The Half Life of Molly Pierce (13 page)

Good luck, Molly.

Here’s hoping.

I text Sayer back and say

What about now? I’m free now.

I’m free now and I don’t want to have to wait to see you.

Clancy and I close up the store, I drive him home and leave without going inside.

I know the way to Sayer’s apartment. I remember the way to Sayer’s apartment. I drive down winding seaside roads with the windows down, letting in the damp and chilly air. It’s dark and nearing nine when I reach his driveway. There’s a small parking area in back. I turn off the car and pick up my phone. I have three texts from my mother.

Where are you going?

Are you aware it’s a school night?

Answer me!

I call her.

Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry! There’s just something I have to do. It’s for school. It’s a project. I completely forgot about it until Clancy mentioned something in the bookstore. Yeah, I know. I know I said I would try harder. I know, and that’s why I’m taking care of it tonight. I’m perfectly safe. I’m doing some work at Erie’s. I may stay over. Is it okay if I stay over?

When I get off the phone I text Erie.

If my mother calls, I’m sleeping over. School project.

She responds within minutes.

Roger!

She says.

Where are you really?

I knew she’d want to know and if she’s going to lie for me she might as well know why she’s doing it.

I’m with Sayer.

I throw my phone in my backpack and leave it in the car.

He’s waiting for me by the back door and I throw myself into his arms. That feeling. The one where he is one side of a magnet and I am one side of another magnet and we are constantly reaching out to each other. It’s stronger now.

I take him by surprise. He laughs at first and then he puts his arms around me. When I don’t pull away, he says my name like a question. Like he’s checking to see who I am.

“Molly?”

“Can I come inside?”

“Of course. Of course, yeah, come on.”

On his couch he brings me water and I sit sipping it.

His apartment has changed. The amount of work he’s done, it could almost be a completely different place.

“It looks great in here,” I say.

I catch him by surprise, but he recovers and he sits down next to me. Our knees are almost touching.

“You remember?”

“It’s easier now.”

“That’s good,” he says.

Our bodies don’t forget.

I feel the space between us like a charged bit of current. Like a wave, like a vacuum. Like a hum. He’s impossibly close but also unreachable, the distance from my knees to his knees is as wide as an ocean. He says something and I don’t answer him. Or I answer him and I forget what I say. Or maybe I am the one who’s said something and he’s answered me or he hasn’t. All I know is I feel like I’m falling into some unending ravine; and the pressure of falling so quickly is making my ears pop, it’s making my stomach churn, it’s making my eyes water. If I can’t have him, I’ll die. I’ll hit the bottom and die. Somehow I think he’s not mine, but without him I’ll be stuck in the forest forever. A yellow flower in my hair and nothing to drink and no map to find my way out.

He says something again. This time he definitely says something, but I still don’t hear what it is and somehow I’ve closed the gap between us and I’ve put my lips on his lips. Just for a minute I will be okay. Just for a minute this is what I need.

I try and tell him that, but it comes out like a moan and his hands on the small of my back are persistent. They are pressing. They are confident and they make me confident. They grip my shoulders and they ease me backward until he is on top of me on the couch.

Is this what I came over for?

Who knows? But it’s what I want now.

Sayer’s hips against my hips. Sayer’s hands against the couch, pushing himself up so he won’t crush me.

Sayer’s mouth on my mouth and Sayer’s lips and Sayer’s teeth. And the way that Sayer tastes. And the beating of his heart against the beating of my heart.

Have I imagined what this might be like?

This back and forth motion, this up and down, this whirlwind, this heat.

A hundred times.

No, a million.

It’s one thing I know I’ve never done and I want it so badly, but I also want it to be over. I want to look back on it. I want it safely in my memory where I can figure out what it means and how I did and whether I want to do it again.

Sayer is slowing down but I don’t want him to slow down. But then I realize he’s just letting me decide. He’s letting me have control.

There’s so little in my life I have control over.

And, yes. I want to control this.

I pull away from him.

