Frannie and Tru (8 page)

Late the next afternoon, Sunday sunlight streaming in the window, Tru fetched me from my room. After two nights of canceled fireworks, the city had delayed them until later this month, some night when they wouldn't interfere with an Orioles game, so once again we were freed from family obligations. The two of us went to find Mom, and he told her he'd forgotten his running shoes at home, and needed a new pair anyway. He asked if we could take the van to the mall, offering to get me dinner afterward, his treat. A few minutes later, as we were buckling our seat belts, I asked him where we were really going.

“Sneakers? I need sneakers? You may want to get your hearing checked.”

He turned up Bruce until it was too loud for us to talk, then whistled the entire ride to the mall. After we pulled into the
parking lot, he hustled inside, while I practically ran to keep up with him. We came in through Macy's at the shoe department, where he immediately pointed at a pair of blue-and-white Nikes and bought them without trying them on. Then I chased him out of there to the food court, where he ordered us two chicken sandwiches with fries and Cokes, not even asking what I wanted, and then practically sprinted back to the car. We shut the doors, and he revved the sad, old engine, looking over at me as he did.

“Just enough time to make it to Prettyboy.”

In fact, there wasn't enough time. Not really. It was going to be twenty-five minutes to get there, followed by what Tru had assured me was a “very fast, very stealth recon mission,” and then forty minutes home.

“It's like we took a long time at the mall, followed by a leisurely sit-down dinner at some disgusting chain restaurant of your choice,” he said, one hand holding his sandwich, one hand on the wheel. “No biggie. Tell them I'm exceedingly fussy about my shoes. A real queen. I tried on a million pairs. It'll be fine. We're going to be fine.”

“But why did we even go the mall? We should have just skipped it!”

Tru looked at me like I was possibly the stupidest person he'd ever met. “Because I needed new athletic footwear, Frannie. Trying to stay in tip-top shape for the coming season.”

“You play sports?”

“No, I do ballet.”

“Shut up—you know that's not what I mean. I just . . . can't picture you on a team. Listening to the coach. High-fiving. Caring.”

I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“Track, Frannie. I do track. So not as much of all that.”

“Are you good?”

“Nothing special. Short distances are my thing. I'm a pretty good sprinter. Actually, I've become an unexpected star at this new event they started last year—Devil Take the Hindmost. You just keeping running around the track, and at the end of every lap, they pull off the last person. You go and go and go until there's only one person left.”

“Whoa. That's kind of awesome.”

He gave me a very specific smile of his, one he reserved for when I sounded extra dopey.

“Yeah, it actually
is
‘kind of awesome.' You have no idea what's going to happen, how fast you should run. The smartest thing is to stay in the middle of the pack for the first half or so. But I never do that. I like to stay out front, run too fast, set the pace. I can run until I puke, no problem. I'm used to it.”

“Why are you used to running until you puke?”

He didn't answer at first, and then his phone conveniently beeped with an incoming text. He gave it a glance.

“Sparrow. She says thanks for coming yesterday. The boys are grateful.”

“Oh, cool.” My voice was high and ridiculous, and I saw his Grinchy grin come out.

“Frannie, have you ever had a boyfriend?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, as sarcastically as I could. “I've had tons.”

“Just asking, just asking.”

“Have
you
ever had a boyfriend?”

He laughed loudly at that, which warmed me to the core. I always felt like my laughs from Truman were hard-earned, special.

“Nobody worth writing home about, I guess you'd say. Not really interested in being tied down. You should never have a significant other in high school. That's a complete waste of your best make-out years.”

I finally saw an opening to ask him all the million questions I'd been wondering about, but, as usual, couldn't find the words that came so easily when I was alone.

“How, um . . . how is it where you are? Is it, you know, liberal?”

“Well, it's not Iran. Or Oklahoma. But it's not San Francisco either. It's a smallish town, but pretty close to New York City. A very tiny, exclusive, stuck-up school. No LGBT club or anything. But I don't care about that shit. You've probably noticed that the tide of the world is flowing in my direction. I'm going to be fine.”

If it were somebody else, I'd think they were putting on a bit of a brave face or whatever. With Tru, I thought I might believe him.

“But what about your parents?” I asked. “I mean, they must be super-Catholic. Mine used to be, but the older we get, the less they seem to care. Now they're only pretty Catholic.”

“What makes a Catholic only ‘pretty Catholic'?”

