Tell Me Three Things (5 page)

“You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. Mom: Are you serious?”

“Theo, slow your roll,” Rachel says, and puts her hand out.
Who are these people?
I think, not for the first time.
Slow your roll?

“As if I’m not humiliated enough. Now my friends are going to see him working at the supermarket with one of those lame little plastic name tags?” Theo throws his fork across the room and stands up. I can’t help but notice the splash of soy sauce on the white dining room chair, and resist the urge to find some Shout. Or is that Gloria’s job? “Give me a break. It’s hard enough without this shit.”

Theo storms off, all ridiculous stomp and huff, like a four-year-old. It’s so overblown that I’m tempted to laugh. Did he learn to throw fits like that in theater class? Then I see my dad’s face. His eyes are sad and hollow. Humiliated.

“Language!” Rachel says, even though Theo is long gone now, and also sixteen.

When I was little, I used to love to play pharmacist. I’d dress up in one of my mom’s aprons and use the empty bottles my dad brought home to dispense Cheerios to my stuffed animals. Until my mother died, it never occurred to me to be anything but proud of my dad, and even then, my doubts were only about his survival skills, not his professional ones. I actually like the idea of him behind the counter at Ralph’s, just down the road from school. I miss him. This house gives us too many rooms to hide in.

Screw Theo and his rich friends; we didn’t have dental in Chicago.

My father is an optimist. I doubt he realized it would be this hard, or maybe, when it was just the two of us flattened in our wrestler’s house, he thought:
There’s no way California could be any harder than this.

“I can’t not take the job because he’s embarrassed?” My dad says it like he’s asking Rachel a question, and again I find I have to look away. But this time it’s not to spare me, but to spare him. “I need to work.”

Later, I sit outside on one of Rachel’s many decks. Stare at the hills, which cocoon the house with their fairy lights. Imagine the other families out there, finishing up their dinners or soaking their dishes. If they’re fighting, their fights are likely familiar, old habits rubbing each other raw in spots already grooved. In this house, we are strangers. Nothing like a family at all.

Weird too to think about how things used to be here, before my dad and I arrived, before Theo’s dad died. Did they all sit down to dinner together, like my family did?

I have my phone with me, but I’m too tired to text Scarlett. Too tired even to see if I have another email from SN. Who cares? He’s probably just another entitled little shit, like everyone else at Wood Valley. He’s already admitted as much.

The screen door opens and closes behind me, but I don’t turn to look. Theo plops down into the lounge chair next to mine and takes out a set of rolling papers and a bag of weed.

“I’m not an asshole, you know,” Theo says, and begins to roll his joint with tender precision. Fat and straight. Elegant work.

“Honestly? You have given me no evidence to the contrary,” I say, and then regret it immediately. Couldn’t I have just said
Yes, yes you are.
Or
Leave me alone.
Why do I sometimes talk like a sixty-year-old? “Won’t your mom see you?”

“One hundred percent sanctioned, legal, and medicinal. Got a prescription from my shrink.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

“No joke. It’s for my anxiety.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and I find myself smiling back.
Only in California,
I think. He holds the joint out toward me, but I shake my head. My dad has had enough trauma for one day. He doesn’t need to see his Goody Two-shoes daughter smoking up with his new stepson. For a pharmacist, he’s surprisingly conservative about pharmaceuticals. “Anyhow, I think she’d be relieved it’s just a joint. A kid from school died last year. Heroin OD.”

“That’s awful,” I say. There was a ton of drug use at my old school. Doubt the stuff they take here is any harder, probably just more expensive. “I wonder what
his
prescription was for.”

Theo shoots me a look. It takes him a moment to realize I’m kidding. I tend to make jokes at inappropriate times. Go darker than I probably should. He might as well learn that about me now.

“You know, in any other situation, I could see us being friends. You’re not that bad. I mean, Ashby could have a field day giving you a makeover, but you already have the raw material. And I can tell you’re kind of cool in your own way. Funny.” Theo looks straight ahead, delivers his backhanded compliments to the hills. “Your dad sucks, though.”

