All You Never Wanted (10 page)

As Xander told it, Empty Hands tutors have been worried that Marisol’s demands pulled resources away from kids who needed the extra help.

“But Marisol
does
need extra help,” Xander had explained. “She’s got her issues. As you can see.”

Marisol’s main issue? Too thin. The last time Alex had seen her, a few Fridays ago at the Empty Hands weekly cheese-’n’-chat, Marisol was a rail. Even in her layered T-shirts and with a sweatshirt tied over her cuffed boyfriend jeans, the girl couldn’t hide it. A glimpse of her collarbone was painful.

And the way she’d sidled up to the buffet table and taken the toothpicked cheddar cube. Like she’d just picked up a frozen mouse, tail end up. She’d nibbled it once, twice, three times. Hardly denting it before crushing it into a napkin and pop-flying it into the trashcan.

Xander had also watched it play out. His eyes meeting Alex’s across the room. A silent confirmation of all of his concerns.

Alex unknots herself. Her fingers are cold. It’s not just hunger. She logs back on and types her reply to Xander:

And logs off again. Her heart won’t stop.

Lame response. Served up with a stupid joke. But no. She’s right. What would make Xander think that he can just enlist her like a foot soldier to deal with Marisol’s condition?

Which, by the way, is a completely different condition than her own.

Thanks, but no thanks.

She imagines Xander reading her note. Tapestry forearms. Dark diamond eyes.

Just forget about it. Switch gears.

Downstairs, Joshua and Thea are playfully quarreling. Alex shuts the bedroom door and sits with the phone in her hand.

Should she do it? It’s Saturday, after all. Still. Gussman must call in to pick up his voice mail. Right?

Maybe she is having one of those maverick genius ideas. The element of surprise and all. Yes, good plan. She’ll pull out the rug.

She plugs in the number and gets dropped straight into voice mail.

“Hello again, Mr. Gussman. It’s me. Alexandra Parrott. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time. You’re a hard guy to track down. Well, ha-ha, I guess I’m still tracking! Listen, idea. Let me bring Leonard Huang by the newsroom, say, next Thursday at six? You’ll be off the air by then, right? For a quick hi, and then you can sign a head shot of yourself for Leonard? Wow, because he’d love it. And I’m not trying to be tacky or whatever, but I think I’d mentioned before that my stepdad would do something
for you in return. Like maybe a contribution to your favorite charity? He’s sweet about stuff like that. Okay. Thanks again. Bye.”

Tacky or whatever
. Yup, pretty tacky. Acknowledging the tackiness doesn’t make it any less so. And did “head shot” sound too fancy? Too in-the-know? It was one of those pseudo-sophisticated
Haute
words. She regretted it now.

Downstairs, Thea squeals and giggles. She
squiggles
, thinks Alex. There should be a word for this self-conscious and breathy-delighted sound that her sister releases when Joshua is around.

Joshua has to work a shift at Ten Pin Alley today. Alex doesn’t have anything going on. She was planning to dig into her pile of homework, or maybe invite Maureen to come hang out by the pool. Mo has a fascination with Camelot’s over-the-top luxuries. Its solar-paneled Roman pool house and its cedarwood steamsauna room and its Artic Spas hot tub.

None of the Blondes have called or messaged her since last night. It’s a standoff and she doesn’t blame them. Officially, they’re exasperated. But Mo can never hold a grudge. Especially if she wants the pool. Jess, on the other hand, has a hard time with “forgive and forget.” So … that might be a problem.

Alex sends out a flurry of personal messages to each of them. Extra care and apology in Jess’s note. Hinting at stress and the headache that prevented her from going out last night. Not too pitiful. But with a teaspoon of fragile. It’s not a total lie.
Pleeese come over! I’m making it special for Jess’s party. I am really sorry about last night! I totally miss you guys!

They’ll come. She hopes.

She checks to see if Xander messaged her. She hits “Confirm.” Ta-da. Now they’re Facebook friends, and she spends the
next few minutes looking at his wall, his pictures, his other friends. He’s cute. Can’t be denied. It’s weird to be looking at him this long, though, right? She logs off again.

