Things I Should Have Known

  “We used to have a dog,” she says, and at first I think she’s making a joke but then I realize she’s serious.

  Fifteen

  I WALK JAMES to his practice on Monday afternoon and then head back to my locker, where someone calls my name. I look up. It’s David. I can’t tell if he was waiting for me or just happened to spot me.

  “Hey,” I say. “What’s up?”

  “Hold on a sec.” He pulls out his phone and sends a text. It doesn’t take long, but still . . . it’s pretty rude, given the fact he flagged me down. “Sorry.” He pockets his phone. “I wanted to ask you about this weekend.”

  “Wait,” I say, because now I’ve gotten a text and I figure I might as well be as rude as he was about it.

  I look at my phone and laugh out loud—​the text is from him.

  More used to texting you than talking to you

  I text back. yeah me too. should we keep going like this?

  Nah

  We look up at the same time. He says, “Ivy invited Ethan to go to a movie next weekend.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s really excited about it. He’s watched a ton of trailers. You should have heard him trying to decide which movie Ivy would like best . . .” He shakes his head. “Actually, it’s probably good you didn’t hear him. It was kind of endless. And loud.”

  “Our bowling friends wouldn’t have approved.”

  “They don’t approve of Ethan’s existence,” he says bitterly. “Assholes.”

  “So . . . maybe it was a mistake to invite them to go to the movie with us?”

  He flashes a brief reluctant smile. Which feels like a minor victory.

  “Anyway,” he says, “does Ivy want you to stay this time?”

  “I’m hoping not. At some point she’s got to start having her own social life.”

  “Right,” he says. “And leave you free to enjoy yours.”

  “I don’t mind coming along.”

  “Even if you have to hang out with the most hated member of your class?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I say. “No one cares enough about you to hate you.”

  Another begrudging smile. “Listen to you,” he says, almost admiringly. “And you’re supposed to be so nice.”

  “I am nice. You bring out the worst in people.”

  “Maybe I just free people up to say what they really want. Don’t you get tired of being so . . . you know . . . sweet and pretty all the time?”

  “Aw.” I bat my eyelashes. “He thinks I’m pretty.”

  “That wasn’t my point.”

  “So you don’t think I’m pretty?”

  I’m trying to torture him a little, but he just shrugs. “I couldn’t possibly think you’re as attractive as you think you are.”

  “It is a high bar,” I agree cheerfully. “So what were you planning to do about the movie?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s kind of a tricky situation with Ethan.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “When things are going fine, he’s great. But when he gets upset . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. Ivy’s the same way.”

  “But does she run? Ethan’s a runner.”

  “As in track and field?”

  “As in running away. If he gets overwhelmed, he just . . . takes off. Used to happen all the time when he was little. He’d slip out a door when no one was looking, and we’d have to hunt him down. A couple of times, we couldn’t find him and had to call the police. At first, it was mostly from school, but after my mother left and my dad got remarried, he started to run away from home too. Freaked out our stepmother so much, she started talking about how maybe he needed to be put somewhere ‘safe.’”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Some kind of special needs institution, I guess.”

  “Oh, God. That’s horrible.”

  “I know. I’ve warned him he has to stop with the running away, but it’s not like he’s thinking rationally when he does it. Or thinking at all, really. He did it once last year, but I found him so quickly they never even knew about it.”

  “What upset him?”

  He sighs. “So . . . the fourth Bourne movie was on TV—​the one that Matt Damon wasn’t in . . .”

  “And?”

  “And he was upset they’d used a different actor. He liked the first three a lot.” He glances at me sideways. “It’s okay to laugh. I think it’s funny too.”

  “It’s kind of sweet . . . Shows he’s loyal. How’d you find him?”

  “He went to the little supermarket on Montana Avenue. It was hot out, and he was thirsty and wanted something to drink. They know us there and could tell something was wrong, so they used his phone to track me down.”

  “But he likes going out with Ivy. He wouldn’t run away on a date, would he?”

  “Probably not.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and stands up straight. “But he’s really invested in things going well—​you saw him with the bowling, how upset he got when we wanted to end early. He wants everything to go exactly the right way, and if something went wrong . . .”

  “Got it.” Another thought occurs to me. “What about when he’s at school? He must get upset there now and then.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t get on or off that campus without going through security.”

  “Oh, good point.”

  “And when he’s not in school, I’m pretty much with him.”

  No wonder David has no social life. He can’t really go to parties and stuff dragging an autistic brother with him. Well, he could—​and people would probably be nice about it—​but someone as proud as he is probably wouldn’t want to have to ask if it’s all right or risk having people feel sorry for him. It also explains why he doesn’t play any sports or do any extracurriculars.

  “You’re a good brother,” I say.

  “I make up for that by being a horrible human being in every other way.”

  I laugh.

  “Feel free to argue the point,” he says. “Anyway, this Ivy thing . . .”

  “Yeah?” I adjust my backpack on my shoulder and glance at my watch. The bus leaves in two minutes. I’m going to have to make a run for it soon. “What about it?”