“And you
are
kind of an asshole,” I say. “For real.”

Theo laughs, shudders at some invisible wind. It cools down at night here, but it’s still too hot for the scarf he has knotted around his neck. He takes a hit, long and hard. I’ve never smoked pot, but I can see the appeal. I can feel him unwinding next to me, sinking deeper into the chair. The glass of wine has loosened me too. I wish Rachel had offered me a second. That’s a gift I wouldn’t have refused.

“Yeah, I know. But do you have any idea how much shit I’m going to take at school because of him? Jesus Christ.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t.”

“This sucks for me too. All of it. Every single minute of every single day,” I say, and once it’s out, I realize just how true it is.
Dad, you were wrong: it could be worse. It is
so much
worse.
“I had a life back in Chicago. Friends. People who would actually
say hello to me
in the halls.”

“My dad died of lung cancer,” Theo says, apropos of nothing, and takes another long hit. “That’s why I smoke. Figure if you can run twelve miles a day and get cancer anyway, I might as well live it up.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know, right?” Theo puts out the joint, carefully saves what’s left for later. He stands up and looks me straight in the eye. No trace of his temper tantrum left. “Hey, for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks, I guess. By the way, can you please start eating the food in the kitchen? Gloria keeps bugging me about you. She said all that ramen is going to make you
guapo.
”

“The ramen is going to make me handsome?”

“
Gordo. Gorda.
Whatever. It’s going to turn you into a big fat fatty fat fatty. All right, my community service is done for the day.”

“Wow, still an asshole,” I say, but this time I let my smile seep into my voice. Theo is actually not that bad either. Not great, but not that bad.

“So I’m probably still not going to talk to you at school,” he says, and for one fleeting second, I wonder if he could be SN.

“I figured as much,” I say, and he gives me one quick guy nod before turning his back on me to go inside.

Ever feel like your life is one long nightmare and you just keep hoping you wake up, but you never do?

ummm, yeah. things that bad?

No. Not really. Sorry. Just feeling a bit self-pitying tonight. Never should have written.

nah, no need to apologize.

you know, they say how happy you are in high school is indirectly proportional to how successful you will be in life.

Yeah? Well, then yay for me, because that means I’m going to be CEO of the whole effin’ world.

nope. I will.

It’s midnight now. I lie in bed and listen to the unfamiliar noises outside. California even
sounds
different. Apparently, there are coyotes in these hills, plus wildfires and mudslides to worry about. This place is always on the verge of an apocalypse.

I can’t just lie here and wait for sleep or tomorrow to come, whichever happens first. My brain is spinning out. A cup of tea. That’s what I need. Something warm and comforting. Chamomile has the same flavor in Chicago or LA. So I pull off the covers and put on my bunny slippers—the ones my mom gave me for my thirteenth birthday—even though the bunnies are kind of creepy now that they’re each missing one eye, and I head downstairs, taking each step carefully so as not to wake anyone.

In the dark, the kitchen feels far away. I need to cross the long living room to get there, and I’m scared of knocking something over. I walk slowly, arms outstretched, and that’s how I’m standing when I first see them: like a cartoon sleepwalker.

My dad and Rachel sit close together on the couch in the den off to the side, a single reading light turned on above them. They can’t see me, thank God, because I’m now hiding behind a pillar. I feel embarrassed stumbling upon them like this and a little stunned too, since I can see that they are not merely strangers who decided on a lark to elope. They look like a real married couple.

This is intimate, and not in the way it was at dinner, when Rachel put her hand on my dad’s, a gesture that on reflection seemed more for Theo’s and my benefit. Now they are bent together, forehead to forehead, and there’s a photo album I’ve never seen before open on their laps. Must be Rachel’s. Is she showing my dad her
before
pictures? Her dead husband? Pictorial evidence that this house used to be filled with a functional family? I can’t hear what Rachel is saying, but there’s something about the hunch of her shoulders and the way my dad reaches up and touches her face—cups it between his palms, like it’s something precious and easily shattered—that tells me she’s crying. He might be too.

