“Hey,” Hank/Frank said to me, but Wes had already started through the crowd. There were so many people, so much to navigate, and as the distance fluctuated between us his hand kept slipping, down my arm to my wrist. And maybe he was going to let go as people pressed in on all sides, but all I could think was how when nothing made sense and hadn’t for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of. So as I felt his fingers loosening around my wrist, I just wrapped my own around them, tight, and held on.
The instant we walked out the front door, someone yelled Wes’s name, loud. It startled me, startled both of us, and I dropped his hand quickly.
“Where you been, Baker?” some guy in a baseball hat, leaning against a Land Rover, was yelling. “You got that carburetor for me?”
“Yeah,” Wes yelled back. “One second.”
“Sorry,” I said to him as he turned and looked at me. “I just, it was so hot in there, and he—”
He put his hands on my shoulders, easing me down so I was sitting on the steps. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Okay?”
I nodded, and he started across the grass toward the Rover. I took in a deep breath, which just made me feel dizzier, then cupped my head in my hands. A second later, I had the feeling that I was being watched. When I turned my head, I saw Monica.
She was standing just to my right, smoking a cigarette, the bottle of water tucked under her arm. I knew well she was not the type to creep up or move fast, which meant she’d seen us come out. Seen us holding hands. Seen everything.
She put her cigarette to her lips, taking a big drag, and kept her eyes on me, steady. Accusingly.
“It’s not what you think,” I said. “There was this guy in there. . . . Wes rescued me. I grabbed his hand, just to get out.”
She exhaled slowly, the smoke curling up and rising between us.
“It was just one of those things,” I said. “You know, that just happen. You don’t think or plan. You just do it.”
I waited for her to dispute this with a “Donneven,” or maybe an “Mmm-hmm,” meant sarcastically, of course. But she didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, indecipherable as ever.
“Okay,” Wes said, walking up, “let’s get out of here.” Then he saw Monica and nodded at her. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Monica took another drag in reply, then turned her attention back to me.
I stood up, tilting slightly, and then righted myself, not without effort. “You okay?” Wes asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. He headed down the walk toward the truck, and I followed. At the bottom of the steps, I turned back to Monica. “Bye,” I told her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she answered. I could feel her still watching me, as I walked away.
“If you could change one thing about yourself,” Wes asked me, “what would it be?”
“How about everything I did between leaving your house and right now?” I said.
He shook his head. “I told you, it wasn’t that bad,” he said.
“You didn’t have some football player pawing you,” I pointed out.
“No,” he said, “you’re right about that.”
I sat back against the side of the truck, stretching my legs out in front of me. Once we left the party, Wes had stopped at the Quik Zip, where I’d bought a big bottled water and some aspirin. Then he drove me back to my house, rebuffing my half-hearted protests by promising to get me back to my car the next morning. Once there, I’d expected him to just drop me off, but instead ever since, we’d been sitting in my driveway, watching fireflies flit around the streetlights and telling Truths.
But not the one about why I’d grabbed his hand. Everything had been such a blur, so hot and crazy, that there were moments I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing. But then I’d remember Monica, her flat skeptical look, and know it had happened. I kept thinking about Jason, how weird he’d always been about physical contact, how reaching out for him was always like taking a chance, making a wish. With Wes, it had come naturally, no thinking.
“I wouldn’t be so afraid,” I said now. Wes, watching a firefly bob past, turned to look at me. “If I could change anything about myself. That’s what it would be.”
“Afraid,” he repeated. Once again, I was reminded how much I liked that he never judged, in face or in tone, always giving me a chance to say more, if I wanted to. “Of . . .”
“Of doing things that aren’t planned or laid out in advance for me,” I said. “I’d be more impulsive, not always thinking about consequences.”
He thought about this for a second. “Give me an example.”
I took a sip of my water, then set it down beside me. “Like with my mother. There’s so much I want to say to her, but I don’t know how she’ll react. So I just don’t.”
“Like what?” he asked. “What do you want to say?”
I ran my finger down the tailgate, tracing the edge. “It’s not as much what I’d say, but what I’d do.” I stopped, shaking my head. “Forget it. Let’s move on.”
“Are you passing?” he asked.
“I answered the question!” I said.
He shook his head. “Only the first part.”
“That was not a two-part question,” I said.
“It is now.”
“You know you’re not allowed to do that,” I said. When we’d started, the only rule was you had to tell the truth, period. Still, ever since, we’d been bickering over various addendums. There had been a couple of arguments about the content of questions, one or two concerning the completeness of answers, and too many to count about whose turn it was. This, too, was part of the game. It was considerably harder to play by the rules, though, when you were making them up as you went along.
He looked at me, shaking his head. “Come on, just answer,” he said, nudging my arm with his.
I exhaled loudly, leaning back on my palms. “Okay,” I said, “I’d just . . . if I could, I’d just walk up to my mother and say whatever I felt like saying, right at that moment. Maybe I’d tell her how much I miss my dad. Or how I worry about her. I don’t know what. Maybe it sounds stupid, but for once, I’d just let her know exactly how I feel, without thinking first. Okay?”
