For a second, I just blinked at him. “What?”
“Iceberg lettuce,” he said. Then he added, quickly, “And don’t say it’s not a food, because it is. I’m willing to fight you on it.”
I smiled. “No fight,” I told him. “It’s a keeper.”
The pump stopped then, and he hung the hose back up, screwing the top on the gas can. “Need anything?” he asked, and when I shook my head, he started toward the store.
I heard a buzzing under my feet: my phone. I unzipped my purse and pulled it out, hitting the Talk button as I raised it to my ear. “Hel—”
“Where are you?” Kristy demanded. I could hear party noises behind her, music and loud voices. “Do you know how worried we are? Monica’s about sick, she’s almost inconsolable—”
“We ran out of gas,” I told her, switching the phone to my other ear. “I left you a message. We were stuck out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Message? I didn’t get any—” A pause as, presumably, she actually checked for the first time. “Oh. Well. God! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“We’re fine. We got a ride and we’re getting gas for the van right now.”
“Well, thank goodness.” I heard her cover up the phone and relay this information to Monica, who, upset or not, I imagined would receive it with her same flat, bored expression. Then Kristy came back on. “Look, I gotta tell you, if I were you guys, I’d just go straight home. This party is a bust. And I was totally misled. There are nothing but ordinary boys here.”
I turned and looked into the gas station, where Wes was now paying, as the man who’d driven us looked on. “That’s too bad,” I said.
“It’s okay, though,” she assured me. “Someday I’ll show you an extraordinary boy, Macy. They do exist. You just have to believe me.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I do.”
Chapter Ten
My mother was stressed.
Truthfully, my mother was always stressed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her actually relax and sit still in a way that made it obvious she wasn’t already thinking about the next six things she had to do, and maybe the six after that. Once, she’d been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.
Everything about Wildflower Ridge led back to my mom. The original proposal for the development, the floor plans for each phase, the landscaping, the community organization; every decision was hers. So I was used to her cell phone joining us for dinner every night, sitting on the third place mat, accustomed to her being at the model home office late into the night, entirely unsurprised when I came home to find contractors, local business owners, or prospective home buyers sitting in our living room listening to a spiel about what makes Wildflower Ridge special.
Her current project was the townhouses, and for my mother they were especially important. She’d taken a risk by going for luxury, adding all kinds of fancy accoutrements like heated garages, marble bathrooms, balconies, and high-end appliances, all for the discerning, affluent professional. But just as she began building, the economy took a slide: there were layoffs, the stock market plummeted, and suddenly everyone was tentative with their dollars, especially when it came to real estate. Since she’d already started, she had no choice but to keep going, but her nervousness had driven her to work harder at making contacts and sales. Considering how many of her waking hours (i.e., all of them) were devoted to this already, it seemed close to impossible. Hence stress. Lots of it.
“I’m fine,” she said to Caroline one morning a couple of days after my late night with Wes, as the three of us sat at the kitchen table. My sister was spending most of her time shuttling between her house in Atlanta, making sure Wally was eating enough vegetables while he battled some corporation in his law case, and the coast, where she conferred with the carpenter, dickered over fabric and paint chips, and, by the looks of the receipts I’d seen, bought up most of the inventory at Home Depot. In between, she’d taken to dropping in to show us pictures of the progress, ask for our opinions on decorating decisions, and tell my mother, repeatedly, that she needed to relax and take a vacation. Yeah, right.
“Mom,” she said now, as I took a bite of cereal, “you’re not fine. Are you even sleeping?”
“Of course I am,” my mother said, shuffling through some papers. “I sleep like a baby.”
That is, if she was sleeping at all. More than once lately I’d come downstairs at two or three A.M. only to see her in her office, still in her work clothes, typing away, or leaving voicemail messages for her contractors or subs. I didn’t know when she went to bed, but by the next morning when I was getting up for work she was always in the kitchen, showered and dressed in new clothes, already talking on her cell phone.
“I just want to be sure that when the house is done, you’ll commit to this vacation,” my sister said now, opening one of her beach-house folders and sorting through some photographs. “It looks like it’s going to be August, probably the second week.”
“Anytime after the seventh is fine,” my mother said, moving her coffee cup aside to make a note on something with the pencil in her hand. “That’s the gala for the opening of the townhouses. ”
“You’re having a gala?” I said.
“Well, it’s a reception,” she told me, picking up her cell phone, then putting it down, “but I’m planning for it to be nicer and bigger than the sales events we’ve had here before. I’m renting a tent, and I’ve found this fantastic French caterer. . . . Oh, that reminds me, I’ve got to call about the kitchen faucets if I want to change them from ruby to diamond class.”
And then she was up, pushing back her chair and starting across the kitchen, still muttering to herself. How she’d gotten from caterers to faucets was hard to say, but it was hard keeping up with her these days.
“So the eighth?” Caroline called after her. “Of August? I can write that down, it’s firm?”
