The Unexpected Everything (25 page)

“He's
home
,” I said, shaking my head. “Which he never is. And it's really strange to have him there all the time. And he's not allowed to work, so he's been watching ancient basketball games. . . .” My voice trailed off. I wasn't sure I wanted to tell him about the terrible dinner we'd had and all our awkward silences, which were made that much worse because it was like my dad didn't even notice them. “I think he's waiting for the investigation to clear him, so he can go back to work.”

There was a small pause, and Clark nodded, then asked quietly, “And what if he can't? I mean . . . if it doesn't come back in his favor?”

This was the very question I had been trying not to ask myself since it happened. “I'm not sure.”

“Well, what did he do before?” Clark asked, then smiled. “I didn't get that far on his Wikipedia page.”

“He was a public defender.” I could hear the pride in my voice when I said it. I had always liked the idea of it: my dad, helping out the people who couldn't afford their own counsel, righting the wrongs of innocent victims—and a lot of scumbags, too, based on the stories I'd heard. “It was actually how my parents met.” I couldn't quite believe I was saying this, but the words were out before I could stop them. The story that the media had was that my parents had met while working together, which was technically true, but without any of the details. “She was putting herself through art school working as a police sketch artist,” I said, feeling myself smile even as I had to swallow hard. “And my dad was furious that one of her sketches
looked exactly like his client, and they started fighting about it.”

Clark leaned forward. “Did the guy do it?”

“Stabby Bob?” I asked, and Clark laughed. “Totally. But it was enough to introduce them.” At the farmhouse, a framed sketch of Bob—long white beard, tattoos, a gleam of crazy in his eyes—had hung in the entryway, startling almost everyone who came over. I had no idea where it was now. Like most of my mother's art, it hadn't been hung up in the new place. I assumed he was in storage somewhere, no doubt carefully wrapped, but put away, out of sight.

“That's kind of how my parents met too,” Clark said, and I felt my eyebrows raise in surprise. “Well, minus the stabbing guy,” he acknowledged. “My dad went to audit a dental practice where my mom was working as a bookkeeper. She'd had the books so organized and could answer every question he threw at her, so he hired her away to work for him.”

“So both your parents are accountants?” I asked, and Clark nodded. “That must have been rough.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me and gave me a smile, like he'd decided something, before going on. “This one time, I think I was eight, they'd sent me to the store and told me to bring back change. But when I was walking back, I saw a new Batman comic. . . .” As Clark went on, telling his story, I realized that I wasn't trying to stop him, or control the conversation, or keep him from asking me something I didn't want to answer. It was like talking to my friends—and I would just have to see where the conversation took me. And so, surprising myself, I leaned forward to listen.

•  •  •

“Explain it to me,” I said. Now that I was, apparently, spending the night in their house, I thought I needed to know a little more about the people who lived there. “Since you're not Clark Goetz-Hoffman.”

Clark winced. “That's a pretty terrible name,” he said, and I silently agreed. “My publisher is Goetz. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is Hoffman.”

“Got it.” I looked at Bertie's water dish, at the
B. W.
that was painted there. “Then what's the
W
for?”

“Oh,” Clark said, giving Bertie a gentle pat. “That's his middle name.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “The dog has a middle name?”

“Bertie Woofter Goetz-Hoffman,” Clark said, raising an eyebrow at me, letting me know he thought this was ridiculous too.

“Woofter?”

“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug. “It's from a book they liked. The character is Bertie Wooster . . . so it's like a pun.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding, remembering the framed book cover I'd seen the first day. “So the dog has four names,” I said, still trying to get this to make sense.

Clark gave me a small smile. “I don't get it either.”

•  •  •

“So you write books,” I said, shaking some Skittles into my hand. I'd found a half-full bag in my purse, and we'd been sharing them. We were both starting to get tired, and I'd decided we needed some sugar. “That's so weird,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, you're my age.”

“Just a little older,” he said, turning so that he was facing me a little more fully, both of us sitting cross-legged on the carpet.
“I'm nineteen.” He held out his hand, and I tipped the Skittles into his palm.

“But still,” I said around my candy. “That's weird. You have a
job
.”

“You have a job,” he pointed out. “If you didn't, you wouldn't be here right now. You'd be off somewhere not reading.”

“But you have a
career
,” I said as Clark gestured to me for more candy. “Isn't that weird?”

Clark laughed. “I guess not to me. I've been doing this for five years now, so publishing books is just . . . what I do.” As I watched, his smile faded, the wattage of his dimples dimming slightly. “It's what I did, at any rate.”

“So you need to give them your third book?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well, when is it due?”

“Two years ago,” Clark said, and I felt my eyes widen. “Yeah. That's pretty much everyone's reaction. There are a lot of people who are really not happy with me at the moment. But it's coming together. I just need to finesse some things, pull some threads together.”

I nodded. “Okay.” I was still trying to process the
two-year
delay. “So do you have a plan? A schedule worked out for when you're going to turn it in?”

I saw something pass over Clark's face, but before I could really see what he was thinking, it was gone, and Clark was giving me a smile. “It sounds like you're pretty organized.”

I nodded, taking that as a compliment, even though he might not have intended it as one. “It's the coin of the realm in my family.”

Clark stared at me. “The what?”

I realized a second too late what I'd done. It was an expression my parents always used, and I'd used it enough around my friends that they no longer thought it was strange. But I sometimes forgot that not everyone had heard it before. “Coin of the realm,” I repeated. “Something that carries the most value.”

“Oh,” Clark said, nodding, like he was turning the phrase over in his head. “I like it.”

“You still haven't answered the question.”

