This One's for You, page 13
“Your firstborn child? For witchcraft purposes.”
Cass shifts on his sleeping bag. “Creepy, but okay.”
A soft burst of laughter floats into the dark tent from somewhere outside. “Actually,” I say, “I want you to tell the Darlas.”
There’s a long pause, and then a deep breath. “Okay,” he says. “Just let me do it when I’m ready.”
I nod. “Okay, just don’t take forever.”
I tuck my hands under my head and look through the tiny square of mesh at the top of the tent, at the hundreds of stars crammed into one patch of sky, trying to figure out where to begin.
“Well, remember the internship my mom got me at the hospital?”
Cass clears his throat. “Yeah.”
“She says I have to do it or she’s kicking me out.”
“Seriously?” Cass’s smile disappears, and the outrage in his voice triggers something strange inside. The protectiveness there is so familiar. I suddenly feel like I might cry.
“Yeah,” I say, furiously trying to blink back the tears. Crying in front of Caspian Forrester would be a fatal mistake.
I can feel him scanning my face in the dark and I suddenly wish he would pull me into his chest, underneath his heavy arm, like he always used to in sleep. I inch back to my side of the tent, into safer territory.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks.
I close my eyes. “I have no idea. Robbie wants me to move in with him and his cousin, but that sounds like a nightmare. I don’t even think I want to date him anymore.”
I think, Why did I just say that? I’m letting my guard down. Revealing things I haven’t even told myself. Making mistakes.
Caspian says, “You don’t?”
I try to read his expression but it’s hard in the dark.
“I’m not sure.”
He swallows. And then an awkward quiet settles on the tent. I listen to the desert sounds. A hundred years pass.
Finally, Caspian clears his throat. “What does your mom think about the Fox?”
I sigh. “She doesn’t know about the Fox.”
He pauses. “Why don’t you tell her?”
Just like Cass, to ask a stupid question like that.
The crying threatens again, and the tear that snakes its way down my cheek makes me feel murderous. I wipe it quickly before Cass can see.
“Are you really asking me that question?” I deflect.
He laughs quietly. “I guess that’s fair.”
I turn onto my back again, trying to calm the feeling of a hundred bull wasps crawling over my skin. Cass’s feet slide noisily against the nylon of his sleeping bag, still restless. Outside something skitters across the ground.
“Can I ask you a question?” he says.
“Sure,” I say, eager for a distraction.
“What happened to us?”
The words are unexpected, and they sour the fragile camaraderie of the past few minutes. Suddenly anger flares back up so hot and overwhelming that I can’t even speak. I’m so angry at him for not knowing, for even having to ask at all.
“Was it my fault?” he asks, quietly.
I’m watching the silhouette of his profile, which is barely visible, the rise of his lips and nose a sharp, mountainous horizon in the darkness. I can see his mouth part to let his breath out, and it’s coming fast, like asking these questions is costing him something. But of course he would never say what it is. The bull wasps become murder hornets. I want to reach out and wrap my hands around his neck, to sting, to swarm, to hurt, to squeeze.
I want to say, Why do you even care?
He turns his face toward me, and I can just make out the sweep of his eyelashes blinking in the darkness.
“Are you angry?” he says, ignoring the fact that I still haven’t answered anything at all. What I am is so far beyond mad. It’s a different emotion altogether.
“Sometimes,” I say, finally putting him out of his misery. A small dose of the truth.
In my mind, I try to time travel. I try to think back to all those times of being left behind. All the half-hearted invitations, all the embarrassed looks. I can’t let myself forget how much it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he says, dark eyes glittering.
“For what?” I say, then I turn away before he can even answer.
24
Caspian
THE NEXT DAY, AS WE DRIVE through the tiny bottom left corner of Colorado between Moab and Santa Fe, we are caught in a thunderstorm. For a long time the weather seems separate, a glob of purple moving along the horizon, the rain an abstract, slanted line across the deep green plain.
I watch Syd watching the sky, a serious look on her face. Last night, when she told me she was angry, I felt something, sharp and uncomfortable, piercing the cloud of nothingness that always surrounds me. And when I woke up to the muffled light of the sunrise seeping into our tent and looked over at the soft shape of her, chest rising and falling with the easy rhythm of sleep, I felt an almost irresistible impulse to reach out and pull her into me.
We drive southeast, the Cure on the stereo. It is our last drive away from home; tomorrow we will turn around and all of this will end—the cheap, bad convenience-store food and the bickering over the cell phone charger and Syd’s growly voice singing to the Clash, the way she winces every time the gas light turns on. My heart feels heavy, like it’s not ready to go.
Somewhere far away thunder rolls, steady and contained. Syd’s eyes stay glued to the horizon, where the road seems to get swallowed up by the violet-gray color of the storm. Again, I feel that compulsion to reach out and touch her.
She’s been quiet this morning, after last night’s awkward conversation. Like she was at the beginning of the trip. With everyone else I like the quiet, but with Syd I don’t; it frustrates me.
