We Won't Feel a Thing (2 page)

Three paragraphs later, she got to this:

…Next on my list is that mermaid mosaic in the courtyard which was already bedraggled at the time of your long-ago visit and is now an utter ruin after the hurricane—I’ve resolved to get it in tiptop shape before the Thanksgiving Luau in November. And that, dear nephew, is where YOU come in!

I have no clue if you and Rachel are still holding tight to that adorable Escape-to-California pact, or if you’ve even broached the subject with dear old dad and mom. But if you’re still aching to flee Nebraska for less dysfunctional shores, I’ll give you both a place to crash this year, and damn the parentals. You’ll have to earn your keep though…Riley, I expect you to restore that mosaic with all the love and care you put into that fabulous tiled mirror you sent me last year. I’ll buy the tiles, you bring your talent. Think of it as a one-of-a-kind internship—if you do a good job, you can do the pool mosaic too, plus the lobby floor and the koi ponds! And Rachel can give me desperately needed help at the front desk when Kya goes on baby-leave. I’d love to have you both start by
September 1.

Where will you stay? Buckle up before I tell you. It is finally, finally time I unlock the doors of Suite 7B again, and I’m doing it just for you! I’d be so thrilled to host you both!!! Please let me know by the end of July if you’re going to come, and I’ll put 7B in some kind of order—as much order as I can manage, ha ha!

Rachel blinked at the
ha ha.
The letters shimmered.

“…I mean, she’s invited us before, but I always thought it was a joke, and I
never
thought she’d give us 7B, can you believe it? Plus the mosaic! I sketched out her whole tail already; I found these great textured subway tiles I want to use. Oh, and I named her Ethel.” Riley gleamed. Rachel thought of all the other times his face looked like that: in art museums, in the light from birthday cakes, on the hotel balcony the first time he saw the ocean. “It’s like,
perfect
.”

Rachel refolded the parchment. She set it on the red silk pillow in front of her. Her brain drummed
fix it fix it fix it
like it did each time a problem reared up.

“What’s wrong?” said Riley.

She traced a slow R on her sock and tipped her chin at the envelope. “Just open.”

***

Riley felt something very, very bad coming. He tried to comfort himself as he picked his envelope open, taking care to preserve Rachel’s awkward drawings.
I always think something bad is coming,
he thought,
and most of the time I’m wrong.

It was a letter. Thick cottony paper, a New York return address under a foreboding logo: red pen crossed with black whip. A few yellow sheets were paper-clipped to the letter, but Riley didn’t bother with those. He was already reading:

Riley refolded the letter and placed it on a fuzzy green monster-head pillow. All the small fantasies he’d allowed himself—making mac and cheese with Rachel in Suite 7B’s kitchenette, watching bad karaoke in the hotel bar, chatting from their twin beds like Bert and Ernie—cracked and fell to pieces.
New York.
It made sense. She checked out
New Yorker
back issues from the Marymarsh Memorial Library and devoured books about witty, tormented urbanites; on her last birthday, when he’d asked about her candle-wish, she’d said “a pet raven and a forty-fifth-floor office.” He pictured her at a New York publishing party. He saw her in menacing black boots and a conceptual haircut, eating goat cheese on fancy crackers and then coaxing some jerkface novelist to join her in a random display of power, like riding a motorcycle down the subway steps or climbing a public art sculpture.

“Wow,” he said.

“That’s not the
present
,” Rachel hurried. “I set it up so you could come too. I found this room in Queens we could afford, with my stipend and my money from Arthur, but now…”

She trailed off. Rachel never trailed off.

“So what about—”
Careful,
Riley warned himself. “What about the California pact?”

Rachel picked lint off her sock. “We never talked about it,” she said. “Anymore.”

I thought we didn’t have to.
“You accepted already?”

“In May.”

Riley let this sink in. “When did you apply?”

“January.”

“And you were going to tell me…”

“…before!
Way
before. But then I didn’t, and it got later and later, and then—”

“Okay.” Riley nodded. His throat burned. “Don’t explain.”

