The Unexpected Everything (24 page)

“Oh,” I said, nodding, like that had explained anything. I looked down at it for a moment, wondering what that must be like—to create something that someone liked so much, they made laptop stickers for you.

Clark dipped a finger into the soup and nodded at me as he tasted it. “It's cool enough, I think.” Then he made a face. “And not really very good.”

“Does it need some Carolina Reapers?” I asked, surprising myself—and Clark, too, judging by the expression on his face.

“Couldn't hurt,” he said, as I grabbed my phone and he led the way back into the laundry room.

Five minutes later I looked up at Clark over Bertie's head.
“I think it's working,” I said in a half whisper, like the dog could understand me.

Clark met my eye and nodded, and then I looked back at the dog. When we'd put the soup in front of him, he had opened one eye and sniffed toward it, but then had closed his eyes and put his head down again, which had made me get really, really scared. Bertie always lunged for his food bowl when I brought him home. To see him ignoring food was pretty much the only indication I needed of how sick this dog was. Fear was making my stomach clench as I realized we really might need to bring him to the emergency vet. But before I could say anything, Clark, to my surprise, had stroked Bertie's head while moving the bowl closer, so that it was right under his nose. “Hey, bud,” he said softly. “Look, it's people food.”

There was a pause, in which I held my breath, worried that this was the turn that the poison control lady had warned us about. But then Bertie raised his head slightly, nose twitching. He sniffed at the soup for a few more seconds before starting to eat—cautiously at first, but then with more appetite, and I finally let myself breathe again.

“I think you're right,” Clark said, as Bertie finished the bowl, nudging it around with his nose, trying to get more. “Should I heat up the rest?”

“Maybe give it a second.” Bertie looked up at me, and I reached forward to scratch his ears. “You did so good,” I said, leaning closer to him. “Good—”

But I didn't get to finish that thought, because right then Bertie opened his mouth and threw up chicken soup—and chocolate—all over me.

•  •  •

“Okay,” Clark said, arriving in the doorway of the laundry room, breathing hard. “So I think you're all set. You're—” He pointed behind him, leaning slightly on the doorframe for support while he caught his breath. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “I was trying to hurry.”

“It's appreciated.” I was trying my best not to inhale. Bertie, after tossing his cookies all over me, had gone back to sleep, while I'd frozen, not wanting to move, or breathe. Clark had scrambled to his feet and gotten me a towel, but it soon become clear that the towel could only do so much and that I really needed to change—and probably needed to shower, since my hair had not been spared. I'd told Clark this, and only after I'd said it did I wonder if this was weird—to ask to shower at a guy's house. But then I figured we'd gone so far beyond anything normal tonight that I no longer cared. And more than worrying if it was weird, I needed to not be covered in dog puke. Clark had gone off to get me a change of clothes, and I'd looked at the sleeping dog, wondering just how much Maya's overtime was going to be and if it would come close to making up for this.

“So my room's down the hall,” he said, pointing. “Second door on the left. There's a bathroom in there, and I put out a fresh towel and a change of clothes.”

“Oh,” I said. Somehow I'd figured that in a house this big, he'd direct me to a guest bathroom somewhere. I hadn't thought I'd be in Clark's
room
. Not that it mattered. It didn't mean anything, after all—I was only doing this because I had to. I got up, trying very hard not to look at what had happened to one of my favorite dresses. I would see if I could work a laundry miracle
tomorrow when I got home. “Great. I'll, um, be right back.”

I walked down the hall as fast as I could, careful not to touch anything on my way. Even the wallpaper looked expensive, subtly patterned and edged in what looked like gold. I tried to casually glance into the other rooms I passed as I walked, but the doors were firmly closed, and I knew this was not the time to go snooping around.

I found Clark's room right away—it was the only door that was open, light spilling out from it into the darker hallway—and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind me. I knew this wasn't really Clark's room, just the room he was staying in for the summer, but even so, the genericness of it took me by surprise. This seemed like it was probably normally a guest room, since there were almost no personal touches—just a queen-size bed with a cream coverlet, a gray couch in the corner, and a desk tucked under an eave. I started to let my eyes roam around the room, but looked down, remembered the situation at hand, and made a beeline for the bathroom.

