Everyone We've Been (4 page)

Another question: Am I so starved for male attention, as Katy claims, that I overreact every time a boy smiles at me?

We reach the counter, and Katy is starting to spout off our order when I realize that it's not that I'm desperate or lame or lovesick.

His smile makes me feel something I've never felt before.

Thick air sticks to my body, hanging on so tightly it's hard to believe other seasons exist that aren't summer. I sigh with relief as I enter the air-conditioned movie store, my phone buzzing in the pocket of my dress. I try to tuck my hair out of my face, but it is prime frizz season and my hair won't be reasoned with. I inherited my mom's aversion to heat and the same tight ringlets as my father's sisters from St. Vincent, so July is always a delight.

The store looks dead, which isn't a surprise, since nobody really borrows DVDs anymore. At Home Movies is the last of its kind in Lyndale, and adults like my mom who have lived here forever and can remember the days of video stores and ice cream trucks and children playing in the streets till sundown are weirdly nostalgic and protective of it.

Though the checkout area is empty, I can hear movement, muttering going on underneath the counter. I'm enjoying the store's miraculous coolness too much to wonder about the source of the sound. I pull my phone out and brace myself for one of twenty texts from my mom, reminding me to grab one thing or the other for our family movie night. Or one of twenty texts from Katy, detailing her, by my count, decade-long road trip.

The message is a picture of four pairs of bare feet on asphalt, a crowd of toes. I pick out Katy's feet by the black nail polish she started sporting when school let out. In another picture, she's standing beside a road sign that says
CURVES AHEAD
, pouting seductively and holding her hands up like a show queen. The silver bracelet her dad sent her three years ago that she never takes off is catching sunlight, so it looks like she's giving off both angelic glow and sex appeal. It's very confusing.

There is no actual text. No
Missing you, boo!
or
How are you holding up?
which I don't expect from Katy to begin with. But I do expect
some
sympathy, if only out of consideration for my plight. She is exactly where I want to be at this moment. In a car, breeze blowing though her piss-straight hair (her words, not mine), on her way to New York City for three whole weeks. A trip being funded by Katy's dad, of course. New York is, like, seven hours from Maine, but Katy and her theater friends are making a whole trip out of it, stopping over at Hampton Beach and a million other places.
I,
on the other hand, am picking up DVDs for a movie night with my mom and older brother.

I spent all of April and May pleading with my parents to let me go on the trip with Katy, and all of June pouting when they refused, derailing my plans for a great summer and possibly my only chance to see New York before I move there. If they
let
me move there.

Being stuck at home is bad enough, but it was during the summer when Dad left four years ago, so July and August are famously gloomy in my family. Katy says it's like our version of seasonal affective disorder.

Maybe it makes me a horrible person—I get that it's sad my parents aren't together—but I don't feel as upset about it as everyone else in my family does. It just feels like so long ago.

Still, we rallied last week for an awkward dinner at Café Amore to celebrate my sixteenth birthday and Caleb's high school graduation a couple of weeks ago. My parents are always self-conscious when we're out anywhere as a family. We used to get a lot of weird looks from strangers, acquaintances staring too long, squeezing my mom's shoulder as they passed or patting Caleb's head uninvited. When I was younger, there were even times I wondered whether it was because my dad is black and my mom is white. But the weirdness happened even when my parents weren't around. I got strange looks from classmates' parents and the occasional special treatment from teachers; it was sympathy more than gawking. I guess my mom being on Channel Se7en makes her moderately famous in a smallish town, and the gossip about my parents splitting up was big news at some point. The odd attention happens much less now, but I remember my parents hated it then and still seem wary of it happening again. So our celebratory dinner basically consisted of uncomfortable small talk, Caleb looking like there were a million places he'd rather be, and me overcompensating to make everyone feel more at ease.

On weekday mornings for the next two months, I'll have lessons at the home of Clarence, a retired viola instructor Mrs. Dubois introduced me to last year. Mostly, it's an excuse to play for Clarence, since her arthritis prevents her from doing so now and she says recordings never sound the same. So I'll play pieces I'm working on and she'll give me notes and we'll talk music for an hour. Then I'll spend the rest of the day biding time, practicing, and reading (something off next year's reading list so I'll be ahead in English class in the fall) before doing it all over again.

The one and only relief about being home this summer is not being crushed in a car with Katy's the-
yuh
-trical friends. I was drawn to Katy for her energy, her commitment to being herself, but some ugly, secret part of me wonders whether
I'm
Katy's best friend because she needs someone she doesn't have to compete with. For Juilliard, for attention. Whether the moment something or someone better comes along, she'll move on to that. Because if there's one thing Katy is good at, it's moving on.

I push the thought out of my mind now and stare at a shelf of movies with foreign names. My mother's exact orders: “Something emotional but uplifting.” Nothing against the foreign film industry, but none of these covers really scream “uplifting” to me. Maybe because I'm not fluent in Hungarian.

The last couple of weeks, Mom has unsuccessfully insisted on family movie nights with me and my brother. Unsuccessfully because we're not the kind of family that does well with bonding time and shared space and basic eye contact. Such advanced stuff is for TV families. My brother likes to keep to himself, holed up in his room, and I like classical music and imagining myself someplace far away. There's not a whole lot of overlap between us.

Right then I hear a noise from the checkout section and turn to watch a boy leap over the counter and hurry toward me.

“Hi!” he shouts, smiling, and a little out of breath. “Welcome to At Home Movies! Can I help you find anything?”

I blink at him, alarmed. “Yeah, I'm looking for a movie?”

The boy laughs, and the wave of hair at the front of his head bops. He smooths his hands over his shirt and says, “Sorry. My dad makes us greet every customer with enthusiasm, but I didn't notice you come in.”

