Copyright © 2012 by Tamara Ireland Stone
Corduroy written by Eddie Vedder, Dave Abbruzzese, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready copyright © 1994 by Innocent Bystander, Pickled Fish Music, Scribing C-Ment Songs, Write Treatage Music and Jumpin’ Cat Music
If I Could words and music by Trey Anastasio copyright © by Who Is She? Music, Inc. (BMI)
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-6840-9
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
October 2011
March 1995
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
April
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
May
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
June
35
36
37
38
39
40
Acknowledgments
For Michael, my daring adventure
Time is the longest distance between two places.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Even from this distance I can see how young he looks. Younger than the first time I saw him.
He and his friends have been skating around Lafayette Park for the last couple of hours, and now they’re sprawled across the grass, downing Gatorades and passing around a bag of Doritos.
“Excuse me.”
Eight sixteen-year-old heads spin in my direction, looking confused, then curious.
“Are you Bennett?” I ask and wait for him to nod, even though I’m sure it’s him. I’d know him anywhere. “Can I speak with you for a moment? In private?”
He knits his eyebrows together, but then he stands up and flips his skateboard over to keep it from rolling down the hill. I catch him looking back at his friends and shrugging as he follows me to the closest bench. He sits at the opposite end, as far away from me as possible.
Everything about him is so similar, so familiar, that I almost scoot over to close the distance, like I would have done so naturally when I was younger. But sixteen years have come between us, and that’s enough to keep me on my side of the bench.
“Hi.” My voice shakes, and I twist a curly strand of hair around my finger before catching myself and returning my hand to my sides, pressing both palms into the wooden slats.
“Ummm…Hi?” he says. He studies me through the uncomfortable silence. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to know you or something?”
My instinct is to say yes, but I stop myself, press my lips together, and shake my head instead. He doesn’t know me. Not yet. “I’m Anna. Here.” I reach into my bag, pull out the sealed white envelope, and smile as I hold it out to him.
He takes the letter and turns it over a few times.
“I thought it would be safer to explain in writing.” My next words are the most important. After all my practice, I should have this part perfected, but I think through each word in my head again, just to be sure. “It’s too easy for me to say the wrong thing today, and if I do, we may never meet at all.”
His head springs up, and he stares at me, wide-eyed. No one’s ever said anything like that to him before, and with that one statement, he knows that I’m in on his secret.
“I’d better go.” I stand up. “Read that when you’re alone, okay?” I leave him on the bench and walk back down the hill. I keep my eyes glued to a single sailboat skimming across the San Francisco Bay so I won’t turn around. After years of agonizing over this moment, I expect to feel relieved, but I don’t—I just miss him all over again.
What I just did could change everything, or it could change nothing. But I have to try. I’ve got nothing to lose. If my plan doesn’t work, my life will remain the same: Safe. Comfortable. Perfectly average.
But that wasn’t the life I originally chose.
I shake out my arms to get the blood flowing, rock my head back and forth until I hear a little pop, and take a deep breath of early morning air that’s so cold it stings on the way down. Still, I muster a silent thanks for the fact that it’s warmer than last week. I tighten the neoprene belt that holds my Discman around my waist and turn up the music so Green Day is loud in my ears. And I’m off.
I take the usual series of turns through my neighborhood until I reach the running path that hugs the glassy expanse of Lake Michigan. I twist around the last bend, giving myself a clear view of the route all the way to the Northwestern University track, and I spot the man in the green vest. As we run toward each other, our ponytails—his gray, mine unruly—swing back and forth, and we raise our hands and give each other a little wave. “’Morning,” I say as we pass.
The sun is slowly rising over the lake as I turn toward the soccer field, and when my feet connect with the spongy surface of the track, I feel a new burst of energy that makes me pick up the pace. I’m halfway around the loop when the CD shuffles again and the new song transports me back to the coffeehouse the night before. The band was amazing, and when they played those first few notes the whole place exploded, everyone bouncing and head-bobbing in unison as the line that separated us local high schoolers from the transitory college students disappeared completely. I take a quick look around to be sure I’m alone. All I can see is empty row after row of metal bleachers, heavy with a winter’s worth of snow that no one’s bothered to dust off, so I belt out the chorus.
I’m racing around the curves, legs throbbing, heart pounding, arms pumping. Inhaling arctic air. Exhaling steam. Enjoying my thirty minutes of solitude, when it’s just me and my run and my music and my thoughts. When I’m completely alone.
And then I realize I’m not. I see someone in the bleachers, hip-deep in the icy fluff of the third row and impossible to miss. He’s just sitting there with his chin resting on his hands, wearing a black parka and a small smile, watching me.
