A Blind Spot for Boys

  Stesha snapped her notebook closed. “The so-called man who told you that was threatened by you.”

  My breath caught. Protest all she wanted about her divination skills, but of course, Stesha would know the truth. And more surprisingly, I actually heard it ring pitch-perfect inside me. She was right. For whatever reason, Dom was threatened by me: that I had told him no, I wasn’t going to sleep with him on our first date or our seventh, words he may never have heard from any woman. That I had exciting plans for my own life that didn’t revolve around his. That I had opinions of my own that didn’t center on flattering him. That I showed promise and talent. And that I thrummed with passion for life and adventure.

  The way Stesha tightened her lips and rapped the phone with an agitated fingertip, I knew she was fighting hard not to say anything she might regret. Finally, she asked, “Did it ever occur to you that he was diminishing you as a way to control you?”

  I shook my head, even as strobe lights were lighting my brain. “But he was so successful.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  “I thought he knew what he was talking about. He had awesome ideas about building my senior portrait business.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Stesha continued, “But, honey, of course, you don’t know how to make a video. You’ll learn on the job the way all of us do. I don’t think we’re supposed to spring out of the womb fully formed like Athena with every bit of knowledge embedded in us.”

  “Right.” A huge balloon of self-doubt popped inside me. “You’re right!”

  “Good. So between Grace and me, we can reach out to the relief agencies. I have friends at the Red Cross. And Grace has contacts at World Vision.” Stesha reopened her notebook and scribbled a nearly indecipherable sentence. “Who knows? They may want to add this to their own efforts.” Even as she wrote, Stesha’s lips curled into a smile. “And just where did this brilliant inspiration for a video come from, Ms. Shana Wilde?”

  The impossibility of this truth made me rumble with a deep belly laugh. “Out of one guy’s doubt.”

  “Well, I’ve always found that one person’s dead end is another person’s on-ramp.”

  “On-ramp,” I repeated, staring down at the camera I was holding, already poised to shoot whatever I wanted, “I would have that tattooed on the inside of my arm, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bowing to my heated protests that I didn’t need a babysitter, Mom had reluctantly arranged for Stesha to simply drop me off at home. Soon after we cleared customs at the Sea-Tac Airport, Stesha launched herself at a grizzled man in a plaid shirt and worn-out jeans, waiting for her at the top of the escalator with a steaming traveler’s mug that smelled of coconut and tea.

  “How did you know this was just what I needed?” she squealed at George, her former husband and current boyfriend.

  The answer was in George’s tender expression, which softened the ridgelines of his craggy face: Because I know you.

  Suddenly, I felt a pang of loneliness because no one had been counting the minutes, anxious for my return. No one had been waiting for me with my favorite hot drink in his hand. No one had carved out time to drive to the airport, eager to bring me home. That feeling was slightly muted when Stesha’s phone rang and she handed it to me. My parents with their lifeline of love. As much as I assured them that I had reached Seattle in one piece, I was lying. How could I be whole when a big huge part of me was lost in the mountains of Peru? Where Quattro was and how he was doing was a mystery. Even if he had a cell, I wasn’t convinced he’d pick up if I called.

  I had barely hugged Stesha and George good-bye at the front door to our cottage when I caught the scent of freshly baked biscuits. Without needing to turn the porch light on, I knew Mrs. Harris was near. She trudged up the steps with a large wicker basket on her arm.

  “You’re alive!” Mrs. Harris cried as though we were across the yard from each other instead of separated by a few feet. “Oh, my! I was so worried about you when you didn’t come home on time. And just look at you! Skin and bones. Don’t those Peruvians know how to cook?” She thrust a hot biscuit at me. “Here. Eat. You’re two-dimensional.”

  “Mrs. Harris! You didn’t need to do this,” I protested, but I bit hungrily into sweet, buttery paradise. I groaned. “This is life changing.”

  Only then did Mrs. Harris notice my crutches, which launched another series of questions and exclamations, punctuated by an “I knew that trip was going to be dangerous!” Finally, she waved me into my own home. I was slightly annoyed when she followed me in until her lips quivered and she wailed, “I just missed you and your parents so much! And Auggie!”

