“I don’t want to get stuck here,” I told Mops.
“Like me?” she asked.
“No. Like Mom. You chose to stay here. That’s different.” More than anything, I wanted my life to be a result of my
choices
, not chance.
“She had a choice too. We all do. And you should probably ease up on your mom a bit.”
That surprised me. “Why? She’s never eased up on you.” If anything, she’d gotten more critical in the months since Pops died. Pops had been the seam that had tacked those two very different materials together—Mom’s silk to Mops’s denim—and when the seam unraveled, the cloth tore. And while denim was strong and easily patched, silk was delicate and irreparable. I didn’t even know where to begin.
Mops sighed, and in that moment, she looked every bit of sixty. “You shouldn’t make the same mistakes as your mother.”
I wasn’t planning on it.
We spent most of the afternoon combing through several tubs of junk that had been stacked in a back corner and forgotten. So far, the most interesting thing I’d found was a container of used leg wax. I was relieved when Mops sent me to the post office. Mr. Anderson waved at me as I passed the pharmacy. He’d been standing at the same counter for as long as I could remember, and he looked exactly the same as he had when I was a kid. He’d given me a sucker every time Mops and I had gone in, and if he thought Mops wasn’t looking, he’d given me two.
The sun glared off the glass in the windows of the insurance company, and my shirt was damp before I’d even gone half a block. There was a “For Lease” sign hanging crooked in the old Marshall’s Cleaners building, and Tommy’s Shoes still had a “Going out of Business” sign plastered to the front window, even though they’d been out of business for at least five years. Solitude began trickling away years ago when the railroad left, but it didn’t get really bad until five years ago when the appliance factory shut its doors for good. Now the only people who remained were either the ones who had nowhere else to go or those who were too stubborn to let go. And for all my complaining, it made me sad to imagine what this place would look like in twenty years.
The heat radiated off the cracked sidewalk, which had been put down in more prosperous times, and I was grateful for the cold air as I stepped into the tiny post office.
“Jenna Oliver!” Mrs. Bridges exclaimed. I saw her at least once a week, but each time she still acted as if she hadn’t seen me in a year. “Heard your mom finally sold the house.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I stuck the key in the lock and turned. Not much mail today.
“It was about time.” She sniffed. “I hope they aren’t Communists,” she added in her mock whisper.
I had to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. “Now, Mrs. Bridges,” I teased, “you know Mom wouldn’t sell Pops’s house to Communists.”
“I would hope not,” she said. “Now you tell your grandma I said hello.”
“Sure will.” I pushed through the door and back out into the oppressive heat. And right into Ian McAlister.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. And then that was it. I didn’t know what else to say.
Mrs. Bridges was right behind me, and since I’d frozen where I stood, she nearly ran me over. “Jenna Oliver, you know better than to block doorways.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Bridges.” I stepped out of her way.
She glared at Ian. “I don’t know you.”
“This is Ian McAlister,” I told her. “He just moved into Pops’s place.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You aren’t a Communist, are you?”
Ian looked at me for help, but he was on his own with that one. “Um, no?” he said.
I tried not to laugh as she got into her car and backed out of the space. She barely avoided clipping the light pole.
“Who was that?” Ian asked.
“Helen Bridges. She’s been protecting Solitude from Communists since 1952.”
“Oh.” And then he said my name. I didn’t know why that caused my heart to pound so hard. I’d heard my name thousands of times in my life. And it wasn’t anything special—just the mixing of ordinary letters in an ordinary way. But there was something about his voice and my name that seemed too intimate for the post office.
“I’m really glad I ran into you,” Ian said. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.”
“Forget it.” I was trying to. I was also trying to ignore how sincere he looked and how, somehow, with him standing right in front of me, it was easier to pretend life was as solid as it had been seven months ago. Before Pops died. Before Mom started drinking.
“But see, forgetting is the easy part,” he said. “Probably the only thing I’m really good at these days. Well, besides being rude. But can you blame me? Just moved to town and a beautiful girl shows up on my porch.”
“Spare me.”
“At least let me take you out to make up for the way I acted.” He did look remorseful.
