Tell Me Three Things (14 page)

“No, you got it all wrong. I didn’t mean—”

“Are we done here?” I ask. Screw it. It wasn’t like my grades were going to be so stellar at Wood Valley anyway. I’m pretty sure that college scholarship thing was just a pipe dream. And at least one mystery has been solved: Gem can do or say whatever she wants because her dad pays off the administration. I guess that’s what a little tax fraud buys you.

“I’m just trying to help,” she says. “I don’t want to make things worse—” But I don’t hear the rest of Mrs. Pollack’s sentence, because I’ve already run out the door.

H
ead down. Thirty feet until I reach my car.
Jessie, you can do this.
Twenty feet. My hands are shaking, but I keep them in my pockets so no one can see. I keep walking.
No one is looking,
I tell myself.
No one can see you.
Fifteen feet.
Almost there.
I will get into my car, I will put the key in the ignition, I will drive and not stop until the gas light comes on. I will head east, find whatever major highway takes me to Chicago. I will show up at Scarlett’s in time for her mom to serve me homemade kimchi.

“Hey. You okay?” I see his shoes before I see his face, the guitar strap across his chest, but that’s because I don’t want to look all the way up. Liam is the last person I want to see right now, except maybe his horrible girlfriend, but at least if I saw Gem, I would find a way to draw blood. Scratch her with my nails. Break her surgically crafted, six-figure nose. Crack her porcelain veneers.

“Please. Just. Leave. Me. Alone.” Tears are kind of like urine. There is only so long you can hold them in. My car is ten feet away. Ten short feet, and then I can drive and cry without anyone ever knowing. I look forward to crossing state lines.

I picture the sign:
YOU ARE EXITING CALIFORNIA.

“Whoa, hold it. What’s going on?” Liam asks, and grabs my shoulder to stop me from storming off. I shrug, but his grip is strong. “You need me to call someone or something?”

“No. You know what I need? For you and your girlfriend to leave me the hell alone.” I am furious, maybe not at Liam, though that doesn’t seem to be relevant right now. Gem and Crystal’s attacks used to be mostly subtle and stupid: my clothes or my laptop tattoos. Whatever. Now, after I talked to Liam for two minutes at a party, the bullying has become something altogether different. Sorry, but his chitchat really isn’t all that exciting. Definitely not worth this.

For a second, I play that game that sometimes soothes me:
What would I be doing right now if I were in Chicago and we had never moved?
I’d be at a newspaper meeting, or maybe yearbook, cropping pictures and picking fonts. I wouldn’t be happy, no. But I wouldn’t feel like this.

“What are you talking about?” Liam looks confused. I wonder if he is not so bright. According to Dri, he and Gem have been dating for six months, which is five months and twenty-nine days longer than he should have needed to realize that his girlfriend is a royal bitch.

Liam swings Earl off, rests him on the ground next to a car. A Tesla. Seriously, some kid at Wood Valley drives a freaking Tesla. Who the hell are these people?

“Forget it. Please just leave me alone. You talking to me? The opposite of helping,” I say.

“I don’t understand.”

“You want to know why I’m upset? Just go ask Gem,” I say, and finally, finally close those last few steps to my car.

“Wait,” he says. “Will you be, you know, working this afternoon?”

Of course I’m not driving or flying to Chicago today. There will be no signs, literal or otherwise. Escaping is mere fantasy. I have to save up first, since I barely have enough cash to fill my gas tank.

My body deflates—there will be no running, no hiding.

This, right here, this is my life.

This.

“Yeah, I’ll be there.” I get into my car, reverse out of my spot so fast I wonder if I’ve left skid marks.

I wait until school is far in my rearview mirror before I start weeping.

I pause. What does a promise to Caleb mean? We’ve glided past his rejection of my coffee offer, have just dug in deeper, as if it never happened. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that his complete unwillingness to hang out with me in real life doesn’t hurt.

Again today he didn’t say hello to me in the hallway. Just another phone salute.

I tell myself it’s because he’s scared of ruining our never-ending conversation, but I tell myself a lot of things I don’t actually believe.

So I lie.

When I get to work, Liam’s mom is behind the counter. Pure relief that I don’t have to face Liam. Instead of saying hello, she hands me a box of books, asks me to shelve them.

