Underneath Everything (22 page)

My pen skids off the page, dashing a diagonal line across three streets.

So this is an interrogation after all. It’s just not about Kris.

“He’s fine.” I keep my eyes on the paper and my answers short. I know what she wants—I’m pretty sure she’s been waiting to talk boyfriends with me since freshman year—but I don’t understand why I should give it to her. She had tons of boyfriends before my dad. I only have this one. He’s mine, and I don’t want to share him.

But my mom, she’s looking at me with this expectant, excited expression. I can’t remember the last time she looked at me like that.

And I have to admit, it would be nice to talk about Hudson with someone who doesn’t hate him, or used to date him. I tick my eyes toward my mom. She’s still smiling.

I smile back.

“He’s good, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

I shrug. The curve in my cheeks deepens.

“So,” she says, moving toward me on the bed, “what’s he like?”

“I don’t know. Quiet, I guess. Different.”
He was hers,
I want to say,
and now he’s mine.
“He likes music.”

“He plays music?”

“No. He
likes
it.” I sit up and scoot back on the bed so there’s a long stretch of comforter between us.

“He plays soccer.”

“An athlete.” She nods. But that’s not who he is, either.

“No.” I shake my head. “Forget it.”

“Well, he must be different if he’s got you wearing this.” She picks up a cut T-shirt from the floor.

I yank it out of her hands. “I’m wearing this because I like it.”

“Okay.” She gives me that silver stare of hers, the one that makes me feel like she can see inside my head.

I drag my map onto my lap and try to salvage that stray mark.

My mom sighs. “Look, I came up here because I know Dad’s been giving you a hard time, but give him a break, okay? He doesn’t know how to deal with all this. You’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“What I mean is, we think it’s good, what you’re doing. It’s what you should be doing. Making friends.

Going out with boys.”

Friends,
she says.
Boys.
Like there are so many.

I draw the same curve of road over and over again, digging in my pen, darkening the line.

“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to talk about it. Fine. Just remember to call if you’re going to be late.”

“I will.”

“And be careful.”

“Mom.”

“You know. If things get serious. Use protection.”

“Mom!”

“Okay!” she says, getting off the bed. “Finish your homework. But don’t stay up too late.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

CHAPTER 26

WHEN I CLIMB into Kris’s car on Thursday, with the morning’s first flakes melting into my hair and dripping down my face, the backseat is empty. “Where’s Bella?” I ask, dropping my backpack between my knees.

Kris checks her mirror. “Doctor appointment.”

We don’t speak as Kris passes two piles of brown and yellow leaves. They are pristine. Perfect.

Dusted with a light coating of snow and begging to be flattened. Kris eyes them as we go by, but she doesn’t swerve. Up ahead at the next intersection, I see a third. The wind lifts a few leaves from the top, twirls them in a dance, tosses them aside.

Kris taps her fingers on the wheel, tightens her ponytail, taps the wheel again. She doesn’t have a cigarette. I’m starting to think she quit. After all the shit I’ve given her, I wonder what finally did it. I open my mouth to ask and clap it shut again. I should know the answer to something so obvious about Kris. And if I don’t, is it really mine to know? Has she asked me about Hudson lately? College applications?

Jolene? She doesn’t even know I lost my virginity.

Melted snow drips down my scalp, off my chin, forms dark circles on my jeans. I stare straight ahead, trying to see each individual flake that dive-bombs toward the windshield. It’s only as the specks of white fly by me that I realize I haven’t marked the colored divisions in my head as we drove through them. Not for at least a week. And now they’re all getting whitewashed.

“My mom asked about the holidays,” I say. “She missed you at Thanksgiving.”

“Of course she did.” Kris turns on the wipers. “I’m the only one who eats her Jell-O mold.”

I laugh. Kris smiles. The moment fades, and there’s silence again, the soft sound of snow buckling beneath the tires. I should ask her about Hanukkah, but the idea that it’s not a sure thing, that it isn’t just assumed she’s coming, makes me hesitate.