“So a date with me is penance?”
He grinned. “Are you always this difficult?”
I shrugged. “Depends on who you ask.”
“Please,” he said, and I swear his cool blue eyes dropped the air temperature by two degrees. “I’m new to town. The least you could do is show me around.”
“So now you want to guilt me into a date?” I asked.
He looked hopeful. “Is it working?”
More than he knew. Way more than I wanted it to. I had no idea what it was about this boy. I’d told myself I wasn’t going to waste my time. But my resolve was slipping. I sighed and tried to sound as if I were doing him a favor. “Fine.”
“Great. Friday?”
“Okay. Are you going to guilt me into paying, too?”
“Might. You will have to pick the place. I don’t really know my way around yet.”
“You’ll learn in five minutes. It’s a small town. Well, if you want something edible, it’ll have to be Repete’s.” I didn’t really want to spend my night off in there, but there wasn’t much else. “Hope you like pizza.”
“Sounds great. Should I pick you up?”
“I get off at five. I’ll meet you there at six,” I told him.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. When he smiled, it was October all over again.
I was alone in the kitchen when Mom came home. Ian had gone to bed hours earlier. I suspected it was one of his headaches, though he wouldn’t admit it. Mom’s footsteps were tired and heavy as she climbed the steps and crossed the porch. The door groaned as she came in. She tossed her keys on the hall table and stepped into the kitchen.
She narrowed her eyes when she saw me. “Ian?”
“Luke,” I corrected. What kind of mother couldn’t tell her own children apart? Identical didn’t mean we were the same. After seventeen years, I’d have thought she’d be better at it than she was.
She nodded, a quick jerk of the head that could have meant anything, then went to the cabinet and took down a glass.
“My day was good, thanks for asking,” I said. “How about yours?” She didn’t answer. She sure wasn’t making this easy. “Sorry. Look, have you heard from Dad?”
Her shoulders stiffened, so I knew she heard me, but she didn’t even acknowledge I was there. I understood her anger—hell, I deserved it—but she was my mother. She couldn’t possibly punish me forever. Could she?
She’d cared more once. Mom was the one who had always run interference with Dad and, on occasion, had kept me from getting in even worse trouble. When I was thirteen, she’d let me practice driving by myself. I was backing the car out of the garage, so focused on getting the back end around a lawn chair that I’d let the front end swing too wide and smash into the side of the garage. She’d told Dad she’d done it so I wouldn’t get in trouble.
Or sometimes, if Dad was out in the field and Ian was at practice, we’d watch a movie and order pizza—just the two of us. Mom had the greatest laugh. But now she kept it locked up somewhere so tight I hadn’t heard it try to escape even once. In those moments, when it had been just my mom and me, sometimes I’d forgotten I was the disappointment, that I was always one step, one point, one score behind Ian. That I caused trouble. In those moments, it had been okay to be Luke.
Then the fight with Dad happened. I should’ve controlled my temper. I shouldn’t have hit him, but it felt good. I’d put all the anger and frustration I felt about never having been perfect enough for him. I had enough resentment in there to break his nose. Maybe we could have gotten past that eventually. But then he’d punched me in the face, and Mom pulled us out of there before the blood dried. She would never forgive Dad for that. I was pretty sure Mom would never forgive me either, which made me seriously doubt the existence of unconditional love. There were always conditions.
Mom took leftovers out of the fridge and stuck them in the microwave. I leaned against the sink, watching her, willing her to look at me. How could two people standing in the same room be so far apart? How could two people, who had once been physically connected, have no connection at all?
She kept her back to me while she warmed her food, the outline of her shoulder blades pushing against the thin cloth of her scrubs. Her hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail, was streaked with gray. That was probably my fault, too.
She still hadn’t looked at me. I gripped the edge of the counter, trying to keep my temper under control. I watched the numbers on the microwave count down. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.” She had to believe me. Even I could hear the remorse in my voice.
Three. Two.
“Stop ignoring me!” My voice filled the tiny kitchen, and Mom jumped. The microwave beeped. Mom moved to open the door, like I hadn’t just spoken, like my words had no weight at all. As if they didn’t matter. As if
I
didn’t matter.
