Sam, page 12
“I should have called you first. I just wanted to talk to you in person.”
She looks at the door, half-afraid, half-hoping someone will walk in. “Dad, I’m working.”
“No problem,” he tells her, and he reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a ratty roll of dollars. He counts out four and she’s embarrassed, even though nobody is there except for Robbie, smoking out the back door.
Mitchell buys two slices of plain pizza and she heats them up while he fills a large cup with orange soda from the machine. It’s the lunch special—two plain pieces, and the drink is free. “What are you reading?” he asks, like they are two people being friendly.
“It’s just for summer school.” She closes her book, Dynamic Earth.
“I missed you.” He is probably hoping she will say I missed you too, but she does not. He says, “I’m starting a new job,” but new customers come in. A mom pushing a double stroller with two little kids, one sleeping, one crying.
Mitchell sits down to eat while Sam waits on them. She brings out hot slices on white paper plates, and she avoids looking at her dad, because it hurts to see him eating there alone.
She wants more customers to fill the place. She wants to start rushing—but no new people come after the lady leaves with her two kids. Mitchell holds the door for the stroller, and Sam braces herself to hear about his job—but he surprises her. He throws away his plate and cup and says, “I know you’ve got a lot of work, so I’ll head out and we’ll talk soon.”
She almost thanks him, because she is so glad that he is leaving—and then she thinks how obvious it is she doesn’t want to see him. She thinks how she used to jump into his arms. Pennies rained down from her pockets—and now she’s hurt him. But he made her! He made her do it. You can’t go away for ten months and find your kid just the way you left them.
Nobody else comes in, but she can’t study anymore. She can’t do anything but stand behind the counter. At last she gets off work and steps into the heat. She takes the bus home and her phone lights up with messages. At first, she thinks it’s Mitchell, but then she sees it’s Corey. She had forgotten he was coming home from camp.
“What?” she says, calling Corey back.
“Can I see you?” Corey asks all in a rush. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he says, “Can I just come over?”
“I’m on the bus.”
“Can I meet you?”
“Why?” The whole thing is weird; she is so distracted, and Corey hasn’t texted her in weeks. “To say you’re sorry?”
There is a long pause, like How did you know? And she didn’t know until that moment. She hadn’t thought of it at all, but now she knows exactly what he wants to do.
“Sam?” He sounds shaky. Maybe he thinks she can read his mind—even though it’s not like that at all. She can’t read anybody, and she doesn’t want to. He says, “Can I meet you at the church?”
“Okay.” She is staring out the bus window.
So, they stand behind St. Mary’s, and he hugs her and then he looks at her and says, “I think you’re an amazing person.” And she thinks, You memorized this. He probably memorized a whole speech on his way back from Vermont. “The thing is something happened.” He is talking fast, and she is translating silently. Something happened means he hooked up with someone else. “We’ve been apart so long.”
She says, “It’s true.”
“I just think…”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
She says, “Yeah, we should break up.”
He is shocked because she’s jumped ahead of him. Confused and relieved, he says, “I always want to be your friend.”
She nods, even though she knows they won’t be. They won’t hang out in his dad’s basement with their clothes on. That’s not how their friendship worked. She says, “Yeah, definitely.”
He looks like he wants to hug her again, but she steps back. “That’s okay.” She doesn’t know exactly what she means by that. It’s okay, you don’t have to keep hugging me? Or it’s okay, I don’t mind you slept with someone else? It’s more like it’s okay, you didn’t break my heart. Try knives. Try torches. My dad is a professional.
29
At home when Sam’s dad calls, she says she can’t talk because she is studying for her final. Even after the exam, she carries her Earth Science book everywhere. It’s like a shield.
At Freeda’s, she turns the pages and stares at all the diagrams and photographs—but mostly she reads about the Rockies. They are the result of plates colliding. They are igneous, and they are ancient—what’s left of prehistoric islands.
Whenever the door opens, she is afraid her dad is back to order pizza, but it’s never him. He felt bad for barging in. That’s what he tells Courtney. He wants to see Sam—but he doesn’t want to put her on the spot.
Courtney sits with Sam on the couch and says, Just hear him out. He wants to tell Sam how he missed her.
Sam says he already did.
He wants to tell her how much he regrets losing so much time with her.
Sam says, Uh-huh.
