In This Moment (30 page)

   
“What are you doing here?” She squeaks.

    “Getting gas.” I state the obvious. “
You?”

    “
Same.” I follow the movement of her head to where Mara is leaning over her car. She waves and I wave back. “We’re skipping class today to head home early for the Thanksgiving break. M-Mara wanted a granola bar and I had a craving for orange juice and, well… you can figure out the rest.”

   
Silence. We’re awkward.
This
is awkward.

   
I cough. “Of all the gas stations in all the towns in all the world…” Aimee blinks at me and I know that she has no idea what I’m talking about. “
Casablanca
,” I offer up.

    Aimee shakes her head. “I haven’t seen it.”

    “Well you could knock me sideways. I’m shocked.”

    She laughs and as it fades, it turns
into a smile. A real smile. It’s the one that I remember. So beautiful that it puts the sun to shame. I tell her this and she smiles and blushes some more.

    “So, um, are you going home for Thanksgiving?” She asks
eventually.

    I lean back on my heels and squint my eyes against the sun hanging at the top of the sky. “Nah. It’s too far for such a short trip. I have to be on campus by Saturday
morning for track team stuff.” I take a shallow breath. “So, how are things with your family?”

    “
Oh, good actually. We’ve been talking and clearing up a lot of the misunderstandings, and I think things are better.”

    “Good.”

    “Well, it was, you know…” She waggles her shoulders and gets a look on her face. “… nice to see you.”

    “Yeah, of course,” I say, mimicking the look
and scratching the back of my neck.

    Silence.

    She points to her sister. “I should go.”

    “Me too.” I step
to the right the same time that she steps to the left and we end up smacking into each other.

    “You first,” I say, moving
out of the way and grabbing the handle of the glass door to keep myself from touching her again.

    “Thanks,” she breathes.
“Um, bye, Cole.”

   
If she looks back, I’ll say something. If she doesn’t, I’ll let it go.

   
I wait.

    I wait some more.

    She looks back.

   
Just once, right before she gets to Mara’s car. It’s a small swing of the eyes over her shoulder—so quick that if I weren’t already looking for it, I would miss it.

   
Still counts.

   
“Hey, Aimee!” I shout.

    She turns
fully, wipes a hand across her beautiful face.

   
I’d like to say something profound or great, but if those words are inside my head I can’t find them. All I can come up with is this: “I’m finally reading the
Harry Potter
books
.”

    “You are?” I can tell that
she’s genuinely surprised. “Why?”

    I move my head to the side like
why-do-you-think
.

    “Which book are you on?”

    “Three.”

    Her eyebrows go up
even further and a fragile smile tips the corner of her mouth. “I think that’s my favorite one. Do you like them so far?”

     I spread my hands.
“I’m not a douchebag, am I?”

  
She looks at me and it’s not so much the fact that she’s looking at me—it’s the
way
that she’s looking. Hope stirs in my chest. And when she breaks into laughter, it grows wings and takes off into the sky.

Aimee

“Where are you off to?”

    I crane my neck over my shoulder
. My dad, home early from work, is coming down the stairs cradling a magazine under one arm and a kayak paddle under the other. I don’t ask.

    He pauses on the fourth step. “Aimee?”

    “I’m actually going down to the pool for a swim.” I finger the strap of the black bathing suit peeking out from under my tank. “It kinda feels like time.”

    He flinches
in surprise at the words
pool
and
swim,
but just barely. He takes the next stair as he works out what to say. “That’s… that’s tremendous, Aimee.”

   
Tremendous? Who says words like tremendous?
“Yeah, um…” I stand and stretch my legs, pressing my slick palms into my thighs. “Try not to make a big deal, okay? I didn’t mention it to Mom.”

    Dad smiles.
It’s the conspiratorial, it’s-us-against-them smile that he used to use with me. “Of course. No big deal. No deal at all.” He wipes his hands in front of his body to emphasize that he gets it. “Do you want a ride, sweet pea?”

    “No, that’s okay. I’m going to
take my bike because I actually have a couple of stops to make first.”

    The smile slips a bit. “Oh, alright.”

    “But hey,” I say, heading toward the garage. “Would you mind checking the air in my tires for me?”

    Dad makes me wait while he fiddles with
my bike for a few minutes and I feel twelve again. Then he follows me down the driveway and once we’ve reached the end, he hugs me for a long time. We don’t use actual words but it feels strangely like a conversation. As I peddle away, I decide that it’s not perfect but at least it’s a start.   

