in some ways, it made things easier. I straightened my posture and said, “Look...” I kept thinking that the rest of my sentence would crawl out of
my vocal cords on its own, but that didn’t happen. So I cleared my throat and forced it out. “I just wanted you to know that I really care about Ben, and I’d never do anything to
hurt him. He’s been hurt enough in the past.”