The Truth About You & Me (2 page)

It was just
past noon when I got home. That's what was nice about Running Start—a full-time schedule was only three classes. Two of my classes were an hour long, five days a week, but Biology—my two-hour class—was only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The rest of my friends were still sitting around at EHS, listening to the same old gossip, eating in the same old cafeteria, taking the same old classes. How could they be happy with that? How did they not feel like the ugly cinder-block walls were slowly closing in, like a coffin meant to trap them forever?

The house was empty because my parents work full time. My mom is an engineer at Boeing, and my dad is a Phys Ed teacher.

At Enumclaw High School.

He's not the sort of teacher people like, either, which never won me any points with my classmates. Dad, if for some reason you're reading this, I'm sorry to say that. It's not because you're not good at what you do. You are. You just expect a lot, and you're not the “cool” sort of teacher that students like. Even you must know we prefer teachers who are easy and fun, not the ones who are always pushing. Pushing is what you do, though. Who you are. You push your students just like you always push me.

To be fair, you only push as hard as you know you can. You just want everyone to live up to their potential. I know that. You were right last year; Ben Phillips
was
lazy, and if it hadn't been for you, pushing him at tryouts, he never would have made the football team, which is what he'd always c
laimed to want but never quite managed to pull off.

At one point, before high school, I took it all as a challenge. Almost a passion, really—the pursuit of perfection, the pursuit of that hug, the reward, the knowledge I'd succeeded. I thrived on the validation I got from Dad, from Mom.

And that's why every report card of mine in the history of everdom has a glossy A next to
Every Single Class
. Even PE, Dad's domain, which was nearly impossible to pull off since I inherited Mom's athletic ability and not Dad's.

See, the thing is, somewhere along the line I realized that I'd climbed aboard a plane and watched it take off, and all I could do was sit there with my seat belt fastened, waiting for it to land at a predetermined destination. One I wasn't sure I wanted anymore.

At some point I decided I didn't want to be pushed. I didn't want to be perfect at everything, charting the exact course that leads to Harvard or MIT. Somehow I just wanted to stop completely—unbuckle my seat belt, and jump off the plane—but I wasn't sure if had a parachute, a safe landing.

And for Mom and Dad, backup plans were a must. You couldn't turn without a new place to go to. But the validation my mom and dad gave me for being perfect just wasn't enough anymore. The “good job” comments, the pats on the back … they meant nothing.

That day, as I stared at the television, instead of feeling stifled and stuck, my mind spun with images of
you
, Bennett, smiling at me. I replayed that moment when your eyes dipped low, and even hours later, my cheeks flamed hot and I hoped with all my might that I hadn't imagined that moment, because it made me feel … different. Alive. Desired.

At three o'clock I got off the couch and went to my room. I spread my books out on the floor, along with a few random print-outs from my classes, and then I sat down right in the middle of all of it.

Like clockwork, the garage door hummed. Then the back door opened and swished shut, and I listened as my father's sneakers strode across the aging hardwood floors, each board creaking as he passed.

I crossed my legs and leaned forward on my elbows, picking up the syllabus to your class and staring at it as if it held the meaning of life.

Dad stepped into my room, his shadow splashing across the floor, and I glanced up, feigning surprise. “Oh, hey,” I said, setting the syllabus down. For effect, I yawned and stretched.

Dad smiled as his eyes swept over my books, playing his part to a T. “Getting ahead already?”

I nodded, deciding that rubbing my eyes would be too much, so instead I played with a strand of my hair, twisting it around my fingers, remembering all the times Mom had pinned it up into a perfect, sleek bun back when I'd danced ballet. “Yeah. Some of my classes will be pretty tough, I
think.”

“Nothing you can't handle,” he said, his eyes snapping up to meet mine.

It wasn't a question, just a simple statement. He expected me to agree, to rise to the challenge, just like I always did, because he'd been there to see me climb aboard that airplane and buckle up. He'd watched my trajectory for years, and this was just another mile closer to my destination.

I'd never understood the phrase, “You can't see the forest for the trees.” To me, it seemed more like you can't see the people standing right next to you if they've been there all along. Can't see the moment they change, the moment they want to be someone else, because you'll forever see them as the person they've been.

“I've got it,” I said, sliding my legs out from under me so that I could lie on my stomach as I reached for my English text.

And then just as the script progressed to
exit stage left
, he creaked his way back to the kitchen to go make dinner.

Every day, Bennett, it went just like that. Every day, I did things just the right way. Living up to my potential. Challenging myself.
Thinking of the future.

Blah, blah, blah. Day after frustrating day, I stayed in the airplane, staring straight ahead, wondering why I no longer wanted to go to the place that had once seemed so promising.

And that day, he never questioned my act because he only saw the person I'd been for years. The perfect, studious daughter I didn't want to be anymore. I was six the first time he told me I'd go to an Ivy League school, just like Mom. I was going to make smart choices, like her—not have lofty, idiotic goals that could shatter just like his kneecap, not have dreams that could be stolen away like his dream of the NFL draft.

I was going to chart a careful course and find success in a calculated way, or else I'd be cursed to a third-rate career as a football coach and PE teacher. Because to settle … that was to fail.

See, Bennett, I was tired of all this. So tired.

I chose Running Start because I saw the freedom in it. I saw the hours to myself. I saw escaping to a campus where my father wasn't teaching in the B Gym.