  “It could be amazing for him. And for me. If they really like each other and she becomes someone he can trust . . .” He stops, then says, “I mean, I don’t want to put too much pressure on the whole thing . . .”

  “No, it’s okay—​I feel the same way. There’s freedom for both of us if this thing works out.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’m going to hang out at the movie on Saturday, and I wouldn’t mind some company.”

  “All right. I’ll see whether or not Ivy wants me there.” I nod toward the front of the school. “I’m going to try to make the bus.”

  “Good luck,” he says, and is gone before I can say goodbye, like he needs to be the one who walks away, not the one who gets walked away from.

  The bus is already pulling away from the curb. I run toward it, shouting, and either the driver doesn’t see me or she’s kind of a jerk, because she doesn’t stop.

  My backpack’s super heavy and the sun is hot, so I decide to just stay at school, do my homework in the library, and hope James will be in the mood to give me a lift after practice. If not, I can take the late bus.

  He responds to my texts on his way into the shower to say that he can drop me off but can’t stay at my house—​he has two tests tomorrow, and he needs to study.

  “I can’t help feeling that you only love me for my car,” he says when we meet up in the parking lot after he’s clean and ready to go.

  “Not true!” I say. “I also love you for your big house and the nice meals you buy me.”

  “Want to guess what I love you for?”

  “My rapier wit?”

  “Definitely not that,” he says, and I stick my tongue out at him. “Right,” he says, and leans over and catches my tongue between his lips.

 
I’m so glad I have a boyfriend who’s fun and happy and good-natured and successful. The way James floats through the world—​that’s how life should be. Easy. Painless. When I’m with him, it feels like maybe that could be my life too.

  Sixteen

  IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT, and I’m studying my sister’s face from across the kitchen table.

  I feel like I haven’t really looked at her in years. I think of her as being blond, but her hair has darkened over time and always hangs, lank and limp, in that eternal unflattering ponytail. Her face is so pale that you can see thin blue veins under her eyes. She almost never goes outside, hates the sun, hates exertion.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asks, looking up from her iPad. “Are you mad?”

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “I don’t know,” she says seriously. “Sometimes people just are.”

  It breaks my heart how confused she can be about what people are thinking and how anxious that makes her. I shake my head. “I was just thinking we should have a girls’ beauty night—​paint our nails, highlight our hair, that kind of thing. What do you think?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Come on! Don’t you want to know what you’d look like with lighter hair?”

  “You mean like Diana’s hair?”

  “Sure. Or like mine. It just takes a few minutes. I’ll do all the work, and if you don’t like it, you don’t ever have to do it again.”

  “Okay,” she says, and stands up. “Let’s do it.”

  “Hold on—​I have to run to the drugstore and buy the stuff first.”

  She instantly plops back down on the chair. “Can you get some potato chips?”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “Junk food is a necessary part of a girls’ beauty night.”

  I have to ask Mom for the car keys again. I wish I had my own car. I really have to get a job. If I start working now and work all through the summer and save every dime, maybe I’ll be able to afford my own (old, used, beat-up, semidisgusting wreck of a) car by next fall.

  That’s a lot of ifs and maybes. And until then, I’m stuck asking for Mom’s keys.

  Mom and Ron are sitting close together on the family room sofa, drinking martinis and watching some reality show. We ate dinner earlier—​cheese pizza Mom had picked up on her way home from Ivy’s school and reheated unevenly so the edges were burned and the cheese was cold. She may be the worst cook ever—​I mean, who ruins pizza?

  Ron’s slung his thick leg over her knees. It’s made his sweatpants ride up at the ankle, and I can see his brown leg hair. Ugh. Nauseating.

  I say, “Can I borrow the car? I need to make a drugstore run.”

  Ron looks up. “I could use a few things myself.”

  “Text me a list.”

  “You know what?” He lifts his leg off of Mom’s lap and climbs to his feet. “I’ll just go with you.”

  Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap. “I don’t mind getting your stuff,” I say. “Really. It’s no problem.”

  “It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  There’s no getting out of this.

  He insists on driving, which freaks me out since his breath smells like alcohol. But he drives steadily enough.

  A few minutes in, he clears his throat. “You’re quiet this evening, Chloe.”

  “Long week.”

  “Two words! I got two words out of her! Victory is mine!” He pumps his fist in the air, taking his eyes off the road long enough to admire his own biceps muscle. “Just teasing. So what made this week particularly long? Seemed like the usual Monday through Friday kind of thing to me.”

  Bleah. Apparently we have to have a conversation.

  “Oh, you know,” I say. “Junior year and all.” Please let that be enough.

  It’s not. “I’ll bet,” he says. “Lots of pressure about college, right?”

  I make a noncommittal sound.

  “I will say I’m always impressed by your grades. You’re lucky you’re naturally smart. School was tough for me.”

  “Yeah?” I stare out my window so I don’t have to look at the dyed wings of brown hair flying back from his widening temples.

