Underneath Everything (8 page)

I bring my knees to my chest, pull my huge sweatshirt over my legs, and hug them tight. She lifts her head and gets this faraway look in her eyes, so I know what’s coming next. “I guess it is just a big fire when you get down to it, but it’s so exciting too, isn’t it? I’ll never forget the time all us girls brought a huge cooler full of marshmallows and . . . .” Here it is, another amazing story from the high school days.

“I know, I know, you had the best time and the most fun and everybody loved you. I get it, Mom.”

“That’s not what I said, Maitreya.” Now I’m getting the full-name treatment. Great. Next she’ll tell me about her honeymoon in Asia, and the Buddha with my name who embodies loving-kindness, so I can see just how far I’ve strayed from enlightenment.

“Whatever.”

My mom takes a deep breath and looks at me hard, like she’s going to launch into one of her long, serious explanations of life, when three bright beeps come from the oven timer in the kitchen. Her ear lifts toward the door, then her eyes look back at me, and her forehead creases. I can tell she wants to stay and keep talking, but then her all-important holiday meal might not make it to the table on time, now, would it?

“I’ve got to put the turkey in, but this conversation isn’t over. Let’s not forget you broke curfew.”

“Which you didn’t seem to care about until just this second.”

“Oh, I care about it,” she says, stepping over mounds of sweaters and scattered papers on her way to the door. She stops with her fingers on the handle. “I just thought if you had an explanation, I might not care about it so much. But since you have yet to give me one, then I most certainly do care.” My mom’s about to close the door, but at the last second she reaches across my dresser and curls her fingers around the handle of the hot chocolate mug I brought up last night.

“Mom. Leave it!”

“Okay, okay!” she says, her hands in the air, her shoulders hunched. “Come down when you’re hungry.”

When she’s gone I check my phone again. Still nothing from Kris. If she keeps up the radio silence, I’ll have to break it to my parents that she won’t be joining us for dessert like she does every year. I can already picture their faces: Mom’s downturned lips, her tilted head, and her tweezed eyebrows, angling up to meet each other; Dad’s gee-whiz-tough-luck-kiddo look, the one where his lips disappear into the puffed-out skin around them and the dimple on his right cheek pops.

We’ve got this holiday ritual, Kris and I. We’ve been doing it since intermediate school. We call it the Holiday Fair Trade Agreement (HaFTA for short). I get to spend the early part of the day at her house—

snacking at the buffet table, playing with her never-ending stream of cousins, and chatting with her aunts and uncles—and she gets to finish the day sitting at a civilized table in a quiet house, hanging out with me and my parents.

The thing is, nobody will notice if I don’t make it to Kris’s. They can barely keep track of each other with so many people and so many rooms. But my parents will definitely notice if Kris doesn’t make it here. Especially if Jake isn’t around to distract them with stories of how lame high school is (for me), how he’s working his ass off to impress some partner at the best law firm in the city (for my parents), and how kick-ass he is in general (for himself). If my parents find out Kris isn’t coming, they’ll want to know why. They’ll want to know what happened. And there’s no way I’m telling them. I’ve already got this gaping hole of guilt in my gut. I don’t need any extra from them, thanks.

I pick up my phone. I’m sending Kris one last text. She may be grounded for life, and she’s probably pissed, but I still can’t believe she’d totally ditch me on Thanksgiving. I put my cell back on the nightstand and stare at it for a second, in case she replies right away, but it doesn’t buzz.

So I walk over to my desk and roll open the lower drawer. It’s filled to the brim with paper ranging in age and shades, from brightest white to muddy yellow—my maps. At least the ones that aren’t framed already or mounted on acid-free paper and tacked to my walls. I’ve been collecting and creating them since second grade, when we took a class trip to the Miller-Cory House, which is one of those museums where people dressed in colonial costumes show you how to churn butter. On our way out that day, a woman in a cape and a bonnet handed me a pamphlet that mapped the West Fields of 1740, which, at the time, wasn’t much more than a midpoint between New York and Philadelphia. I still have that one, actually. The paper used to be smooth and slick. Now it’s a soft memory, shiny from finger oil, feathered and peeling at the white folds, sitting at the bottom of my drawer.