It wasn’t the first time I’d felt a wave of embarrassment pass over me in giving an answer, but this was more raw and real, and I was grateful for the near-dark for whatever it could hide of my expression. For a minute, neither of us said anything, and I wondered again how it was possible that I could confess so much to a boy I’d only known for half a summer.
“That’s not stupid,” he said finally. I picked at the tailgate, keeping my head down. “It’s not.”
I felt that weird tickle in my throat and swallowed over it. “I know. But just talking about anything emotional is hard for her. For us. It’s like she prefers we just not do that anymore.”
I swallowed again, then took a deep breath. I could feel him watching me.
“Do you really think she feels that way?” he asked.
“I have no real way of knowing. We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about anything. That’s the problem.” I ran my finger around the edge of my water. “That’s my problem, actually. I don’t talk to anybody about what’s going on in my head, because I’m afraid they might not be able to take it.”
“What about this?” he asked, waving his hand between us. “Isn’t this talking?”
I smiled. “This is Truth,” I said. “It’s different.”
He pulled a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. The vomit story alone was huge.”
“Enough with the vomit story,” I said, exasperated. “Please God I’m begging you.”
“The point is,” he continued, ignoring this, “that you’ve told me a lot playing this game. And while some of it might be weird, or heavy, or downright gross—”
“Wes.”
“—it’s nothing I couldn’t handle.” He was looking at me now, his face serious. “So you should rem
ember that, when you’re thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it’s not so bad.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe you’re just really extraordinary.”
As this came out, it was like someone else had said it. I just heard the words, even agreed with them, and a second later realized it was my voice. Oh, my God, I thought. This is what happens when you don’t think and just do.
We sat there, looking at each other. It was warm out, the fireflies sparkling around us, and he was close to me, his knee and mine only inches apart. I had a flash of how his hand had felt earlier, his fingers closing over mine, and for one crazy second I thought that everything could change, right now, if only I could let it. If he’d been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing would have stopped me.
“Okay,” I said, too quickly, “my turn.”
He blinked at me, as if he’d forgotten we were even playing. So he’d felt it, too.
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Go ahead. Hit me.”
I took in a breath. “What’s the one thing you’d do,” I asked, “if you could do anything?”
As always, he took a second to think, staring straight ahead out at the clearing. I had no idea what he’d say, but then I never did. Maybe he’d reply that he wished he could see his mom again, or suddenly be granted X-ray vision, or orchestrate world peace. I don’t know what I was expecting. But it wasn’t what I got.
“Pass,” he said.
For a second I was sure I’d heard wrong. “What?”
He cleared his throat. “I said, I pass.”
“Why?”
He turned his head and looked at me. “Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because I just do.”
“You know what this means, right?” I said, and he nodded. “You know how the game works?”
“You have to answer whatever question I ask next,” he said. “And if you do, you win.”
“Exactly.” I sat up straighter, bracing myself. “Okay. Go ahead.”
He drew in a breath, and I waited, ready. But all he said was, “No.”
“No?” I said, incredulous. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean,” he repeated, as if I were slow, “no.”
“You have to ask a question,” I told him.
“Not immediately,” he replied, flicking a bug off his arm. “For a question this important, a question that carries the outcome of the game, you can take as long as you want.”
I could not believe this. “Says who?”
“Says the rules.”
“We have more than covered the rules,” I told him. “That is not one of them.”
“I’m making an amendment,” he explained.
I was truly stumped. In fact, everything that had happened in the last five minutes, from me calling him extraordinary, to that one moment I felt something shift, to this, felt like some sort of out-of-body experience.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But you can’t just take forever.”
“I don’t need that long,” he said.
“How long?”
“Considerably less than forever.” I waited. Finally he said, “Maybe a week. You can’t bug me about it, either. That will nullify the entire thing. It has to just happen when it happens.”
“Another new rule,” I said clarifying.
He nodded. “Yup.”
I just looked at him, still processing this, when suddenly there was a burst of light from the other end of the street as a car came over the hill. We both squinted, and I put my hand to my face, then lowered it as I realized it was my mother. She was on the phone—of course—and didn’t seem to see us at first as she passed, pulling into the driveway and up to the garage. It was only when she got out of the car, the phone still between her ear and shoulder, that she looked over at us, squinting slightly.
“Macy?” she said. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m coming in, right now.”
She went back to her conversation, still walking, but not before taking another glance at me and at Wes’s truck before climbing the stairs, finding her keys, and letting herself inside. A second later, the foyer light came on, followed by the ones in the kitchen and back hall as she moved toward her office.
“Well,” I said to Wes, hopping down from the tailgate. “Thanks for a truly exciting evening. Even if you are leaving me hanging.”
“I think you can handle it,” he said as he walked around to the driver’s side, climbing behind the wheel.
