One of the Guys (25 page)

Emma's cheery voice breaks into my memory. “I have a date later,” she says. “A real one.”

“Don't tell me you're back with Kevin.” I place my cell down and lick sugar from my lips.

Emma studies her bare feet and picks a piece of lint from her pink sweater. “New guy,” she says. “Someone you know.”

My stomach drops. Is she talking about Micah? After the night on the basketball court, he texted me a few times. Wanted to talk in person. I said no. I need space. It just hurts to look at him. And I
miss
looking at him. Whatever we had—whatever we were going to have—is ruined.

So maybe I should be cool with Emma dating him. I can't claim him. I should let him go. “You can date whoever you want to date, Emma.” I force a smile. Cringing. “You have my blessing.”

She hops up to open the blinds, and a ribbon of moonlight rushes in. Emma studies the pile of crunched papers beside my desk but restrains herself in organizing them. She sits back on my unmade bed. “Really?” she asks. “That's a huge relief.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. My stomach gurgles. I dig my toes into the carpet. “Where's he taking you?” I'm grinning so hard my face hurts. “The lake?”

Emma leans back on her elbows and makes a face. “Luke hates the lake,” she says. “And it's freezing.”

I shake my head. “Wait—Luke?”

“Yeah.” She pauses. Smiles. “Who'd you think I was talking about?”

“No one.” I throw my empty soda at the trash can near the door. It hits the side but bounces in.

Emma laughs. “Micah? You thought I meant Micah? That's sweet, Toni. That you'd let me have the love of your life and all.”

“He's not—” I pause. Now's a good time for a change in subject. “So Luke? Tell me more.”

Please don't bring him up again
. Emma senses that. “It started when I read his journal,” she says.

I laugh. “You
kept
that?”

“I was curious!” she says. “I didn't expect to fall in love with his words.”

Love. Love. Love
. A sickening word. I move to the floor and pull my knees to my chest. I practically whisper, “You're in love with him?”

“I don't know.” Emma sighs and giggles. “It's early. We've only hung out a few times. But I've got a good feeling. Have you ever read anything he's written?”

“You mean did I steal his journal and read it?” I smirk and pause. “No.”

“I didn't
steal
it.” Emma leans forward, twisting her hair tighter around her finger. “I returned it.”

“I'm scared to even ask what he would write about,” I say, opening a box of Junior Mints. Probably how much he hates me.

“He wrote a lot about that monster in Lake Champlain,” she says. “Sounded like a pretty great summer for you guys.”

I look down, smiling, remembering the excitement of that day. A melancholy washes over me. I open another Mountain Dew. “Well, good. You deserve to be happy, Emma.”

“So do you, Toni.” She picks a loose string from the sleeve of her pink sweater. “It kind of sucks sometimes, doesn't it?” She tilts her head. Her honey hair falls over the side of her face. “Being in love?”

I examine the vacuum-streaks on my pale pink carpet. Emma insisted on vacuuming when she got here. “I wouldn't know,” I say with a shrug. But I totally know what she means.

“He'll be home before midnight.” Emma speaks slowly, carefully, like she's breaking bad news to me. “You should go talk to him.”

I know she's not referring to Ollie anymore. But I can't talk to Micah. I just can't. Whatever I say to him, he'll repeat it to Ollie and Cowboy, and I don't want to be a
joke
. Nothing feels sacred anymore. But I feel him over there, next door, his weight impossible to ignore. It pisses me off, the way he affects me.

“You know what?” I stand, as if this abrupt movement could permanently shake Micah from my mind. “I've already got plans tonight.”

I arrive at the cemetery after midnight. The harsh moonlight shines over fresh red roses scattered near tombstones. A few heart-shaped balloons blow in the wind. I park on the side of the road that cuts through the cemetery.

A miniature notebook tucked under my right arm, I navigate the graves, a familiar path. His grave is cloaked in shadow, stubbornly hiding from the Valentine moon.

“Hi, Dad,” I say, kneeling on the frozen ground. I pull the hood of my coat over my ears. “Happy Valentine's Day.”

Sometimes I wait for the stone to speak back to me, for a low hum or whisper, anything, but not even the wind humors me. It's a stark quiet around here, as if sound's forbidden. I lean forward and read his name again and again. I hope the letters will somehow morph into someone else's and this could all be a bad dream. Like maybe he'll walk up behind me, tell me to come home, that it's late, and he'll throw his arm over my shoulder. We'll laugh about our bad dreams because that's all it ever was—what happened to him, what happened to me, what happened to our family. A bad dream.

I wipe my nose on my sleeve, surprised to find hot tears on my skin. I thought I had mastered the art of keeping them away. I examine the rows of Tweety Bird stickers in the notebook. They're starting to fade, the once-bright yellow bird now sickly. There must be at least a hundred of them, lined up page after page, the cartoon bird smiling and then scowling and then wearing glasses, the stickers all various shapes and sizes.

Abruptly, they stop. Blank pages follow. I got too big for them, I guess. If I'd let him, Dad would have kept handing them out for every little thing I did, probably forever.

I sit like that for some time, the stickers on my lap, trying to remember why I earned each one, and then I hear crunching gravel. A pair of headlights appear on the horizon. A car moves steadily down the road. I close the notebook and stand.

