What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay (16 page)

And after I hung up with Lily, Jesse actually came over and tapped on my window. When I opened it and poked my head out, he put his elbows up on the sill.

“I couldn’t stand to just call. I had to see you again.”

I leaned on the sill from the other side till our foreheads touched, and he kissed me. I said, “It’s nice to see you again, too.”

“Want to go to the movies tomorrow?”

“Um, to be honest, my parents may not like it.”

“Am I too old or too crazy?”

“Both, probably,” I whispered, and we started giggling like idiots. I’m not even sure why.

“We’ll just have to sort of sneak up on them, then,” Jesse said. “What would be a nice innocent date?”

“Bookstore,” I said. “I’ll meet you at Bert’s.” Bert’s is never closed, even on New Year’s.

“Two o’clock,” Jesse said. He boosted himself up on the sill and kissed me again, and then he disappeared into the darkness. I heard a car start up.

I went to sleep thinking about Jesse, just sliding into this happy fog, and I didn’t have any of Felix’s dreams. I did dream I was trying to wrap a wet fish up in tissue paper and the paper kept tearing. God knows what that means.

What woke me up was a noise in the living room. I squinted at the clock. It was 3:30 a.m. My room is at the opposite end of the house from Ben’s and Grandma Alice’s, with the living room in between. The Todal wasn’t barking, but I was still scared. I know the kind of noise the Todal makes clicking around the floor at night, and this wasn’t it. This sounded like a person—someone being careful in the dark—and it wasn’t Ben’s footsteps, either.

I slid out of bed and into the hall. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I got to the living room just as whoever it was clicked the front door open, probably making off with Ben’s laptop. I switched on the light.

No wonder the Todal hadn’t barked. It was Mom, with her shoes and her bra in her hand and her dress on inside out.

14

I didn’t say anything, just stood there gawking at her. And the next morning on the phone she pretended she hadn’t seen me, which is ridiculous because I’d turned the light on.

“What were you doing wandering around in the middle of the night anyway?” she asked.

“What were
you
doing?”

“What I was doing isn’t any of your business.” She sounded like she had a headache. I’ll bet she had a lot of champagne at that party.

“When are you moving back home?” I asked.

“I’m not. What gave you that idea?”

“Oh come on, Mom. Your hair looked like you combed it with an eggbeater, and your dress was on inside out.”

I could hear her pouring coffee. “What if it was?”

“You can’t divorce Ben and then start hooking up with him!” I said indignantly.

“Angie, this is not the time to talk about it. My head hurts.”

“You have a hangover.”

I was using the house phone and Ben appeared and took it out of my hand. “Good morning, Sunshine,” he said into it. I couldn’t hear what Mom said, but he laughed and hung up.

“I don’t understand you!” I said.

“You don’t have to.”

“Are you and Mom getting back together?”

“Not at the moment.”

That’s what I mean about New Year’s Eve making people go nuts. So I gave up on them and spent an hour trying to decide what to wear to meet Jesse at Bert’s. I finally settled on my new sweater and my black velveteen pants. In another miraculous event, my hair looked perfect.

Jesse was waiting for me when I got there. He bought us both a coffee and we sat at a table under an oak tree. He turned his chair so its back was to a shelf of books. I’ve noticed that he always sits with his back to the wall. It was a beautiful day, about sixty degrees out and the sky looked like it had just been washed.

“I found something I bet you’ll like,” Jesse said. He pulled a book out of his backpack. “I already bought it.”

It was a book about the Day of the Dead, with lots of photos of skeleton figures—a Day of the Dead bride dancing in her bones and a white veil, skeleton cowboys riding skeleton horses, a skeleton doctor with a stethoscope. There was even a skeleton teacher reading something out of a book, one hand up in the air. I wanted to paste a wild red wig on her and give her to Mom. “This is great,” I said. I started to give it back to him but he shook his head. “Nah. It’s for you.”

I was embarrassed. “This is the third thing you’ve given me. Counting the Duchess.”

He said, “I like to give you things.”

I wound a piece of hair around my finger.

“You have the most beautiful hair,” he told me. “I could get lost in it, like some wild thicket.”

Just then Felix of all people walked by and gave me a raised-eyebrows look. I smiled and waved and hoped he wasn’t there to meet Mom, which would be all I needed. With luck, she was too hung over to go out in the sunlight.

We drank our coffee and watched some robins in the flower bed excavate for worms. Bert went past rolling a metal trash can. The lid fell off with a bang and bounced across the patio until Felix scooped it up. Then a car door slammed out in the street, and a little kid went by shrieking at the top of his lungs. When I looked at Jesse, he was white as paste and his hand was shaking so bad he slopped his coffee. He set the cup down crooked in the saucer and looked all around like he was about to either run for it or dive under the table again. I put my hand on his and I could feel the muscles jump.

Felix made it over to our table in about two steps, like some ratty old angel with his bathrobe wings flapping out behind him. He put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, but he was careful to let Jesse see him before he touched him. Jesse slid down in his chair and took a deep breath.

“Pretty noisy day,” Felix said.

“Yeah.” Jesse reached for his coffee again and knocked it over. “Shit! I’ll be right back.” He shoved his chair back and went to the coffee bar for napkins. Felix gave me a long look.

“What?” I said.

“This may not be a good idea.”

I glared at him. “Not you too.”

Felix looked sad and shook his head. “He may have demons you can’t imagine.”

I thought maybe I could, after dreaming Felix’s dreams, but I told Felix, “Then he needs someone to care about him.”

Felix said, “Need is a hell of a bad basis for love. I ought to know.”

