You Take It From Here (22 page)

You cried and wailed and begged Henry to make your mother stop. But he didn’t. I think he was scared. Of both of you.

Then I heard you shout, “But it wasn’t a secret! Danielle knew about Aubrey! I thought she told you!”

You threw me under the bus, you little shit.

I’m sorry you suffered that night, Jenny. But I have to say, it was really nice hearing your mom get to be so normal. You probably only heard her hysterics and outrageous threats of violence, but I could translate what was under it. She was being your mama. I hadn’t heard her sound that happy in a long time.

SEVENTEEN

I
t must have been a week later when my left arm started tingling. It felt like my skin had a surface burn, as if I was being attacked by fire ants. I held my arm flush against my churning stomach, mashing one ache against the other.

I was in need of some coffee. It might be that I was having a heart attack or the beginnings of pancreatic cancer, but before I found out either of those things, I needed more caffeine so I could deal with it. I could just imagine the diagnosis: sympathy cancer.

When I walked into the coffee shop I saw Smidge sitting at a table with Seth Sampson.

Seth Sampson (referred to always with both names by everyone who has ever known him, including family members) was my unofficial boyfriend for all of four and a half minutes at the beginning of my senior year. He was a football player and completely out of my league; I thought I had suddenly become the Chosen One of Neville High when he asked if he could come over to my house one night. I didn’t know if he was going to ask for a date or to see my calculus homework, but I didn’t care. I felt important.

Turned out Seth Sampson wanted to sit next to me on the stairs outside my front door and get to third base, skipping bases one and two.

I sat there as his fingers prodded my thighs, groping past my underwear. Fear kept me still as I worried,
What if he doesn’t kiss me?

He didn’t. He eventually got bored with his exploration and left without a word.

He must have known how mortified I’d be if anyone ever found out I’d let someone walk right over and treat me like someone checking to see if dinner was done. He was right to assume I’d never tell anybody, not even Smidge. I couldn’t face her. She’d be so upset that I hadn’t stuck up for myself; demanded something other than misery and confusion in return for his spelunking expedition.

And now Smidge was huddled up with Seth Sampson at the coffee shop, one hand playfully flirting along his arm as he made what I assumed to be a series of idiotic jokes. The way she was cackling you’d think it was Open Mic Night and Smidge was three drinks past her two-drink minimum.

“I’m so
sure
!” she guffawed, her voice bouncing off the walls of the mostly cement room. The other patrons gruffly squared their shoulders, harrumphing around their laptops, hunched over their paperbacks, exaggerating their actions so that Smidge could catch a hint. She didn’t, even when the couple finishing their breakup coffees gave her red-eyed glares.

I was one hundred percent sure Smidge had never come close to betraying Henry, and this seemed like a very weird time to start doing it. Maybe she had decided to spend more
time with the people she previously wouldn’t, just so she could leave more strangers with a great impression of her. Her legend could live on in even more minds. Maybe she thought you got into Heaven by the number of attendees at your funeral.

Seth Sampson raised both his hands like he was reffing his own touchdown as he shouted, “I swear to God!” as Smidge made a sound like a frightened chicken. I decided to wander over before it got any worse.

“Hey, Danielle,” Seth Sampson said with a cheery smile, as if he didn’t remember anything, as if we were the oldest of bestest friends who hung out in coffee shops telling jokes all the time. Just a regular Rachel and Joey.

Smidge presented Seth Sampson to me as if I was an adoring crowd. “Look who’s back in town!” She placed her fingers to her cheeks, but it didn’t hide her flush of emotion. “Did that sound celebratory?” she asked him.

“I like it,” he said.

“Well, I didn’t mean to cheer, it’s not appropriate. Seth Sampson is back home to help his mother, who’s not feeling well, bless her heart. Dans, isn’t it nice of this boy to come home to help take care of his mama? Isn’t he a nice son?”

Seth Sampson fiddled with a wooden stir stick, flipping it between his thumb and forefinger as he looked me over.

“Danielle Meyers,” he said. “I hear you’ve done all kinds of exciting things in your life. Like move to California.”

I narrowed my eyes in disdain. “Are you being sarcastic?”

Smidge waved a bony arm toward me, as if shooing a gigantic fly from her picnic table. “Forgive Danny,” she said. “She sometimes speaks in Asshole.”

Later that night on the porch, Smidge studied her toes while I tried to figure out the best way to start asking questions about Seth Sampson.

She had her feet perched up on the wall in front of her, wineglass dangling from her left hand. Her toenails were meticulously painted and it occurred to me that she was either doing her own toes or she was somehow finding time to sneak away for secret pedicures.

If I were dying, I’m pretty sure the first thing I’d stop doing is worry about the state of my feet. In fact, my impending death would be a fantastic excuse not to think about
any
of my twenty nails. My fingertips would become a wasteland of ripped cuticles and sharp, jagged edges.

I launched into my best impression of Smidge, raising my voice an octave, heavy on the drawl. “Oh, Seth Sampson! I just don’t remember you being so
real
-funny! But you sure are a hoot and a holler, I’ll tell you what. Is this coffee spiked? Because I am drunk off of how awesome you are. Can I feel your muscles?”

Smidge raised herself in her chair, already on the defensive. “Oh, you know,” she tossed, as if that was enough on the subject.

“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

She draped one arm over her head, rotating her hand at the wrist as she stared off into space, formulating an answer. “Well,
Mother
, since you’re so curious about my social life, I will tell you that I just happened to run into him.”

I’d yet to hear back from the Lizard. I briefly wondered if I should give it another try, or if silence was her answer to the situation and the extent of her willingness to take part.