He is working on a farm.
Sam says, That’s nice. She imagines little pigs with corkscrew tails.
Courtney says she can see how Sam might be upset.
Sam says, “I’m not,” but she doesn’t want to talk, or see her dad for any reason. She doesn’t really want to see anyone. Not Halle. Definitely not Kevin. Instead of climbing at the Y, she sits at home in air-conditioning. She gets a 92 and very good! on her exam, but she doesn’t show it to Courtney.
Her mom says, Let me cut your hair, but Sam says no.
Her mom says, You’re starting junior year and that’s the most important year.
Sam says, Thank you for reminding me.
School starts, and Sam walks to class, and she walks home, alone.
Corey is off with new people, so she hardly sees him juggling in the halls. Halle is away at Andover. Even Noah plays hockey every afternoon. Courtney works until six, so Sam is alone with her thoughts, which are not about her dad or Corey or school or really anything around her. They are all about the people she can’t see—Declan and his girlfriend.
On Facebook Declan’s girlfriend is beautiful with dimples and her name is Ashley. She goes to the University of New Hampshire and she skis. Does she climb too? Sam isn’t jealous. How could she be? She is just wondering.
Practice starts two weeks after school begins. What will it be like this time? Will Declan critique her, the way he did before? Will he drive her? Sam is taller and stronger. Her arms are hard. Her eyes are sad. What will he think when she climbs for him again?
* * *
—
Her dad sends her a letter in the mail. It’s on lined notebook paper and the writing is thick black print. Sam I still owe you an apology actually a lot of them. If I could just talk to you if you would let me. You are my— At this point, there is a tiny drawing of the sun, the moon, and stars—and maybe a comet. It could also be a spaceship. It is hard to tell.
Sam leaves the note at the bottom of her locker, and her textbooks crush it down. Precalculus and U.S. History and Spanish and American Literature and Biology. She likes the weight of all those books. She likes the way people ignore her, because it gives her time to count the days and hours until she can climb again.
* * *
—
She sees Declan as soon as she walks in. Even though he is at the far end of the gym, she recognizes his stance, his legs apart. The gym is giant, crawling with climbers, but everywhere he goes, she senses him.
When he gathers everyone, he picks up right where he left off, except that this year he divides the team into two practice groups because there are so many kids. It’s not like one group will be better or worse. They are still one team, and the groups are equal, and they will switch off drills. Declan takes one group and Toby takes the other.
Sam holds still as Declan calls names from a list. She doesn’t want Toby’s group. It’s true Toby has been at the gym for longer, but she coaches all the younger kids. How can the groups be equal? Nobody believes that, and nobody believes the groups will switch off either.
When Declan calls her name for Toby’s group, she looks at him in shock and silent protest, but he ignores her.
She climbs with ten other girls and Toby, and he doesn’t even glance in her direction.
As soon as practice is over, she packs up and changes shoes. She is never coming back. She is never going through that again. She is almost out the door when he asks if she wants a ride.
“Okay,” she says, as though her heart’s not racing.
There is sand on the floor of his white car and all between the seats. It’s still summer weather in September. They are both wearing shorts and T-shirts. The sun is beating down, and she brushes sand off her bare legs.
He starts driving, and the wind is whipping through the open windows, and they don’t speak. It would be embarrassing to whine about Toby’s group. And she would feel dumb asking, How were the Rockies? She doesn’t know what to say, and so she tells him, “My dad came back.”
She has no idea why she said that. Her dad is the last thing she wants to talk about. She wants to start over, but she can’t, because she’s crying.
“Sam!” He takes the next exit and pulls off onto Cherry Hill Road and parks the car in a crunch of gravel. “What happened?”
It’s very still. The air is hot. She is afraid to say more, but she does anyway, because it turns out Declan is the only one she wants to tell. She has been waiting and waiting. “He was gone almost a year and now he’s back.”
“Your dad who used to whistle at the meets?”
She is watching his face. His dark eyes can be hard or mischievous or playful. Now they’re just surprised. He doesn’t seem so much in his twenties. He’s more like a kid now, and she’s the older one. She is the one with more experience, or at least, more pain. “He has a new job.”
“That’s good, right?”
She tries to explain. “No, because he does this every time and it won’t work! He starts out good and then he disappears.”
