Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (6 page)

She’d known, though, that after the fact, she wouldn’t get those words. She’d seen the pickup line as if it had been a prompt he read off a cue card, and she’d wanted him anyway.

He stood and held out a hand to help Trix up. This cheered her briefly. Until, still holding her hand, he began to shake it as if they’d just concluded a business meeting. “Hey, thanks,” he said.

She bit her lip and looked toward the dryer with its gaping circular mouth. “Yeah, sure.”

“It was fun. I mean it. Serious fun.”

Nothing about being his girlfriend. Of course.

She was never convinced that guys who made promises about future relationships meant them, but she liked to think, at least for a couple hours, that she was lovable.

Big deal, she told herself. It was just sex. Just body parts. Apparently this was how the world worked, and she might as well get used to it.

Devlin gave her a last wave and left her there, surrounded by bottles of Tide and boxes of Bounce. Scorned by the snug accouterments of a functioning family home.

She’d wait a few minutes before she followed him out.

As she stood there in the dark, her brain reeled. Devlin had been her seventh guy. Or was he her eighth? God. And Emily was still a virgin. How had her best friend managed that?

And how did Trix and Emily happen to be best friends? It seemed that they were diverging down different paths—Trix careening into adulthood and Emily on this lateral, moving sidewalk. But then, Trix really shouldn’t criticize Emily’s failure to evolve. Ryan McElvoy was paying more attention to Emily than to her, wasn’t he?

The ants came back, scampering all over her inner thighs and down her calves. Trix thought she might go insane trying to scratch them off.

10. Hostility

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Emily’s dad woke her by rapping her doorframe and belting, “Up!” He did not believe in lazy mornings.

She stood and pulled a sweatshirt over the Top Pot Doughnut t-shirt she slept in. She couldn’t wait until she was in college and could sleep as late as she wanted on weekends.

As she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom that connected her room and Kristen’s, her cell phone buzzed.

A text from Trix.

WHR DID U GO LST NGHT?

Emily typed in:
HOME! Duh.

She washed her face and went downstairs. She was the only one in the house who drank caffeinated coffee, so she made herself a cup with the French press.

“Want some steel cut oatmeal?” Melissa asked from where she stood at the stove. “I put flax seeds in. Add a little kefir and mmm.”

“Is that supposed to tempt me?” Emily sat at the table with her creamy coffee. “How about some Bisquick waffles? A few slices of bacon?”

“Oh, Emily,” Melissa said. “That stuff’s horrible for you. A growing girl needs her steel cut and her kefir.”

“I don’t want to grow anymore, thanks anyway.”

“Right.” Melissa caught her lip between her front teeth. She used a wooden spoon to scrape the sides of a pot.

From outside came the lawn mower’s drone. Emily peeked out the window and saw her dad pushing it angrily back and forth across their wide yard.

Part of what made Emily’s extreme height seem so unfair was that no one else in her family was especially tall. Her dad had stopped just short of five nine. And Kristen was average. So Emily had to skulk around being a cypress tree, all alone. The closest any other girl in school came was Jessie Turner, who was somewhere around five ten, with milky blond hair and amazing bone structure. And an apparent ability to draw guys like flies to honey.

Emily’s mom lingered in the kitchen like an apparition. Emily would’ve liked a mom to talk to, one who would wake her up sweetly in the morning with a gentle brushing aside of her curtains, and who would understand the challenges that came from being a tall girl.

The story of how her mother had left was family lore now, The Unraveling of Marilyn Wozniak Lucas. She took money from the bank account, painted stars all over the station wagon, and stocked up on this Guatemalan tea sold at her favorite food co-op. (They were able to figure out this part of the puzzle because another mom had seen her that morning.) Still, Bob Lucas didn’t catch on.

On a misty Monday morning, she drove away while Emily’s dad was at work and Emily and Kristen, four and five, were with a babysitter.

Emily could remember only dark snippets of what happened next. Her father arriving home in the middle of the afternoon and making lots of phone calls. A police officer showing up, looking so big and official standing in their doorway, scribbling in his notepad. Kristen holding her hand tightly as they sat on the swings in the backyard, waiting to find out what had happened to their mom.