Jesse came back with a handful of napkins. I could see how mad and embarrassed he was for being afraid of a car door and a little kid. Felix helped him mop up the coffee and didn’t say anything else. When it was cleaned up, Felix kind of drifted off to the fiction section but I knew he was still watching us. I would really appreciate it if everyone stopped treating me like I was twelve.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Jesse said. “I really hate it when I do that in front of you.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“That’s because you’re my angel. Angel by name, angel by nature. You know, I’d really like to be able to talk without all these people and making an ass of myself. Could we go somewhere? Pack a picnic maybe and have a day in the hills? On a nice day like this?”

Well, that sounded just like heaven to me, but I knew Mom would flip if I even suggested it.

“Um. I’d have to work on that.” I bit my thumbnail.

Jesse smiled. “Next weekend? Saturday?”

He looked so hopeful. Somebody has to care about him. He deserves someone to love him. He’s only four years older than I am. Ben’s six years older than Mom.

“Saturday,” I said.

On Saturday, I called Jesse and told him to meet me in the park. I told Ben I was going out with Lily and made Lily swear not to rat me out. I’ve never lied to Ben or Mom about anything important like that before, but I also just caught Mom sneaking out of Ben’s bedroom with her dress on inside out. If Mom and Ben can act like that, they don’t get to tell me what to do.

Jesse met me with his mom’s car. He had a picnic basket covered with a red and white cloth in the back seat.

“Where are we going?” I asked, but he just smiled and said, “I’m going to show you something special.”

He turned the car up Highway 33, and after about a mile we pulled onto a dirt road, bumped along it for a while, and parked at the end where a creek comes down the hill. A trail led off from there through the crackling brush, with its dusty clumps of sage and Matilija poppies and outcrops of huge, pale stones.

I got out of the car a little suspiciously. “Are there snakes up here?”

“They buzz,” Jesse said. “Anyway, they can bite me.” He shook his artificial foot at imaginary snakes. “I want to show you this thing.” He hefted the picnic basket and started up the trail.

“What?”

“You’ll see,” he said mysteriously.

I followed him through the scrub and up a slope of sandy soil and those white stones that look like huge slabs of bone.

Jesse put his good foot on the slope and pulled himself up by a manzanita bush, dragging the picnic basket with him. I scrambled after him. A grasshopper zinged by my head and I ducked, feeling my hair to be sure it hadn’t landed in it.

Jesse laughed. “Come on. Up here.”

I went up the rest of the way, onto a flat space against the hillside. A rock overhang made a little shelter and Jesse put the picnic basket under it. I ducked in beside him and he pointed at the ceiling.

“Look up there.”

I craned my neck. On the underside of the overhang there was an animal scratched into the stone, with bits of old red-brown paint clinging to its ears and tail. It was curved into a
U
shape, with round eyes and whiskers. I tipped my neck back farther to stare at it. It looked playful, like it might jump off the rock.

“The Chumash people painted him,” Jesse said. “A long time ago.”

“Oh, he’s wonderful.” I was in love with the critter already. I wanted to throw a ball for it. “What is it? A dog? Or a fox?”

“He’s an otter. Look how long he is, and look at his paws. There used to be otters in the river here. I found him hiking when I was a little kid. You’re the only person I’ve shown him to. If people find out about him they’ll spoil him.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” I liked the idea of having a secret otter with Jesse.

Jesse sat down on the rock floor under the otter and pulled the cloth off the basket. “A bottle of root beer and a loaf of bread,” he said. “And thou. Also ham sandwiches and grapes.”

I sat down beside him and he twisted the cap off the bottle. “I even brought glasses.” He poured root beer into one and handed it to me.

“Elegant.”

“I thought I probably shouldn’t have been feeding you wine at New Year’s.”

I rolled my eyes. “My mom’s the one who got snockered at the party.”

Jesse chuckled. “Give her a break. Teachers deserve to get drunk.” He unpacked the sandwiches and handed me one and put the grapes on the cloth. It must have been awkward sitting on the ground like that with his leg, but he didn’t seem to care.

I smiled at him. “Shall I peel you a grape?”

“Nah. All the vitamins are in the skin. My mother says so.”

“Mine too.” I pulled one off its stem. Jesse opened his mouth and I tossed it at him, and he managed to catch it. After he swallowed it, he barked like a seal and clapped his hands and we both broke up laughing. Then we settled down and ate our ham sandwiches while the otter watched us.

Jesse leaned his back against the stone and put his right arm around me while he ate with his left hand. “Man, it’s nice up here.” He sighed. “Man,
you’re
nice. I really need this.”

We stayed up there all afternoon, just talking about things, like whether you would be a pioneer on Mars if you had the chance and how the Chumash people caught fish up here and where all the otters went. We kissed some, too, and I think I’m in love. I know I am.

When he took me back, he dropped me at Lily’s so I could truthfully say I was coming from there. Lily drove me home. She didn’t exactly say she didn’t approve, but I can tell she’s dubious about it, even though she gave Jesse a hug before he left.

“Ange, are you sure about this?”

“Not you, too?”

“No, I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

She sighed. “And preferably not get me in trouble.”

Um. Yes. That’s an issue. I’ll have to think of something else. I promised her I would.

On Monday there was a drawing of an otter in my locker. He has a fish in his mouth and little hearts coming up from his head like thought balloons. I still haven’t figured out a good way to meet Jesse without making Lily lie for me, but I will. And in the meantime, there’s lunch and art class.

When we sat down at the lunch table, Lily looked at both of us and said, “If you make gooey faces at each other just once, I’m out of here.”

“Can’t,” Jesse said. “We’re strictly on the down-low.”

“I hope so.”

“We are innocently hanging the winter art show this afternoon,” I said. “In full view of the authorities.”