They sit there together, and she thinks, Do you know what I mean? Do you have any idea what I mean? It helps to tell him, but she can’t read his face, and she can’t have anything she really wants, a kiss, a caress, a return to what happened when he looked at her for real and touched her. She can’t ask about that either. They never spoke about it then, and they can’t start now. Everything is unsaid between them.
30
At school Sam’s first class is gym, at 7:50. It’s called conditioning, but all that means is sit-ups, pull-ups, and sprints between orange traffic cones. Sometimes Sam runs; sometimes she is too sleepy.
The teacher is a pregnant lady named Mrs. Keith, who stands and watches everybody. Her last baby was premature, so she waves her hands and blows her whistle, but she can’t actually do anything. On the day they take turns climbing ropes, Sam watches Mrs. Keith’s round astonished face below. She can’t believe how fast Sam climbs to the gym ceiling.
Sam hangs out there, swinging a little.
“Okay, come down now,” Mrs. Keith calls nervously.
Sam pretends that she can’t hear. Down below, the other kids don’t want to climb, so they are happy for Sam to run out the clock.
“Come on down. Safely.”
The rafters are covered with thick dust. Sam writes with her finger. SCHOOL SUCKS. Also, CLEAN ME.
Her class sits on the polished floor like kindergartners, and Sam is nicely balanced, gripping with her hands, clamping with her legs and knees.
“Sam!” Mrs. Keith is starting to freak out a little bit. Sam knows how teachers think. What if something happens? What if there’s an incident? It’s not like Mrs. Keith can climb up after her.
The bell is ringing, and Sam is on the floor in just an instant, jumping the last few feet. Mrs. Keith almost laughs with relief. Everyone is staring.
Too bad her other classes are so hard. English is terrible, especially The Scarlet Letter.
“Just try!” her mom says. Also, “Enjoy school, because real life is so much harder.”
Sam already knows life is hard, but Courtney’s new thing is letting go of anger. She thinks it would be good for Sam to see Mitchell on her birthday. Her mom says, “Seventeen is big.”
Sam points out, “You say that every year.”
“But your dad’s here now. He’s here for it! We could celebrate together.”
Sam just shakes her head, and so she turns seventeen without him.
But even after that, her mom will not give up. She says, “How about in a week—or when you’re ready—you just call him?”
Sam chooses the second option—when she’s ready—which is never.
Her mom says, It’s not good for you. It’s not good to carry so much sadness and so much pain.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m not calling him,” Sam tells her. It’s not like she holds a grudge. It’s self-defense, because the sadness and the pain come from seeing him.
Courtney says, “It’s hard to be so unforgiving.”
Not true. It’s easier. And anyway, Sam does forgive her father. She gets it: He is sick, he can’t help screwing up. She just doesn’t want to watch it happen anymore.
What’s hard is going to school each day and sitting there, then going to the gym and climbing in Toby’s group where Declan can’t even see her.
Sometimes Declan drives her home, sometimes he doesn’t. When he does, she wants to ask him why she’s in the lower group, but she knows what he will say. There is no lower group. He’ll talk like any other teacher.
* * *
—
In December Toby is out of town, so Declan coaches both groups together. He says, “Okay, let’s see what you can do.”
Like you care, Sam thinks, but on the wall, she feels alert and smart and curious. What will I do? What will I try? I’ll show you.
There are three separate bouldering problems set up, and the girls rotate between them. Sam tries the first and solves it fast. She attacks the second, and it’s harder. She has to work at it, but she knows what to do. Wedge yourself in. Leverage yourself, so you’re like one side of a triangle.
“Okay!” Declan compliments her.
But the third problem kills. It’s weirdly tricky, because the holds you think will work don’t work at all. Your route looks right but then you’re stranded, and there’s nowhere to go.
“Think,” Declan says, when she falls. “No,” he tells her when she falls again, and then she has to stop because other girls are waiting, but she can’t give up. She almost sees the answer, but he yells, “Hey! Get down.”
She reaches anyway. She lunges, and she’s swinging by one hand.
He isn’t interested. She is taking time from everybody else. “I said get down!”
She drops to the mat and her face burns.
“Over there.” He points her to the sidelines. The other girls are watching, hushed, as she draws her knees up to her chest. “Which part of that don’t you understand?” he says. “Over. There.”
