Sweethearts

  “I know.”

  Hours later, I was still awake in bed and worrying over what the rest of my high school life would be like. I was scared to go back to Jones and face them all. Maybe I’d have to eat lunch alone in the library until graduation. Katy might not ever talk to me again. She’d given me a ride home, saying, “I’m only doing this because I don’t want to be at the party, either.” We didn’t talk the rest of the way.

  I thought of what Cameron said about the day I came across the yard to him to ask him to be in my club. About how I had guts. About how I was brave and strong. He was around to tell me these things now, to remind me, but I was going to have to learn how to remember them myself, and believe them.

  I got up, crept to Alan’s office, and went in.

  “Cameron? Cam?”

  He didn’t move, and appeared to be fast asleep.

  I’m not sure what I wanted. To look at him, I guess, and talk. I sat on the floor by the sofa bed so that my face was level with his. His breath came in short, toothpaste-minty sighs.

  “Cameron Quick,” I whispered, just wanting to hear his name. He still didn’t move. I touched his face, following the curve of his jaw, the bow of his lips. This was the boy who made my childhood less lonely, who made me feel loved. And known. And accepted. Who had stared into my most terrifying moment right beside me, while my most terrifying moment was his everyday life. And I pictured him patting that baby doll by a cold window, showing it comfort by instinct. I felt overwhelmed with sadness for his life and what it could have been, even though I knew he wouldn’t want me to feel that way. He’d say it was all right, that he’d get by, that he could take care of himself. That he didn’t need anyone to fix it. But I still wanted to, to somehow make up for that infinite, infinite well of helplessness that I’d spent most of my life believing had swallowed us up.

  It hadn’t, though, because we were here, weren’t we? Wiser and braver and more ready for life than our friends or parents or anyone we knew, than even I had realized until he came back to show me.

  I touched his wrist lightly, his elbow. I tucked the blanket up around his shoulder.

  “I love you, Cameron,” I whispered.

  He was gone in the morning. November first, a day I’d forever keep in my mind as a landmark. I was the least surprised of us all. Mom couldn’t believe it. “I thought he’d stay until graduation,” she said, walking through the house desultorily. “I honestly thought he’d change his mind and stay. Maybe he’ll be at school. Maybe he just left early to . . .” Her voice trailed off, sad and quiet.

  “His stuff is gone, honey,” Alan said.

  “He won’t be at school,” I said. I poured bran flakes into a bowl, covered them in skim milk. I felt numb and had a sugar hangover from the Halloween candy, and half wondered if I’d dreamed going into his room and telling him I loved him. Maybe he’d heard me. Maybe that’s what made him leave. I’d scoured my room for a note from him, a message, a sign, anything. I didn’t find one.

  At school, no one outside our circle really noticed or cared that he wasn’t there. His attendance had been so random, anyway, and we were used to people coming and going, trying on the school to see if it fit, parents hoping this would be the place where little Johnny or Susie might finally do something right or at least not get beat up.

  Ethan didn’t come to school, and Steph made me sit at our usual table even though I’d been on my way to the library with my brown bag, figuring that would be least awkward for everyone. “You can’t do that,” she said. “I’ve gone through a million breakups and trust me, you have to immediately make a statement and show you’re not going to run off and hide. When Ethan comes back to school, he’ll see how it’s going to be and he’ll just have to deal with it.”

  “Right,” I said. “Okay.”

  And he did, the next day and the next day and the rest of the year, all of us pressing on to graduation like Cameron had never been there at all.

  That didn’t stop me from looking for him. For weeks and weeks, I imagined I saw him everywhere. I’d drive down State Street and think it was him standing in front of a pawn shop or fast food place. I’d be in the grocery store and see a tall, dark-haired figure from the back and I’d trail up and down aisles until I got a front view to be absolutely sure it wasn’t him. I’d hear noises outside the house at night and open my window, calling his name softly, or I’d go out onto the porch to see if he was there.

  I tried his cell over and over but he never answered. Then I’d call just to hear his voice on the outgoing message, until eventually that was gone, too.

  I drove by his old house, even knocked on the door once hoping whoever lived there would understand and let me walk through, trying to gather memories, even bad ones, and store them away so I could share them with Cameron if he ever came back.

  Every day I checked the mailbox for a letter or postcard, flipping through the grocery store ads to make sure nothing was stuck in the pages. I created an e-mail news alert so that I’d know if his name was mentioned in any newspapers. Even Mom and Alan couldn’t let go — Mom admitted to using her connections at the hospital to make sure he hadn’t turned up sick or dead anywhere in the state; Alan was late coming home one night and confessed he thought for sure he’d seen Cameron walking out of the downtown men’s shelter and onto a bus, which Alan then followed to the end of the line.

