Middle Ground (35 page)

“You really believe that?”

He shrugged. “Letting go is easy. Anyone can do that. Love is fighting for someone to stay. That’s what takes work. I know that now. I used to think I was better off alone, but alone is the worst place to be. It just took me this experience to figure it out.”

My mouth fell open with shock. Justin Solvi changed. For me. I opened his eyes to possibly the most important thing in life.

“Your dad doesn’t actually think he can keep us apart, does he?” he said with a smile.

He made it sound too easy. “So what are we supposed to do?” I asked. “Flee the country so we can be together? Hide away the rest of our lives? I love you, but I don’t want that. I don’t think you do either.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said.

“Then what do you want?”

He looked at me like it was obvious. “I want you to fight for me, too. You fight every day. You never back down. So let’s make this work. We’ll figure it out.”

“What about digital school?”

He frowned. “You’ll always come first, Maddie. You always have. It just took me a while to realize it.”

I stared at him, shocked these words were coming out of his mouth. “I still don’t know what to tell my dad.”

Justin waved his hand in the air like he was brushing the idea away. “He’s going to be in L.A. for the next week. We’ll figure something out.”

I nodded and wanted to be as assured as him.

“I need to think about this,” I said. I looked up at the sky and wanted to see birds. I needed an omen that something would help carry me through this. But the sky was gray and thick clouds crawled slowly by, in no hurry to move.

“What do
you
want?” he asked me.

“I want to be with you,” I said because at this moment, that’s the one feeling I could count on. That was my one certainty.

He took a deep breath of relief and he leaned down and rested his forehead against mine.

“Thanks,” he breathed. “That all I needed to hear.”

Okay, first I need to thank my husband, Adam, because none of this would have happened without your support. I would also like to thank my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for reminding me that I don’t actually live on a deserted island. Thanks to my editor, Julia Richardson, for helping me to spin a manuscript that I was simply happy with into a book that I am immensely proud of writing.

Thanks to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for their care and time on my books, especially Carol Chu, Candace Finn, Rachel Wasdyke, and Betsy Groban.

Thanks to my core four (you know who you are) for inspiring me to get out of my writing zone, and also for so many great book recommendations. Thanks to Ryan for so much writing inspiration (all of our crazy times together manage to make it into my books). Thanks to Imagine Coffee for your amazing espresso and positive energy.

Thanks to my sister for answering all of my exhausting phone calls and taking every word I say with love and patience. Thanks to my mom for hand-selling
Awaken
to practically every resident in Wisconsin. Thanks to two fans that have really reached out to support me: Natasha Fulton and Heidi McLaughlin Bennett.

And, if you’re still reading this, thanks to YOU, my readers. You make this all possible.

First Meet

Gray

Out of the corner of my eye, I’m watching a girl.
She’s on the opposite side of the courtyard from me. The sun is pounding down on her bare shoulders. Her face is pressed up against a camera, and she’s squatting low to the ground. It looks like an old manual camera by the way she focuses the lens and turns a lever after every shot.

The courtyard between us is really just ample cement sidewalks converging in a circular cement center. Apparently, whoever designed the landscape of Mesa Community College, felt this cheap material would suffice for students who are here on a budget and don’t deserve a luxury landscape. Ivy League schools get Corinthian columns, cobblestone promenades, and brick halls surrounded by gardens so students can read Ernest Hemingway next to granite fountains and quote Robert Frost in terraces covered with climbing vines. Community college students get cement benches and a lone cafeteria specializing in greasy doughnuts and potato wedges. It puts us in our place from day one.

My eyes are drawn back to this strange girl. You can’t help but notice her—she’s always roaming around outside, like she’s part coyote. Sometimes she sits against a tree and writes in a notebook no bigger than the palm of her hand. Sometimes she draws on a sketchpad. Sometimes she whistles. She’s always by herself. She wears the same beat-up black Adidas tennis shoes every day. I think I used to own the same pair, when I was twelve.

She wears baggy jeans, an interesting style choice since the average summer temperature in Phoenix is a hundred and ten degrees. The jeans practically slide off her bony hips, and the bottoms flap like bird’s wings in the dusty wind gusts. Today her tank top is the color of the sun, a citrus yellow, and it’s too small, hugging her long, slender waist. She has the curves of a beanpole. Once she caught me watching her and grinned, but I immediately looked away. I don’t want to acknowledge her. I’m not looking to make friends. I just want a diversion, an object to rest my eyes on so I can zone out and wait for time to pass.

I lean against a wall of the science building, which offers a sliver of shade, and pull my baseball cap low over my forehead to block out the bright light reflecting off the pavement. I always wear a hat to class. I feel like I can hide behind it, like I have the power to shun the world simply by lowering its rim. I pretend people can’t see me and I can stare at whoever I want, mostly girls, in their skirts that fall barely below their hips, in high heels that show off their tan legs, and skintight tank tops that leave little to the imagination, which is fine with me.

I pick up my iPod and scroll through the albums until I find rap. I think music is seasonal. In the summer my taste changes. More hip hop, upbeat, fast-paced. In the winter it slows down. More acoustic and oldies. I drum my fingers against the ground and delay going to class until the last possible second. There is nothing more painful than taking math and creative writing in the middle of the summer. It’s too much forced right and left brain activity to be asked of a person before noon. At least the misery comes in a concentrated dose of four weeks and not an entire semester.

