From my bedroom, I called my father. When he answered, I could hear a news broadcast playing in the background—and he echoed my mother, saying their breakup had nothing to do with my quitting soccer or me at all. “I think we both knew we’d part ways after you left for college. But we just couldn’t make it that long. We were close, but we couldn’t do it. I’m sorry. People fall out of love, Nanette. It’s just the way it is. But we both love you the same as we ever did. That will never change.”
So everyone was sorry.
As if that helped.
Dad said we’d go out to dinner twice a week and then we’d see how things went while he found a more permanent place to stay, as he was currently in a motel. I would live with Mom in the house where we had all lived for my entire life.
I asked if either of them was seeing anyone else, and they said they weren’t. They each just wanted to be alone for a time. They preferred nobody to each other, which made it all that much worse.
Right then and there, I mentally shifted my allegiance and began rooting very hard for team Stella Thatch and Sandra Tackett.
There was that possibility, at least.
I wanted to believe that love could win in the end.
I called Alex from my bedroom and said, “I vote yes.”
15
This Broken-Family Club
“My parents separated. My dad moved out a few days ago,” I said to Booker as we sat in his sunroom. “It’s kind of funny. Just as soon as I fall in love for the first time, Mom and Dad call it quits—like they were waiting for me to take over for them. Carry high the love banner because their arms were too tired.”
“Well, at least you and Alex are getting along famously.”
“How did you know that Alex and I would be a match?”
“Oh, I just had a hunch.”
“But the timing. I mean—it was like you knew I’d need a boyfriend when my parents broke up. You had a feeling that all this was necessary. You knew. But how?”
“I definitely did not know anything about your parents’ situation. Let’s not entertain magical thoughts. It’s just that all eighteen-year-olds need to be in love. It’s why we have things like proms, even though proms are not for everyone. You’re at a time in your life when you need to feel and believe wildly—that’s just the way it is.”
“Were you ever in love, Booker?”
“Sure.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, unfortunately.”
“Why?”
“Lack of courage, mostly.”
I thought about Wrigley, who turns and runs just as he’s about to ring his prom date’s doorbell. And how the real-life twins were the prom queens. Had Booker been at the real-life prom? Or maybe had he put on a tuxedo and held a finger up to a doorbell only to flee at the last possible moment? “Do you wish you had done things differently?”
“Of course. Pretty much everyone does.”
“What was her name?”
“Why do you assume it was a her?”
“Was it a him?”
“No, it was a her.”
I laughed. “Tell me about this special mystery woman.”
He looked away.
“Did you never tell her how you felt? Like Wrigley in—”
“Stop right there,” Booker said, and then pointed a finger at my face. “We shall not be discussing my failed novel.”
“It definitely was not a failure.”
“By what standard did it succeed?”
“It’s my favorite novel. Alex’s, too. And this kid Oliver who Alex—”
“I know all about Oliver. Alex writes about him constantly. But is that the purpose of writing a novel—to be someone’s favorite novelist? Is that why we write or make art? Do you think that’s why I wrote that book? For you? You and Alex and Oliver didn’t even exist when I went mad for literature and sent that collection of desperate words to New York City. I didn’t write it for you. No, I certainly did not.” There was anger in his voice, which was not like Booker.
“For whom did you write it, then?” I asked.
He smiled and said, “You won’t get your answers that easily.”
I nodded, and then I had a random thought. “You never talk about your parents. Do you have a good relationship with them?”
“I didn’t know Mom. She left my father when I was little. For a better-looking and wealthier man she’d met while working as a waitress. Dr. Farrell. I believe they had a torrid affair in the back alley and then the local hotel and finally in the man’s mansion across town from where I lived. On the other side of the tracks, as they say.”
“So she left you and your father?”
“Yes, she did. I guess I can’t blame her. It wasn’t really a happy home. I like to think at least she was happy. My father was a weak man. I never really saw her after she moved out.”
“She just left you behind?”
“Completely forgot about me. Had new children.”
“And that’s why you don’t trust women?”
“Are you Sigmund Freud now? Should I lie down on this couch?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I trust you.”
“You don’t trust me enough to tell me about your great love,” I said, and suddenly I was full of electricity again—like I was close enough to just go for it. “Was she by any chance a twin?”
Booker didn’t speak for a second, which was unusual. A sadness darkened his face before he caught himself and said, “I don’t want to talk about my past. How many times have I told you this?”
“Okay,” I said. My heart was beating too fast, so I switched gears. “I hate my parents. I love them, too. But mostly, I’m just tired of being around them. Does that make any sense? Loving and hating people at the same time?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it does.”
“So what should I be doing now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m just eighteen, and I know I’m supposed to be going gaga for my last year of high school and applying to colleges and making plans for the rest of my life—but I really don’t want to do anything except hang out with Alex and you.”