  “Mrs. Harris…”

  “Then I heard about the mudslides. But after that first report on the news, there wasn’t any information. My goodness, I was so worried! You have no idea!”

  Here it was, another nudge to create a video of the wreckage. I almost raised my eyes heavenward and cried out, Girls! Okay, okay, I’m paying attention! I’ll start the video tomorrow.

  With an oomph, Mrs. Harris set the heavy basket down on the kitchen table and mopped the sweat from her forehead, looking exhausted. I could imagine why: She handled stress the same way Ginny did. They both baked. We’re not talking about slinging a dozen chocolate chip cookies into the oven. No, that’s amateur hour. We’re talking about marathon baking by the batches, multiple batches.

  I asked, “Mrs. Harris, what did you do?”

  With a small self-conscious smile, she lifted the pink-checkered kitchen towel draped over the basket to reveal a treasure trove of bite-size brownies, biscuits, and an assortment of containers. The last of my annoyance melted away at the sight of all this food. Every last stir and spoonful was for me.

  “Blame it on that Anderson Cooper,” Mrs. Harris continued, shoving another biscuit at me before unloading the basket. “When even he didn’t say so much as a peep—not a single peep, I tell you—on CNN about the mudslides, I just about turned into a Keebler elf.”

  “You think?”

  We both laughed. Now that the basket had been emptied, Mrs. Harris looked around uncertainly, lost without a purpose, and I thought guiltily about how rarely we had invited her over for a meal.

  “Well,” she said, patting my hand, “you must be so tired with all that to-ing and fro-ing. I’ll just say good night.”

  For Mrs. Harris, the pathway between her cottage and ours might as well have been the Inca Trail. Her life had shrunk pinprick small since her husband’s death, and I had done nothing but grumble whenever she beckoned me to her porch, always with a kind word and a homemade treat. If there was anyone who needed to rejoin the world, it was Mrs. Harris. And if there was anyone who ought to invite her, it was me.

  “There’s way too much food in here for one person,” I said, pointing at the bounty on the table. “You should stay and eat with me.”

  “You’re too tired.”

  “Come on, Mrs. Harris. Stay.”

  “Maybe for a little bit.” She grinned at me, almost giddy, and I wondered just how lonely she was. Her children rarely visited. She had no one but our cottage community for company.

  All through my hobbling around the kitchen to set the table, then through the entire meal itself, I found myself fielding her rapid-fire questions about the trip. Finally, when we had devoured two cookies apiece, I reached the part when Grace revealed her prosthetic leg, miming her striptease as much as I could on my one good leg.

  “Whoa, this sprain makes me really appreciate what she did,” I said, lowering myself back onto the chair.

  “I think that woman would scare me,” Mrs. Harris said, brushing the crumbs off her lap. It was strange not to hear the scuffling of Auggie’s paws as she scrambled to lick the floor clean, but Aunt Margie was supposed to drop her off tomorrow after work. I couldn’t wait.

  “Well, maybe a little bit, but you’d love her,” I said. Between the helicopter and the plane and the pueb
lo and Cusco and now this conversation, I had lost track of time. I straightened in my chair and exclaimed, “You know what we’re going to do tomorrow?”

  “What?” Mrs. Harris asked, cocking her head to the side.

  “We’re going on a walk. After school.”

  “You’re on crutches.”

  “Trust me, a little thing like that wouldn’t stop Grace. So it’s definitely not going to stop me.” And I hoped Mrs. Harris heard my unspoken words: It definitely shouldn’t be stopping you. After demolishing two heaping plates of food, I leaned back in my chair, feeling bloated and ready for bed.

  But then Mrs. Harris said the magic words: “Let’s see your pictures.”

  I wanted to review them myself, only privately. Automatically, I said, “Oh, not yet. There are hundreds, and you don’t want to look at them all.”

  “I do,” said Mrs. Harris staunchly.

  “Half of them might be terrible. And all the photos from the early part of the trip were taken by someone else. I was just borrowing this camera.”

