When I don’t think too hard about things, it’s good between Sam and me.
Great, actually.
In so many ways, he brings out the best in me.
We’d only been hooking up a few weeks when I received five straight college rejections. Honestly, I wasn’t shocked. My transcripts had improved in Brockport, but on the days I’d shown up at my four previous high schools, I was generally smoking weed, skipping class, or chasing some guy. If anyone lectured me about academics, I’d tell them exactly where they could put their number-two pencil.
But then after my royal flush of rejection letters, Boston University wait-listed me. That evening Sam helped me compose a response, thanking them for reconsidering me and explaining how I was born to a teenage mom and had moved all over the country. Sam encouraged me to tell them that since arriving in Brockport, I’d starred in two musicals and one summer production at the college, and if I was accepted, I was going to be all over the Stage Troupe, which is this student-run theater group at BU. It was weird writing this stuff, but Sam insisted I send out the letter. Three weeks later I got a call from an admissions officer inviting me into their freshman class.
As the S’s and T’s receive their diplomas, I glance into the bleachers again. Still no Aimee. At this point I’ve chewed off all my nails. I wish I had my phone because I’d send her a quick text message, but there are no pockets in my gown and I couldn’t exactly carry it in my hand during the procession.
“Do you know what time it is?” I whisper to the guy on my left.
He pushes up his sleeve. “Two fifteen.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Aimee should be here by now. Even if her plane landed late, she’d still have had time to make the thirty-minute drive into Brockport.
The principal instructs the U’s, V’s, and W’s to line up. I adjust my cap and take one more look into the stands. Aimee’s seat is still empty. As I step onto the stage, receive my diploma, and shake the superintendent’s hand, I’m doing everything I can to swallow back the tears.
On the way back to my seat, I pass Sam’s row. I can feel him smiling at me, but I make a serious effort to stare straight ahead.
When I think too hard about things, it’s difficult between Sam and me.
Awful, actually.
In so many ways, he brings out the worst in me.
We’ll be having a perfectly fine evening, like he’ll meet me at the end of my Pizza Hut shift and we’ll be munching bread sticks in the parking lot and then, out of nowhere, he’ll bring up the whole relationship thing. I’ll tell him if he’s looking for a girlfriend, he’s come to the wrong place. He’ll say that it’s just about letting myself love. And when he uses that word, I’ll storm away and he’ll call my phone and I won’t answer and he’ll call again and I won’t answer and, finally, around midnight I’ll text him to apologize and we’ll return to hanging out and having fun and carefully avoiding certain conversations.
Aimee doesn’t arrive in time to see me receive the Barker Weill Drama Award, and she doesn’t arrive in time for the cap tossing, and as we’re all marching out, I finally have to accept the fact that she hasn’t arrived in time for any part of the ceremony.
As all the graduates are reuniting with their families, I can’t find my grandparents, which is unfortunate because in that brief second that I’m standing by myself, I’m assaulted by Sam’s mom’s camera.
“Great picture!” she squeals. “I’ll definitely put this one in Sam’s senior-year scrapbook.”
There’s something about Sam’s mom that annoys the hell out of me. Partially, it’s her soccer-mom bob and closet full of machine-washables, as if she’s never accepted the fact that she no longer has toddlers smearing applesauce on her clothing. Also, she knows all of Sam’s and his sister’s friends and always tries to keep tabs on who is hooking up with whom, and why someone broke up and what the big fight was about.
“Where’s your mother?” Sam’s mom asks me. “I’m dying to meet her.”
Damn it, Sam. I told him Aimee was coming, but I didn’t expect him to blab it to the entire world. Just then Sam and his dad show up. I say hi to Sam’s dad and shoot a look at Sam.
“What?” he asks.
Sam’s mom is watching us, so I shrug dismissively.
“Is your mom around?” Sam asks.
I’m still glaring at him when my grandparents emerge from the crowd. I can tell by the smiles plastered on their faces that they’re working overtime at plastering. They hug me tight and gush about the Barker Weill Drama Award and how I strode so confidently across the stage.
