Zarr, Sara - Sweethearts (4 page)

3:48 It wasn't a panic attack. I know this because I looked up "panic attack" online when I thought that's what I was having. Nor was it generalized, free- floating anxiety, which were also listed on the Web site. I knew why I felt the way I did. My heart pounded; I worried I would throw up. At 3:50, I went to the kitchen and let a spoonful of honey melt in my mouth. It coated my tongue and slid down my throat and momentarily calmed me. 3:54

The thing was this: After that day at Cameron's house, because we'd never said anything about it, I sometimes wondered if it happened. I dreamed it, maybe, or made it up. Maybe my mom and all my teachers were right back then about my imagination and how it was very nice and important for children to have imaginations, but not when it kept them from living in the real world. But I think I know the difference between things that happened and things I imagined happening. This had happened, just like the ring and the walks home from school and the I Love You.

3:57

It was very possible that I should be worried. What did I really know about Cameron Quick, anyway? What Gretchen said about him growing up to be a school shooter popped into my head and I couldn't let it go. Here was this guy I hadn't seen in eight years who tracked me down and knew where I lived and turned up at my school for no good reason. Like a stalker.

4:02

I remembered: The fall before he went away, we were walking home from school and took a detour. There was an office park a few blocks from my apartment building. It was nice, for an office park, with manmade ponds and fountains and a stand of aspens between one of the buildings and the Jordan River Parkway. We wandered into the aspens and lay on the ground hoping for a breeze so that we could hear the leaves clatter -- that's what aspen leaves do, they clatter. The ground was cold against my back and at first i worried about bugs, but after a few minutes of lying there with neither of us speaking, the sound of cars on the nearby road faded out and the afternoon sun blazed behind the trees making green-gold light all around us. I turned my head so that I could see Cameron. His hand was inches from mine. I wanted to take it, or at least stretch my fingers out to see if they reached his. But we hadn't touched since the day at his house, with his father there watching, making it something it shouldn't have been. I pulled my hand closer in and looked back at the sky and the quaking leaves.

