Crush Control (3 page)

“My name is Quinton,” Hot Guy said, moving past my eyes.

“Willow,” I said, and we stood there awkwardly for a minute.
Should I shake his hand? I mean, it seems kind of past routine introductions—after all, my hand was just practically massaging his butt.
But the awkwardness continued, so I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

Quinton looked down at his right hand, but he was still holding a wad of bloodstained tissues.

I glanced over at the tissue I had tossed to the ground when I pried Oompa off his leg.
He's going to think I litter—on top of everything else.
Quickly I scampered over and snatched up the tissue, which now had soaked up some yellow Gatorade and was a sopping mess. “Let me just clean this up,” I said, desperately searching around for a garbage can. When I didn't see one, I shoved the sticky, drenched tissue wad into the pocket of my cotton shorts, shuddering slightly.
Exit now!
“Well, I guess I better get going and take off this T-shirt before these M&M's melt.”
No, I did NOT just say that! This day cannot get any worse.

Quinton looked at me like I was a little deranged. “Okay,” he said tentatively. “See you on Monday.”

“Not unless I see you first.” I pointed at him.
What was wrong with me?

Quinton smiled at me, but I couldn't quite decipher if it was a smile of sweet Southern charm or if inside he was mocking me. I grabbed Oompa's leash and darted back through the shrubs and down the winding dirt trail. I was disappointed that I'd made such a disaster of a first impression—something that had seemed so enticing to me as we drove cross-country just hours before. When I left Vegas, that was all I wanted—an opportunity to start over, to stand out in a crowd, to throw away the years of blending in and become someone special. Someone extraordinary.

My first chance at reinvention was not at all how I had planned it, but it was memorable nonetheless.

By the time I walked the half mile down the road to our new house, long trails of sweat trickled down my back and my hair was damp at the nape of my neck. We'd left 106-degree heat in the desert, but here, though it was a full fourteen degrees cooler, I felt like I had just walked into a steam room. The air hung on me like a stifling, soggy sweater.

Our house was one story and white, with black shutters and a wraparound porch that seemed to beg for rocking chairs and potted flowers. A Mayflower movers' truck was parked by the curb, nestled between our mailbox and the huge cherry tree that shaded half of our front yard. The back metal doors of the truck were propped open, revealing an array of boxes and furniture stuffed inside. At the house next door, a woman wearing a straw sun hat was bent down pruning the drying periwinkle blossoms off a large hydrangea bush. She looked up and waved a gloved hand in my direction. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said warmly.

I smiled and waved back. Oompa and I climbed the porch steps and walked into the house, where I saw my mom standing barefoot in her aqua blue halter top and white shorts, directing the moving men to put the kitchen table next to a bank of oversize windows. It's a wonder they didn't crash into the wall since clearly neither of them opted to look where they were walking for fear of breaking eye contact with my mother. She was entrancing that way. I guess that's what made her such a good hypnotist. She wasn't just beautiful, although that was undeniable; she was alluring in an indefinable way that just made people, both men and women, gravitate toward her energy. I noticed the men didn't even glance in my direction once.

That right there summed up how my life had been in Vegas. I had been invisible. Not just when I was with Mom, but at school, too. Everyone knew my Mom was the Hip Hypnotist. It's not like I could conceal it—there were twenty-foot billboards broadcasting her face across town. But I was partly to blame for my invisibility, too. Because the more Mom's show and notoriety blossomed, the more I shrunk back into myself—never even trying to compete for attention. Somewhere along the way I lost the courage to be adventurous. I fell into the role of the responsible one—keeping things organized and running smoothly, while Mom was the star.

You'd think that even if I'd become less adventurous, at least I could still be flirtatious. After all, I lived with the perfect teacher. But the truth was, I never liked to risk the possibility of humiliation. Who would notice me in her shadow? It might have been easy to resent her had she not been so lovable. But that was the thing—for all the reasons everyone was drawn to her—her adorable charm, her contagious laughter, her romantic ideology—I was drawn to her, too.