“All I’m saying,” I said, “is that when this is all over, I’m going to submit, like, twenty amendments. You won’t even recognize the rules once I’m done with them.”
He laughed out loud, shaking his head, and I felt myself smile. What I wouldn’t have admitted to him, not then, maybe not ever, was that I was actually happy to have to wait awhile. The game had become important to me. I didn’t want it to end at all, much less right that second. Not that he had to know that. Especially since he hadn’t asked.
“You know,” I told him, “after all this buildup, it had better be a good question.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, sounding sure of himself, as always. “It will be.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Goodness,” my mother said, tracing her finger down one side of the picture on the table in front of her. “It’s really coming along.”
My sister beamed. “Isn’t it? The plumber’s coming tomorrow to install the new toilet, and the skylights are in. We’ve just got to decide on paint colors and then they can start on the walls. It’s going to be just gorgeous.”
I’d never thought it was possible for someone to be so enthusiastic about going over paint chips that, to my eye anyway, looked exactly alike. But Caroline had completely thrown herself into the beach house project. And while there were new window treatments and skylights, the moose head was still over the fireplace (although it had been cleaned by a professional— hard to believe someone actually did such things for a living), and the same splintery Adirondack chairs remained on the back deck, where they’d be joined by a new wrought-iron bench and a row of decorative flowerpots. All the things we loved about the beach house, she said, would still be there. It was, she said, what my dad would have wanted.
“What I’m thinking,” Caroline said now, as my mother moved on to another picture, squinting at it, “is that once the kitchen is all painted, I can do some tiling along the molding. Kind of a southwestern look, with different patterns. I have it in here somewhere, hold on.”
I watched my mother as she looked through the latest round of pictures, picking up one showing the new sliding glass doors to examine it more closely. I could tell her mind was wandering to other houses, other paint chips, other fixtures: the ones in the townhouses, which were progressing on a parallel timeline to Caroline’s project. I knew that to her, the beach house was distant, past, while her projects were present and future, close enough to see from the top of our driveway, rising up over the next hill. Maybe you could go backwards and forwards at the same time, but it wasn’t easy. You had to want to. My sister, her mind dancing with images of plantation shutters and smooth blue kitchen tiles, might not have been able to see this. But I could. I only hoped that eventually, my mother would come around.
A few nights later, I worked a fiftieth birthday party with Wish in the neighborhood right next to Wildflower Ridge. They picked me up on their way there, and afterwards, dropping me off, Delia asked a favor.
“I so have to pee,” she said. “Would it be all right if I came in for a second?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Delia!” Bert said, looking at his watch. “We’re in a hurry here!”
“And I’m pregnant and about to pee all over myself,” she replied, opening her door and swinging one leg out. “I’ll only be a second.”
But a second, to Bert, was too long. All night he’d been obsessing about how he needed to be home by ten at the
very latest in order to see Update: Armageddon, a show that covered, in his words, “all the latest doings in doomsday theory.” But the party had run long, and even though we’d rushed as much as we could, time was clearly running out, not only for the world, but for Bert as well.
“I’m coming too,” Kristy said now, unlocking the side door. “Every time I tried to use the bathroom at that party someone was in it.”
“My show comes on in five minutes!” Bert said.
“Bert,” Wes said, pointing at the dashboard clock, which said 9:54, “it’s over. You’re not going to make it.”
“Update: it’s too late,” Kristy added.
Bert glared at both of them, then slumped in his seat, looking out the window. For a second it was quiet, except for Delia grunting as she lowered herself onto the grass by the sidewalk. I looked at my dark house, looming up in front of us: my mother was at an overnight meeting in Greensboro, not due back until morning.
“You can come in and watch it here,” I said. “I mean, if you want to.”
“Really?” Bert looked at me, surprised. “You mean it?”
“Macy,” Kristy moaned, knocking me with her elbow, “what are you thinking?”
“She’s thinking that she’s kind and considerate,” Bert said as he quickly slid down the seat to the open door, “unlike some people I could mention.”
“I’m sorry,” Delia said, putting her hand on my arm, “but I’m really bordering on emergency status with my bladder here.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Come on, it’s just inside.”
“So we’re all going in?” Wes asked, cutting the engine.
“Yep,” Kristy said. “Looks that way.”
As we approached the front steps, Delia waddling, Kristy eyeing the house, with Bert and Wes and Monica bringing up the rear, I told myself that even if my mother had been home, I could have done this, invited my friends in. But the truth was, ever since her talk with me about concerns for my priorities, I’d stopped talking about my job at Wish, or Kristy, or anything related to either. It just seemed smarter, as well as safer.
I unlocked the front door, then pointed Delia to the powder room. She moved across the foyer faster than I’d seen her go in weeks, the door shutting swiftly behind her. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” we heard her say. Kristy laughed, the sound sudden and loud, bouncing off the high ceiling above us, and we all looked up at once, following it.