And that night as I fell asleep, I saw you.

I hit traffic
on the way to school the next day, and I whipped into the parking lot with my heart racing, worried, not sure if there was such a thing as a tardy slip in college.

I was late, ten whole minutes, to my eight o'clock English 110 class. When I walked through the door, breathless, my professor was already at the front, talking about our first essay assignment. My face flamed hot as every student in the room looked up at me when the door squeaked open. I thought I'd be reprimanded, but I wasn't.

College really is different. It didn't take long for me to figure out that no one cares if you come and go. If you chew gum, or stare out the window, or never turn in a scrap of homework. The more I got to know the rules of community college, the more I realized that high school teachers are sort of babysitters, and at college there is no babysitting.

And I really liked the sound of that, liked the idea that maybe when no one was looking, I could become someone else.

When class finally ended, I slipped out the door, ahead of the rest of the students, not wanting to be late for my second course of the day.

It's funny how, on that day, I was so consumed by the clock. If I could have a superpower, I think I'd wish for the ability to speed up time. Do you wish that, now? Now, when so much is happening so slowly, and you must be just sitting there waiting and thinking and waiting to see what happens next, what's going to tumble down or be rebuilt?

If I had that power, I'd give it to you. You must need it more than me.

I strode across campus that morning, the dew sticking to my cute little black flats, pleased that I didn't have to pull out the map again to remember where I was going. The campus, sprawled across a hill, was surrounded by evergreens. I felt so adult, so in control, as I navigated my route, cutting between buildings to get to the lab. There would be no bell ringing out the next class period, no hall monitors looking for passes.

Lab 3A was empty when I walked in, or at least I thought so. But as I stepped past an open closet door, you turned into me, and we collided.

You reached out to grab my arms, and you held me up.

You touched me, to keep me from falling, and I was so close I could smell you, a clean, aspen-like cologne washing over me. Something so different from the Axe body spray favored by high school boys, that sort of burning, overwhelming smell that follows them around like a cloud. Yours was subtle, sophisticated.

“Madelyn!” you said, your strong hands gripping my arms.

I stared, wide-eyed, back at you as my cheeks flushed hot. I'd smashed right into you, like some dorky little high school girl who couldn't look where she was going.

“Sorry,” I said, hoping my face wasn't nearly as red as it felt. And that's when my brain caught up with my ears and I realized you'd said “Madelyn,” and it made me smile so wide I must have looked pretty crazy.

“No, it's my fault, I didn't realize it was nine already. I was just hanging up my jacket.” You jutted your thumb over your shoulder at the closet behind you.

That day you didn't have a V-necked sweater over your button-down, and it was easier to see the line of you, the way that cotton hugged your body.

“I'm actually a little early,” I said, to make you feel better.

I'd never been more happy to be early, to get this serendipitous moment when our bodies collided. That's how it was with us. One day we were two separate people and the next we collided, and neither of us stood a chance.

I wish I could tell you I regretted everything that happened after that.

I walked farther into that room, and instead of sitting in the back like I had the day before, I plunked down at a table right up front, so that when you sat down at a desk in the corner, we were just a few yards apart.

I wanted to say something else to you, something witty, but a couple of other students arrived then, two guys who were laughing as they stepped through the door. It shattered whatever moment we could've had, whatever impression I could have made.

They took the table in the back and the room filled up, and then Katie sat down next to me, flashing her pretty, easy smile. “Hey, Madelyn,” she said, tossing her backpack onto the table.

“Hey,” I said, even though I was a thousand miles away.

No, I was twelve feet away, in that place I'd stood when you touched me.

“Cool if I sit here?” she asked, playing with the newly pink-streaked ends of her dark hair. How did she have time to add something so cute in the twenty-four hours since I'd seen her last? “I'm betting we'll need lab partners.”

“Sure,” I said, finally forcing myself back to the present. Katie looked cute that day, in figure-hugging jeans and a sweater that dipped low over her cleavage.

I wondered, then, if I'd look like her, act like her, in a couple more years. She seemed so comfortable in her skin, so casually confident. The girls in high school, the pretty ones … their confidence seemed forced, fragile, all smoke and mirrors.

But not with Katie. With Katie, I'd bet anything she felt confident right down to her core.

Katie kind of grimaced, then. “It's only fair to tell you I'm miserable at science.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm really good at it. I took Advanced Bio
last year.”

She brightened. “Really? What school did you go to? I went to Kentlake. We had to do it as sophomores and that seems like a million years ago. I barely squeaked by then, and whatever I learned has officially leaked out of my brain by now.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice kind of falling. “Uh, Enumclaw. We have Physical Science as sophomores and Biology as seniors, so the class just ended a few months ago.”

It was my first out-and-out lie, and I'm not even sure why I said it. You weren't listening or anything. But I liked Katie, I guess. I liked her warm smiles and easy chattiness. I didn't want her to think I was too young to be worth her time.

“Huh. Weird,” she said. “But I guess that makes it my lucky day!”

But it was my lucky day, because friends didn't come that easy to me, and yet that's exactly how it seemed with her. I really was different, in college. I was changing and evolving, even on that second day.

“Starburst?” she asked, fishing a piece out of the front pocket of her backpack.

You watched me unwrap it. You watched me put it in my mouth. And then you looked away from me and stood up.