The Love That Split the World (14 page)

That night, during the early Sunday morning hours, I’ve finally gathered the courage to call Beau and ask him if he’s still willing to help with the car. But while I’m staring at his pre-entered name, my phone starts buzzing in my hand, and Matt’s name appears onscreen. Immediately, there’s a pressure on my chest like a teenage elephant is sitting on me as I stare and blink and stare some more at my phone, making the snap decision to answer on the final ring.

“Hello?” I feel like I’m swirling around in a toilet, preparing to go down the drain.

“Natalie,” Matt says.

“What do you want?”

There’s a long pause before he says, “I just missed you.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Please let me say something.” I don’t answer. “Natalie?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry and I’m embarrassed and I hate myself.”

“Yeah.” I swallow the knot of emotion in my throat. “That’s pretty much how I feel too.”

“Nat,” he says gently. I can tell he’s been crying, and I don’t care. “Nat, please. I’ll do anything.”

“What do you want from me, Matt?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. I just want to make it right. Tell me how to make it right.”

“I don’t think you can. I don’t think
we
can. Matt . . . we’re broken.” I hang up, and despite all the promises we’ve both made, I think it’s finally true.

When an hour has passed, I’m still staring at the ceiling, eyes burning and chest heavy. By now I’m thoroughly self-conscious again but I steel myself and call Beau anyway, holding my breath and hoping that the call will go through. It seems to be working, but with every ring, my heart sinks further. I just want to hear his voice right now. The line clicks, and noise fills my ear, music and shouting. “Hello?” I half-whisper, not wanting to wake Coco in the next room over.

The music fades into the background until it’s all but gone. “Hi,” Beau says, his voice even slower than usual.

“You’re busy,” I say.

“No,” he says.

“No?”

“I’m just out with my brother. It’s fine. I’m glad you called.”

“I’m glad my call went through.”

“Hey, you wanna come over?”

“Tonight?”

“Right now.”

“I’m already in bed,” I tell him.

“Is that a maybe?”

I briefly contemplate sneaking out. “I think it’s a rain check.”

“You
think,
Cleary?” he says.

“Hey, what’s your last name?”

“Wilkes, why?”

“No way,” I say. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“Beau Wilkes. The exact same name of Ashley Wilkes’s son in
Gone with the Wind
, and you’re not kidding.”

“Pretty sure the whole reason my mom slept with my dad a second time was so she could give that name to a baby,” he says.

“Beau Wilkes.”

“Natalie Cleary, what can I do for you? It’s late and you don’t wanna come over, so what? Do you have another emergency you need me to pick you up from?”

“Would you come if I did?”

“I would.”

“What if you had to travel by carriage through a dangerous shantytown?”

“I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” he says. “Did you call for any reason?”

“Yeah, actually. I’m wondering if you still want to take a look at my car, before I take it in.”

“You want to use me?” he teases. “I’ve never been used for my brain before.”

I laugh. “How’s it feel?”

“Fine.”

“Fahn.”

“And now you’re making fun of the way I talk. You’re heartless.”

“I’m sorry, Beau Wilkes. I like the way you talk. And this is probably obvious, but I’m using you
equally
for your mind and body.” He’s silent for a long second, and I almost think he’s hung up. “Hello?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“You’re still there?”

“I was just picturing you,” he says softly.

“Oh” is all I can manage.

“You look real pretty.”

I cover my face with my hand, smiling stupidly into my palm. “Thanks, Beau.”

“I’d love to take a look at your car.”

“You would?”

“I would.”

“When’s good for you?”

“I’m working all weekend,” he says. “I have Tuesday morning off.”

So maybe I’ll have to miss one session with Alice after all, or maybe she can push it back to later in the day. “That sounds perfect,” I say.

“What time?”

“Whenever,” I say.

“So, like, one or two?” he says.

“Is it at all possible you could do nine?”

He laughs. “Yeah, I’ll just park my truck on your street and sleep there the night before.”

“If that’s too early—”

“Nine’s fine.”

“Thanks, Beau.”

There’s a pause before he says, “Goodnight, Natalie.”

“Goodnight, Beau.”

15

Monday night brings the Promenade for Independence downtown, a parade complete with high-stepping horses in costumes, followed by the annual fireworks display at Luke Schwartz’s mini-mansion. I used to love the Fourth of July—marching with the dance team in our sequined blue and orange leotards with their little spandex skirts, going to Luke’s to see the illegal fireworks his dad’s assistant drove out to Indiana to buy for us. The irony of celebrating Independence Day as an indigenous person was lost on me only until I was about seven years old, but last year was the first time I felt grated enough by the idea to skip the parade. Mom knew how excited I used to get about the Fourth and was understandably confused, and for some inexplicable reason, I decided the best way to
casually, lightly
explain my growing discomfort was to compare my participation in the
parade to cartwheeling down the Trail of Tears.