“I saw it on this PBS show about weird boutique colleges. I had to apply, Ri.” She flipped through the yellow papers. “They have a sorority called
Ibid et al.”

“Those are your people.”

“Right?”

“Do my parents know?”

“No. Whatever. Your mother will dance on my suitcase.” Rachel flopped back on the pillows and sighed, scanning the ceiling constellations. “I told myself you’d like New York. All the artists. Museums. I thought—”

“I’ll go.” He huddled beside her, nodding hard. “I’ll like it. I’ll go with you.”

“No you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve made sixty-four mosaics called
California
.”

“Sixty-three.”

“You named the mermaid already.”

“It’s just a job. There’ll be others.”

“There’s no way you’re not doing this, Ri.”

“So what do we do?” he said.

We separate.
The words hung between them.

Rachel turned her face to the ceiling. He saw her eyes trace Embley and Yewbert, the twin constellations shaped like wonky infinity symbols.

“It’s not the end of the world,” she said. “Don’t look so serious.”

“Okay.” Riley rubbed at a cut on his finger. “But like…”

“What?”

“It feels serious. Doesn’t it, to you?”

“What’s serious?” said a voice across the room. “And why isn’t that door closed?”

Rachel and Riley shoved the letters under pillows and scrambled to their feet. Mrs. Anne Woodlawn stood akimbo in the doorway, shaking her head at their unpartitioned space. Her brown curls were shellacked with Ultra Control PowerHold spray, which smelled suspiciously like her citrus furniture polish. She wore a brown silk shirtdress from Jonah’s Junque, ladylike sandals with a sensible heel, and the string of real pearls she reserved for funerals and the dignified author photos she liked to stage on the patio. Under her arm was a dead poodle.

“I joked about the Hindenburg.” Rachel gestured to the history book askew on the floor. “Riley said it was still too soon.”

Mrs. Woodlawn pressed her thin lips together and narrowed her eyes. In the eight years Rachel had lived with them, Riley’s mother had never once seemed satisfied with one of Rachel’s explanations. “Fine, I don’t care,” she said. She held up the poodle. “Will one of you make room for Sniffles, please?”

“Ew,” said Rachel.

“Why?” said Riley.

Mrs. Woodlawn sighed the sigh of the persecuted. “Mrs. Mindish specifically asked that he be kept in a room with no other animals until pickup. He was skittish in life.”

“That’s demented,” said Rachel.

“I don’t want a dead dog in my room,” said Riley.

“Yes, well, no one
wants
a dead dog in his room, Riley, but sometimes they find us.” Mrs. Woodlawn plunked the pedestal of Sniffles down on Riley’s art desk, beside a sea-glass-and-terracotta mosaic labeled
California #63.
“She paid fifty extra dollars, which we need because the man of this house misplaced a third fleshing knife and sat on his glasses again. So the dog stays here until the Mindishes return from Key West. And if you two plan to bring those sour attitudes to DERT, I’d suggest an adjustment
tout de suite.
The car leaves in two minutes.”

Riley sneaked a look at Rachel. Their new problem crushed him close again.

“We can’t go,” said Riley.

“We’re sick,” coughed Rachel.

“I would
appreciate
your cooperation.” Mrs. Woodlawn spoke pleasantly, twisting her pearls with a bony finger. “Dr. Gannon is practically a miracle worker. Ninety-four percent of families who attend DERT seminars forge stronger bonds and awaken their authentic selves.” The pearls twisted tighter, cutting into her neck. “Also, it was sixty-five dollars a ticket, not including poncho fees, so I expect full participation from both of you or I’m sorry to say there’ll be extra essays on
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, and possibly a French quiz. And for the love of the
gods”—
she closed her eyes—“will you please get rid of that awful thing?”

“What thing?”

Rachel and Riley exchanged looks. Mrs. Woodlawn released her pearls and pointed at the sandcastle.

“Who keeps dollhouses at your age?” She spoke slowly, as if crafting a new line for her ninth unpublished novel,
Forbearance Rewarded.
“It’s absolutely
macabre
.”

