Capture the World (14 page)

Realization dawns. “This was planned, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Is that why you came tonight? On date night?”

My gaze falls to the box my aunt brought from the living room.
What are you doing, Aunt Trish?

Matthew steps away from the bar. “Nonna?”

She doesn’t flinch. “I’ve been friends with your aunt for a long time, Reagan. Your mother, too. When your father and sister died, I invited Trish and Georgia to a grief group I became a part of after I lost my Ralph. Your aunt came. Still does occasionally. Your mother—”

My hands fly to my mouth, my head shaking, begging her to stop. I don’t know how much the kids at school know about my history, what they know beyond my mother’s nervous breakdown, and I don’t want them to know.

Approaching me, Perlita touches my shoulder, squeezing.
 
“Your aunt brags on you all of the time. You’re a good girl, Reagan.” Her gaze catches mine. “Trish visited me twice a week for three months after my husband died. She’s a special woman, and I think a good deal of her.”

We have a silent conversation with our eyes.

“Give this a chance,”
her gaze says.

“I don’t want her sent away,”
mine replies.

Perlita nods. “If I overstepped my bounds asking my grandson to talk to you, I apologize. Truth is, I thought you two might be good for each other. Like your aunt has been for me.” She glances at Matthew. “You needed to be brought down a peg or two. All that attention you’ve been getting at school because of the team, and,” her gaze returns to me, “you needed some lifting.”

Matthew looks angry, which surprises me. “I don’t mind being nice to people, Nonna, even without you asking me to, but maybe we should let Reagan work this out with—”

“I’m going to do it,” I interrupt suddenly.

Matthew pauses, glances at me, and frowns. “Excuse me?”

It was the way he looked at his grandmother that settled it for me, the way he’d gotten angry on my behalf. Not only is it unexpected, it’s the push I need.

“The video project,” I say. “I’m going to do it.”

Matthew gawks, mouth open, at a complete loss of words. “Uh … okay?”

“Because, you know,” I grin, “phones.”

He laughs. “You’re weird, Lawson.”

“You like weird,” I remind him.

Perlita watches us, her dark eyes filling with amusement.

Matthew stares daggers at her. “Don’t,” he warns.

“I’m going to do this,” I repeat, awed, obviously talking to myself. “God, help me, I’m going to do this.” Distracted, I begin ushering my guests toward the back door. “I’m really not trying to get rid of you,” I explain, “but I think I need some time.”

“We’re being dismissed,” Matthew tells his grandmother, stunned.

She smiles in my direction. “About damn time someone did that to you, nipote.”

They’re still arguing when I shut the door in their faces.
Not rude,
I tell myself,
but necessary.

FOURTEEN

The real world

The videos

MY PHONE IS fully charged, turned on, and I can’t think of a damn thing to say to it.

Pacing my room, I lift it, lower it, and lift it again.

I pace the night into nonexistence.

I’m not sure what intimidates me more—the idea of ‘traveling’ with my mother under the watchful eye of my mobile device, or me.

Blowing my cheeks out, I march to my bedroom closet, pull the door open, and step in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the other side.

It’s me. All of me.

“I’m short,” I mutter.

No shit, Sherlock.

Okay, I can do this.

Spinning slowly, I grimace at my rear end. Lift my shirt. Pinch my love handles. Flick my nose. Stretch my massive lips. Pretend to pop a pimple. Smile.

Close my eyes.

Open them.

Stare at myself,
really
stare. Like I’m not me, but someone else looking at me.

“Hashtag not bad,” I admit, out loud, because Matthew isn’t here to groan. “Keep it real,” I add in a manly voice, and then scrunch my nose. “Meh.”

Am I really doing this to myself? Being a girl?

I look again.

I am pretty. Not stunning, but pretty. My hair is too straight, the kind of hair that literally does not hold a curl. At all. The kind of hair perms laugh at and curlers spit out. It’s long, hitting the middle of my back.