She will not move.
He takes her by the arm and slides her off. He actually yanks her off the mat, and she thinks, What’s happening?
She glares at him. He just turns his back.
The other girls pretend they are not looking at her, and she pretends she doesn’t see them pretending not to look. They think she is about to cry—because they don’t know her.
She zips up her jacket and pulls her hood up and runs all the way to the bus stop.
Cold cramps her toes inside her shoes. She stamps her feet. She stuffs her gloved hands into her pockets. She could call her mom, but then she would have to talk to her.
She looks far down the road, watching. It’s been an hour, but the bus doesn’t come. A white car pulls up instead. It’s Declan.
Slowly she opens the door and feels a blast of warm air.
They sit there in the car by the side of the road and she knows he feels bad, even though he won’t apologize. He looks at her almost softly. “Are you okay?” He takes her hands and blows on them.
She is afraid he’ll hear her pounding heart. He is so close. The ice inside her melts away. The windows fog over. He unzips her jacket, and she feels him under her shirt, against her skin, inside her pants. His palm, his fingers, the heat radiating from his hands.
She can’t see anything outside. She can’t feel anything but his hand against her. He is pressing, and she is coming to meet him, throbbing harder and harder until she breaks apart like hard candy smashing into the tiniest sweetest pieces.
Again, again, her body pleads, even as he wipes mist from the windows and the world shines in.
He avoids her eyes as he starts driving. He doesn’t speak; he doesn’t look at her. Together they watch the stripy road. White black white. Sun trees sun.
31
Sometimes he kisses her; sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes they park near snowbanks and she warms her hands inside his jacket and his pockets and his pants. And then, instead of taking her home, he drives her to his place in Salem. She says, What about your girlfriend?
He says, I don’t have a girlfriend, and that might be true. There are no new pictures of Ashley online when she looks for them.
They only go to his place when his roommates are away. It’s quiet and his sheets are dark and tangled. They lie down, and she pulls her shirt over her head and when he kisses her, she thinks, This is kissing. When he strokes her body, she thinks, This is why people like it so much. This is what they mean.
She also knows she can’t tell anyone. He even says it when they are together. He whispers, and it’s like a spell. “You were never here.”
She looks at the door, half-afraid, half-hoping someone will walk in. “Dad, I’m working.”
“No problem,” he tells her, and he reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a ratty roll of dollars. He counts out four and she’s embarrassed, even though nobody is there except for Robbie, smoking out the back door.
Mitchell buys two slices of plain pizza and she heats them up while he fills a large cup with orange soda from the machine. It’s the lunch special—two plain pieces, and the drink is free. “What are you reading?” he asks, like they are two people being friendly.
“It’s just for summer school.” She closes her book, Dynamic Earth.
“I missed you.” He is probably hoping she will say I missed you too, but she does not. He says, “I’m starting a new job,” but new customers come in. A mom pushing a double stroller with two little kids, one sleeping, one crying.
Mitchell sits down to eat while Sam waits on them. She brings out hot slices on white paper plates, and she avoids looking at her dad, because it hurts to see him eating there alone.
She wants more customers to fill the place. She wants to start rushing—but no new people come after the lady leaves with her two kids. Mitchell holds the door for the stroller, and Sam braces herself to hear about his job—but he surprises her. He throws away his plate and cup and says, “I know you’ve got a lot of work, so I’ll head out and we’ll talk soon.”
She almost thanks him, because she is so glad that he is leaving—and then she thinks how obvious it is she doesn’t want to see him. She thinks how she used to jump into his arms. Pennies rained down from her pockets—and now she’s hurt him. But he made her! He made her do it. You can’t go away for ten months and find your kid just the way you left them.
Nobody else comes in, but she can’t study anymore. She can’t do anything but stand behind the counter. At last she gets off work and steps into the heat. She takes the bus home and her phone lights up with messages. At first, she thinks it’s Mitchell, but then she sees it’s Corey. She had forgotten he was coming home from camp.
“What?” she says, calling Corey back.
“Can I see you?” Corey asks all in a rush. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he says, “Can I just come over?”
“I’m on the bus.”
“Can I meet you?”
“Why?” The whole thing is weird; she is so distracted, and Corey hasn’t texted her in weeks. “To say you’re sorry?”
