Twisted Fate (5 page)

I
don’t know why I wanted Declan to spy on him. I guess I wanted to see what he was really like. At the time I didn’t have any information about him, just what I could observe by hanging around. And I have to admit I had a strong reaction whenever I thought of him or when anyone mentioned him. It wasn’t even so much that he was handsome—though he certainly was.

Honestly, I just think I was bored. Bored bored bored. Some days I actually feel like I’m trapped in the school. Like the place is really a jail. We’re forced by law to go there—to be there all day. It’s the closest thing to a prison there is. In fact it’s like the whole population actually has to go to prison first before they can enter society. Have to make sure we learn these arbitrary bullshit rules—make sure we won’t talk back, that we’ll follow orders. Once we prove that, once they’ve ruined our ability to even think for ourselves—then they let us go.

Declan was right about having to pretend we’re not in some tedious made-for-TV movie. It’s not like you really have to study. If you pay attention for even one minute you know what’s going on. I used to beg my parents to let me stay home and read something good instead of wasting my time at school, but then Ally liked school so much I’d just get dragged along with her—sucked into her idea about it. That didn’t last forever obviously but when I was young she’d always coax me to get up in the morning and tell me how much fun class was going to be.

After a while it was anything but fun. I’d be stuck sitting at my desk for hours and hours after I already got it, listening to some teacher who just has a BA from a shitty school and a teaching certificate from the state of Maine drone on and on and on and on instead of being outside skating or reading a good book or listening to music. School might be fine for Ally and her friends but not for me. Not for Declan and Becky either. And I had a feeling—not for Graham. Something about the way he looked at things made me feel like he was already done with whatever it was school was theoretically supposed to offer. Really done. Like he’d already been to college and had a job and two kids and been divorced and remarried and had become an alcoholic and was paying double alimony and child support even though he was just a kid. That’s how heavy his look was. He was weary and skittish and somehow weirdly confident; up to something, beaten down but unbeaten. And he was clearly
on some kind of drugs. I mean clearly the kid was wasted half the time—or at least that’s the impression I got. Sometimes his pupils were dilated and sometimes they were little pinpricks.

“Don’t you think you’re giving this guy a little too much thought?” Declan very reasonably asked. “I mean, he sounds chill. I’m not really up for spying on some guy because you’ve got a crush. It doesn’t bother
me
; it shouldn’t bother
you
. Why don’t we just hang with him?”

This was classic Declan. Once he got high he was all philosophical about how “everything in the world is connected” and everyone is chill and we should all get along. And peace and love and God in the smallest drop of water blah blah blah.

“Yeah, a lot of thought,” Becky said, and then started laughing. “Too much thought.” She looked at us but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Is he yummy?” Then she laughed again. “Oh . . . wait . . . no . . . didn’t mean to say yummy . . . ,” she whispered to herself. “Is he . . . um . . . ?”

“He’s like some kind of teen idol,” I said, interrupting her weird digression. “It’s gross actually. Fancy car, fancy clothes, pretty golden hair, like he belongs in a catalog, except for all the other stuff I told you about. Y’know, how he looks like an old man kinda . . . all serious.” I could have gone on and on discussing the details but I got lost thinking about it and then I got distracted looking at the leaves moving gently in the wind.

“Definitely not your type,” Declan said, grinning, bringing me back to the conversation. “But he doesn’t sound like a creepy dweeb either.”

Becky laughed. She said, “Dweepy creeb.”

“He is!” I shouted. “Being from a catalog and being a creep are not mutually exclusive. They don’t cancel each other out, you can be one and still the other. You can—”

“We get it, we get it,” Declan said, waving his hands in front of my face. “It just seems weird of you to be so wrapped up in a guy like that when you only hung out with him
once
. I know you have your Spidey senses, Tate, but maybe they’re not working with this dude. I mean, think about who you really want to invest your energy in.” He leaned forward, smiled beatifically at me, and batted his eyelashes.

It was funny but I really didn’t want Declan to start going on and on about “energy,” which was a whole other lecture he liked to give when he was high. “Energy” and then, without fail, physics and string theory and YouTube videos of talking crows. Weed just made Declan more in awe of the world than he already was, which was saying something, and made him talk ten times as much, which could get pretty unbearable—especially if you were also a little effed-up.

I knew what he was getting at by the “my type” comment. Declan was “my type” and he knew it. He was the ranked chess champ of the county, had nearly a perfect score on his PSAT, and he dealt pot and read Dostoyevsky
and Jane Austen. That’s who I want to be with. That’s who I want to run away and sleep on the beach with. That’s who I want to give it to and take it from. Not some weird kid from the south. I told myself that again to make sure I really got it. Declan, I thought. Declan, not Graham.