Gathering it up, I pile it on top of my head, suck in my cheeks, and cross my eyes.

My mouth really is spectacular, and I don’t feel bad for appreciating it because it’s
my
mouth. They’re
my
lips. They’re not my mother’s or my father’s. They’re a feature that just happened. Maybe they came from some distant caveman ancestor, the trait so far down the line no one else in the family can claim the kind of lips I have.

So, they’re mine. Uniquely mine.

For some reason this strengthens my resolve, and I leave the mirror, pick up my phone, click the camera button, and switch it to video.

It’s me on the screen, and it makes me nervous.

I talk into the phone once, twice, immediately hating how I look and sound. Delete. Try again.

My gaze falls to the paper art surrounding me, and I think about Matthew, the ‘paper’ text messages we’d sent to each other when he couldn’t get in touch with my cell.

That’s the girl I need to be.

Press record.

“Hi!” I wave at the phone, grimace. “This feels really stupid, like I’m trying to put myself somewhere that I don’t belong. I guess I am, you know? Putting myself in that place.”

This isn’t making sense. I’m not making any kind of sense.

Swallowing hard, I gulp in air, and barrel on. “I’m Reagan Lawson, a seventeen-year-old student at Heart Bay high school, and I’m the daughter of a woman with mental illness.”

That wasn’t so bad. A little pathetic, but honest.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I glare at the screen, realize I look like the bitch people probably think I am, and switch to a smile.

Too big. Tone it down.

I dial it back. “I don’t really know how to go about doing this. I guess I’ll do it in parts so the videos are easy to upload. Not that you need to know that part. Anyway, um, I think I’ll start with who my mother is.”

Standing, I walk to my bedroom wall, press my hand to it. “This is the wall between my mother’s bedroom and mine. I’m showing you this because that’s what my relationship with her feels like. A wall.” My fingers walk the green paint. “There are all kinds of mental illnesses. I mean, I guess. I don’t really know all that much about how the human brain works. I know it’s pretty complicated, though, because if the doctors can be believed, they don’t seem to know why my mother is the way she is.”

Suddenly, it feels like a dam inside my body breaks, spilling forth a mouthful of words that drown me.

“Actually, do you want to know what
I
think? I think she’s coping the only way she knows how.” I laugh, and the sound is sad. “Once upon a time, I had a whole family. A father, a mother, and a brand new baby sister that I never got past hating a little. Until she was born, I was it for my parents. Doted on. Spoiled. A princess. Then suddenly, I was someone’s big sister, and it was new and too real. Like I was Lady in Disney’s
Lady and the Tramp
. Wow, did I really just reference that film and compare myself to a dog?”

A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow past it. “I loved her, and I wish I’d had the chance to show her how much. Her name was Julia Gwen Lawson, and she was six months old when she died. My father was thirty.”

 
I stop the camera, turn it back on, and say, “My mother doesn’t know who I am. She calls me her jewel, and I hate her for it because I’m not my sister, and I didn’t die.”

Oh my God! This hurts so bad. Mom, why don’t you see me? I’m right here. Right here! Just look at me. See me. Please see me! Not Julia! Me!

The tears are sudden, a flash flood that ravages me. The anger pounds my insides, and it startles me how mad I am, how hurt.

My phone falls to the carpet.

“I am a terrible person,” I whisper because I feel like one.

The loneliness comes next, so hard and awful that I actually grab my stomach, groaning.

Flipping the phone over with my toe, I stare down at it. “Did you know that loneliness is a real pain. I mean, a very physical pain. A terrible, terrible pain so big, so
huge
I could really use a pain killer right now.”

My sobs kill the rest of the words.

Falling to the floor, I bring my phone to me, stop the video, and do something I can’t take back. I send it to Matthew’s phone, save his number under my contacts as ‘Keep it Real’.

Immediately, I regret it, but it’s too late.