My mother, halfway through the door, turned her head. “The eighth,” she said, nodding, “firm. Absolutely.”
Caroline smiled, pleased with herself, as my mother disappeared down the hallway. She picked up her folder, tapping it on the tabletop to straighten its contents, then put it down in front of her again. “So it’s set,” she said. “The eighth to the fifteenth, we’re officially on vacation.”
I put my spoon down in my now empty bowl, finally realizing why this date had been ringing a bell in my head. It was the day after Jason was returning from Brain Camp: by then I’d know whether we were together or really over. But now it was only the end of June. The townhouses still needed windows, fixtures, landscaping. The beach house was going to be painted, the floors sanded, the new décor installed under my sister’s watchful eye. The new would be new, the old, new again. What I’d be, on a break, broken, or otherwise, I had no idea. Luckily for all of us, though, we still had time.
Wes and I were friends now. And really, no one was more surprised than me.
Initially, the only thing we shared, other than working for Wish, was that we both had lost a parent. This was a lot to have in common, but it wasn’t just about that anymore, either. The truth was, since our night stranded together, I felt comfortable around Wes. When I was with him, I didn’t have to be perfect, or even try for perfect. He already knew my secrets, the things I’d kept hidden from everyone else, so I could just be myself. Which shouldn’t have been such a big deal. But it was.
“Okay,” he said to me one night, as we sat on the back deck rail at a party in the Arbors, a neighborhood just down from my own, “what’s that about?”
I followed his gaze to the open sliding glass door that le
d into the kitchen, where three girls I recognized from my school—the sort of girls who hung out in the parking lot after late bell, wearing sunglasses and cupping their hidden cigarettes against their palms—were staring at us. Or more specifically, at me.
“Well,” I said, taking a sip of the beer I was holding, “I think they’re just surprised to see me here.”
“Really.”
I nodded, putting my beer back on the rail. Inside, over the girls’ heads, I could see Kristy, Bert, and Monica playing quarters at a long oak table in the dining room, the fancy centerpiece of which had been pushed aside and was now piled high with beer cans. More often than not at parties lately, I ended up sitting with Wes off to the side, while Kristy and everyone else trolled for extraordinary boys, or in Bert’s case, desperate fresh-man girls. While they tried their luck and bemoaned the prospects, we on-a-break types just sat and shot the breeze, watching the party unfold around us.
“And they’re surprised to see you here because . . .” Wes said, nodding at a guy in a baseball hat who passed by, saying his name.
“Because,” I said, “they think I’m Miss Perfect.”
“You?” he said, sounding so surprised I felt obligated to shoot him a look. “I mean, ah, I see.”
I picked up my beer, taking another sip. “Shut up,” I said.
“No seriously, this is interesting,” he said, as the girls moved out onto the deck, disappearing behind a clump of people waiting in line at the keg. “Perfect as in . . .”
“Goody-goody,” I said, “by association. Jason would never be here.”
“No?”
“God, no.”
Wes considered this for a second, as I noted at least six different girls around the deck checking him out. As much as I was getting used to this happening whenever I was with him, it was still a little unnerving. I’d lost count of how many dirty looks I’d gotten just by sitting next to him. We’re not like that, I wanted to say to the girls who stared at me, slit-eyed, their eyes following me whenever I went to the bathroom or to find Kristy, waiting for me to be far enough away to move in. By now, though, I could spot who was and wasn’t his type a mile off. The girl in the tight black dress and red lipstick, leaning against the keg? Nope. The one in the denim skirt and black T with the tan? Maybe. The one who kept licking her lips? Ugh. No. No. No.
“Let’s say Jason was here,” he said now. “What would he be doing?”
I considered this. “Probably complaining about the smoke,” I said, “and getting very concerned about whether all these cans are going to be properly recycled. What about Becky?”
He thought for a second, pulling a hand through his hair. In the dining room, I could hear Kristy laughing loudly. “Passed out someplace. Or behind the bushes sneaking a smoke that she’d deny to me later.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Ah.”
The girl in the tight black dress was passing by us now, eyeing Wes and walking entirely too slowly. “Hi,” she said, and he nodded at her but didn’t reply. Knew it, I thought.
“Honestly,” I said.
“What?”
“Come on. You have to admit it’s sort of ridiculous.”
“What is?”
Now that I had to define it, I found myself struggling for the right words. “You know,” I said, then figured Kristy had really summed it up best. “The sa-woon.”
“The what?”
“Wes, come on,” I said. “Are you seriously not aware of how girls stare at you?”
He rolled his eyes, leaning back on his palms. “Let’s get back to the idea of you being perfect.”
“Seriously. What’s it like?”
“Being perfect? I wouldn’t know.”
“Not being perfect.” I sighed. “Being . . .”
As I tried to come up with something, he flicked a bug off his arm.