Ten minutes later I'd washed my hair and was confident I no longer smelled like horrible things. I wrapped myself in the towel Clark had left out for me, neatly folded, and walked out to his room. I'd balled up my dress and stuffed it into a plastic bag I'd found underneath the sink, trying not to think about the fact that I'd been worried, a few hours earlier, that it had gotten wrinkled on the drive to the restaurant.

I saw that, at the foot of the bed, there were a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt laid out. The sweatpants were gray and fit well enough, thanks to the drawstring waist. The T-shirt was a dark blue, and across the front, in typewriter font, it read
ASK ME
ABOUT THE LUMINOSITY.
I just looked at it for a moment, then gave up trying to figure it out and pulled it on.

I knew I should probably head right back out to help with Bertie, but I'd taken a quick shower, and I figured I probably had a few minutes' cover before my absence seemed suspicious. I told myself I wasn't going to snoop, or look through anything—I had a deep aversion to that, ever since I had returned from the bathroom during an interview two years ago to see the reporter poking through my bag—but I told myself it couldn't hurt to just look around.

It didn't take me long to realize that this was different from the guys' rooms I'd been in before. Usually, there was a lumpy, hastily made bed, a pile of stuff in the corner, and clothes tossed around. Even Topher, who was pretty neat, had a room that was just a little in disarray, like he was always kicking off his shoes and tossing off his jacket, leaving someone else to deal with them.

Clark's room wasn't like that. There was a neat stack of books on the desk—a few thick fantasy books, but most of them seemed to be nonfiction, with titles like
Breaking the Block, Jump-Start Your Imagination, Moving Beyond Writer's Block
, and
Resisting Resistance
. I glanced away from them quickly, feeling like I'd seen something that I probably shouldn't have seen.

Through the open closet door, I could see three shirts hung up, and on top of the dresser, a neatly folded pile of laundry, tilting slightly to the right. The only thing that was slightly messy were two button-down shirts that were laid out on top of the dresser. I couldn't help but wonder if Clark, like me, had gone through several outfits, trying to find the right one for our date.

I turned away, ready to leave his room. I really didn't want
to be in there any longer. It wasn't that I felt like I was invading his privacy—it felt like the opposite, like it was invading in on me, showing me a side of Clark that I felt like I shouldn't be seeing, not yet—or maybe never. I never really wanted to know these things about the guys I'd dated—their fears and insecurities. I didn't want to know that Clark had spent time worrying and getting ready for our date. And I didn't want to ask myself why the sight of his neatly folded T-shirts was making me feel something I didn't even have words to express.

I was almost to the door when something on an end table caught my eye. It was a picture in a small silver frame, showing a little boy, around five or six, sitting on the shoulders of someone who was probably his dad. At first I assumed that it was a picture that belonged to the house, family or friends of the couple in all the pictures downstairs. But as I looked at it for another moment, I realized it was Clark. He looked basically the same, just without the glasses. The man—his dad, I was guessing, based on their resemblance—was looking up at him and smiling, while young Clark, midlaugh, stretched his hands up to the sky like he was trying to touch the stars.

I caught my eyes reflected back to me in the glass and suddenly realized what I was doing. I turned off the light and closed the door firmly behind me as I went. I walked back to the laundry room, tugging at the hem of the shirt, feeling weirdly exposed, even though the sweatpants and T-shirt covered more than my dress had.

“Hey,” Clark said, giving me a quick smile. “Are the clothes okay?”

“Fine,” I said, nodding, wanting to change the subject. I
tucked my wet hair behind my ears, wondering why it suddenly felt like I had my armor down. That like this—in his clothes, without my makeup and with my hair sopping wet—Clark could see more of me than I wanted him to. “How's he been?” I asked as I looked at the dog, who appeared not to have moved since I'd been gone.

