These Are the Moments (15 page)

Chapter 37

Now

Wendy changed her mind. She was a good sister, after all.

Wendy woke from mid-nightmare to Claudia bursting through her door, clutching a garbage bag filled with forks.

“Get up. It’s time to cash in on that favor.”

Wendy shot up straight and squinted at her sister. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Your point?” Claudia said. “Meet you downstairs.”

Falling out of bed, Wendy groaned, threw on some sweatpants and headed for her door.

Claudia waited on the porch with the keys, which Wendy took sleepily. Claudia tossed the mysterious bag into the backseat and said, “Drive.”

“Drive where?” Wendy asked, in a yawn.

“Just go.”

As Wendy turned for town, the car clock read 2:33. The streetlights struggled to stay awake as Wendy guided the car through the deserted roads. For a while, they didn’t say anything, but Claudia kept her eyes on the road, her face a mixture of dogged determination and excitement. It was the look of a serial killer. Or a very disturbed mental patient.

“So, where to now?” Wendy asked again, as they hit the highway. They were the only car in sight.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” Claudia said. “I think it’s by Walmart.”

Wendy didn’t bother to ask this time.

Covington at night was like an empty amusement park. Without any cars and people, it seemed like something that could just up and leave at any moment, like a town pretending to be a town. Everything had been closed for hours. And now, the world slept, except for two sisters with a garbage bag full of plastic forks.

“Oh, turn here!” Claudia said.

Wendy recognized this road. “Umm, okay.”

She took a sharp turn down the particularly dark road. There were yards with broken fences standing before houses set back into the woods. There were snippets of neighborhoods, not the snooty gated kind, but the ones with actual people living in them.

They reached a fork in the road. Claudia instructed, “Left.”

And Wendy knew. She didn’t know how Claudia knew, but she did. Wendy set the car in park. “You are not taking me to Simon’s house.”

Claudia grinned, sinister and playful. “Left.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious? Come on. Pretend you’re in high school again.”

In high school, Mom and Wendy used to go on secret missions together. Before she could drive, Wendy would sneak out with Mom, still in their pajamas, and steel around town to see if Simon or Reese or even Owen were home. It was all for the thrill of getting caught, which they never did, more than the actual stalker element of it all.

It was their thing.

“Fine,” Wendy said, “Let’s go.”

She veered left, flipping off her lights and counting the houses.
One, two, three
. On the fourth house, she slowed the car to a crawl. There were three cars in the driveway. Simon’s mom’s and dad’s, and one she didn’t recognize. It was a small, gray two-door, and it looked pretty new. No scratches, no nicks, no life to it at all.

Simon was home, officially. Not just passing through, but back in her life, for the foreseeable future. The majority of her knew that this would not end well. The rest? That part was a little less clear.

“That’s his, right?” Claudia whispered, as if someone could hear her.

“Looks like it.”

“How do you feel right now?”

Wendy squeezed her eyes shut. “Tired.”

“Come on,” Claudia said, turning to Wendy. “Have some adventure. We should do something fun. We should . . .”

She grabbed the bag of forks.

“. . . have a really big picnic?” Wendy asked.

Claudia sighed. “No.
Justice
.”

Then Claudia was out of the car, sneaking stealthily into Simon’s yard. Wendy gasped, then maneuvered the car to the edge of the street. Closing the door carefully behind her, she whispered, “What the hell are you doing?”

Claudia drew a single fork and stabbed it into the ground, teeth up. “Remember Sarah? Remember Lizzie? Don’t you want to do something about them? This is therapy, Wend! Come on, be a sister.”

Therapy,
Wendy thought,
therapy for who?

Wendy hadn’t realized it until that moment, but it made sense. It was easier for Claudia to deflect her own feelings onto Wendy, to try to fix something from the outside, instead of fixing the one thing she couldn’t.

Herself.

“Fork me,” Wendy sighed, then laughed.

As Wendy and Claudia crawled around Simon’s yard, they would hold her breath at every creak, at every click of the water heater. And then they would laugh silently to each other, trying not to fall into the dirt.

Claudia was right. With each stab to the dirt, Wendy did begin to feel a little better. She started to forget the parts of her that still hated Simon. She started to
laugh
, to
live
, to be sixteen again.

Three hundred forks and thirty minutes later, they admired their handiwork.

“He’s gonna be so pissed,” Claudia said.

“Good,” Wendy smiled.

And then they dove into their getaway car, as if the cops were after them, as if the whole world were hanging on their every move.

On the way home, Claudia sat barefoot with her impossibly small feet curled over the dashboard. “Hey, Wend?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m still kind of rooting for Simon. I think, if he can ever just get it together, if he could just make some kind of life change, then it would work.”