I steal glances at him but continue to run, pretending not to care about his presence in my sanctuary. He looks like a Northwestern student, maybe a freshman, with dark shaggy hair and soft features. He doesn’t look threatening, and even if he is, I can outrun him.
But what if I can’t?
My mind jumps to the self-defense courses Dad made me take when I started running in the near dark. Knee to the groin. Palm thrust to the nose. But first, you should try to avoid confrontation by simply acknowledging the attacker’s presence. Which sounds much easier.
As I come around the bend, I give him a slight nod and a glare that probably conveys a weird mix of fear and tenacity—like I’m daring him to make a move but terrified that he just might. And as I run by, staring him down, I watch his face change. His smile disappears, and now he looks sad and dejected, like I just used those self-defense skills to punch him in the gut.
But as I follow the curve of the track and start heading toward him again, I
look up, right in his direction. He gives me a more hesitant smile, but it’s warm, like he knows me. Genuine, like he might just be someone worth knowing. And I can’t help it. I smile back.
I’m still grinning as I turn the next bend, and without even thinking about it, I flip around midstride to look at him again.
He’s gone.
I spin in place while my eyes search the track for him, and then I sprint to the bleachers. At the bottom of the steps, I hesitate for a second, wondering if he was ever there at all, but I gather my courage and trudge up.
He’s not there, but he had been. He left proof: the snow is packed down where he sat, and on the bench below, two depressions show where his feet rested.
And that’s when I notice something else.
My own footprints are clearly visible in the powder around me, but where his should have been—leading to and from the bench—I see nothing but a thick layer of untouched snow.
I race into the house and take the stairs two at a time. I turn on the shower, peel off my sweat-drenched clothes, and stand naked while I down a glass of water and let the steam fill the bathroom. My reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror fades away behind the thick fog, and when my image becomes completely obscured, I run my palm across the glass, clearing a wet, dotted path in the condensation. I consider my face again. I don’t look crazy.
I spend my entire shower wondering if he was real, whom I can tell, and how I might possibly come out of that conversation sounding sane. As I get dressed for school, his face is still creeping into my thoughts, but I do my best to push the whole thing out of my mind and try to convince myself I imagined it. Still, I vow to avoid the track for the rest of the week. I know what I saw.
I shake it off as I zip into my boots and give myself one last check in the full-length mirror. I run my fingers through my curls, scrunch them up in my hands, and shake my head again. Useless.
Throwing my backpack over my shoulder, I force myself to move on to my morning ritual. I stand before the map that decorates the largest wall in my room; I close my eyes, touch it, and open them again. Callao, Peru. Good. I was hoping for someplace warm.
With my travel dreams on his mind, one day last summer Dad spent a secret hour in the garage adhering this giant paper map of the world to a foam-core board. “You can mark all the places you go,” he said as he handed me a small box of red pins. I stood there and stared at it—this colorful expanse of paper, with its topographic mountain ranges and changeable shades of blue to depict the various depths of the ocean—and saw a map of the world, but knew it wasn’t mine. My world was much, much smaller.
After Dad left the room, I stuck the little red pins into the paper, one by one. My class had visited the state capital last year, so I put a pin in Springfield. We once took a family camping trip to Boundary Waters, so I put one in northeastern Minnesota. We spent a Fourth of July in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My aunt lives in northern Indiana, and we go twice a year. That was it. Four pins.
At first, all I could see was that pathetic little cluster of red near the state of Illinois, but now I view the map the way Dad intended. Like it’s asking me to see every square inch of it with my own eyes, challenging me to make my little world larger and larger, pin by pin.
I give the map one last look and head down the stairs toward the glorious scent coming from the kitchen. I don’t even need to hit the landing to know that Dad’s standing at the coffeepot pouring out two mugs—one black, for him; one with milk, for me. I grab my cup from his outstretched hand. “Good morning. Mom already gone?”
“She left before you did. Early shift.” He watches me take a sip, and then he steals a peek out the kitchen window. “Where did you run today? It’s still pretty dark out there.” He sounds worried.
“Campus. The usual.” There’s no way I’m telling him about the guy at the track. “It’s freezing, too. That was a tough first mile.” I pour myself a bowl of raisin bran and plop down on the stool at the counter. “You’re welcome to join me, you know,” I say with a grin. I know what’s coming next.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Wake me up some morning in June and I’ll run with you. Until then, you aren’t getting me out of my warm bed for that kind of torture.”
“Wuss.”
“Yes.” He nods and raises his coffee mug in a mock toast. “Yes, I am. Unlike my Annie.” He shakes his head. “I created a monster.”
