Authors: Rachel Vail
I WOKE UP
to the sound of water running, with no idea where I was. It took maybe two seconds for me to figure out that
a) I was in the bathroom,
b) in the tub,
c) not alone, and
d) that was not water running.
When I heard the toilet flush my theory was confirmed. What to do? If I said something, the person who just peed would be at least startled if not furious, and I would have to explain what I was doing fully dressed in the tub. I resolved to lie very still until the person finished washing his or her hands and with any luck that would be the end of it.
Clearly I was not having a lucky weekend. A hand, a boy hand, reached behind the shower curtain and turned on the water. The bath started filling. I was getting damp.
Think,
I thought. I needed a plan. The hand felt the water, adjusted it a little warmer, and turned the middle knob so the shower went on. I had to do something; the situation was only getting worse. When I saw the hand grasp the shower curtain, I realized that in about one second a naked boy was going to step onto me in the bathtub and most likely have a heart attack on the spot.
Think!
As reassuringly as I could, I said, “Don’t panic.”
Unfortunately, the clatter of the shower rings skidding across the pole and the thrumming of the water into the tub (and onto me) must have drowned out my voice, because Daniel, fully naked, lifted his leg to get into a tub I was lying in, unintentionally taking his shower.
“Stop,” I said, calmly, at the exact second, or maybe a split second after, he saw me.
He screamed. I screamed. I’m not sure why I screamed. I was startled, too, I guess, even though I’d had some time to prepare myself. It was a startling situation. He pulled the shower curtain closed between us but honestly it was too late. I had seen it all by then.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” Daniel yelled.
I decided I may as well turn off the water. “Taking a shower, apparently.”
He didn’t respond for a minute, and then said, “But . . . I turned on the water.”
“True,” I said. I stood up. Water dripped off me. My clothes felt extremely heavy.
“So you weren’t in the middle of your shower, when I came in.”
“Right again,” I said, wringing out my hair. “No wonder you got into Princeton. You’re a junior?”
“Sophomore,” he said.
I smiled at the goldfish pictures. “Oh.”
“Josie?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going back to my room. When you’re done in here, leave the door open.”
“Okay,” I said, and then, since I couldn’t resist, added, “Nice seeing you.”
After the door closed, I opened the shower curtain again and stripped off my clothes. I grabbed a towel off the pile and scampered back to my room. Margo was gone and the beds were tightly made. I got dressed quickly and rubbed my hair dry. I was determined to be bright and fun, easy to get along with, smooth like Margo, confident like Emelina.
When I got down to the great room, Frankie and Margo were in the kitchen, trying to be subtle about watching Carson and Emelina, who were at the table, playing cards.
“Good morning,” I said, smiling brightly.
Nobody responded.
“Queen of spades,” Carson said, slapping a card onto the top of the pile. “I’m doomed.”
Emelina raised one eyebrow at him.
“You’re asking for it,” Carson said. He slapped his hand down.
“Bull,” Emelina answered, low and sexy.
“Oh, yeah?” Carson asked, leaning close to her.
“Hey, Josie! Want some eggs?” Frankie offered. “I’m scrambling.”
“Sure.” I was relieved to hang with them in the kitchen, getting the butter, the salt, anything to keep from looking toward the table, until the eggs were done and plated. Carson and Emelina had just finished the game when we got out to the table. I sat down beside Carson and started to eat my eggs, without tasting them.
Margo picked up the cards. “Whose fortune can I tell?”
“Mine,” Frankie offered.
“Okay.” Margo smiled and shuffled, then started laying out cards as her eggs cooled. “Three cards here, four there, and I’ll do me at the same time.”
Frankie grinned up at her.
“Okay,” Margo said, considering the cards. “For you, I see a young love. You run away together.”
“I hope yours says the same.”
Margo tilted her head. “No, mine says I’ll fall in love with somebody old and rich and he’ll die and leave me alone, but very, very wealthy.”
Frankie pushed the cards away and said, “I’ll kill him.”
She grinned at him and took a bite of her eggs.
“Do mine,” Carson said.
“Okay.” Margo swallowed, shuffled, and laid a new array of cards on the table. “Let’s see, diamond, spade . . . hmm, I don’t know. I messed up.” She reached to sweep up the cards. Carson grabbed her hand and stopped her. “No,” he said. “The cards don’t lie. What? I die young or something?”
Margo didn’t answer. “It’s just a game,” she said, her voice quavering. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Let go of her arm, man,” Frankie said.
