The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

~

IT TOOK ME A
while to realize I wasn’t chubby Serena anymore. If I’d tried to slim down it never would’ve worked. I like to eat. I mean, I was never all-out enormous, but I like second helpings, cupcakes at lunch, and soft drinks with real sugar. My brother Devin was the same way, and my parents never made us feel bad about our imperfect frames, but sometimes I could hear the silent comparisons with Morgan leak out from other people’s minds.

My extended family, my parents’ friends, even strangers like shop assistants or waiters — they were all charmed by Morgan. He was virtually perfect — friendly, funny, and nearly as good-looking as the guys you see in magazine ads for designer jeans. Whenever I was next to Morgan I noticed the way people beamed at him. They even beamed at me when I was beside him; I gained goodwill by association. You had to be a seriously hard case to steel yourself against Morgan. Confirmed homophobes even seemed to soften their antigay attitudes around him, usually unwilling to make an enemy of Morgan over something they’d label unnatural in someone else.

People loved Morgan no matter what he did, just
because
he was Morgan. Devin and I used to complain about it to each other, but Devin had his own exceptionalities going for him. Morgan was the popular one, but Devin was the one who’d qualified for Mensa at fourteen and had been doing my parents’ taxes ever since. He was the one who’d won a full university scholarship and was always first in his class. Before last spring he’d never failed anything in his life.

That was
then
, before Devin turned every day into a twenty-fourhour exercise in tension when Dad dragged him home from university in March. He
wasn’t
well
, as my parents liked to call it. The results of Devin’s
unwellness
were unpredictable, and whenever I was around the house I was too edgy to be hungry (you never knew what would happen next). You’d think getting rid of the source of that stress would help, but when Devin went
AWOL
in June my appetite curled up and died completely.

For months everyone in my family was too preoccupied to notice my dwindling waistline much, me included. No one except Izzy even mentioned it, and that was only once.

So I didn’t really know I was thin until August 22. Devin was gone and the three of us still living at home weren’t doing a fabulous job of dealing with his absence. Dad didn’t talk about him or
it
if he could avoid the topic, but he didn’t smile much anymore either. Mom was away from the museum with migraines so often — lying in the dark with her white noise machine amped up to maximum — that they’d hired her a full-time assistant.

That night in August Mom was supposed to take me back to school shopping because nothing fit anymore; all my clothes hung on me like an exaggerated “after” image in a weight loss commercial. The funny thing about shopping with my mom was how she’d turn into a teenage girl while doing it, laughing at stuff she wouldn’t ordinarily find funny and asking me things about Izzy and Marguerite, as though the four of us were all friends. Then we’d stop for lattes and whisper silly things about passersby. Occasionally she’d try on things decades too young for her, just kidding around. It was embarrassing and comical at the same time. I’d be smiling while wishing for the power of invisibility.

This past August I didn’t have to make that wish, and there were no lattes or laughing either. Mom complained that she had a crippling headache and handed me her
ATM
card. Dad was the one who taxied me over to the Glenashton mall, instructing me to call when I needed picking up.

But I never made that call. Instead I bumped into Jacob Westermark, who surprised me by flirting with me in the food court line, his dark blue eyes zooming in on my pupils like I was someone else. We sat and talked for a long time, him listening almost as much as he spoke. Then he drove me home and kissed me in his car. Jacob with his sexy basketball player arms and a
T
-shirt that fit so well it made me wonder if I was staring.

He was precisely the kind of guy Devin would’ve torn to pieces under his breath in a funny voice the minute Jacob walked away. Athletic. Popular. Cocky enough to believe his own hype. But he was also sweet that night, and when I finally stepped inside my front door various bits of me were purring shamelessly from the things we’d done in his front seat.

Jacob didn’t pretend we’d never kissed. He didn’t apologize for it either. We kissed a lot from then on. In Jacob’s bedroom, the baseball diamond bleachers five minutes from my house, Chaz’s basement, around the back of the school portables, at a booth in Pizza Hut where we both sat on the same side and the middle-aged waitress called us cute. For a while he made me believe I’d found the thing, the person, that would make me stand out from all the other average, nearly invisible kids I went to school with. No Mensa or MuchMusic for me. His name was Jacob Westermark.