He lifts his head up and he looks into my eyes, and in his green eyes for just a minute I see Lyle. For just a second I see Lyle.

Lyle. Why didn’t I want you?

Why did you die?

Then he’s said something else and I hear him this time.

It’s “I love you.”

But for whatever reason.

This time, I don’t believe him.

It’s started raining.

Sayer uses the bathroom and when he comes back, I’m sitting up in the bed, my back propped against pillows.

I remember the wind making his windows rattle, but they don’t rattle anymore. He must have fixed them.

He crawls into bed next to me and lies on his side.

“You should have gone home hours ago,” he says. “It’s late.”

I shrug.

I’m not sure anymore what I should do versus what I shouldn’t do. I’m not sure what’s right and what’s weird and what’s comfortable and what’s crazy.

The rain. The few candles scattered around the room, burning low in their jars. This feels right.

But I know what he means.

You turn a magnet over and it doesn’t attract the same things. Suddenly it pushes away the things it connected with before, and if it’s strong enough, it’s impossible to get them to even touch.

There’s something between them. It’s invisible. But it has shape. It has a beginning and an end. You can’t see it, but you feel it pushing back against your fingers.

“Are you doing okay?” I ask. I’m never the one to ask that and I realize I probably should, if I want the people I care about to keep caring about me.

“You mean Lyle?”

“I mean Lyle, yeah. Other things. Everything.”

“I’m fine. It’s weird. We were never close. But it’s weird not having him around. And there are all these things I have to do. I have to cancel his cell phone. I have to sell his car and I have to cancel his insurance and I have to go to his bank and close his account. You never think about those things, you know. You never think about them.”

“Where did he live?”

“With our uncle. He would have moved out when he turned eighteen. He wanted to live with me. Asked me a couple times. I didn’t really have the room. He told me I could have moved. But we were never good under one roof.”

Me in the picture couldn’t have helped.

Was I something between them? Did I do irreparable damage to a relationship already fragile and unsteady? If I had kept both of them at arm’s length, never made a choice between them. Or made the choice to take neither.

Am I awful?

Sometimes I feel like I’m awful.

Sayer, he guesses what I’m thinking. He puts a hand on my knee and he squeezes the bone.

“It was nothing you did.”

“It was, sort of,” I counter.

I can’t deny my involvement, at least. I might not have been the nail but I was one last pound of the hammer.

“It wasn’t anything you did,” he says. He squeezes my knee again. Closes his eyes and sighs happily. Peacefully.

I have the feeling Sayer would stick up for me no matter what I did. Drive a bus full of children into a lake and he’d be the one blaming the kids for being too loud.

I wonder how high my pedestal goes. It’s undeserved, regardless. But the view. It’s hard to give that up.

I settle down in the bed.

I don’t want to sleep yet.

I want to go a little further backward. I want to remember more.

I’m with Sayer again.

We’re standing in the doorway of his apartment. I have my car keys in my hand and my back is against the doorframe and he’s going to kiss me for the first time.

This is when he kisses me for the first time.

I hold my breath for so long, I might have turned blue.

When he pulls away he puts his hand on the side of my face and pinches my skin between his fingers like he’s checking if I’m real.

And he says my name.

He calls me Mabel.

He asks me not to go.

“Just stay a little longer, Mabel.”

But it’s a school night. My mother will kill me.

No no wait a minute.

I’m in Sayer’s bed again. I stand up so quickly I almost lose my balance.

That’s not my name.

Where have I heard that name before?

Mabel.

Lyle.

Lyle called me Mabel.

I pulled off his motorcycle helmet and he called me Mabel and I thought I heard him wrong.

I thought I heard him wrong but I didn’t.

“Molly? What is it?”

Sayer must have fallen asleep because his eyes are red and bleary.

I take a step away from the bed and hit the bureau with my hips. Curse loudly and grab the wood with both my hands so I don’t fall over. So I don’t pass out. Because I don’t know what this means but I think it must mean something big.