4:09

I watched from the living room window as he came up the walk. The impossibility of it struck me again -- that he would be back, that he would find me and show up in my life. But there he was, all six-plus feet of him in the jeans and shirt he'd worn earlier, taking long steps toward the house. I moved to the door and resumed my watching through the peephole. He stopped on the first of the three stairs up to our porch and stared at our house. I imagined that he could see through the walls, like a superhero, see me on the other side of the door, and then through me, through my skin and into my heart, which he would see was afraid. Who would he expect me to be? He stood so long on the bottom step that I worried he was going to change his mind and turn around, and before I really knew what I was doing I opened the door. "Hi." "Hello." "Do you want to come in?" He walked up one more step and shook his head. I went toward him. We were the same height now, him on the second step and me on the porch, and I could see right into his eyes. "Maybe we can sit out here," he said. "Okay." I lowered myself into the aluminum rocker, slowly. I had this feeling that if I moved too fast, or touched him, he'd disappear. He finally came all the way onto the porch and sat in a plastic chair a few feet from me. "Hi," I said again. "Hi." "You're here." I studied his profile. It was so exactly how I remembered it -- the way he always had his head tilted slightly down, looking out at the world as if from underneath something. "Sorry," I said, "for staring." "Go ahead and stare. I don't mind." "You look different," I said, "but also the same. It's weird." "You, too." He stared back at me for so long that I wanted to look away. Instead, I closed my eyes, trying to make a picture of little Cameron materialize. I saw him in that striped T-shirt and his jean shorts, skinny legs and falling-down socks. Him sitting across from me in Mr. Lloyd's office during speech therapy, squinting with effort every time he got to a word with an r in it. I remembered the way he'd look at me when he got it right, shy and proud, a Cameron Quick that no one else at school ever got to see. And the time he handed me a half-squished Fig Newton, still warm from his palm, at lunch. I had more memories of him than I thought, and they were coming at me quickly now, too fast to really hold on to. Cameron, big Cameron, said, "Are you there?" I smiled, keeping my eyes shut. "I'm staring at you in my head now." "Where are we?" "Mr. Lloyd's." "Your hair is in two braids." "Crooked braids," I said. "My mom was always in a hurry." I sat still and held the picture in my mind, as real as when I'd lived it. Big Cameron breathed next to me, his own eyes closed for all I knew. Or maybe not, maybe still looking at me. And beyond that, the sound of leaves on cement every time a breeze fluttered by. Still farther, cars passing a few streets away. And I turned the image in my mind around so that instead of facing Cameron, I was looking at myself: Jennifer Harris, braided hair and secondhand clothes and missing teeth and baby fat. She would leave Mr. Lloyd's office and end up home alone, in an empty apartment, standing in the middle of the room with her backpack at her feet. It seemed like she -- I -- had lived an entire lifetime on that green, threadbare couch, equidistant from the TV and the refrigerator. She looked back at me with two questions: How could you have left me? And Why didn't you say good-bye? I assumed they were questions for Cameron. I opened my eyes, ready to ask, but knew that if I even attempted to say those words the tears would start. Instead I asked, "How did you find me?" "I've followed you for a long time." He must have mistaken the look on my face for alarm or fear, and said, "Not literally. I just mean I never lost track." But it wasn't fear, or anything like that. It was an instant of realization I'd have a lot in the coming days: I'd been thinking of him as coming back from the dead, but the fact was he'd been there all along. He'd been alive when I cried in my room over him being gone. He'd been alive when I started a new school without him, the day I made my first friend at Jones Hall, the time I ran into Ethan at the library. Cameron Quick and I had existed simultaneously on the planet during all of those moments. It didn't seem possible that we could have been leading separate lives, not after everything we'd been through together. "... then I looked you up online," he was saying, "and found your mom's wedding announcement from before you changed your name. I didn't even need to do that. It's easy to find someone you never lost." I struggled to understand what he was saying. "You mean . . . you could have written to me, or seen me, sooner?" "I wanted to. Almost did, a bunch of times." "Why didn't you? I wish you had." And I did, I wished it so much, imagined how it would have been to know all those years that he was there, thinking of me. "Things seemed different for you," he said, matter-of-fact. "Better. I could tell that from the bits of information I found ... like an interview with the parents who were putting their kids in your school when it first started. Or an article about that essay contest you won a couple years ago." "You knew about that?" He nodded. "That one had a picture. I could see just from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn't need me coming along and messing it up." "Don't say that," I said quickly. Then: "You were never part of what I wanted to forget." "Nice of you to say, but I know it's not true." I knew what he was thinking, could see that he'd been carrying around the same burden all those years as me. "You didn't do anything wrong." It was getting cold on the porch, and late, and the looming topic scared me. I got up. "Let's go in. I can make coffee or hot chocolate or something?" "I have to go." "No! Already?" I didn't want to let him out of my sight. "Don't worry," he said. "Just have to go to work. I'll be around." "Give me your number. I'll call you." "I don't have a phone right now." "Find me at school," I said, "or anytime. Eat lunch with us tomorrow." He didn't answer. "Really," I continued, "you should meet my friends and stuff." "You have a boyfriend," he finally said. "I saw you guys holding hands." I nodded. "Ethan." "For how long?" "Three months, almost." I couldn't picture Cameron Quick dating anyone, though he must have at some point. If I'd found Ethan, I was sure Cameron had some Ashley or Becca or Caitlin along the way. I didn't ask. "He's nice," I added. "He's ..." I don't know what I'd planned to say, but whatever it was it seemed insignificant so I finished that sentence with a shrug. "You lost your lisp." And about twenty-five pounds, I thought. "I guess speech therapy worked for both of us." He smiled. "I always liked that, you know. Your lisp. It was . .. you." He started down the porch steps. "See you tomorrow, okay?" "Yeah," I said, unable to take my eyes off of him. "Tomorrow." I stayed up late IM-ing, at first just with Ethan, about an English assignment and auditions for The Odd Couple and what we were going to do that weekend -- everything but what was really on my mind. Talking to him was the last thing I wanted to do. What I wanted was to go over and over the conversation with Cameron, remember every detail of his voice and the way he cleared his throat and how his eyelashes were long and soft over his big eyes. I wanted to think about how I was going to break the news to my mom. Mom! Mom! Guess what? Cameron Quick is alive! No. Because he was never dead. I'd been thinking about this. If I was a mom and my daughter came home and told me that her only friend -- who'd recently moved away, which was hard enough -- died in a freak accident, I'd do some checking. I'd do some asking around. I'd make sure she got to send flowers to the funeral or something, had the chance to talk about it and remember him. Instead she gave me two days off of school and told me to move on and make new friends. I knew she was busy back then, but I couldn't believe she was too busy to have done a better job helping me deal with it. Anyway, my immediate problem was Ethan, and since I'd been on a bad mini streak of neglect and lying, I needed to put all the other stuff aside and give him some attention. While I chatted with him, Steph came online and we started chatting in a separate window. Steph: It's him, right? The WHO we were looking for yesterday. It's that new guy.

