The One That I Want (2 page)

The door to the bathroom swings open, flip-flops flip-flopping their way into a nearby stall. The student quickly finishes her business, and the whoosh of the toilet is followed by her immediate exit. Teenagers have no time to wash their hands, no consideration of the germs that might plague them. They are invincible. Bright. Untarnishable. The world beckons. I hear it from them every day when they flop on my office love seat, their nonchalance practically oozing off them, their aspirations for the future simultaneously hopeful and ridiculous.

I press the pad into my undies, just to be sure, just in case I missed it, and shimmy my underwear back up my hips.

The bathroom door squeaks open again.

“Tilly? You ready?”

“Hang on, I’m coming.” I flush the toilet for etiquette’s sake. “No period,” I say, smiling at Susie in the mirror. “Cross your fingers.”

“Are you late?”

“No, not yet, but you never know.” I run my hands under the faucet, then my eyes, a momentary reprieve from the heat, and look at my reflection, wide-eyed and anticipating and ready in every way for what comes next. The prom. The musical. The baby that just might be brewing inside of me.

“Fingers are crossed, then,” Susanna says, and I study her, noticing how faded she looks, how just a year ago, she, like the students here, was bright and shiny and not even close to used up,
and now, how she’s dulled, muted even. The gray circles, the pull of her jaw, her wrinkled skirt.

“Let’s go,” I say, grabbing my bag from the chipped Formica counter, its innards overflowing with contact names for follow-up calls for college applications and potential after-school job notices.

We stride down the empty hall of Westlake High School. Everyone, even the most delinquent kids, has been dismissed for the afternoon, for the long holiday weekend, full of barbecues and fireworks and cold beers with neighbors. Right now, though, mostly everyone is at the fair.

We walk by the athletic display, stuffed full of trophies from state championships past, and I catch a glimpse of the team photo from Tyler’s senior year: he was the star shortstop and team captain and eventually MVP of the championship game. If you search the newspaper photo that’s pasted up next to the trophy, you’ll see seventeen-year-old me, my face distorted with sheer euphoria at Ty’s victory, my body lithe and firm and supple underneath my cheerleading uniform. I rarely stop and gaze into the display these days, but still, just knowing it’s there is enough to fill me with complete contentedness.

Susanna and I reach the exit, and I press open the heavy metal doors, which jangle behind us as we go. The outside air is suffocating, the sun relentless. I close my eyes and smile up at it, despite my open pores and my moist underarms and my best friend’s cheeks, which are now red like army ants. I have the Arc de Triomphe, and I have the fall musical, and I have a husband who loves me, and my best friend beside me, and I might, oh, I just might, have a speck of a child growing inside of me.

I open my eyes and grin at Susanna. “Oh, what a beautiful morning.”

“What are you talking about?” she says. “It’s four o’clock already.”

I start humming.

“Oh, I get it.
Oklahoma!”

“It just wouldn’t be the same if it were called, ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Afternoon,’ now, would it?” I say, waiting for her to unlock her minivan. “But it is.” I smile wider. “A beautiful afternoon.”

She rolls her eyes as the doors snap unlocked.

“Come on,” I say. “This is going to be fun.”

“More like trouble with a capital T,” she answers, climbing into the driver’s seat and igniting the engine.

“A
Music Man
reference! I didn’t think you had it in you!”

We laugh together, an open, freeing joy that has glued our friendship together since kindergarten.

For a second, I consider asking about Austin, about whether or not Susanna has reconsidered taking him back, whether she thinks they can find a way to mend their marriage, stay true to their vows. But she is smiling now, enjoying the moment, and it feels so much easier not to ask. Later, I will. But no, not now. And besides, before I can even broach the subject, we have pulled out of the parking lot of WHS, our windows down, the air rushing through our hair, the radio already on, and for a moment, it’s as if we are seventeen all over again.

Susanna makes a turn into the parking lot just after the homemade sign reading,
JULY FOURTH EXPLOSION: WESTLAKE CARNIVAL
.

