The End of the World (19 page)

I hold my breath against his answer. He doesn’t make me wait too long.

“Last I heard, they’re still living in the same house. When I moved out there was talk of taking in more kids.” My stomach twists as Cameron stares up at the ceiling, lost in thought, no doubt filled with visions of days long past, though not as long for him as they are for me. It’s been more than a year since he walked out the door. But…more kids? Everything about his words spells out disaster.

“Any idea if that actually happened?”

“I’m not sure if the rumors are true, but someone told me they wound up with one.”

Cameron looks over at me, really looks at me. And then he looks through me, straight down to the center of my worst fear. If I ever questioned…if I ever thought for one second that there was no one in the world who knows me…who really, really knows me…that in-the-flesh answer just locked me in his sights and refused to turn away.

Cameron knows me. He knows the best and worst parts of me, including my deepest fears.

He always has.

His eyes turn downward as he answers the question I’m too afraid to verbalize.

“A girl. I heard they have a ten-year-old girl.”

So Pete has company. It’s the worst news of all.

With that thought, I shatter into a thousand jagged pieces. And then my best friend in the world does what only a best friend can do—he joins me on the floor and pulls me into his lap. He holds me and cries with me and whispers words of encouragement into my ear until the syllables turn into the sweetest lullaby and I slowly drift to sleep.

*

Cameron

I’m not sure
what it is about my lap, but this girl has been asleep on it for two hours in the late afternoon while I lie flat on my back in the middle of the questionably clean living room floor and stare up at the ceiling. There’s a cobweb wrapped around her overhead fan. The fan is spinning and spinning and spinning around, threatening to release the web straight onto my head. I’ve been assessing the situation since I spotted it an hour ago, wondering what I should do in the event it falls. Should I jump out of the way and risk Shaye’s head giving a hard thud to the floor? Or should I let it land on me and untangle myself afterward? It’s an impossible situation, one I see no hope for.

Todd once called me obsessive about the silliest things. I’m beginning to think he was right.

Finally, Shaye begins to stir, her head rolling around on my stomach in ways that have all thoughts of the cobweb disappearing like they never occurred to me at all. Since I spotted her three days ago, I’ve kept myself armed with constant reminders that she is my friend. That she is older than me. That in her eyes I was just another kid to take care of.

I wish my mind would gather up those reminders and tell my heart to shut the heck up.

She’s gorgeous. And I’m so tired of trying to pretend not to notice.

“How long have I been asleep?”

Her voice is raspy and adorable and she makes no move to sit up, just gives a little stretch and sinks back into my stomach. Without thinking, my hand finds the top of her head and my fingers begin to move. I’ve never felt hair so soft, never wanted to touch anything this much.

“Two hours of me having to stare at a disgusting ceiling fan and discover a newfound but very real fear of cobwebs.”

She looks up at me and frowns. “What cobwebs? I don’t have cobwebs. I’ll have you know I’m a clean freak.”

I nod toward the ceiling. “That cobweb. That very large, on-the-verge-of-attacking-me cobweb. Ever heard of cleaning your ceiling fans, freak?”

Shaye sits up and glares at me, a harmless, cute glare that wouldn’t scare even the smallest animal. “I said clean freak, not freak in general.”

My back cracks and pops like an eighty-year-old man as I move to join her. “I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood.” I slide her a wink just to further aggravate her. It works.

“Shut up, Cameron, and get me a broom.”

She stands and I stand and for a second all I do is stare at her. There may or may not be a stupid grin on my face. I may or may not look half drunk. I clear my throat and look around, trying to recover a cool factor that I’m not sure was ever there in the first place.

“Where do you keep it?”

She dusts off the back of her denim cutoffs and rubs her hands together. “In the closet in the kitchen. You won’t have trouble finding it since it’s the only closet in this place.” She rolls her eyes. “You’ll also find towels and shampoo and jars of peanut butter and cans of Chef Boyardee, should you find yourself wanting something to eat later.”

I laugh. After spilling the story of the kids a few hours ago, I wasn’t sure the old Shaye would return anytime soon. It’s times like these that I love being wrong.

“I might get hungry, but you and I both know I’ll never eat that.” I locate the broom and walk to the ceiling fan, running it down the blades, stepping back to let pieces of lint fall to the floor.

“Fine. We’ll order pizza. In the meantime, after you clean that off would you mind using that broom on the kitchen floor? I haven’t swept in days.”

“So what you’re saying is, you might want to rethink that clean freak comment.”

“Just do it, Cameron.” But I hear her soft giggle.

And just like that, we’re back where we started. Two kids saddled with responsibilities so heavy that the only way to cope is to dig in and get them done together.

The difference is, this time I’m actually enjoying myself.

*

Her phone keeps
ringing and every single time it buzzes she leaves the room to answer it, even though we’re in the middle of a movie and I’m sick and tired of hitting the pause button. Then there are the hushed voices, the conversations that say a lot without saying much at all—like Morse code, which might seem like nothing but tapping to the average person but is full of all sorts of meaning to those in the know.

And I’m in the know. Or at least I’m not entirely stupid.

Kevin keeps calling, and he’s mad about something.