CHAPTER THREE

~

WHEN I WAKE UP
, the back of my throat tastes like musty fall leaves and a thick strand of my hair is curled around my neck, a sweat mixture forming on my skin. I smell like last night’s beer, which reminds me of Aya Yamamoto’s hand on my knee and all the guys wanting to turn us into a live demonstration of
Girls Gone Wild
.

Jacob Westermark is a sleazy little asshole that I won’t let myself miss. He should’ve stood up for me and told the rest of them to go fuck themselves. I’m embarrassed that I slunk off into the night like a woman shamed. I should’ve slapped Jacob across the face or dumped a drink over his head like a girl in a movie would. His friends would’ve laughed at him instead of howling at me. I’d feel so much better right now if I’d done that instead of running off.

I untangle myself from my death grip hair and drag myself into the bathroom. Surprisingly, I don’t look as bad as I feel. I brush my teeth, gargle the stale grossness out of my throat with citrus mouthwash, and drag myself down to the kitchen for something to eat that won’t make me feel like the icky insides of a recycle bin. The milk tastes sour, and the cola and orange juice burn on first contact. I settle for ice water and two pieces of plain toast, and my dad strides in searching for his keys while I’m chewing. “How was the party last night?” he asks absently.

I got over Jacob, high school parties, and the entire concept of sex in one night. That’s how the party was. But I sigh and say, “Annoying. People drinking too much and acting like idiots.”

Dad looks impressed with my maturity. “Well, it sounds like we don’t have to worry about you too much, doesn’t it?” He spots his keys on the counter next to a container of dried pasta and sweeps them into his hand.

No one would’ve thought to worry about Devin before either. Maybe you can never do enough worrying. “Where are you going?” I ask him.

“Home Hardware,” Dad says. “I have some work to do in the upstairs bathroom and I can’t find my caulking gun.”

Some things went missing while Devin was home. Neither of us mentions this possibility in relation to the caulking gun. Dad goes off to Home Hardware and I shuffle upstairs and listen to my cellphone messages. The first thing I hear is Jacob shouting into my ear above the din of a Kanye West tune, demanding to know where I am. If he sounded worried maybe I’d soften, not enough to keep seeing him but enough to wonder if he cared a little.

Jacob doesn’t sound worried. He sounds like the same pissed off, drunken dickhead he was last night. I’m glad that the next two messages are hang-ups, but when I press
end
my cell rings in my hand. I freeze at the sight of Jacob’s phone number. What would a girl in a movie do? What would Morgan, who expects everyone to like and respect him, do?

“Hello,” I say quietly.

“That’s all you have to say?” Jacob says. “Hello?”

“Pretty much.” I try to sound like I never cared about him in the first place. This is what you get for expecting another person to be your magical, special thing. Consider me educated.

“Shit, Serena.” He grunts into the phone. “You take off in the middle of Wyatt’s party and now you give me attitude. What’s with you?”

“You really don’t know?” How can that be possible? My heart jumps against my rib cage.

“How could I?” he asks. I wait for him to go on, but there isn’t any more.

It’s humiliating to have to say it. I can’t believe I let myself get twisted up in this. What happened to the guy I sat with on the same side of a booth kissing? Is he still in there somewhere along with asshole Jacob?

I think back to how we were in the beginning. How tender Jacob’s voice got whenever he thought I was feeling sad, the way he was always telling me how beautiful I was and how good I made him feel when we were touching each other.

“The way you see me …” I pinch my lips together and pace my bedroom, my fingertips sliding across the contents of my dresser like they’re Braille. “The way you see me isn’t
right
. It’s all about you. It’s like I’m not even a …” I stop moving and drop my voice. “It’s just sex. That’s the only thing that matters to you.”

I loved making out with him, and when he’d tease my breasts and say how gorgeous they were. It’s true, I was always ready to whip off my top for him and let him do it. But Jacob seemed to get bored of those things more easily than I did. He wanted more, so I tried.