By the time we hit the grounds, the fair is bustling. All of the local vendors hawk their eclectic wares from behind flashing booths, some playing country music, some blaring horns, some
simply shouting for us to come over and have a gander. We stroll through the grounds, stopping to buy handheld battery-powered fans for two dollars each—a pittance against the heat—waving at an assortment of friends who have piled up over time. I’ve lived in Westlake since birth; we’ve all raised each other over the years.

The fairgrounds reek, as they always do, of an off-kilter combination of animal stink, fried dough, and human body odor, and the dust immediately layers our skin like spackle. As we walk by the petting farm, I pull my hair, the color of damp straw, into a tight ponytail.

“I’ll meet you in a few,” Susanna says. “Austin is here somewhere with the kids. We’re doing a hand-off.”

“Want me to come?”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine. He actually came over for dinner last night.” She shrugs.

“Things any better?”

“We’ll see,” she says, a little too grimly, a little more devoid of the forgiveness I wish she had for Tyler’s best friend, who’s not such a bad guy, but who may have made a marriage-ending mistake by fooling around with his office manager in her car after a very happy happy hour and having the poor sense to do so in his driveway when she dropped him off, just in time for Susie to catch a glimpse out their bedroom window. Not that I don’t understand her bitterness; I do. But I don’t want them to shatter, not the two of them. Not the four of us who have clung together, barnacles, since high school.

I watch her wander off and then scope around for Tyler, but the crowd is too packed to get a real sense of the landscape, so instead, I head for the ice-cream stand.

“Hey, Mrs. F.”

I spin around to see one of my favorite students, Claudette
Johnson, behind me, in slightly too-short shorts and a slightly too-clingy T-shirt with a winking Mickey Mouse decal, which surely holds some sort of irony that’s over my head. She is lean and tanned and well rested, and if you didn’t know her, you’d never imagine that her prettiness has nothing to do with how she defines herself.

“Hey, CJ, how’s your summer going?”

“Well enough. Last real summer before I’m out of here.” She flashes me a genuine smile that illuminates her entire face, taking her from small-town beautiful to anywhere-in-the-world breathtaking. The same smile I see whenever she comes into my office to discuss launching her life on a bigger stage than Westlake can offer.

I wish she wouldn’t be in such a rush. I always tell her that.
“I wish you wouldn’t be in such a rush, CJ!”
That there are a lot of wonderful things about planting her roots here in town, near her father, who I know will despair at seeing his only child head out into the world that could swallow her whole; near the community who rallied around her and her dad when her mother skipped out seven years ago. But CJ never considers it, never considers a secondary option.

“And are you ready for prom planning? We’re starting next week.”

“I got your e-mail.” She nods. “And I heard you might be doing the musical too.” I notice several of the football players lingering behind her, taking in the view.

“Guilty as charged.” I smile. “Don’t worry; you’ll be the first to hear about auditions.”

The line inches us toward my awaiting Nutty Buddy.

“How’s your break going?” CJ asks. “Do anything major?”

“Nothing much,” I say, thinking of how Tyler has just expressed his regret that we once again didn’t take advantage of my
summer off, didn’t take that virgin trip to Europe or at the very least, a drive down the coast to California.

“I wish we’d done it,” he said a few nights ago, shortly after I hung up with Principal Anderson. “I’ve always wanted to surf in San Diego. We should have at least done San Diego.”

I laughed as I stirred the tomato sauce for dinner. “I’ve never heard you mention
that
before.”

He shrugged, flipping the channel from one baseball game to another. “I’m feeling old. Feeling like I’d like to try new things. Why not surfing?”

“Why not?” I agreed amicably, already relieved that he hadn’t mentioned trying to squeeze it in during August, mulling over how difficult it would have been to find time for our baby-making sex, considering who would have watered the plants, who would have looked out for the house, how I would have organized prom and now the musical.
It’s so much easier that we didn’t go
, I thought.
Tyler can learn to surf another time
. But I swirled the sauce with my wooden spoon and said nothing. I almost blurted out that we’d see Paris at the prom, but I suspected he’d just turn up the volume on the TV. Not that Tyler doesn’t enjoy prom; every year he dutifully holds my hand and slow-dances, but just last year, he mentioned that he was starting to feel a little too old for this stuff, a little more like a chaperone than an alumnus, and last week at dinner, when I announced the City of Lights theme with unhinged giddiness, I could detect the disinterest painted across his face. Though Susanna later said, “Who could blame him? He’s thirty-two. Who still wants to go to prom?” I twitched and supposed she was right, all the while thinking,
Well, I do!