But now that we had moved across the country, we were both ready to try on new lives. She wanted to leave the eccentric lifestyle behind, and I secretly wanted to inject a little spice into my own.

“A little to the left,” Mom said now, jostling her hand in that direction, and the moving men set the rectangular table down with a thud against the wooden floor.

I looked at the table and thought of all the late nights back in Vegas where I'd sat at one end with my textbooks open, doing homework while I watched Mom and her cluster of friends drinking coffee and eating leftover fried chicken from the casino buffet. They would talk about life and love and movies. Maybe, I thought, this time the table would be surrounded with my new friends instead of Mom's. Maybe instead of sitting around watching
Glee
like Becca, Lauren, and I used to do in Vegas, here in Georgia I'd rent a karaoke machine and all my new friends and I would sing along to the
Glee
sound track. Maybe they'd tell me I could be a star. Mom would be next door talking with the new neighbor about gardening and pruning shrubs instead of drinking coffee with the sequined-leotard-wearing, Cher-loving neighbor from Vegas.

The moving men walked back outside and I pulled one of the kitchen chairs over to the table and sat down. Mom brought two bottles of Aquafina water over from the fridge and slid one across the kitchen table toward me like she was a casino bartender. I wondered if she realized that even though she was two thousand miles away, the lifestyle was still embedded in her simplest actions.

I looked out the window at the lush green landscape—the clusters of leaves grouping together to enclose and canopy the yard. “I don't remember it being this hot.”

She nodded. “Ah, the sticky, Southern summer air. It feels like someone hosed you down with hot honey.”

I laughed. “Exactly.”

The movers came back in, one holding an armload of boxes and the other holding my black Panasonic stereo with the front piece broken off and dangling by a cluster of thin wires. “Looks like this got damaged.” The mover grimaced. “You got the moving insurance, right?”

Mom sighed and shook her head.

“Oh,” the mover said, looking down at the mangled equipment. “Maybe it's fixable?”

“Just leave it on the table,” I said. “I'll take a look at it.”

The mover looked startled. Was it because he didn't think a girl could fix electronics or simply that he hadn't noticed I was there? He placed the stereo down on the table in front of me.

Mom instructed them to take the boxes to her bedroom and pointed down the hall. The men lingered for a second, listening to the soft jingle of her thick silver bangle bracelets. I thought back to Hot Guy Quinton from the park and wished he had watched me with that soft longing in his eyes. Instead, he'd just looked a little baffled by me.

“So,” I said, after the movers finally walked away. “When are we going over to see Grandma and Grandpa?”

Mom's back stiffened and she pursed her lips ever so slightly. She looked around the house as if suddenly realizing that yes, we had moved back to Georgia, back to the small town she had escaped from eight years ago. “I don't know,” she answered nonchalantly.

“What do you mean, you don't know?” When Mom decided to move us back to Georgia everything seemed so urgent. Grandpa had a stroke; time seemed of the essence. We needed to get back home and mend fences before it was too late. So now why the dispassion? “You said you were ready to reconcile with Grandma and Grandpa. Don't back down, Mom,” I said encouragingly, selfishly, because I didn't like having a family divided.

Mom didn't respond. She just looked over at Oompa. He had propped his ear against the wall in a desperate attempt to hear the soft reverberation of Cher's throaty voice. When no lyrics sounded, Oompa moved away from the wall, climbed onto the couch, and burped like a human with indigestion.

Mom got up and stared at the wall like she was mentally planning where to hang her
Casablanca
movie poster. “When we moved to Vegas it was, I don't know, rebellion I guess. I was tired of Grandma trying to mold me into a mini-version of herself.” She sighed. “And Vegas is the exact opposite of their quiet, conventional life.” She turned and smiled at me. “But I'm thirty-three years old and it's time to grow up, get a real job and live a more normal life.”

I stared at her. We could live a more normal life anywhere. We came back to Worthington, Georgia because she wanted to reunite with her parents.