   
My first stop isn’t far so I don’t have much time to get psyched up. I tell myself that it’s like swimming in a race. You don’t think, you just
do
.

   
Don’t think, just do.
The words move inside of me like fast water, propelling me down the road, around the curve. Panting, pushing, I drop the bike at the crest of the hard-packed shell walkway, take the familiar front steps two at a time, and ring the bell before I can stop myself.
Don’t think
,
just do.

   
“Do you know how many times I’ve played the what if game with myself?” The words are fizzing in the air before I can register the lines on her face. “What if we hadn’t gone that night? What if we’d gotten a ride with Brian?” My voice breaks and tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I can barely make myself look at her but I keep going. I came here to talk to Jillian’s mother and that’s what I’m going to do. “What if I had known about the pills?
How
could I have not known, right? She was my best friend and I thought that was the kind of thing that we told each other. Maybe she’d gotten good at pretending… I-I don’t understand any of it and still, I wake up every morning and think: What if I could go back to that night and choose all over again?
What if
?” 

   
Mrs. Kearns takes a step forward then stops. “But you can’t.”

    “Right. I can’t.”
I think of Jillian, taking my hand, jumping into the void. And I think of her taking my keys out of my hand, laughter creasing her eyes.
I’m fine.

    “Aimee…”

    “I’m sorry. I just… God! I miss her so much that it hurts. And sometimes it hurts so much that I’m convinced she’s trapped inside of me trying to beat and claw her way out of my chest.” I pound my fist against my breastbone. “And I don’t even know if that’s what I want… because, because… if she gets out—if the memories stop haunting me—I’ll be alone. Really and truly alone.”

   
“Oh, Aimee,” she says and her voice holds more sadness than anger. “It’s
me
that wants to go back. What if I had been stricter? What if I’d gotten her into ballet instead of swimming? What if I were the type of mother to search her daughter’s room? Would I have found the pills then? What if I could go back and live an entirely different life? Would one single choice make a difference?” She closes her tear-soaked eyes. “And, honey, I’m the one who should be telling you that I’m sorry. You were just a kid—a kid that I loved and then turned my back on for one mistake and all the other things that you couldn’t control. Do you know what Jillian would do if she were here right now?”

    U
nable to look her in the eye, I give my head a little shake.

    “She’d slam a door in my face and not talk to me for over a week.”
Mrs. Kearns finds my hand, winds her fingers into mine. Her skin is warm and smooth. “You aren’t to blame for Jillian’s death. You never were.”

   
I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t lift my voice above a whisper. “I didn’t know about the pills. I didn’t know.”

   
She doesn’t respond, but she nods her head like she believes me, and she pulls me into her arms and squeezes me hard against her body. “Come inside,” she says against my hair. “Please.”

    So I do.

***

    One thing I know from watching all those movies with Cole is that real life doesn’t work out the way that it does onscreen. In real life, you rarely know the right thing to say and the best parts aren’t condensed down to a manageable script that wraps up at the two-hour mark. The director never calls cut. There isn’t a period at the end of the last sentence. There’s a question mark.

    If my life
were a movie, fresh from seeing Mrs. Kearns, I would go to the tabernacle of Jillian’s grave and I would sprawl out on a pallet of lush green grass under a sunlit blue sky. I’d talk out loud for hours, telling her all of the things that she’s missed. The breeze would pick up along with a stirring musical score. A white bird of some sort might take flight from a nearby tree and I would just
know,
in some secret place inside of me, that Jilly and I are okay.

    Real life doesn’t work q
uite like that, does it? It’s jumbled up and it’s messy and there are too many thoughts, too many
feelings
curling around inside of you
.
You can’t unwind them and say for certain, “this is this, and that is that.”

   
It’s not like that.

    It’s like
this:
grass, scorched and brittle under my sneakered feet and sweat pooling in the butt of my bathing suit from the bike ride over here. Real life is me slapping occasionally at the no-see-ums circling my ankles as I silently stare at the stone tablet that marks the spot where my best friend’s ashes are buried. Real life is me searching for answers but winding up feeling more lost than ever.

    Looking around, t
he only thing that I know for sure is that she’s not here. Not in this place. There’s no way Jillian Kearns would stick it out for eternity in a humdrum Florida cemetery full of browns and greys and a bunch of decaying old farts. Not a chance. She’d go where the action is.

   
I will if you will.

    I tilt my face to the sky and s
omething that Mrs. Kearns told me earlier comes back to me.