“Sure thing,” I say, looking through the pile. A lot of financial guides.
Overnight Millionaire. Beat the Market. Money Now.
I head over to the shelf that Liam’s mom has labeled
GET RICH QUICK!
and begin to sort the books alphabetically by author. For a second, I think about picking one up for my dad, but then I remember that (1) we are no longer on speaking terms, and (2) my dad could actually write one of these books, though it would be a bit short:
Marry Up.

“I like your can-do spirit,” Liam’s mom says, since I shelve fast. Anything to keep busy. She smiles Liam’s smile at me. I’ve worked here for weeks now and I can’t remember her name. I just think of her as Liam’s mom, or sometimes, I guess, Mrs. Sandler. I bet if I ran into her somewhere else, un-bookstore-related, I wouldn’t recognize her. She looks a lot like the moms back home: no-nonsense hair, everything maximized for efficiency, not necessarily attractiveness. Like a real mom, not an aging actress.

I try to think about Caleb’s smile, but I’m not sure I’ve actually seen it. Which makes sense. SN is not exactly the smiley type. I can easily picture Ethan’s smile, though: how it unfolds across his face, from left to right, like a perfect sentence.

Clearly, I need to stop this Ethan obsession. Not healthy.

“You okay? You look a little…smeared,” Mrs. Sandler says, handing me a tissue. “You want to talk about it?”

Damn it. Forgot that I experimented with mascara this morning. Despite my protests that makeup and I are not friends, Agnes had promised that waving a wand against my eyelashes would change my life. Now it’s just unclear what’s smudged mascara and what’s bruising.

“Not really.” I wonder if Mrs. Sandler likes her son’s girlfriend, if she has ever met Gem. Does Liam have to keep his bedroom door open when she’s over? Somehow, I doubt it. Those are quaint Midwestern rules; they don’t apply in LA, where the kids openly smoke pot and drive fresh-from-the-dealership cars and have parents who will donate money to get them out of trouble. Liam’s mom probably buys him condoms, jokes over take-out sushi about not wanting him to make any Little Liams.

I think of Caleb’s mom, prone on the couch, so out of it she can’t be bothered to eat lunch. What did he bring her? I wonder what his mom looks like, if she too is tall and handsome. If she too prefers to wear gray.

“Better?” I ask after I wipe my face, and I turn to face Mrs. Sandler. The Kleenex is black, probably a little salty now too.

“Much. You’re a really beautiful girl. Inside and out. Do you know that?”

“Um, thanks?” I say, or ask. How strange, I think, to be called both ugly and beautiful, two words I rarely hear, in the same day. The former because most people are neither that mean nor that truthful, the latter because it has never applied to me. Agnes called me hot today too—another word never before used to describe me—though I think of hot as altogether different from beautiful. Hot seems to be about guys liking you. Beautiful is about liking how you look.

Of course, Liam’s mom is old enough to think all sixteen-year-old girls are beautiful. Gem, on the other hand, sees me through clearer eyes.

“You can take the afternoon off if you need to,” Liam’s mom says, and her kindness almost makes me ache. Reminds me that when I go home, it will be to Rachel’s house. My mom will not be there to nurse me back from this. There is no longer a person in the world who is interested in everything I have to say just by virtue of the fact that it comes out of my mouth. Scar tries, but it’s not the same.

My mom will not make me a cup of cocoa with mini marshmallows, and we won’t share a plate of Chips Ahoy, more than a dozen between us, an indulgence reserved for bad days. My mom wasn’t strict about what counted when it came to me: a B on a math test I thought I had aced or losing my favorite charm bracelet. When she needed the boost, though, our ritual was reserved for only the very worst occasions: a cancer diagnosis, or later, a T-cell count being low. The word “spread” being used by a medical professional after looking at a black-and-white photo of her insides.

Eventually, I made the cocoa and drank both of ours. Ate all the cookies.

“Thanks, but I honestly could use the cash.” I picture Scarlett’s parents’ basement. Not home, not even close, but closer than what I have now. A big L-shaped couch and an oversized TV from last century, as thick as it is tall. The slightest hint of mold in the air, almost but never quite covered up by the smell of fresh laundry. It wouldn’t be so bad. School would be familiar and easy after Wood Valley. I’d have Scarlett back, maybe even my old job at the Smoothie King. My dad would barely notice I’m gone. He might even be relieved not to have to worry about me. I could do it. I really could.