Carson let go, shoved his chair away from the table, and went to the front door. He stomped into his boots, grabbed his jacket from the coat rack, and went outside. Emelina stood up.
“Go,” Margo whispered to me.
I jumped up and followed Emelina to the door.
“I’ll go,” I said to Emelina, as we sat on the bench beside each other, putting on boots.
She stopped lacing hers up and considered me.
“You still love him, don’t you?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Does he still love you?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed hard and grabbed my jacket off the hook. “What about me?”
Emelina shrugged.
I shook my head. “No. That’s not fair.”
“Fair? You think it’s a game?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
I pushed out the door into the cold morning. It had snowed a ton overnight. The cars looked like massive marshmallows. Everything was white. I clomped through the knee-high powder until I found Carson around the side of the house, sitting sideways on a snowmobile.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked up at me. “Hey.”
“Want to go for a ride?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I’m driving.”
“Deal.”
He got on and I sat behind him, pressed against his back with my arms hugging his waist. He turned it on and we started flying, fast and smooth, into the fields behind the house. He took a path through the woods and we went awhile like that. It was absolutely beautiful back there, the trees heavy with snow and no noise but the roaring of the snowmobile’s engine and the pounding of my heart. When we emerged we were on the far side of a pond, beyond which I could see the house, covered in snow, smoke billowing out of the chimney. It looked as peaceful and pleasant as a scene could look. Carson headed toward the house, around the lake, but three-quarters of the way there he hit the brakes and stopped. He turned off the engine.
I didn’t let go of him, and he didn’t release the handles. We just sat there for a few minutes in the quiet.
“You should never have come,” he finally said.
I rested my head on his back.
“I shouldn’t have made you come. This isn’t your scene, these aren’t your friends. You’re miserable and so am I.”
“I am not,” I said, though my tears were dripping onto his jacket. “I’m having a great time.”
“No, you’re not.” He pried my hands off him and turned his head toward me. “I think we need to end this before either of us gets hurt.”
“Too late!” I yelled. “I’m already hurt. How can you do this to me? You begged me to be your girlfriend. I told you it wouldn’t work but you convinced me. And now, when my heart is wrapped up, when I have given up everything to be your girlfriend—my friends, my job, my clothes, my . . . everything! Everybody is mad at me and now you’re just like, oh, sorry, never mind? What the hell is that? I am turning myself into a pretzel to be wherever you want, whenever you want, whoever you want, and you just throw me away like a piece of trash?”
“I guess you were right,” he said, calmly.
I shoved him off the snowmobile. He landed on his back in the snow. “Love is a brat, you think? No, love is fine. You are the brat, you spoiled, rotten brat!”
“Josie . . .”
I stood above him. It took all my self-control not to stomp his gorgeous face with my boot. “I love you!”
“Josie!” Someone was yelling my name, far away. “Josie!”
I turned and looked toward the house. Frankie was standing there in just his long johns, waving his arms. “Come here! Come in!”
I squinted toward him and saw the back door open. Michael walked through it. Michael? Michael! I started running toward the house, leaving Carson on the ground behind me.
“MICHAEL!”
I got to the back deck out of breath and grabbed onto Michael’s jacket sleeves.
“I tried your cell,” Michael said. “I tried it like a hundred times.”
“There’s no service up here,” Emelina said, coming out of the house, too, in her boots and coat. “Notorious.”
“And the phone lines are down, so . . .”
“From the storm,” Emelina explained. “Gingy was just saying we got almost fifteen inches.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked Michael. “What happened? What are you doing here?”
“It’s your mom, Josie.”
I kept my grip on his olive-green sleeves and didn’t move.
“She was in a car accident.”
I felt my knees buckling under me.
“She’s in the hospital. She’s pretty banged up, couple of broken ribs and a black eye, your father said, but she’s okay.”
Emelina dusted the snow off a chair. “Sit down.”
I did. I looked up to thank her and saw Carson, beside her. Michael knelt in front of me. “She wants to see you,” Michael said. “Your father called me. He gave me the address. I said I’d bring you right away.”
“Michael.”
He took my hands. “She’ll be fine, Josie. I promise. Come.” He stood up and pulled me. I stood up too but didn’t take a step. “Come on, Josie.”
I looked at Carson. “You want me to go.”
“Of course,” he said, in his soft soothing voice. “Your mother was in an accident, Josie. What are you gonna do? Stay here and bumper ski with us? Go!”