“. . . gorgeous,” I finished. Two weeks earlier, this would have mortified me: I could just see myself bursting into flames from the shame. But now, I only felt a slight twinge as I took another sip of my beer and waited for him to answer.
“Again,” he said, as the parking lot girls passed by, eyeing both of us, “I wouldn’t know. You tell me.”
“Donneven,” I said, in my best Monica imitation, and he laughed. “We’re not talking about me.”
“We could be,” he said, as I watched Bert take note of a group of what looked like ninth graders who had just come into the living room.
“I’m not gorgeous,” I said.
“Sure you are.”
I just shook my head, knowing this was him evading the question. “You,” I said, “have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit.”
“Bit?”
“You know what I mean.”
He shook his head, clearly discounting this description. “And you,” he said, “have that whole blonde, cool and collected, perfect smart girl thing going on.”
“You’re the boy all the girls want to rebel with,” I said.
“You,” he replied, “are the unattainable girl in homeroom who never gives a guy the time of day.”
There was a blast of music from inside, a thump of bass beat, then quiet again.
“I’m not perfect,” I said. “Not even close.”
“I’m not tortured. Unless you count this conversation.”
“Okay.” I picked up my beer. “What do you want to talk about?”
“How about,” he said, “that we’ve got an ongoing game of Truth to get back to?”
“How about,” I said, as a guy from my English class stumbled by, looking sort of queasy, “not. I can’t handle Truth tonight.”
“You’re only saying that,” he said, “because it’s my turn.”
“It isn’t. It’s mine.”
“It’s—”
I said, “I asked you about Myers School, then you asked me about Jason. I countered with a question about Becky, and you asked me about running. Two rounds, my turn.”
“See, this is why I don’t hang out with smart girls,” he said. Then he rubbed his hands together, psyching himself up, while I rolled my eyes. “Okay, go ahead. I’m ready.”
“All right,” I said, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “What’s it like to always have girls swooning over you?”
He turned and looked at me. “Macy.”
“You’re the one who wanted to play.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and I wondered if he was going to pass. Too competitive, I thought, and I was right. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not something I notice, if it’s even happening.”
“The name of the game,” I told him, “is Truth.”
He turned and looked at me, annoyed. “Fine. It’s weird. I mean, it’s not like it counts or anything. They don’t know me by looking, nobody does. It’s totally surface. It’s not real.”
“Tell that to her,” I said, nodding at the girl in the far corner, who was still ogling him.
“Funny,” he muttered, making it a point to look away. “Is it my turn yet?”
“No, I have a follow-up question.”
“Is that legal?”
“Yes,” I said, with authority. Now I was Caroline, making up my own rules. “Okay, so if that’s not real, what is? What counts, to you?”
He thought for a second, then said, “I don’t know. Just because someone’s pretty doesn’t mean she’s decent. Or vice versa. I’m not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.”
I wasn’t sure what answer I’d expected. But this wasn’t it. For a second, I just sat there, letting it sink in.
“You know,” I said finally, “saying stuff like that would make girls even crazier for you. Now you’re cute and somewhat more attainable. If you were appealing before, now you’re off the charts.”
“I don’t want to be off the charts,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I do, however, want to be off this subject.”
“Fine,” I said. “Go ahead, it’s your turn.”
Inside, I could see Kristy chatting up some guy with dread-locks, while Monica sat beside her, looking bored. Bert, for his part, was eyeballing the girl with the quarter, who, by my count, had now missed the cup six times in a row.
“Why is being perfect so important to you?”
I felt myself blink. “It’s not,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s this game called again?”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “I don’t care that much about being perfect.”
“Seems like you do.”
“How do you figure?”
He shrugged. “Every time you’ve mentioned your boyfriend, you’ve said he was.”
“Well, he is,” I said. “But I’m not. That was part of the problem.”
“Macy, come on.” He looked at me. “I mean, what’s perfect, anyway?”
I shook my head, lifting my beer to my lips. It was empty, but I needed something to do. “It’s not about being perfect, really. It’s about . . . I don’t know. Being in control.”
“Explain,” he said, and I sighed.
“I don’t know if I can,” I told him. I glanced back at the dining room, looking for Kristy, a distraction, but she and Monica and Bert were gone, the table now deserted. “When my dad died, it was like everything felt really shaky, you know? And trying to be the best I could be, it gave me something to focus on. If I could just do everything right, then I was safe.”
I couldn’t believe I was saying this, not here, at a party packed with classmates and strangers. In fact, I couldn’t imagine saying it anywhere, really, except in my own head, where it somehow made sense.
“That sucks, though,” Wes said finally, his voice low. “You’re just setting yourself up to fail, because you’ll never get everything perfect.”
“Says who?”
He just looked at me. “The world,” he said, gesturing all around us, as if this party, this deck encompassed it all. “The universe. There’s just no way. And why would you want everything to be perfect, anyway?”