Only Alien on the Planet (8 page)

I lay there, staring into the dark, my heart thudding.

The front door opened.

I could hear them talking, James and Charlie—talking and laughing and shushing each other. They opened the door to my parents' room, and then they came down the hall toward mine. I closed my eyes before the light from the hall touched my face.

“I told you,” whispered Charlie. And the door closed.

They went on down the hall to the kitchen and closed that door too, so their voices were muffled, the words indistinct. I opened my eyes into the darkness and sighed. I was glad they were finally home. I hadn't realized before how much of me had been waiting for that, waiting to know they were home safe. Waiting to share the house with somebody.

It's the family, Gin,
I could hear Paul saying.
There's nothing more important than the family.

And maybe that's the only point there is to anything.

I remember having a fleeting interest in what James and Charlie might be eating. After that, I must have fallen asleep.

Y
ou're going to be late,” James yelled up from downstairs. The front door slammed. I looked at the clock and gasped. I'm only consistent when it comes to stupid things, like being late and getting myself into awful situations. I grabbed my stuff and pulled on my parka, flying out the front door at approximately the same moment Caulder and Smitty should have been halfway to school. But when I looked up the street, Caulder was still standing at the foot of his walk. I found this strangely disappointing.

I nodded at him, hitched my purse up on my shoulder, pulled the collar of my parka up around my ears, and stood at the foot of my walk, waiting and catching my breath. I guess it didn't occur to me to go over and wait with Caulder. I just stood there at the end of my walk with my books in my arms, breathing little clouds out into the air.

After a minute, Caulder came trudging over to me.

“Aren't we late?” I asked him. He shrugged, peered at Tibbs's house, scowled at his watch, and took another look at Tibbs's.

“Maybe he's sick,” Caulder said, sounding worried.
Well, that's good of you
, I thought.

“Maybe he hates our guts,” I said.

“There is that,” he allowed. Reluctantly, he started down the sidewalk toward school.

“You could go check,” I suggested. Caulder turned around and took one more look at Tibbs's. “No,” he said finally. “We're late enough as it is.” He started walking again.

“I thought you were worried,” I said, following him down the sidewalk.

“Well,” he retorted. “
You
want to go over there? Mrs. Tibbs is probably still in her robe—you could see what her hair looks like in the morning—”

“No thanks,” I said. So we went on to school, neither of us saying a word.

As it turned out, Smitty wasn't sick. He was sitting in homeroom. He didn't bat an eyelash when I caught it for coming in after the bell. And I was angry about that—mad that we'd stood there in the freezing cold, waiting for him. Mad that I'd caught heck in front of the whole class—that it was his fault, and I was never going to get any satisfaction out of knowing he knew it.

He was getting more human every minute.

It was hours before I finally realized that Smitty had been making another statement. Of course even a halfway intelligent dog would act to avoid an uncomfortable situation, but still—it was like an affirmation of our very existence, that he shouldn't want to walk with us.

If that's why he hadn't shown up this morning.

“Well, I think we can assume he definitely is avoiding us,” Caulder said that night. We were on our way home from Tibbs's with my math. Smitty hadn't helped me; his mother hadn't been able to find him anywhere.

“You better be able to explain this stuff to me, Caulder,” I warned him, meaning my math. “This is your fault.”

He glared at me. “Oh, really,” he said.

“Yes, really,” I told him. We turned in at my walk. “I have to hand in this stuff tomorrow, Caulder. The way my luck is running, Mrs. Shein will probably ask me to explain it at the board.”

“Which you could do, if you wanted to,” he said. “If you'd stop whining and use half your brain.”

“Which I could do, if I had anybody who could explain it to me. Which I would have if we'd just left Smitty alone in the first place.”

“Oh.
Now
it comes out. She cares more about getting her grade in math than she does about helping another human being.”

“Oh.
Helping.
”

“Yes. Helping.” Caulder had his nose stuck up in the air.

“You're a real truck driver, you know that, Caulder? As long as you get where you think you're going, you don't care who you turn into roadkill.”

He turned around and stared at me. “And what's that supposed to mean?”

“You think you're Albert Schweitzer or somebody, but you're not. You'd probably cut down rain forests and call it 'Progress for Mankind.'”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You've been weird all day,” he said to me. “So, what's the problem?”

“The problem is, you don't really care about Smitty.”

His mouth fell open. “How can you say that to me? What do you mean I don't care about him? What do you want me to do? Die for him or something? I love him; you know I love him.”

I folded my arms and took a breath. And then I looked him square in the face. “You don't hurt people you love.”

His hands fell down to his sides. He looked away from me, and then he took a breath and he met my eyes. “You do if you have to.” He lifted his hands slightly and then dropped them again. “I don't want to hurt him,” he said. “Lord knows I don't.”

We were standing on my front stoop, freezing, staring each other down.

“You do what you have to do,” he said softly.

“What you
have
to do,” I echoed.

“You do your best,” he amended. Then he sighed and leaned back against the wall of my house. “Sometimes I get carried away,” he admitted. “But—” he looked up at me, “—I think maybe sometimes you run when it looks like it's going to cost you anything.”

A little tongue of anger spurted up inside of me at that, not because he was criticizing me, but because I knew he was right. “This isn't about me,” I said.

“This is about us,” he said wearily. “And maybe why we need each other. And maybe why he needs both of us, and not just me.”

I still had my arms folded, but something in all that had sounded like reconciliation and suddenly I wasn't angry with him anymore.

“What about my math?” I said.