The answer they needed never came. Confusing days passed during which Emily and Kristen were shuffled to different neighbors. Casseroles and quiches filled the refrigerator. Kristen’s first grade teacher even took them both out for ice cream.

Now, the pining for her real mom made Emily lash out at Melissa, “Don’t you ever, you know, indulge in a Pop-Tart? Why are you such a health food Nazi all the time? It’s tiresome.”

Melissa didn’t seem fazed. “I’m just trying to take care of this family. Lord knows you need taking care of.”

Emily leveled her gaze at Melissa and said, “I’m sure we’d do just fine.”

Melissa’s head jerked up, as if she’d just been pricked with a pin, voodoo style.

The turning of the wheels in Melissa’s brain was almost visible.
Ouch. Pretend it’s okay. Emily’s just a kid. Cut her slack. Cut her slack. Cut her slack.

Melissa continued stirring her steel cut oats.

Emily said. “I’m being a brat. You can say it.”

Melissa stirred harder. “You know,” she said. “I do my best around here. I understand the fragile relationship between a stepmom and stepdaughter. I just don’t get why you’re always on me.” Emily thought she heard Melissa’s voice catch.

Then, as if she were thinking aloud, “Kristen seems okay with me.”

Emily could smell the fresh mowed grass through an open window. “I don’t get it either.”

Kristen swooped in then and grabbed an orange from a wooden bowl on the table. She wore a cute, splashy running skirt and a tank top and looked athletically adorable. Tanned, blond, big-boned in an attractive, Scandinavian way.

“Can I have some of that oatmeal?” she asked Melissa.

“Yes,” Melissa said, a victorious lilt to her voice. “Yes, you certainly may. It’s just about ready.” She looked pointedly at Emily and raised her brows.

Emily smirked and said, “I’d still rather have Pop-Tarts.”

The landline rang and Kristen, being closest, answered. She held out the phone. “It’s Trix. For you.”

Emily realized she’d left her cell upstairs and that Trix had probably been trying to call her on it. She rolled her eyes.

Trix said, “Hey. Who was that tall drink of water you were talking to last night?”

Emily had been so annoyed at Trix for slobbering all over the blond guy, and so distracted by walking to the bus stop with Ryan, she’d forgotten all about Sam. “Oh,” she said. “Just some childhood friend of Jason Bleak.”

“Did he get your digits?”

Just then, Emily decided Sam was okay, if only because his interest allowed her to participate in a conversation where her best friend asked if a boy had “gotten her digits.” Wasn’t that what high school girls were supposed to talk about? Supposed to focus on? Not on inches and stretching jeans and runaway moms.

Suddenly, Emily felt a surge of euphoria. She was a normal teenager, for just that moment. And she had to laugh at Trix—crazy, maddening, Trix. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

Emily wouldn’t tell her about Ryan. She didn’t want it out there to be picked apart and banged up and analyzed. Not yet anyway. “Promise you’ll never make me go to another one of those things?”

“Another party? Oh, you’ll go to more parties. There are lots of parties in our future.”

“How’d it go with Mr. Blondie? You seemed pretty into him.”

Trix’s voice twisted a little when she said, “Yeah. He’s okay.”

“You sound weird. Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Trix sighed. “Except I need to talk. Get some stuff out. Are you free today?”

“Yeah, I just … I wanted to take pictures.”

“Meet me at Green Lake,” Trix said. “You can snap away while we walk.”

Emily agreed, though a little reluctantly. She’d been looking forward to some alone time with her camera. Time to think about last night, to deconstruct her conversation with Ryan, to relive each step between Jason Bleak’s house and the bus stop. But Trix didn’t sound right.

They planned to meet at one.

Emily hung up and, while Kristen ate her steel cut oatmeal with flax seeds and kefir, poured herself another cup of coffee.

11. Regret

G
REEN
L
AKE WAS
crowded, as it always was on sunny weekends. Parents pushed babies in strollers along the concrete path that fully encircled the small body of water. Inline skaters zoomed and weaved, and bicyclists called out, “Coming up on your left!”

Trix and Emily held coffees as they walked, and every so often, Emily would pull out her camera, squat, and snap a picture of a goose, a kid on a tricycle, or a fisherman.

