Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (3 page)

The Boyfriend summoned Cruz, and after ten minutes of my mom saying goodbye in baby talk—
Will you miss me a widdle bit? I’m gonna miss wu!—
The Boyfriend and Cruz left.

No, he didn’t ask me for my phone number. No, no plans to see me later.

Just a wave and a thousand-watt smile.

With mom’s track record with men, she was sure to break up with The Boyfriend in a matter of minutes, and I would never see Cruz again.

As soon as the door closed behind them, I ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I cracked open a 99-cent notebook, flopped onto my bed and started writing. I wrote quickly before the details would evaporate from my memory.

It didn’t matter that I wouldn’t see him again because I would have the day recorded forever. Any time I wanted to spend time with Cruz, I could, just by reading my words.

This is how I write: I get an idea. From where? I don’t know. Maybe from a muse or God, or maybe indigestion. I get a lot of indigestion.

Anyway, I get an idea, and I have to write it down. Have to. I’m kind of the crack addict of writers. I gotta. I needa. I hafta.

So, I get a pen—I love the XXL Bic pens, which are discontinued, but I can still find them at the 99-cent store—crack open one of my notebooks, and just write.

I mean, I don’t know where the words come from, and I’m not even aware when I’m writing. I just zone out, and my hand flies across the paper, stringing words together in a reasonably good story.

I don’t wake from my writing stupor until my fingers cramp too bad to hold the pen. Not only am I the crack addict of writers, I’m also the zombie of writers. I’m like The Walking Dead, but the Lying Down and Writing Dead.

So, I was crack/zombie writing, almost done with the last detail of my blissful time with beautiful Cruz—twenty pages front and back—when my mother threw open my door and stormed into my room.

She had taken off her bikini and had put on sweats and a hoodie. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her eyes were big and bloodshot. She had the look on her face she got when she figured her life was crap, and I was most likely to blame.

She was too quick for me. She swiped my notebook out of my hands and held it high above her head.

“Are you kidding me?” she screeched. “You’re up here playing around when I’m slaving away downstairs? Don’t even think you’re not going to help clean up.”

I heard her voice as if it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. My attention was on my notebook. As she spoke, she waved it around, making the precious pages flap. I knew I would have to be careful. Mom was volatile at best and at worst she knew how to hurt me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice a soft whisper. “I’ll come down right now.”

“I mean, you play, you pay, kid,” she continued, screeching as loud as she could. “I noticed you had a pretty good time at the party and then you leave me to repair the damage.”

She lowered the notebook and rolled it in her hands until it formed into a tight cylinder.

“You’re right,” I said.

Mom blinked, as if she was trying to focus on me. I noticed her attention had shifted to my body. My towel had slipped, revealing me in my bikini. Her face registered surprise and something that fueled her anger, and I quickly re-tied the towel around me.

“Damn right, I’m right,” she said, enunciating each word slowly.

The room grew quiet. I had stopped breathing. We studied each other, me trying to read on her face what punishment she had planned for me, and her studying me to determine just how much she hated me at that moment.

I longed to be anywhere but there. There was nothing safe about my room, nothing safe about being anywhere where my mother could get at me. But I couldn’t get away. I was sixteen, and I was invisible. My mother was the only person in my life.

Mom blinked and took a deep, deciding breath. Then, she opened my notebook and ripped a page in half. Then, another. Then, another. She grew calmer as she ripped. She ripped until my memories of Cruz laid on my bedroom floor, transformed into confetti.

“And mop the kitchen. It’s a mess,” she said as she left my room.

I dropped to the floor, gathered the bits of paper, and wished to be invisible once more.

I’m nobody. Who are you?

--Emily Dickinson

The summer was over, and I was three-thousand-dollars richer. Not bad and almost worth babysitting the Maclaren triplets for three months.

After surviving taking care of the three, not-potty-trained toddlers--especially the time they got into the Costco supply of Hersheys and puked and pooped for six hours straight--I would have thought the first day back at school wouldn’t have seemed so scary. But it was.

Poop and puke were nothing compared to high school students.