She’s in her bedroom with the door closed, but I don’t mind. I can wait it out. I have all kinds of patience. And I can also hear the occasional loud phrase, phrases like
can’t come over
and
see you later tonight
and
stop being difficult
. Maybe it isn’t my place, but I walk into her bedroom to ask her about it.

“Who is that?”

“Cameron, get out!” she hisses.

I don’t. Just stand in the middle of the floor and try to act like I belong here.

She sighs and turns away.

“No, I’m here alone. No, it wasn’t a man’s voice. I’m watching television.”

She might not be looking at me, but I hear it.

Fear.

Sadness.

Brokenness.

I lower myself to her bed. I’ll be quiet, but I won’t leave. She gives me a look and rolls her eyes. It doesn’t faze me. I’ve seen that reaction a million times before and I can certainly handle it now.

I listen wordlessly to a few more rounds of one-sided negotiations—she goes to his place, he comes to hers, they go to dinner but only if she buys and agrees to both pick him up and drive him back home. It’s all I can do not to grab the phone and hang it up myself.

She finally ends the call, but instead of talking to me like I’d hoped, she heads into the bathroom without a glance in my direction and shuts the door with a loud bang. I hear sniffling. Water running. A cabinet door open and close. A toilet flush. And then there’s nothing but silence.

So I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

When she finally emerges ten minutes later, all traces of her make-up are gone and her red-rimmed eyes betray the now dried tears. For a minute I feel bad for saying anything at all, but then I remember how much worse it is to keep quiet. I’m done with being quiet.

“Who is he?” I say when she finally walks over and sits down next to me.

She studies her hands for a long moment, then looks up at me. The fear and sadness I heard earlier has been joined by apprehension and reserve and a fair amount of regret. But just as she opens her mouth to respond, the doorbell rings.

Ready or not, I think I’m about to find out.

Cameron

H
e’s a fairly
likeable guy. Nice enough. Funny. Polite to an almost militant degree—perfect manners, just the right amount of charm, at rapt attention anytime I speak, which at this point has been most of the time. He asks direct questions about my life, my education, my history and waits patiently while I purposely give detailed, long-winded answers. Drawn-out conversations give you a chance to decide if a person is really listening or just faking their way through one question after another. In the last hour, I feel like I’ve had a decent opportunity to learn some things about this Kevin guy that Shaye’s dating. He’s charming and friendly. Has a nice smile and an even nicer way of carrying himself.

My B.S. meter has been out of control for fifty-nine of the last sixty minutes.

I glance at Shaye for what might be the thousandth time since this fun little conversation began, but like all the other times, she refuses to look at me. Instead she just sits there with a ridiculous smile on her face that she’s somehow convinced herself I can’t see through. As if she’s forgotten the day she met me for the first time and the afternoon she showed me how to use a lawn mower and the night she tried to pretend she wasn’t sucking her thumb and crying inside a dirty bathtub. Her tight smiles never fool me. It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. At this point I have a headache at the base of my neck from keeping myself from doing it even once since Kevin started talking and she started faking interest.

“So you’ve been dating Shaye for six months? And you still haven’t met her parents?” I ignore the daggers she shoots my direction and keep talking. Kevin’s not the only one who can pile on the crap and look comfortable doing it. “That honestly surprises me a little. They really are the nicest people you could ever meet. Just precious. Married for…” I tilt my head and give Shaye the sincerest of phony looks. “Twenty-four years now? Such a great marriage. An inspiration to all of us, really. Maybe one day the two of you could—”

“Do either of you want something to drink?” Shaye jumps up so fast I can almost see her head bounce up and down like a cheap bobble-head doll they give away at minor-league baseball games.

“Nope, I’m good,” I say, barely containing a smile. “Why don’t you sit back down and talk with us a bit longer? I’d love to hear you tell Kevin about the twentieth anniversary party you threw for your mom and dad.”

Shaye glares a hot hole through my brain and reluctantly begins to lower herself onto the sofa. Kevin stops her with a hand to her thigh. It’s all I can do not to slap it off.

“I’m not one for parties,” he says to me before looking up at her. “Get me a beer, babe? After the day I’ve had, I could use another one.”

It’s his fourth so far, and from what I’ve gathered his day consisted of flipping burgers for two hours before he walked off the job to head here. Practically a slave to the system, to hear him tell it. A justifiable reason to get drunk at five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Tell me about your job,” I say, completely uninterested in his answer but wanting to keep the conversation going because the alternative is Shaye finally leaving with this guy, which was the entire reason he showed up in the first place. I can’t let that happen, even though I have no fool-proof plan in motion to prevent it. I keep waiting for one to fall in my lap, reminding myself that she would have been long gone by now if I hadn’t initiated this conversation. So maybe I do have a plan. Maybe it’s just to keep talking until I run out of air or use up all the words in the dictionary or my throat closes up from dry mouth and open sores, but it’s a plan nonetheless. One I can live with. “Bill’s Burger Barn? Is that the name of the place?”

Another death glare launches in my direction, courtesy of Shaye. I give myself an invisible pat on the back for becoming so good at ignoring them. “It’s Mickey’s Diner. I already told you this,” she says. The accusation in her voice and the warning that accompanies it reverberate through the room.