Me: Hold on.

Ethan typed away; I contributed smiley faces and LOLs and OMGs as necessary, while figuring out what to tell Steph.

Steph: You know Katy is already obsessed, right? Me: Yeah. Ethan: Come over Saturday night. My parents have a work thing. House to OURSELVES! Me::) Steph: So what's the deal? You don't have to tell me. Okay, you have to tell me. Ethan: Is that a yes???? Me: I think so. I have to ask my mom. Steph: Maybe I can help. You need someone to talk to. Just tell me! Ethan: We can order pizza. Pizza and a movie and who knows what else?! Steph: Hello?

She was right; I needed someone to talk to. It wasn't going to be Katy, and it most definitely was not going to be Ethan.

Me: He came over today. Ethan: Who? I jerked my hands off the keyboard, realizing I'd accidentally posted to the wrong window.

Ethan: Who came over?

My fingers hovered. I knew I had to type something fast or it would only look worse.

Ethan: Jenna?? Me: Cameron Quick. The new kid? He stopped by to say hi. I'm not sure why I told him that, other than that I couldn't think up a lie quickly enough.

Steph: Are you there?

I ignored her and held my breath waiting for Ethan's reply. IM fighting is the worst, because you can't see the other person's face or hear any breathing like on the phone -- nothing. Ethan could have been momentarily interrupted by a parent or he could be sitting there hating me and it would all look the same on my screen.

Me: It was no big deal. He just wanted to see my new house. I didn't know he was coming. Ethan: You didn't know? Then how did HE know where you LIVE?

Good question. I thought fast. Ethan didn't know anything about my history. He didn't know I thought Cameron was dead. He really didn't know anything about me. As far as he was concerned, my life had started in ninth grade, when I walked into Jones Hall and promised myself I would smile, I would look nice, I would make friends.

Me: His mom and my mom are friends. They stayed in touch, I guess. Ethan: Oh. His mom was WITH him? Today? Why didn't you say so?? I started to correct him and tell him no, Cameron hadn't come with his mom. Then I backspaced over everything and started over. Me: Because I'm dumb? J Ethan: You're not DUMB. Dummy. J