“You want me to go so you can be with her.” I pointed at Emelina. By now most of the people were on the back deck, but I didn’t care. “You want me out of the way so you can get back together with Emelina.” I turned to Daniel, who was leaning against the back door. “You know that’s what’s happening here, don’t you, sophomore?”
“No,” he said. “I have no idea what’s happening here. I’m having a surreal day.”
“Don’t you care that your girlfriend loves another guy?”
Daniel shrugged. “High school drama.”
“Josie,” Michael said.
“I’m not going,” I told him.
“You have to,” Michael said. “Josie, come on.”
I broke away from him and went to Carson, threw my arms around him. “Come with me,” I begged. “Please. Carson, I love you. You love me, don’t you? You did. You almost did. You were falling in love with me, remember?”
Somebody stop me,
I thought. I am that girl, that horrible girl screaming
But I love you Carson!
But even recognizing that I had become my own worst nightmare, and knowing then the complete humiliating futility of pleading, begging, screaming in front of everybody, I couldn’t stop. “Frankie!” I turned on him ferociously and saw him flinch. “Didn’t Carson say he was falling in love with me?”
Frankie shrugged his bony shoulders.
“He did! He told you. Carson,” I was crying, yelling, smiling, everything at the same time. “Come with me. I need you to be there with me. It’s not over between us, I swear it’s not. Don’t give up on us. I’m sorry for, for everything. Okay? Please. I love you! Don’t you love me even a little?” I looked deep into his eyes, into his witch eye, hoping for some magic.
Carson pushed me softly away. “Go.”
Michael picked up my hand. “Come. It snowed seven inches last night.” He shot a nasty look at Emelina, then leaned closer to me. “The roads are bad. It’ll take three hours, at least. Let’s grab your stuff and get out of here.”
“Carson,” I said.
“Go,” Carson said. “The guy drove up in a blizzard to get you, and your mother is in the hospital. What’s wrong with you?”
“You, maybe,” I said.
I let Michael lead me toward the back door.
I SLEPT THE
whole way home. I didn’t think I’d be able to with all that was going on but I think I was asleep before we got to the highway. Michael woke me in the hospital parking lot. I blinked my eyes, looking at him, gradually remembering what had happened. “Hey,” I said. “You drove.”
He half-smiled. “I turned sixteen two weeks ago.”
“I remember,” I said. “I can’t believe you drove up to get me in a snowstorm. Your mother let you?”
“She wasn’t pleased.”
“I bet.” I could just picture that scene. “Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
“Tell you later.” He unbuckled me. “Let’s go in.”
“Michael . . .”
“Later,” he said.
We zipped through the parking lot and into the lobby. I hate hospitals so much; they are way too full of sick and damaged people. We went around and around, down a long corridor, up an elevator, down another long hall, stopped at a nurse’s station. Michael talked to them. I stared at my feet.
“Come on,” he said, and I followed him to a door. He knocked and we went in.
My father jumped up, off the edge of the bed. He threw his arms around me. “Josie,” he said, and then turned to Michael. “Thank you so much, Michael.”
Michael shook his head. “I’ll wait outside, to bring Josie home.”
“Right, okay,” Dad told him. “Good idea.”
“Mom?”
She looked weird, a little dazed, banged up, and pasty. It was scary.
“You okay?”
“You look so worried, Josie,” she said, and started to laugh, but stopped herself, grabbing her side. “Oh, don’t make me laugh, that’s the worst. Don’t frown like that, Josie, or you’ll be a wrinkled prune by the time you’re forty.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “If you’re still criticizing me, you must not be that close to death.”
“Death?” She started to laugh again but caught herself. “You are the most operatic person. I had a little accident. I’m fine. You should see the other guy.”
“You hit somebody?” I hadn’t even thought of that. “Mom, you hit somebody? How is he? Were you talking on your cell phone?”
“No,” she said. “And yes. The guy I hit was twenty feet tall and made of oak, or walnut, or something.”
“You hit a tree?”
“It was the tree’s fault,” she said.
I smiled, a little. She smiled back.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re back already from your fabulous weekend?”
“It wasn’t very fabulous,” I admitted.
“Did you eat cheese?”
“No,” I said. “Mom, I am more than a digestive tract.”
“What happened to your hair?”
I turned to my father. “I gotta go,” I said. “Are you staying here or going home?”
“Go,” my mother said. “Come back in the morning and spring me from here.”