I grabbed a kitchen chair and slammed it into the cabinets. The wood splintered with a loud crack. Mom whipped around, her eyes wide, finally looking at me. She was pale, and I knew I should stop, except I was glad to finally have her attention. I didn’t want to lose it.
“I’m right here!” I shouted, smashing the chair into a cabinet door and cracking it down the middle. “You can’t ignore me forever!” Destruction felt good—satisfying. I was like a teakettle, the pressure building until I screamed. So I released a little pressure.
“Why are you doing this?” Mom asked.
Her ragged voice took all the fight out of me. I dropped the chair and crossed the space between us. She put her hands up to stop me. “Don’t,” she said, tears running down her face. She left me standing there. I heard her bedroom door slam several seconds later.
I slumped down in a kitchen chair, one I hadn’t destroyed.
Ian emerged from his room. He always hid when there was trouble. Maybe that was why he always avoided it, and I always managed to rake it up like a pile of dead leaves and dive in headfirst.
“I thought you had a headache.”
“Damn,” Ian said when he saw what I’d done to the kitchen.
I laughed blackly. “I destroy everything I touch.”
He looked toward Mom’s room. “Even people,” he whispered.
“Maybe especially people.”
My headaches, and the dreams that came after, were getting worse. I’d just wanted to lie down for a minute, and the next thing I knew, it was late afternoon. Friday. I jumped out of bed and threw on a clean shirt. I couldn’t be late—I wasn’t going to make any more mistakes with Jenna. I was surprised she’d agreed to go out with me at all, considering.
My truck kicked up a cloud of dust as I tore down the dirt road, bouncing over ruts. The grass in the ditches was brown and brittle, the ditches themselves baked dry by the unrelenting sun. It was a hell of a lot hotter than Massachusetts. I cranked the air up to high.
The woods became pasture, which slowly became the town of Solitude. I drove past a subdivision and a sprawling trailer park. A bunch of kids were playing with a water hose, their feet covered in mud.
The town itself was small but neat. A sprinkler arced water across an oval patch of grass. Several cars were lined up outside Jimmy’s Dairy Bar, and red-faced kids sat at outdoor tables and tried to eat their ice cream before it melted.
Repete’s was on the east side of town, curving around both sides of a long brick building. A maroon and white awning covered the corner door. I pulled down a narrow side street and into the back. There were two rows of cars, and I parked at the end, next to Jenna’s rust-colored Bronco. She was leaning against the driver’s door.
She looked amazing. Her hair glinted copper in the sun, and I couldn’t stop staring at her legs. I threw the truck in park and climbed out.
“Punctual,” she said. “Add that to the list of things I like about you.”
“What else is on the list?” I asked.
She grinned. “Not much.”
We walked across the gravel parking lot and stepped into the dim restaurant. The walls were brick and lined with sports paraphernalia, most of it maroon and white—the Solitude Warriors. Signs proclaiming victories dated back to the 1920s, and a large wooden plaque had a picture of a spear with the dates of more recent football state championships. They’d won two years in a row, but that had been ten years ago. My old high school had won state almost three years ago, when I was a freshman. I hadn’t been the starting quarterback then, but I’d gotten a lot of playing time. I knew it was going to be hard to waltz into a new town and get on the team. Another thing I should resent my brother for. My dad sure did.
I followed Jenna toward the counter. We threaded our way through tables, the restaurant about half-full, everyone staring as we passed.
“Get quiet and stay alert,” Jenna said. “They’ve scented you.”
But I got the distinct feeling that they were more interested in Jenna than me. She smiled and waved at a family sitting against the far wall, then was stopped by a table of old men. The man who grabbed her arm was wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt and had more hair in his ears than on his head.
“Heard your mom sold the house,” he said, barely glancing at me before looking back to Jenna. “What are they like?”
“You’re looking at one of them.” She grinned and jerked her head in my direction. “Mrs. Bridges thinks he might be a Commie,” she whispered conspiratorially. The old men roared with laughter. “I’m going to ply him with pizza and see if he talks.”