“Deal.”
We go back to the room and push the door open.
There’s been an explosion—clothes are scattered all over the floor, and Ethan’s at the dresser dragging out more.
“What’s going on?” David halts in the doorway. I’m stuck behind him, looking over his shoulder.
“I’m changing drawers,” Ethan says. “It’s not fair that Ethan W gets the top ones, so I’m moving his clothes to my drawers and mine to his. I had to take everything out first. That’s the only way to do it.”
“You can’t just move his clothes,” I say. “You have to ask him first.”
“But it’s not fair! David said so.”
“Chloe’s right, though,” David says. “We have to discuss it with him and Sammy first.”
“You didn’t tell me that!” Ethan’s voice starts to rise. “I didn’t know. Am I going to get in trouble?”
“No,” I say. “We’re going to help you put the clothes back the way they were. Which are yours, and which are the other Ethan’s?”
He stares at the piles. “I’m not sure anymore,” he says unhappily.
“We can figure it out,” David says. He kneels down. “I recognize these tops.”
I flip through some pants. “These have name tags that say Ethan Wilson.”
“They probably belong to the other Ethan, then,” Ethan says, calming down a little.
“Odds are good,” I agree gravely.
We manage to get the clothing back in the drawers—maybe not with a hundred percent accuracy, but close enough.
“If he wants to keep the top drawers, it’s okay,” Ethan says when we’re done. He was pretty stressed during the process, but now that the clothing’s all back and the drawers are closed, he’s doing better. “I don’t really care.”
David avoids my glance, but to his credit, he looks a little ashamed of himself. And he doesn’t argue.
Thirty-Eight
WE LEAVE THE DORM, and Ethan shows us the gym, where he proudly informs us that in one month he’s already doubled the weight he can curl, then the community room, which has an enormous flat-screen TV and a bunch of pinball and video games, then the computer room, and then his little corner patch of their big community garden, where he’s growing lettuce and beets.
“But you don’t eat vegetables,” David says.
“Sammy says food tastes better when you grow it yourself.”
“It’s true,” I say. David rolls his eyes and makes a snorting sound. “It is,” I insist. “I once had a tomato plant, and I hate tomatoes, but I ate the one little tomato I succeeded in growing, and it was delicious. Then the plant died.”
“I didn’t want to grow tomatoes,” Ethan says.
“I don’t blame you. It only leads to heartbreak.” There’s a loud clanging sound. I look around. “What is that?”
“Lunch. On weekdays it’s at noon, but on Saturdays and Sundays, it’s at one. I want to go eat. I’m hungry.”
“I’m hungry too.” I appeal to David. “Maybe we could run out for a meal and then come back?”
“Let’s just check out the cafeteria first—I want to see what kind of food they’re serving here.”
Ethan is trotting ahead, so I take the opportunity to whisper to David, “If you say a single negative thing about the food—”
“I won’t. Not unless there are maggots in it or something.”
“If there are maggots in the food, you will be too busy scraping me off the ceiling to talk at all.”
The food doesn’t have maggots in it. It’s just your basic cafeteria food, not particularly appetizing, but edible. Ethan seems happy enough with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that’s offered as an alternative to anyone who doesn’t want the main course of fish and rice. Ethan tells David, me, the two cafeteria servers, Sammy (who’s keeping a watchful eye on everything), and every one of his friends who’ll listen that he doesn’t like fish and doesn’t believe that anyone else really likes it either.
Once he’s gotten his sandwich, he points to a group of kids at a table. “I sit there. Between Julia and Nicholas.”
“Go ahead and join them,” David says. “We’ll go get lunch and come back after, okay?”
“Okay,” Ethan says, and walks off.
“Maybe I should say something to Sammy now about the bunk beds,” David says.
I tug on his arm. “I’m starving. Can’t we eat first? You can go on the attack later.”
“I’m not going to go on the attack.”
“Still . . . food first.”
In the car, I Google restaurants, and we locate a Subway just a couple of miles from the school. After we get our food and sit down, I tear savagely into my sub—I really am starving.
When I look up, David isn’t eating. Just sitting there, staring at the table.
“You okay?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He sinks his face into his hands. “I feel all messed up inside.”
“Why? Ethan seems okay, doesn’t he? Maybe there are some minor issues . . . but the school’s a lot better than I expected.”
“I know,” he says with a small groan. “I thought so too.”
“Then what? What’s wrong?”
He drops his hands. “I honestly don’t know! I mean, I’ve spent the last month picturing the worst, and it’s not that bad, and I should be happy about that. So why do I feel like shit?” He reaches for his sandwich and unwraps it slowly, then takes a bite without any real interest or appetite.
“Maybe because it’s all anticlimactic,” I say. “Ethan doesn’t need to be rescued. At least not immediately.”
“That should be a good thing.”
“It should. But we’ve both been thinking about him so much—especially you—and wondering what would happen when we came. And there’s kind of nothing for us to do. For now, anyway.”
“Maybe.” We eat in silence for a minute. Then David says, “I thought he’d be happier to see us.”