“How’s the holiday issue?” I ask instead. If Kris and I can’t be sleepovers and fortune-tellers anymore, surely we can be something else. . . . I swallow back the artificial taste of the word itself:
friends.

A label. Doesn’t mean anything.

“It’s at the printer,” she says, opening the window to its usual slit. This must be it. I wait for the slip of the pack from her pocket, the slap of her hand on the bottom as she steers the Corolla with her knees. I reach for the lighter in my jacket—Jolene’s—but Kris doesn’t need it. She dangles her fingers out the window. There’s nothing between them but wind and wet flakes.

“Nice.”

“A deadline’s a deadline,” she says, like it’s no big thing. “Even when we don’t have help.” She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t have to. The words do what she knew they would. Guilt burns red streaks across my cheeks. “We could use some help handing them out, though. You know how it is before break.”

“Yeah,” I say, “sure. Everybody disappears. I remember.”

“Cool,” she says, bringing her fingers back through the window for our final turn toward school. Their tips are red from the cold. “I’ll find you later.” As she says it, the tires spin free for a second and we glide across the intersection, over a slick mix of ice and snow. I can barely register the fact that we’re out of control before we hit a gritty, salted section of street and the Corolla’s rubber tires grip the ground again.

Neither Kris nor I mention it as we pull up to school.

Kids swarm the white lawn and gather by the doors. They lift their heads and hands to the sky with delighted smiles. They look young. I feel old watching them.

Kris parallel parks in one of her trademark spaces: a corner spot so small nobody else even slows down to consider it. It’s not worth it to them: the attempt; the possibility they won’t be able to make it, especially on the front lawn before school, with everybody watching. But for Kris it’s no problem. Once the Corolla is snug in its spot, she shuts the window and turns off the car. Neither of us reaches for the door. We watch as white flakes stick to the windshield, blotting out arms, houses, hats, jackets. Soon we won’t be able to see anything. I take off my seat belt. The
click
sounds loud in the silence.

“It’s not him?” she asks.

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“What’s what?”

“What’s
this
?” She looks me up and down, raises her eyebrows, shrugs her shoulders.
Explain,
the motion says.
Explain yourself.

“Maybe I’ve changed.”

“Maybe,” she says, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “But I don’t think so.”

“What about you?” I free my hands from the straps of my backpack. They’re stiff and shaking. “You quit smoking.”

My voice sounds strange, like when you hear yourself on a recording and don’t recognize it, because that’s not the way you sound inside your own head.

“My mom caught me, and I promised to quit a habit that’s killing me. It’s not the same thing.” Kris sucks in a deep breath, blows it out slow, and I imagine smoke. “So, this is who you are now?”

“What if it is?” I ask, my voice tight and rising. This voice I recognize. This is me with a full throat and wet eyes. It’s me about to cry. “Is that so terrible? If I’m different?”

“No. Different is fine. Different is cool.” Kris grabs two hunks of hair in her hands and fixes her ponytail. “But you don’t seem different. You seem like someone else. I mean— Shit, Mattie. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you seemed like Jolene.” She says the last part with a huff and a half laugh, like the thought itself is ridiculous. That I could be anything like Jolene.

“Just because we’re not together every second doesn’t mean I’ve turned into someone else. Just because it’s so impossible for you to believe I could change—” I blink back a budding tear, take a ragged breath, and reset. “Doesn’t it ever get to you? That it’s been me and you—just me and you—for so long?”

I turn away from Kris and try to focus on something else. Something other than the end of us. But nothing else exists. The window is caked with white flakes.

“No. It doesn’t,” Kris says, quick and cold as the mounting snow. “Because that’s what I wanted. It’s what you wanted, too.”

I turn back to her. As soon as she sees my face, her expression changes. She’s looking at me now like I’m far away. Like I’ve stolen the last year from her and dropped it on the seat between us.

