You, Maybe (8 page)

Sixteen

I HEADED BACK
to my house, cutting through Annabel and Tom’s yard. I could hear Fluffy and Sarge barking at me from inside, but I didn’t look up. I pressed the garage button with crossed fingers, and surprisingly enough, got lucky: my dad’s car was gone. Phew—they were out; no explanations necessary for why I was back so soon. The feeling of relief lasted about three seconds, at which point it was replaced by loneliness, abandonment, and despair. I turned and looked around, 360 degrees: all these lawns, mowed to the proper standards, islands of snow dotting them decoratively; swing sets and basketball hoops, welcome mats, winding walks, fake shutters nailed open, all uniformly inviting—and it could just as easily have been a ghost town. Okay, maybe that’s not fair; mid-January mornings in Pennsylvania aren’t famous for the glut of lemonade stands. But still, I was the only person in sight, the only person around, standing in front of my half-empty garage with no parental supervision. What would stop me from taking my mother’s keys off the hook inside the door and driving her sedate black sedan away from this little hellish bit of paradise forever?

Well, not knowing how to drive might stop me. Or at least slow me down.

I went inside and sat against the fridge to call Tru and Zandra back.

“Oh.” Zandra’s voice on Tru’s phone. “Found a minute for your friends, Glamour Girl?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just . . . I was at Michael’s.”

“You are insatiable!” Zandra shrieked.

“Yeah,” I said. I felt so tired.

“We’re gonna lie around Tru’s room all day doing nothing but eating candy and complaining about how boring our lives are. Want to join us?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I can’t.”

“Oh, right, Tru just reminded me—you’re spending the day at Michael’s for his birthday.”

“No,” I said. “I, I kind of, just, broke up with him.”

“You what? She broke up with Michael. But you’re going out with Carson!”

“Exactly.”

“Oh. She told Michael about Carson,” I heard her tell Tru, and then she asked me, “How’d he take it?”

“Not well.”

“You want us to come over? Tru’s father will drive us. Right, Tru? We can be there in ten minutes. Tru! Get . . .”

“No, I’m going over to Carson’s.”

“Oh,” she said, and told Tru. “Okay.”

“Miss me, okay?”

“We’ll try,” Zandra said. “Call us if you need backup.”

“I will.” I hung up and hauled myself upstairs. It was still too early to go over to Carson’s. Right then I was wishing I could blow off both the boys I love—I could be eating candy for breakfast with my friends instead of groaning at myself in front of my mother’s mirrored wall units. My favorite black sweater didn’t look great and original and cool to me, suddenly, despite the thirteen safety pins holding together the rip I had cut from the neck to the shoulder.

I opened my mother’s wall unit door. On top of her sweater pile was a new yellow one, with the tissue paper still folded into it. Cashmere. I pulled my hand away. I don’t do pastel. My mother must’ve told me a hundred times that I need to soften my look and I roll my eyes every time.

I ripped off my sweater and pulled my mother’s new yellow cashmere over my head. The tissue paper fluttered toward the floor. The deep V neck exposed a lot more of me than I usually do; I closed the door warily, not sure I was ready to see the mirror.

Well. Okay. Not so bad. I stopped myself from stretching it out with my fists; the cashmere clung to my body, showed my curves. Ew, like Mom. She sure has tits, is probably the first thing people think when they see her. Well, so what? I have tits, too. Maybe Mom was right, that I should stop hiding in my big old clothes.

Before I could change my mind, I dashed downstairs, threw on my jacket, hat, and gloves, and pulled my bike out of its spot. For a severely anti-athletic person, I sure get plenty of use from the old thing. Six more months until I can drive. I kicked the kickstand extra hard. Six more months. I glided down the driveway, not looking at the house of my six-months-older friend who was celebrating his birthday alone.

As I rode, I realized suddenly that I had sort of always subconsciously figured I would lose my virginity to Michael, too, and now maybe everything is different and there won’t be any going back. The thought that maybe I won’t ever lose my virginity to Michael hit me like a loss in itself. Maybe all this time as I was telling myself I didn’t want a boyfriend because no way do I ever want to be half a couple, maybe I already was half a couple.

Oh, no.

