Fall For Anything (3 page)

I am going to explode.

I put on my shoes and leave the house half-dressed. I’m wearing shorts with a pajama top that hopefully passes for a T-shirt if no one looks closely at the cartoon sheep slumbering over the big bubble letters across the chest that say
NIGHTY-NIGHT NIGHTIE
.

I leave on my bike, pumping my legs hard because I’m angry and I don’t know how else to work it out. I check my watch. Milo is at Fuller’s right now, killing time until two, when his cousin Mark relieves him and then we can skulk around Branford with less purpose than anyone else in this dumb town.

I bike across two streets, cut through an alleyway and round the corner off the main street. Fuller’s comes into view. The place is busy. One truck, three cars, a self-serve parade. The closer I get to it, the sounds, the smells, everything feels like too much. Instead of slowing down and pushing the handbrakes or even dragging my feet, I speed up, pumping my legs harder, until I can feel it in my heart. I just keep moving—

Until the back of the truck stops me.

I guess I’m not going as fast as I think I am. Maybe it only felt like my legs were matching pace with my pulse. Still, when I hit the truck, it makes this awful sound. My stomach ricochets off my spine and instead of going over the handlebars and into the truck bed, I sort of flop right over. I land on my side and my bike collapses on top of me. I close my eyes.

I don’t feel so much like exploding anymore.

I mean, I think I could sleep here.

“What the
fuck
did you
do
to my
fucking truck
?!”

I open my eyes. The guy the truck belongs to stands over me. He’s wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt over one of those greasy, off-white undershirts and his arms are hairy and the knees of his jeans are so worn out it’s amazing they’re still attached. Roy Ackman. Farmer. Everyone knows Roy.

He came to the funeral.

He is giving me the weirdest look right now.

“Eddie Reeves?” he asks, totally bewildered. I’m the last person on earth he’s expecting. Before I can say anything, the jingling of the bells over the front door to the store sound. Open. Close. Milo. I hear him before I see him.

“
Jesus,
Eddie!”

Roy lifts my bike off me. “You got a problem with my truck?”

“Why didn’t you
stop
?” Milo demands, looming over me.

“Uhm…” I lick my lips. Milo extends his hand and I fumble to get my fingers around his. I can’t figure out how to work them because when I say they’re dying, I mean it. I can’t hold on. It takes forever, but I finally get a grip and Milo pulls me to my feet. As soon as I’m upright, his hand is on the small of my back, like he’s keeping me steady.

“I spaced out,” I say. “I guess.”

Milo just stares at me, but Roy’s face softens like that, and I sort of hate that I’m going to get away with this for all the wrong reasons, but I think I have to let it happen because everyone in Branford knows how Roy Ackman feels about his truck.

“I’m really sorry, Roy,” I add. “I didn’t mean to.”

“No, no,” he says gruffly, waving a hand. “It’s okay. I know…”

He looks me right in the eyes. I didn’t notice how blue Roy Ackman’s eyes were until this exact moment. He shoves his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, and starts vomiting small-town condolences all over me.

“So, is your mom doing okay? We miss seeing her around town. If you ever want to come down, we’d love to have you for dinner. Corinne keeps meaning to call to let you know our door’s always open to you…”

I rub my arm. “Yeah … thanks.”

“Okay, then…” He keeps staring until he snaps to, remembering where he is and what he was doing before I decided to play chicken with his Chevy. He goes in his pocket for his wallet, pulls out a twenty, and hands it to Milo. “Twenty even. I’ll be on my way.”

Milo salutes him. “Have a good one, Roy.”

We watch Roy pull out and then I grab my bike and make my way to the store, resting it against the building before pushing through the door. The air-conditioning feels good.

Milo edges in behind me.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Beth served gluten-free pancakes and decaf for breakfast. And she’s moving in for like a month.” I lean against the freezer full of pop and energy drinks. “You seem busy.”

“Kind of.”

