The Words Between Us, page 12
I keep my face impassive. Sarah didn’t need to blab about my “situation” to tell this man that I needed some help with an ArtPrize entry.
The waitress arrives and begins to fill the table with steaming plates. Ryan thanks her and then looks back to me with the sparkling eyes of an eager child. I place the sketchpad beside me on the torn vinyl-covered seat to keep it safe from grease stains and pick up my fork.
“I don’t see how I’ll have enough books to cover it. I don’t think there are enough books in my whole store for that. I appreciate all the time and thought you’ve put into this, but I think it’s going to have to be a smaller dinosaur. Maybe one with some interesting features, like sails or body armor. Like a stegosaurus, or what are those things with the clubs on their tails?”
“Ankylosaurus,” he supplies effortlessly.
“One of those. Then we can showcase the books more. Don’t you think that would offer a little more opportunity to be artsy about it?”
“Well, sure, I guess. You would get admirers for that. But you might not stop anyone in their tracks. Sarah said it had to be something that left people awestruck.”
“Sarah’s not in charge.”
The minute the words leave my lips I wish I hadn’t said them. Sarah is just trying to help. And frankly, she is probably right. She’s the one with the experience in wowing people, not me.
“I mean, I just don’t think it can be done. I’m sure you and the kids on your team can build it. But I don’t know where to get the books. And all this high-tech lightweight metal and all the parts? Where are you going to get that and how much will it cost me?”
“Robin, you’re looking at this all wrong. Big projects are not the work of one person. They might start out as the vision of one, but they are never completed by one. You’ve got your technical advisors—that’s me. Your construction team—that’s the Science Olympiad kids and maybe a few of their parents. And your corporate sponsors—that’s who is going to provide either the funds to make the skeleton or the materials themselves. I’ve already got a few calls out to companies that manufacture this kind of thing. You have their name somewhere to show that they sponsored you. Big companies do things like that all the time. It’s good PR. They’ve all got philanthropy in their budgets.”
“Okay, so that takes care of the skeleton, but we still have the problem of enough books. Where do those come from?”
He leans back against the booth. A moment later he’s leaning forward again with bright eyes. “You do a book drive!” He takes a triumphant bite of toast.
“A book drive.” I let it sink in a moment. It could work.
“You do it in May or June when everyone is cleaning out their basements for garage sales. Make it a big event, get the River City Times down there and a couple local news stations. You could even go door-to-door with a truck to do pickups for people who can’t get to the drive. Old people have a lot of books. Then all those people have a stake in the project and in supporting your store.”
I’m beginning to catch some of Ryan’s enthusiasm. Dreadnoughtus. Fearer of nothing. I need more of that fearless spirit. Sarah has it. Dawt Pi has it. Ryan seems to have it. Maybe they could rub off on me a little.
As if she knew I was thinking of her, my phone buzzes.
“Hang on. It’s Sarah. Let me take this.” I slide out of the booth and answer the phone at the same time. “Hey.” I walk to the foyer at the front of the restaurant. “Where are you? I’m all alone eating breakfast with a stranger.”
“Sorry, my alarm didn’t go off.”
I suddenly begin to worry that Dawt Pi’s alarm might not have gone off, that maybe she didn’t open the store this morning as we had arranged.
“Anyway, Ryan’s a nice guy. Did he show you the plans?”
“Of course he showed me the plans. What do you think, we’ve just been getting to know each other over bad diner coffee and burnt toast?”
“You should get to know each other. He’s a nice guy.”
“You already said that.”
“He’s single.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You know exactly what. So are you coming?”
“Did you already order?”
I glance back to the table where Ryan is mopping up egg yolk with his last piece of toast. “We’re practically finished.”
“Then no. I’ll catch up with you later. You like the plans, though? He’s got it all figured out.”
“It’s so big.”
“Caleb picked it out. I think it’s awesome.”
“It’s starting to grow on me. But we’ll need to do a book drive to cover this thing.”
“Perfect! Ooh! I’ll get started on posters today. Text me the dates when you have it figured out. And Robin? Ryan’s a really nice guy.”
“I believe you.”
I hang up, then sit back down in the hollow of the old booth that indicates where thousands of breakfast-loving people have sat before. “Her alarm malfunctioned. She’s not going to be able to make it.”
“Bummer.” He looks like he really means it. Like every other guy in this town, he’s probably in love with Sarah Kukla. But he’s definitely not her type. He’s smallish and smart and wearing a sweater vest over a sharp button-up shirt and vintage tie. He’s clean-shaven, shaggy-haired, and wearing hipster glasses. His pants are corduroy. I can almost guarantee he drives a hybrid car. Or perhaps a bike. He’s a nice guy.
I wash down a bite of cold poached eggs with cold coffee like a guy slamming a shot to get up the courage to hit on Sarah. She will not save me from this conversation. I have to be sociable. Fearer of nothing.
“So, Ryan . . . tell me a bit about yourself.”