But also, okay.

As awful as I felt about hurting Michael and losing him, possibly losing his friendship and love forever, and maybe also the love of his parents who would hate me for hurting him, especially on his sixteenth birthday when they were counting on me to be there for him, I was also in a small, weird way kind of happy. Set free.

I sped up and let the wind rip tears from my eyes. I didn’t really want to spend these next twelve hours of my life watching TV with Michael in Michael’s house, eating popcorn and sometimes, during the boring parts of the movies, fooling around with each other in our usual half-distracted way, watching the movie out of the corners of our eyes while we kissed. I had thought that’s what I wanted to do, but now that I was sprung, it was clear to me that I actually didn’t. At all.

Because what I wanted to do with the next twelve hours was be Carson’s girlfriend. I wanted him to hold my hand and grab me if the Eagles managed to get a first down, grab me and yell, pull me close and feel Emelina Lee watch me, even as her hand gripped college-boy Daniel’s; I wanted to feel her envy shoot across the room to stab me as she remembered what it was like to be Carson’s girlfriend, and wonder who I was, this sophomore who had him so smitten, so in love.

In love. I wanted to feel him fall in love with me. I wanted to fall in love with him. I wanted to say whatever was on my mind and watch him smile; feel him look deep into my eyes and shake his head at the wonder of me, at how shocking the intensity of his feelings for me had become, so fast. I wanted him to look at me like he was just barely managing to stop himself from devouring me, and then I wanted him to take me into some back room on a pretext of finding the pickles, and grab me, kiss me hard and deep, and say
Oh man, Josie, oh, what you do to me. I have never felt this way about any other girl before
.

Seventeen

I DROPPED MY
bike in Carson’s driveway and stumbled up his walk. I rang his doorbell and tightened my ponytail while I waited. Carson opened the door. I smiled, not just at the fact that this time I was not in a clown suit. “Hi,” I said to him, leaning forward.

“Hold on,” he said. “I mean, come in. Emelina’s just telling us the funniest story.”

“Great,” I said, a master of enthusiasm.

“Well, I’m fine,” Emelina was telling the small, actively attractive group. “Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the truck.”

“The truck?” Carson asked her. “Wait. What happened?”

“Tell them,” Daniel urged, and turned to us. “It’s a great story.” He gave Emelina’s hand a squeeze. I took off my gloves in case anybody developed the urge to squeeze mine.

Emelina leaned against the door frame. “You remember my grandparents’ old ugly orange couch, up at the mountain house?” she asked Carson, who nodded. “Well, it finally collapsed. My parents had just ordered new leather furniture, so my grandparents said they would love to have our old things. It was just a matter of getting the furniture to them. Well, I would do anything for Gingy and Pops, you know them, Carson. Aren’t they great?”

“Great.” Carson nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Everybody loves them. My parents said it’s not worth it, we’ll buy them new furniture—but I love that old stuff. I have a hard time saying good-bye, I guess. . . .” She smiled a little. “So I said rent me a truck and I’ll haul the furniture up to the mountain house myself.”

“Your parents let you?” I asked, interrupting.

She looked at me, confused, and shrugged. “What were they going to say?”

I was starting to sweat so I unzipped my jacket. Also I wanted Carson to see my tight sweater. “My parents have a lot to say about what I eat for lunch,” I answered, taking the jacket off, slowly. Carson noticed. Good.

“And you listen?” Emelina was asking me, meanwhile.

“No,” I said. “But I think if I asked them to rent me a truck, they’d . . . hesitate.”

Emelina shrugged. “Not mine.”

“Go on,” Carson said, turning back to her. “So you rented the truck . . .”

“I rented the truck,” she said. “I brought it home and, with some help, loaded the old furniture into the truck and kissed my parents good-bye.”

Daniel gave a little stifled laugh, either about kissing her parents good-bye or in anticipation of what was to come, I don’t know. I didn’t really care. I was busy scouting out a place to put down my coat, here at the Emelina show.

Yes, I know. Meow.

“I started down the street. I could hear the stuff clattering around a little in the back, but it sounded okay. I had never driven a truck before. I love to drive, you know I do.”

Carson nodded. I suppressed a gag.