This coming from the girl who was over and done with her own boyfriend, no second chances. “There were a lot of
if
s in that sentence.”

“Just saying,” Claudia said. “It could happen.”

As Wendy pulled into the driveway, she found herself wondering if it really could happen. If Simon could stop being so afraid. If they could learn to work it out. But in the low light of the morning, it seemed like an impossible dream, a wish on a flower blowing into the wind.

Chapter 38

Then

Wendy was in a dream.

Seeing her life up on the wall, like it was something outside of her, was a strange sensation. It was like she’d just puked up her own heart and smothered it in paint.

This was her Senior Art Show.

The last great thing she’d do in her high school career.

She’d gotten there an hour earlier than she needed to, so she spent most of the time drinking water out of a paper cone and taking trips to the bathroom. She mingled with the other artists, mostly girls in her class, and strategically straightened her frames. Obsessively straightened them.

She thought, more than she should have, about the crowd moseying around and whether they’d stop to look at her work and what they’d say if they actually did.

Who’s the artist?

So much potential.

She pictured them as cold critics, the kind you see in movies, with snobby friends and cool designer glasses.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

Girls from her school showed up and congratulated her. People she didn’t even know went out of their way to introduce themselves. And it didn’t feel real. All these people, kind and courteous, telling her that she was talented. It didn’t feel like it could actually be happening to her.

“Can I get an autograph?”

Peter’s lean arms snaked around her and he kissed the top of her head. She let him hold her for a brief second, before she turned to kiss him.

“You’re amazing. You know that, right?” he asked.

She did. He’d told her three times already. “So I’ve heard.”

Peter was a surprisingly great second boyfriend. He was the kind of person who would tell her that she looked beautiful in front of her friends, which made her uncomfortable, but also happy. He was simple, uncomplicated and downright okay. That was good. Better than good, normally.

Wendy’s parents parked themselves in front of her section of the exhibition. She caught fragments of their conversations.

Mom:
Oh, Wendy’s the creative one. She’s so talented. Always has been!

Dad:
That’s my daughter, right there. The one with the brown hair and the big, bright future.

Claudia had taken to a bench, clicking her heels together, continually asking, “When can we go?” Still, she had hugged Wendy and said she was proud of her. That was nice.

Reese and her mom showed up, too.

“Now, tell me about this porch swing,” Mrs. Rita said. “It’s from your house, right?”

“Yes,” Wendy said.

Then Mrs. Rita babbled, as was her habit, about how she was a nude model in college, and Wendy started to drift into space, losing herself in the mass of people, catching their faces like fireflies in the backyard. Happy. Sad. Drunk. They were all one haze of the same kind of light.

Standing in front of the porch swing, she caught the side of an all too familiar face.

Blinked twice.

Then gagged on her own spit, just a little.

Alone, Simon stood in front of the painting, dressed up in a white button-down, a small bouquet of sunflowers in his hand.

“Do you do portraits?” Mrs. Rita asked.

“Umm,” Wendy said.
Words,
she thought,
speak words
. “No. Not yet.”

Simon’s sister Morgan made her way toward him, and Wendy looked around. No Sarah. She batted her eyes. Shut. Open. Shut. But there he stood. Flesh, bones and memory, all wrapped up into one torpedolike package.

Since the day in the woods, a whole year ago, she’d heard nothing from or about him. It was like he had erased himself completely from her life. No pictures. No stories. He hadn’t existed.

Until now.

“You should really pursue art in college,” Mrs. Rita said, smacking at a piece of gum in the corner of her mouth.

“I’m thinking about it, yeah.”

She looked at Simon looking at her art. His hands held carefully onto the flowers, her favorite flowers, his legs slightly apart like he owned that small square of room, immovable as the crowd filtered around him. He stared at the porch swing. Wendy’s mind rushed with thought:

I’m looking at Simon looking at the painting of our swing.

What are you thinking?

What are you doing?

Why are you here?

Simon turned.

For half of a second, their eyes met, locked and reacquainted themselves. And he smiled. He smiled like he knew her, and he had the years to back it up.

Wendy threw her eyes into anything else. He kept noticing her. She kept ignoring him. Then, he was walking forward. And he wasn’t alone in that.

Peter from the left and Simon from the right, Wendy locked herself into place.

“Well, congratulations again,” Mrs. Rita said, her eyes forging through the crowd.

But Wendy couldn’t let her leave. “Uhh . . . tell me more about the nude modeling thing.”