It landed about as successfully as you’d expect any joke about genocide to land. That is to say, I made myself feel sick and my mom sob. She and Dad had of course skipped the parade in solidarity, which is why I’m not surprised when I hear a light knock on my door frame and look up to see Mom, smiling tentatively. “Thought you, your dad, and I could have a game night tonight while Jack and Coco are out?” she says.

“Dad hates games,” I point out.

She waves the notion away with a manicured hand then crosses her arms over her stomach and glides into my room. “Your father loves games. He hates losing.”

I don’t bother pointing out that I actually
do
hate games, and anything with a semblance of competition for that matter, because I know the point of Mom’s offer is to pretend today is
just like any other day, and not a holiday she used to love.

“I was actually thinking about going to the parade,” I lie.

She studies me. “Really?”

“No,” I admit. “But only because I don’t want to see Matt.” As soon as I say it I realize it’s true. Convictions aside, I really, really, really wish I could be at that parade tonight. I wish I could sit on a quilt surrounded by friends on Luke’s front lawn, watching explosions of glittering light fill up the sky. I wish Megan and I would get to take pictures of one another writing each other’s names in the air with sparklers, and that we’d drink bottles of Ale-8-One with sneaky quarter-shots of vodka we can’t taste or feel but enjoy just for the sake of rebelliousness and summer and friendship and all the parts of the Fourth of July I still love. I wish that change weren’t so hard, or that I
didn’t feel so thoroughly that I needed it to make room in my life to live and space in my brain to think. “I would go,” I say again, “if things were different.”

“Oh, honey.” Mom releases a sigh and sits down beside me, pulling me against her chest and lightly circling her fingernails against my scalp. She squeezes me tight. “It won’t always feel like this,” she says. “Time heals all.”

And by the end of our conversation, after Mom and Dad have finally accepted that I’ll be fine staying home while they go out after all, I start to think she’s right. Last July I made Mom cry, and now she’s going to a cookout. Maybe by this time next year, when I look at or think about Matt Kincaid, my heart won’t start to break. Maybe I’ll be able to think of him as my friend again.

For tonight, though, I wander barefoot through an empty house, catching the dust of years on the bottom of my feet and memorizing the walls I’m leaving behind soon. When the sun sets, I go up to my room and watch my cul-de-sac’s private show of fireworks from my bedroom window.

When the last of our neighbors sets off the last grand finale, I fall into bed and text Megan:

Miss you so much it hurts.

Seconds later, she texts back,
The feeling is mushrooms,
followed by a second text reading,
Yes, autocorrect, I meant to say mushrooms, not mutual. Good catch.

Life without you does feel a little bit like fungus,
I reply.
But definitely less tasty.

I mean, both mushrooms and my tears taste a little bit salty?
Megan says.

How do you have fluid left for tears with all the soccer sexting you’re doing?
I answer,
Btw I tried to type soccer sweating, but my phone simply wasn’t having it.

Your phone’s right,
she replies.
Soccer sexting. Fave competitive sport. Considering trying out for Olympic team.

You’re a shut-in,
I say.
*Shoe-in*. SHOO-IN**.

You’re a beautiful and wonderful and sensual and strong golden fawn,
she says, followed by,
That was supposed to say “my best friend,” but my phone
 . . .

The feeling is mushrooms,
I tell her. I fall asleep feeling a happy kind of sad.

Beau never shows up. When I call him, his phone goes straight to voice mail. I call a handful of times and leave one message, but soon it’s noon and it’s clear he’s not coming.

Dad decided to take a half-day, so he gets home around one, drops his bag in the kitchen, and starts digging through the refrigerator for a beer. “Where’s your friend?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Something came up,” I lie. “He couldn’t come.” Dad glances back at me suspiciously. I am, after all, sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the day like I’ve been waiting, but he doesn’t call me out. I’ve never been sure if it’s more annoying when Mom tries to help me process my emotions aloud or when Dad looks at me with X-ray, horse-whisperer eyes but keeps what he sees to himself.

He looks down at the bottle in his hands and gives it an apologetic sigh before stuffing it back in the fridge and
clearing his throat. “Well, your mom’s right. We probably oughta get a second opinion on it before shellin’ out a few thousand bucks on something new, and I’d feel better if we took it in to a professional anyway. Don’t want my baby girl in a car some kid duct-taped together.”