“Well, then be glad we both want to hang out with you, too. What a lucky thing—to have exactly what you want.”
“But it can’t last. After this year, everything will be different.”
“And yet there is now. It’s all yours and mine and Alex’s. Isn’t that divine?”
I smiled and then said, “I went out to dinner with my father last night, and he told me I had to write a fantastic college essay now that I wasn’t going to play soccer anymore. He went on and on about it and didn’t ask one question about my now. I don’t think he even knows about you or Alex.”
“His loss,” Booker said.
“I wish you were my father.”
“Don’t wish for stupid things.”
“Is it so stupid?”
“If I were your father, we couldn’t be friends, now, could we? You would hate me instead of your actual father. And I would feel obligated to make sure you were writing a fantastic college essay. We probably wouldn’t talk about anything else. And I certainly wouldn’t be playing your personal cupid if I were your father. So as you can plainly see, my being your father would ruin absolutely everything.”
I thought about it and laughed because it all made so much sense.
“Booker? If she walked into your life again—the love of your life—and she wanted to be with you, would you give love another chance?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But if it could? Theoretically?”
“We’re different people now. Pablo Neruda said it better than I can. ‘Tonight I Can Write.’ Read that poem if you haven’t already. You’ll fall in love with Neruda and wish you were eighteen when he was—that you knew him in Chile a long time ago. I’d recite it for you now, but it would make me cry, and I hate crying in front of lovely young women.”
> I swallowed hard and said, “‘There were moments when my love for her made me believe that I was better than I really was—or was it that she made me aware of my own potential, that she made it possible for me to transcend myself and truly become?’ Nigel Wrigley Booker, The Bubblegum Reaper.”
His eyes widened and then he roared, “How did you discover my middle name?”
“I…” But I couldn’t think up a good explanation on the spot.
“Did Alex tell you that? Did he show you my yearbook?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I’d never before seen Booker turn bright red.
“I’m not interested in Sandra Tackett or Louise Tackett, God rest her soul. And I need you to leave now. Right now!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was only trying to—”
“Leave me!”
Booker had never yelled at me like that before, either. His face was now turning purple, like he was about to have a stroke or something, and the look in his eyes was devastating, because I saw hatred swirling around his pupils. It scared me, so I left.
On the pavement, I called Alex and tried to tell him everything.
“Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
When he pulled up, Oliver was in the front seat looking glum. His glasses were taped together where the lenses met at the top of his nose, and his cheek was swollen.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same,” Oliver said.
“Get in,” Alex said, and so I did.
We drove to the field where Alex and I had watched the hunter’s moon rise, and then we all exchanged information.
The pretty boys had started in on Oliver during lunch period, throwing Tater Tots dipped in ketchup at him, which explained the red spots on his shirt, so he reported them to the lunch monitor, who took two or three of the pretty boys to the principal’s office. The rest jumped him on his way home from school, breaking his glasses and leaving bruises on his ribs as punishment for being a “snitch.”
“It’s like our middle school is a prison and I might get shanked at any second,” Oliver said, maybe going for humor, but we didn’t laugh.
“I’m going to their houses tonight. I’m going to speak with their fathers,” Alex said.
“Don’t do that. It will only make things worse for me,” Oliver said. Then to me, he said, “So what happened at Booker’s place?”
I told them everything, and I got the sense they weren’t pleased that I’d leaked information.
“He already knew you had the yearbook,” I said in self-defense. “Alex told him.”
“You told Booker about the yearbook?” Oliver asked Alex.
“In a roundabout way. Just testing the waters, so to speak.”
“But we didn’t vote on it,” Oliver said. “We vote on everything!”
“True. My bad,” Alex said.
“My bad?” Oliver said.
I was sensing some tension, so I got to the point. “I voted yes to making contact with Sandra Tackett. Let’s go right now.”
“Really?” Oliver said, which let me know Alex hadn’t told him yet.
“Yes. I’m in. One hundred percent.”
“Well, all right, then,” Alex said. “You heard the lady.”
“But my shirt is full of ketchup stains,” Oliver protested. “I don’t want to meet the real live Stella Thatch like this!”
“We’ll swing by your house first so you can grab the yearbook, the extra photocopy of The Bubblegum Reaper you made, and a clean shirt,” Alex said.
“I also need to shower. You don’t meet a Sandra Tackett every day,” Oliver said, and then we were off.
As we were driving, Alex kept looking at me in the rearview mirror, since I was sitting in the back. Whenever he caught my eye, he would smile brightly, as if we were in on a private joke—or maybe it was like Oliver was our kid and we were planning some sort of surprise birthday party for him, as weird as that sounds. But I got the sense that we weren’t just doing this for ourselves but because Oliver had had a terrible day at school, too. We were trying to right that wrong. It was a relief that Alex didn’t seem mad at me for upsetting Booker, because when I’d left Booker’s house, it felt a lot like when I had tried to kiss Mr. Graves.