  “Today they’d diagnose me with a learning disorder, and I’d get help,” he says. “But back then they just said you were stupid if you couldn’t learn to read.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  “I survived. I’m a survivor, Chloe.”

  Oh, great. Now the Destiny’s Child song is earworming in my head.

  “I want you and Ivy to be survivors too. That’s why I push you both the way I do. For your sake. Your mom doesn’t like to make demands on you—​she loves you too much—​so it’s up to me to teach you the value of hard work and discipline and self-control.”

  “Mom and Dad taught us plenty,” I say tightly.

  “Of course they did! You’ve had great parents. The best. But I like to think that I bring something new to the table.”

  I don’t say anything, and his words linger, wither, then die in the silence.

  Ivy has replaced Ron at Mom’s side on the sofa. I drop bags of chips and M&M’s on the coffee table in front of them and hold up the highlighting kits I bought.

  “Get ready for beauty, Ives! We are going to look so gorgeous that every guy will fall in love with us and every girl will hate our guts.”

  “Why will they hate us?” Ivy asks, snatching up and ripping open the bag of chips.

  Ron says from behind me, “Go easy on the junk food, Ivy.”

  “Okay.” She crunches a chip in her mouth. “Why do girls hate girls who are beautiful?”

  “They don’t.” Mom shoots me an exasperated look. “I don’t know why Chloe said that. It’s a sexist stereotype that women will fight each other for male attention, but women can and should support one another.”

  “Will other girls like me less if I use this?” Ivy asks, pointing at the highlighting kit.

  “Of course not,” I say. “All it does is make your hair lighter. Come on. Let’s go do it in the bathroom.”

  She hesitates for a moment, then slowly follows me upstairs, clutching the chips bag to her chest the whole way.

  In the bathroom, I try to brush out her hair, but there are a ton of tangles, and the brush keeps getting stuck.

  “Ow!” she says, and pushes my hand away. “I changed my mind! I don’t want to do this.”

  “I’m almost done. Do you ever brush your hair?”

  “Yes, every day!”

  She must just smooth the brush over the top before dragging it into a ponytail. There’s no way she’s really getting out the snarls on a daily basis. The mats feel like they’ve been months in the making.

  I try again.

  “Chloe, stop!” She clutches at her head.

  “Just relax.” I try to ignore all her moans and complaints, but I’m sweating and tense by the time I can actually get a brush clear through it.

  I mix up the highlighting solution and start painting it on strands of her hair and tucking them into little tin foil packets. It would be fun if Ivy were into it, but she’s tense as she watches in the mirror, her face creased with anxiety, her lower lip tucked under her upper teeth. She keeps reaching up to touch her head.

  “It’s itchy!” she says. “And it smells bad, and it hurts.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I highlight my hair all the time. And it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “Well, it hurts me.”

  “Whatever. I’m almost done anyway.” I speed-paint a few more strands, just to keep the sides even, and then tell her to let it sit while I do my own color.

  It takes me two seconds to brush out my own hair: it’s layered, unlike Ivy’s, which Mom simply hacks a few inches off of every once in a while. I can’t afford an expensive haircutter, so I go to one of the cheap chains and micromanage the whole thing, telling the cutter exactly how I want every strand cut. I’ve been highlighting it sin
ce eighth grade—​first just putting lemon on it and sitting in the sun and eventually upping my game to use the at-home kits.

  A while later, after I’ve rinsed and combed us both out, we stand in front of the mirror side by side.

  “It doesn’t look that different,” Ivy says, suspiciously eyeing her own reflection.

  “That’s because it’s still wet. It’ll lighten as it dries. Can I cut your hair just a little bit? To give it a better shape?”

  She backs away. “It will hurt even more.”

  “Haircuts don’t hurt.”

  “If you pull, they do.”

  “I won’t pull. Come on. You need a new look. Enough with the ponytails.”

  “I like ponytails.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be able to wear it down too? And have it look nice?”

  “I feel like—” She stops, her hand flailing around. Sometimes the words don’t come easily for her.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you don’t like what I am.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I turn so I can look at the real her, not just the reflection. “This isn’t about changing you, Ives. I just thought you’d have fun experimenting with being a little glamorous. That’s all, I swear.”

  She thinks for a moment, her eyes cast down, searching out and consulting an invisible advisor on the floor. She looks up again. “Okay. You can cut my hair.”

  “You sure? I don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay.” She pats me on the shoulder. “I know you want to.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I kind of really do.”

  “Holy cow,” Mom says, coming into our room later to check out the results. (That’s how my mother curses—​she grew up in the Midwest.) “Your hair is lighter than ever, Chloe. You’re heading into platinum territory.”

  “I like it,” I say defensively, but she’s already turned her attention to Ivy.

  “Oh, baby! Your hair looks beautiful! Is it shorter too?”

  “I let Chloe cut it.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Mom studies us. “You guys almost look like twins now.”

  “I don’t think I look like Chloe,” Ivy says. “She’s thinner, and her hair is whiter than mine.”