But I had to admit there was some pull I felt from Graham. Like he knew something about me right away. Something other people ignored or just didn’t realize. There was a mystery about him that I wanted to understand. The way he laughed when he met me and Ally. The way he looked at Ally. Our fates were twisted. I knew it the minute he crossed into our yard and stood with the sun on his face beneath the pine tree.

I know it seems like even then I was becoming obsessed with him. That I was paying too much attention to him, like Declan said. Now I only wish I had paid more attention. Those cool blue eyes were used to looking at people a certain way. Used to being looked at like he was the black sheep. And he was smart. My only hope, now that time is running out, is that he was never—even at his best—smarter than me.

I
told Sydney about the calls at work and she made her usual snide comments. She told me that it definitely wasn’t some cell tower problem and that probably someone was stalking me and that I should have told Mrs. Porter. It’s a little hard to take her ideas seriously sometimes. She can get paranoid and see the worst in everything. I told her I’d tell Ginny Porter if it happened again but that I wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions about anything or take advice from someone dressed head to toe in black. “Can you get out the sugar?” I asked her. I was reading a new scone recipe.

“You’re ignoring me!” she shouted.

“I think I’ll put walnuts in these,” I told her, and she groaned and slapped her forehead dramatically.

“Listen to me, Ally,” she said. “Has anything like that ever happened at work before?”

“Not that I remember,” I said, cutting the butter into small squares and pouring a cup of sugar into the bowl.

Syd was overreacting as usual and I think this time it was because she was jealous. The fact is Syd can be jealous of my job. It’s probably the only thing she
is
jealous of. I don’t think there’s anything else she pays attention to. She’s jealous of my job because she’s unemployable. She interviewed for positions at other B and Bs in town and did not get them. Too busy hanging out skating with Becky and Declan to really make an effort to get dressed up and submit a résumé and look like she was interested in the places. And I think people could tell by looking at her that she was a little wild.

She said, “Whatever, Ally. Suit yourself. I’m going over to Declan’s!” That was her solution to everything. She barely spent any time at home anymore. And if you said something that made her upset or contradicted her, she went over to Declan’s.

I like Becky and Declan fine. Even though they act like I don’t exist. I remember the first time Declan came over and Syd brought him to our room. He looked at her posters and he looked at mine—looked at the stuff on my side of the room—and he laughed really hard. Right in front of me. He said, “You’re a master of irony.” I walked out of the room. I’m sure they needed their privacy anyway.

Becky, I actually like a lot. I mean she and Syd have been friends since they were little kids. And we used to play together sometimes. My friends, of course, don’t want to spend time around Syd at all. So I stopped introducing her to them. I generally see them at school or at work. The few times I tried to hang out with her and one of my friends she
was really rude. We were baking a quiche together and she wouldn’t help with anything or clean up. She just sat on the counter, swinging her feet, acting bored, and kinda making fun of us. She kept saying, “So who’s your boyfriend?” It was really awkward. Or, “Have you ever even made out with a boy?” Not very classy.

I think the only friend we really had in common was Graham. In fact he may be the only person we really spent time with as sisters—Graham brought us together. At last. But not for very long, obviously. Things went really fast once Graham moved next door. Life changed in the blink of an eye.

S
ince Graham moved in it seemed that all he did was mess around with his car. He would keep the garage door open and I had a pretty good view of him from the screened-in porch on the west side of our house. So I would sit out there sometimes and watch him. I didn’t feel bad doing this. I knew he watched us too and I knew he was really interested in Allyson.

A lot of the time he would go into the garage with a cup of coffee in his hand, wearing his jeans and a ratty V-neck T-shirt. Sometimes he would stand there looking at the car not doing anything for about half an hour. Other times he’d be bent over the engine.

Something about the way he moved really got to me. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or thought he was a creep. His body was more relaxed than Declan’s. He seemed lithe like a puppy, but sleepy. He moved slowly. And I could see the
muscles in his back when he was leaning over the hood of the car.

Also he was a superrich kid doing manual labor, which seemed like a contradiction somehow. Most of the preppy boys I knew sailed or snowboarded or did other things like that for hobbies. No one rebuilt cars, or fixed things. I liked that he was different, but there was something that seemed dangerous about him. Even by himself—not talking to anyone and tinkering around all alone, he seemed moody. I watched him throw a wrench across the garage because he was frustrated. And another time I watched him sit in the car staring straight ahead—lost in thought, it looked like he was wiping tears out of his eyes.

There was something wrong with Graham. And I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know what made him the way he was, to be his friend, to talk to him and hang out, to go driving with him. I wanted to know his secrets.

I wanted to make him disappear.

1:42—Yacht club