We chatted a little more; Steph signed off after I hadn't answered her. By the time I got up from the computer, my breathing had returned to normal after the stress of lying to Ethan, but I ended up in the dark kitchen anyway opening the fridge as quietly as I could so as not to wake up Mom or Alan. I needed sweet, I needed creamy. There was no pudding, no yogurt, nothing for making chocolate milk, no ice cream, not even any applesauce. All I found was part of an old bag of chocolate chips in the freezer. I dumped them into a bowl and heated them in the microwave until they started to melt. I got a spoon, went back to my room. I sat with my back against the door. The curve of the chocolate-coated spoon fit exactly right against my tongue. Sometimes I missed being Jennifer Harris. Obviously, being Jenna Vaughn was more of an overall advantage in life, but there were moments I missed being Jennifer the way you can miss versions of yourself when you get a totally new haircut, or a favorite pair of jeans finally wears out. Even though it was sad that I'd spent so much time home alone eating and reading, the truth was that those were some of my favorite memories. Getting lost in a book with something sweet or salty or hopefully both, like stacks of crackers with butter and jelly, seemed, in some ways, the closest I'd gotten to complete and total happiness. The two questions came into my head again: How could you have left me? Why didn't you say good-bye? I missed myself the way I missed what Cameron and I had before that day at his house, and how time almost stopped when we were together. We didn't have to explain it or understand it or talk about it, ever. Everything was innocent. It just was. Nothing, nothing could be as simple as that ever again. CHAPTER 8 CAMERON'S PRESENT IS A DOLLHOUSE. IT IS RIGHT IN THE middle of his bedroom and made out of wood. It's not fancy like a Barbie Dream House, it doesn't have furniture or anything, just a wooden back and two wooden sides and a slanty roof and it's open in the front. The side walls have little windows that are almost square but you can tell Cameron did it by hand, with a tiny saw, maybe. Because they are a little bit crooked. He looks at me, still holding limp Moe in his arms. It was too big to bring to school, he says. It has two stories inside and comes to my waist. I can picture how I'll put Rufus and Bitty, my toy mice, inside. I run my finger along the inside edge of one of the windows. Anything that could make a splinter has been sanded away. You made it? He nods. Cameron's father laughs. Okay, okay. It's the worst dollhouse you've ever seen in your life, right? Just tell him. He knows. No, I say. Its good. Me saying that the dollhouse is good makes something change in Cameron's father. Now he's looking back and forth at us in a way that makes me wish I hadn't said it. But if I hadn't said it then Cameron might think his dad was right, which he wasn't. So I don't know what I should have said. If you like it so much, why don't you play with it now? It's confusing the way he talks. I wouldn't mind playing with the dollhouse, but Cameron doesn't move. His father studies me and scratches at his dark mustache. I thought he was sweet on you but now... now I'm not so sure. I think maybe he just wants someone to play dolls and hopscotch and dress-up with. Yeah, that makes more sense, now that I take a good look at you. You're not really the type to be anyone's girlfriend, are you? This lines up with the kind of thing I hear people say about me at school and I wonder what is wrong with me that even Cameron's father can look at me and see the truth: that I'm ugly and fat and no one wants to be my friend. It makes me feel guilty. The fact that Cameron does want to be my friend somehow makes his dad act mean like this. If I were thinner and prettier, if I had the right clothes like Jordana and Charity, then maybe it would make Cameron's dad see him in a different way. A better way. / think I have to go home, I say. Not so much to Cameron's father but to Cameron himself, who is just standing there next to the dollhouse, his eyes big but his lips clamped shut. When I was Cam's age I had games I liked to play with my little girlfriends, too. But it sure as hell wasn't hopscotch and dollies. We played house. We played doctor. That's what normal kids do. His father is leaning against the door, getting comfortable, and his face lights up the way my mom's does when she has a good idea about what to fix for dinner. Maybe you just don't know how, huh? CHAPTER 9 IT'S AMAZING HOW ADAPTABLE WE ARE; HUMANS, I MEAN. LESS than twenty-four hours after seeing Cameron again for the first time in eight years, back from what I'd believed was the dead, I'd already adjusted to the new reality. When he walked across the cafeteria to our table, the sight of him seemed almost ordinary. Almost. Because while the sight of Cameron now seemed ordinary, the fact that I was sitting