  But it was never him. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. It was like he’d died all over again.

  One night, about three weeks after he left, I found myself awake at four a.m. thinking about him. First my thoughts were about him, and then they were to him, and soon it all became a sort of prayer — a prayer to Cameron Quick. The words were statements: I won’t forget you and Don’t forget me and Whatever happens, I’m always here. Then they were questions: Where are you? and Will I ever see you again? and Why didn’t you say good-bye? Pretty soon I was talking right out loud, as if he were in the room with me and the thing that had lurked just beneath all my looking began, finally, to poke through the surface.

  “How,” I whispered, “could you leave me again?”

  That question dug right into the part of me that was hurting most. Because hadn’t we talked about this, all of this? The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what had happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all. I wouldn’t have done that to him, ever, in a million years.

  I got out of bed and went across the room to curl into the chair where he’d spent that night talking to me through the dark. I pressed my face into the upholstery and cried.

  Soon there was a knock on my door — a quiet, Alan sort of knock. It was his coffee and writing time already. I wanted him to come in but couldn’t manage to speak. The door inched open.

  “Jenna?”

  “I’m over here,” I finally said, sniffling. “In the chair.”

  I saw his figure come closer in the dimness; he sat on the ottoman, facing me. “I don’t know what to say,” he said softly.

  “Me, neither.”

  He reached over and patted my ankle. I kept my face turned into the chair. We stayed like that until my alarm clock beeped.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE CARD AND POINSETTIA CAME THE DAY CHRISTMAS BREAK started. They were sitting on our porch when I got home from working out with Steph at the JCC. She and I had actually gotten closer since Cameron left. Part of it was what I’d said at the Halloween party, and her trying to prove to me that she did know me and love me anyway. Also it was like she’d seen a new side of me during that time, that I wasn’t just good old dependable, predictable Jenna. I was someone who might actually have a secretly complicated life, like hers.

  “The whole deal is awesomely romantic, if you think about it,” she’d said at the gym that morning. “This tall, handsome man from your past remembered you all those years and l
ooked for you and found you and came back and changed your life. I know it was like two months ago, but I still think about it practically every day.”

  Imagine how I feel, I thought. “It would have been more romantic if he’d managed to say good-bye,” I’d said, ending the conversation by stepping into the shower.

  When I pulled up to the house and saw the plant, I figured it was from one of Mom or Alan’s colleagues, or the LDS ward down the street that liked to do neighborly stuff during the holidays. The outside of the card read, “For the Vaughns.” I had my hands full with my gym bag and water bottle and decided to leave it for my parents to discover when they got home.

  Later, Mom stood in the kitchen doorway, dressed in her scrubs and holding the plant and card. “Jenna? Did you see this?”

  My hands were busy squishing together a meat loaf in progress. “Yeah. I guess I should have brought it in. Sorry.”

  “Honey, it’s from Cameron.”

  I turned around, my ground turkey–covered hands suspended in midair.

  “There’s another card inside,” she continued. “For you. He must have sent it to the florist and had them forward it.” She set down the plant and came over to me. “Wash your hands. I’ll finish this.”

  I cleaned up and took the envelope into my room; just seeing my name in his handwriting made me feel closer to him already. I was holding the envelope that had been touched by the pen that was held in his hands. I studied that for a long time — the slant of the J, the curve of the e. I opened it and unfolded the sheet of yellow legal pad paper.

  Hi.

  My eyes wanted to skip to the end, but I made myself read it line by line.

  I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time but didn’t know how to start. The time since I left has gone by fast. And slow, too. I came back to California. Been spending time with my brothers and sisters . . . and my mom. Decided I didn’t want to put them all through any custody stuff. It would be just one more crappy thing for them to endure, you know? But I’m trying to help them all out a little so that things can maybe be different for my brothers and sisters. When I stayed with you I kept thinking how I wished they had someone like Alan. Then I thought maybe it could be me.

  It was kind of selfish of me to run off from them to find you. Not that I regret that in any way, trust me, but it hit me that instead of sitting around being frustrated and angry maybe I could do something. I had enough of feeling helpless. Spent the first 16 years of my life feeling that way.

  It meant leaving you, which I hated.

  Good-byes are the worst.

  If I didn’t leave like I did I might not have gone through with it. I couldn’t look you in the eye knowing I might not see you again for a long time. Sat down to write you a note but couldn’t do that either. I would have drowned from all the crying — better if I didn’t start.

  If I could split myself in half and take part of me to CA and leave part of me in UT, I would have done it in a second. Wanted to be in both places at once, so much. But you don’t need me like they do. Think about how it was for us back then and you’ll understand. Anyway, you’ll be fine. I have no doubt about that. You’re the bravest person I know. Always have been.

  But I’m sorry.