Ten minutes later, my phone dings.

Keep it Real: Dude, you’ve really got to prepare people for shit like that.

My heart pounds, torn between giddily thumping and stopping altogether because I don’t know what he means by that.

I go twenty minutes asking myself a million questions that don’t matter. Did he hate it? Was it too much? Too real? Too hopeless or sad?

Three words: Boys are stupid.

Suddenly, my phone screen lights up followed by another message.

Keep it Real: *video attachment*

I stare, dumbfounded. He sent me a video?

My fingers tremble as I press play because, yeah, I’m scared.

Matthew Moretti appears on the screen, a little awkward, which is, hands down, the sexiest thing ever. This tall, confident guy reduced to mobile-sized vulnerability.

He grins, angles the phone so that it shows his torso, lifts his shirt, and flashes me his six pack abs. “Because you know you wanted to see that.”

I laugh and roll my eyes.

“You’re glaring … or something right now, but admit it, that did it for you, right?”

The phone is back on his face. He hasn’t shaved, the stubble sharp in the dim light thrown off by a lamp in his room. It’s late, maybe one o’clock in the morning. Aunt Trish and Uncle Bobby returned home hours ago.

The picture on the screen shakes, moves off his face, and then returns to it. “So, that video? Yeah. I was planning to be all funny, maybe strip for you, but as handsome as I know I am, I don’t really want a dick video of myself out there. Colleges aren’t really into that shit.”

Sitting on his bed, he gazes straight into the phone, and it’s crazy how intense he looks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about your family. I knew you had lost your father. People don’t really talk about it, so I guess I never realized you lost, like, an entire family. Except your aunt and uncle, I mean. I have a sister, and I know how hard it was to be a girl while growing up in a house full of boys, but she still had Ma …” He shakes his head. “Boy, I really need to shut up. Anyway, since I kind of gave you this video idea and that shit just got really, and I mean really real, I thought maybe I could send you some moral support by doing videos, too. Not for the project, btw.” He grins. “Yes, I totally just abbreviated a word. Out loud.”

He grows quiet, glances at something I can’t see, and then faces me again. “I’m Matthew Moretti, and I’m an eighteen-year-old student and basketball player at Heart Bay High.”

The phone goes blurry, refocuses. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “Imagine me without words. That’s happening because that intro sounded way too intervention, like I’m about to announce I’m on drugs or something. Which I’m not!” He laughs. “It’s weird because there are all of these things I could say about myself, and then when it comes down to saying it, it seems stupid. So, I’m going to switch it up a little. Remember when you told me you prayed to your mother?”

I nod, realize I’m nodding at a video, and then laugh at myself.
 

“Well, I’m going to do that now. Except to you.” He inhales, and then exhales with, “Please make my brother, Christopher, quit hating me.”

My eyes widen.
What?

“You heard me right. He hates me. I used to think it was because of the older brother thing or basketball. Hell, all of that makes sense, right? I even thought maybe girls? No,” he shakes his head, laughs shortly, “it’s because I’m mostly deaf. Crazy, huh? It’s true. I’ve heard him say it, which is ironic in itself.” He brings the phone close to his face, so close I can make out the pores in his skin, the freckles I didn’t realize dotted the bridge of his nose. “I hold him back because I’m too expensive. Too needy.”

He mimics his parents. “Matthew needs new hearing aids, so we’ll just wait to send Christopher to football camp. Matthew has a hearing problem, so it’s okay if he has girls in his room.”

Grimacing, Matthew blinks, keeps his eyes closed a minute, reopens them. “He’s right, and I either want new ears or I want to be completely deaf because being somewhere in between sucks.”

Even after the confession, he offers me a smile. “Btw—see, there it is again—I need to see your room. Like really see it because, unless I’m losing my sight on top of my hearing, there is some really cool shit in there. No lie, Lawson. Really cool shit. Did I see a dragon? Or do I just need sleep?”