The first time I put it in my mouth I almost gagged and had to pretend my jaw hurt instead. The main thing was, he liked it and told me I was good. Sometimes he’d say really dirty things while I was doing it. Some of them made me feel good because I knew he wanted me and some I didn’t want to hear because they made me feel wrong and almost … I don’t know … like ashamed or something. The thing was, back then it was never just the bad things on their own, there was always the nice things too — amazing kissing and Jacob’s awe-inspiring basketball player arms, him nuzzling my breasts and talking to them like they each had beating hearts of their own.

“C’mon,” Jacob says, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing through the phone. “We’re not even
having
sex, Serena. There’s never been any sex.”

I’m quiet. He doesn’t see that the balance between good and bad things has been weighing on the wrong side for too long already — him saying nasty things into my ear, always trying to convince me how much closer doing those things would make us. Or maybe he does see it, but it doesn’t make any difference to him.

“We were just kidding around last night,” he continues. “You know that. Why do you have to blow it all out of proportion? Nothing even happened, did it?”

Nothing happened because Aya upchucked and I pulled a disappearing act. Otherwise Jacob would’ve been quite happy to sit there next to me and watch Aya and I put on a show for all his friends, no matter how shitty I felt about it.

“I’m just sick of it, Jacob, okay?” My voice is whiny. I want to sound self-righteous, but I can’t stop feeling sorry for myself. “I’m tired of things being wrong.”

Jacob makes a frustrated noise into the phone. Then he says, “If it was just about sex I wouldn’t be with you, would I? So, look, what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, Jacob, okay?” For some reason I can’t stop saying “okay.” “This just isn’t happening anymore. We’re done. I’m tired of you pushing me, telling me what you want, making me feel like a slut — or
not enough
of a slut. I’m never just …” My tongue trips over my teeth. “… me.” A single hot tear squeezes out of my right eye.

Jacob coughs out the same aggravated noise he made earlier. “You like when we’re together too, Serena. You can’t pretend you don’t. If
you
took things too seriously last night … hey, that’s not how it was, so I’m sorry you got it wrong.”

“I’m not looking for an apology,” I tell him. “
Not that that actually was one
.” Yay for me, it turns out I can pop out some decent, movie girl lines after all.

“Hey,” Jacob says, and now he actually sounds slightly worried, “I was loaded last night. I hardly knew what I was saying. If it was worse than I thought, I didn’t mean it. I know you’d never do anything you didn’t want to anyway. You’re not like that.”

Aren’t I? I rub the tear off my face and act like it was never there in the first place.

“Do you want me to come over later?” he asks in a mushy tone. “We can watch that Emma Stone
DVD
you wanted to see. I can stop at the mall and pick up some of that almond popcorn you like first.”

That sounds nice, but if I follow it through in my head I know it will always turn out the same way, maybe not tonight, if he’s being good, but eventually. If I could cut out the things about Jacob that I like and keep them I wouldn’t be left with anything close to a whole person. The whispering to my boobs, holding my hand when we walk, and telling me I’m beautiful just isn’t enough.

“I can’t, Jacob.” My throat hurts but there are no more tears. “You should call someone else.” I can’t resist a final movie girl line. “And be nice to her, all right?”

I hang up before he has the chance to say something I don’t want to hear. I switch my cell off, climb back into bed, and wait for high school to be over.

***

In some ways breaking it off with Jacob is like taking a step back in time. I’m still semi-popular at school (I’m still Morgan LeBlanc’s sister and I’m still thin) but I’m not a hotshot point guard’s girlfriend anymore. What’s more, I don’t want to be
anyone’s
girlfriend (or anyone’s FB either) and I let that be known, in subtle ways, to the guys who think I’m a fresh opportunity. Mostly I’m back to hanging out with Izzy and Marguerite, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. I know they talk about things to each other that they don’t discuss with me, and neither of them calls me at night unless it’s about homework or
TV
.