Syd reaches over to turn down the music. Then, suddenly, the storm is right here. We are pushed by the wind and pelted with rain. It glazes the windshield so fast that the worn-out wipers struggle to catch up. I put them on as high as they’ll go, but water piles up before the blades can make the return sweep. A truck streaks by us on the two-lane road, the force of it pushing the Jeep toward the shoulder. Syd gasps and I pull the car over to side of the road, turning off the engine and hitting the emergency flashers.
We sit for a moment, safely parked on the wide shoulder, listening to the pounding rain. I fleetingly wonder about the Darlas in their giant van. I try not to panic as I imagine them lurching down the highway.
The thunder arrives then, cracking the sky all the way open. Lightning flashes. The hair on my arms floats up into the air. Electricity from outside seems to fill up the car; the tiny space that’s now full of wrappers and coffee cups and discarded layers of clothing is buzzing with this weird energy. It makes me want to turn to Syd and shake her. To say, Talk to me. Tell me what I did. But her head is turned away from me, looking out the window as though she can actually see the landscape through the water rushing down the sides of the car.
I look down to where her long fingers curl on the door handle like a threat. It doesn’t feel safe, even inside the car, and I try to think of a way to keep her here, out of the rain and lightning. But that’s the thing about Syd: you can’t make her stay anywhere.
As soon as the thunder begins to recede, she does it, and my heart leaps into my mouth. She flings open the door and jumps out of the car, into the battering rain. I sit there for a few seconds, feeling the way all the energy is drained out of the small space when she leaves it. And then, before I know what I’m doing, I open the door and leap out after her.
The rain is violent. Stinging. It’s like standing inside of a car wash. I’m drenched in a second.
Syd starts spinning around with her palms up to the sky, like she’s in that Blind Melon music video her dad showed us once, and she looks completely beautiful with her mouth open and hair plastered to her forehead.
She yells out, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.”
It reminds me of being kids, the easy way curse words would fall right out of her mouth.
The storm ends almost as abruptly as it began, the block of rain moving on to another part of the highway. We stand there for a few minutes, shivering and watching the sky change color.
Then Syd turns to me with a crooked grin and walks back to the car.
We get back in and I crank the heat. Syd starts stripping off her clothing. She’s down to her bra before I can react and she’s yanking down her jeans when she says, “What are you doing, creep?” And I realize that I am staring, gazing, leering at Syd, at her soft stomach and sharp collarbone and wild limbs, with my mouth wide open.
I can feel my face turning red as I look away, at my rain-covered window. My heart is galloping inside my chest. All I can think is soft and freckles and Syd.
“Shit, sorry.”
I close my eyes and start to yank my own shirt off, trying to come back down to earth, but Syd is twisting around in her seat to grab clothes from the back and I end up jamming my elbow right into the flesh below her hip.
“Ouch!” she yelps. And then I try to jerk back and realize that I am somehow truly stuck inside my own shirt. I fumble around, banging my limbs into various parts of the car, until she says, “Here, let me help,” and her hands grab the fabric and tug it up over my head in one smooth gesture. She’s sort of leaning over me then, almost naked, her smooth, wet, hot skin close to mine. The car is warm and foggy and her hands are on my shoulders and she’s looking down into my eyes, all the way down to the dangerous depths. She’s almost at the void.
And then I’m possessed by some other version of myself, one who reaches up to tuck my finger under the strap of her bra, sliding up and down her impossibly perfect skin from her collarbone to the end of the flat plane above her breast. A drop of rain falls from her nose onto my forehead. Her breath smells like satsuma mandarins. My mouth waters.
And then, despite all odds, regular me wrests back my consciousness and I grab my hand back, horrified, like I’ve touched a hot stove, and sort of prop Syd against her seat. What the fuck are you doing, Cass? says the voice of reason inside my head.
“I’ll get the shirts,” I say.
I feel like I might never recover from this, but then Syd laughs and says, “You’d better.” And for the first time all day, it feels like she doesn’t hate me.
25
Sydney
WHEN WE GET TO SANTA FE it’s still raining, although the biblical downpour has slowed to a drizzle. The sky is kind of purple and the buildings are all a bright orange red, even in the flat light of the heavy clouds.
Cass and I haven’t talked in almost two hours. We haven’t listened to music. The soundtrack of our ride into town is just the rain and the awkward noises our bodies make as we shift around the car, which has shrunken to about half its size since our surprise roadside encounter. In my head is an unspoken loop: mistake mistake mistake mistake. In the past twenty-four hours I have made so many mistakes I can’t even count.
Like this morning, when I broke up with Robbie via text while Cass was inside the gas station. He called me six times after that, but I didn’t pick up.
Or yesterday, when I texted my boss at Amoeba that I wouldn’t be back for three more days and he told me that it’s fine—I’m off the schedule for the rest of July.
Cass pulls into the lot of a motel called the Shooting Star, stopping in a parking spot right next to the office. He turns off the engine and sits there, staring through the front windshield like he’s trying to think of something to say.
“Maybe we should camp tonight,” I say half-heartedly, even though I don’t really feel like spending the night sleeping on the wet ground. The continual dwindling of funds is grating on me, especially since I now have nowhere to go once all of this is over.