My heart pounds, and I feel sick to my stomach. I imagine the photos on her lap. Maybe there’s one of Theo, age five, being swung in the air between his parents. We have that picture in our
before
album. My mom on the right, my dad on the left, me in the middle, caught right at magic liftoff. I am smiling so big you can see that I’m missing a tooth. Did my dad show Rachel our pictures? Hand over everything—our entire history—just like that?

My eyes fill with tears, though I fight them. I’m not sure why I feel like crying. Suddenly, everything feels irrevocably broken in that way it can in the middle of night when you are alone. In that way it can when you are watching your father comfort his new wife. In that way it can when you too are hurting but there’s no one there to comfort you.

I walk backward, a silent moonwalk, a trip that feels so much longer going back than it did coming. I pray that they don’t see me, pray that I can get away before they start kissing. I
cannot
watch them kiss. When I finally get to the stairs, I force myself to go up slowly and noiselessly, one at a time. I force myself not to run away as fast as my creepy bunny slippers will take me.

D
ay 15: better and worse and maybe better. Sun still shines with relentless aim and glare. My classmates are still fancy-pants, and the girls still somehow look more mature than me, more confident. As if sixteen years adds up to more out west than it does where I come from.

The humiliation begins early, in class.
Good,
I think.
Bring it on. Let’s get this over with.
Maybe I am my dad’s daughter after all. An optimist.

“The Gap is so pleb, don’t you think?” Gem asks her wonder twin, of course in reference to my jeans, though I have no idea what she means. Pleb, short for “plebian”? As in my pants are those of the common folk? Well, yes, yes they are. As are my Costco undies, which I’m tempted to pull down so she can kiss my ass.

The anger sharpens my wits, makes me want to advance rather than retreat. I will not engage with these girls. I’m not strong enough for that. But I will turn to Adrianna, who is sitting next to me, because, screw it, no time like the present to make an ally. I ignore my burning face, refuse to turn to see if the Batman overheard anything, and pretend I don’t notice that anyone was talking about me.

“I like your glasses,” I say, just a tad above a whisper. Adrianna blinks a few times, as if deciding about me, and then smiles.

“Thanks. I ordered them online, so I was a little nervous.” There is something about her tone, quiet, like mine, that’s inviting. Not overly loud, not that teenage-girl voice that everyone else seems to use to demand notice. She has brown hair tied back in a bun that looks purposely messy, big charcoal-lined brown eyes, and bright red lipsticked lips. Pretty in the aggregate, the sum somehow adding up to much more than each individual part. “You really like them?”

“Yeah. They’re Warby Parker, right? They make neat stuff.” I hear Gem and Crystal giggle in front of me, maybe because I used the word “neat.” Whatever.

“Yup.” She smiles and gives me an
ignore them
look.
Bitches,
she mouths.

I smile and mouth back,
I know.

After class, I gather the courage to tell the Batman that we’re going to have to de-partner, that I’m not willing to risk breaking Wood Valley’s honor code just because he doesn’t know how to play well with others. I am feeling brave today, empowered by having introduced myself to Adrianna and by not cowering before the blond-bimbo squad. Or maybe it’s that for the first time since I moved to LA, I ate something other than peanut butter on toast for breakfast. Regardless, I will be immune to the Batman’s cute-boy voodoo.

Not my type,
I tell myself just before I march up to his usual spot by the Koffee Kart.

Not my type,
I tell myself when I see him in all his black-and-blue glory, as tender as a bruise.

Not my type, for real,
I tell myself when it turns out I have to wait in line behind a group of girls who are traveling five strong, like lionesses, one the obvious leader, the rest her similarly dressed minions. All the type to skin you alive and suck on your bones.