“They have to see if the bleeding stopped,” my father said to her, and then said softly to me, “She had a lot of internal bleeding.”
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out what to do. It was habit to be mad at her, and she just pushes all my buttons, even from a hospital bed. Even with internal bleeding. Why couldn’t she be like Michael’s mother for once and tell me what a fine young woman I was becoming? Maybe if she did, even once, even if it were a lie, maybe I’d have a better chance at becoming a fine young woman.
Her eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked my father. “Is she okay? Did she just pass out? Maybe we should call a nurse.”
“She’s had quite a bit of morphine,” he whispered. “She’ll be fine, the doctors think. She was lucky.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Gently he brushed the hair off her forehead. I watched him, realizing it had been a long time since I’d seen them touch. “We were lucky.”
“Do you like stilettos?” I asked him.
“What?” He was fussing with my mother’s covers. “Oh, the high heels? They’re awful. The worst thing for feet, absolutely dreadful.”
“Mom said one time . . . something. Nothing.”
He looked at me, finally, sheepishly. “That I liked them? Yes, well. Your mother has amazing legs, and they do look good in those awful shoes.” He kissed her forehead. I looked away. If I were in a hospital bed, who would kiss me as I slept? Not Carson, probably. Maybe he would. Maybe he would realize he loved me, if I were in a hospital bed. But maybe not.
I would want him to be there.
“Why don’t you head home,” my father suggested. “I’ll stay here again tonight, but I’ll call you later. Or you can call here. Michael has the number. He’s a good person, Michael.”
“Unlike me,” I muttered.
“No,” Dad said. “Like you.”
“That’s not what Mom thinks,” I said, and turned toward the door.
My father grabbed me by the jacket. “Don’t. You. Dare. Don’t you dare criticize her.”
“I wasn’t,” I stuttered. “She always criticizes me. Why don’t you ever yell at her?”
He shook his head. “Get out of here. Go.” He shoved me toward the door. I slammed through it.
“Let’s go,” I said to Michael.
“You okay?”
I didn’t answer, just started walking fast down the hall. I couldn’t even see where I was going. I set the pace and Michael set the course, yanking me around corners and into an elevator. “Is she all right?” he whispered as the doors slid shut.
“She’s the berries,” I said.
Out in the parking lot, the cold air on my face felt good. I followed Michael to his father’s car. He opened my door and closed it after I was in. We drove for a while without talking.
“They must’ve been cracking up when they brought her in,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “A car accident with internal bleeding is a big laugh.” I looked out my window.
I am alone in the universe
, I thought.
“No,” Michael said. “I meant the clown getup.”
It took me a minute to hear what he said. “The what?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“That’s where she was, or where she was going, when she got into the accident. They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what, damn it, Michael?”
He made a complete stop at a stop sign, turned right, and pulled over on the side of the road. “You blew off a birthday party, Saturday?”
“I canceled one,” I said.
“Apparently the mom of the kid called, asking if by any chance your plans had fallen through because they like hired a pony or something and the kid was still all broken-hearted, only wanted Tallulah the Clown. So, your mother—and this is third-hand, this is what your dad told my mom—your mom told this lady that you had to be out of town for a very important meeting but that your backup had become available, and would do the party.”
“I don’t have a backup,” I said.
“Yes, you do.”
“My mother?”
He nodded.
It was impossible to imagine. “My mother was going as my backup?”
“She was on the cell clarifying the directions when she smashed into a tree. When they brought her into the hospital she was in the rainbow wig, the striped suit, whiteface, red nose . . .”
“Was she driving in my clown shoes?”
“That I don’t know,” Michael said.
I hit myself on my forehead with the heels of both my hands. “She thinks it’s that easy? You can just put on the costume and that’s it, you become Tallulah? She doesn’t know the first thing about doing it. She doesn’t know how to run a kid’s birthday party! Maybe it looks that easy to everybody else but there’s a lot more to it than putting on a red nose, believe it or not. What the hell was she thinking?”
Michael shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t thinking anything. Maybe she was just backing you up.”
“Why would she do such a stupid thing?”
“Why does anybody do a stupid thing?” he said. “Love. She loves you.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but started crying again instead.
He sat there quietly for a long time while I cried myself dry. He didn’t even look at me.
“Michael . . .”
He turned the car back on and said, as he pulled out, “Love makes us stupid, sometimes.”
I looked out the window as he drove. “Thank you,” I said.