16
Then
It’s hard to know someone—to really know them—when they’re dead before you meet them. But as winter eased up that year in Sussex, I found that, along with falling for her son, I wanted desperately to know Emily Rose Flynt. With each book that Peter gave me, I felt sure that I was getting closer and closer to the real Emily. Every book revealed another layer, like pulling the outer petals from a rose, ever narrowing and bringing into focus what was inside.
As the volumes mounted and sprawled beneath my bed, I began to have visions of the dwindling stash in Peter’s basement. Someday the boxes would be empty and my font of knowledge about my new obsession would run dry. No more clues to follow, no more codes to decipher. I began to despair of how quickly Peter breezed through the books, inserting them into my locker with the regularity of a tray of food sliding through a slot to a prisoner in solitary.
In January and February I read no fewer than a dozen books, including all seven of Jane Austen’s novels and a good deal of Virginia Woolf’s. When Peter asked if it was okay if he skipped reading Woolf’s abridged diaries and simply passed them on to me, I acquiesced and dutifully scratched out a poem in payment. Late into the nights, I scoured the pages for Woolf’s incisive wisdom and dry wit. Emily’s markings seemed more insistent here than they had been in any other book, with whole paragraphs and sometimes entire pages of text underlined. Was it simply because Woolf’s wandering sentences were difficult to excerpt? Or was there more to it?
Already knowing the end of Virginia’s story, that she would drown herself in a river to silence the voices inside and release her loved ones from her madness, I read slower than normal in order to savor her voice as long as possible. With each turn of the page the water rose a little, as did my suspicions regarding Emily’s sudden death. I had been waiting for Peter to see it in the other books, where his mother had made careful note of the emotional chaos that seemed to overcome so many female characters. He’d certainly noticed that there were a fair number of crazy women, but it was obvious that he accepted his father’s explanation of his mother’s death—that she’d died of an aneurysm, without warning and without lingering.
I’d seen Jack Flynt at football games in the fall. He stood grim-faced at the chain-link fence that separated the fans from the field, his eyes critical, his mouth sour. It was hard to envision him with everyone’s favorite English teacher, who seemed in every story to be graciously lending a hand and a smile to anyone in need of one.
There were vestiges of Emily and Jack all over school: names on trophies and plaques, faces reaching across time from black-and-white photographs. They’d been high school sweethearts at Kennedy, attended the University of Michigan, married before they graduated, had two handsome and talented boys. They seemed like a fairy tale.
I was staring at one of these artifacts in a glass case as the halls were emptying out for spring break when Peter came up beside me.
“What are you looking at?”
“Your parents.”
He squinted at a photo of the court at the 1972 senior prom, part of a display the student council had arranged to drum up interest in the 2001 senior prom. “Good-looking couple. But you know, I think we have them beat.”
“Pardon me? Are we a couple? I thought you only wanted to steal kisses from me when I was feeling vulnerable. You’ve hardly let yourself be seen with me here at school.”
Peter clutched his chest. “Ouch.”
“The truth hurts, my friend.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you. We just don’t cross paths all that much. I’m a senior. You’re a freshman. Never the twain shall meet in the halls. I don’t see you coming down to the senior islands anymore.”
I poked him in the chest. “I only do that when I want to throw books at you. I like a good spectacle now and then.”
“Well, what do you say we make a big spectacle of ourselves and rock the prom together? Or do you still think dances are lame?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dances are never like they are in movies, at fancy hotels with amazing live bands. In junior high they were always in the cafeteria, reeking of yesterday’s tuna salad, with a crappy DJ playing the Chicken Dance every sixth song.”
Peter put his hands on my upper arms and turned me to face him. “Does that mean you’re turning me down a second time? Because seniors don’t get turned down by freshmen. Not twice. We don’t have to spend much time at the dance. Enough to get our picture taken and to show off how incredible you look.” He pulled me closer, put his face to the top of my head, and breathed deeply. “And maybe we’ll have time for some slow dances so I can smell your hair.”
“Weirdo,” I said, pushing him away. “You know, I was standing here thinking that maybe my mom went to Kennedy at the same time as your parents.”
“Maybe. There are school yearbooks in the library.”
“Want to help me look?”
He checked the clock on the wall. “Doubt it’s open now. Spring break. We’re probably the last ones left. We better leave so we don’t get locked in here all week with nothing to eat but ketchup packets.”
“Can’t we just look?”
“Why don’t you ask your mom? That’s still happening, right?”
I spun around and groaned as I walked away from Peter and the Proms of Years Past. “I don’t know.”
“If we don’t go this week, we won’t have another chance until June.”
“And if we don’t go check the library this moment, we won’t have another chance until next week, so come on.”
I skipped off and knew that Peter followed. He caught up with me down the next hall and overtook me to try the door. “See, it’s locked.”
I tugged on the library door and it opened easily.
“You don’t trust me!” he exclaimed.
I laughed. “And obviously I shouldn’t.”
Inside, the fluorescent lights were already off. I glanced around for Mrs. Dabrowski, the librarian, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“So where are the yearbooks?”
Peter led the way to a dusty back corner shelf of local history books. I ran my finger along the spines and pulled out the yearbooks from 1968 through 1972. I gave two to Peter, sat down on the floor, and started flipping pages.