“The same,” Clark said, patting his back gently. “I got him to drink a little more but didn't give him any more of the soup. I didn't think we should risk it.”

“Probably wise,” I said as I crossed over to sit on the other side of Bertie—and then, just to be safe, moved a few inches farther away. “So no change?” I asked, picking up my phone and pulling up the Internet, ready to go over the dangerous symptoms once again.

“Wait . . . ,” Clark said, starting to reach toward me, but not before I realized that I had actually picked up his phone—and on his screen, I was looking at the last page he'd had open. I blinked as I stared at it. My dad's official portrait looked back at me from his Wikipedia page. “Sorry,” Clark said, and I could hear the embarrassment in his voice.

I nodded. I knew I should give him his phone back, but I kept looking down at the screen, at my dad's factual information. I was there, under the personal-life section—
Daughter Alexandra Molly Walker, 17. Wife Molly Jane Walker (deceased).
“So did you learn anything?” I asked, looking at the photo at the top of the page. It was the one that always seemed to accompany any article about my dad—though I had a feeling it might soon be replaced by the press conference on our front porch. It was a picture of my dad taken five years ago. He was wearing a dark suit, and the president walked next to him. On his other side
was Governor Laughlin. You could see me, a few steps behind him, in a black dress, my hair pulled back with a black velvet headband that had made my head feel like it was on the verge of exploding. I'd never worn it again after that day. The picture had been taken by the press that were waiting on the steps of the church after my mother's funeral, and it had made the front page of the
New York Times
above the fold the next day. It was hailed by pundits and journalists as a seminal moment, a return to decency, people reaching across the aisle even in the middle of a campaign, putting aside differences in times of crisis, etcetera. It was seen by almost everyone as a symbol. And almost nobody who talked about the picture mentioned my mother, except in passing, like her funeral was just the setting for this larger, more important moment.

It was the way her whole funeral had felt—like it actually wasn't about her at all. I watched as her friends and her students looked around at the Secret Service agents, at the
president
, and crumpled up the pieces of paper they'd brought with them, looking doubtful, not wanting to get up and talk about my mom—talk about who she'd really been—in front of the leader of the country. And so there hadn't been any great or silly or funny stories about her. The words that were said could have been said about anyone, and the whole thing felt wrong, like I was letting her down. Like we all were.

“Sorry,” Clark said, still sounding embarrassed, and I started to feel bad. I closed out of the screen and handed him his phone back as he slid mine over the carpet toward me. After all, it was public information. If I'd had the time before Bertie had gotten sick, I would have no doubt been googling Clark and
his books. “I didn't realize your dad had run for vice president.”

“Almost,” I corrected, though a lot of people made this mistake. “He had to drop out before it was official.” I looked down and traced a circular pattern on the carpet.

“How's he handling all this recent stuff?” Clark asked, and I looked up at him, fixing a smile on my face.

“Oh, just fine,” I said immediately, reaching for some of the lines Peter had written for me when everything was starting to fall apart. “Obviously, it's a time of transition, which is always hard, but . . .” I looked at Clark, and it was like I suddenly realized where I was. In a laundry room, with a vomiting dog, wearing someone else's clothes, with a boy who was not, to my knowledge, a member of the media. I could, I realized with what felt like a physical shock, tell him the truth.

It went against everything I'd been told my whole life—sometimes explicitly, but more often not. It was just what I'd learned, before I knew I was learning it. Stay on message. Don't tell people what you really think or feel—unless it's been vetted and approved. Keep people at arm's length and your feelings to yourself. And I'd done it, for years now, until it was second nature. And where had it gotten me?

“Well,” I said slowly, feeling like I was going against a lifetime of training, “I'm not sure. It's been . . . weird.”

Clark was looking over at me, expectant. I knew other guys would have just nodded, maybe said “bummer,” and then we would have moved on—gone back to fooling around, or to safe, easy topics. Topher would have known what I meant and not asked any follow-ups, because none would have been needed.
But it seemed like Clark actually wanted to know—that he was waiting for me to go on.