Thousand Words (8 page)

Mom and Dad were watching TV in their bedroom, and the rest of the house was dark. I called out that I was home, then headed to the fridge to grab a soda.

My phone rang, and I stood up abruptly, banging the back of my head against the fridge door. I rubbed it, pulling my phone out of my pocket. It was Kaleb.

“Hey,” I said.

“I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have told them.”

I let out a gust of air. “It’s okay,” I said. “But you’re sure you didn’t show it to them?”

“Positive. I talked to Nate. He’s just being a dick. He won’t say any more about it.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Forgive me?”

I paused. What was there to forgive? After all, I’d told my friends about it, too. Kaleb hadn’t been guilty of anything I wasn’t also guilty of. “Yeah. Okay. But from now on, what’s our business is our business, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I slipped up once. It won’t happen again.”

“Okay, good.” I climbed the stairs to my room. “Talk tomorrow?”

“Sure. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

But even as I hung up, I couldn’t help wondering if that was the prevaricatoriness Dad was always talking about that I was hearing in Kaleb’s denial.

And I couldn’t ignore the little voice in my head that was saying if he slipped up once, who was to say he wouldn’t slip up again?

We started school on a Tuesday in August. Kaleb drove away the following Thursday afternoon for freshman orientation. The college suggested that the best way for freshmen to battle homesickness during orientation was to avoid contact with home for the entire week so they could concentrate on getting used to living on their own and getting to know the campus.

We stayed out until the very last second of my curfew Wednesday night, kissing and holding each other in his parents’ basement as if to make up for time we knew we were going to be missing. I cried when he dropped me
off. It felt so final. I didn’t know how I’d ever make it through a day, much less a week, a month, a semester without him.

I was a zombie at first, thinking about nothing but Kaleb. About what he was doing and who he was doing it with. So in love and missing him so much it physically hurt. I hadn’t seen him as often as I’d wished during the summer. But this was different. At least during baseball season I could stop by if I wanted to, I could see him if I wanted to. With him at college I had no choice but to be away from him.

He didn’t call me when his week was up. And he didn’t answer when I called, either. I was convinced that something horrible had happened to him, that something horrible had happened to us, so by the time we finally talked, a week and a half after he left, we fought.

I called, and at last he picked up, but he was too busy to talk. In the background I heard plates clinking and girls’ laughter.

“I was worried about you. You were supposed to call me days ago,” I said.

“I’ve been really busy. You don’t understand. They make you do all kinds of stuff during orientation. You don’t have time to talk to anyone. I’ve barely even talked to my roommate. And I really do have to go.”

My eyes felt full and I bit my lip, feeling numb. He was so pulled away, I barely knew his voice. “Okay. Will you call me later?”

“Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

Now my eyes were burning and I knew I was going to cry if this kept up. First his boys, then his orientation, now he was too busy. Why did it seem like there was always something more important to Kaleb than me? But I missed him so much, I wasn’t going to say anything. “Okay. I love you.”

He paused, and again I heard girls’ voices in the background. “Um, I’m not alone in here.”

“So what? You can’t tell me you love me?”

“Not right now.”

“Because there are girls there?”

“No, because there are people here, Ashleigh.” His voice was low and breathy in the phone, as though he was cupping a palm over the receiver or talking facing the wall or something. “Don’t freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” I said, the tears finally spilling over. I swiped at them. I always cried when I got mad. I hated that about myself. Wished I could be cool and venomous. Icy. Instead, I always turned into a four-year-old, and it was embarrassing. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to tell me you love me. I miss you.”

“That’s because you don’t understand. You’re still in high school.”

“So now I’m some immature little high schooler? You weren’t thinking that last month when you were passing my picture around the table at Pizza Crib.”

“I didn’t pass that picture around. I’ve told you that.”

“Oh, okay, so Nate just saw it all on his own.”

A part of me was surprised that I was bringing up the Nate thing again. Kaleb had sworn he was telling the truth and nobody had seen it, and I’d sworn I believed him, and we’d both promised to let it go, but in my heart I hadn’t. I couldn’t. Because in my heart, I didn’t believe him.