“So is all okay? Are you going somewhere?” Liam’s mom asks, breaking my intense bout of texting. Clearly, I should put my phone away and finish shelving. Today is not the day to get fired.

“Sorry?” I ask. She points behind me, and it’s only then, when I follow her finger, that I notice I’ve subconsciously migrated over to the travel section.

I pause. Since our pancake fight eight days ago, I have successfully avoided my dad. Not so much as passed him in the halls of Rachel’s house. This is his first overture toward peace, but screw that. Why should I always operate on his timetable? Be available when it’s suddenly convenient for him? Be the good daughter who makes things easy and simple? Be the one who plays along, tries to make him feel better about his bad choices? What about when I need him? Where is he then?

I quit.

He married Rachel. Let that be her job now.

I have nothing to say to him.

No, I have nothing to say at all.

A
nd so here it is: Wood Valley Giving Day. I take SN at his word and wear my Vans, mostly because I don’t have anything resembling work shoes and it’s too hot for my winter boots, which are comfy and ugly as hell and which would most certainly make Gem weep with joy at how easily I make myself a target. I wear my mom’s old University of Illinois T-shirt, the one that’s been laundered so many times the writing is fading, and an old pair of ripped jeans and pull my hair back into a ponytail. Not at all chic, but I figure a day devoted to physical labor/community service does not require chic, even at Wood Valley. I pat some concealer on the bridge of my nose, cover up the bruising. Lesson learned: no mascara.

School is closed today; instead of going to our normal classes, we’re expected to report for work at the Habitat for Humanity site. For once, Theo wanted to drive in together, since he was worried about getting lost and carjacked, though the neighborhood looks not too different from where I grew up. But apparently, this place is in desperate need of two hundred rich kids who have never before touched a power tool.

We are supposed to erect the frame of a house.

Someone has not thought this through.

Gem is here. Because she is everywhere, she and Crystal, and there is nothing I can do about their omnipresence. She wears a tank top with huge armholes thrown over a sequined sports bra, which is one of those things that probably shouldn’t exist but for which the one percent are willing to pay large sums of money nonetheless. Her shirt bears the words, I kid you not,
THUG LIFE.

And although this place is pretty big—a whole house will be built on this plot of land—Gem is for some reason drawn to that which she hates, and she finds me. Walks right by, so close that I shouldn’t be surprised when I feel her shoulder jam into mine. And yet, I am. The pain is sharp and perverse, and I imagine it hurt her just as much as it hurt me.

Maybe more, since she’s bony.

“Excuse me,” she says, all righteous indignation. Theo and I have just arrived, so I haven’t even had a chance to find my friends, to at least surround myself by my wholly ineffective girl team. Not that Dri and Agnes could do anything, necessarily, but still.

What does Gem want from me? A scene? A punch? Tears? Or am I giving her exactly what she’s asking for when I stand here and look at her, slack-jawed? No words come, not even the easy ones she likes to slug at me.

“Really?” Theo says, and at first I think he’s talking to me, and I feel so alone that I may actually cry, right here, right now. Finally give the people what they want. “Touch Jessie again, and I swear to God, I will ruin you.”

Theo is talking to Gem, actually pointing his finger in her face. He looks menacing in his own version of a community service day outfit: lumberjack flannel shirt, designer jeans, spotless, intentionally untied Timberlands. She just stares at him, and I can see her gum sitting stupidly in her mouth.

“Blink once so I know you understand what I’m saying,” he says.

“Whatever,” Gem says, just as Liam comes over to join us, all cheerful and oblivious, blocking her exit.

“Hey, guys. Happy Wood Valley Giving Day.” Liam smiles at us, at me, as if yesterday never happened. And like this is all fun, spending the morning outside among “friends.” He already has a hammer in his hand, ready to build. I can almost hear his mom praising his “can-do” attitude. Onstage, he seems like a rock star. Right now, he’s more like a Boy Scout with a sprinkling of whiteheads on his chin. I’m not a particular fan of either look, but where’s Dri? She’d lap this up.

“Liam, keep your girl on her leash, okay?” Theo says, and walks away, his job done, I guess, and though I appreciate his support, I’m mortified. And left standing here, like an idiot.

“What’s he talking about?” Liam asks Gem, but then I notice he’s actually looking at me.

