Say What You Will (13 page)

He still looked gorgeous, the white of his shirt against his dark skin, the black of his bow tie, the same color of his eyes. Thankfully her hand was steady enough to type. “NO. NOT TIRED.”

“Do you want to show me around your house?”

It was a strange request, especially given that it was close to midnight. She stood up. “SURE,” she said, and started to move around. “KITCHEN,” she typed, and gestured. “DINING ROOM. OFFICE/STUDY.” She moved slowly down the hall, surprised to discover her parents had already gone to their room and closed the door. “AND MY ROOM,” she said when they got to it.

It was a little embarrassing to have Sanjay see her room, with its little-girl mementos. Pink walls, a pile of stuffed animals in one corner, a pile of books in the other. She was about to explain why she held on to one and didn’t shelve the others, when Sanjay produced a surprise from behind his back.

“Ta-da!” he said, pulling out the bottle of champagne and two glasses.

He stepped inside her room and closed the door behind him. She smiled when she understood what he was thinking.

“Don’t worry about your parents,” he said. “They practically dimmed the lights for us.”

S
TARTING AT ELEVEN FIFTEEN,
when he found out that Amy had left with Sanjay, Matthew spent the most of the night furiously texting messages. After he’d driven Sarah home and got back to his room, he sat down at his computer and wrote Amy an email:

In the morning, he wrote again:

Maybe he was laying it on a little too thick, especially since Sarah had helped him put Nicole’s note in perspective. By the time they got out to the car and were driving home, she wasn’t crying anymore. Mostly she wanted to say mean things about Sanjay. “He never really wanted this job with Amy. He just needed to make money for college next year and this was the best way to do it. He thinks Amy’s a spoiled rich girl, that underneath this show of being so close to her parents, she’s furious and getting ready to explode.”

“Explode how?”

“Like really rebel. Look at the way her mom controls every aspect of her life. She even picked the friends Amy was allowed to make this year. We all had to send in a resume and she decided who was ‘qualified.’ I mean, is that screwed up or what?”

He had to admit: hearing Sarah say this made him feel better about the note in his pocket.

She felt a little dizzy at all this. How badly she’d misread the situation. She wasn’t sure if she should be honest and tell him what she’d wanted to last night. Then she decided,
What the hell.

Two minutes later, he sent this back:

Two weeks later, Amy told her parents she was going out to dinner with all her peer helpers as a thank-you for all their help this year. She got one hundred fifty dollars cash to pay for dinner, and was allowed to have Matthew pick her up, though her mother raised a skeptical eyebrow at this.

“Why can’t Sanjay give you a ride?” Nicole asked, a nervous edge in her voice.

“HE DOESN’T HAVE A CAR, MOM! HE BORROWED ONE ON PROM NIGHT.”

“Sarah can’t take you? Or Chloe?”

“NO. THEY’RE MEETING US THERE.”

“I don’t like the idea of Matthew giving you a ride. You remember what happened last time.”

Yes, I do,
Amy thought.
Last time I left early and abandoned him because I was scared.
“IT’S JUST A RIDE, MOM. I’LL BE FINE, I PROMISE.”

She
was
fine. They weren’t meeting up with anyone else. They went to a park near Matthew’s house and sat near a playground where he’d played as a boy. Matthew packed a picnic, filled with all the soft foods Amy liked most and two cans of Boost, which he claimed to have developed a taste for. “It’s a little like Muscle Milk, which I also try to drink regularly. I’m sure you can tell just by looking.”

They ate their hummus and tabbouleh salad, strawberries and shortcake, and afterward, they went through a list of things they wanted to do over the summer. Amy had about six books she wanted to read. Matthew had to work five shifts a week. “They’re all in the evening, though, which leaves my days a little free,” he said. “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing before four.”

“YOU COULD COME OVER TO MY HOUSE WHILE MY MOM IS AT WORK,” Amy said. “WE COULD HANG OUT AND SWIM.”

At first he thought she was kidding; then he looked at her face. “Are you serious?”

She stared back at him, unembarrassed. “YES.”

“But your mother wrote me this note. They don’t want me to see you—”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT MY PARENTS SAY. THEY AREN’T HOME DURING THE DAY. YOU SHOULD COME OVER.”

Sneaking behind her mother’s back? Was this one of her dares? “I could do that. I mean—sure, I’d like to do that.”

G
RADUATION CAME AND WENT,
a hot, sticky nonevent. Afterward Matthew and his mother ate dinner at an Outback. He ordered a filet mignon and she ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks, and then when his meal came, another. “You seem better these days,” his mom said. “Do you think all that stuff is helping?” She waved her hand, a little embarrassed, because she meant the medication, and the doctor.

Though he’d been going for three months, they hardly talked about it at all. He told her he didn’t want to overanalyze every little thing, or check in with her all the time. Apparently she took that to mean he didn’t want to talk about it at all, so he hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her, “I
am
better. I hope.”

She smiled and ate one of his French fries. “That’s great!”

In the beginning it felt like a fog rolled into his head and when it cleared, it left behind something strange: silence. There was no voice in his head. Since then, he couldn’t believe how much more time he had in the day. Hours, it felt like, where he could do what he wanted. Listen to music, surf the internet, text Amy. He’d spent the week before graduation doing all this and still had time left over to start a reading program, too. If he wasn’t going to college, Amy told him, then he
had
to start filling in the gaps of his education. “We haven’t even graduated yet,” he told her.