“E, tell me you’re coming on Saturday,” the leader, a girl named Heather, says, not at all dismayed by the Batman’s dismissive hug or the fact that he keeps glancing down at his book. Not Sartre today.
Dracula,
actually, which is both awesome and seasonally appropriate reading, considering we are nearing Halloween.

Not my type, not my type, not my type.

“Maybe,” he says. “You know how it is.”

Generic words arranged in such a way as to say absolutely nothing. Impressive in their nothingness. I’m not sure I could say less in as many words, even if I tried.

“For sure, Ethan,” one of the other girls says. Her name is Rain or Storm. Maybe Sky. Definitely something meteorologically related. “So, like, yeah, we’ll see you then, then.”

“Yeah,” he says, and this time he just gives up the act completely. Starts reading right in front of them. His energy sapped.

“Okay, well, bye!” Heather smiles her best smile—perfect teeth, of course, since LA is the land of the porcelain veneer. I Googled “veneers” last night and found out they cost at least a thousand dollars a tooth, which means her mouth cost five times more than my car.

“Bye-ee,” the other girls say, and finally walk away. The Batman looks relieved that they’re gone.

“Can I help you?” he asks, like I’m the next customer at a drive-through. I remember our English project, and how he just assumed I could be railroaded like everyone else.

“So ‘The Waste Land’…,” I say, and tuck my hands into my back pockets, trying to look casual. “If you don’t want to work together, that’s fine. But then I need to tell Mrs. Pollack and find another partner. I’m not just going to let you do the work.”

There, I said it. That wasn’t so hard. I breathe out. I feel lightheaded and shaky, but nothing that can be seen from the outside, I hope. My mask firmly still in place. Now I wish he could just hand me my Happy Meal and end this thing.

“What’s the problem? I told you I’ll get an A,” he says, and leans farther back. He owns that chair even more than I own my lunch bench. He stares at me again. His blue eyes look almost gray today: a Chicago winter sky. Why does he always look so tired? Even his hair looks tired, the way it sticks up in random little peaks and then folds down, as if bowing in defeat.

“That’s not the point. I can get an A on my own. I don’t need to hand in your work,” I say, and cross my arms. “And anyway, it’s against the honor code.”

He looks at me again, and I see the faintest hint of a smirk. Better than a dismissal, I guess, but still obnoxious.

“The honor code?”

Screw him. He’s probably the son of some famous actor or director, and he doesn’t have to worry about his place here. Or getting into college. He’s probably never even heard the word “scholarship” before. Would have to look it up.

“Listen, I’m new here, okay? And I don’t want to get kicked out or in trouble or whatever. And it’s junior year, so it all counts. So I don’t really care if you think that’s dorky or stupid or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” the Batman says. Another inscrutable smirk. I hate him. I really do. At least when Gem and Crystal make fun of me, it’s for things that I can tell myself don’t matter. My clothes, not my words. I hear my mom in my head, for just a second, since her voice has mostly evaporated—water to air, or maybe disintegrated, dirt to dust—but for one easy second, she’s right here with me:
Other people can’t make you feel stupid. Only you can.

“Or whatever,” I say again, like I’m in on the joke. Like he can’t hurt me. I bite back the sudden tears. Where did they come from?
No, not now. No way.
I take a breath, and it passes. “Seriously, I’ll just find another partner. Not a big deal.”

I force myself to look him in the eye. Shrug like I don’t give a shit. Make it sound like I too have people lining up to talk to me, like the lionesses do for him. The Batman looks right back at me, shakes his head a little, as if trying to wake up. And then he smiles. Not a smirk. Nothing mean or cruel about it. Just a good old-fashioned smile.

He doesn’t have porcelain veneers. He does have a cleft. His two front teeth are slightly crooked, veer just a tiny bit to the right, as if they’ve decided perfection is overrated. I don’t think he wears eyeliner. I think he was just born like that: his features enunciating.

