Back When You Were Easier to Love (10 page)

“My friends wouldn’t.” He pauses. “Or at least most of them.”

And Noah and I, we stop talking. We are thinking of Zan. We are haunted by Zan.

People ask me
what I miss most about California, and what I miss most is what I never had. In California, I never had a boyfriend at one of the colleges, one who took Modern Chinese Literature and Political Psychology, and didn’t care that I took French II and eleventh-grade English. I miss hanging out with him in the village, eating chocolate-dipped s’mores and browsing used books. I miss him holding out a daylily, yellow bleeding into orange like a perfectly ripe nectarine, saying it’s almost as beautiful as I am.

I never had this. I miss it anyway.

It’s not really
lunchtime yet, but since it wasn’t really breakfast yet when we left, I figure it’s time to break out the snacks. I open the Chips Ahoy!, a bag of Doritos, and two bottles of Sprite. Noah drives, occasionally using shorthand like, “Chips, please,” or “Drink.”

I wish he wasn’t so hell-bent on getting good gas mileage. According to him, driving behind a semi makes for good fuel economy, and we’ve been crawling along at sixty miles an hour.
You’re driving a turbo,
I want to say. I’m still not positive what that means, but I’m pretty sure his mileage is already shot.
Live it up, man. Go seventy-five
. Instead I say: “This classic has no tunes.”

Noah sighs, exasperated. “That isn’t the car’s fault. We’re driving through the middle of nowhere, so we don’t have any radio.”

“A car from the current century would pick up at least one or two stations.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. “Yeah, but would a car from the current century have
this
?” He smiles wider now, and taps just below the clock. A cassette tape deck.

“Nice.” I give him a thumbs-up. “I haven’t seen one of those since I used to ride around with my grandma.” Back when she still drove, Grandma had a huge white car that spoke to her. A little mechanical voice would tell her things:
Please fasten your seat belt. Your windshield wiper fluid is low. A door is ajar
. Grandma would listen to books on tape. If Noah has books on tape I hope they aren’t lame mysteries that you figure out thirty minutes into it. Those ruin the whole drive. “So do you have any tapes?”

“Feast your eyes on this.” He takes one hand off the wheel and takes a zippered case from the console. “Sweet, eh?”

I unzip, and all the tapes are in a row, plastic cases spine-up. “Kris Kross, Tiffany, Wilson Phillips? Who are these people?”

“Keep going.” Noah’s excited, like a little kid showing off a baseball-card collection. “There’s a New Kids on the Block album from when they were popular the first time.”

“Um, New Kids on the Block has never been popular a second time.”

“Oh, they will be. Just you wait.”

“Yeah, I’ll be holding my breath.” I keep flipping through titles. “Man, your musical taste is appalling. Country, forgettable eighties pop . . . Barry Manilow? No way!”

“That one’s my mom’s. She doesn’t have a tape player and she—”

This is awesome. “I love Barry Manilow!”

Noah winces. “Don’t admit that in public. Or if you do, sound at least a little bit ashamed.”

“But I’m not at least a little bit ashamed. Barry rocks!” I pull open the case and try to slip the tape into his right hand, but it’s a no-go.

“You want to listen to it, you put it in.” He keeps both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road.

“I don’t know how. I’ve never used one of these.” I don’t mention that even Grandma’s tape deck was newer than this one. No need to be catty.

“You just slide it in. It’s not hard.” He pumps his fist in a little cheer. “You can do it!”

Zan wouldn’t make me do it. Zan would just do it for me. That’s the kind of boyfriend he is. Was. Will be. Whatever.

But Zan’s not here, Noah is. So I accidentally force the tape in backward once, realize it’s not happening, and flip the tape over so it feeds smoothly into the deck. On the tape Barry is midway through “Copacabana,” and I sing along. In my imagination, it’s Zan sitting next to me, not Noah. In my imagination, Zan is joining in with me on the chorus.

“Don’t you think
Zan looks like Barry Manilow?”

“No.”