I saw him relax. “Don't worry about your math,” he said, making it sound dogged. “I'm not as useless as I make out.”

Which turned out to be a good thing, as Caulder was the only help I was going to be getting for days to come.

No Smitty in the morning, no Smitty at night. No matter how Caulder lay in wait, Smitty outguessed us, and I got yelled at more than once for being late to homeroom. The one time Smitty was late, the teacher didn't say a word to him. Caulder was right: that kid had a very good thing going in some ways.

The one bright spot in my life that week was
supposed
to have been the Film Society. But the kids bailed out of our movie again that Friday night. They were showing
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,
a movie I actually
knew
something about. A happy film—actually funny in places. Exactly the thing I needed. James and Charlie and the girls had bailed out early in the week, having found something
far
more meaningful to do with their Friday night. But that was okay; it meant Caulder and I could be old people, alone together— old, tired people who sorely needed a tandem sense of emotional satisfaction. It was going to be restorative. It was going to be lovely. This is what I sincerely believed.

Then Thursday night, Caulder gave me this triumphant look and announced that he had
finally
asked Hally out. And where was he taking her? Guesses, anyone? To the Film Society. To
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

And I was supposed to be pleased. I was supposed to be
proud
of him.

When it finally got through to him that I wasn't, he was offended. “Was this not what you wanted? Did you not persecute me into doing this?” he demanded, and then, turning to everyone else, “Did she not?”

“She did,” they all intoned solemnly.

“Then why is she looking at me like that?”

There was a moment of silence.

“What is
she
going to do Friday night?” I asked him. “While you and your girlfriend are going to
our
movie?”

“Well, you can come too,” he said very simply.

“
Right
,” I said. And Kaitlin and Melissa agreed.

“What?” he said again. “Why not?”

“He is
so
stupid,” I said to his sisters.

“Caulder,” Katie said very patiently. “You can't ask one girl out and have another girl tag along.”

“I thought this was an enlightened age,” Caulder protested.

“You can't ask one girl out and have another girl tag along,” Kaitlin repeated, “no matter what age it is.”

“Hally wants to go out with
you
, not with
us
,” I pointed out.

“But she's
your
friend,” he said. And then, with sudden comprehension, “She
wants
to go out with me?”

“You are so
stupid
,” I said again. “You are so—
typical.
” I got up from the table. “I'm going for a walk,” I said. “I'm glad you asked Hally out—okay? I'm really glad. Glad for you, glad for Hally, glad you all have someplace to go Friday night. I hope you all have a
great
time.” I couldn't help the look I gave him, and I got my coat, and I went outside.

“Just leave her alone, Mr. Sensitive,” I heard Kaitlin say as I pulled on my coat. “She'll take care of herself.”

I slammed the front door and stood there steaming in the dark, chill October night. I stalked down the walk and started down the street—going nowhere, really, just giving Caulder and the whole rest of the world a good, mental pounding.

I went two blocks and gave up.
So what about me?
I was thinking. I stopped and sat in the gutter.
Everybody else in the world gets what they want. Oh, of course, they love me. I'm great to have around as long as you don't have anything better to do. Paul takes off for college, my folks drag us out here and then desert us, the kids take off with their friends, Caulder deserts me—it's not even because he's so stupid. It's not even because he's mean. It's because I'm the kind of person people forget, that's why. I just might as well not even exist. I'm not the kind of person people fight for. I'm just sort of an extra. I might as well just sit here the rest of my life. Alone. In the gutter.

The wind blew and a smattering of leaves hit the street, scudding away from me. I looked up. There wasn't another soul in the street. There were lights in the windows of the houses, but they seemed cold and distant. There were no cars moving. Only the wind. I could have been the only person alive in the whole world. It was very depressing. I picked up a little chip of broken asphalt and balanced it on my palm.

“This is stupid,” I said out loud. I chucked the asphalt into the street. I was still too mad to give in to depression. So I got up and walked back down the street toward my house.
Okay,
I said to myself, quoting Paul,
What is it, exactly, Ginny, that you want?
At the moment, that was an easy answer. I wanted to see the stupid movie.
So go alone.
Of course. Walk ten blocks in the dark and freeze to death on the way.
So go with them.
Unthinkable.
Pride getting in your way.
Maybe so. I'm just funny that way.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, frustrated and angry and fed up with myself. I looked up and found myself glaring at the pale blue rectangles of the Tibbses' living room windows.

People allow themselves to be defeated,
Paul told me one time.
Like the time I fell off that horse? I didn't have to fall off it. There was actually a moment—just this one, silvery little moment—when it could have gone either way.
He'd opened his hands.
I gave up. My choice was to let go. So, I ended up with my face in the dirt and a concussion. Of course, if I'd stayed on, I'd probably have broken my neck…

“Okay,” I said to myself, and without any clear idea of what I was going to do, I marched up the walk and knocked on the door.

Mrs. Tibbs looked a little surprised to see me. Alone, that is—without Caulder. She stood there at the door, smiling politely, waiting.

“Would you tell Smitty I'm here?” I asked her. “Could you tell him I'm here by myself, and I need to talk to him?”

She was obviously too polite to shut the door in my face. After a moment, she stepped back and let me in. Her brows were all delicately puckered. “Where's Caulder?” she asked me, peering out over my shoulder into the dark as though she thought he'd suddenly pop up there.

“I believe he's studying,” I said.

She sighed, but she finally showed me into the living room, putting out a hand to indicate that she expected me to perch myself on her brocade sofa.