Almost eleven. She sleeps too late on weekends. How did she and Thea manage those early Saturday mornings at Topshop? Even crazier—she’d actually looked forward to them. Dropped off by their mother, with a pit stop for muffins and coffee. Maybe not the most glamorous Saturday, but it had shaped a memory. Unlike these blow-away, cotton-candy Camelot weekends of shopping and naps and nothing. She forgets them almost as soon as they pass her by.

Her cell vibrates as the text comes through.

Xander again. So he has her cell phone number, too. It catches her off guard. How’d he get her number? He must have pulled her volunteer file. Does he like thinking of himself as the guy with the perpetual upper hand? Annoying. She can just see him in his bedroom, sunk into some grungy office swivel chair that he’d inherited from an uncle or grandfather. She bets he’s got an aquarium, too, inhabited by a couple of ugly fish with quirky names—Finn, Nemo. And his walls are taped with rare posters of Doctor Who and the Velvet Underground and Keith Richards. Oh, and a corkboard, for sure! Thumbtacked with multiple Get Off the Couch rallying causes and issues.

Ha, she totally knows this guy.

Seven Orchard Lane is what, fifteen minutes away? Alex hasn’t eaten breakfast yet. She didn’t allow herself much for dinner last night, either—three-quarters of a slice of cheese pizza. She’d been too nervous that Joshua might last-minute jokingly kidnap her off to Republic of Dim Sum.

She could go to this Xander thing. Part of her is itching to do it. The sensation of wanting to jump out the window of her life has shadowed her for months. An inescapable urge to fly, dash, disappear. Spend the day somewhere she’s never been with people she hardly knows. Most Empty Hands volunteers are college kids or recent college grads. Unlike her school friends, none of them know Alex.

“And I did okay yesterday.” Alex surprises herself by speaking out loud. As if quoting her favorite self-help book. “Maybe today I’ll be okay, too.” It sounds normal. It sounds like a reasonable expectation. An Empty Hands barbecue has got to be better than sitting in this house, worrying about whether her friends have forgiven her and will come over tonight.

It could work. Might.

By the time Alex joins the other two downstairs in the kitchen, her plan is fixed.

“You crazy, Mami. You don’t need to do that.” Thea points her cereal spoon like a wand to break the spell of Alex’s silly decision.

“What if I
want
to go to the barbecue?”

“Dorkburgers with do-gooders? Hello? Didn’t someone tell you that you’re already into college?”

Joshua guffaws his support. And Thea’s acting the same as last night. She’s flirting hard. Tipped back on her hips and speaking in
that wispy helium voice. Thea was never this airhead around her boyfriend from her sophomore year. That cute, smart-mouth kid, Kezzy Vasquez, who broke his arm falling off a roof and then moved away. Alex had liked Kezzy—he’d had his sly charms. No matter. The new Thea would have eaten Kezzy alive this year if he’d stuck around.

Alex has teased him about it before, but Joshua always pretends he has no idea about Thea’s crush on him. And yet he must feel something, because he changes, too. He gets roostery. “Baby, you want a lift?” he asks Alex now. “The end of Orchard is all the way east.”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll drive myself. Otherwise, it’s harder tomorrow.” Alex stumbles through the explanation. She is discussing her Problem, sort of. She’s aware of Joshua and Thea both listening too hard.

And Joshua is nodding yes yes yes. He’s so sick of it. He’ll try for a touchdown on any weak pass that Alex is throwing him that she’s leaving behind this “phase.” Or “losing streak,” as he calls it.

“Okay, so let me help out on tonight,” Joshua offers. “What should I pick up for the party?” He’s trying extra hard because of the Tissue Box Incident.

“Just ready-mades from Carvel. Jess loves ice cream. Get them to write something like ‘Happy Fiftieth to our dear Midge’ or ‘Happy Bat-Mitzvah, Amy.’ Some sort of joke. Like we accidentally got her the wrong cake. You’re funnier than I am, so you figure it out.” Alex unshoulders her purse. “Here, I’ve got money.”