“What’s your mom’s name?” Peter said from above.
“Her maiden name is Lindy Gray. Well, Linda Gray, I guess.”
“Why don’t we take these with us for now?”
“It says right on the shelf that you can’t check these out. And anyway, I didn’t see Mrs. Dabrowski at the desk.”
“That’s probably because she went home already and the janitor is about to lock up these doors and we’re going to get stuck in here.”
“What, are you afraid?”
He bent over and snatched the books out of my hand.
“Hey!”
“Come on, Robin. Let’s go. We’ll bring them back after spring break, and no one will miss them.”
I tried to grab them back, but he started for the door.
“You big baby,” I called after him.
He let out a loud laugh and burst through the door with me on his heels. When he suddenly stopped in his tracks, I ran hard into his back. “What the—”
“Can I help you two?” Principal Pietka stood with his hands on his narrow hips.
“Sorry, sir,” Peter said. “Just getting some last-minute books for a paper I need to do over spring break. We’re on our way out now.”
“I see, and what is this paper about?”
“American youth culture during the Vietnam War,” I supplied.
Mr. Pietka held out his hand and Peter handed him the yearbooks. “I didn’t think we loaned out yearbooks.”
Peter found his tongue. “You don’t, normally.”
“Mrs. Dabrowski said since the paper is due the day we come back from spring break that she’d make an exception,” I said.
Mr. Pietka extended the books back toward Peter. “Have a safe spring break.”
“You too. Thank you, sir.”
We walked quickly down the hall and out to the back parking lot, where Peter’s car was the only one left. The moment the doors closed behind us I burst out laughing. A second later Peter followed suit, though a little less boisterously.
“You should have seen the look on your face!” I guffawed.
“Hey, it took me off guard, okay? I’m not a natural-born liar like you are.”
“Obviously.” I swung my backpack off my back and shoved the yearbooks in.
“Want a ride home?” Peter asked.
“Yeah. Bus is long gone. I can’t wait ’til it’s warm enough to ride my bike again. I hate taking the bus.”
Peter unlocked the passenger-side door and opened it for me. “Why don’t you ever ask me for a ride?”
“I don’t know.” I sat down in the car and tucked my backpack at my feet. “You’re a senior. I’m a freshman. Never the twain shall carpool for fear of what his friends will say.”
“That’s a load of bull and you know it. I don’t care what my friends think.” He shut the door hard and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side. He pulled out of the parking lot too fast.
“Well, I care,” I said. “I don’t want to be within twenty feet of your idiot friends.”
“So what? Ignore them.”
“Okay,” I said, “you want to know what I really think it is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“My parents.”
“Your parents? That’s completely irrational! I helped you steal yearbooks from the library to see if our moms might have been friends in high school! I’m taking you to Connecticut on spring break instead of going to my uncle’s place in Arizona to sit by the pool! I don’t understand you, Robin. I’m the one who’s asking you out and giving you books and coming to get you in the middle of the night when you’ve had a fight—and yet I’m supposedly the one who’s avoiding you? That’s insane. You’re insane.”
The rest of the drive was silent. Peter’s face was a younger version of his dad’s, staring grimly ahead. When he pulled up at my grandma’s trailer I started to get out, but he put a hand on my knee.
“Wait. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong here.”
“Nothing.”
He scoffed and shook his head.
“No really, nothing,” I said. “You’re right. You’ve been nothing but nice to me. You’re perfect. I guess I just don’t see why anyone would want to get involved with . . . all this.”
“Look, I get it. Really. But I like you. And I want to take you to the prom. So say you’ll go with me.”
“Of course I’ll go with you.”
His face broke into a brilliant smile. “Great. So are we going out east this week or not?”
“Let me think about it.” I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, but he redirected me to his lips. When I could breathe again I said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I got out and waved as Peter drove off. I watched the car until it disappeared and turned to go in. It was only then that I realized the door to the trailer wasn’t shut.
17
Now
Ryan, I didn’t think when you said ‘you’ that you were talking about me specifically. I thought it was like a general ‘you,’ meaning ‘the people involved in the project.’ Wasn’t that your whole point when you were talking about a team?”
“But it’s your store, Robin. You need to be there. They don’t want to talk to me; they want to talk to you.”
Ryan takes a sip of red wine. I hadn’t expected my uncharacteristic attempt at small talk to result in this man asking me out, especially to a place that serves wine. And I had so rarely allowed myself to be in a situation where a guy might propose a date that I stumbled into accepting. I used to be so good at lying. I had lived and breathed my own lies for so long that I guess I thought I didn’t have to try very hard at it anymore. Apparently I was wrong.
“I think you and the kids would make a great story,” I say. “‘Devoted teacher and coach challenges his ragtag group of young geniuses to put their considerable brainpower to work to save local bookstore.’ How is that not a more interesting angle than ‘Quite-possibly-washed-up old maid begging for your old books to save her business, even though this town has made it abundantly clear that it doesn’t need a sweet, quirky used bookstore’?”