“Dad, I hope you can see me,” I whisper to the tombstone. “I hope you can see everything. I hope you can know the new me. And all the new mes to come. Because I don't want to stay the same forever, Dad. I want to be a girl with painted nails. A girl who can wear a skirt now and then. Well,
maybe
.” I chuckle. “I want to be the college girl. The brave girl. The scared girl. The businesswoman. The engineer. The teacher. The nurse. The doctor. When we meet again—and I
know
we'll meet again—I hope you can still recognize your little tomboy with the skinned knees.”

The car parks in the small lot to the right. A figure steps out and walks swiftly along the foot path toward me. I step behind a tree to hide—a strange instinct, but a part of me wonders if this is the mysterious visitor to my father's grave. The one who leaves a new bandana now and then.

I watch the tall figure navigate the foot path, half-jogging, and stop at Dad's tombstone. The clouds move, allowing the moonlight to push through for a moment, shining on the boy standing there. The boy with the scruffy chin and the wide jaw and the buzz-cut. He's wearing a suit, his tie loose and crooked.

I watch him set a red bandana on the ground. He stands for several minutes, his head bowed. And then Micah looks up and walks away. I don't move until his Honda vanishes into the darkness.

He and my dad got along well. We hadn't reached the age for romantic entanglements yet, so Micah was just the boy next door. But I didn't expect this—his special visits to my father.

A feeling—a strange, full, lovely feeling—balloons inside my chest and spreads. It's a feeling I can't shake on the drive back, no matter how loud I play country music.
Micah
. Of course he visits my dad. Even though we're not talking right now. I take the long way home and cruise along the lake. I glance over now and then, half-expecting to see Champ splashing in the water, his black tail whipping about. He must be so lonely down there. Especially tonight.

Maybe change doesn't have to mean growing apart. Maybe it can mean growing closer. I won't know unless I let Micah see the part of myself I keep hidden. Emma's right.

I gotta talk to him.

When I pull into my driveway, I see him sitting on the front porch. My heart pounds. Maybe he has the same idea I do tonight. I slam the car into park and jump out, breathless and excited. Man, I've missed him.

“Hey,” I say, trying to hide my smile. I don't want to appear over eager.

I stop when Cowboy appears around the corner. Something's not right. “What's wrong?” I ask.

“It's Ollie,” Cowboy says, fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket. He looks to Micah, who stands with his beautiful face scrunched and serious. “He's in trouble.”

twenty-five

I
SINK INTO THE WORN LEATHER OF
the Honda's passenger seat and reach for the loose thread near my knee. Nervously, I pull at it. It feels different without Ollie here. Heat from the vents blasts my cheeks, and I pull my coat sleeves over my cold hands, watching the night through the window. I ignore my pale reflection in the glass.

“Before his phone cut off, he said he was somewhere on Lake Road,” Micah says. “We'll start looking there. Keep an eye on your phone in case he calls.”

My phone rests in my lap, but I'm still not sure how I can help the situation—whatever that may be, exactly. I'm here though. All I know is that Ollie called Cowboy about thirty minutes ago, desperate for a ride home, and Cowboy recruited Micah as back-up.

As we drive along the shore, the headlights punch the surface of the lake. There's so much I want to say to Micah, I need to say, but I don't. Not with Cowboy here, silently watching. Cowboy's quiet nature never bothered me before, but tonight his presence feels loud and obvious. Micah sniffs, groans, and pulls a tissue from his pocket to wipe his bright red nose.

I look at him, tugging at the seat thread. “You're not taking care of yourself.”

“It's a cold.” He shrugs. “It's nothing.”

“In two days, you'll be imitating a corpse in your bedroom,” I say. His jacket is wrinkled, his tie loose. Dark circles rest under his tired eyes.

He flips on the radio. The volume, as always, is stuck on low, but a Keith Urban song plays. He doesn't change the station, and I know that he's playing the radio for me tonight. He sniffles. “You can't predict the future,” he says.

“I can predict yours.” I lean back. Glance at him. “It's a gift.”

He suppresses a smile. “Or a curse.”

I shrug. “Or both.” Maybe the way I feel about him is a gift and a curse. A gift because of the butterflies and whatnot and a curse because it means everything will change. Not just with us. Like Ollie implied, what happened with Micah and I affects the whole group.

All of a sudden, he blurts out, “I wasn't making fun of you about the dancing at the cabin, Toni. I know you don't want to hear it, but it's the truth. I was asking for some advice. That's the only reason I said anything about it.”

I stare at the stick-figure I drew on my cast, my eyes shifting to his words below the drawing. I look at those words more than I care to admit. It feels nice, sitting beside him, almost like old times, except that everything beneath the surface is different. Like we're hiding a lake monster of our own beneath polite words and nervous gestures and childhood nicknames.

“Can we just focus on finding Ollie?” Cowboy asks. “He sounded drunk or something.”

Micah coughs and slams on the brakes, jolting me forward. The car screeches to a halt. The seatbelt digs into my skin.

“Dude!” Cowboy yells, waving his arms.

“Sorry about that, but I think that's him.” Micah points at something in the distance.

I squint through the windshield. Someone waves near the water, dancing in the headlights. A boy with curly black hair. A boy with something red smeared across his face.

“Oh my God.” I get out of the car. Cowboy follows and runs ahead of me. Micah climbs out but keeps the car running. The headlights shine across the road.