Once I wriggle free, my grandpa clears his throat. “We just stepped outside to call Aimee. . . .”
“V’s mother?” Sam’s mom asks. “Where is she?”
“Something came up with her boyfriend,” my grandma says. “He went back to the hospital in the middle of the night. It sounds like the kidney stone was causing a lot of pain and —”
“A kidney stone!” Sam’s mom gasps. “How awful. That’s supposed to be the worst.”
“Aimee’s still in San Antonio?” I whisper to my grandma.
“I’m so sorry,” she says quietly.
For this horribly long moment, everyone stares at me. My cheeks are searing and my throat is tight, and even though I’m surrounded by the celebratory buzzing of graduates, the only thing I can hear is a voice in my head saying, I can’t believe you thought that this time things would be different.
Sam walks me to my car. The plan is that I’m meeting my grandparents at the Red Bird, then heading over to the Almonds’ for a barbecue, then going to a party with Sam and his sister, Rachel, and maybe one of her friends.
As Sam and I head out of the rink, we dodge hordes of graduates posing for pictures with their families. Neither of us comment as we pass three sets of mothers and daughters pressing their cheeks together, but by the fourth Sam says, “I didn’t know your mom had a boyfriend.”
“Yeah.”
Sam is watching me, so I fixate my attention on my gown swishing around my calves, my fingers gripping my diploma, my new sandals rubbing the skin off my toes.
“How long have they been together?”
“I’m not sure.” I pause. “Maybe since January?”
Sam doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by the way he’s edging closer that he wants to take my hand. I’ve always drawn the line on that. Kissing in public is one thing. It means you’re hot for each other. But hand-holding is in another league. It means couple. It means commitment. It means I’d better fill up my tank because I’m going to drive a hundred miles in the opposite direction.
“What’s his name?” Sam asks.
Why can’t he quit it with the questions? Does he want me to admit I haven’t memorized the names of all of Aimee’s boyfriends? She only calls this one the Cowboy. Besides, there have been so many over the years that at some point I stopped wasting the brain cells.
After a moment I say, “I haven’t met him, so . . .”
Sam gestures toward the rink. “Are you upset?”
“Not really.”
“You’re not upset your mom didn’t make it to graduation?”
I sigh heavily and flip my hair over my shoulders. “Can we not talk about this anymore?”
As Sam and I walk through the heavy glass doors, he says, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Yeah,” I snap. “No big deal.”
Sam and I head across the parking lot. It’s still drizzling out, and I can’t help thinking that there’s something about drizzle that makes me incredibly sad. It’s so quiet you hardly know it’s there until you realize your clothes are wet and you’ve been getting rained on all along. Also, the earthy odors are so strong — steamy pavement and mowed grass and wilted dandelions. I’m not sure why those smells are heartbreaking, but they just are.
Sam and I arrive at my car. It’s a used black Volkswagen that my grandparents helped me buy last fall. I had to be at
graduation early, so I drove myself over here, pried my key loose from the chain, and, for lack of a more modest crevice, slipped it into my bra.
“What you just said about it not being a big deal,” Sam says. “You haven’t seen your mom since she moved to Costa Rica, right? How long ago was that?”
My hands are trembling. I’m having a hard time fitting the key into the lock.
“I think it’s more of a big deal than you’re letting on,” Sam says. “I think you should call your mom and tell her you’re upset.”
“Sam.” I clench my teeth. “I seriously don’t want to talk about this.”
I open the car door, lean in, and toss my diploma onto the passenger seat. As I do, I spot my phone resting in the drink holder. I quickly check for messages from Aimee. Nothing.
I don’t exactly want Sam to know I was checking, so I drop my phone onto the seat, take a few shallow breaths, and trace my fingers over Demon Puck. That’s what Sam always calls it. Basically, a few weeks after Amos brought me that hockey puck, I painted a smiley face on it and superglued it to my dashboard. Sam immediately dubbed it Demon Puck because wherever you’re sitting in the car, its eyes are always following you.