“What’s going on?” he says again. He’s sitting up now, rubbing his eyes with his fingers.

And carefully. As carefully as I can manage. With a voice even and steady and strong. I say, “Sayer. Who’s Mabel?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“T
ell me one thing about yourself,” Sayer says. We’re drinking coffee in a small, cluttered café. There’s a stage against one wall big enough for a stool and a microphone. It’s empty now; but in a few minutes Sayer’s friend Parker will play a short set.

This is the first time Sayer took me here. I haven’t met Parker yet.

Sayer buys me a cappuccino and he gets himself a coffee and we sit awkwardly, unsure. I play with my rings.

“One thing?” I say. “Just one thing?”

“For now,” he says, smiling.

I don’t know what to say so I take a long sip of my cappuccino and when I pull the cup away Sayer looks at me, waiting.

“Like what?” I say. “Like what sort of thing?”

“Tell me your favorite color.”

“My favorite color is red,” I say.

“Huh,” Sayer says. “Most girls say blue.”

“So you ask a lot of girls?”

“I take polls on the street,” he says, grinning. He has this grin. It’s almost exactly like Lyle’s. Only Lyle’s is thinner. Lyle’s is more sarcastic.

“Like a questionnaire? Do you have a questionnaire?” I ask.

“Yes. Um, favorite color. Favorite animal. How many brothers and sisters?” he says.

“Red. Cat. One brother and one sister.”

“Names?”

“Clancy, Hazel.”

“Are you close? Do you like them?”

“They’re younger,” I say. “We’re close, I guess.”

“How old are you?” Sayer asks.

“This is the fourth question,” I say. “You said to tell you one thing. So it’s my turn. What do you do?”

“I’m an electrician,” Sayer says.

“Really?”

“Really. Well—I’m apprenticing.”

“You’re an apprentice?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call themselves an apprentice. It sounds like you practice magic.”

Sayer smiles. He takes a quarter out of his pocket. He shows it to me. It’s a regular quarter. He has me tap it on the table. He tells me to bite it, but I don’t know where it’s been. I give it back to him.

“Are you going to do a magic trick?” I ask, leaning back, waiting.

“Yeah, sure. I can do a magic trick. I just need a quarter. Got one?”

He’s got his left hand in a fist. I reach for it and pry it open. The quarter’s gone. I check the other hand. Gone.

“Impressive,” I say.

“I’ll do a trick. Let me borrow a quarter.”

“I don’t have a quarter.”

“Sure you do. Look—I can see one. Hold out your hand.”

I hold out my hand. He reaches behind my ear. He rubs his fingers together and the quarter falls into my palm.

“Do you do this to all the girls, too?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, frowning. “And they are generally more impressed by it than you are.”

“Oh no, I’m impressed,” I say, laughing. I try and give him back the quarter, but he pushes my hand away.

“Keep it,” he says. “You can buy a gum ball.”

I put the quarter on the table. Around me, people have started clapping. I look up at the stage; Parker is situating himself on the stool. He fixes the guitar strap around his neck and adjusts the microphone. The café goes quiet as he plays the first few notes of a song.

“I didn’t think you were going to respond,” Sayer says, suddenly close to me. I turn toward him; he’s slid his chair next to mine so I can hear him over the music.

“I wasn’t going to,” I say. I turn back to the stage. Parker has dirty blond hair tucked behind his ears. He has a nice voice. He’s singing about a girl.

“Because of my brother?” Sayer guesses.

I look at him again. His face is close to mine. I feel my heart lurch awkwardly, and for just a minute I feel myself slipping away. I grip my cappuccino mug and I stay here by sheer force of will.

“What makes you say that?” I ask.

“I saw you,” Sayer says, “in the parking lot.”

“Oh, yeah, when I fell.”

“No. Well, yes, I saw that, too. I mean before that. I saw you before that.”

“Right,” I say. “Well.”

“He likes you,” he says.

“I gathered that.”

“But you don’t like him?”