Jacob gives me the evil eye in the school hallways but says nothing. Twice Wyatt calls me a bitch. One time Jacob’s next to him and looks away. The other time Wyatt’s with Chaz and Orlando, and Chaz tells me I’m damn cold. Nobody else seems mad at me, but I feel less important. Is it dumb to miss hearing someone tell you how pretty you are with a special kind of tremble in his voice when being pretty isn’t supposed to matter anyway?

Dad seems to take my breakup with Jacob as inevitable. Mom asks if I’m okay and then zones out when I answer. Why do I bother when I know the only thing she wants to think about anymore — the one thing that seems to make her feel better — is shutting herself in the den to make eBay bids on retired Swarovski figurines to add to her collection? I always just end up feeling guilty for mentally interrupting her.

But if Devin (the old Devin, that is) were around he’d congratulate me on ditching Jacob’s ass. He’d probably call me shallow for being tempted by basketball player arms in the first place but who is he to judge? And anyway, I’m not sure the old Devin even exists anyplace outside my head anymore.

Since he left I can’t seem to get through two weeks without having a dream about him. I wouldn’t mind except there are only two dreams that I have about Devin and both of them are bad. In dream number one he’s on a shouting rampage. First he takes on my parents and then he turns on me. The dream Devin says scathing things I’ve heard him yell in real life, but he yells other awful things too. His mean streak is a mile wide and bone deep. It makes Jacob’s selfishness seem like a walk in the park, like wildflowers and baby bunnies. When I wake up from that dream I feel like a hollowed-out egg, but the other dream is worse and that’s the one I shake myself awake from tonight, a chill at the base of my spine.

The dream starts like a typical scary movie scene. It’s night, and a young woman (me) is scurrying under a decrepit-looking city bridge. There aren’t any stars or moon but somehow I can see my feet on the cement. It’s not any particular temperature. I don’t feel hot or cold and there’s no wind and no traffic either. Quiet. Dark. Alone. My heart thumps frantically at the sound of footsteps behind me. Heavy. Slow. Like whoever or whatever it is knows it will get me in the end. I sprint for the other end of the bridge, where it should be lighter but isn’t, and anyway my legs can’t work up enough speed to escape. I run in slow motion, like I’m fighting air, until I’m sick to death of trying. I’m a goner and I know it.

I turn to see what’s behind me, expecting my heart to stop in fear. I’m positive it will be a psycho killer with a knife or some ancient horned evil, but it’s neither of those things. A version of Devin’s standing there under the bridge with me. He’s gotten so skinny that he looks like something from a medical journal. His head doesn’t sit right on his shoulders and his anorexic arms are stiff like a zombie’s. I know in an instant that he wasn’t chasing me and doesn’t mean to harm me. He doesn’t even know I’m there.

He’s gone. Lost.

I stare at the empty person in front of me and watch him walk. He thuds right by me, into the night, his eyes dull in their sockets and his face expressionless.

That’s the moment I wake up, alone in the dark missing a brother. He could be anywhere. He could be dead. I shiver and sweat at the same time, thinking about that.

Back in mid-July a jogger in Newmarket stumbled across a body near a running path in the woods. The newspaper described it as a young white male, fully clothed. My mom’s hands started shaking and my dad kept saying there was no reason for Devin to be in Newmarket, no reason. We live about an hour away from Newmarket, but I’ve never been there and I’d never heard Devin mention the place either. Like my father said, there was no reason for Devin to be in Newmarket.

Only maybe he hadn’t started out in Newmarket. He could’ve been kidnapped or gotten himself in the middle of a drug deal gone bad. Maybe he was screwing some married woman and her husband found them together and got violent. My mind raced as my mom’s hands continued to shake.
You never knew with Devin.
He’d become the kind of person anything could happen to.

By the time he left us, he’d already lost touch with lots of his old friends. The only people I saw him with were ones who either wouldn’t look you in the eye or would stare for too long and make you want to take a step away from them. There were random girls too — one who wouldn’t stop shouting while they were in his bedroom and who later stumbled out having forgotten to button up her jeans and another whom I caught a glimpse of him having sex with (her miniskirt hitched up and her thong around her ankles) through the wide open bathroom door before I realized what was happening and took off for Izzy’s house.