Mom made a big production of looking at her watch. “We've been here for fifty-three minutes and I just drove for two days. Cut me some slack! I'll call Grandma and Grandpa. Just let me rest a little.”

I wanted to tell her not to be nervous. We'd be one big, happy family again.

I put my arm around her and we continued to stare at the blank wall. “I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of miss Cher right now.”

Oompa buried his nose under his paws and sighed.

From the kitchen table my cell phone buzzed that I had a message. I picked it up and saw that Max had texted.
U here yet?
I smiled.
Max
.

Technically, the first time I met Max, I was still in the womb. My mother had sat next to Max's mom when they were both in Dr. Wendall's waiting room, both nine months pregnant with bulging bellies and swollen ankles, both facing huge opposition from their families. My mother, the daughter of the Worthington, Georgia, town judge and his garden club president wife, was pregnant at sixteen—a scandalous shame for such a reputable family. Max's mother, Maria, was ten years older and married, but her family was unhappy that she had chosen to marry outside their culture.
Not Latino! Not Catholic! Didn't speak a word of Spanish! Didn't know the difference between a tortilla and a gorilla!
Never mind the fact that Max's father was a hardworking and honest man; Maria's family was old school in their customs and very unforgiving. So Mom and Maria bonded in their parents' judgment.

When Max was born two weeks before I was, Mom said every time Max cried I kicked inside her like I was just dying to get out and meet my playmate. And when I did arrive, all squirmy and screaming, I was a colicky mess, crying nonstop until one day Maria came over and placed Max on the couch next to me and miraculously I stopped. Whether it was the warmth of his body or the comfort of his fast-ticking heartbeat so close to mine, we'll never know, but anytime Max was around I was happy. And so was he.

Every story of my childhood somehow involved Max. Every preschool picture I drew included him. Mom saved all the notes from our preschool teachers:
Max and Willow play so nicely together!
Notes from the day care:
Max and Willow love to play Legos together and they only fight when Willow keeps insisting on kissing him!
Notes from our elementary teachers:
Could you please ask Max and Willow to refrain from passing notes during class? It's quite distracting.
Notes from Principal Wells:
It has come to my attention that Max and Willow have each forged a doctor's note and left school early today.
That was Max's brilliant idea—the day we dodged out of fourth grade to go home and build a teepee in his backyard from tree branches and a canvas tarp. Only the tree limbs I selected, entwined with such pretty shiny leaves, were actually covered in poison ivy. That night, while Mom and Maria dabbed pink splatters of calamine lotion all over our bodies, they told us that our discomfort was our punishment. They tried to hide it, but they were laughing a little, because that's just how Max and I were—always together, always adventurous, and always having fun.

But after we moved to Vegas, things changed. I changed. I was no longer the fizzy, fun-loving girl that I had been. I was like when a bottle of old Coke turned stale. No fizz, no excitement. I was the same person, sure, just like Coke is still Coke, but due to time and circumstances, I'd become stagnant. Definitely not the best version of myself. I was in need of a big boost to shake my life back up, and I hoped Max would be the one thing that could do that.

All these years, Max and I stayed in touch. There was just some undeniable connection that came from growing up together. Day after day, we shared stories and jokes and the details of our ordinary lives—until one night the fall of my eighth grade year, when something extraordinary happened.

I was tucked in bed, the comforter pulled high over the cornflower blue gown that I hadn't yet taken off. “Logan dumped me,” I garbled to Max on the phone. “Right there, in the middle of Becca's bat mitzvah, right in front of everyone. He said I was boring and that I studied too much.” I sniffled. “And he called me a prude. Then he made out with Macy Hollister in the middle of the dance floor. In front of everyone—in front of everyone's parents.” Tears spilled down my cheeks and dampened my pillow.

What happened next forever changed the course of our friendship.

“If that guy is too blind to see how incredible you are,” Max said, “if he can't see how smart and capable and fun and beautiful you are, then he's so not worth it.”