Everyone We've Been (11 page)

Caleb is bleary-eyed when he comes down for breakfast on Monday morning. With the exception of Mom's short-lived family movie nights, our paths haven't crossed much this summer. Instead of celebrating the end of high school, making plans for the rest of his life, he's been holed up in his room. Today he's wearing sweatpants and a crusty-looking shirt, but the most offensive thing about his appearance is the dusting of dark facial hair on his chin.

“New look?” I ask, unable to hide my disapproval.

Without looking up at me, my brother pats his chin. “Just something I'm trying.”

“I don't think it's working,” I say. He doesn't answer, just chews his Lucky Charms silently, obnoxiously. Most of Caleb's friends hightailed it out of Lyndale the second they were done, the way I plan to. I look at him and wonder if he feels lonely, if he secretly hates that he's staying. I want to ask him
why
he is.

I doubt he'll tell me, though.

We never confide in each other.

I remember being fourteen and wanting so much to be included in everything my brother was doing. One afternoon after Caleb had just gotten his license and inherited Mom's old car, I saw him getting ready to go out and I asked to go with him, but he refused. He was so set on whatever he was doing—his jaw stiff, his eyes determined. He was gone for hours, and when he came back, he went straight upstairs. I tiptoed after him, curious.

I found him in the bathroom, his shirt raised, looking in the mirror and flinching like he'd been stung. I moved closer, quietly, so he wouldn't see me through the glass, and I saw him touching his rib gingerly. He looked like he was about to cry.

I stepped into the bathroom before he had time to pull down his shirt.

R.
That was all his tattoo said.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “You got a tattoo?”

His face contorted. I was sure he was going to tell me to get lost, threaten me to breathe a word and it would be my last, but to my surprise, he only seemed terrified.

“Please don't tell Mom,” he begged me. “Or Dad. Please.”

“Okay,” I said. I was shocked at what he'd done and, most of all, at his response. I liked the idea of a secret between us, but I wanted to feel fully included.

“Who is she, anyway?” I asked. “R?”

Caleb didn't answer.

“Rachel? Rebekah? Rrrrrrandy,” I said. Admittedly, I was jealous. I wished I could've thought of something or someone I cared about enough to mark my skin, my body, with their name.

“Addie, please,” was all Caleb said. The lack of disdain in his voice surprised me again. I promised not to say anything.

When I broke a couple of weeks later and told Mom, it was payback for something stupid like Caleb taking too long in the shower. As soon as I saw his face and Mom's, though, I wished I hadn't done it. She was furious with him and, inexplicably, with me.

“I'm sorry,” I told Caleb after he and Mom had finished a yelling match behind the closed door of her room. “Is it because you're underage? It's not a big deal. Lots of people have tattoos. I'm sorry.”

He stalked into his room and banged the door shut.

“I'm sorry,” I called from the other side, but he didn't answer. I knew somehow I'd crossed a line, done something I couldn't take back, no matter how desperately I wanted to.

I caught him on his way into the bathroom the next morning. “Caleb, I'm sorry. It's just a tattoo. Mom will get over it. Should I talk to her or something?”

“Just leave it, Addie,” he said with such finality and coldness that it scared me. “Leave it.”

I thought of the way I'd found him in the bathroom, running his hand over the curve of the
R
like it was either precious or painful. Maybe both.

Who's R?
I wanted to ask him when he was finally speaking to me again, weeks later, but I couldn't. Everything between us felt fragile, tentative.

In a way, it still does.

I force myself to try now, though.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

He takes so long to answer that at first I don't think he will, but finally he says, “Nothing's wrong.” But I'm not sure I believe it. “Summer, you know,” he adds halfheartedly.

“People still bathe and have normal human contact over the summer,” I say, even if we can lounge around the house and sluggishly pass the time.

I'm tempted to ask whether he wants to do something, hang out like we used to when we were younger, but we don't really do that. So instead, I retreat and start getting ready for my viola lesson. Soon Caleb is back in his room, the door shut between us.

“Why didn't you
tell
me?” Zach asks, his mouth open in surprise, moments after I enter his house. It's our first official day of shooting, and he is staring at my viola.

“It never came up,” I answer with a shrug. I've just come from my lesson, which I biked to, so my viola is still in my basket.

