I'd missed one morning of school because of a doctor's appointment, and when we came in the next there was Cameron Newton, sitting at our table.
“Look,” I said, whispering. “It's Cameron Newton.”
“I know,” she said cheerfully, lifting a hand to wave to him. He looked nervous and stared down at his paste jar. “He's a nice guy. I told him he should sit with us.”
“What?” I said, but it was already too late, we were there and Cameron was looking up at us, in his black turtleneck and black jeans. Even his eyes looked black.
“Hey, Cameron,” Scarlett said, pulling out the chair next to him and sitting down. “This is Halley.”
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.” His voice was surprisingly deep for such a small guy, and he had an accent that made you lean in and concentrate to understand him. He had very long fingers and was busy working with a lump of clay and a putty knife.
“Cameron's spent the last five years in France,” Scarlett told me as we got settled, pulling out all of our alphabet letters and getting them organized. “His father is a famous chef.”
“Really,” I said. Cameron was still making me a little nervous. He had the jumpy, odd quality of someone who'd spent a lot of time alone. “That's neat.”
Scarlett kicked me under the table and glared at me, as if I was making fun of him, which I definitely wasn't. Cameron got up suddenly, pushed out his chair, and stalked into the supply room. He walked like a little old man, slowly and deliberately. As he passed the paper cutter, a group of girls there dissolved into laughter, loud enough so I was sure he heard.
“You didn't tell me you made friends with Cameron Newton,” I said in a low voice.
“I didn't think it was that big a deal,” Scarlett said, cutting out an O. “Anyway, it was the coolest thing. I was here yesterday by myself, right? And Maryann Lister and her friends were talking about me. I could hear every word, you know, all about Michael and the baby and how I was a slut, blah blah blah.”
“They said that?” I said, swiveling in my chair to find Maryann Lister, who just stared back at me, startled, until I turned away.
“I don't care now,” she said. “But yesterday I'd been sick all morning and I was kind of blue and you weren't here and it just got to me, you know? So I start blubbering right here in Commercial Design, and I'm trying to hide it but I can't and right when I'm just feeling completely pathetic, Cameron scoots his chair over and puts this little piece of clay on the table in front of me. And it's Maryann Lister.”
“It's what?”
“It's Maryann Lister. I mean, it's this perfect little head with her face on it, and the details were just amazing. He even had that little mole on her chin and the pattern of the sweater she was wearing.”
“Why did he do that?” I said, glancing back to the supply room where Cameron was pacing the aisles, putty knife in hand, looking for something.
“I had no idea. But I just told him it was nice, and pretty, and he kind of ignored me and then handed me his history book. And he just puts it in my hand, but I still didn't know what he wanted me to do with it, so I handed it back to him. And right then she and her friends said something about him and me, like we would be perfect for each other or something.”
“I hate her,” I grumbled.
“No, but listen.” She was laughing. “So Cameron, totally solemn, takes the book, centers the little clay Maryann on the table in front of us, and then lifts the book up, drops it, and flattens her. Just like that,
smoosh.
It was so funny, Halley. I mean, it just about killed me. And then I took the book and pounded her, and he did, and we just pummeled her into nothing. I'm telling you, he's a riot.”
“A riot,” I said as Cameron came out of the paper room with another wad of clay in his hands. He looked straight ahead as he walked, as if he was on a mission. “I don't know.”
“He is,” Scarlett said with certainty as he came closer. “Just wait.”
I spent the rest of that week in Commercial Design getting to know Cameron Newton. And Scarlett was right: he
was
funny. In a weird, under-his-breath-as-if-totally-not-meaning-to way that made you think you shouldn't laugh, even when you wanted to. He was incredibly artistic, truly gifted even; he could make a clay face of anyone in minutes, completely accurate down to the last detail. He did Scarlett beautifully, the curve of her face and smile, her hair spilling across her shoulders. And he did me, half smiling, my face tiny and accurate. He had a way of being able to capture the world, perfectly, in miniature.