While Oliver showered and changed, I slid up into the Jeep’s front passenger seat.
“Booker totally freaked out when I brought up the Tackett twins,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. But you already wrote him about the yearbook, so you can’t be too mad at me.”
“Yeah, I’m not,” he said, and then laughed.
There was a devilish twinkle in his eye.
“You know more than you’re letting on,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“What game are you playing?”
“No game.”
“You know, I asked Booker why he never talks about his mother and he told me about—”
“How she had an affair with a doctor and left him behind. It’s sad.”
“You knew?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it made me realize that you never talk about your mother, either.”
He shrugged. “She left me and my father, too. Only there was no rich doctor or a mansion or any wild affair. She just left us when I was seven. It crushed my father, who sort of became a zombie afterward. He’s a nice guy who bought me this kick-ass Jeep, but he’s not really present most of the time. Not like Booker has been, anyway. Mom sends me a Christmas card every year with a hundred-dollar bill in it. But my dad has enough bucks to make that seem sort of sad and irrelevant. I don’t spend those hundred-dollar bills. I give them to the first person I come across who looks depressed. Always a total stranger. I fold the bill up so that I can palm it, then I reach out and shake a miserable person’s hand, transferring the money—but I never, ever talk to the person. If I let them thank me, it would ruin everything, so I just walk away quickly. That’s been a Christmas tradition for some time now. Other than that, I don’t really hear from my mom at all.”
“Do you not trust women now?”
“What?” he said, and then laughed.
I let it go and then said, “What about Oliver’s dad?”
“Pretty much the same story as ours.”
“Ours?”
“Your dad just left, too.”
It shocked me at first when he said that, but then I realized I was indeed part of this broken-family club now. Even still, I said, “He didn’t exactly leave me. We have dinner a few times a week.”
“Does that make you feel any better?”
I looked away.
Oliver bounded out his front door wearing a pair of backup glasses too small for his face and a new button-down shirt. He had the yearbook and the photocopied Bubblegum Reaper in his arms. “You stole my seat!”
“You forgot to call shotgun. Get in the back, my man,” Alex said, and then we were on our way to Sandra Tackett’s house.
16
Using the Same Basement You Were Currently Locked Away In
At a white ranch home with two apple trees in front of it and a large flower garden to its right, a woman about Booker’s age answered the door and said, “Can I help you?”
She was wearing an orange cotton dress with a white sweater. Her hair was gray but stylish, with a little wave on the right side of her face. She had on pewter eye shadow, which I immediately wanted to wear myself, even though I had never before worn eye shadow. Hers didn’t make her look slutty like most of my classmates—who wore eye shadow heavy as porn stars—but mysterious and maybe even regal, like a queen.
“Are you Sandra Tackett?” Alex said.
“That’s me. Now, who are you three?”
Alex introduced us all.
“Is this you?” Oliver said, and held up the 1967 yearbook opened to her photo.
“Where on earth did you get that?” she said, and then laughed in this very good way. “I’m actually t
he one next door. My twin sister and I thought it would be funny if we tricked everyone. She was photographed as me and vice versa.”
Alex and Oliver and I exchanged glances.
“Now—what, may I ask, brought you to my front door wielding a yearbook?”
I said, “We’re friends of Nigel Booker. Do you remember him? He was in your class.”
“How do you know Nigel?” she asked.
“We’re technically his fans,” Alex said.
“Nigel has fans now?”
“Have you read his novel?” Oliver asked.
“I have not,” she said.
“It was published in 1988, but it went out of print shortly after,” Alex said. “We think that two of the characters might be based on you and your sister.”
“Well, I’ll be,” she said, and then put her hand on her chest as if to suggest she was highly flattered. “Why would he write about us?”
Her asking that question seemed bad for Team Stella. If Sandra had been the real-life twin in the woods with Wrigley, she would know exactly why he would write about them. But then again, that was almost fifty years ago, so maybe she had forgotten. She also could have just been playing dumb, like she did for her twin—well, in the novel at least.
Regardless of whose theory was right, I could tell that the woman in front of us was excited, which scared me, because what if she was the bad twin in the novel? There was no way she would enjoy the read if we had it wrong. It seemed like we were playing with emotional dynamite.
“And it’s a love story,” Oliver said. “Maybe even a love letter.”
“A mystery we’re hoping you can solve,” Alex said. “We’d like to interview you after you read the book.”
“Why don’t you ask Nigel whatever questions you have? He’s the author. So certainly he can fill in the blanks.”
“He won’t talk about the novel anymore,” Alex said. “He’s put a moratorium on book discussions.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Alex said, “we believe he’s heartbroken. And that it might be you he’s pining for.”
“That sounds positively salacious!” the woman said with a huge smile on her face and both hands over her heart now, which seemed like a good sign for Team Stella. “Where can I get a copy of this novel?”