But that didn’t matter. Everything was over except for the paperwork and parties. Some seniors had stopped coming to school at all. With extra time and nothing to do, Matthew started reading. He read all of J. D. Salinger, who was surprisingly funny until he got so weird and impenetrable.

“HE NEVER GOT OVER HIS TIME IN THE WAR,” Amy explained.

“Or in prep school,” Matthew guessed.

He liked the books and he liked the feeling of accomplishment that came with finishing another one, especially as the summer began to unfold. He spent most of his mornings reading while he waited to go over to Amy’s house, where he would swim until it was time to go to work.

With these loose, unstructured days, he had more time to think about what Amy had written in her email. He never mentioned it when he was with her, but the words always hovered in the back of his mind.
If you’re a seventeen-year-old with a crush on your best friend.
He lingered over those words:
crush
and
best friend.
He couldn’t do anything about them just yet, but they buoyed him with an unexpected self-confidence. They propelled him to do and say things that surprised him.

They flirted now. At least it felt as close to flirting as he’d ever gotten. In the afternoons when he went over to her house for a swim, he spread suntan lotion on her shoulders and brought her presents like Cheetos, which she loved and her mother refused to buy. Amy always clapped and hugged the bag and he understood something was happening.

The ground beneath their feet was shifting, but he also sensed something else. A hesitation on her part. A little reluctance. Something he couldn’t pinpoint but made him pause.

Every day, Amy thought of new ways to tell Matthew what she wanted to say. She’d program her Pathway to say, “I LOVE YOU, MATTHEW MALONE!” or she’d lower it to a whisper. “I THINK I LOVE YOU.”

It never happened.

Even though it was there, between them, every afternoon.

She could feel it in his attention. The way he read every book that she suggested and loaned him. The way he arrived every day, twenty minutes after her mother had left. The way they dwelled on certain subjects and avoided others—like prom, for instance. And next fall.

All through July and the first half of August, he seemed so much better, so much easier with himself, playing games in the pool, diving showily, shaking his hair over her dry body stretched out on a deck chair. “You should come swimming with me,” he said one afternoon, in the second week of August, just after they’d eaten a little lunch at the outdoor table and returned to the lawn chairs beside the pool. Neither one of them wanted this time to end, though they both knew it would. “I understand your commitment to tanning, but maybe you could do both at the same time—”

“YOU’VE MISTAKEN ME FOR SOMEONE WITH FOUR WORKING LIMBS.”

“Come on—didn’t you used to swim a lot?”

“AS A TODDLER WEDGED IN SWIM RINGS, YES.” She used to love the water, the thrilling buoyancy of it, the way her body floated beneath her. “THE LIFE JACKET I’D REQUIRE NOW IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS FLATTERING.”

“Do you have it?”

“I’M NOT PUTTING IT ON, MATTHEW.” This whole summer she hadn’t gone in the water once. She told Matthew she didn’t like it, that her skin reacted to the chemicals in the pool. Instead she lay on a deck chair, reading and typing and watching him. She never told him the real reason—that she was scared of being in the water with him. Scared of needing his help. Scared of his arms around her. Scared of his dream coming true.

“All right. Why don’t I hold you, then? Float you around a little.” He stood beside her, a puddle of water spreading out from his feet.

“I DON’T THINK SO. YOU’D FEEL SO BAD IF I DROWNED.”

“There’s where you’re underestimating me. You don’t realize that I’ve been working out all summer. Once a week, at least.” He did have more muscles, she’d noticed. Still she had too many memories of humiliating moments when her body betrayed her. Therapeutic horseback riding with her favorite instructor, Glenn, who she once kicked so hard he buckled over and dropped down to his knees. She was 112 pounds of contracted muscles that obeyed no orders she gave them. “I HAVE THIS LITTLE PROBLEM WHERE I KICK PEOPLE SOMETIMES. MY LEGS THINK IT’S FUNNY.”

Amazingly Matthew held out his hands. “I’ll take my chances.”

Without another word he bent over, scooped her up off her chair, and carried her down the pool steps into the water. It happened so fast, her body had no time to tense up or flinch. She buried her head in his neck and when he got them into the water up to his waist, he turned her around so his hands were clamped under her arms, around her chest. She floated for a few minutes with her eyes closed, her head back against her shoulder. If her heart hadn’t been beating so hard, it would have been relaxing.

“Remember my dream?” he whispered into her ear. “Where you were a great swimmer?”

Her hand twitched to type a response.

“Where we got in the water and it was like you were
fine.
I still think about that sometimes. I know what you said swimming dreams are about, and maybe you were right, but I still think it was about something else.”

What?
She wanted to scream.
What was it about?

He didn’t answer the question that she couldn’t ask.

Instead they floated around the pool until they had to get out, because her mother would be home soon.

All summer they’d danced around similar moments, where they almost said something and didn’t. Where their bodies spoke for them. Where he brushed an eyelash off her cheek or adjusted a twisted strap on her bathing suit and they’d look at each other for a moment longer than was technically necessary. And then the moment would evaporate. She never pressed those times or mentioned them after they were over. She never wanted to ruin one by shining too bright a light on it and saying,
Look at this. What’s happening here? Are you scared, too?