After a little back-and-forth, Zach has been able to come up with a production schedule that suits all of us. He is working evenings at the movie store this week. Kevin, who landed a job as a dishwasher at Pizza Hut, starts work at four every afternoon. And since my lessons go till ten-thirty every weekday morning, I can only start after eleven, which works well with Raj's request that he not be required to wake up, under any circumstances, before ten.

The great thing is that, with my mom at work, she can't hover or demand to meet Zach's entire family or something embarrassing like that.

“We were going to use Raj's iPod for the sound track,” Zach says now.

“Rajesh likes
honky-tonk,
” Kevin adds with disgust. “And not the kind
I
like.”

“Kev,” Zach says tiredly. He turns to face me again, still wearing the look of shock he had earlier. “Will you play something?”

“Um, sure,” I say, even though I am thinking,
Oh God, no.
Maybe it is preshooting jitters, but I can't help feeling nervous whenever Zach's full attention is on me. Our test run the other day went well, but I noticed something. Zach is different when he's behind the camera. He is very calm and focused, and he is almost always frowning with intensity, concentrating. I'm terrified now that somehow I'll disappoint him. Or maybe it's just those gray eyes—twinkling, I can handle, but smoldering, traveling slowly over my face, even with the lens between us, I just cannot get used to.

I sit down on one of the couches, careful not to crush any of Zach's camera equipment, which is scattered everywhere at this point. Then I open my case, pull out my instrument, and begin to play.

I play for a minute, tops, an upbeat melody I hope they'll recognize.

When I am finished, Kevin bursts into applause. “Bravo! Bravo!”

Both Zach and Raj are quiet for a minute, and I watch them, flushed from playing, trying not to be disappointed at their mild reaction.

Then, together, they go quietly, “Oh my God.” The very first time I met Raj, apart from the fact that he dressed casual and seemed moderately invested in, if a little detached from, their film, it was hard for me to see why he and Zach were friends. But little by little, I'm seeing similarities. Both of them can talk Ciano movies for hours—Zach pro, Raj also pro, but not at Zach's level. Raj, despite appearances, has a dry sense of humor. And for all the heaviness, the
sighing,
Raj brings into a room, Zach's lightness balances it out.

“What's wrong?” I ask now, biting on my lower lip.

“That's fucking
Super Mario,
” Raj says, a little inflection—God help us—coming into his voice. “She plays
Super Mario!
”

Kevin laughs. He likes to slap things when he laughs—his thigh, the arm of the couch. Now he slaps Zach's back.

I laugh, too, relieved. “Oh, my brother was obsessed growing up, so I learned to play it.”

Raj continues to appraise me, as if I am a deity. “
That
needs to be our sound track.”

I realize Zach still hasn't spoken, but he's moved to start putting together his camera equipment.

I am packing away my viola, carefully, because I'm OCD about scratches, when I notice he's stopped what he's doing and is watching me.

“What?” I ask, brushing a strand of hair from my face. I pulled my hair into a somewhat sloppy French braid this morning so that, apart from my bangs, it would be effectively out of my way.

“You play like you're in love with it.”

I laugh, but his eyes are so serious that I feel my ears tickle with heat. “Maybe I am,” I say back, too quietly for Raj and Kevin to hear. Zach doesn't say anything in response, just watches me for a few more seconds.

The four of us move the furniture out of the way to open up the center of the basement. Zach places a pile of sheets on the ground, which we use to cover the couches just in case. Raj spreads newspaper over the carpet, and I help him, marveling at how efficient they are, how many times they must have done this.

“Okay, makeup,” Zach says. “Kev, Mom wants you outside for that.”

“The cat stepped in the paint tray that
one
time!” Kevin protests.

“I know, Kev,” Zach says patiently. “But it got all over the house.”

Kevin turns to me. “Follow me then, babe.”

“Kev.”

I let Kevin go a little ahead of me, hoping it'll read like a rejection of his romantic overtures. As I'm climbing up the stairs, I hear voices in the basement. Zach and Raj are talking, whispering.

I can't make out what they're saying, and I don't mean to eavesdrop, but I freeze for a second. Kevin has already disappeared through the basement door and is, I assume, outside already.

Figuring Kevin and I are gone by now, Zach and Raj raise their voices a bit.

“Like it wasn't obvious,” Raj is saying.