There is a long pause, like How did you know? And she didn’t know until that moment. She hadn’t thought of it at all, but now she knows exactly what he wants to do.
“Sam?” He sounds shaky. Maybe he thinks she can read his mind—even though it’s not like that at all. She can’t read anybody, and she doesn’t want to. He says, “Can I meet you at the church?”
“Okay.” She is staring out the bus window.
So, they stand behind St. Mary’s, and he hugs her and then he looks at her and says, “I think you’re an amazing person.” And she thinks, You memorized this. He probably memorized a whole speech on his way back from Vermont. “The thing is something happened.” He is talking fast, and she is translating silently. Something happened means he hooked up with someone else. “We’ve been apart so long.”
She says, “It’s true.”
“I just think…”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
She says, “Yeah, we should break up.”
He is shocked because she’s jumped ahead of him. Confused and relieved, he says, “I always want to be your friend.”
She nods, even though she knows they won’t be. They won’t hang out in his dad’s basement with their clothes on. That’s not how their friendship worked. She says, “Yeah, definitely.”
He looks like he wants to hug her again, but she steps back. “That’s okay.” She doesn’t know exactly what she means by that. It’s okay, you don’t have to keep hugging me? Or it’s okay, I don’t mind you slept with someone else? It’s more like it’s okay, you didn’t break my heart. Try knives. Try torches. My dad is a professional.
29
At home when Sam’s dad calls, she says she can’t talk because she is studying for her final. Even after the exam, she carries her Earth Science book everywhere. It’s like a shield.
At Freeda’s, she turns the pages and stares at all the diagrams and photographs—but mostly she reads about the Rockies. They are the result of plates colliding. They are igneous, and they are ancient—what’s left of prehistoric islands.
Whenever the door opens, she is afraid her dad is back to order pizza, but it’s never him. He felt bad for barging in. That’s what he tells Courtney. He wants to see Sam—but he doesn’t want to put her on the spot.
Courtney sits with Sam on the couch and says, Just hear him out. He wants to tell Sam how he missed her.
Sam says he already did.
He wants to tell her how much he regrets losing so much time with her.
Sam says, Uh-huh.
He is working on a farm.
Sam says, That’s nice. She imagines little pigs with corkscrew tails.
Courtney says she can see how Sam might be upset.
Sam says, “I’m not,” but she doesn’t want to talk, or see her dad for any reason. She doesn’t really want to see anyone. Not Halle. Definitely not Kevin. Instead of climbing at the Y, she sits at home in air-conditioning. She gets a 92 and very good! on her exam, but she doesn’t show it to Courtney.
Her mom says, Let me cut your hair, but Sam says no.
Her mom says, You’re starting junior year and that’s the most important year.
Sam says, Thank you for reminding me.
School starts, and Sam walks to class, and she walks home, alone.
Corey is off with new people, so she hardly sees him juggling in the halls. Halle is away at Andover. Even Noah plays hockey every afternoon. Courtney works until six, so Sam is alone with her thoughts, which are not about her dad or Corey or school or really anything around her. They are all about the people she can’t see—Declan and his girlfriend.
On Facebook Declan’s girlfriend is beautiful with dimples and her name is Ashley. She goes to the University of New Hampshire and she skis. Does she climb too? Sam isn’t jealous. How could she be? She is just wondering.
Practice starts two weeks after school begins. What will it be like this time? Will Declan critique her, the way he did before? Will he drive her? Sam is taller and stronger. Her arms are hard. Her eyes are sad. What will he think when she climbs for him again?
* * *
—
Her dad sends her a letter in the mail. It’s on lined notebook paper and the writing is thick black print. Sam I still owe you an apology actually a lot of them. If I could just talk to you if you would let me. You are my— At this point, there is a tiny drawing of the sun, the moon, and stars—and maybe a comet. It could also be a spaceship. It is hard to tell.
Sam leaves the note at the bottom of her locker, and her textbooks crush it down. Precalculus and U.S. History and Spanish and American Literature and Biology. She likes the weight of all those books. She likes the way people ignore her, because it gives her time to count the days and hours until she can climb again.
* * *
—
She sees Declan as soon as she walks in. Even though he is at the far end of the gym, she recognizes his stance, his legs apart. The gym is giant, crawling with climbers, but everywhere he goes, she senses him.