    “
When you girls were about ten or eleven, I was driving the kids to school and I asked them who they would be if they could be anybody. I don’t remember Daniel’s answer. I’m sure that he said he’d like to be the President or some famous athlete with a massive endorsement deal.” She pushed my hair back from my face and sought out my eyes. “Do you know what Jillian said?”

    I shook my head.

    “I’ll never forget it because it was such an odd thing to say. She told me that she’d be you.
You
, Aimee.” She cupped her hand to the place where my heart beat under my skin. “Maybe you aren’t wrong. Maybe she is inside of you. But I don’t think she’s making a racket because she’s trying to get out. I think she just wants to make sure you know that she’s there.”

Cole

I can’t explain what’s happening inside my head. It’s like trying to describe in one concise sentence how and why
Terminator Salvation
went so very wrong. It’s more like,
where do I begin?

    If
I had to bottom line it? Then I’d say that I’m fucking sick and tired of getting in the way of myself.

   
I’m not sure exactly
what
I’m supposed to do next, but I’m pretty sure that I have to do something or I’ll just get swallowed into the bottomless vacuum of dead space that’s been carved out where my heart should be.

   
So, on Wednesday night, I dial the numbers one at a time and then I bring the phone up to my ear.

   
When she answers and I hear her voice—live and unscripted—for the first time in three years, I make myself take a breath and I say, all casual like, “So, there’s this girl…”

   
My mom, to her credit, doesn’t miss a beat. She doesn’t get gooey on me. She doesn’t breathe heavily into the mouthpiece, or start to cry, or heave the phone across the room.

    Nope.

    Like she doesn’t have a terminal brain tumor, like we talked yesterday, like there isn’t a giant elephant sitting on top of her, she says, “There always is. What’s her name?”

Aimee

“I, for one, think that you should just call him.”

    I look up from my book
and see Mara staring at me anxiously. She slides onto the stool next to me and props her elbows on the dark grey granite counter.

    “Call w
ho?” Mom tosses two halves of a cracked eggshell into the garbage can. She’s making a batch of pumpkin-zucchini muffins for the morning.

    “Cole,” Mara answers. “I think that s
he should call him and tell him that she misses him.”

   
Mom nods thoughtfully. “He was a very attractive young man.”

   
I put my hands up and duck my head to the counter. “Ugh. I’m not—I can’t even have this conversation with you guys. Honestly.”

   
Dad walks in the kitchen. “What are we not talking about?”

    “No.” I
adamantly glare at my mother and my sister. “Definitely not.”

    Ignoring me, Mom say
s: “Cole. Mara thinks that Aimee should reach out to the boy and settle things.”

    “
Mmm...” Dad nods his head once and sits down at the kitchen table.

    “Ugh!” I moan.
“We’re not doing this.”

    Mom points a wooden spoon at me. “R
emember that Dr. Bernstein told us that communication is key.”

    “Then l
et’s communicate. Let’s talk about something else…
anything
else!”

    Dad pipes up. “I read an article in
Men’s Health
about kayaking and—”

    Mara cuts him off
. “I saw Daniel on campus the other day and we talked about the situation.”

    That
whips my head around. “You
what
?”

    “
Daniel Kearns?” Mom asks as she measures out a half-cup of vegetable oil.

    “Yep.
If you remember correctly, we do know each other from high school.” Mara clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “Anyway, Daniel agrees with me. And the two of us have decided that if you and Cole don’t talk soon, we’re going to have to pull a parent trap number and force you together.”

    “You’re not my parent, Mara,” I say, twisting my hair over my finger.

    Mara flares her eyelids. “You know what I mean. Daniel told me that Cole is still completely heartbroken.”

    Mom’s forehead creases and she frowns. “Poor thing.”

    “Mom, it’s not—” A loud noise interrupts me.

   
“Wha—”

   
You would think, with the way the members of my family react to the sound of the doorbell, that we’re Colonials and this is the eve of the British invasion.

    Mara yelps. Mom drops the wooden spoon she’s holding.

    “What
the
?” That’s dad, checking the digital clock above the stove, furrowing his brow.

    Mom titters
, moves the mixing bowl back to the center island opposite the sink. “Don’t answer it, Carl.”

    “Why?” I interject, stepping off the barstool more out of instinct than curiosity.

    Mom runs the wooden spoon under the tap, wipes it on the bottom of her apron and shrugs delicately. “Could be burglars.”