After washing last night’s smoke and dirt from my fingers, I gingerly lift the top layers of stained paper from the stack and set aside the acid-free buffers that separate them. These maps aren’t originals, of course—those are preserved—but I still have to be careful. They were printed in 1901, the same year as the originals, and on the same type of wood-pulp paper. It’s the paper that gives them that smell: a mix of must and leather, with a hint of grass and something acidic when you put your nose to it.

I found them last summer, during my daily eBay estate-sale search. As soon as I saw the crisp lines, block letters, pastel shading, and numeric labels, I knew they were Sanborns. But instead of showing the whole town, like the 1921 map hanging above my bed, these sheets divide Westfield into sections.

I lay them out in order: sheets one, two, three, four, five. I’m still looking for the sixth. I know it exists. I’ve seen it online at the Library of Congress site and the Rutgers Cartography Libraries, where the Sanborn Map Company’s archives have been digitized.

The maps are so damaged from sitting in the seller’s damp attic, I try not to touch them any more than I have to. But sometimes I can’t help it. My fingers linger, skim their thin paper-skin. Truth is, I actually like the stains and folds and bleeds of ink from the things that were pressed against them. Not just because it’s the only way I could have afforded them, but because you can see and feel the years they’ve lived. Their history is visible. Until I restack the maps and buffers, set them gently on top of the rest of my collection, and roll the drawer closed.

I cast another glance at my nightstand, but my cell hasn’t buzzed or rung or played the whistling theme song Kris thumbed in when I got it a year ago. It’s just sitting there, still and useless. So I do the only thing that’s left. I clean my room.

But a few hours later, after I’ve cleared the floor, folded the shirts, and shut the drawers; after I’ve cleaned my desk and rotated my hanging maps and made my bed; after I’ve reorganized the books on my shelf, not by title or author or subject, but in which order I read them, I still don’t feel better. Everything is organized, but nothing feels neat. And that’s because no matter what I do to this room, it won’t change anything. Color coding my shirts won’t make Kris call. Changing the map placement on my walls won’t make Hudson pick up the phone. I can’t put everything back in order.

I check my cell one more time, just to make absolutely sure I didn’t miss a text, then slip it into the pocket of my sweatshirt and head downstairs, where the air is thick with garlic, green beans, squash soup, and stuffing. No need to tell my parents about Kris. No need to tell them anything just yet.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 8

TWO COURSES, THREE kinds of potatoes, four side dishes, and one twenty-pound turkey later, we’re all silent and stuffed. I mean, seriously, we’re only three people. My brother called right before we sat down to tell us that he wasn’t going to make it for dinner, but he’d try for dessert. He said he absolutely had to stay because the partner wanted him there, and it was the kind of opportunity you just couldn’t pass up.

My dad’s chin got so tight and narrow that it pushed up his bottom lip until he let out a loud sigh and shrugged his shoulders, like
What are you gonna do?
And my mom’s gray eyes looked stormy and sad, until she snapped out of it and announced, “At least Jake’ll be here for the best part of the meal!” Because she believed him. Even though he’s not going to show up. He never does.

I mean, I get it—why my parents want Jake home. I can’t tell hilarious stories about pranks I’ve pulled and games I’ve won. But I’m here, aren’t I? And he’s not. I don’t know why my mom can’t just accept it and get on with her life.

After carrying some dishes to the sink, I duck into the bathroom and slip my phone out of my jeans.

Still nothing from Hudson. I suck it up and send him a text. I write something simple. Short. Casual. It takes me so long to come up with that perfect tone, my parents have completely cleared the table by the time I’m finished. I read over the message as my phone attempts to send it:

So over Thanksgiving. Brainstorming covert missions to make it through dessert. You?

It’s okay. Not great, but not terrible, either.

My mom calls me to help in the kitchen before the message sends.