“Oh, please,” she says, her voice sharp now, bitter. “I didn’t ask you to come with me that night, remember? I was leaving.”

That night.
The skin under my arms and beneath my breasts slicks with sweat. No matter how many ways I walk away, that’s where I am.
A hot August night. A maze of town houses. A game of manhunt.

The second time I walked away from Jolene, we picked teams, dropped our cells in the basket (no
cheating!), and ran into the web of connected buildings, concrete pathways, and rows of bushes that
made up Cal’s complex. In the souped-up version of hide-and-seek we called manhunt, the rules were
simple: one team hunts, the other hides. If you get caught, you’re escorted to home base, where you
stay until the game ends or a member of your team beats the guards and tags you free.

But I wasn’t worried about the rules.

Hudson had called me that afternoon sounding tense, desperate. His mom’s stuff was in boxes. His
dad was deep in his drink. His brother was nowhere to be seen. I promised to meet him after the teams
split. He said he’d find me.

So I pushed apart some branches and sank my sneakers into the dirt between two short bushes
where the leaves kept trying to meet but never quite made it.

“You know you’re hiding in plain sight, right?” Kris asked. She stood in front of me, arms crossed,
red curls kinky and high from the heat.

“That was sort of the idea.” I looked past her, scanned the silent grounds.

Kris had been quiet for a few weeks in the fall, after I’d forgiven Jolene for the ropes, but she’d
never asked what had happened. She’d never asked about Hudson, either, even though she’d seen him
fish a blade of grass from my hair the night we named stars. She didn’t want to know every single thing
like Jolene did. So I hadn’t told her. Not because I wanted to keep anything from Kris, but because it
didn’t belong to her. Hudson had trusted me. He’d drawn me into his distant place. And I loved the
dark, dense closeness of it. The shared secret. It made me greedy. I wanted him all to myself.

“As team captain, I should care,” Kris said, separating the branches and stepping in next to me.

“Lucky for you, I don’t give a shit about winning.” Our shoulders touched. The sticky skin on our arms
pressed together. It had to be ninety degrees, at least.

“Maybe that’s why Jolene chose you as opposing captain.”

As if I’d summoned her, Jolene came around the corner: ballet flats soft on the cement, draped tank
top swishing against her stomach, head swiveling left and right, throwing dark hair over her bare
shoulders. I’d never seen her hunt. Usually we were on the same team. She reminded me of a cat: sleek,
smooth, ready to spring.

When Jolene was a few steps away, Kris reached for my hand, but hit a thin branch. It snapped. As
Jolene’s head whipped around, Kris and I took off in opposite directions. I ran flat out until I realized
no one was behind me. Jolene must have gone after Kris, which made sense considering Jolene’s
competitive streak, Kris’s hatred for any form of physical activity, and the fact that they were opposing
captains. So, with heavy breaths and a thin film of sweat, I trotted back toward the last row of town
houses and ran along the path that led toward Cal’s, where it would be easier to find Hudson, and tag
Kris free once Jolene brought her back to base.

But I never made it. Jolene appeared in front of me. Alone.

“Lose something?” I asked. Jolene slowed to a stop, turned on her heels. If she still cared about
the game, she could have tagged me. But she didn’t lunge or run in my direction.

“Nope. You?” Her voice was light, pleasant almost, like I’d just asked if she wanted a tall glass of
lemonade.

“Where’s Kris?”

“Trapped in a tower, waiting for a white knight.” She motioned to the sky, rolling her eyes. “Who
cares?” she asked, holding out her hand to me.

I didn’t take it. “For real.”

“Real?” Jolene laughed. “Since when do you want that?”

“Where is she?” I asked again, the temperature in my face and cheeks rising way above the August
heat.

Lightning bugs flew lazy circles in the dead air around us. Screams and laughter sliced the night.

“I think you spend enough time with her already, working on that poor excuse of a paper. If I didn’t
know any better, I’d think you liked her more than me.”