“He was totally happy to see you!”
“Not really. I mean, yeah, he thought it was nice I came, but it wasn’t like he was sitting around waiting for me or anything.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Years and years of us always being together, with me doing everything I could to . . . you know . . . help him. And then he goes away, and he’s totally fine.” He gives a strangled, slightly choked laugh. “Oh, God. Is that my problem? That I’m so selfish I want him to be miserable without me? Am I that big a wack job?” He drops the rest of his sub on its paper wrapping.
“Well, yeah,” I say. “But not for that reason. You don’t want him to be miserable. It’s just . . . you were planning not to go away to college because he might need you, right? And then he’s the one who goes off to school, and he doesn’t even seem to miss you. But I bet he does miss you. It’s just that he’s like Ivy—neither of them is very good at saying what other people need to hear.”
“But it’s more than just what he says. I honestly think I miss him more than he misses me.”
“That’s because you took care of him. And he’s still basically being taken care of, but you don’t have anyone to take care of. So you lost more than he did.” I nudge his hand with mine. “I’m willing to be taken care of, by the way, if you need someone to fill that void. I could use a little more nurturing in my life.”
“I’ll try,” he says. “But I’m not all that great at being warm and fuzzy.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I think maybe you’re being sarcastic,” he says, exactly the way Ethan would say it, and I laugh.
“You need to be proud he’s doing so well,” I say. “It’s all because of you.”
“So basically you’re saying I should let my baby bird leave the nest?”
“Exactly. Now eat your sub so you can regurgitate it for him when we get back.”
The afternoon goes better than the morning did, mostly because David stops looking
for things to criticize.
Sammy suggests that Ethan show us the “movie studio,” which turns out to be a corner of the arts and crafts building with a green screen and a digital camera on a tripod. Ethan tells us he’s going to make a movie and that Julia will star in it.
“Maybe also Nicholas,” he says. “But I’m not sure about that.”
David corners Sammy about the “bunk bed situation,” as he calls it, and Sammy explains that they didn’t want to move any of the other boys too soon after Ethan’s arrival—“Transitions are hard for them, and we didn’t want them to associate Ethan with something negative”—but that eventually they’ll have the bottom and top sleepers switch places. “I promise you it will be fair and even in the long run.”
David nods and doesn’t bring up the dresser drawers. Which I take as a personal triumph.
At the end of the afternoon, as we’re getting ready to go, Ethan asks us when we’re planning to come back for another visit.
“Whatever you think,” David says. “Do you want us to come back soon?”
“Yes,” Ethan says. “But you don’t have to come for so long. I didn’t get to do some stuff with my friends today that I wanted to do. But it’s okay. I’m still glad you came.”
“We’ll come for a shorter visit next time.”
“Then come back soon. For just a little while.”
“You got it,” David says, and the brothers embrace briefly. I give Ethan a hug too and say goodbye.
“Hey,” I say to David as we continue on to the car, “you know what I just realized?”
“What?”
“Ivy turns twenty-one in a month. If she comes with us to visit Ethan after that, they’ll have to let us take him off campus!”
“Wait,” he says, halting. “That’s, like, totally brilliant.”
“I know, right?”
“You may actually deserve to be my girlfriend.”
“Jerk,” I say.
“Blonde,” he says.
On the drive back, he holds my hand tightly whenever he doesn’t need his hand to steer. “Thank you for coming with me,” he says when we’re close to home.
“You’re welcome.”
“And for keeping me from making a mess of everything.”
“It’s a full-time job.”
“Then why do it?”
“I don’t know. I must like something about you.”
“Well, don’t stop.”
“I won’t.” I hesitate and then say, “That place . . .”
“What?”
“It was pretty nice. Maybe your folks knew what they were doing.”
“They just got lucky.”
“Maybe.” His father had said they’d chosen carefully. I’d dismissed that as the kind of thing he would say whether it was true or not. But maybe he’d meant it. “It’s good, is all.”
“Yeah.” There’s a moment of silence. “Guess I should start looking at colleges,” he says abruptly.
“Yeah—you can go anywhere now.”
“I’d still like to be within driving distance of that place so I can visit Ethan a lot and be there if anything goes seriously wrong.”
“I’ll look nearby too. Maybe we can both end up near our siblings and—” I stop.
“And?”
“I don’t want to presume.”
“If you think I don’t want us to be near each other next year—”
“Then what?”
“Then I take back calling you brilliant.”
“Ugh,” I say.
“What?”
“This whole liking each other thing. It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s totally outside my comfort zone.”
“We could stop. You could crawl back into your hole—”
“And abandon you to a meaningless life of high social status and handsome boyfriends?” He shakes his head. “I’d never be that cruel to you.”
“Then I guess we’ll just keep going on like this.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It sucks but it’s the right thing to do.”
Thirty-Nine
I POST A PHOTO of the two of us on Instagram, which David says is the “most basic thing” I’ve ever done. “The fact that I’m dating someone who even has an Instagram account—”
“We can’t all be antisocial psychopaths,” I respond sweetly.