When he gathers everyone, he picks up right where he left off, except that this year he divides the team into two practice groups because there are so many kids. It’s not like one group will be better or worse. They are still one team, and the groups are equal, and they will switch off drills. Declan takes one group and Toby takes the other.
Sam holds still as Declan calls names from a list. She doesn’t want Toby’s group. It’s true Toby has been at the gym for longer, but she coaches all the younger kids. How can the groups be equal? Nobody believes that, and nobody believes the groups will switch off either.
When Declan calls her name for Toby’s group, she looks at him in shock and silent protest, but he ignores her.
She climbs with ten other girls and Toby, and he doesn’t even glance in her direction.
As soon as practice is over, she packs up and changes shoes. She is never coming back. She is never going through that again. She is almost out the door when he asks if she wants a ride.
“Okay,” she says, as though her heart’s not racing.
There is sand on the floor of his white car and all between the seats. It’s still summer weather in September. They are both wearing shorts and T-shirts. The sun is beating down, and she brushes sand off her bare legs.
He starts driving, and the wind is whipping through the open windows, and they don’t speak. It would be embarrassing to whine about Toby’s group. And she would feel dumb asking, How were the Rockies? She doesn’t know what to say, and so she tells him, “My dad came back.”
She has no idea why she said that. Her dad is the last thing she wants to talk about. She wants to start over, but she can’t, because she’s crying.
“Sam!” He takes the next exit and pulls off onto Cherry Hill Road and parks the car in a crunch of gravel. “What happened?”
It’s very still. The air is hot. She is afraid to say more, but she does anyway, because it turns out Declan is the only one she wants to tell. She has been waiting and waiting. “He was gone almost a year and now he’s back.”
“Your dad who used to whistle at the meets?”
She is watching his face. His dark eyes can be hard or mischievous or playful. Now they’re just surprised. He doesn’t seem so much in his twenties. He’s more like a kid now, and she’s the older one. She is the one with more experience, or at least, more pain. “He has a new job.”
“That’s good, right?”
She tries to explain. “No, because he does this every time and it won’t work! He starts out good and then he disappears.”
They sit there together, and she thinks, Do you know what I mean? Do you have any idea what I mean? It helps to tell him, but she can’t read his face, and she can’t have anything she really wants, a kiss, a caress, a return to what happened when he looked at her for real and touched her. She can’t ask about that either. They never spoke about it then, and they can’t start now. Everything is unsaid between them.
30
At school Sam’s first class is gym, at 7:50. It’s called conditioning, but all that means is sit-ups, pull-ups, and sprints between orange traffic cones. Sometimes Sam runs; sometimes she is too sleepy.
The teacher is a pregnant lady named Mrs. Keith, who stands and watches everybody. Her last baby was premature, so she waves her hands and blows her whistle, but she can’t actually do anything. On the day they take turns climbing ropes, Sam watches Mrs. Keith’s round astonished face below. She can’t believe how fast Sam climbs to the gym ceiling.
Sam hangs out there, swinging a little.
“Okay, come down now,” Mrs. Keith calls nervously.
Sam pretends that she can’t hear. Down below, the other kids don’t want to climb, so they are happy for Sam to run out the clock.
“Come on down. Safely.”
The rafters are covered with thick dust. Sam writes with her finger. SCHOOL SUCKS. Also, CLEAN ME.
Her class sits on the polished floor like kindergartners, and Sam is nicely balanced, gripping with her hands, clamping with her legs and knees.
“Sam!” Mrs. Keith is starting to freak out a little bit. Sam knows how teachers think. What if something happens? What if there’s an incident? It’s not like Mrs. Keith can climb up after her.
The bell is ringing, and Sam is on the floor in just an instant, jumping the last few feet. Mrs. Keith almost laughs with relief. Everyone is staring.
Too bad her other classes are so hard. English is terrible, especially The Scarlet Letter.
“Just try!” her mom says. Also, “Enjoy school, because real life is so much harder.”
Sam already knows life is hard, but Courtney’s new thing is letting go of anger. She thinks it would be good for Sam to see Mitchell on her birthday. Her mom says, “Seventeen is big.”
Sam points out, “You say that every year.”
“But your dad’s here now. He’s here for it! We could celebrate together.”
Sam just shakes her head, and so she turns seventeen without him.
