The Rules of You and Me (9 page)

“
Just someone from back home,” I told him. “She feels the need to keep me updated on every little thing that happens.”

“
I can see how that would get annoying,” Jude commented.

I sighed as I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. “It’s not that it’s annoying really. It’s just that I don’t care. It’s weird. A year ago, I was happy in the middle of all of that stuff. I was Hannah Cohen, straight A student, president of half the clubs in school, on the track to being valedictorian and heading off to Yale. I had the boyfriend that everyone liked. The parents that everyone knew. I was the girl that everyone wanted to be.”

“
So what happened to that girl?” Jude asked.

“
I wish I knew. It all started to seem wrong. I realized that every part of my life was nothing more than an image people saw, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be that fake person anymore. But I don’t know who the real Hannah is behind it.”

I bit my lip. I had said too much, let him in too close. It was hard to remember being the person I was a year ago. It seemed like a dream, like it had never been real. Which it hadn’t. The appearance I kept up was my parents’ creation, not mine.

Maybe dating Zac Greeley had been the first crack in that persona. Everyone thought we were an odd couple, and Natalie never understood why I dated him, though she put up with him for me. Zac was a nice guy, but he was unique. He was constantly on the move, unable to focus on one thing for very long, and he always came up with insane ideas. My mom hated him at first sight. Her nose had scrunched up at Zac’s wrinkled T-shirt with a hole near the collar and his orange sneakers that were held together with duct tape. The more Mom hated him, the more I was determined to be with him.

But it all got to be too much. Zac had a way of seeing inside people, knowing things you didn’t want him to know. And he had gotten too dangerously close to the truth about my family. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I’d get through this summer, then I would go home and forget about everyone here and be the Hannah Cohen everyone expected me to be.

“
Maybe the real Hannah is a girl who climbs to the top of Chimney Rock,” Jude said.

I glared at him, but he just grinned. He leaned back against the rail, his elbows propped up on the wood and his ankles crossed. My gaze traveled over him, taking in the casual, relaxed posture. This was a guy who had it all figured out. He could be anyone he wanted to be and didn’t care what people thought of him. I wished I could get inside his head and find out how to be that person too.

“
The one thing I do know is that the real Hannah keeps her feet on the ground.” I wiped sweat off my forehead. “I’m too tired to make it to the top anyway. It’s like a hundred degrees out here.”

Jude straightened. “All right,” he said. “We’ll try again another day. I’ll get you up there eventually.”

We started back down the stairs and I breathed a sigh of relief once my feet touched the parking lot. My sandals slapped across the asphalt as we walked toward Jude’s dusty gray truck. I couldn’t believe I had agreed to ride in that thing. It groaned and creaked as we had made our way up the mountain toward Chimney Rock and I was sure it would die along one of those hairpin curves. But it had miraculously made it, and I had to admit it was nice to sit back and let someone else worry about not driving off the side of the mountains.

“
What’s so great about Chimney Rock anyway?” I asked as we buckled ourselves into the truck.

“
You’d know if you ever went up to the top,” Jude said.

“
Give me a reason to go.”

Jude eased the truck out of the parking lot and back down the narrow road away from the state park. “It’s just this place where I always feel like I’m on top of the world. Where nothing can get me, you know? Whenever I go up there, it makes me feel like all my other problems are so small and insignificant compared to the big picture.”

I watched the trees pass by as we rumbled down the mountain. A sense of longing washed over me. That was what I needed, a place to get so far up that everything else couldn’t touch me. My parents, Yale, and the people back home would all disappear into the landscape below.

But I couldn’t go up there. Even the idea of being so high made a cold sweat break out along my neck.

I shifted in my seat, tugging at the belt to relieve some of the pressure in my chest.

“
So,” I said, searching for a change of subject, “what’s with your truck anyway?”

Jude glanced at me. “What do you mean?”

“
Why is it unpainted?”

“
Oh.” Jude ran his teeth over his upper lip and adjusted the cracked rearview mirror. “It’s a work in progress. I haven’t gotten around to painting it yet.”

“
How long have you been working on it?”

“
A year,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. “And somewhere in that year, you never found the time to paint your truck?”

Jude shrugged, but didn’t say anything else. His expression turned blank, like he had shut down. I shifted in my seat as the silence deepened. The tension had become thick within the small cab of the unpainted truck. We rode the rest of the way back to Aunt Lydia’s house without speaking a word.

I squished the wet clay between my fingers as I examined the lump on the table in front of me. To my left, Ashton expertly added sloping curves into her vase. Even Kate’s bowl actually looked like a bowl. Mine still looked like a lump of gray clay.

“
How do you do that?” I asked, leaning toward Ashton to whisper the question. At the front of the room, the instructor was helping an older woman with her vase. All around me, people worked hard at their pottery, barely using any effort to manipulate the clay. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself, but nothing seemed to be working as easily as the instructor had led me to believe.

“
Hold your hands like this,” Ashton said, showing me the correct posture again.

I tried, and this time the clay rose up in a column. But then it collapsed, bending over in the middle so that it looked sad and pathetic.

“
Tell me again why we’re doing this?” I said.

“
It’s fun,” Kate answered.

“
It’s torture for the art challenged,” I said.

“
Everyone has an artist in them,” Ashton said. “Didn’t you ever draw when you were a kid?”

“
Sure, but at some point, I realized that I sucked and so I gave it up and focused on things I was actually good at.” I sighed as I looked at my clay-caked hands. “I’m going to go wash up and wait for you guys to finish.”