  “Enough with the caveats!” said Mrs. Harris, her words softened with a smile. “I really would love to know what you saw.”

  How could I deny that request when I might hear the very same plea from Dad one day? So I gestured for her to follow me to the living room, where I retrieved Quattro’s camera from the tote bag, then slid the SD card into the computer I had left downstairs before the trip. I held the laptop between us on the couch and started at the beginning with the photos Quattro had shot: me, photographing the Goliath-size boulders in the ruins outside of Cusco. Me, admiring beautiful orchids, tenacious for life. Me, laughing with Grace as she yelled, “Sexy to the end!” Sharing a look of concern with Mom. Listening intently to a story that Ruben was telling.

  “Whose camera did you borrow?” Mrs. Harris asked, leaning back into the plush pillows.

  I stared at the image of me, taken from up high on the trail, as I gazed out at the fog-covered mountains, my profile dreamy and soft. Quietly, I said, “Just a guy.”

  “Well, you’re obviously not just a girl to him.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. I don’t think we’re even friends, not really.”

  “Shana, let me tell you something.” Mrs. Harris gently covered my hand. “No man ever takes this many pictures of someone he doesn’t care about. Maybe you need to let him know how you feel about him.”

  Later, after Mrs. Harris called it a night and I locked the door behind her, the house was quiet. Too quiet. The familiar whiff of cedar and pinecones may have smelled like home, but it didn’t feel like home without Mom warbling off tune, Auggie pattering from one set of cold feet to another, Dad prepping for the next morning’s running, biking, or hiking adventure.

  Holding my crutches in one hand and the handrail with the other, I hobbled up to my bedroom, feeling fortunate to call this space mine. In fact, our small cottage now seemed palatial compared to our tent. Tired, I set Quattro’s camera down on my desk. A moment later, my cell phone, which I had left charging at my bedside, rang. All feelings of weariness disappeared. I lunged for it, hoping, hoping, hoping. But it was my brother Max, his smile beaming back at me from a photo I had shot of him long ago.

  After spending the last year avoiding Max, I was a little worried about this conversation. I needn’t have been. His first “Shana!” was so enthusiastic, he might have been throwing his arms around me. As usual, he spoke at warp speed, squeezing a billion thoughts into a minute: How’s your ankle? Bloated up like a sausage? Can you believe you were in a mudslide? So were you doing early training for the Tough Mudder, or what? What do you mean, you don’t know about the Tough Mudder? It’s this obstacle course race designed by the British Special Forces. There’s an event where you crawl through mud under barbed wire. One wrong move, and BAM! You get literally nailed. Blood streaming from your head. So you wanna do it with me?

  The barrage suddenly stopped. Silence is never golden when it comes to Max. It’s molten with burning questions. I braced myself by picking up the camera, switching it back on.

  Max didn’t disappoint, saying bluntly, “I’ve been meaning to apologize about being a dick.”

  I grimaced and moved to the comfort of my bed. “Do we have to do this now?”

  “We should have done this months ago! Look, I shouldn’t have barged into your life like that.”

  “Yeah, it was humiliating.”

  But Max’s so-called betrayal was nothing more than him being overprotective, no different from Dad’s response to my sprained ankle. And no different from why I had wanted to barge in on Helen’s life and ask her what the heck she was doing with a narcissist like Hank. He may have had some redeeming characteristics, but he was still so self-absorbed, there was no room in a relationship for more than him and his ego.

  “I was an asshole,” Max said.

  “Nah, I know you pest-controlled him because you cared.”

  “Pest-controlled?” Startled into laughter, he asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Scare tactics. You know how we use vibrations to scare off moles? Well, you yelling at Dom pretty much did that.”

  “Whoa, pest controlling.”

  “Yeah, in front of half the business school.”

  He groaned. “I thought you were going to die on the spot.”

