Lock and Key

  “Does this mean you’re going to give me a check?” I asked.

  “No,” he said flatly. I smiled. “But I am proud of you, Ruby. You’ve come a long way.”

  Later, up in my room, I kept thinking about this, the idea of distance and accomplishment. The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. In the end, though, maybe it’s not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

  Middle-school girls, I had learned, moved in packs. If you saw them coming, the best thing to do was step aside and save yourself.

  “Look, you guys! These are the ones I was telling you about!” a brown-haired girl wearing all pink, clearly the leader of this particular group, said as they swarmed the kiosk, going straight for the KeyChains. “Oh my God. My brother’s girlfriend has this one, with the pink stones. Isn’t it great?”

  “I like the diamond one,” a chubby blonde in what looked like leather pants said. “It’s the prettiest.”

  “That’s not a diamond,” the girl in pink told her as their two friends—twins, by the look of their matching red hair and similar features—moved down to the bracelets. “Otherwise, it would be, like, a million dollars.”

  “It’s diamonelle,” Harriet corrected her, “and very reasonably priced at twenty-five.”

  “Personally,” the brunette said, draping the pink-stoned one across her V-necked sweater, “I like the plain silver. It’s classic, befitting my new, more streamlined, eco-chic look.”

  “Eco-chic?” I said.

  “Environmentally friendly,” the girl explained. “Green? You know, natural metals, non-conflict stones, minimal but with big impact? All the celebrities are doing it. Don’t you read Vogue?”

  “No,” I told her.

  She shrugged, taking off the necklace, then moved down the kiosk to her friends, who were now gathered around the rings, quickly dismantling the display I’d just spent a good twenty minutes organizing. “You would think,” I said to Harriet as we watched them take rings on and off, “that they could at least try to put them back. Or pretend to.”

  “Oh, let them make a mess,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal cleaning it up.”

  “Says the person who doesn’t have to do it.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me, walking over to take her coffee off the register. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You’re in a bad mood. What gives?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said as the girls finally moved on, leaving rings scattered across the counter behind them. I went over and began to put them away. “I think I’m just stressed or something.”

  “Well, it kind of makes sense,” Harriet said, coming over to join me. She put an onyx ring back in place, a red one beside it. “You’re in your final semester, waiting to hear about college, the future is wide open. But that doesn’t necessarily have to get you all bent out of shape. You could look at it as, you know, a great opportunity to embrace stepping out of your comfort zone.”

  I stopped what I was doing, narrowing my eyes at her as she filled out another row of rings, calm as you please. “Excuse me?” I said.

  “What? ”

  I just looked at her, waiting for her to catch the irony. She didn’t. “Harriet,” I said finally, “how long did you have that HELP WANTED sign up before you hired me?”

  “Ah,” she said, pointing at me, “but I did hire you, right?”

  “And how long did it take you to leave me alone here, to run the kiosk myself?”

  “Okay, so I was hesitant,” she admitted. “However, I think you’ll agree that I now leave you fairly often with little trepidation.”

  I considered pointing out that the fairly and little spoke volumes. Instead I said, “What about Reggie?”

  She wiped her hands on her pants, then moved down to the KeyChains, adjusting the pink one on the rack. “What about him?”

  “He told me what happened at Christmas,” I said. “What was it you said? That you weren’t in a ‘relationship place’? Is that anywhere near your comfort zone?”

  “Reggie is my friend,” she said, straightening a clasp. “If we took things further and it didn’t work out, it would change everything.”

  “But you don’t know it won’t work out.”

  “I don’t know it will, either.”

  “And that’s reason enough to not even try,” I said. She ignored me, moving down to the rings. “You didn’t know that hiring me would work out. But you did it anyway. And if you hadn’t—”

  “—I’d be enjoying a quiet moment at my kiosk right now, without being analyzed,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be nice!”

  “—you never would have made the KeyChains and seen them be so successful,” I finished. “Or been able to enjoy my company, and this conversation, right now.”

  She made a face at me, then walked back over and hopped up on her stool, opening up the laptop she’d recently bought to keep up with her Web site stuff. “Look. I know in a perfect, utterly romantic world, I’d go out with Reggie and we’d live happily ever after,” she said, hitting the power button. “But sometimes you just have to follow your instincts, and mine say this would not be a good thing for me. All right?”

  I nodded. Really, considering everything I’d just gone through, Harriet was someone I should be trying to emulate, not convince otherwise.

  I moved back to the rings, reorganizing them the way I had originally, in order of size and color. I was just doing another quick pass with the duster when I heard Harriet say, “Huh. This is weird.”

  “What is?”

  “I’m just checking into my account, and my balance is kind of off,” she said. “I know I had a couple of debits out, but not for this much.”

  “Maybe the site’s just delayed,” I said.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have signed on for this new system with Blake. I just feel better when I sign every check myself, you know?” She sighed, then picked up her phone and dialed. After a moment, she closed it. “Voice mail. Of course. Do you know Nate’s number, offhand?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

  “Well, when you see him, tell him I need to talk to him. Like, soon. Okay?”

  I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be seeing him, much less delivering messages. But she was already back on the computer, scrolling down.