By the time we set the table for dessert it’s late—we waited an extra hour for Jake, who—surprise, surprise—didn’t show up. We’re tired, and the hushed roar of football is the only noise in the house. This is when Kris usually walks in, telling some crazy Thanksgiving tale, like the time her cousins wrestled each other into the kitchen and knocked the cranberry sauce onto the dog. And from then on it’s all jokes and stories and laughing so hard our ice cream dribbles off our spoons and onto our chins. But tonight she’s not here, either.

And somehow my mom was so busy cooking and my dad was so busy snoring in front of the TV that

they didn’t even realize I sat in my room all day, drafting my own version of the missing sheet from the 1901 map. That I never went over to Kris’s place. That I never went anywhere. So after my mom lays out the cookies, the fruit platter, the pumpkin pie, and two kinds of ice cream, she looks over to the fourth plate, then she looks at me. And I know what she’s going to say.

“Where’s Kris?” she asks, resting her hand on the back of the dining-room chair. Since she doesn’t sit, neither do we. All three of us stand around a table full of desserts and softening ice cream.

“Oh, she’s not coming,” I say. “That pie really looks delicious, Mom. What flavor is the ice cream?”

“Thanks, honey. I bought Vanilla Bean for you. She’s not coming?”

“Nope.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

“Nope.” Technically, that’s true. No fight. No nothing. I’m just a terrible friend. I tap my fingers on the back of the chair. “Can we sit down?”

“Of course we can,” my father says. “Diane, come on. Sit. You’ve been on your feet all day. What have we got here, Vanilla Bean and Swiss Almond? My favorite,” he says, scooping his own spoon right into the Swiss Almond pint. “Mmmmm.” He scrapes the floor with his chair, then sort of falls down into it and serves himself a huge bowl of ice cream. Now that he’s down, I sit too, even though my mom’s still standing, looking my way.

“You sure you’re okay?” my mom says, pulling at her necklace. “Nothing you want to talk about?”

“Nope. Can you pass the fruit?”

“Sure,” she says. But she doesn’t pass it. She walks around the table to where I’m sitting and stops behind me, setting a hand on my shoulder. Then she places the bowl next to my plate. I dig out the strawberries and blueberries with the huge serving spoon. She’s still standing behind me when we hear an engine and see two beams of light swipe across the dark backyard. Jake. He actually made it.

The weight lifts from my shoulder, and my mom begins flitting around the kitchen like a fly to get him a plate, a glass, a napkin. By the time the door cracks, she’s got her arm outstretched and her cheek in the air for a kiss. Jake shakes off the cold and shucks his black overcoat, laying it over Mom’s arm as Dad claps him solidly on the back. While he passes out kisses and apologies, I check my phone under the table. I have a fail message. The text to Hudson never went through. I resend it, but it fails again. So I try his old email address. It bounces back. What the hell?

“What’s wrong with you?” Jake’s at the table now. His stubbled cheek is rosy from the cold and rounded over a bite of pie. “Did you get weird while I was gone?” He points his crumb-covered fork at me.

“I’m not weird.” I lay my phone in my lap and push the fruit around on my plate. Could Hudson have changed his number? The one I used is from last year.

“Well, you’re not acting normal,” he says. Jake is five years older than I am. Normal used to be fixing my Shake ‘N Bake oven and building me pillow forts. Then he started high school, and it switched to soccer and the same party every weekend, where everyone adored him. Now it’s working his way up at the best law firm in New York by putting in long hours and telling all the stories in his arsenal, which are endless and always nab laughs.

Not exactly my kind of normal.

I narrow my eyes at him. He opens his wide.

“Okay, okay.” Mom cuts us off. “Jake,” she says, with a tip of her head and a saccharine edge, “tell us what’s going on!”

“Yeah. How are things at the firm?” my dad asks, leaning over the table to cut himself a second piece of pie. “They still working you to the bone?”

And that’s all Jake needs. He launches into some story. And just this once, I appreciate Jake’s ability to dominate dinner, or anything at all for that matter.

I lean back in my chair and sneak glances at my lap, where I left my phone.

Just when I’ve given up on hearing from Kris—it’s been over twenty-four hours since we spoke, which is like a year in me-and-Kris time—my cell buzzes.