He goes to the counter and pours two coffees, no cream and no sugar—straight up. He doubles up on the cups so we don’t burn our hands because the Styrofoam gets hot and then he grabs two pepperoni sticks from the jar beside the cash register and hands me one and he never pays, but it doesn’t matter because his aunt owns the place and she doesn’t care. Milo is on all the surveillance tapes, eating up the food, but as long as she never has to work the register, it’s totally fine.

“Sorry about Beth,” he says, looking me up and down. His gaze lingers on my
NIGHTY-NIGHT NIGHTIE
. He doesn’t say anything, which is good. I yawn. “Tired?”

“I was up late.”

“Really? Because I called you last night and you didn’t pick up.”

“Sorry.” I take a sip of the coffee, which is stupid. It burns all the way down. “Beth woke me up as soon as I got to sleep. She says I need to get my cicada rhythms back on track.”

His mouth quirks. “You mean
circadian
rhythms?”

“What are you, Beth?”

A customer comes in, and then another and another. Milo stands alert behind the register and I just stay there, yawning, until he says, “Take the couch. I’ll wake you when my shift ends.”

I go to the backroom and flop down on the gross leather couch that has been here since time immemorial and that, despite its grossness, is actually really comfortable. I close my eyes and next thing, Milo is shaking me awake and the light coming in through the window has changed.

“Gus is here,” he says.

I rub my face and follow Milo back into the store, squinting, trying to wake myself up. As soon as Milo’s uncle sees me, he envelops me in this big bear hug and I can’t figure out why until I realize this is the first time I’ve seen
him
since the funeral too. Gus doesn’t usually follow one of Milo’s shifts. Mark must have cancelled.

“Holding up?” He keeps his voice low.

“Yep,” I say into his chest.

It takes him forever to let go, or maybe it just feels like it. I can’t wait to get out of his grasp, but as soon as I am, I sort of want to be hugged again.

Gus claps Milo on the shoulder.

“So what’s on the agenda for you two today? Trouble?”

“Of course,” Milo says.

Of course. We leave Fuller’s, making our way to the park so we can sit there and do nothing. Milo walks my bike for me, like he doesn’t trust that I won’t just pedal myself into the back of another truck. We don’t talk. It’s quiet between us lately. All the time. Sometimes I’m afraid my dad’s death has stolen whatever sparked between us back in the second grade.

We never used to be this kind of quiet.

I’m edging down the roof like usual when I catch myself on a nail that wasn’t there before. I tear the skin of my thigh on it and I feel my blood soaking into my jeans. When I hit the ground, my cell phone rings. Milo. I forgot to set it to vibrate. The ringtone is obscenely loud against all the nighttime around me and the only way I can think to make it stop is to answer him, so I do.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“I thought you’d be asleep.” He sounds surprised. “It’s late.”

“No. What’s going on?”

I tiptoe around the house to get my bike, trying to be as quiet as possible. The reception crackles a little. I hope he doesn’t know I’m outside, that he can somehow figure this out.

“Nothing … That truck thing today was pretty fucked up.”

“I know.” I walk my bike to the street slowly. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine—I mean, it’s not fine. I mean, that’s not why I called.”

“Why did you call?”

And then I get this crazy thought that he is finally going to tell me about that night because the silence on the other end of the line is so heavy, so important.

This has to be it.

“I don’t know,” he says. Or maybe not. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

Silence. And then he fakes a yawn and says, “Look, I should call it a night but I’ll see you tomorrow or something, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

He hangs up.

I leave.

This place never has anything to say to me.

Beth’s luggage precedes her, which is horrifying, and as soon as she steps through the door, she immediately throws herself into making the house a “more positive place.”

“It’s all about how you
choose
to be,” she tells me as she sticks magnets with inspirational quotes all over the fridge. She also brought a few plants—ferns, mostly. I feel bad for them. No one is going to water them and they’ll die. “You need more light—” She walks to the window and pulls back the blinds, giving me a look like
I’m
the one who drew them closed in the first place. “Vitamin D! Essential. Do you know how many diseases a little bit of sun can
prevent
? I have a list somewhere in my purse.…”

She flits out of the room before I can respond. Mom is upstairs doing I don’t know what, so I guess I’m the welcoming committee. A second later, one of those Sounds of Nature CDs is filling up the entire house. We now live in a rain forest.