“But normally I drive my little—you know my car.”

He smiled at her. Bitch.

I squeezed Carson’s arm and whispered, “Where’s the bathroom?”

He pointed, without taking his eyes off Emelina. I slunk off to the bathroom and left my stuff in a small pile outside it.

As I washed my hands, I considered calling Zandra and Tru. I didn’t want people to hear me and think I was talking to myself in there, though, so I dried my hands on the towel and came out. I would tell them about Emelina later and we’d be merciless about her.

More people had arrived, and Emelina was still talking: “It was completely stuck in the underpass! So I threw it into reverse, floored it, and flew out backwards.”

Every mouth (except mine) dropped open. Every eye was riveted to her beautiful face. I considered throwing up, as a diversion.

“I climbed down from the truck,” she continued, softer, so everybody had to lean forward. “All the people were very nice. They got out of their cars to see if I was okay, which of course I was, and the truck looked fine too, not at all scraped on the sides, of course, which is where I was looking, but then I noticed all the wheels were resting on a huge piece of metal. I didn’t remember driving over a big sheet of metal on the way in so I asked, ‘What is that under my truck?’”

“And what was it?” I asked. My voice boomed. It sounded strangely impatient. Go figure.

“The roof,” Emelina smoothly answered. “The roof of the truck had popped off and I had driven onto the top of it. So I had to back up some more to get off it, and some of the guys helped me pull it over to the side of the road. They were so wonderful, all the people there, helping me, all of them, out of their cars, and it was cold, starting to snow. Remember? Just before Christmas. The first snow.”

Well
,
well
, I thought.
How
It’s a Wonderful Life.

“So then what happened?” Carson prompted.

“Nothing, really,” Emelina said. “That was that. I thanked all the people, who were all clapping and cheering. It was quite the party by then. Funny.” She chuckled to herself.

Oh
,
yes
, I thought.
What a riot!

“Some of them were beeping and chanting my name as I made a U-turn. What a scene. I waved good-bye and took the long way around to the highway, and brought the stuff to my grandparents’ house.”

“You brought it?” I had to ask. “You drove the four hours without the roof?”

“And back,” she answered. “The next day.”

“In the snow?” I smiled at her. Or bared my teeth, anyway.

“Topless!” Emelina said. “So to speak.”

She came right over to me, laid her long fingers on my sleeve, and asked me quietly, intimately, “But do you want to hear the funniest part?”

Not really
.

“You have to hear this,” Daniel said.

“That wasn’t the funniest part?” I asked.

“No,” Emelina leaned against the banister, right beside Carson. “When I returned the truck, sans lid, they asked if there were any problems with the rental. I said no, not at all, only the top popped off down at the underpass on Chesterton, and it was there on the side, in the bushes. The guy wrote it down and said, ‘Thank you for renting with U-Haul.’”

Carson laughed. “He said thank you for . . . ?”

“I kid you not.” Emelina held up her right hand, like she was taking an oath. “So yesterday morning I got something from U-Haul in the mail, and I figured, here it is. They’re suing me, they want a payment, something. I opened the letter and what was it?”

We didn’t know. We all waited.

“A check for fifty dollars!”

Nobody moved. “I don’t get it,” I finally said.

“My deposit, I guess. Good gig, huh? If they need tops popped off any more trucks, I could get rich. My dad’s theory is that it happens all the time. Anyway, now the mountain house is full of the furniture I love, so all it needs is the people I love—the weekend after next. Carson, come. And bring—” She gestured toward me.

I had to stop myself from saying I would rather yank off all my fingernails than spend the weekend hearing more of your never-ending, self-aggrandizing, stupid stories. But Carson had finally turned toward me, so I stifled my growl and imitated a smile.

“We’ll go cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, build a fire, it’ll be great. You’ll love Gingy and Pops, Joey, everybody does.”

“Josie,” I corrected. Grrr.

“Right. We’ll ask Margo and Frankie, too, if you want. Sound good?”

“As long as you’re not driving,” Carson told her.

She smacked him on his head and stood up. We all followed her into the family room. Like a happy little parade.