“Nothing,” I answer, and then spot Caleb on the other side of the lawn, staring into his phone. Screw it. My first instinct was to text SN—he always cheers me up—but I might as well just go talk to him. I’m too beaten down for this anonymity nonsense. It also occurs to me that Caleb may be the only person here who actually knows what he’s doing. He built a school, after all. “Later, Liam.”

I cross the lawn, vaguely hear Gem and Liam begin to argue.

“Hey there,” I say, once I’m in front of Caleb. Instead of his usual uniform, he’s sporting a USC sweatshirt and jeans with paint splatters, a baseball cap pulled low, as if he wants to downplay his good looks. Still a Ken doll, just the construction version. “Always on your phone.” I smile, the closest I get to flirting, which is its own form of double-talking, I guess. I hope he can’t see my bruises.

“Yeah,” he says. “Thank God Liam found it at the party. Not sure how I would have lived without it.”

“Phew,” I say, and exaggeratedly wipe my hand against my brow. I look like a moron.

“About that coffee—” he says.

“Like I said, we don’t have to. I just—” I want to say:
I like talking to you every day. I look forward to your three things. I think about you. A lot. Let’s make this real.

But of course, I don’t. For whatever reason, he wants to keep up the virtual divide.

“No, I’d really like to. It’ll be fun to show a newbie the ropes. Maybe after school on Thursday?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Cool,” he says, and salutes me with his phone again, that weird
let’s IM later
signal. I feel bad about his brush-off—he obviously doesn’t want me to stay and chat—but a minute later, my phone buzzes.

Dri hugs me as if we didn’t just see each other less than twenty-four hours ago, and as if she didn’t text me ten times last night to make sure I was okay. Clearly, she feels bad about not helping me yesterday, but what could she have done? I’m the one who let myself be tripped.

“I
love
WVGD. I’d take this over classes any day,” she says, and squints up at Liam on a ladder, his shirt now off, advertising an impressive almost-but-not-quite six-pack and a splattering of freckles. “Not a bad view.”

“I know. She’s one-note,” Agnes says, with an apologetic look. “Sorry to hear about all the Gem drama yesterday. You want me to kick her ass?”

“Would be fun to watch, but no thanks.” I think about how many people have offered an ass kicking on my behalf since I moved here, and I feel grateful. Although I wish I didn’t need defending, it’s nice knowing there are people who have my back. “Theo was actually my knight in shining armor today.”

“Seriously? Theo?” Dri asks.

“Yup. I’m about as shocked as you are.”

“Look at that. Family comes first,” Agnes says.

“Maybe it does,” I say, looking over at Theo, who has found Ashby—her hair is no longer pink, but a shocking white—and they’re laughing on the fringes of the job site totally unconcerned about participating in today’s events. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s rolling a big, fat joint.

Lunch is a full buffet, set up in aluminum trays over fire burners. None of that bag-lunch nonsense. It almost looks like Gloria was here, perhaps Rachel’s donation to WVGD. But no, it turns out it’s Gem’s dad who is responsible. There’s even a card on the table saying
Thank you to the Carter family for this organic feast!

Shit. I wonder if that means I can’t eat.

“Whatever. Don’t let her stop you,” Ethan says, and I jump as much from the fact that I didn’t realize he was behind me as from the fact that he has read my mind.

“I know it’s stupid, but—”

“Nah. Not stupid, but if it’s as good as last year, I promise you won’t want to miss it. Even out of pride.”

“It’s not pride. It’s not wanting to give her another reason to come near me.”

“Seriously? I thought you were tougher than that,” Ethan says, and he takes two plates and piles them with food. Hands one to me.

“What made you think that?” I ask. He shrugs, motions for me to follow him, and so of course I do. I’ve noticed that Ethan has the ability to find a space and make it his own, and he’s even managed to do that here, though we are only spending a single day on this construction site. He sits on the ground behind the half wall of the future kitchen and under the shade of an enormous grapefruit tree. Away from the rest of our class, and though not quite out of view, in a direction no one would think to look.

“So listen. Sorry about yesterday,” Ethan says.

“Why? You didn’t do anything,” I say, and follow his lead and start eating. He’s right: the food is delicious. Cheeseburgers, though the cheese is neither yellow nor processed and probably has a French name I can’t pronounce and the burger resembles a burger only in form. Kobe beef, according to the tiny flag stuck in its center, as if this designation is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Thug life, my ass.

It’s Gem’s world,
I think not for the first time.
The rest of us just get to live in it.