Beth reenters the room and notices the look on my face.

“For meditative purposes,” she informs me.

I roll my eyes. “Because we meditate so much around here.”

“Maybe it’s time you started,” she says. “Stress is a killer.”

“Then I should be dead really soon, because you’re stressing me out.”

“Oh, Eddie.” She comes over and pinches my cheek, something she used to do when I was five. I hated it then too. “I wish making
you
a more positive person was as simple as all this! You need to stop looking at me as the enemy and start looking at me as a
reprieve
.”

When her back is to me, I turn my fingers into a gun and aim it directly at her head.

Fuller’s is pretty empty, except for a blue Ford Taurus parked next to the store.

I don’t think anything of it until I get to the door and I see who it belongs to and then I don’t know what to think. Her back is to me and she’s leaning over the counter talking to Milo, but I don’t need to see her face to know who it is. I would recognize those legs anywhere. They’re perfect and tanned. Go all the way up.

Missy Vinton.

Milo looks up from his spot behind the counter and sees me at the door. I hold up a hand and take a step back like,
forget it, I’ll go,
but he shakes his head and Missy turns to see who he’s staring at and when she sees me, she hurries over and opens the door.

The last time I saw Missy—before she moved during junior year—she was turning into Marilyn Monroe.

Now the transformation is complete.

Missy Vinton.

That girlfriend Milo had that one time.

“
Eddie!
Oh my God!” Missy exclaims. She throws her arms around me and squeezes me so hard I can’t breathe. “It’s
so
good to see you!”

I don’t know what to say. I stare at Milo over her shoulder. He’s looking straight at me, but I can’t read his expression.

Missy Vinton.

It took forever for him to ask her out. He never said
love
and I know it wasn’t, but he wanted her so bad he had no problem telling me just how much. He was the one who pointed out the Marilyn Monroe thing (only a fleeting resemblance at the time) and he’d always make these really lame jokes about changing his name to Joe. And then, in the middle of sophomore year, at some party at Deacon Hunt’s, he got drunk enough to tell her so.

And I guess she’d liked him for ages too.

They were the loneliest ten months of my life.

“Welcome back,” I tell her.

“Thank you. I am so,” Missy says, and then she pauses right there. Pause. I steel myself for what’s coming next. “Sorry about your father, Eddie. Like, really, really sorry.”

“Thank you,” I say, and she finally pulls away. “Wow, Missy. This is a surprise.”

“Really? I told Milo I was coming in, like, May. I’m staying the summer—with my grandparents.” She turns around to look at him. “You didn’t tell her?”

“No,” I say before he can. “He didn’t.”

It’s not subtle. Not the way it comes out of my mouth. And I’m sorry for the way it comes out of my mouth because I don’t want to cause this kind of tension. Missy actually steps back like I’m going to bite her or freak and I want to tell her it’s not her, even though it’s her. But it’s also
not
her. It’s Milo.

It’s Milo not telling me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I try to keep my voice light.

Because Missy and Milo never really broke up. They just stopped. She moved. They didn’t write. They didn’t talk on the phone. I know he missed her. So maybe it wasn’t a full stop between them so much as it was only a pause. Pause. Resume play.

Fantastic.

“I was going to,” he says awkwardly. “But then … your dad…”

“Oh,” I say. And then I laugh. I don’t know why or where it comes from. Nervous laugh. Missy shifts, awkward, and even Milo looks uncomfortable and I’m already a third wheel. “Oh, right.” I nod. “Right. That makes sense. Sorry.” This is painful. “So I should go.”

“But you just got here,” he says.

“I know, but I don’t want to interrupt.”

“You’re not—”

“I am.” I take a few steps back and pull the door open. “I mean, I did.”