So Scarlett took Cameron in, the way she'd taken me in all those years ago. And Cameron grew on me as well; his low, quiet voice, his all-black ensembles, his strange, jittery laugh. I had nothing in common with Cameron Newton except for the one thing that counted: Scarlett. And that, alone, was enough to make us friends.
My mother still wasn't happy about Macon. There were things he did that she couldn't pin on him directly, but she was suspicious, Like the calls he made to me every night: when I didn't answer he either hung up or wouldn't leave a message. Sometimes he called late at night, the phone seeming to ring incredibly loud, just once, before I could grab it. Often she'd pick it up, and I could hear her, half-asleep, breathing on the other end.
“I got it,” I'd say, and she'd slam it down. Macon would laugh, and I'd huddle deeper under the covers, and whisper so she couldn't hear.
“Your mom hates me,” he'd say. He seemed to enjoy it.
“She doesn't even know you.”
“Ah,” he'd say, and I could feel him grinning on the other end. “And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.”
Because of this, and other frustrations, she started making new rules.
“No phone calls after ten-thirty,” she said one morning, over her coffee cup. “Your friends should know better.”
“I can't stop them from calling,” I said.
“Tell them you'll get your phone taken away,” she said curtly. “Okay?”
“Okay.” But of course the calls didn't stop. I never was able to fully fall asleep, with one hand always on the phone. All this just to say good night to Macon, from wherever he was.
There were other things, too. Some nights, when Macon knew I couldn't see him, he'd drive by and just beep or sit idling at the stop sign across from my window. I knew he was waiting for me, but I could never go. I knew he knew that, too. But he still came. And waited.
So I'd just lie there, smiling to myself, goofily secure in the knowledge that he was thinking about me for those few rumbling minutes before he hit the gas and screeched away. This always brought on the light at the Harpers' next door, and Mr. Harper, neighborhood watch chairman, standing on his porch, glaring down the street. I don't know why Macon did it; he knew I was on thin ice anyway, that my parents were strict, a concept he clearly could not understand. Every time I heard a beep or a squealing of tires, I felt that same pull in my stomach, half exhilaration, half dread. And always my mother would look up from her book, her paper, her plate and look at me as if it was me behind that wheel, me hitting the gas, me terrorizing the neighbors.
Because of this, I had to devise new ways for him to pick me up. I'd leave the house most weekend nights, bound for Scarlett's, and cut through the woods behind her pool to meet him on Spruce Street. And from there, we went everywhere and anywhere. Slowly, I was beginning to see bits and pieces of the rest of his life.
One night, after a few hours of driving around, we pulled into a parking lot at the bottom of a huge hill. It faced a tall apartment building lit up with row after row of bright lights. The highest floor was all windows, and I could see people moving around, holding wine glasses and laughing, like a party on top of the world.
“What's this?” I said as we got out of the car and climbed the hill, then a winding flight of stairs with a thick iron rail.
“This,” Macon said as we came to a row of glass doors, and a lobby with cream-colored walls and a huge chandelier, “is home.”
“Home?” He held the door for me. When I stepped inside, the first thing I smelled was lilacs, just like the perfume my mother wore on special occasions. I looked at my watch: 11:06. I had fifty-four minutes to curfew.
Macon led the way to the elevator, hitting a triangle-shaped button with the back of his hand. The door slid open with a soft beep. The elevator was carpeted in deep green pile and even had a little bench against the far wall if you got tired of standing. He hit the button for P and we started moving.
“You live in the penthouse?” I turned in a circle, watching myself in the four mirrored walls.
“Yep,” he said, his eyes on the numbers over my head. “My mother's into power trips.” This was the first time he'd talked about her, ever. All I knew about was what I'd heard, years ago, when she'd lived in our neighborhood. She sold real estate and had been married at least three times, the last to a developer of steak houses.