“Not the current Barry Manilow. The Barry Manilow of the seventies. He and Zan had the same shaggy, feathery hair.”

“Didn’t the Barry Manilow of the seventies also have a gigantic nose?” says Noah.

I just pretend like he agrees with me. “Those thick, soulful eyebrows, too. They’re just like Zan’s.”

“Zan doesn’t look like Barry Manilow, past, present, or future. Will you please just quit talking about Barry Manilow? And will you please, please,
please
quit talking about Zan?”

Noah sounds annoyed, which makes me annoyed. I’m cool with ticking him off, but not if it’s at Zan’s expense. Or Barry’s. I eject the tape from the deck. “Look, in just a couple of hours we’re going to be in the same city as Zan. Now’s the time to start remembering things about him.”

Noah just drives for a long time. But I still don’t care if he’s mad. Even if his silence does make me uncomfortable without Barry’s soothing tones to fill in the gaps. Finally he says, “I remember stuff about him. I just don’t feel like sharing everything I remember with you.”

“Well, share away! I’m all about sharing the Zanories. That’s my newly created word for Zan memories, by the way.”

“Yeah, I caught that.” Noah pushes harder on the gas pedal. “The first time I met you was because of Zan. Your birthday party last year.” We’re definitely going faster now, and I watch his hands flex on the steering wheel. “Remember?”

“Of course I remember. You brought me my present from Zan.” I pretend like I don’t notice our rapid increase in speed. Maybe this is what the pizza guy meant by “turbo.” Why Noah’s using this SAAB superpower now, when the trip’s practically over, is one of his many notthat-interesting mysteries.

“You know what Zan gave me?” I ask, because it occurs to me that he might not. “A blank book for writing poetry. It was spiral-bound and covered in purple velvet.” I know they’re unnecessary details, but I like the way it shows he has no taste, but that he knows me. Knew me.

“His mother bought it,” says Noah wryly. “Wrote the card, too.”

People ask me
what I miss most about California, and what I miss most is what I never had. In California, I never had an entire summer at Huntington Beach, every single shade of sand slipping through my fingers, between my toes, in my hair. I miss my feet making prints in the cakey, just-moistened sand, or gliding over it, solid and compact, at the ocean’s edge. I never had a little brother, skin the color of a nude nylon, eyes the color of Zan’s, tottering along the beach with a plastic pail collecting seashells.

I never had any of them. I miss them anyway.

“So I’ve been
wondering something.”

“Something I know the answer to?” Noah takes his eyes off the road for a full nanosecond to look at me. Probably because we’ve been silent so long. I’ve forgotten how much time has passed since anybody spoke.

“Something you, and only you, know the answer to,” I say. “Which is this: Why are you antilove?”

Noah’s eyebrows scrunch up. “What makes you think I’m antilove? What does that even mean?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who doesn’t believe in having a girlfriend in high school.”

He finishes making a gradual turn and then we’re staring straight into the sun. I flip down the visor in front of my seat. The brightness is unexpected. Still, it feels like he’s cheating when he puts his sunglasses on. I want to know what he’s thinking, and I need all the clues I can get.

“Deciding not to have a girlfriend isn’t the same as being antilove,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Just because two people are a couple doesn’t mean they’re in love. In fact, most of the time they aren’t. Especially in high school.”

“Sometimes they are, though. Sometimes two people are drawn to each other by a force greater than themselves. And sometimes that happens in high school.”

“Like with you and Zan?” I’m beginning to notice a pattern in how Noah speaks. He says everything in basically the same tone: a calm, noncommittal tone that doesn’t portray any emotion. So he might be sarcastic when he says it or he might be totally sincere. I don’t know, so I can’t get mad at him.

“We’re not talking about me and Zan. We’re talking about you being antilove.”

“I’m not antilove! I just think high school relationships are dumb.”

“Because you don’t want to get too attached before your mission. Because you don’t want to risk actually caring about a girl.” I don’t know why I’m getting irritated, but I am. “You don’t want her to get all needy and send you letters and care packages every day when you’re gone.”