“Busted.” Clark paused for a moment, like he was gathering his thoughts, then said, “If it were as easy as just getting organized or sticking to a schedule, I'd have done it years ago. But you can't rush these things, even though I know I'm holding things up. Everyone wants the new book. My publishers keep putting it on the calendar. I'm getting pushback from the people who want another movie. . . . At this point, I don't even think it would matter if it was
good
. As long as there was something they could put out.”

“But what's the problem?” I asked, beyond glad that medicine didn't have any of these issues. You didn't take an extra-long time to do a heart bypass, or tell someone you weren't feeling inspired to fix their brain hemorrhage. You did your job, that was all.

“Well . . .” He cleared his throat. “In terms of where I am with the third book . . . It's complicated, because in the last one . . .” He paused and looked at me for a moment before saying, “I wrapped up Tamsin's story at the end. Pretty definitively.”

“Oh,” I said, then paused. “But wasn't she your main character?”

“Ah,” he said, pointing at me. “Now you're beginning to see what the problem is.”

•  •  •

“Biggest fear?” I asked around a yawn, leaning back against the wall. Clark had gone and gotten us pillows after the Skittle sugar buzz had worn off and we'd both started to crash. I had a pillow behind my head and one underneath me. We'd tried to get Bertie out to a more comfortable location for us—like one with couches—but he'd just curled more tightly into a ball and made a little moaning sound when we tried to move him, so we decided to leave him where he was. Now that most of the adrenaline and panic had left the situation, I was feeling how late it was. It was starting to feel like two a.m. at a slumber party, when everyone is sleepy and a little bit punchy (and usually hopped up on sugar) and you're too tired to tell anything but the truth—that fuzzy half-awake, honest feeling. It was how we'd found out Bri had kissed her second cousin—by accident, she swore—last summer at a wedding.

“Haunted houses,” Clark said around a huge yawn, half-muffled by the hand he raised in front of his mouth.

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. But I supposed it stood to reason that if you wrote fantasy novels, you believed in things like ghosts. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

“Not actual haunted houses,” Clark said dismissively. “I don't believe in those. I mean the kind they have at Halloween, that you can walk through and people jump out and scare you.”

I just looked at him. “That makes less sense.”

“My parents took me to one when I was, like, four. Way too young. It scarred me for life.” He shuddered, like he was reliving something, then turned to me. “Yours?”

“Driving the wrong way on a highway on-ramp,” I said
immediately. I'd been driving Palmer and Bri home last spring, talking with them and not paying attention, and this had nearly happened. I'd had nightmares about it for weeks.

“That is a very logical fear,” Clark said, and I realized that even without looking at him, I could tell he was smiling.

“Thank you.” I smiled as well, choosing to take this as a compliment.

•  •  •

“Hey, bud,” I said softly to Bertie as I stroked his ears. Clark had gone to turn off the lights and make sure all the doors were locked, and it was just me and the dog. His eyes were closed, but they no longer seemed like they were squeezing tight against the pain. He seemed like he was peaceful, his breathing slow and even, though every time there was a pause in his breath, I would start to panic, fearing the worst, until he'd start again, the sound of his snuffly breathing letting me relax once again. “Hang in there, okay? We need you to pull through.” I ran my fingers through his fur and then left them on his back for a moment, letting my hand rise and fall with every breath he took, feeling a little more reassured with every one.

•  •  •

“So how old were you?” I asked, as I adjusted the pillow under my head. I had told Clark that I wasn't going to
sleep
; I just needed to lie down for a little bit. We needed to stay awake in case something changed with Bertie, but that didn't mean I couldn't rest for a little bit. Maybe because of the walls-down, sleepover feeling of it all, I'd started asking the kinds of questions you ask at slumber parties—like how old you were when you had your first kiss.

“Uh,” Clark said, and I could hear, even through his fatigue, that he was a little thrown by this. Probably boys didn't have slumber-party questions like this, which was really a loss for them. “Twelve, I think?”

“Whoa. You middle-school stud.”

Clark laughed and shook his head. “Not at all. Exactly the opposite, in fact. But when you grow up in the middle of nowhere, you take the opportunities you can—like when family friends with cute daughters show up.” He looked at me and slid a little farther down the wall, like my proximity to the floor was pulling him down as well. “You?”

“Um.” I was now slightly embarrassed, even though I had asked the question. “I was fourteen.” In the silence that followed, I hurried to say, “It wasn't like I didn't have other opportunities.” I thought about all the middle-school games of Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven that I'd avoided like the plague. “I wanted my first kiss to mean something.”

Clark looked over at me, his eyebrows raised. “Did it?”

“It did,” I said, thinking about Topher, in a different laundry room, and everything it had started. It had meant something—I just hadn't fully realized then what that something would be.

“There's this thing in the world of my books,” Clark said, and I realized it was getting a little bit more normal to hear him talking like this. The same way it had been strange when Tom had been talking about agents and headshots and casting directors and now it was just something we were all able to ignore.

“What thing?”

“This idea that the person who kisses you first gets, with that kiss, a little piece of your soul. And they have a hold over you.
Most people don't ever use it against you. But some people do.”

I turned this over in my mind, feeling like maybe I would have to read Clark's books now. “So where'd that come from? Is that what happened with your first-kiss girl?”

“No,” Clark said, laughing. “She's fine. We're friends online, and I get to see pictures of most of her meals, even though we haven't spoken in seven years.” He turned to look at me. “What about you?” he asked. “Ever think about your guy?”

“Well . . . yeah,” I said, realizing I was starting to choose my words carefully again. It was one thing for my friends to know about Topher, but I wasn't about to give out details that could identify him. “He—I mean, we still occasionally . . .” I trailed off, not exactly sure how to put this. “We're kind of off and on.”