“I don't know. We never say grace anymore. A few years ago we started taking the summer off from church.”

“Ha! So that's why we haven't been. Well, my family goes to church all year long. They're hard-core like that. Richard grew up in New Jersey, in a little Irish neighborhood. Everybody was Catholic. So on the one hand, he got away and left all that behind to be a rich, WASPy asshole, and on the other hand, he still clings to it. I don't think he really cares in some deep way. I mean, ask him how he feels about money or war or the death penalty, I promise you none of it actually aligns into some kind of structured view of the world. Certainly not a Jesus-y one. Going to church is just a good excuse to make me do something I don't want to do. He's a real dick about it.”

“How did they find out?” I asked quietly. “About you?”

There was a small hum from the CD player, the pause between songs amplifying the silence.

“Let's just say I told them and leave it at that.”

The sun was beginning to fade, and I watched it a little desperately, hoping we'd make it to Prettyboy before dark.

“Do you always call your dad Richard?” I asked.

“Not to his face,” Tru said, and he gave me a little half smile.

Then he turned the volume up until Bruce was screaming in our ears, and I knew it was time to stop asking questions.

“So you've never been here?”

“No!” I said. “When would I come here? You're not allowed to come here!”

“Not exactly. I think you've been hearing some trumped-up stories. According to the most basic of internet searches, you can
hike and boat and fish here, not to mention hunt birds with a bow? Not sure what that's all about, but look out for stray arrows flying at our heads. I mean, the place has a freaking parking lot. There's definitely no swimming, but it's not quite as mysterious as everyone likes to make it sound.”

“So why did we have to lie? Why did we sneak off to do it right now?”

“I don't know, I just really felt like coming tonight. And because it's fun, Frannie! Aren't you having fun?”

I was, a little bit, even if I was still kind of nervous, but I didn't want to tell him that.

“If it's no big deal to be here, then why are we parking on this random street in the middle of nowhere?”

“Well,” Tru said, “it is going to be dark soon, at which point we are
not
supposed to be here. Plus, I've been looking at maps. The jump-off is just a quarter mile that way.”

He hopped out of the van and headed for the trees, leaving me to lock the doors before I caught up.

“So nobody died here or whatever?”

“Oh no,” he said. “That part's true. Seems like every five years or so it happens again. Swimming here is a terrible idea.”

We entered the woods, no path for us to follow, just me darting after Tru as he clomped through the trees, following the GPS on his phone while the daylight began to dwindle. At first I could still hear cars off in the distance, but as we got a little farther, those noises died away, replaced by birds chirping, squirrels rustling. I named the trees to myself as we passed. Ash. Pine. Oak. Truman
was a few steps ahead, on a singular mission, plowing right through the debris of the forest, the tangle of vine and stick and bush. A leaf fluttered down and stuck in his hair without him feeling it.

Just as I was wondering how close we were, I caught a new sound—the sound of water falling. Falling and churning. Tru must have heard it, too, because he looked back and gave a little twitch of his head, telling me to catch up. I hopped my way over to him, reaching up to pluck the leaf from his hair as I did.

We pushed on, ducking under low-hanging branches, dodging roots and saplings, the gushing getting louder. Another few feet and we could see a rocky outcropping, jutting off into the sky. Tru and I started to jog toward it. We hit the edge of the tree line, took our last steps slow and measured.

Prettyboy gaped and gleamed below us, the water pristine. The reservoir stretched for ages in both directions, a dam surging to the left, a metal bridge arching to the right. No sign of any fishermen or hikers or bird hunters. No boats. I wondered how cold the water was, how deep. Tru pointed to the right, and there was the rope, wound tightly around a high branch, hanging perfectly still.

We moved forward, a little closer to the edge than I would have liked, and sat on the flat, gray rocks, still faintly warm from the sun. Tru flipped onto his stomach and kept inching forward, until he was right at the lip, peering down. For a few minutes we said nothing. Tru flicked tiny pebbles off the edge and watched them fall.

“Gatsby spends a lot of time staring out across the water.
Looking at a green light. Dreaming about a girl across the way, who he's still in love with. Does that seem romantic?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Don't you think so?”

“I do. Well, I'm pretty sure I do. All this tragic shit happens in the book, and it's because Gatsby and Daisy get together, even though she's married. So, yeah, they create all this turmoil, but there's a madness at the heart of what they're doing that's beautiful. Or maybe not beautiful, but real. Or powerful or something. I don't know. The first time I thought that's what it was all about. The romance. But the second time I read it, part of me wasn't so sure.”