“I wouldn’t mind the care packages,” he says all jokey, smiling.

It only makes me madder. I want to know the truth about this. I don’t know why I’m taking it so seriously, but I want him to, too. “When you fall in love, you can’t help it. It’s not something you can put off, just because you’ve decided you should.”

Noah shrugs. “Maybe you’re right. But that’s never happened to me. So I don’t worry that it will.”

“But what if it
does
?” I prod. And again, I don’t know why.

And again, he makes a joke. “Are you falling in love with me, Joy Afterclein?”

“It’s the Senior Discount hat that did it,” I deadpan. “Irresistible.”

In the distance, clouds are stretched so low in the sky they reach right to the mountains. Somewhere, it is raining. The strange sun makes me feel like an actor in a movie, caught between light and dark. I wish the Barry tape was still providing background music.

“I believe in love,” Noah says finally. “I just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Why is hearing him say it a relief? It is, though. I feel some part of me, somewhere, unclench. “I’ve got it even less figured out than you, probably. I’m learning the hard way.”

“And I’m here learning the hard way with you.”

Maybe he wants it to sound reassuring, but it just sounds stupid. “Yeah, you are. Idiot.”

You know how
people say pets resemble their owner? To me, Gretel has always resembled her house. I mean, not on the surface: she’s a willowy seventeen-year-old with light brown hair, light brown skin, and amber-colored eyes. Her house is a ninety-four-year-old Craftsman with extra-wide front doors, cool old light fixtures, and stained glass.

But the house looks like the kind of fairy-tale cottage a girl named Gretel would live in. Like Gretel, it’s full of built-in hidden treasures—the tiny bench between the staircase and the living-room wall, the bookshelves popping out from unexpected places, the ceiling beams slanting at unusual angles. Her house smells of jasmine.

I open the car door. Even though it’s evening, the air is soft, like velvet. It’s nothing like the hard Haven air, always stinging you with icy cold or blistering heat. Noah feels it, too, because he breathes in long and deep while he stretches his legs.

“Joy!” Gretel runs up to me, and her hair is much, much longer than it used to be and she hugs me hard and says, “It’s so good to see you!” She breaks away from me and extends her hand, all grace and poise. Everything I’m not. Everything I’ve missed. “You must be Noah. Pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah, hey,” Noah mumbles back, his hair flopping in his face just enough that I know he’s ducked his head. Noah? Shy? Maybe it’s Gretel. Maybe her charm and beauty affect even Soccer Lovin’ Kids.

“So, let’s get your stuff so we can eat!” says Gretel. “You guys must be
starving
.” She opens the back door and takes out our snack bag, eyeing the soda and cookies carefully but without showing any judgment. “We’re having mac and cheese made with whole grain pasta,” she says, looking at Noah. “I hope you’re okay with that. We’re vegetarian.”

Noah lifts his head. “That’s cool,” he says, and smiles.

Noah gets the
guest room, and I’m bunking with Gretel, just like back in the good old days. I love Gretel’s room, with its hardwood floors and funky patchwork quilt and handwoven area rug. I’ve never found a bedroom remotely like hers in Haven. I breathe in the same way Noah did when we first got here: long, hard, and audible.

“You happy to see me or something?” Gretel unrolls my sleeping bag and I am reminded of unrolling my sleeping bag last night. I’d known that girl for a few months.

I’ve known this girl for as long as I can remember. We were from the handful of Mormon families in town, and we went to the church nursery together as toddlers, the church Primary together as children, and the church Young Women together up until last year.

“I’m thrilled to see you or something,” I say, examining my reflection in the mirror she framed herself, out of triangular pieces of glass in all different colors. Gretel goes to fine arts camp every year, and she made the mirror the last summer before she became a counselor.

When I look at myself, I’m expecting red-rimmed eyes and pasty skin after a day of driving and a dinner with the Addison family. But instead I see something in my eyes I haven’t seen in a long time. Something that makes them brighter—brighter and softer both.