I opened the Danish butter cookies tin that I had hidden under my bed and counted the money that I had stashed there. Three-thousand-four-hundred-seventy five-dollars and twenty-three cents. That’s how much closer I was to the Sorbonne in Paris.

I had enough for the plane but no way to survive once I was there, especially because I couldn’t get a work visa and so couldn’t work in France. I also had no idea how to apply to the Sorbonne or how much it cost. And after three years of high school French, all I could say was: “Il y a de la neige sur le train,” which means: “There’s snow on the train.”

“And bienvenue a Paris,” I said to my empty bedroom. “Welcome to Paris. I know how to say that, too.”

I was a wild-eyed optimist when it came to Paris. I had no idea how I would get there, but I was determined to do it. Get to Paris, study at the Sorbonne, and write all day at cafes on the Boulevard Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I knew deep in my heart that this was my ticket to happiness.

My ticket to me.

I threw my pocket Emily Dickinson book into my backpack, along with my binder, and zipped it closed. Emily had kept me company my whole life, ever since I learned to read. But she had been content to live her life in her room, and I had been counting down until I could escape my invisible life.

I slipped the backpack over my shoulders, my feet into flip-flops, and I ran downstairs. I poured coffee and water into the coffee maker and flipped the
on
switch. I placed two Pop Tarts into the toaster and got the milk out of the fridge.

Once it was done, I poured coffee into my mom’s favorite mug and topped it with the milk. I was her alarm clock, because she wanted to be woken with a cup of coffee instead of top-forty tunes and a happy DJ. Nevertheless, it was hit or miss in the morning. I mean, her mood was all over the map before she got her caffeine.

I walked upstairs and opened her bedroom door. Inside looked normal. All Disney princesses and Miss Havisham. Lace and pillow-topped everything. When in doubt, my mom liked to surround herself in whatever was appropriate for a five-year old girl.

The whole house looked like Goldilocks had thrown up all over it.

Mom’s curtains were drawn, leaving only a crack of light peeking through. I put her coffee on the nightstand next to her bed, and I opened the curtains. The sun flooded in, illuminating every corner of her Laura Ashley ensemble.

But the sun had no effect on her. She was sound asleep.

“Good morning,” I said, quietly, making my way to a safe distance away from her by the door. “7:15. Wakey. Wakey.”

Mom stirred and turned onto her stomach. I had to get going, or I would be late for the first day of school.

“Okay, then,” I said. “You’re awake, right? The coffee is by your left arm. Wakey. Wakey.”

I sighed. If I left without waking her, she would Godzilla my ass. It took her at least an hour to get ready for work. Her eyeliner and curling iron took up a good twenty minutes. If she was late, she would blame me, but I had to be careful. She only had limited patience for alarm clocks. I bit my lower lip. What to do?

“Ahem,” I said.

“I heard you!” she yelled into her pillow. “What the hell! Just leave, already.”

Phew. My work here was done. “Okay,” I whispered. “Leaving now.”

I tiptoed out and ran down the stairs. Grabbing my Pop Tarts, I left the house, locking the front door behind me.
That went smoothly
, I thought. I had forgotten to remind her that it was the first day of school, but since I would be home way before she was, it didn’t really matter.

My mother had defied all of my predictions and was still with The Boyfriend. It was probably her longest relationship. More often than not, she would sleep over at his house, or he would sleep at ours. Several times, I went in to wake her up in the morning but had to turn around in a hurry after taking in an eyeball-full of their canoodling.

Blech. Shudder.

I was right about Cruz. I never saw him again after the pool party. My mom and The Boyfriend never mentioned him—at least not in front of me—and I wondered if he was still in town or if he had given up on Mr. paella-and-wine and ran home to his mother.

After my mom had ripped apart my notebook, I opened another one and wrote all about Cruz. This time I wrote slowly. Every night when the house was dark and quiet, I would slip into bed and write by the light of a flashlight. I savored every word, every memory, dragging them out, detailing all my senses that he had awakened.

I filled two notebooks. Then, I kept writing. I wrote about the future. About possibilities.