A hawk swooped in front of us, and Tru propped himself up on his elbows, watching it descend to the water. I got down on my stomach, too, and shimmied forward until I was next to him, looking down the fifty-foot drop to the reservoir below. The surface was glistening, threatening. Shining like diamonds.

“It's always a little romantic, looking at the water,” I said. “It has that forever feeling. It fills you up.”

“Does it?” Tru asked. “Water reminds me that I'm small. It's like this soulless void that's bigger and older than me. Part of an endless cycle. So I get that infinite feeling, but only because it goes on forever and I won't. It's weird, but that's the forever feeling I like. Standing there helplessly makes me feel kind of powerful. On a good day, I can look down and will myself not to care.”

I shifted forward a bit, peering over the edge and letting the water swallow my thoughts. I felt a little scared, but for once it wasn't about any of the real things in my life. I was scared of the view, the swirling currents below.

“I like looking at water because it makes me forget,” I told Tru.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

The hawk rose back into the sky, curving to the left and gliding away until it was a blur, a dot, nothing. We sat there for several more minutes in silence, the day dimming down. With only a few rays left to guide us, Tru stood up and headed back toward the car. Again he moved almost too quickly for me to keep up, some secret urgency fueling him on.

The weekend was over, and Monday reared its head.

I was back with Duncan, reading a new Bible passage, watching him do mazes, frying up some grilled cheese. As usual, I ate twice as fast as he did, and as soon as I was done I hopped on the laptop they kept in the kitchen. At the beginning of the summer, I'd lurked around a lot on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, scrolling through the immature jokes and cat videos and bikini pics of my old classmates, thinking how stupid it all was, but still feeling lonelier than ever. Today I hovered for a minute over the keyboard, wanting at first to look up Truman and all the boys in the band, then deciding not to. I didn't want to find them on there. Or that wasn't completely true. Part of me was desperate to find them, to excavate their online lives, looking for pictures of their exes and seeing how many followers they
had. But a bigger part of me didn't want to see all that, the one-off comments they made and never thought about again. I liked them right now just the way I knew them. If I saw or read too much, it might ruin all that.

Instead, I started searching other things. I looked up and memorized the lyrics to a couple of the songs that Devon sang. I read about Gatsby. I Googled “marine welders new careers,” which was so idiotic I closed it out before I even saw what came up.

After that, Duncan and I went down to the basement as usual. He played with his train set, and I tried to focus on my summer reading, wanting to get as excited about it as Tru was about Fitzgerald.

After a while I gave up and went to play with Duncan, but again I couldn't seem to relax. Usually I only got a little bored hanging out here, but today I felt restless. I couldn't stop thinking about the band. The way Devon sang. P.J. smiling at me. Winston's promise about lunch next year. When I might see them all again.

I went to stand by the little basement window—it was one of those skinny ones up near the ceiling that only show a patch of grass and hint of light. I suddenly felt a little trapped, wanting to be somewhere else. Almost anywhere else. I thought about Tru in a college classroom, learning Latin. Sparrow making art. The boys playing music.

From down on the floor, Duncan told me that the chicken was too big. I found it harder than usual to smile and say, “I know.”

Our family was not its best at dinnertime. We were still living without air-conditioning, and the back of the house got unbearably hot whenever anybody cooked. Chores fell behind with Mom working more, and there were never enough clean plates and silverware. Some key ingredient was always missing from the pantry. We were grumpy and tired and hungry by the time we sat down, and while the table fit five people okay, with six, we were crowded, bumping elbows. Mom tried too hard to make everyone talk. Dad didn't try enough.

That's how things were on Wednesday night, as we settled in our chairs, a heaping mound of pasta steaming at the center of the table. The bowl was too big to pass, so we all had to lean awkwardly over or give our plates to Dad to spoon some on. Two minutes in, marinara was splattered all over the tablecloth. Jimmy muttered something about who eats spaghetti in the dead of summer. Everyone looked annoyed and sweaty, except for Tru, who I'd never seen sweat in my life. Mom handed me the basket of rolls and tried to break the quiet.

“How was Duncan today? Busy with his trains?”

I shrugged. Nodded.

Silence descended, and Mom turned to Tru, who was sitting next to her. She put a hand on his arm.