Eventually I let him go back to whatever he had going on that was making him so “busy.” We hung up angry, and after that day, he and I could barely talk without our conversation eventually leading to that argument again. It was a nasty loop of me accusing him of lying, of never loving me, and him telling me I was immature and I wouldn’t understand what he was going through until I went to college. And one of us would hang up on the other and then three hours later we would text each other, tell each other how sorry we were, that we still loved each other, that we were both stressed out. That I needed to let the picture thing go because I was wrong.

And then one day I saw Nate in the hallway at school. My heart thudded hard in my chest and instantly sweat popped out at my temples. I tried hard to play it off, because I was walking with some girls from cross-country, and I didn’t want them to notice that anything was up.

But he looked right at me, gave a little half-wave, then shut his locker door and called out to someone I couldn’t see down a connecting hallway and rushed off. And that was it. He looked right through me. There was
no “gotcha” moment. No knowing stares. No leers. No comments.

Maybe he really hadn’t seen the picture. Maybe Kaleb had been telling the truth this whole time. I felt insanely guilty for all the accusations I’d made.

I called him that night to tell him how sorry I was. To confess to him that I knew he was telling the truth and that I should have trusted him from the beginning because he’d never done anything to make me not trust him and he didn’t deserve having me doubt him.

A girl answered his phone.

“Who is this?” I asked, my throat pulling tight and my fingertips tingling.

The perky little voice at the other end said, “This is Holly. Who’s this?” And there was this chirpy giggling in the background… a different girl… and some murmuring and a bark of laughter that I would have recognized anywhere. Kaleb.

It took a few seconds for my brain to drown out what was going on in the background and for my mouth to catch up with everything I was thinking, none of which was good at all.

“Is Kaleb there? This is Ashleigh. His
girlfriend
.”

I put extra stress on the last word, maybe too much because she made a snorting noise and then I could hear her say, away from the phone, “Kaleb, it’s your
girlfriend
,” and she put the same stress on the last word as I did. Like she was making fun of me. I felt like a little kid being teased by
the big kids in the neighborhood, and anger welled up in me so vigorously my throat felt closed with emotion.

“Hey, Ash,” Kaleb said. He had the nerve to sound relaxed, which made me all the madder.

“Having a good time?” I choked out.

“Huh?”

I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to steady my voice. “So who’s Holly? Let me guess. She’s a study partner.”

There was a pause, and I could hear footsteps and the whine of a door closing, like he was getting to someplace private. “Actually, yeah, she is,” he said. “You’re not going to do this again, are you?”

“Actually, yeah, I am!” I shouted into the phone, no longer in control of my emotions at all. “Every time I call you, you either can’t talk or you’re giggling with some girls and calling them your study partners, and it’s bullshit, Kaleb. Are you sleeping with them?” And there I was again, accusing him of doing something I had no actual proof of. It was like I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t trust him.

“No,” he said, his voice icy and abrupt. “We’re part of a study group. There are two guys in there named Mark and Gannon. I’m not sleeping with them, either. Jesus.”

“So what was she doing with your phone?”

“It was on the table, and she was the closest one to it. This is stupid. I’ve got to go. They’re waiting for me.”

I laughed, a loud, ugly laugh that made me sound pretty much unhinged. And maybe I was. Maybe I finally had lost it. “I’m sure they are. You’re totally cheating on me, Kaleb.
I’m not dumb. How would you like it if I cheated on you? How would you feel if you called and some guy answered my phone?”

His already steely voice took on a sharp edge. “I can’t even believe you’re being that kind of person.”

“I’m not!” I shouted, no longer sure what point I was trying to make. I wanted someone to slap their hand over my mouth, to make me stop talking. “I’m trying to show you what it feels like when I call your phone and some girl answers. It feels like crap. You shouldn’t think you’re the only guy who wants me, Kaleb. Because you’re not.” It hurt my own heart to say these things, but my mouth had gotten out of my control and there was no bringing it back now.