Somehow, in that thought, nowhere to go, I find a tiny seed of hope. I look up at the motel. It’s a little out of place, a dirty stucco building in a sea of smooth, clean adobe, but it looks safe and warm, with flowery curtains and a hand-painted vacancy sign in the office window. It’s our last show with the Darlas, but what if it wasn’t? Tonight, I’m in the booth. If I do a good job, maybe they’ll take me with them. I think of the stops left on the tour: Austin, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York. I could find a job. I could find a life. But whatever happens, I’m going to have to figure this out on my own, and a maxed-out credit card is not a good place to begin.
“Are you sure?” Cass says, still not looking at me, watching the rain patter gently on the windshield.
“Let’s just wait awhile,” I say. “Maybe it’ll let up.”
Cass nods and swallows, reaching for the door handle, even though he’s obviously got nowhere to go. He’s right: the air in this car is suffocating.
“I’m gonna take a walk,” I say. And then I slip out into the rain.
* * *
• • •
For some reason, I find myself calling Isabel, the oldest of the Greenfield brood and the one who seems to get me the least.
“You are in deep shit,” she says to me when she picks up the phone.
“What else is new?” I say.
“Seriously, though, Mom is beside herself.”
I feel a little guilty at that. But not guilty enough to do anything. “She’ll get over it,” I say. Then I remember that it’s a Wednesday afternoon in LA. “Are you at work?”
Isabel is an assistant to a stylist who works her to the bone. She never, ever takes calls during the day.
She sighs. “Yes. I’m hiding inside a bathroom stall right now.” She pauses. “I was worried about you.”
I feel comforted but also frustrated. They always expect the worst from me. They’re not always wrong. I look down at my damp clothing; I am crouching in a doorway to hide from the rain. Six hundred dollars in credit card debt. Feeling completely lost. “I’m fine,” I say. “Better than fine.”
Even as I say it, tears start welling up.
“Yeah, sure,” she says. But I don’t think she believes me. Once a fuckup, always a fuckup. The Greenfield motto for failures like me. “Listen, I gotta get back to the fitting. Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” I say, swallowing my emotion down. “I really am good. Can you just tell Mom to stop worrying about me?”
“Ha!” Isabel says. “Good one.” I hear the sound of a door opening, and then she whispers, “Shit,” and hangs up. And I’m all alone on the street.
* * *
• • •
Later, at a small club on the outskirts of town, I help the Darlas set up their amps and pedal boards. Then I help the sound person mic the drums and check the board. For a while I feel like I’m back in the basement with Dad and he’s showing me the inside of his fuzz pedal, the way all the wires come together. It’s about balance, he’d said. Input and output. Volume and gain. Clarity and softness. I forget everything that’s wrong in my life as I adjust the knobs and levers until the perfect combination of crackle and melt is achieved.
But I’m not in the basement; for the first time I’m standing at a real mixing board, in a real venue. In a few weeks I could be working at the Fox Theater, where the board changes almost every night and there are two full crews, one for the stage sound and one for the house. Yoko Ono has performed there, and Primus and Metallica. I want the Fox so badly it hurts, even though it’s starting to feel impossible.
I’m about to slink off the stage and find a place to hide until the show when Jasmyn says, “Are you okay?”
I look at her kind eyes, her black Stratocaster, and her long purple vintage dress, and for a second I think I could unload everything right here. Could just come out and say, I’m so, so lost. But I don’t even know where I’d begin.
26
Caspian
WHEN I WAS A KID I was obsessed with other people’s mothers. I would stand at the side of the playground and stare like a creep at the mothers on the benches as they fumbled through their bags for a Band-Aid or a tissue, or chatted on their phones. On rare occasions when I was invited to someone’s house for a playdate, I would skulk around by the kitchen, waiting for a mother to ask if I wanted a snack, and then I would watch as she’d arrange things on a plate in a way that felt so careful and kind. At night, I would lie in my bed and wrap the word around myself like a blanket: mother, mother, mother.
The past few days I’ve been thinking that word a lot. Because suddenly an image of my mother has started forming in my mind. I can almost picture her here, with the rest of the Darlas, tall and dark, together with everyone else but a little bit separate, like me. She’d sit next to Charlie and they’d both FaceTime home every night, Mom calling me and Dad, telling us jokes, telling us to be good and not get too lonely.
When you were born all the trees were in bloom.
At night, when I think of the words of that song, it almost sounds like she loved me.
* * *
• • •
Tonight, when we are all sitting backstage at the club, waiting for our last show with the Darlas to begin, Julia looks at me and says, “Go get your guitar.”
I’m sitting on a musty purple couch, obsessively reading through my very short text stream with Kit Molina, trying to find a way to tell her no while also telling her yes. Maybe Calvin could go on this tour, while Cass stays home and does what’s expected. Maybe Calvin could have kissed Syd in the car today, while Cass held all the lines firmly in place. If only double lives really worked like that.
I look up, Julia’s words having finally trickled down through my consciousness. “My guitar?” I ask, clearing my throat. I slide my phone into my back pocket and adjust my glasses, looking up into Julia’s warm blue eyes.