When I emerge from the car, Sam has his hands clasped behind his neck and he’s looking up at the overcast sky. He’s frowning and the rain is wetting his cheeks. I lean against the hood, and he positions himself across from me. I think he’s about to kiss me, but instead he studies my face, like he’s searching for answers. I don’t happen to have any, so I stare back at him. He reaches over to touch the scar on my forehead, which is still purplish and a little tender, but then pauses and lowers his hand.
I glance down at his sneakers, my sandals, the oil shimmering in the puddles. I think about how much I want him to leave me alone right now, stop making me feel bad I’m not whatever perfect girlfriend he wants me to be.
“I guess I’ll see you at your barbecue,” I say.
“Or maybe we should meet in St. Louis?” he asks, grinning.
I have to smile. That’s this dumb joke we have, but even so, it does the trick. We lean in for a kiss and it’s soft and warm, and I instantly take back everything I thought about wanting him to leave me alone. Now I’m wishing we could pull apart our slippery blue gowns, press our bodies together, and ultimately end up somewhere horizontal. Preferably a bed, but I’d settle for a backseat.
I can tell Sam feels it, too. He wraps his arms around me, and we stay like that for a while, hugging and kissing and getting drizzled on. Then I hop into my car before either of us can do anything to screw it up.
Sam has no idea what he’s saying when he tells me I should call my mom and let her have it. Granted, I’ve never given him much on Aimee, only that we ping-ponged from coast to coast until she sent me to live with my grandparents because she was moving to Costa Rica.
But I’ve never told him what happened in Seattle or Phoenix or Philadelphia or Burlington or even Eugene. And I definitely haven’t told him about San Diego, which is where I lived before Brockport, because that would require talking about Michael and, so far, I haven’t told anyone about Michael.
Michael was Aimee’s boyfriend in San Diego. I know I said most of her boyfriends were nameless crotch-scratchers, but Michael was different. We’d only been living in San Diego for three weeks when they started dating. Usually, when Aimee landed a new guy, I wouldn’t meet him until that morning-after moment in the kitchen or, worse, the day we showed up at his house with a U-Haul. But before Michael even visited our apartment, he insisted on getting together with me in a neutral spot. I remember it perfectly because some kids from school had finally asked me to hang out, but no, Aimee insisted on dragging me to some beach to meet some guy and walk some beagle.
My first impression of Michael was “Huh?” I know it sounds shallow, but according to the laws of the dating universe, Aimee and Michael were a total mismatch. It’s hard to rate my mom’s attractiveness except to say that she’s tall and skinny and has long, blond hair and people are always telling her she could be a model. Michael was short and bald with a honker nose. Plus, his dog’s name was Mama, which made me wonder about his lingering parental issues.
But Michael turned out to be hilarious. He was a sitcom writer who did stand-up comedy on the side. Plus, he actually took the time to get to know me. All through June and July, if Aimee was working a double shift, he’d take me out to dinner or we’d bring Mama to the beach and he’d ask me about my life or what I thought of various jokes, and he’d actually listen if I told him something sounded dumb. Plus, he couldn’t go ten minutes without a Starbucks, so he and I bonded over our mutual caffeine addictions.
In early August Aimee said we were moving into Michael’s house. Michael let me pick a color for the guest room, and he and I spent a weekend chugging iced lattes and rolling on the paint. All through that fall, we watched the same shows and ranked the taco shops in the neighborhood and took Mama to the beach. Sometimes Aimee would joke that she was the third wheel, but mostly we were all having a good time together.
Around Thanksgiving Aimee stayed out late two nights in a row. Through December she got calls on her cell phone and dashed into the backyard to answer them. I sensed something was up, but I kept hoping if I didn’t say anything, it would go away.
Right after New Year’s, Michael flew to Vancouver for three weeks to film a made-for-TV movie. The day after he left, Aimee came home with a sunburn when she was supposedly at work all afternoon. As soon as I saw that, I cornered her in the kitchen and told her she’d better not hurt Michael. She acted all innocent, but the following week, she confessed to me that she’d fallen for a twenty-two-year-old surfer she met on Black’s Beach. I started yelling and saying how I had no respect for her and she was a horrible person and I couldn’t believe she cheated on Michael like that.