My first inclination is to defend Beau, but then, with disappointment sinking in my stomach, I remember that Beau’s supposed to be here, and he isn’t. I don’t really know who he is; maybe he is just some kid. “If you really loved me, you’d forget the car and buy me an airplane,” I say, steering the conversation away from the absence of Beau.

“Kiddo, if you really loved me, you’d get a bike.” Dad swipes his phone off the counter and shoots the refrigerator one last mournful glance. “Come on. Let’s get that sucker towed in.”

“What about this one?” Coco spritzes another purple bottle identical to the last hundred into the air beside my nose. We’ve been in Bath & Body Works for thirty minutes, and by now I’ve entirely lost my sense of smell.

“It’s nice,” I lie, scrambling to check my phone when I feel it buzz in my pocket. My mounting nerves skyrocket when instead of the apology from Beau I’d been hoping for, I see a mass text from Derek Dillhorn, alerting us to a party he’s throwing while his parents are out of town. I haven’t tried calling Beau since yesterday afternoon, and he hasn’t called me either. Four days have passed since we talked about him coming to look at the car, four weeks since Grandmother gave me her
three months’
warning, and this shopping trip
isn’t proving to be the distraction from either situation I had hoped it would be.

“That’s what you said about the last six,” Coco complains.

“They were all nice.”

“Then why are you making that face?”

“Because my brain is full of fumes, and I’m about to pass out,” I say. “It’s unrelated to all that toxic gas you keep spraying into my eyes.”

Coco groans. “Why did you even come?”

“Because I wanted to hang out with you.” And because Mom was too tired when she got home from work and asked me to. And because while the Jeep’s in the shop, my only opportunities to get out of the neighborhood are going to come in the form of running errands in Mom’s car. And because I needed to do
something
that required me to stop staring at my impossibly silent phone.

Coco sighs and clasps her hands together. “Can’t you, like, wait outside or something? You’re making me anxious.”

“Are you serious?”

She widens her eyes and nods sharply.

“Can’t you just get Abby a gift card? She’s turning fifteen, not getting a Nobel Prize.”

“I need to show her we’re going to stay friends after I transfer,” Coco shoots back. “Her love language is gifts! This needs to be perfect.”

“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about right now?”

“You’re only making this take longer.”

“Fine,” I say, “I’ll be in the food court with my face buried
inside a pizza until my nose stops stinging.”

“Great,” Coco says, spraying the air with a pale green bottle for emphasis.

I fight a sneeze as I leave the store and make my way over to the food court. I spot Rachel sitting across the room at a table in front of Sbarro, her hair freshly dyed an unnatural shade of blond as opposed to her usual unnatural dark brown, and my stomach sinks. I still wouldn’t say I’m mad at her, but I
had
resolved not to see her or Matt again until our ten-year high school reunion.

The sinking sensation goes from bad to worse when I see who’s sitting across from her.

Beau. Slumped back in his chair, hands resting on his legs, and Rachel has her foot hooked around his calf under the table. At the exact moment I register all of this, his eyes shift up to me. I look away as fast as I can and turn sharply toward the bathroom hallway, picking up my speed and praying he didn’t see me. I know he did.

God, I’m so tired of avoiding everyone and everything.

Maybe I should just be grateful. It’s going to be so easy to leave here after all. Maybe I needed my hometown to turn on me so I could let it go.

“Natalie,” Beau calls after me.

I don’t turn around. I’m in the hallway now, virtually running to the women’s restroom.

“Natalie, wait,” he calls again.

I bolt through the door and pull it closed behind me, starting to pace along the sink as I wonder how long I’m going to have to stay hidden in the bathroom. Everything about this is
so humiliating. I should’ve just said “hi” to them, acted normal, but instead I ran away and hid, and now there’s no pretending I’m not upset.

“Natalie,” Beau calls through the door. “Natalie, I’m coming in.”

My eyes sweep over the bathroom for any other exit as I hurry to hold the door shut, but I’m too slow. Beau’s already in, and we’re alone together, and I’m so embarrassed I want to die.

“This is the ladies’ room, Beau.”

He walks me up to the edge of the sink, grabs me around the waist, and kisses me. For a second I’m so surprised, so overwhelmed by both how frustrated and how attracted to him I am, that I kiss him back. When he lifts me up and sets me on the sink, I abruptly come to my senses and shove him back.

“What’s wrong with you?” I shout. I jump down and stalk past him to the door. “Stay away from me.”

I storm back toward Bath & Body Works, noting that Rachel is no longer in the food court when I pass. I weave through the clouds of sugary-sweet scents, march up to Coco, and drag her toward the faux-wooden checkout counter. “Whatever you’re holding in your hand right now is what Abby’s getting.”