The Unexpected Everything (30 page)

Remembering our earlier conversation and hoping I'd get points for trying, I ventured, “Eight?”

“Know when to fold 'em, kid.” My dad shook his head and started to head back to the kitchen. “You can walk him to his car.”

“Uh,” Clark said. “That's great, except my car is outside that gate thing.”

“Why?” my dad asked, sounding baffled.

“Well, there was nobody inside the gatehouse,” Clark explained. “There was a note saying they'd be back in five. So I just parked outside and walked. I didn't want to be late.” He gave me a tiny smile, and I felt the forgetting-our-date guilt hit me once again.

My dad shook his head. “Andie, remind me to have a conversation with the Neighborhood Council about what passes for security around here.”

I nodded quickly. “Totally. So . . . can I still walk Clark to his car?”

My dad looked between me and Clark for what felt like an eternity before he finally nodded. “Fine,” he said. He raised his eyebrows at me. “No driving anywhere. And be back before seven a.m. this time.”

“Fine,” I said grudgingly, and then a second later, added, “I mean, thanks.” My dad nodded, then walked into the kitchen again, tapping his watch as he went.

•  •  •

I looked over at Clark as we crossed from the driveway onto the road. It was a long summer twilight, like the sun was fighting to stay around as long as possible, even as it slowly, steadily, got darker.

“So,” Clark said, nodding toward the street we were approaching. It was the main street that wound through Stanwich Woods, the one that carried you past the gatehouse and around in a circle, until you returned to where you came from. “Want to show me around?”

I hesitated for just a second. It had seemed like my dad was giving me permission to stay out a bit longer, with his seven-a.m. comment. “Sure,” I said as we walked onto the main road, gesturing for him to follow me. “Though there's not all that much to see.”

“Well, I doubt that,” Clark said, falling into step next to me. We were walking a little closer than I did with most people. I could have reached out and touched him easily, not even needing to extend my arm.

“Welcome to Stanwich Woods,” I said, doing my best imitation of Toby's docent voice. “As you can see,
actual
woods were
torn down to make it, but at least they acknowledged them with a nifty name.”

Clark turned to me, his eyebrows raised behind his glasses. “I guess you don't like it here?”

I looked around as we took the curve in the path. To our left was a pond, complete with tiny, picturesque footbridge and weeping willow hanging over it. The streets were almost empty of cars, and in the houses we passed—all looking vaguely alike—I could see lights on in the windows and families sitting down to eat, people going about their evenings. The streets curved gently, and the wrought-iron streetlights arched over the road from either side, guaranteeing that when it was dark enough, the evening joggers and dog walkers would be able to see just fine. But you couldn't see the stars here like you'd been able to at our farmhouse. “It's fine,” I said after a moment of walking next to Clark in silence. Somehow, without even really being able to say how, I knew he'd wait until I was ready to answer him. And I didn't feel the impatience coming off of him the way I sometimes did with Topher when I was taking too long to gather my thoughts. I could somehow tell that Clark would be happy to walk next to me in silence until I knew what I was going to say. “We used to live way out in backcountry,” I finally said, by way of explanation. “And then we moved here, after . . .” I hesitated for just a second, then made myself continue. “After my mom,” I said quickly, not letting myself linger on any of the words. “And it just seems so fake. Like the idea of what a picturesque village once looked like.”

Clark glanced over toward the duck pond, which was free from ducks at the moment. “I don't know. If you ask me, living way out in the middle of nowhere is overrated.”

“How far were you from civilization?” I asked as we followed the curve in the road, and I took a tiny step closer to him—so small that even Clark might not have noticed it.

“An hour to the nearest gas station,” he said. “Two and change to the closest real town.”

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “That
is
far.”

Clark laughed. “Tell me about it. I got to see, like, two movie-theater movies a year.”

“Don't tell my friend Bri that,” I said, smiling at him. “She'd make you get caught up on your film history, decade by decade.”

“Well, that doesn't sound so bad,” he said, giving me a shrug. “I've got some time on my hands this summer.”

The comment hung in the air between us, and I noticed there was just an edge of bitterness to it.

“So, about your book,” I said after a moment of silence in which I tried not to notice how close together our hands were, both swinging by our sides as we walked. Clark didn't say anything, and I was about to change the subject, start talking about something easier . . . but then I remembered how patient he'd been, walking next to me, and I bit my lip, forcing myself to keep quiet as I walked next to him. I didn't know how exactly, but I could tell he was trying to find the right words.

“What I told you last night?” he finally asked, and I nodded. “You're the only person who knows that. Everyone knows I'm having trouble—there are whole websites devoted to it—but I haven't told anyone else how bad it is.”

“Your secret is safe,” I said, raising my right hand. “Ex–Girl Scout's honor.”

“Ex?”

“Long story,” I said, feeling like now was not the time to tell him the story that involved Toby, a cooler of ice cream, and Bri massively failing to be an effective lookout. “Another time. But I'm pretty sure the oath is still good.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair and causing the back to stick up funny. “I knew what was implied when my publisher offered me her house. I could stay there for free all summer, but at the end of it, I'd better have a book for them.”

We walked for a moment, not speaking, and I was suddenly aware of how loud the cicadas were all around us. I looked at the fireflies winking on and off in the grass while I tried to figure out how best to ask this. “So . . . what's the problem?” I finally asked, knowing that Bri or Tom, who seemed to understand and appreciate an artistic temperament, would have found a gentler way to ask this. But I was having trouble getting my head around it. I sometimes didn't
want
to study, but I did it anyway. You didn't wait for the perfect studying mood to strike you.

I heard a buzzing sound and looked up to see the streetlights all flickering to life above us, going on one by one until you could see more clearly what had been fading in the slowly falling darkness—the bench by the edge of the duck pond, the tree branches over our heads, the details of Clark's face.