  “I would have if the party had been in a frat. I would never have lived that down. You know how many kids from our school go to UW, right? People would have talked about that until I was eighty.” Mortifying almost a year ago, humorous now. Max’s boom of laughter reminded me of all the times he had tossed keys, balls, and my own stuffed animals at me to “train” my reflexes. All the hours he’d spent with me at parks, teaching me the art of throwing the perfect spiraling football. He was the real reason why I was so comfortable with guys, able to joke around with them, hold my own.

  I told Max in a soft voice, “To be honest, I’m glad you did what you did.”

  “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “It was love,” I said, remembering what Quattro had told me. “Love makes everyone a little crazy.”

  Max cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the love talk. “Well, you better tell your new guy—”

  “There is no new guy!”

  “Not according to Mom. So if the new guy does anything to hurt you, I’m kicking his butt.”

  “You taught me to kick butt on my own.”

  “That’s because you’re one Tough Mudder.”

  “I am.”

  “Great, I’ll send you the training schedule. Not sure how we’ll train for the Arctic Enema. Or the Electroshock Therapy. But we’ll figure it out.”

  “The what? Wait, I’m not signing up—”

  “Awesome. See you after Guatemala.” I heard a last evil cackle before the dial tone buzzed in my ear. I grinned. My brother was back.

  Jet lag, a full belly, and a long day of travel should have left me catatonic, but the conversation with Max had pumped me up too much to sleep. Possibly the image of plunging into a floating iceberg abyss in the Tough Mudder and hauling myself out before I went hypothermic had something to do with my insomnia. So I braved the stairs—not the easiest task on a sprained ankle—and retrieved the computer I had left downstairs. Hopping one-legged back up the steps with the laptop under my arm, I felt like I was already training for the obstacle race.

  Safe on my bed, I opened the computer. While I may have skipped through the photos Quattro had taken of me, I was snagged on Mrs. Harris’s pronouncement: I wasn’t just a girl to him. But what if she was wrong? The thought made me so sad that I scrolled through the photos, picking a random one to open. Stesha, standing next to a gnarled tree wearing the same soul-seeking expression when she asked me what I was supposed to learn in Peru: What’s your purpose for being here?

  I leaned back against my pillows, as answers rushed at me. Maybe I needed to witness my dad pest-controlling Grace. Maybe that was the only way I could see the effect
of all my boy control techniques on guys. Maybe I was meant to fall for Quattro, a guy on a strict no-girl diet, just so I’d know how it felt to be pest-controlled myself. Who knew?

  What I did know for sure was that I had let Quattro go because I was afraid to fight for him.

  What was the purpose of living in a safe, secluded, impenetrable bubble of one?

  Girls! I could easily imagine Grace tipping her head to yell up at the sky. Girls! That doesn’t sound like living.

  No, it didn’t.

  Neither Stesha nor Grace would ever have allowed real love to fall through the cracks. I wouldn’t either.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Some people might call it stalking, others sleuthing. I had the sneaking suspicion that Grace and Stesha would have named it search and rescue. But for me, I was seeking. Forty-five minutes after looking for Quattro, I finally remembered that I had blocked his e-mail, which meant I’d had his address all this time. Before I could chicken out, I composed a message, which I rewrote. Then rewrote again. It’s amazing how much time it took to choose fifty-six words.

  Hey, Quattro,

  Did you and your dad get home OK? I hope so, but let me know. Plus, I’ve got your camera and need to get it back to you. I think I owe you at least a dozen bacon maple bars. Maybe two. Let me know when you want to collect. I miss you.

  xome

  Hitting Send only led to an endless cycle of second-guessing: The “xo” might have been okay by itself, but why did I have to add the “I miss you”? I studied the shadows on my ceiling, kicking myself for tipping my hand too much. I should have kept it to a casual, hey-buddy “Miss ya!” But I knew I wanted to signal that I girlfriend-cared about him, not friend-cared.

  Finally, I gave up on trying to sleep and spent two hours sketching the storyboard for the video and drafting what I wanted to say in only ninety seconds. By the time I finished with that, it was almost one, and I should have gone to sleep. Call me compulsive, but I thought I might as well drop in the images and footage that I had shot. At three, I yawned and finally pressed Save.