Another thing I can check off the list,
I thought as I scrubbed at my hands over the stained sink in the corner of the room. Mark would be happy when we resumed our sessions in the fall. Attempting to be artistic in the little pottery studio at Blue Ridge Crafts was certainly stepping far outside my comfort zone.

Ashton and Kate were still putting the finishing touches on their works, so I wandered around the hall outside the room and studied the artwork on the walls. I had never really been into art or paid much attention to it. I used to visit Aunt Lydia’s gallery and pretend to be interested in the newest paintings she had acquired, but really, it all looked the same to me. I could look at pictures of the Mona Lisa or Starry Night in a book and understand that someone had deemed them masterpieces, but nothing really called to me in the paintings. I didn’t know what made them anymore special than any other painting by another artist.

I stopped in front of one painting, feeling something familiar about it. It featured a small town rising out of the trees that surrounded it. The buildings weren’t very tall and there was nothing remarkable about it. But something held me there in front of it for a long time as I studied the colors and the shapes within the painting.

I looked at the brass tag underneath the painting. “WILLOWBROOK” BY LYDIA MONTGOMERY, ASHEVILLE, NC.

This was one of Aunt Lydia’s paintings. And not just any painting, but one of my home.
Our
home.

I was still standing in front of the painting when Ashton and Kate finally found me.

“
How long has this painting been here?” I asked.

“
A long time,” Ashton said. “Lydia donated it after she moved here. I think it’s the last painting she actually finished.”

Why had Aunt Lydia given this painting to the studio? Had it been too hard for her to look at it and remember home? Or did she just want to forget?

Ashton and Kate talked as we left Blue Ridge Crafts and I followed along, still thinking about the painting. I barely noticed when they stopped, so I crashed into Ashton’s back.

“
Ouch,” I said. “Sorry.”

But Ashton didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at the ground, her face red.

“
What’s going on?” I asked.

Kate nodded her head toward something down the street. “She’s too afraid to keep walking this way.”

“
Why?” I looked down the street, but just saw more shops like the others we had already passed.

“
Because Carter works at the burger place up there,” Kate explained. “She thinks that if she walks by the window, Carter will think she’s stalking him.”

“
We came by here yesterday,” Ashton said. “It would look weird if we walk by again today.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “It’s a free sidewalk, Ash. You can walk by a million times a day if you want.”

“
I don’t want him to think I’m doing it on purpose!”

“
You
are
doing it on purpose,” Kate said.

“
But I don’t want him to know that.” Ashton crossed her arms. “Let’s go across the street.”

“
Then we’d have to cross back once we pass,” Kate said. “That’s stupid.” She looked at me. “Grab her arm.”

I grabbed Ashton’s left arm while Kate grabbed her right. Keeping her solidly between us, we walked down the sidewalk. Ashton’s feet dragged on the concrete as we got closer to the burger shop where Carter worked, but we managed to pass without her freaking out.

“
Was he there?” Ashton whispered. She had stared straight ahead the entire time until we passed the little shop.

“
No,” Kate said. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see him.”

“
Dammit,” Ashton whispered.

“
Why are you whispering?” Kate asked.

Ashton sighed. “I’m pathetic.”

“
Yes, you are,” Kate agreed. “But if you’d talk to him, he’d probably realize how great you are too.”

Ashton’s shoulders slumped, her mouth turned down into a deep frown.

“
Hey,” Kate said, “let’s have a girls’ night. We’ll watch a bad movie and curl our hair and eat tons of candy.” She looked at me over Ashton’s head. “Hannah? You in?”

“
Can’t,” I said, giving her an apologetic smile. “Jude and I are going out for pizza.”

The two girls stopped again, gawking at me with their mouths open.

“
What?” I asked, stopping and looking back at them.

“
You’re spending a lot of time with Jude,” Kate said.

“
Yeah,” Ashton agreed. “Are you two like…dating? Hooking up? What?”

“
No! We’re just friends.”

They exchanged a look like they didn’t believe me.

“
Really,” I assured them. “Nothing is going on between us.”

We started walking again, but I knew the conversation wasn’t done.

“
So,” Kate said after a few seconds of silence, “what do you and Jude do together?”

“
We just drive around,” I said. “Talk. Go to Chimney Rock.”

“
That’s it?” Kate asked.

“
That’s it,” I confirmed.

“
Weird.” Kate’s forehead scrunched into a confused look. “Jude hasn’t really talked to anyone in months, and now he’s talking to you? He pushed all his old friends away because he didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. We just kind of get each other.”

Kate and Ashton exchanged another look. I scowled and tried to ignore it. What did it matter to them if I hung out with Jude?

“
Maybe he’s going back to his old self,” Kate said at last.

“
Maybe,” Ashton agreed. Her eyes lit up. “Hey, you should invite him to hang out with us sometime. Maybe it’ll bring him back into the land of the living.”

I wasn’t sure if Jude would want to hang out with Ashton and Kate, but I agreed to ask. He would probably say no and if he did, then fine, end of discussion.

“
We should get a whole group together,” Kate said. “Syke and Nadia and Trent…and Carter.” Her eyes darted toward Ashton and she grinned.

The tips of Ashton’s ears reddened. “You’re trying to torture me.”

“
I’m trying to help you,” Kate said. “It’s just a group of friends all hanging out. No pressure.”

Ashton sighed, but she said, “I’ll do it if Hannah gets Jude to come.”