Joshua steps forward to close the space between them. “I think I can cover one lousy ice-cream cake.”

“Two, actually. Two’s more fun.”

“With two wrong messages?”

“Maybe one wrong, one right.” Alex and Joshua are exactly the same height, and she likes when they stand toe to toe because then she can watch him grow wider, scooping himself upward from the waist and lifting his chin. She can smell him now, too—he’s beery, although he never drinks in the morning; and herbal, though he doesn’t smoke in the morning, either. Plus he’s got a whiff of Downy “April fresh” fabric softener that, come to think of it, captures nothing of April. Unless April smells like bug spray.

Alex has always enjoyed the combination of scents on Joshua—they’re his hymn—but this morning, it’s too much. She’s hungry and all she wants is another piece of toast, and no chance of that now, thanks to Xander and Marisol.

She needs to stay void if she wants to control this day.

“I get off work at six,” says Joshua. “I’ll be here by six-thirty. With the cakes.”

“Dudes, we need a lot more than Carvel,” Thea pipes up. “This is not some musical chairs piñata party. Like what about kegs, for starters?”

“You do what you want, Thee. I don’t need kegs. And the house is big enough for both kinds of parties,” Alex answers. “That seems fair.”

Her sister is either glad about this decision because it frees her to run her party how she wants, or she’s furious because it means that she and Alex aren’t sharing a vision of what this night is supposed to be. Of course, Thea’s probably happy
and
furious. Thea possesses a near-mystic, somewhat horrifying ability to claim almost any emotion.

But she looks cute today in that halter dress that shows off her
figure. Next to her, Alex feels blah in her weekend standard: beach shorts and an oversized Hanes T-shirt. She had stopped wanting to look fancy after Camelot landed on her, but she’d liked to look cute. Now her problem is twofold—most of her clothes are too big, and anything that’s even remotely stylish reminds her of
Haute
.

Joshua walks her to the car. “Sure you can drive?”

“Absolutely.” Absolutely unsure.

In the car, she leans out for Joshua’s kiss. He doesn’t move. He clamps his hands at each end of the unrolled window and pushes out his lips as if he’d rather reach her from a distance. Or else he’s implying that any more pressure and she’ll burst like a bubble. His gesture isn’t entirely protective. She knows he’s making a point. She can feel Thea watching them intently from the window.

She puts the car into drive. Holds her breath and prays.

And then, yes, thank you, she’s off.

As she exits Round Hill Manor, Alex fires up Lulette’s playlist. If bluesy reggae soundtracks this day, what could go wrong? Doing fine, she’s doing just fine. Except that Xander’s house is farther out than she’d anticipated. And when the familiar sweep of Orchard Lane ends but the road continues, it’s like she’s traveling back into olden days, when this part of Connecticut was farm country. No Camelots.

She crosses Crestline Avenue, a first. Now it’s East Crestline, and now the road is losing shape to chunky gapped gravel. Mailboxes are skewered and trees stretch hoarily past telephone wire.

A final pull around a breakneck bend, another unsure mile, and she’s here.

Oh. A lot of people have showed up at Xander’s house. She
wasn’t expecting that. Cars up the driveway and some parked in the field. At least a dozen kids are involved in a Frisbee game in the shaggy meadow out back. The house itself is very ugly, with a terrible addition—a saltbox that swallowed a shoebox. But it’s real land out here. There’s a barn and a chicken coop, an apple orchard on the horizon.

Droplets of sweat are sliding down her sides as she cuts the engine. Why did she come? Bad idea after all. She feels displaced and shy. Maybe she should reverse this decision. Go home, stay home. Call up the Blondes, redo the morning.

She presses her forehead against the steering wheel. She’s so empty. Wiped out from this drive.

It’s not for another minute that she senses him. She looks up.

Xander has walked out of the house to stand by the porch post. The late morning lights him up long and noodly, and she sees he’s shaved, which makes him look younger but also sweeter. As he approaches the car, her stomach belches a monstrous
yurp
—an internal combustion she hardly ever hears anymore. It used to happen all the time back in its early, outraged days—when her body was furious at what she was doing to it and had the strength to protest.