“Okay, fine. Well, if there’s a line at your door, maybe you should go for it. I’m not in high school anymore, and you’re acting like a—”

“A high schooler?” I interrupted. “Again? Nice. Maybe that’s because I am a high schooler. Which you knew when you started dating me.”

“No, actually I was going to say you’re acting like a bitch.”

The wind was sucked out of me. Kaleb had never called me a bitch before. He’d never called me any name before. I didn’t even know what to say. I stood, clutching the phone, my mouth open unbelievingly.

“I’ve got to go,” he said when I didn’t respond.

“That’s it? You’re not even going to apologize?”

“No. Are you?”

I paused. Did I owe him an apology? Should you be sorry for being upset that your boyfriend is hanging out with girls while he’s away from you? That one of the girls is answering his phone? That you love him so much the idea of losing him hurts as immediately and fully as if you’d already lost him?

“For what?” I finally said, because I honestly wasn’t sure what he wanted an apology for.

“For… just… forget it, Ashleigh. I don’t have time for this.”

“You don’t have time for me, you mean. Because you have Holly to take care of,” I spat. I didn’t want to end the conversation like this. And if the only way I could keep it going was to keep the fight going, so be it. Plus, I was still wounded. I wanted him to feel bad for what he’d said. I wanted him to feel sorry for me.

“Okay,” he said, “bye. I’ll talk to you in a few days.”

When he finally called, three days later, he was in his car on the way back to Chesterton for a long weekend. He sounded grim. He said he wanted to see me right away. He said we needed to talk.

But he didn’t tell me he loved me.

He didn’t say he was excited to see me.

Just hung up.

The day after Mack bought me Hot Tamales, I brought extra change and bought us both SweeTarts. And the day after that I split a packet of Oreos with him because neither of us had enough coins to get a whole pack to ourselves. And pretty soon it was our thing, to head straight for the candy machines during restroom break, me blinking the glow of the computer screen away in the unlit hallway and him yanking up his perpetually falling-down jeans.

Every day we met there, and every day we shared a short conversation. But I was always the one doing the talking.

“Where do you live?” I asked him once.

“In Chesterton.”

“Yeah, but where?”

He laughed and stuffed a palmful of M&M’S into his
mouth. “I freaking live here these days.” And then I laughed with him, because I totally felt that way sometimes, too, but I soon found myself laughing alone as he took off toward the classroom again. He did that often—just walked away in the middle of a conversation, leaving me feeling awkward and wondering if I’d said something wrong. This time, though, I followed him.

“I live in Lake Heights,” I said, tripping after him, the M&M’S in my palm growing warm.

“I know. You live in that green house. The one with the pool.”

“No, that’s Vonnie’s house. Mine’s on the smaller side of the neighborhood. You live over there, too, or something?”

“No. Everyone knows about the green house with the pool.”

Of course they did. Like I said, Vonnie’s parties were legendary.

“What do you listen to?” I asked, pointing to his earbuds, which were casually draped around the back of his neck.

“Music.”

I rolled my eyes. “Duh. What kind?”

“Any kind.”

“Who’s your favorite?”

“Whoever’s on at the time.”

“Can I listen?”

“Why don’t you bring your own music?”

“Because I can’t concentrate on that and work at the same time.”

“Then I guess you can’t listen. I don’t want to distract you. Hey, look, a double M&M.” He held up two candies fused together, and the subject was closed. Mack had a real knack for closing subjects.

The day before I was supposed to meet with Kaleb, Mrs. Mosely was late and room 104 was locked. Kenzie and Angel sat on the floor, Kenzie’s mighty stomach held up by her lap so high it looked like it was eating her head. Angel was painting Kenzie’s fingernails, Kenzie’s hand splayed out on the carpeted floor in front of them, the scent of fingernail polish permeating the hallway.

“Damn, girl, close that shit up,” Darrell said, dropping his backpack to the floor and leaning against the wall. “You gonna mess up your baby with fumes.”