Dad turned me into a runner. He had been an Illinois Cross-Country State Finalist in high school. With his glory days behind him, now he’s the crazy guy in a professorial sport coat standing at the end of the course, clapping wildly and cheering me on in a booming voice that threatens to take down the forest’s most sturdy oaks. It’s gotten worse now that the cross-country season has ended and I’m running track, where he’s never out of sight and there are no trees to muffle him. Even though he’s beyond embarrassing, he’s devoted. In return, he’s the only one I still allow to call me Annie.
Dad goes back to his paper while I down my coffee and finish my cereal in comfortable quiet. Unlike Mom, who seems compelled to fill silence, Dad lets it stick around like a member of the family. But then the low horn of Emma’s car breaks the calm.
Dad drops one side of the newspaper. “There’s your Brit.”
I give him a peck on the cheek and head outside.
The car is humming in the driveway, and I walk toward it as quickly as I can without banana-peeling on the ice-covered concrete. I let out a little breath of relief when I swing open the door of Emma’s shiny new Saab and fall into warm leather.
“’Morning, love,” Emma Atkins chirps in her British accent. She throws the gearshift into reverse and flies out of the driveway. “Did you hear?” she blurts out, like the words have been locked up in there for hours and she’s finally setting them free.
“Of course not.” I look at her and roll my eyes. “Why would I hear anything before you do?”
“New kid starting today. He just moved here from California. That could be good, right?” While Emma’s seen the world, she hasn’t seen much of the States beyond the Midwest. California seems like a fantastic American oddity to her, like frozen custard or a hot dog dipped in cornmeal and impaled on a stick.
“Anything new is good,” I say, and when I turn to look at her, I see that she’s wearing more than the usual amount of eye shadow, extra accessories, and the uniform miniskirt she had hemmed to make it “mini-er.” Clearly the new guy’s been heavy on her mind since she woke up this morning. When we stop at the light, I watch her stretch her neck to look into the rearview mirror and blot her lipstick with her fingertip. Not that she needs any extra help. She’s English, but she looks more like a Brazilian supermodel with her high, defined cheekbones and dark, sultry eyes. Today I didn’t even bother to put on lip gloss, and when we walk into school together, whether Emma’s all dolled up for the new guy or not, I know which one of us turns heads.
Even more extraordinary than the extra effort she’s taken with her appearance is the fact that she hasn’t bothered to put on music. I reach into the glove compartment and start sifting through the pile of CDs, loose and scratching up against each other, until my fingertips feel suede. I unearth the hot pink case I bought Emma for her birthday last year, and start slipping the disks into the little plastic sleeves.
“Hey, why aren’t you more excited? This is big news, Anna. We haven’t had a new student since…” She trails off as she thumps her fingers on the steering wheel, like she does when she’s deep in thought.
I don’t even look up from my project as I finish her sentence. “Me.”
“Really?”
I shrug and nod. “Yeah. Eighth grade. Zits and braces. Frizzy hair. That horrible plaid Westlake jumper.” I wince at the thought of that last one. “New kid. Me.”
“Really…” She stares out the window and thinks about it, like there’s a chance I’m wrong. Then she says, “Huh. I guess so.” She reaches over and pinches my cheek. “And se
e what a good day that turned out to be! Without you, I’d be singing all by myself. Speaking of which, we’re going to be at school before you choose one. Here.” Emma reaches over and grabs the disk on top. “Vitalogy. Perfect.”
We’ve been playing the new Pearl Jam CD practically nonstop for the last three months. She slips it into the stereo and turns up the volume as high as she can without distorting the bass. She looks at me and smiles, moving to the beat as the opening guitar notes of “Corduroy” start out quietly, then build, escalating at a steady rhythm until the car is filled with sound. I lean back into my seat as the drums join in, softly at first, then louder. We hear the last five notes of the intro and that’s our cue—we look at each other and sing.
The waiting drove me mad.…
You’re finally here and I’m a mess….
We sing every word, loud and off-key, but the final minute of the song is instrumental, so that’s where we really let go. I air-guitar and bob my head while Emma drums on the steering wheel, her hands flying around and slapping the leather, but as close to “ten and two” as I’ve ever seen them. As if she were capable of choreographing our arrival, she pulls into her usual parking space just as the last guitar notes fade to black and twists the key in the ignition. “Pearl Jam’s coming back to Soldier Field this summer, you know? You should get Freckles to get us tickets.”
“Stop calling him that.” I stifle a laugh. “His name is Justin. And yeah, he can probably get us tickets.…”
She looks at me sideways, eyebrows raised. “Probably? Come on, he’ll do anything you ask. That boy has it bad for you.”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ve known him since I was five. We’re just friends.”
“And is he aware of this?”
“Of course he is.” My parents and Justin’s have all known one another for years, and for most of them, he and I were inseparable. But things have changed. Justin Reilly used to feel like a comfortable pair of sweats, but now he’s more like a prom dress. Lovely but itchy.