Satisfied with her exit line, Mrs. Woodlawn clomped away. The fourteenth, eleventh, and fifth steps screeched as she marched downstairs.

“Macabre?” said Rachel.

“Poncho fees?” said Riley.

“I’ll miss her so terribly much.”

Riley turned away and stuffed his fists in his pockets. It was coming on fast—the hated sizzle in his nose, the wetness in his eyes. He pinched both his legs, hard.
Be like her. Be brave. DO NOT CRY,
he ordered himself.
This is what normal people do. They grow up, and then they leave each other.

“Hey.” Rachel stepped in front of him. She smelled like she always did, like tart apples and the inside of her pencil sharpener. “We’ll be okay.”

“Oh, I know.”
Joke. Must joke.
He summoned a British accent. “I find your company
dreadfully
tiresome, anyhow.”

“See?” She clapped his shoulders and shook him lightly. “We’ll still talk all the time. We’ll see each other at Thanksgiving.”

“Christmas. Summers.”

“I’ll send you pictures every day. Buildings, sculptures, funny dogs. People with interesting faces.”

“I’ll send you pictures of signs.” His voice wavered. “Bad apostrophes.”

“
And
your mosaic.”

“Like, every day. A whole Evolution-of-the-Mermaid photo essay.”

“We’ll have so much more to talk about.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“So we’ll just…act normal?”

“But of course, old girl,” he Britished.

Rachel turned away from him. She grabbed her black hightops and started yanking them on. Riley’s senses flooded with the story of their shared life: the salty-cool smell of his Tidal soap mixed with her Poison Apple hand lotion, the taste of the bacon-pineapple pancakes they made together on chilly Sundays, the sound of Rachel playing WrathQuest 5 on their laptop and singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls” off-key in the bathtub. He couldn’t remember how it felt to be by himself. How it felt to be without her. He pictured himself alone in Suite 7B, eating ramen noodles and talking to a goldfish, and he rioted inside as if a giant wave had snatched him off the shore.

“Now, good sir.” Rachel clasped her hands over her heart. “Are you ready?”

“To…?”

“Awaken our
authentic selves
?”

Outside in the driveway, the family car started with a grumpy harrumph, ready to chug them all off to the DERT seminar. Inside the sandcastle, Bob and Athena marked the hour with a
ting
that felt foreboding. A shiver crawled up Riley’s spine.

“I’m ready,” he lied.

Chapter Two

When Rachel and Riley were younger, they thought the Puckatoe Agriculture & Convention Center was the most beautiful and romantic building in the history of the world, partially because Mrs. Woodlawn called it
that eyesore
and once signed a petition to have it torn down
.
Its mottled stone called to mind dank castles with secrets, its gloomy clock tower and murky windows were ideal spots for brooding and dying of the vapors, and a fresco of eighty-six concrete animals underscored the roof’s parapets, marching two by two in an endless circle. Best of all, the architect had insisted on perfect symmetry, so the PACC looked like one of those mirror-image inkblots in the
Let’s Learn Psychology
textbook Mrs. Woodlawn used for their one o’clock lessons.

Every year, when the livestock show moved in and Mrs. Woodlawn dragged Mr. Woodlawn to dog and horse shows in the PACC’s Grand Arena, Rachel and Riley would come along and then get lost. They spent lazy magic hours here on their own, eating food-court baked potatoes the size of shoes, watching baby chicks hatch under heat lamps, and inventing stories about the commune of pigs in Exhibit Hall B, rife with romantic entanglements and plots to unlock the steel pens and escape.

But everything was different now.

The bongos, for one thing.

Rachel and Riley heard them from across the parking lot, as soon as they climbed out of the old blue Ford. The drums pounded hard and fast, as if the building had acquired a frantic heartbeat. Rachel and Riley convinced themselves this was funny, not creepy. They had just distracted themselves with seventeen manic rounds of Would You Rather as Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn bickered over a lost library book, and they were determined to find the rest of the evening wildly amusing.