He's got the enthusiasm part, all right.

“That's okay,” I say.

“What are you looking for?”

I tell him my mom asked for a foreign film that is emotional but uplifting. He frowns at the collection of DVDs on the wall.

Finally he says, “Does she like slashers?”

His response is so unexpected that I burst out laughing. “I've never asked, but I'm going to guess no.”

He isn't laughing when he says, “That's too bad.” He starts to walk toward another section, and I follow him, curious. “There's this Italian guy, Rinieri Ciano?” I shake my head no. I have not been indoctrinated into the world of slasher films. “He makes some of the best—like, just
sick
movies. He's a legend.”

There's a good chance I'm gaping at him, because he quickly adds, “I don't mean disturbing or scary. ‘Sick' as in ‘good.' In fact, I'd classify them as comedy. Satire. They are horrodies—horror comedies. It's ketchup and blue string for veins, stuffed socks for intestines.”

I am definitely gaping because he laughs now. A laugh that instantly makes me feel warm all over, negating the air-conditioning, and I don't even mind. “You have to see it. Like, you know it's fake, and that's the whole point. It's Ciano's way of commenting on filmmaking and life in general.”

“What's his comment, exactly?” I ask.

“I'd say art, how to tell stories.” He says it so seriously, so pensively, that now even my ears are warm. As if he is telling me a secret, whispering it inside them. “Will you try one?”

“Okay,” I say. Then quickly add, “Maybe not for my mom, though. I thought, er,
Le coeur est une montagne
looked good.”

My face heats even more at my abysmal French.

“Ah,
oui,
” the boy says, grinning at me as he reaches down to pick up a DVD case. His
oui,
which sounds like a New England boy speaking French (and by that I mean it is almost as bad as my attempt), makes me feel better. “I'd start with this one—
The Sea in the Garden.
” He is back to being serious, and I realize that this boy does not play around with his slasher movies.

“I'm here all week,” he says a few minutes later, when he's checking out my movies. “I want to hear what you think.”

“Okay.” It occurs to me then that I might hate his recommendations,
really
hate them, and then what will I say?

“If I'm ever not out front, I'm most likely in the breakroom, so just ask for Zach.”

Zach.
It suits him somehow, an energetic, slasher-loving boy.

“Thanks,” I say.

“No problem, Miss Sullivan,” he says, bringing up my mom's profile on the computer.

“Addie,” I correct.

“Addie.”
He is trying my name out, too, seeing if it fits me, fits my big, easily tangled black hair and the way I carry myself, except he is doing it out loud. He must've decided it does, because he grins at me one more time.

A bright, radiant smile that makes stepping outside and back into the heat wave on a cloudless summer day in Lyndale seem like stepping into the cool shade. I see spots as I get on my bike.

That night I watch
The Sea in the Garden
on my computer, just so I can come back the next day.

“Addie!” Zach exclaims when I walk into the movie store. He's beaming as if I am an old friend. As I get closer to the counter, though, his expression turns serious. “What's the verdict?”

“Horrible. Really, really horrible,” I say, watching as his face falls.

“Really?” he asks quietly, disappointed.

“He nearly married his
sister
!” I say dramatically, and understanding lights up Zach's face.

“You're talking about
Le pontagne
!” There is visible relief in his face, and a smile crawls across it.

“Le something montagne,”
I say, glancing at the DVD case in my hand. “
Le something
shit
agne.
Though my mom loved it.”

Zach laughs now, and even though it seems like something he does easily, I feel proud. He slides the movies from me and puts his elbows on the counter, leaning forward. “So the
real
verdict? I promise I won't mind. You can tell me if you hated it.”

I can't. Not with his dancing eyes and his lips tilted up in a half smile, on their mark, ready to full-on sprint into a grin.

“It was good,” I say carefully. “Kind of confusing.”

Zach watches me, nodding slowly.

“Like, I just didn't get what made the guy snap when he'd been so normal the whole movie.”

He nods again, squinting to take in what I am saying.

“And it was fake. Really, really fake.” He is fully smiling now. “I think I saw the ketchup bottle in the corner of the screen once.”

“I know!” Zach laughs, elated. “It's fucking fantastic.”

His laugh is contagious and I laugh, too. There is a ding then as a customer, a middle-aged woman wearing a high ponytail and gym shorts, comes in to return a pile of DVDs.

“So what else do you have?” I ask. I didn't lie to Zach. The movie
was
good. Weird, but good. And different. More importantly, it gave me an excuse to come back here today.

“I could tell just from looking at you that you'd appreciate it,” he says as we walk to the Horror section.

What does
that
mean? “I look like a slasher chick?” I joke.

His eyes take in all of me, and his cheeks redden the slightest bit. “Just, you know, someone who would understand.”

I don't know what it means, but I like that answer.

I follow him to the checkout, and someone who looks like a carbon copy of Zach in thirty years comes out to join us. He is just as tall, his hair a reddish brown and thin on top.

“Oh, damn, I'm so sorry,” the man says, addressing me. “He's pushing Ciano on you?”

“He's not pushing,” I say at the same time Zach says, “She
likes
it, Dad.”

The man—Zach's dad—raises both hands in surrender. “It's an acquired taste. But at least he's giving you one DVD at a time, not the whole collection.” He turns to his son. “You could do that, you know. They're not exactly in high demand.”

Zach keeps his eyes on the computer when he says, “I want to hear what she thinks of each one.”

“Oh,” is all his father says.

Oh,
is all I can think as Zach hands me the DVD, signature smile in place. And then I am stumbling out the door, heart fluttering a little bit. I'm trying to figure out how other girls manage to mount bikes while wearing a skirt, praying he isn't watching me.

Hoping he is.