The next morning Aimee told me that she and the surfer were moving to Costa Rica and I was being sent to live with my grandparents. I never even got to say good-bye to Michael because, nine days later, Aimee put me on a plane to Brockport. After that I didn’t hear from her for almost a month. And here it is, a year and a half later, and she still hasn’t shown up.
When I arrive at the Red Bird, the hostess chirps, “Valentine, party of three that used to be party of four?”
I grunt and she leads me to my grandparents’ table. As soon as I sit down, they’re both suspiciously upbeat. They pour me a glass of iced tea and tell me how they’ve ordered an assortment of my favorite baked goods and they’re so proud of me and I looked so beautiful in that cap and gown, and they’re buttering me up so much I’m counting the seconds until they begin fishing for my innermost feelings.
I’ve just bit into a mixed-berry scone when my grandpa runs his hands through his gray hair and says, “How are you holding up?”
My grandma sighs heavily, all concerned and sympathetic.
It’s lucky my mouth is stuffed because I have the entire chew and swallow to formulate a response other than: How the FUCK do you think I’m holding up? I haven’t seen my mom in eighteen months, and she canceled on me yet again because some random guy has a kidney stone and it’s suddenly more important than her own daughter?
Instead, I just shrug.
“You’re really okay, honey?” my grandma says as she reaches over and clasps my hands.
“I know how much you were looking forward to seeing Aimee,” my grandpa adds.
I wriggle my fingers loose and attempt to swallow back the lump in my throat. Seriously, what do they want me to say? Do they want me to tell them how, in the past few months, I’ve been having a hard time remembering what my mom looks like? It’s little things you can’t see in a picture, like how one of her eyelids droops when she’s tired or that her elbows are so damn bony. Do I tell them I couldn’t fall asleep last night because I kept envisioning how my mom would hug me close and then, still holding my hands, step back and say how great I looked, so beautiful, so grown-up?
My
grandparents are still waiting for me to participate in their group-therapy session when my phone rings. I grab it off the table and quickly say, “Hello?”
“Hey . . . it’s Chastity.”
“Hey, Chas . . . what’s up?”
“Trinity and I wanted to make sure you’re coming to the party. It’s going to be huge. This guy’s parents are in England and basically don’t care what he does while they’re gone.”
I assure Chastity that I’ll be there. I can hear Trinity squealing in the background, and I’m about to ask whether I can crash their pre-party, but my grandparents are staring at me, so I tell Chastity I’ll see her later and then hang up.
I totally don’t want to go to Sam’s barbecue.
That’s what I’m thinking as I drive through town and turn into Sweden Village. The rain has stopped and the air is mild, but I still feel like crap. I’m just not in the mood for fielding all those “where are you going to college next year” questions, as if anyone actually cares because all they want to blabber about is where they went to college and where their kids went to college and where their kids’ neighbor’s dog went to college.
Honestly, all I want to do at this point is chill out, get a little tipsy. Okay, I’ll be honest. More than tipsy. After the day I’ve had, I’m ready to get wasted.
But Chastity said the party isn’t starting until nine or ten. It’s not like I can spend the next four hours hanging out with my grandparents or cruising aimlessly around Brockport, so I head down Hollybrook Lane, park on the curb in front of Sam’s house, and slide on some lip gloss.
As I’m cutting through the side yard, I pause for a moment. Maybe I should head back to my car, call Sam, tell him I’ll meet him at the party later. I’m just not in the right head space for this. But then I remember my lack of viable options, so I smack my lips together and continue into Sam’s backyard.
I spot Sam right away. He and his sister are over by the laptop. They’ve set it up on a card table at the edge of the yard, under a flowering white tree. Rachel is angrily gesticulating, and as I get closer, I realize they’re arguing about whose playlist to do next.