“Has Frannie told you much about Duncan?”

Tru looked up, smiling, fork paused in the air.

“Yes, she's told me a little.”

In fact, I'd barely told him anything at all.

“Well,” Mom said, “you probably know that Duncan is autistic.
He's a very nice boy, very sweet, but he does repeat himself a lot. Some people would get impatient, but Frannie is so good with him. She has the right temperament for it.”

Of course Mom would think that was a compliment, and not something that made me sound like the world's most boring person. I stared at her, hoping she'd let it go at that, but she just went on and on about what a good job I did, how nice and even-keeled I was. Tru kept smiling.

“I'm sure Frannie is really good with him,” he said. “I certainly couldn't do it.”

I stabbed at my spaghetti, irritation boiling over. Mom was about to start talking again, but I cut her off.

“It's barely a job. He plays with his trains, and I sit there. It's lame.”

Mom looked at me in surprise.

“Frannie! It's not lame. Watching someone else's children is a huge responsibility. You're very important to their family.”

I just kept stirring my pasta, not in the mood to eat, definitely not in the mood to talk about this anymore.

“We have an autistic kid at camp,” Kieran said. “It can be really hard some days. You work hard, Frannie.”

I still said nothing, while next to me, Jimmy sighed and rubbed his shaved head, which had become a kind of angry habit of his in recent weeks.

“They don't even pay you that much,” he said. “If I had to put up with that kid every day, I'd be pissed I wasn't making more money.”

Mom put her fork down and frowned at him.

“What?” He raised his hands, palms turned up, looking back and forth as though trying to locate the problem.

“Don't be rude. And don't say
pissed
.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes again, this time harder.

“So sorry, Mom! I'll never do it again!”

He said the words with a lisp and flopped his wrist.

I shouldn't have been surprised. It's not like Jimmy hadn't made that kind of joke before. Or Kieran, for that matter. Or Dad. Still—I was mortified. I told myself not to react, not even to turn my head.
Don't look at Tru. Don't look at Tru. Don't look at Tru. . . .

I couldn't help it. My eyes flashed to him, and there he was. Expression smooth as porcelain. I searched for cracks and saw none.

I turned to the twins, who were shoveling noodles into their mouths, oblivious. Mom wore a certain distant look, the masterfully detached expression that she used when pretending not to have heard something. Dad remained as he had through almost every meal that summer. Not his giggly self. The other side of him. The angry, silent side. He was a mountain rising from the end of the table, cold and unchanging.

Kieran tried his best to keep dinner from tanking completely, talking a little bit more about the autistic kid they had at camp. But now everyone was irritated, and nobody was really listening.

Then Tru spoke.

“I met a kid like that when I used to do spelling bees.”

There was a barely noticeable pause all around the table. Tru
didn't usually say much at dinner, just did a bullshit routine of eating, listening, and laughing politely. I always thought it was kind of funny, especially because I felt like the only one who really knew when he was full of it, which was—well—most of the time. Now, though, we were all at attention.

“His name was Spencer Todd. He grew up one town over from me, so I'd seen him at other competitions, before the big ones, kind of got to know him. He was a savant, really amazing. Memorized people's birthdays, did math without a calculator, that kind of thing. Before we competed, when all the other kids were pacing around or cramming at the last minute, like that was going to help, I'd just sit next to him and feed him equations. You know, something to pass the time.”

He started to twirl more spaghetti, then paused.

“And, yes, I realize I just outed myself.” He sent the faintest wink in my direction. “As a kid who did spelling bees.”

My fork clattered against my plate. The wink had been a thing of beauty, the faintest of movements. So swift it was deniable.

“Oh, dude,” Jimmy said, head down, consumed by eating, “we already knew about the spelling bees.”

“Well, of course we knew!” Mom said. “We all watched you on TV. Oh my gosh, we were so excited. When you finally missed one, poor Frannie! I thought she was going to cry.”

This time my fork fell all the way to the floor, and I was able to disappear beneath the table. When I came back up I shot her a death stare that she didn't even notice, but Tru—Tru was looking at me with a kind of delight.

“Well,” he said, turning to address the whole table, “blame my dad for all of it. He had this dream of me as a chess champion, but when I wasn't so hot at that, he turned to
spelling.
Because apparently it was also his dream for me to be socially crippled.”

At the mention of Uncle Richard, my father broke his quiet spell with a giggle.