  Harriet wasn’t the only one not resting assured, or so I found out when I got home and found Cora in the foyer, wiping up the floor with a paper towel. Roscoe, who usually could not be prevented from greeting me with a full body attack, was conspicuously absent.

  “No way,” I said, dropping my bag on the floor. “He’s mastered the dog door.”

  “We lock it when we’re not here,” she told me, pushing herself to her feet. “Which is usually no problem, but someone didn’t bother to show up to walk him today.”

  “Really?” I said. “Are you sure? Nate’s usually really dependable.”

  “Well, not today,” she replied. “Clearly.”

  It was weird. So much so that I wondered if maybe Nate had taken off or something, as that seemed to be the only explanation for him just blowing off things he usually did like clockwork. That night, though, his lights were on, just like always, as were the ones in the pool. It was only when I really looked closely, around midnight, that I saw something out of the ordinary: a figure cutting through the water. Moving back and forth, with steady strokes, dark against all that blue light. I watched him for a long time, but even when I finally turned out the light, he was still swimming.

  Chapter Seventeen

  That weekend, there was only one thing I should have been thinking about: calculus. The test that pretty much would decide the entire fate of both my GPA and my future was on Monday, and according to Gervais—whose method was proven—it was time to shift into what he called “Zen mode.”

  “I’m sorry?” I’d said the day before, Friday, when he’d announced this.

 
“It’s part of my technique,” he explained, taking a sip of his chocolate milk, one of two he drank each lunch period. “First, we did an overview of everything you were supposed to learn so far this year. Then, we homed in on your weaknesses therein, pinpointing and attacking them one by one. Now, we move into Zen mode.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Admitting that you are powerless over your fate, on this test and otherwise. You have to throw out everything that you’ve learned.”

  I just looked at him. Olivia, who was checking her UMe page on her phone, said, “Actually, that is a very basic part of Eastern cinema tradition. The warrior, once taught, must now, in the face of his greatest challenge, rely wholly on instinct.”

  “Why have I spent weeks studying if I’m now supposed to forget everything I’ve learned? ” I said. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Olivia shrugged. “The man says his method is proven.”

  Man? I thought.

  Gervais said, “The idea isn’t to forget everything. It’s that by now, you should know all this well enough that you don’t have to actively think about it. You see a problem, you know the solution. It’s instinct.”

  I looked down at the practice sheet he’d given me, problems lined up across it. As usual, with just one glance I felt my heart sink, my brain going fuzzy around the edges. If this was my instinct talking, I didn’t want to hear what it was saying.

  “Zen mode,” Gervais said. “Clear your head, accept the uncertainty, and the solutions appear. Just trust me.”

  I was not convinced, and even less so when he presented me with his instructions for my last weekend of studying. (Which, incidentally, were bullet-pointed and divided into headings and subheadings. The kid was nothing if not professional. ) Saturday morning, I was supposed to do a final overview, followed in the afternoon by a short series of problems he’d selected that covered the formulas I had most trouble with. Sunday, the last full day before the test, I wasn’t supposed to study at all. Which seemed, frankly, insane. Then again, if the goal was to forget everything by Monday morning, this did seem like the way to do it.

  Early the next morning, I sat down on my bed and started my overview, trying to focus. More and more, though, I found myself distracted, thinking about Nate, as I had been pretty much nonstop—occasional calculus obsessions aside—since I’d seen him swimming a couple of nights earlier. In the end, both Harriet and Cora had heard from Mr. Cross, who was wildly apologetic, crediting Harriet’s account and offering Cora a free week’s worth of walks to compensate. But in the days since, whenever I’d seen Nate across the green or in the halls at school, I couldn’t help but notice a change in him. Like even with the distance between us, something about him—in his face or the way he carried himself—was suddenly familiar in a way I hadn’t felt before, although how, exactly, I couldn’t say.

  After two hours of studying, I felt so overwhelmed that I decided to take a break and quickly run over to get my paycheck from Harriet. As soon as I stepped off the greenway, I saw people everywhere—lined up on the curb that ran alongside the mall, gathered in the parking lot, crowded at the base of a stage set up by the movie theater.

  “Welcome to the Vista Five-K!” a voice boomed from the stage as I worked my way toward the main entrance, stepping around kids and dogs and more runners stretching and chatting and jogging in place. “If you’re participating in the race, please make your way to the start line. Ten minutes to start!”

  The crowd shifted as people headed toward the banner— VISTA 5K: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!—strung between the parking lot and the mall entrance. Following them, I kept an eye out for Olivia but didn’t see her—just runners of all shapes and sizes, some in high-tech lycra bodysuits, others in gym shorts and ratty T-shirts.

  Inside the mall, it was much quieter, with few shoppers moving between stores. I could still hear the announcer’s voice from outside, along with the booming bass of the music they were playing, even as I walked from the entrance down to the kiosk courtyard, where I found Harriet and Reggie standing at Vitamin Me.

  “I’m not doing the fish oil,” she was saying as I walked up. “I’m firm on that.”

  “Omega-threes are crucial!” Reggie told her. “It’s like a wonder drug.”