“Exactly. I sit there and listen to those girls say stupid crap and I just pretend I can’t hear them because it’s all so dumb, it doesn’t seem worth it. But I don’t know. I should have said something. And I wish I had seen her foot.”

“It’s not your job to protect me,” I say, and reflexively reach up and press the bruise.

“Still. I should have. Does it hurt?” he asks, and his hand goes out as if to touch my face, and then he thinks better of it, brings it back to his side.

“Yeah, a little,” I admit.

“You deserve…I don’t know…” Ethan shrugs, and for a moment, I think he may be blushing. I hear Agnes and Dri in my head:
He’s damaged. He’s never ever dated anyone at Wood Valley.
“Not that…”

“You know what I deserve? An A in English,” I say, and Gem can suck it, because Ethan and I toast with our gourmet cheeseburgers.

“Thank you,” I tell Theo later, on the ride home, as we glide past little houses and minimalls with signs written in Korean and car washes and a vast array of fast-food franchises. A million non-Kobe hamburgers to choose from.

“It was nothing.”

“Well, I appreciate it. You didn’t have to.” I pretend to be deep in concentration as I make a tricky left turn, but really I feel shy. This thank you feels somewhat like an I’m sorry, though I’m not sure why. Recently, my existence feels like everyone else’s burden.

“Gem once called me a faggot,” he says, so low that at first I’m not sure I heard correctly.

“Seriously?”

“Yup. I mean, it was a million years ago, and it was actually the first time I had ever even heard the word. So I went home and asked my dad. I actually said to him, like, ‘Daddy, what’s a faggot?’ ” Theo looks out the window, his hand up against the glass, like a child trapped on a long road trip, desperate for human connection from the other passengers on the road.

There’s nothing lonelier than a hand on glass. Maybe because it’s so rarely reciprocated.

“What did your dad say?” I’m curious about Theo’s father, whether Rachel has some sort of type. I picture him as bigger than my dad and more handsome, dressed in shirts with little polo players and pressed-by-Gloria khakis. There aren’t pictures of him around, which would be weird, but then I realize there aren’t very many pictures at all. Like Theo has arrived into almost-adulthood in this current form and shape, nothing to prove he was once a dimply baby.

The walls of my old house were covered with pictures of my family. Each of my school photos were framed and mounted in chronological order, even the ones where I was caught with my eyes closed or with a messy ponytail or in that horrible awkward phase when I had both braces and baby fat. My own personal time line leading upstairs.

Who knows? Maybe Rachel thinks family photos, like color, clash with her decor.

“My dad was great about it, actually. Said it’s not a nice word, that there are better words for boys who like boys. And he said that it would be okay if one day I decided I liked boys too, and it would be okay if I didn’t. That he loved me no matter what—” Theo’s voice cracks. I don’t look over, keep my eyes on the road. Wait for him. “I was really lucky. I mean, I never even had to really come out to my parents. They always knew, and it was always okay. Or not even okay, better than that. Not something that had to be evaluated at all. It just was. Like having brown hair.”

“Your dad sounds like he was really cool.”

Theo nods.

“Have you ever wished it was the other way around?” he asks me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it was your dad instead of your mom?”

“Honestly, all the time.”

“It would like, literally break my mom’s heart if she heard me say that, but he got me, you know? He understood. Just everything.”

“My dad knows I would switch if I could, I think. Maybe that’s why he never wants to hang out with me anymore. Because he sees it on my face.” Even as I’m talking, I realize this is not quite true. I just think he finds Rachel more interesting.

My mom got sick right around the time when I was supposed to stop wanting to hang out with my parents—when the pull was supposed to turn to pushing—and yet that never happened. I didn’t just love my mom, I liked her. And though she was only genetically obligated to love me, I’m pretty sure she liked me too.

“Maybe you remind him of your mom, and he’s trying to move on,” Theo says, which is sweet, him defending my dad.

“Maybe,” I say, even though I don’t think that’s quite true either. My mom and I looked nothing alike, were nothing alike. She was brave and big-mouthed, more like Scarlett than like me. And she used to joke that she wouldn’t have believed I was hers—we were physical opposites in all ways—if she hadn’t seen me come out herself.

I don’t remind my dad of my mom, I know that, but for the first time I wonder if he wouldn’t switch us too—me for my mother—given the chance.