  I hope everything is going great for you, Jenna. (I’m finally getting used to calling you Jenna.) You deserve all the happiness you can get.

  My address is on the other side of the paper if you ever want to write to me. I understand if you don’t. The one thing I promise is that from now on you’ll always know where and how to find me.

  Remember that no matter where I am or what I’m doing I’ve got a special place inside me that’s all for you. It’s been there since the day we met.

  Love always.

  Cameron

  By the end of the day I had that letter memorized.

  Mom, Alan, and I put together a big Christmas box to send to Cameron and his brothers and sisters. We filled it with gift cards for grocery stores and department stores, books, and homemade cookies. We included a prepaid calling card, the idea being that Cameron could call us anytime, but he didn’t. Maybe he needed the minutes to take care of other stuff. I tried not to be upset about it or feel let down every time the phone rang and it wasn’t him; even with his letter and apology and explanation, I still felt a pinch of hurt from time to time.

  More of an ache, really, a stretching of my heart in the general direction of California.

  CHAPTER 27

  SOMETIMES I STILL STARE INTO SPACE AND THINK ABOUT Cameron.

  I think about how there are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark.

  I don’t mean the usual faint impression: He was cute, she was nice, they made me laugh, I wish I’d known her better, I remember the time she threw up in class.

  And I don’t just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you — the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It’s the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. Ethan changed me, for instance, but the longer we’ve been apart the more he sort of recedes into the distance as a real person and in his place is a cardboard cutout that says First Boyfriend.

  I’m talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. My mom was right about that. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.

  Which is maybe why I don’t write to Cameron as often as I thought I would. Every time I sit in front of the computer or put a pen to paper, I find myself in a dead stall. We talk on the phone sometimes but never quite get around to saying much of anything important until the very last two minutes of the conversation when he tells me how much it means to hear my voice, and I tell him I miss him, and we make vague promises about seeing each other again. In the back of my mind I have this idea that when I graduate I’ll load up my car and drive across the wide expanse of Nevada, into California, find Cameron on the map, and knock on his front door. And we’ll talk all night.

  But then I don’t.

  The pulse of unfinished business still beats while life unfurls; days, weeks, months.

  I end up going to college out of state after all, in a new place with a roommate, a person who one day I didn’t know and the next day is my de facto best friend, and I’m always telling her the stories about Cameron Quick: the ring in my lunch box, escaping from his father together, chocolate chip pancakes and the time he slept in my bed and the Great Halloween Debacle of Aught Six. I don’t want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick — even the bad ones — so I repeat them often.

  My roommate asks me if I’m in love with Cameron and I say no, not in love. I start to tell her that I do love him, but stop myself before it comes out. It takes some thinking; years of it, in fact. I know I said it to him that night, and I still wonder if he heard me, but as I get older I think — can it really be love if we don’t talk that much, don’t see each other? Isn’t love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other’s faults and take care of each other? Still, by the time I’ve had my share of boyfriends, I discover that even the ones I truly love never bring on the same kind of feeling that I get when I think about Cameron. In the end, I decide that the mark we’ve left on each other is the color and shape of love. That’s the unfinished business between us.

  Because love, love is never finished.

  It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete. There’s one I always come back to: me and Cameron Quick, lying on the ground in an aspen grove on a golden fall day, the aspen leaves clattering and quaking the
way they do. Cameron turning to me, reaching out a small and dirty hand, which I take and do not let go.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to my wonderful editor, Jennifer Hunt, whose vision and patience pushed me further into this story than I thought I’d be able to go. Thanks, too, to T.S. Ferguson, Victoria Stapleton, Ames O’Neill, and the whole Little, Brown crew.

  Major gratitude goes to my amazing agent, Michael Bourret, who continues to be a voice of cool-headed sanity in the wilds of my writerly angst. I’m also grateful for the sane voices of Tara Altebrando, Lew Hancock, and Emily Lupash, as well as those of all my smart and talented colleagues in the YA world.

  Special thanks to Mark Miller, who gave me a ring in third grade and found me thirty years later. He generously granted me permission to use the memory of that ring, and the freedom to make up the rest.

  As always, the biggest thanks of all goes to my husband, Gordon Hultberg, whose steadfast love and support continues to create the necessary space.

  Sara Zarr was raised in San Francisco, California, and now lives with her husband in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the author of The Lucy Variations, How to Save a Life, What We Lost, Sweethearts, and the National Book Award finalist Story of a Girl. Her website is www.sarazarr.com.

  More from Sara Zarr:

  The Lucy Variations

  How to Save a Life

  What We Lost

  Story of a Girl

  Coming December 2013:

  Two acclaimed authors join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

  Don’t miss Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando!

  Keep reading for sneak peeks from What We Lost and her upcoming novel The Lucy Variations.