“Well,” Clark said, and then stopped. It was like I could practically feel him choosing his words carefully, like he wasn't used to talking about this. “Lately I've been thinking that I might be done.”

“With . . . writing?” I asked, just as a pair of headlights swung around the curve in the road. We stepped over to the side, and when the car was gone and we started walking again, we were a little closer still, now just inches away, even though we could have walked in the middle of the open, empty road, the streetlights casting our shadows on the ground in front of us.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don't think it's this book, or the pressure to continue the series. Or . . .” Clark shook his head. “It's like I don't have any more stories to tell. Which might be the case. Some writers only get a couple. Maybe I just got two.”

I looked ahead and realized that we were almost to the gatehouse; it was just beyond the curve in the road—the brighter streetlights and the road beyond Stanwich Woods, where Clark's car was waiting, which would mean this was over. “Want to see a terrible statue?” I asked, quickly crossing the road to take us on a detour away from the gatehouse, hoping he would be turned around and wouldn't realize exactly what I was doing.

“Always,” Clark said, deadpan. I led him down the street—was it really a street if it had no houses on it?—that ended with the statue of Winthrop Stanwich, with the small playground and picnic tables to the side of him. Only the main road had streetlights, so as soon as we stepped off it, we were back to only the fading light to guide us.

“But maybe it's not true,” I said as we walked down the road to the statue. Possibly it was because it was so empty—this was mostly meant to be a walking path, without even a yellow line painted down the center—but we were walking farther apart now, a person space between us, so that we could turn and see each other. “That you only have two stories in you.”

“It might be,” Clark said, and I could hear the frustration in his voice. “I keep trying, but it's like there's nothing
there
. I've even tried writing other stuff, other than my series, and it's not working. So I'm left with the conclusion that I really might be done.”

“But . . . ,” I started as we reached the statue. We both stopped in front of it, which was really the only proper reaction to seeing the statue of Winthrop Stanwich for the first time. Palmer's brother Fitz always joked that by the time they were done building Stanwich Woods, they'd run out of money and decided to let the statue building go to the lowest bidder. It was in bronze, and life-size, or close to it. Winthrop Stanwich was depicted as a slightly rotund guy in a high collar, equally high vest, short breeches, and buckled shoes. There was a cape over his shoulders, slightly raised on both sides, which was probably meant to convey his movement but just made him look like a weird Puritan Batman. He had a beard and a monocle—though Fitz had a theory that he was supposed to have glasses before someone saw what was happening and just decided to pull the funding and call it a day. But the best thing about the statue was Winthrop Stanwich's expression. He was reaching out his right hand, first two fingers extended, like he was pointing at something, his expression equal parts happy and confused. At least, that's how I read it. Tom thought Winthrop was angry and attempting to scold someone, and Toby was convinced he was about to break into song. He was like an inkblot, and everyone saw in his expression what they wanted to.

For a while—not coincidentally, when both Palmer's brothers were in high school—stuff kept showing up in Winthrop's hand. It really was the perfect height and position to hang things
on, though Palmer's brothers had preferred to leave boxers dangling around his wrist. The Winthropping—it wouldn't have been very hard to find the culprit, since it was down to the Stanwich Woods residents—had subsided somewhat, but every now and then there would be a note in all the residents' mailboxes, asking them to stop putting Santa hats, or Halloween costumes, or just random take-out bags, on Winthrop. But it was ultimately a losing battle, and something else would show up before too long. He was unsullied now, though, pointing to whatever he was pointing to unencumbered.

“Wow,” Clark said, shaking his head. “You weren't kidding.” He looked over at me, and I felt my eyes straying involuntarily to his mouth. I took a small step closer to him as he looked away, down at his watch. “I should probably get you home,” he said, giving me a half smile. “I don't want your dad to hate me.”

We walked away from Winthrop, and I turned back for just a second to see him, arm still extended toward something, cape forever billowing in imaginary wind. When we reached the road again, I pointed for us to go left—otherwise known as the longer way around to the gatehouse—praying that Clark had a terrible sense of direction like Toby, and he wouldn't notice this.

“It's just this way,” I said, as Clark paused.

He raised an eyebrow at me, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Really,” he said, not exactly phrasing it as a question.

“Uh-huh,” I said, walking with purpose now, knowing that what I'd tried to do was completely obvious but not really caring. But I wasn't ready for this—Clark, the falling darkness, walking next to him—to be over yet. We walked in silence, and I noticed that he was right by my side, closer than ever. Even
without turning to look, it was like I could feel his presence next to me, aware of every step he was taking. Our hands were both down by our sides, and they were so close to touching, I could feel the tiny breeze made by his arm as it swung, the night air cool on my skin.

“I don't think you can just decide you're done with writing,” I said when I realized that Winthrop had interrupted a pretty important topic. “You don't think you could tell me a story, right here, right now?” Clark shook his head, and I knew he was about to tell me why I was wrong, but before he could, I jumped in. “Look, I'll start you off. Once upon a time . . .” I gestured for him to pick this up, but he was just staring back at me, clearly waiting for me to continue. “Once upon a time, there was a guy,” I continued, when I realized this was on me.

“A
guy
?” Clark asked with a laugh. “There aren't
guys
in my world. There are Elders and mages and princes and orcs, but . . .”

“But this
isn't
your world. We're just making up a story that doesn't matter, for fun.” Clark didn't say anything, and after a moment I asked, “You don't think you can do it? I'm getting us started, and I don't even read.” Clark stopped and looked at me, and I could see something in his expression—like he was fighting a competitive instinct. “Once upon a time,” I said again, feeling like he was on the verge of joining in, “there was a guy. Named Carl.”