  “I didn’t agree to wonder drugs. I agreed to take a few things, on a trial basis. Nobody said anything about fish.”

  “Fine.” Reggie picked up a bottle, shaking some capsules into a plastic bag. “But you’re taking the zinc and the B-TWELVE. Those are deal breakers.”

  Harriet shook her head, taking another sip of coffee. Then she saw me. “I thought you might turn up,” she said. “Forget vitamins. Money is crucial.”

  Reggie sighed. “That kind of attitude,” he said, “is precisely why you need more omega-threes.”

  Harriet ignored this as she walked over to her register, popping it open and taking out my check. “Here,” she said, handing it over to me. “Oh, and there’s a little something extra in there for you, as well.”

  Sure enough, the amount was about three hundred bucks more than I was expecting. “Harriet,” I said. “What is this?”

  “Profit-sharing,” she said, then added, “And a thank-you for all the work you’ve put in over the last months.”

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I said.

  “I know. But I got to thinking the other day, after we had that talk. You were right. The KeyChains, all that. I couldn’t have done it without you. Literally.”

  “That’s not why I said that,” I told her.

  “I know. But it made me think. About a lot of things.”

  She looked over at Reggie, who was still adding things to her bag. Now that I thought of it, she had been awfully receptive to that zinc. And what was that about a few things, on a trial basis? “Wait,” I said, wagging my finger between his kiosk and ours. “What’s going on here?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” she replied, shutting the register.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Fine. If you must know, we just had drinks last night after work, and he convinced me to try a few samples.”

  “Really.”

  “Okay, maybe there was a dinner invitation, too,” she added.

  “Harriet!” I said. “You changed your mind.”

  She sighed. Over at Vitamin Me, Reggie was folding the top of her bag over neatly, working the crease with his fingers. “I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Initially, I just went to tell him the same thing I said to you. That I was worried about it not working out, and what that would do to our friendship. ”

  “And? ”

  “And,” she said, sighing, “he said he totally understood, we had another drink, and I said yes to dinner anyway.”

  “What about the vitamins?”

  “I don’t know.” She flipped her hand at me. “These things happen.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking over at Reggie again. He’d been so patient, and eventually he, too, got what he wanted. Or at least a chance at it. “Don’t I know it.”

  By the time I went to the bank, ran a couple of errands, and then doubled back around to the greenway, the Vista 5K was pretty much over. A few runners were still milling around, sipping paper cups of Gatorade, but the assembled crowd had thinned considerably, which was why I immediately spotted Olivia. She was leaning forward on the curb, looking down the mall at the few runners left that were slowly approaching the finish line.

  “No Laney yet?” I asked.

  She shook her head, not even turning to look at me. “I figure she’s dropped out, but she has her phone. She should have called me.”

  “Thanks to everyone who came out for the Vista Five-K! ” a man with a microphone bellowed from the grandstand. “Join us next year, when we’ll run for our lives again!”

  “She’s probably collapsed somewhere,” Olivia said. “God, I knew this was going to happen. I’ll see you, okay?”

  She was about halfway across the street
when I looked down the mall again and saw something. Just a tiny figure at first, way off in the distance.

  “Olivia,” I called out, pointing. “Look.”

  She turned, her eyes following my finger. It was still hard to be sure, so for a moment we just stood there, watching together, as Laney came into sight. She was going so slowly, before finally coming to a complete stop, bending over with her hands on her knees. “Oh, man,” Olivia said finally. “It’s her.”

  I turned around, looking at the man on the stage, who had put down his microphone and was talking to some woman with a clipboard. Nearby, another woman in a Vista 5K T-shirt was climbing a stepladder to the clock, reaching up behind it.

  “Wait,” I called out to her. “Someone’s still coming.”

  The woman looked down at me, then squinted into the distance. “Sorry,” she said. “The race is over.”

  Olivia, ignoring this, stepped forward, raising her hands to her mouth. “Laney!” she yelled. “You’re almost done. Don’t quit now!”

  Her voice was raw, strained. I thought of that first day I’d found her here with her stopwatch, and all the complaining about the race since. Olivia was a lot of things. But I should have known a sucker wasn’t one of them.

  “Come on!” she yelled. She started clapping her hands, hard, the sound sharp and single in the quiet. “Let’s go, Laney!” she yelled, her voice rising up over all of us. “Come on!”

  Everyone was staring as she jumped up and down in the middle of the road, her claps echoing off the building behind us. Watching her, I thought of Harriet, doubtfully eyeing those vitamins as Reggie dropped them into the bag, one by one, and then of me with Nate on the bench by the pond the last time we’d been together. And if I don’t? he’d asked, and I’d thought there could be only one answer, in that one moment. But now, I was beginning to wonder if you didn’t always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it’s enough—more than enough, even—just to be there. Laney must have thought so. Because right then, she started running again.

  When she finally finished a few minutes later, it was hard to tell if she was even aware that the crowds had thinned, the clock was off, and the announcer didn’t even call her time. But I do know that it was Olivia she turned to look for first, Olivia she threw her arms around and hugged tight, as that banner flapped overhead. Watching them, I thought again of how we can’t expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it’s a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.