at a table full of social non-pariahs, including a boyfriend who was mine, was what seemed wrong. Watching Cameron come toward us I could see why Katy used the words "hot" and "gorgeous" to describe him -- he definitely had nice hair and a long, lean body with broad shoulders, and the eyes. I wondered what Jordana would think now if she saw him. He set his tray on the end of the table, not particularly near any of us. "Everyone," I said, "this is Cameron Quick." Ethan stood to reach over the table and shake his hand. "Hey. I'm Ethan." "We were ... we both went to the same elementary school," I said, even though they'd heard that basic explanation already, "and then he moved, and ... now he's moved back, so he's here. Here he is." Steph looked at me like she knew 1 needed help, and said, "I'm Steph, this is Katy." Katy smiled and waved; Steph pointed down the table, "Gil, Freshman Dave, Junior Dave, and obviously Jenna." Cameron finally spoke, mostly to his lunch tray, "Hi. Nice to meet you all." I watched him to see if he sneaked any looks at Steph, like most guys did when they first met her, dazzled and intimidated by her starlet body and model face. He barely seemed to notice. Ethan took a bite of his burrito. "So you and Jenna were in the same class when you were kids?" Cameron glanced at me. "Basically." "What was Jenna like back then?" Gil asked. "Got pictures?" Cameron smiled. "Don't need pictures. I got her up here," he said, tapping his forehead. I groaned, making a joke of it, while inside I worried over what he would say. He might tell them I was fat, or about my lisp or my thrift-store clothes or how much I'd changed. "Two braids. Sweet eyes. Good heart. Adorable. Just like she is now." Gil looked at Ethan. Katy studied her apple, eyebrows raised. Steph said, "Jenna has all that and more, except maybe the braids. Which is why everyone loves her. I dare you to find one person in this school who does not like Jenna Vaughn.'7 Based on the color of Katy's neck, I think there might have been one person who didn't like me, at least for the moment. "So, Cameron," Steph continued, "auditions for the school play are next week. You should come. We need more males of the species to try out." "Not my thing," Cameron said. "Okay, so you don't want to be onstage. You could be back-stage." "With Jenna," Gil said helpfully. "She's the stage manager -- " Ethan talked over Gil. "But if it's not your thing," he said, "it's not your thing. You don't even have to have a thing if you don't want." "Right," Katy said, "no thing required." Cameron didn't respond, didn't even act like anyone was waiting for him to say anything. He just ate his lunch, scooping spaghetti onto a piece of bread and folding the bread over into a sort of sandwich before putting it in his mouth. I was fascinated by the most mundane little details of him -- how he held his paper napkin in his left hand while he ate with his right, the space he took up when both his elbows were on the table. I was suddenly aware that I'd been staring at him, and everyone else at the table was staring at me. They were all done with their lunches. I wondered how much time had passed. "Urn," Katy said to me, "are you all right?" Steph caught my eye and smiled slowly. "Oh, yeah." I concentrated on my half sandwich trying to think of something witty to say, but I was in total Jennifer Harris territory now, spacing out and forgetting how to make simple conversation. Cameron picked up his empty tray. "Nice to meet you all. See you later." He lifted a finger toward me. "Bye, Jennifer." We watched him leave, then Gil said, "How come he calls you Jennifer?" I crumpled up my lunch bag. "Because that used to be my name." "Really?" Ethan said. "I didn't know that." "I changed it a long time ago." "He's shy," Steph said, still watching the spot where Cameron had been sitting. Katy smirked. "Not with Jenna." Ethan surprised me by coming to Cameron's defense. "That's because they've known each other forever. I'd be nervous, too, if I were meeting all you retards for the first time." "Good point," Junior Dave said. I drove Ethan home after school even though what I wanted was to talk with Cameron for a hundred more hours. We sat in front of his house -- his family had a bungalow near the park, a small brick thing that barely held him and his parents and his two little sisters, Carly and Hannah. He took my hand and wiggled my fingers one by one. "You look nice today." "I do?" Hard to believe, as lumpy and tired and out of sorts as I felt. "Yeah." He got closer, played with my earring. "Your hair is all... wavy." "Thanks for being so nice to Cameron." I don't know why I said that right then, totally ruining the mood Ethan was obviously trying to get me in. But talking, flirting, having a normal conversation about our usual things felt impossible. He stopped playing with my earring and leaned back. "Sure. I mean, I've got nothing against the guy." "Exactly," I