It was a long, loud giggle, one that he tried to but could not restrain.

That night Jimmy and Kieran asked Tru if he wanted to head over to Michael Donovan's place again, to his backyard pool, but Tru begged off. I couldn't stop wondering why—if it was because he was mad at the twins, or Jimmy at least, or if he was just starting to think that their friends and their parties weren't that cool.

I tried to imagine what his life was like at home in Connecticut, with his prep school friends and his rich, angry parents. All I could conjure was a ridiculous picture of him and Sparrow, drinking cocktails in fancy clothes while a disco ball twirled overhead.

Agitated, I went downstairs to see him. Ever since our day and night hanging out with the band, I didn't feel so bad bothering him. Tonight his door was open, and he was sitting on the bed with
Gatsby
,
which apparently he'd started again
.

“Hey, sport,” he said, resting the book in his lap but not closing it.

For once I didn't fumble around for words. I just asked him what I wanted to know.

“Why didn't you want to go out to Michael's? I mean . . . I was
just wondering. If it was because you don't feel like hanging out with the twins. Or just Jimmy or whatever.”

Now he set the book aside.

“Well, Frannie. Here's the thing. My mom and Richard wanted me kept on a pretty tight leash this summer. Sort of semigrounded. Very little fraternizing. And that's a lot to ask of Barb and Pat, don't you think? The responsibility of keeping me caged up? Anyway, I try to lie low here and there, because your mom's let me out way more than she's supposed to. She's not so bad, you know. You're lucky.”

I felt a little bad then, remembering how I'd kind of snapped at her. I was still annoyed with her, but I also realized that I'd never bothered to wonder what she'd been going through this summer, how she felt about having Tru here and what it might mean for her relationship with her sister. There was too much there to think about right now, and I pushed those worries aside, not wanting to deal with them yet. Besides, I was confused by what Tru had just said.

“But why are you grounded?” I asked. “For being . . . ? You know. For
that
?”

He sighed, picking the book back up and flipping through it, shutting me off. I was afraid I might not be welcome much longer, so I changed the subject as quickly as I could.

“Did you decide yet, if it's romantic?” I asked. “When Gatsby's looking at the water?”

He looked at me like he was the teacher, and I was his smartest student.

“You're a very good listener, Frannie. I'm still thinking about it. I'll let you know.”

“Is that why you're reading it again? To figure it out?”

“You could say that. This is the great American novel, you know. I've decided it's all I'll read this summer, until I know it inside and out. F. Scott Fitzgerald and I are becoming very good friends.”

I shuffled my feet a bit, thinking about what I'd Googled that week.

“I, um, I was reading about it online? Some people think that the main character is gay? The Nick Carraway guy?”

I could tell right away this was not the right thing to say. Not because it was off-limits, just because it was dumb.

“Right, and that must be why I'm so into it!” Tru gave a girly little shrug. “I love things that are gay. Like me.”

A week ago I would've been completely embarrassed, but now I could read him a little better. I knew he was just screwing with me.

“But is it true?” I asked.

He laughed, gave another shrug. A real one this time. “Actually, I don't know. He might be. It's definitely possible. But I don't know how important that is. I'm still figuring out what's really important. What Fitzgerald is trying to say. I haven't looked up anything about it. I don't want to know what Wikipedia or SparkNotes says. I want to figure it out for myself. And it's pretty damn complicated.”

“But you always seem happy when you're reading it. Why does it make you so happy if you don't even know what it's about?”

He scoffed. “Jesus, Frannie, you make me sound like a moron.
I get it on some level. It's about power and greed and money and secrets. And dreams. Stupid, stupid dreams. But I don't want to know the themes or whatever. Any idiot can figure those out. I want to know it more deeply. I want to know what it says about the human condition. Then someday I can speak of it very eloquently at a pretentious party or in a college lecture hall, and lots of attractive people will want to sleep with me. The men
and
the women, of course.”

I tried to kill my laugh and ended up snorting, which pleased him to no end.

“Besides, that's not why I like reading it. The words make me happy. The way it sounds. All of it sounds so beautiful.”

He tossed me the book.

“Read something out loud,” he said.

I opened to a random page.

“‘Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have known.'”

I looked up. “I didn't know there were cardinal virtues. I've only heard of cardinal sins.”

He laughed at this, not his normal short snickers or self-satisfied chuckles, but a real laugh, long and loud.