Unfortunately, it’s a sentiment shared by many of my friends.
“No one likes him,” Sarah tells me bluntly one day. “It’s not like we’re not trying. But he says stuff like that thing today, and you have to admit, it’s just rude.”
I know what she’s referring to. I’d made David sit with me and my friends at lunch. People were having a lively debate about the meaning and the usage of the word feminism, and David brought the entire conversation to an abrupt halt by saying, “A feminist is someone who believes in equal rights for women, so you’re either a feminist or you’re an idiot.”
“He was kind of right,” I point out.
“It’s not what he says, it’s how he says it. Can’t you get him to at least pretend not to think that everyone else is a moron?”
“Believe me, if I could, I would.”
“Don’t get mad at me for asking this, but why do you like him? I mean, I know you guys have the autistic sibling thing in common, but that can’t be the whole story.”
“It’s not.” I want to explain, but it’s not easy. “You know that viral video that everyone was into a few years ago? About the lion who gets reunited with the guy who raised him as a cub? And the lion, like, licks him and hugs him and plays with him? And it’s amazing?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You saying David’s a lion?”
“It’s just . . . it’s easy to get a dog to love you. But it’s a lot harder—and cooler—to get a lion to. Especially if you’re the only person he doesn’t attack.”
“I hope there’s a sexual metaphor somewhere in this whole lion thing,” Sarah says. “Because, honestly, that’s the only reason that would actually make sense to me.”
“I don’t think either of us has a problem with you leaping to that assumption,” I say with an exaggerated wink.
“Seriously,” she says. “Calling him a lion . . . I have issues with this.”
“It’s just a metaphor.”
“I know. But I don’t want you to be involved with someone who could hurt you.”
“He wouldn’t. Not ever. He thinks the world is a shitty place, but he also thinks I’m the best thing in it. Well, me and his brother.”
“Great,” she says. “Now you’re making me jealous. I’m jealous of your relationship with David Fields. Could I be a bigger loser?”
“I’m not even telling you the best parts.”
“Good,” she says. “Spare me.”
There really is a lot more I could tell her. Like how I admire the way David says whatever he wants to without worrying about offending people—I wish I could be more like that. And how I know that his impatience with stupidity would never turn into anger against me or into actual cruelty against anyone—because, deep down, he just wants to defend the weak and helpless and disenfranchised, and it’s his fears for them that make him so frustrated and easily annoyed with how wrong people can be.
And how he treats my sister like a human being. Not like a pet, not like an idiot, not like an alien. He includes her, talks to her, listens to her, and occasionally gets irritated with her.
And how when he and I are alone together, his desire for me makes my knees weak and my pulse race. And how I like being the first girl he’s ever gotten this close to, ever even kissed.
How all he wants when we’re alone in the dark is to please me—to spark my desire until it equals his. I enjoy making him work for it, sometimes even tease and torture him until he’s a little desperate, but the truth is . . . the desire’s there already. I adore his slim, strong body, his slender hands, his dark eyes, his neat ears, his warm nec
k. All of him, in fact.
I admired and enjoyed James’s body when we were going out, the way you would a work of art that you’ve been given permission to touch, but with David, it’s not like that. He’s not a piece of sculpture. He’s flesh and blood and bone and skin and everything that’s warm and real and passionate.
Forty
MR. AND MRS. FIELDS visit Ethan and discover that we went to the school without their permission. They’re not as pissed as I thought they might be, maybe because Ethan seems fine and David didn’t try to kidnap him or anything.
Mrs. Fields complains that the car trip was too hard on the baby, who apparently screamed the whole way there and back. Mr. Fields says they’ll leave him with a babysitter the next time they go, but Mrs. Fields is horrified by that idea—the school is too far away, and “if Caleb needed me while we were gone, I’d never forgive myself.” She doesn’t exactly refuse to go back, but she rejects any possible solution, and ultimately the job of visiting Ethan falls mostly to David.
I’m convinced that both Mr. and Mrs. Fields have hated me ever since we argued with them about sending Ethan away. They’re pretty cold whenever I come by their house and, no matter how charming I try to be, they never fuss over me or invite me to dinner the way James’s parents always did.
David doesn’t care. “It’s not like their opinion matters to me. In fact, if they approved of you, I’d be worried.”
“I know, but I like people to like me.”
“It’s your biggest flaw,” he says, and I don’t think he’s joking.
I don’t care. I want to be able to go to his house and feel comfortable and welcome.
There is one member of the family who hasn’t made up his mind about me, so I throw myself into entertaining the baby every time I go over. I squeeze his chubby little legs and play peekaboo and repeat the la-la sounds he makes and bring him stuffed animals to chew on. Mrs. Fields seems a little uneasy with all this enthusiasm at first, but since she believes her baby is irresistible, she doesn’t actually question my sincerity. When Caleb laughs and gurgles at me, she starts meting out a few thin, begrudging smiles of her own.