Trix was quiet, wobbling a little in her three-inch wedges. She said, “I mean, it’s not that big a deal, right? Everyone does it.”

A cool breeze ruffled their hair.

“Right,” Trix continued. “Well, not you. Not
everyone
. But most of us.”

Emily knew Trix was being a jerk because she’d done something last night that shamed her. But her words flooded Emily with a feeling she hated: of being the only one. Of being left out of something big.

“You put out, didn’t you? You did something with that guy you shouldn’t have. And you’re trying to make me feel like the pariah. I can see right through you, Trix.”

Trix scowled. She hadn’t said it to hurt Emily. More to justify herself. “I didn’t say you were a pariah.” Then, yanked by a grabby jealousy that her friend got to be the “good” one, the one with the fancy house and cute, wholesome boy paying attention to her, she added, “Though if the sneaker fits … ”

Emily stopped on the path and people streamed around them. Bicyclists glared. If there was one thing she most hated about Trix, it was this: how she tried to deflect her insecurities onto other people, usually Emily.

Trix added, “If a hottie like that was hitting on you, you’d be all over it, too.”

A cloud drifted across the sun and Emily felt cold. “I didn’t think he was a hottie. He had hard eyes.”

“Hard eyes? What the hell does that mean?”

As angry as Emily was, she sensed that her friend needed her right then. She looped one of her arms through Trix’s and propelled them forward. Trix resisted at first, not wanting to be cajoled out of her anger. She staggered slightly as she pulled back. But then she gave in and walked.

Emily said, “It means his eyes weren’t soulful. I didn’t see much in them, Trix.”

“It was dark,” Trix argued.

“Not that dark.”

“You were drunk.”

“One beer?”

“He wasn’t so bad,” Trix said, but her fight was obviously fading. They went several hundred feet in silence. Then, quietly, she said, “He got up and left right after … we did it.”

“Where did you … do it?” Emily asked, not at all sure she wanted to know.

A seaplane rumbled above, heading for Lake Union to the south.

Trix admitted, “At Jason’s. In a laundry room.”

“Oh, Trix.”

Trix started sniffling. “I know. I know, okay? So don’t say it.”

In that moment, Trix didn’t seem irreverent or daring or admirable at all. She just seemed sad. A girl ditched a few minutes after having sex with a boy she barely knew. Emily muttered, “What a skank.”

“That’s probably what he’s saying about me right now.”

Emily had the urge to offer advice like,
what goes around comes around
. But, frankly, she didn’t have enough experience to say much of anything. She’d never had sex, or even come close. How did she know what it’d be like in Trix’s shoes?

Instead, Emily asked, “Did you … did he use a … ?”

“Yeah,” Trix shook her head to banish the memory. “Yeah. He had a condom in his back pocket. Thank God.”

“Would you have, if he hadn’t had one?”

Trix wanted to yell, “No! Of course not!” But the fact was, she didn’t know. She got so caught up in moments. Especially if she was feeling good and having fun and basking in someone’s flattery.

They came upon a family walking four abreast across the trail. Trix and Emily stepped up on the grass to skirt around them.

“I want you to be my girlfriend. I like more than your body, I like your mind.” Trix mimicked Devlin, then made a gagging sound. “Please.”

“Maybe he’ll call,” Emily suggested.

“No. I could tell. He was done. He got what he came to the party for.”

Emily felt bad for Trix. Trix had been in this position more than once, and each time she moped for days afterward, feeling slutty and dirty and used. And each time, Emily told herself she’d never, ever get herself in the same situation.

She did something unforgivable then. She took off her lens cap, crouched and snapped a rapid succession of photos. She had to. Trix’s expression was so wan. So vividly conflicted and sad.

And Trix responded exactly how Emily expected. She kicked out her foot hard, just missing the camera by a slim few inches.

12. The Runaway’s Daughter

T
HAT NIGHT
E
MILY
dreamed her mom was standing in a bright, wheaty field, wearing a sundress—the kind a little girl might. Her face was generic—all the features in their right places, without forming a recognizable person. Exactly how it was in Emily’s memories.

Her mother didn’t see her. She just crouched and picked wildflowers—Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans—while humming a lullaby.