She was all too willing to oblige. Quick sigh. Sip of wine. And Mrs. Rita was back to gabbing.

Simon was behind her now, so close that she could faintly smell his cologne. His back was to hers, the top of it lightly grazing her shoulders. A ripple coursed through her nerves.

Then she could hear him. A voice straight from the grave he’d dug for it. “Amazing, huh?” he said, to his sister. “They’re watercolors. Like that porch swing. That’s what talent looks like.”

The color receded in her face and the room suddenly felt a sharp rise in heat.

Peter was in front of her now, his smile caked to his face. “Hey, pretty girl. Almost ready to go?”

She nodded.

She was more than ready.

Chapter 39

Now

Wendy felt great. That kick-ass, superwoman type of feeling that made her want to hit the gym or a punching bag or maybe sprint around the block in all of her glory.

She was a painter, officially.

One that might get paid, eventually.

When she received the email from Raven that morning, she didn’t know what to expect. The meeting had gone well, but Raven had made no promises.

So when Wendy read the words,
we would be honored to host your work in our gallery,
she could barely control her excitement.

Reese texted: “So, does this mean you’re famous now? Should I start prepping my
dodging the paparazzi
look?”

“Don’t forget the shades,” Wendy said.

Vivian answered: “You are the best! I can’t wait for the
remember when
photos. I’ve been saving for this very moment.”

“Y’all are only semi-acceptable friends,” Wendy replied.

At home, Claudia grilled her.

“Okay,” she said. “So, now you’re going to have to pump out two pieces a week. We’ll set up an online shop for you. Maybe you can expand into cards or stationary or something like that.”

“Calm down,” Wendy said. “One thing at a time.”

“Do you think Picasso said that? Michaelango? Frieda Kahlo?”

“Yes, probably at some point in their lives.”

“Okay, well, I’m just saying,” Claudia said. “You shouldn’t slack off now. You should expand.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

That night, Dad grilled steaks on the patio, while Mom fixed the salad. Wendy poured three glasses of wine, taking Dad’s to him. Dad looked like a well-dressed mountain man, still in his work clothes, but his hair in a thick, curly brown mess.

“Here you go,” Wendy said, handing him his glass.

“Thank you,” he said. “Pretty exciting day for you, huh?”

Wendy propped herself up against the rail. “Yeah. Kind of surreal.”

“Always knew you could do it,” he said, matter-of-factly. “The second I saw your first show, I thought, this girl’s got what it takes.”

“The first show? Dad, I had one painting. Of a tree. And it was all the way in the back corner.”

“Eh, technicality. You’re a winner. We all know it.”

We all know it
.

Simon included.

Wendy didn’t talk to Dad about boys, but when she needed him, he was there. When Simon left for college, Dad held her head for hours, just letting her cry until she burned out all energy and fell asleep. She wondered if he wished he could do the same for Claudia.

Dad lifted the lid of the grill. “All set.”

Around the table, the four of them took their seats. No one ate until Mom said, “Claudia, would you like to say the prayer?”

“Sure,” Claudia said, lacing her fingers together. “Hi God, it’s Claudia. And Dad and Mom and Wendy. Thank you for this food, and for family and for, umm, recycling. We love you. Amen.”

Wendy laughed. “Amen.”

Mom and Dad shook their heads. “Amen.”

When Wendy went to pick up her fork, her phone vibrated beside her.

“I heard you’re going to be in a studio?”

That didn’t take long. It was either earlier or later than she’d anticipated, depending on the way she thought about it.

She set the phone down, and saw that Mom had noticed. “Everything okay?”

“All good,” Wendy said, knowing it was written all over her face.

After dinner, Wendy helped with dishes before going to her room. The floor was a mess. Last night, she’d had the bright idea to spread all of the paintings out on the carpet in chronological order, ten in all, realizing that this was a series, not just ten stand-alone projects.

Her phone vibrated a second time. “I saw the photo that Claudia posted. I’m so impressed. You really captured the pond, exactly.”

Wendy leapt onto her bed. She would keep on ignoring him. And he’d go away again.

I don’t need this right now.

She dipped her brush into the water, then into the pigment, trailing the blue around the page in one neat circle. Around and around, she went. Just for the motion of it.

A third time. “I know I blew you off. I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind. I think we can talk. If you want to, of course.”

Wendy sighed.

What do you want?

She could see herself in Italy. Eating pizza and gelato and traipsing through fountains. She could see herself sipping on wine and waving at cute Italian boys. Maybe she’d go hiking and park herself up on a hill somewhere, looking down at the city and painting the whole scape of the world below.

“Okay,” Wendy answered. “What do you want to know?”