said, nodding. "As long as he stays away from you, he can be my best friend if he wants." He took my hand again. "Why don't you come in? No one's home for a while." This time it was me who pulled back. "He knows I have a boyfriend. We can still be friends, though," I said, resisting the urge to tack a "right?" on the end of my sentence. "Well, yeah. Within reason." "What does that mean?" "It means 'within reason.'" He turned away from me and stared out the windshield. "Jenna, think about it. If there was some hot girl who'd known me half my life and described me as having 'sweet eyes' and being 'adorable' and she suddenly turned up out of nowhere, how would you feel?" He made air quotes while he talked, and even imitated Cameron's deep voice in a way that didn't sound entirely complimentary. "You're friends with Steph," I said. "That doesn't bother me." Which, actually, was not totally true. But I would never, ever let on that it bothered me, because no one likes an insecure, possessive girlfriend. No one likes an insecure, possessive boyfriend, either, a fact that Ethan did not seem to grasp. "So you're saying you're going to be hanging out with Cameron?" he asked. "I'm saying he's my friend." "I'm saying you're my girlfriend." "I'm saying I know that, and you have nothing to worry about." He sighed. "Why don't you just come in?" He made puppy dog eyes at me and I said yes and we went straight to his room and closed the door. He needed reassurance. I needed reassurance. Which was probably why we ended up breaking our firmly established makeout boundaries in a big pile of Ethan-smelling blankets on his bed, with his cat, Milhouse, curled up near the pillows. The kind of feeling I got from being with Ethan that way was something like when I ate, the same private sort of comfort that I got when I had my favorite foods all to myself. It didn't seem quite right that it would feel like that. Because being with someone was supposed to be about intimacy and trust along with feeling good. The point was sharing something with the other person, making this special connection you weren't making with someone else. That's what my mom always said, anyway. Mostly, though, I went inside myself while I experienced it all -- his hands on me and mine on him, his mouth, the warm climby floating, the intensity and release. I stayed utterly silent through it all, eyes shut, concentrating and not wanting it to ever be over and at the same time wanting it done. It was not unlike the way I always wanted food to last forever while also being anxious for it to be gone so that I could breathe again and go on with my life. Afterward I curled into a ball alongside Ethan with my forehead on his chest. He pulled me close. "Was that okay?" he whispered. I nodded against him. "Are you sure? We kind of bent the rules, and . . . Well, I don't want it to be like you felt like you had to or something." "Ethan, I wanted to," I muttered. "It was good." "Okay." He tucked the blankets around my shoulders. Milhouse stretched and jumped off the bed. "Because you seemed kind of, I don't know. Far away." I thought about that, and what I should say back that wouldn't make Ethan feel bad or make me sound weird, but then we heard the garage door go up and scrambled to realign all our clothes and arrange ourselves in a convincing configuration of textbooks and school binders. By the time his mom poked her head in his room, we were calmly discussing The Old Man and the Sea with the door open. "Hi guys, I'm home." She scanned the room, as if looking for evidence of something. Fortunately Ethan never made his bed so it didn't look any more or less disheveled than usual. "Are you saying for dinner, Jenna?" "No, thanks, Mrs. Green," I said, closing the book I'd just opened, as if exhausted from an hour of studying. "I actually have to get home." Ethan walked me out to my car. "I didn't mean to be an ass," he said, holding the door while I climbed in the driver's seat. "About Cameron, I mean." "I know." "Just... you know. I think he likes you." I laughed it off. "No, he doesn't. Not like that." Ethan couldn't possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like romance or a crush. "Pick me up tomorrow?" "Tomorrow is Saturday, silly. But you're coming over tomorrow night, remember?" He glanced toward the house. "My parents are leaving at six, then Carly and Hannah are getting picked up at six-thirty, so you could come at seven or something?" "Okay," I said. He bent down to give me a slow, sweet kiss, and I drove off. The farther away I got from Ethan's house, the more I felt lost. I wanted to go back and see him again, or drive by Steph's, or even call Katy. The things that made up my life as Jenna Vaughn seemed slippery and uncertain. I didn't go back to Ethan's, though, because I thought it would seem weird or needy, and really it wasn't Ethan per se that I wanted, more the idea of him and the fact of us being a couple. I didn't drive by Steph's