“Okay, let’s do it,” he says.

“Excuse me?” I am distracted because his smile transforms his face. He turns from beautiful, moody teenager to a goofy, slightly awkward one in an instant. I can almost see him at thirteen, vulnerable, shy, not the same person who holds court at the Koffee Kart. I bet I would have liked him better then, when he read Marvel comics instead of Sartre, when he didn’t wrangle with all the hard questions and come out the other end sad or angry or tired or whatever it is he is.

I definitely like him better smiling.

“Let’s tackle ‘The Waste Land’ together.
April is the cruellest month
and all that jazz. Not my favorite poem, but it’s seminal,” he says, and puts his bookmark in
Dracula
and closes it, like that’s that. Decision made. Here are your Chicken McNuggets with extra honey mustard.
Pleasethankyouyou’rewelcome.

“Okay,” I say, because reading him makes me slow. I’m the tired one now. His smile is like unlocking a riddle.
How does an imperfection make him seem even more perfect?
And did he just use the word “seminal”? Is he sad or angry or just sixteen?

“Do we really have an honor code here?” he asks.

“We do. It’s ten pages long.”

“Learn something new every day. We haven’t officially met yet, have we? I’m Ethan, Ethan Marks.”

“Jessie,” I say, and we shake hands like real adults: no fist bumps or faux cheek kisses or guy nods. His fingers are long and slender and solid. I like them as much as his smile. Like touching them even more. “Holmes.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Jessie.” He pauses. “Holmes.”

Day 15. Definitely better.

Later, in gym, I walk the track with Dri—she says that’s what her friends call her, because Adrianna has “too many reality-show connotations”—and we laugh as we count the number of times Mr. Shackleman tries to surreptitiously adjust his balls. It’s Dri’s game. SN is right: she’s funny.

“I can’t decide if he’s itchy or trying to hide his boner from watching the Axis of Evil run,” she says. Gem and Crystal have lapped us three times now, not breaking a sweat, not even breathing hard. They look so good, I can’t help but watch them too.

Mr. Shackleman doesn’t look much older than the high school boys, except he already has a beer gut and a small bald patch on the back of his head. He wears gym shorts and blows a shrill plastic whistle more than necessary.

“Are they twins?” I ask about Gem and Crystal.

“No,” Dri laughs. “But they’ve been best friends, since, like, forever.”

“Have they always been so, you know, bitchy?” I hate the word “bitch.” I do. Using the B-word makes me feel like a bad feminist, but sometimes there is no other word.

“Not really. You know how it is. Mean girls get mean in seventh grade and they stay that way until your ten-year reunion, when they want to be best friends again. At least, that’s what my mom says.”

“It’s funny how high school is high school everywhere,” I say, and smile at Dri. Try not to feel uncomfortable at the mention of moms, like it didn’t set off an invisible flare in my chest. “I mean, this place is completely different than where I come from, but in some ways it’s exactly the same. You can’t escape it.”

“College. So close and yet so far away,” Dri says. She’s nothing like Scarlett, who is brash and unafraid of anything or anyone—contrary to what she claims, she’s the brave one of our duo—and yet, I have a feeling Scar would like Dri. Would guide her along, like Scar has done for me all these years.

“A friend told me recently that how happy you are in high school is indirectly proportional to how successful you’ll be later in life,” I say, testing the theory that maybe SN is Adrianna, which I’d definitely take over SN being Theo. Maybe she was just too shy to reach out on her own. I study her face, but there isn’t even a twitch of recognition.

Nope, not her.

“I don’t know. Hope so.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out an inhaler. “Sorry. I’m allergic to the outdoors. And the indoors. And everything else. I know it makes me look like a tool, but not breathing looks worse.”

Once we are better friends, I should tell her she has nothing to be sorry for. No self-deprecating qualifier necessary. And then I laugh to myself, because even though she is two thousand miles away, Scar is right here too. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing she would say to me.