I fork over three bucks for my ice cream and wave good-bye to CJ. The Nutty Buddy stands no hope against the swelter and starts melting down my hand as soon as I tug off the gold wrapping, so I
swirl my tongue over the edges of the cone in a frantic race against the heat and suck in the flawless taste of vanilla ice cream, hardened chocolate sauce, and peanuts.

I roam toward the bumper cars, the squeals of toddlers growing louder over the bluegrass band that plays on the stage behind me. I spot Susanna with her six-year-old twins, negotiating a cotton candy purchase, Austin hovering near their huddle, but I let them be.

I’m wiping the sticky ice-cream residue off my hands when I notice a tent just behind the hot dog stand. It’s a compelling, rich shade of purple with an elaborate fabric door dotted with gold stars that shimmer in the glare of the sun. I start toward it and feel the pad in my underwear shift.
Please don’t be my period
. A silent prayer.
Please, please, please don’t be my period
.

I pull back the velvet curtain and poke my head inside. The air is cool, so much cooler than the fairground, and for the first time in hours, my body calms itself, my pores shuttering, my pulse slowing in my neck. Incense burns in the corner, and a cloying scent of vanilla and clove overwhelms my nostrils.

“Hello?” I say, my vision taking a moment to adjust to the darkness.

“Just a moment.” A voice calls out from beyond yet another swath of fabric hanging behind a wobbly folding table. “Yes, hello.” A woman with a wrestler’s body emerges, squat, compact, almost lithe but too bulky to be graceful. Her hair is so black, it’s almost purple, and her skin, alabaster against it, is nearly translucent. She’s about my age, though her overuse of eyeliner reminds me of some of the Westlake students who are still learning the art of makeup application. Suddenly, she is familiar.

“Oh my God, Ashley Simmons?” I say, squinting to make out the recognizable face.

She steps closer. “Silly Tilly Everett.” Her lips purse together into a half smile. “I’m not surprised.”
Silly Tilly
. My nickname from a lifetime ago.

“It’s Tilly Farmer now,” I say, then double back to her statement. “You’re not surprised to see me here?”

“Not really.” She shrugs. “You were always an easy read.”

“I thought you moved away.” I deflect, because I have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. Ashley was the third part of my best-friend trio with Susanna up until the seventh grade. When puberty attacked, we—all hormones and budding breasts and
boys, boys, boys
—dismembered our triangle. Ashley gravitated toward the kids who lurked outside the middle school, cat-calling at the nerds, unmerciful in their teasing, and later graduating to the stoners and crew who smoked cigarettes in the parking lot, while Susie and I stuck to the jocks, the cheerleaders, the prom court. Last I’d heard, after two years at community college and then beautician school, she headed south to Idaho.

“I came back a few months ago,” she says. “Quietly. Didn’t make a big announcement.” She pauses. “My mom got sick. Coronary heart disease.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I say, because I am. “Please send her my hellos.” Ashley’s parents were always kind to me, even when she and I had long outgrown each other. In high school, when my family was fraying at all edges, they both showed up on our front porch, toting tuna casseroles and an offer for a home-cooked dinner at their place. I thanked them for their generosity but turned them down, saying we were coping and doing just fine. I’m not sure if I ever did return their Tupperware.

“What’s up with the tent?” I say, glancing around.

“I do readings,” she says, like this is supposed to make sense.

“Readings?”

“Yeah, you know, of people’s destiny, of their future.”

I feel my upper lip curl, my forehead wrinkling in bemusement, but then sift through my memory for a vague recollection of her saying much the same in high school—that she could read palms, predict when someone would die, eerie incantations that eventually branded her an outcast, even among the dweebs who were already outcasts enough. She’d brush by me in the hallway and whisper in my ear, “Tilly Everett, do I have something to tell you!” a hint of foreboding, a tickle of glee in her voice. I could never figure out if she was doing it because she resented me for becoming popular or if she still remembered our friendship and was only playing me, that tiny fragment of our childhood still a shared spark.