Cruz possibilities.

I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew there were no Cruz possibilities. I knew there were only Cruz impossibilities. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t certifiable.

But when you’re invisible, living with a mother who would rather you’d disappear completely, writing about Cruz possibilities was a comfort. By the first day of school, I had written about Cruz and me starting a Bed & Breakfast, going on a romantic yet doomed mission to Mars, and starring in the Twilight reboot together. Among other stories.

Whenever I felt like I was living a Judy Blume novel or destined to be the new
Girl, Interrupted
, or that my dream to move to Paris was a ridiculous, impossible delusion, I would write about Cruz. With the movement of my Bic pen over my cheap paper, gone was the desperation, depression, and frankly, anger that stalked me morning, noon, and night.

A seething furious anger that I never allowed myself to feel.

I wondered if the Dalai Lama wrote about Cruz possibilities. I mean, he was always smiling.

It was a twelve-minute walk to school. I timed it to arrive right when the bell rang. My survival instinct prevented me from hanging around the quad before school started. Invisible sucked, but it was better than being a target. Getting there right when the bell rang meant that I could slip into class and into a seat in the back row without anybody taking notice of me.

I checked my schedule. I had humanities first period, which was usually my best class. Easy A. This year I had Mr. Lawrence, who was a new teacher.

***

The room was packed. More budget cuts meant our class was bursting with forty-two seats. I took the one in the very back row next to the door just as the bell rang.

Mr. Lawrence was young and good looking. He wore jeans and a t-shirt announcing READ. He had round, wire-rimmed glasses that framed his big blue eyes. I could imagine he would be the object of a lot of high school girls’ fantasies. His syllabus wouldn’t help matters.
Pride & Prejudice, Love Story, Romeo and Juliet
. Mr. Lawrence was going to have to contend with a lot of lovesick seniors.

The students shifted in their seats, opening binders and notebooks, clicking their pens and twirling their pencils. The girls wore itty-bitty miniskirts, Daisy Dukes, or tighter than tight jeans. The boys sagged or didn’t.

There was a sad lack of acne and a surprising amount of designer bags. Zac Posen might call it “pedestrian,” but I called it “over my budget.”

I was wearing jeans—normal ones, not tight—and a men’s white undershirt. I had pulled my hair back into a ponytail, as usual.

I took out my binder and pencil and waited to take notes. Although I had already read everything on the reading list, I was still a fanatic about my grades. I didn’t know what grades the Sorbonne wanted, but I would be ready with A’s. Come on Mr. Lawrence, I thought, bring it on. Make my day.

He started with attendance. About halfway through, he got to me. “Tess Parker,” he called.

“Here,” I said, quietly and raised my hand.

“You mean,
Mess
Parker,” Jillian Glass sneered, causing a wave of snickering throughout the class.

I held my breath. “Mess” was one of the miseries I had lived with since second grade when I didn’t know how to brush my hair.

I slumped down into my chair and waited for the snickering to stop. It wasn’t a great way to start my senior year. The other students turned to look at me, as if the world had turned inside out, the back had become the front, and I had become the teacher.

I guessed they were trying to see if I really was a mess. I ran a self-conscious hand over my hair and fought a desire to close my eyes and run out of the room.

I would have wished for a miracle to happen, something to draw the attention away from me, something to erase “Mess Parker” from my fellow seniors’ sadistic minds, but I didn’t believe in miracles. In my experience, miracles were like unicorns. Like the Abominable Snowman. Like a good Adam Sandler movie.

Then, a unicorn pranced into the classroom.

I mean, a miracle happened.

The door burst open, and a wild creature marched through.

She wore a pink tutu and black leggings with boots, a t-shirt, and lots of bangle bracelets. Her head looked like it had exploded but instead of brain bits, blond curls shot out in frizzy, manic spikes. Like they were trying to escape or attack anyone who came too close to her.

She opened her large plastic purse and rummaged through it. Finally, she took out a scrap of paper.

“Is this humanities?” she asked, reading from the paper.

Then, her wallet fell out of her purse.