But even after that, her mom will not give up. She says, “How about in a week—or when you’re ready—you just call him?”
Sam chooses the second option—when she’s ready—which is never.
Her mom says, It’s not good for you. It’s not good to carry so much sadness and so much pain.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m not calling him,” Sam tells her. It’s not like she holds a grudge. It’s self-defense, because the sadness and the pain come from seeing him.
Courtney says, “It’s hard to be so unforgiving.”
Not true. It’s easier. And anyway, Sam does forgive her father. She gets it: He is sick, he can’t help screwing up. She just doesn’t want to watch it happen anymore.
What’s hard is going to school each day and sitting there, then going to the gym and climbing in Toby’s group where Declan can’t even see her.
Sometimes Declan drives her home, sometimes he doesn’t. When he does, she wants to ask him why she’s in the lower group, but she knows what he will say. There is no lower group. He’ll talk like any other teacher.
* * *
—
In December Toby is out of town, so Declan coaches both groups together. He says, “Okay, let’s see what you can do.”
Like you care, Sam thinks, but on the wall, she feels alert and smart and curious. What will I do? What will I try? I’ll show you.
There are three separate bouldering problems set up, and the girls rotate between them. Sam tries the first and solves it fast. She attacks the second, and it’s harder. She has to work at it, but she knows what to do. Wedge yourself in. Leverage yourself, so you’re like one side of a triangle.
“Okay!” Declan compliments her.
But the third problem kills. It’s weirdly tricky, because the holds you think will work don’t work at all. Your route looks right but then you’re stranded, and there’s nowhere to go.
“Think,” Declan says, when she falls. “No,” he tells her when she falls again, and then she has to stop because other girls are waiting, but she can’t give up. She almost sees the answer, but he yells, “Hey! Get down.”
She reaches anyway. She lunges, and she’s swinging by one hand.
He isn’t interested. She is taking time from everybody else. “I said get down!”
She drops to the mat and her face burns.
“Over there.” He points her to the sidelines. The other girls are watching, hushed, as she draws her knees up to her chest. “Which part of that don’t you understand?” he says. “Over. There.”
She will not move.
He takes her by the arm and slides her off. He actually yanks her off the mat, and she thinks, What’s happening?
She glares at him. He just turns his back.
The other girls pretend they are not looking at her, and she pretends she doesn’t see them pretending not to look. They think she is about to cry—because they don’t know her.
She zips up her jacket and pulls her hood up and runs all the way to the bus stop.
Cold cramps her toes inside her shoes. She stamps her feet. She stuffs her gloved hands into her pockets. She could call her mom, but then she would have to talk to her.
She looks far down the road, watching. It’s been an hour, but the bus doesn’t come. A white car pulls up instead. It’s Declan.
Slowly she opens the door and feels a blast of warm air.
They sit there in the car by the side of the road and she knows he feels bad, even though he won’t apologize. He looks at her almost softly. “Are you okay?” He takes her hands and blows on them.
She is afraid he’ll hear her pounding heart. He is so close. The ice inside her melts away. The windows fog over. He unzips her jacket, and she feels him under her shirt, against her skin, inside her pants. His palm, his fingers, the heat radiating from his hands.
She can’t see anything outside. She can’t feel anything but his hand against her. He is pressing, and she is coming to meet him, throbbing harder and harder until she breaks apart like hard candy smashing into the tiniest sweetest pieces.
Again, again, her body pleads, even as he wipes mist from the windows and the world shines in.
He avoids her eyes as he starts driving. He doesn’t speak; he doesn’t look at her. Together they watch the stripy road. White black white. Sun trees sun.
31
Sometimes he kisses her; sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes they park near snowbanks and she warms her hands inside his jacket and his pockets and his pants. And then, instead of taking her home, he drives her to his place in Salem. She says, What about your girlfriend?
He says, I don’t have a girlfriend, and that might be true. There are no new pictures of Ashley online when she looks for them.
They only go to his place when his roommates are away. It’s quiet and his sheets are dark and tangled. They lie down, and she pulls her shirt over her head and when he kisses her, she thinks, This is kissing. When he strokes her body, she thinks, This is why people like it so much. This is what they mean.
She also knows she can’t tell anyone. He even says it when they are together. He whispers, and it’s like a spell. “You were never here.”