My eyes wander back to this girl—now lying flat on her stomach in the middle of the sidewalk. I can feel myself glaring at her. What is she doing? Taking pictures of the stupid concrete? I watch her, baffled, and scan her lanky body. She isn’t skinny like models in magazines—emaciated skinny, people who look like stick figures with big hair and makeup. She looks hyper skinny, as if she can’t sit still long enough to eat a full meal. As if her secret diet is living life at a vivacious speed.

I check the time on my phone and look back at her with a frown. Of course she has to be monopolizing the one path between me and the English building. I could walk around her, but I’ve never seen someone photographing a sidewalk with such dedication, and I’m curious to know what’s luring her to put her face inches from the ground. I stand up and take cautious steps toward her like I’m approaching a wild animal that could thrash out unexpectedly. She’s sprawled out, her chest supported by her bony elbows, her hands holding the camera perfectly still. She must have heard me coming.

“Don’t walk any closer,” she warns. I stop a few feet away, and the wind picks up sand around us. Wisps of brown hair fall free from her braid and blow in her face. I frown at her for hogging a public walkway.

“You’re blocking the sidewalk,” I say. My throat’s dry and my voice comes out raw and scratchy. She slowly turns her neck to face me and her eyes are intense on mine, serious in her mission.

“You’ll scare them away,” she whispers, and motions with her eyes. I look down at the empty path. There isn’t a single movement in the distance. I stare back at her with concern. Maybe she’s schizophrenic. Maybe the desert heat has fried her brain (at least the logical side) and she’s hallucinating. I lift my foot to back up, but then I glance down and realize only a few inches away from this girl’s head are two pale green geckos. They’re facing each other as if they’re talking.

I keep still and watch her turn the camera lens with delicate precision. She presses a button and I hear a subtle click.

“Got it,” she says. She stands up and brushes the sand off her jeans. She’s taller than I thought, only a few inches shorter than I am, and I’m six foot three.

“It’s hard to get those buggers to sit still,” she says. She smiles and her light brown eyes meet mine. “Definitely camera-shy.”

I study her. She must be from out of town. My guess is the Midwest or out east.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” I look at her skin, covered in freckles but paler than native Arizonians’, who acquire enough daily sun to give their melanin a year-round stain of tan.

“What makes you say that?” she asks, and squints up at me.

Because you’re acting nuts.

“You don’t see many locals sacrificing their bodies on hot cement to get a close-up shot of geckos,” I tell her. “They’re everywhere.”

She looks at the ground for more lizards. “They’re so friendly. They always play tag around my feet.” She places a black cap over the camera lens. “I’m visiting for the summer,” she says, in answer to my question. I raise my eyebrows. Normally I’d be gone at this point. Small talk isn’t my thing. But this girl is becoming more bizarre by the minute.

“You moved to Phoenix for the
summer?
” I ask, and she smiles at my shock. Most people flee the desert this time of year, unless you like feeling your skin bake or you enjoy spending your days inside a cool refrigerator commonly referred to as air conditioning.

“I’ve always wanted to see the desert,” she says, and raises her chin. “What are you doing after class?” My mouth drops open at her assertiveness. Does she actually think I walked over to talk to her? Doesn’t she realize she was just blocking my way?

“Uhm,” I stammer. My daily routine is the same: eat lunch, play video games, strum my guitar, lift weights, try to figure out my life. Stay out of my parents’ way. Work part-time at Video Hutch.

“Could you give me a ride home?” she asks.

I stall and pretend to check something on my phone while I think of an excuse.

“I rode the bus over from Scottsdale, and it took two hours to get here,” she adds.

My mouth drops open with shock
again.
Who moves to Phoenix without a car? A weird jean-wearing, ride-mooching girl, that’s who.

“You live in Phoenix without a car?”

“No, I have one,” she tells me. “I just prefer riding the bus. I can see more of the city that way. But today you can be my tour guide.”

I frown at her for presuming I have nothing better to do this afternoon than drag her around town. I mean, it’s true, but it’s rude of her to assume it. Besides, any normal person wouldn’t be this forward with a stranger. And who actually enjoys riding a city bus? It’s like a ghetto on wheels.

“You don’t know me,” I warn her. “My idea of fun could be scorpion breeding.”

She searches my face for a long time and finally smiles. “I’ve seen you around. You don’t do much, just sit in the shade and tap your fingers on the ground and listen to music. Sometimes you play air guitar,” she adds. “You look pretty bored most of the time, like you’re half asleep. But you seem harmless enough. And you’re cute.”

I stare back at her. So she
has
noticed me noticing her. And according to her I come off as boring and harmless. I wonder if that’s how all women perceive me. Well, at least she threw
cute
in there.

“I can meet you here in an hour,” I hear myself say. I wish I could catch the words and reel them back in my mouth to safely store away in my Shut the Hell Up, You Idiot file. What am I going to do with her? But before I can take the offer back, she nods.

“Perfect. I’ll finish my courtyard collage.” I look around at the dried grass, the cement benches, the scrawny trees and dusty ground. She’s going to spend an hour photographing this eyesore? I sigh and head toward the English building, already contemplating an escape plan.

Dylan

I sit down on the dry, prickly grass
and watch him curiously as he dives inside the English building like he’s running for cover.

My photography class has taught me two crucial lessons about life. First, become an avid people watcher. It’s amazing the truth people expose when they think nobody’s looking. Two, look for beauty where it isn’t obvious. Try to see life through a creative lens. I love this challenge. Anyone can see what’s right in front of them, but it’s subtle beauty, the kind that takes time to discover, that you have to uncover and dust off, that catches my eye. I find things with cracks and flaws and textures so much more interesting than something polished and perfect and pristine. It’s the same way with people.