“This is amazing,” I said. “This elevator is nicer than my whole house.” The beep sounded again as the doors slid open, onto another, smaller lobby. As we got out I saw, through a slightly open door, people moving, mingling, and voices mixed with the clinking of glasses and piano music.
“Down here,” Macon said, leading me around a corner to what looked like a linen closet or maid's room. He pulled a keychain out of his pocket, unlocked it, and reached in to turn on a light. Then he stood there, holding it, waiting for me. “Well, come on,” he said, reaching over to snap me on the side in the one spot where I was absolutely the most ticklish, “we haven't got all night.”
The room itself was pretty small, painted a light sky blue; there was a single bed, neatly made, and a dresser and desk that looked brand-new. Beyond another door on the opposite wall, I could hear someone playing the piano. On a chair, at the end of the bed, there was a TV with something taped to the screen.
“This is your room?” I said, taking a few steps to the TV to get a better look at what was stuck to it. It looked like a photograph.
“Yep.” He opened the door to the party, just a crack, then peeked out and shut it again. “Wait here,” he said. “I'll be right back.”
I sat down on the bed, facing the TV, and leaned forward to get a good look at the photograph. I thought how familiar it looked, and the setting, before it finally hit: it was me. Me, at the Grand Canyon with my mother, the same picture that sat framed on our mantel. But she wasn't in this picture, had somehow been cut out neatly, leaving only me with my arm reaching nowhere, cut off at the elbow.
I pulled the picture off the TV, turning it over. I was still holding it when Macon came back in, carrying two glasses and a plate of finger food.
“Hey,” he said, “I hope you like caviar, because that's about the best thing they had out there.”
“Where did you get this?” I asked him, holding up the picture.
He just looked at me, and I swear he blushed, even if only for a second. “Somewhere.”
“Where?” It wouldn't have surprised me a bit to go home and find that frame on the mantel empty, everything else untouched and in its proper place. He was that slick.
“Somewhere,” he said again, handing me a wine glass and the paper plate.
“Where, Macon?” I said. “Come on.”
“Scarlett. I took itâborrowed itâfrom Scarlett. It was stuck to her mirror.”
“Oh,” I said. I flipped it over again. “You could have asked me for one.”
“Yeah,” he said, popping something small and doughy into his mouth and not looking at me.
“Well,” I said, kissing his cheek where it was smooth and soft and smelled slightly cool, like aftershave. “I'm glad you like me enough to steal my picture.”
Outside the music was still playing. In Macon's tiny room, we were like stowaways.
“You don't spend much time here, do you?” I asked him.
“Nope.” He sat up and drained his glass. “Can you tell?”
“Yeah. It doesn't even look like anyone lives here. Where do you stay, Macon?”
“I don't know. I used to stay at Sherwood's a lot. They had an extra room, his dad was always out of town. His mom never cared. And I got other friends, other places. You know.”
“Sure,” I said, but I didn't. It was completely foreign to me, this nomadic existence, traveling from place to place, crashing wherever was convenient. I thought of my own room, filled to the brim with my trophies and pictures, my spelling-bee ribbons and schoolbooks, everything that made up who I was. The only place in the world that had been all mine, always.
I looked over and he was watching me, then leaning over to kiss me as I closed my eyes and lay back, feeling his arms slide around me. With the party music in the background, and voices outside passing louder and softer, he kissed me and kissed me, the bed settling comfortably under us. The sheets smelled like him, sweet and smoky. Macon was a good kisserânot that I had much to compare him toâbut I just knew. I tried not to think of all the practice he'd had.
Then, after what seemed like blissful hours, I saw his watch glowing and the time on it: 12:09.
“We have to go,” I said suddenly, sitting up. My shirt was all twisted and out of place and my mouth felt numb. “I'm late.”
“Late?” he said, all discombobulated and confused. “For what?”
“For my curfew.” I grabbed my coat and jammed my feet into my shoes while he jumped up and turned on the light beside the bed, which had somehow been turned off though I couldn't remember when. “God,” I said, shaking my head. “I'm dead.”