“You just
happened
to run into him?” I asked.

She leaned over to the side table, examining the label on the wine bottle.

“Yes, just like how you
happened
to run into us,” she said.

I couldn’t let it be. “You guys were sitting kind of close, is all.”

Smidge let her spine unhinge at her neck; her head dropped and rolled to the side as her eyeballs bulged, like she had been struck by a temporary possession. “We were sitting at a table. For two. Like two people.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Oh, okay, Danny. You caught me. I wanted to see if I could bag the head boy from high school. I wanted to know if this sickly ass still had the hotness.”

“Just because you say it sarcastically doesn’t mean it can’t be the truth.”

“I see what you’re doing here,” she said. “And it’s not going to work. Back to the plan, missy. No more stalling. What it is time for you to do is: a Henry experiment.”

“Right now?” Henry was upstairs in a battle with a certain brand-new ninth-grader over an essay she hadn’t finished writing for her English class.

“When he comes back to the kitchen, I want you to chat him up.”

“
Chat him up?
What does that even mean?”

Smidge tucked a hand across her waist and held her wineglass with the other, like she was wandering through an art show. “He needs to get used to you being close to him,” she said. “If not, it won’t happen after I’m gone because he’ll think it’s like a betrayal or something. We have to have it already in his head that you are a separate, sexual being.”

“Please don’t call me a sexual being.”

“Look, I’d probably find someone to have sex with him even if I weren’t dying. Then I could finally live in peace. I love him, but I don’t need to have him in my face every night.”

“Smidge.”

“Pawing all over me.”

“Smidge.”

“You’ll have to get used to that. He likes grabbing butts.”

“Smidge.”

She was on a roll. “Married people should only have to do it once a month. When you’re with Henry, I say you don’t have to do it more than four times a year. But you should probably do it more often at the beginning. You know, if he’s sad.”

“Please stop.”

“Although, I admit I don’t like thinking of you two kissing. I like how Henry kisses.”

“I am so uncomfortable right now.”

“Then go in there and flirt with that man. Bump into him. Touch his hand. See if he looks you in the eye and gets real close.”

“Give him the old Seth Sampson treatment?”

Smidge pinched my arm. “I wasn’t flirting with Seth Sampson,” she insisted.

“I’ll do this only if you promise you won’t see him ever again.”

Smidge launched into a full-scale production of moral outrage, putting her glass down onto the table before adjusting it like it was the sole audience member for this monologue she was about to deliver, ensuring it had the best view.

“I didn’t even
try
to see him! I
ran into him
. I already said that!”

“Then it’s easy to make this promise.”

She tucked her lips into her mouth, scrunching her face in frustration. It’s possible the difficulty she was having wasn’t over getting to see Seth Sampson again. It was in letting me tell her what to do.

“Fine,” she said. “Because I don’t
ca’yir
. I promise.”

“Who’s making promises?” Vikki had let herself in through the screen door and was wearing some kind of yellow housedress that had seen better days and what appeared to be several lonely nights. She had her hair pulled into pigtails, of all things, topped off with a trucker cap that read
Rest Stop.

“Knock, knock!” she added as an afterthought.

“It’s Vikki!” Smidge cheered. “Come sit. Danny’s gonna go into the kitchen and get us all some more wine and you can keep me company.”

Vikki practically pushed my ass off the bench. “Sounds fun! Now, what were you promising?”

“Ohhhhh,” Smidge said, drawing the word out for a few seconds. “Just that I wasn’t cheating earlier, when we were playing a game. Right, Dans?”

I held my hand on the doorknob. “I didn’t say you were cheating. I said it looked like you were thinking about it. Like it looked fun to you.”

“Thinkin’ ain’t cheatin’,” she said, turning her back to me, fluffing out her hair. “Ain’t no thought police up on this porch, right, Vikki?”

Vikki looked from Smidge to me and then back again, her overglossed mouth a twisted pout of confusion. “Well, I’m
sure I don’t know what y’all are talking about, but that wine sounded like a good idea.”

“One second,” I grumbled as I pushed my way inside.

I’d hoped fate would be on my side and I’d find an empty kitchen, but no such luck. Henry was at the sink, scouring the roasting pan from that evening’s dinner.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, drying his hands on a nearby tea towel, slapping it back and forth between his palms like he was making a tortilla. “When exactly are you going home?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Smidge asked me to stay.”

“Yeah.” He turned back to the sink. “I know. It’s just . . . the school year already started and . . . Am I going to have to buy you a Christmas stocking?”

I stood there, unsure of what to do next.

He opened the cabinet to his left and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. “I’m drinking this,” he said. He took a step toward me and then another and suddenly he was right next to me, reaching a hand just past my cheek to open the cabinet door behind me. “Need a glass,” he explained.

“Oh, good!” said Smidge as she made a beeline to where we were standing. “My two favorite people, right next to each other.” She smirked before looking over her shoulder toward your bedroom. “Since Jenny’s on my shit list tonight for that essay bullshit.”

As she chattered on, her hands went to work. One was on Henry’s arm, the other my hip, gently pulling us into what was threatening to become a group hug. I tried to wiggle away, but she gripped my side, pulling me into the position she wanted. Smidge slid herself into the space between us.
Reaching toward the speakers on the counter, she decided, “This should be louder.”

Once satisfied with the volume, she snapped and bounced, eyes closed. “Nnh!” She grooved, turning the two-by-two space in front of the sink into a dance floor. “Oh, people!” she moaned. “I forgot how good this song is.” She hip-bumped me into Henry before shimmying off toward the porch. “I miss my drink!” she shouted to no one in particular, then disappeared around the corner.