Eighteen

I HAD NO
idea what was happening in the game. When other people jumped up, I jumped up, too; when they groaned, I joined in. I had no mind of my own, or what little I had was used up on sensation: Carson’s palm against mine, the smell of his hair as he lowered his head toward my face, the pressure and heat of his leg thrown over my own.

At halftime we all went out in the backyard to toss a ball around. Carson split us up onto teams, choosing me first. First time in my life that ever happened. I whispered to him, “I suck at football.”

“I figured,” he whispered back. “Go deep.”

With only a vague idea what that meant, I ran around like a lunatic, waving my hands in the air but praying he wouldn’t throw the ball my way. He didn’t. Emelina caught a perfect spiral from Daniel on the other team and scored. I cheered for them. What did I care? She could win any football game in the world; I was Carson’s girlfriend and she wasn’t.

Carson grabbed me. “What are you doing, you dope? They’re on the other team!”

“Haven’t you ever heard of good sportsmanship?” Emelina said, defending me, I guess.

Carson let go of me and said to her, “I’ll show you good sportsmanship.”

“Promises, promises,” she answered, and walked away.

I watched her go. Carson grabbed me from behind again but I pulled away. “Hey,” he said. I shrugged him off. He grabbed my hand and tugged me around to his side yard. “Somebody’s jealous,” Carson said, unzipping my jacket. “That turns me on.” He slipped his hands inside and ran his hands down my shoulders, across my chest, up my sides. I felt like clay he was sculpting, felt every contour of myself get molded by his hands. When his mouth came down to mine, there was no resistance left in my lips. I felt his fingers touch my neck, my earlobes, my earrings.

“Everything about you turns me on,” Carson whispered. “Your great-grandmother’s earrings, even. Is that weird?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

He groaned. “Mmm, how you never take them off—it makes me want to get you completely naked. . . .”

“Carson . . .”

“Someday?” he asked. “Someday, not now, obviously, but someday, will you take them off, for me? Be completely naked with me. Come to Emelina’s, in the mountains. Oh, wouldn’t that be so great?” He kissed my neck, his hands slipping under my sweater. My mother’s sweater.

“I don’t know,” I said. I could feel the cold air hitting the strip of bare skin he was exposing.

“Just imagining you taking off everything, even your earrings . . .”

“I never take them off.”

“I know,” he said, touching my earrings and kissing me again. “Promise me, though, someday. Josie, please. Say maybe, at least.”

“Maybe, at least,” I said.

“Second half!” his father yelled. “It’s starting.”

Carson groaned. “I’m gonna explode. Ugh.” He held my hand walking back in. I watched Emelina notice that.

We settled back into the same spots. Carson’s cheeks were pink and he smelled like winter. I tried to watch the game instead of just him. It was a challenge. After about ten minutes he kind of untangled from me and whispered, “Will you get me a soda?”

“Um, okay,” I whispered back.

I stood up and started to make my way across the family room, past and over people. Everybody looked attached to the TV by invisible strings from their eyes to the screens, loose smiles on their faces, slumped in random positions all draped on one another. It was nice, actually. I had always imagined these groupings of beautiful people being high-tension affairs, with secret codes and competitive strife, each person checking out everyone else, jockeying for position and superiority. These guys all seemed relaxed and comfortable, easy. Like normal people only better-looking. I wondered if maybe, possibly, I fit in among them.

I went to the kitchen to get Carson a soda, but stopped when I got to the fridge. It was full of pictures, and beside it was a whole bulletin board filled with more photos as well as lots of invitations, letters, and a calendar. I guess I started reading and lost track of time. I was reading Carson’s acceptance from Harvard, which was pinned next to the emergency phone list and a photo of Carson with his parents and a gorgeous girl I didn’t know, hiking on a mountain, wide smiles across all their faces.

“Hey,” Carson said, behind me.

I jumped, startled and caught.

“Thanks for the soda.”

“Sorry, I was just . . .”

“Yeah, I see,” he said, opening the fridge and getting himself a can of soda. “So?”

“What?” I asked him.

“You tell me, you’re the one going through my stuff.”

“Harvard uses nice paper for its acceptances,” I noted. “And who’s this?”

Carson glanced at the photograph. “Me,” he said.

“And?”

“And my parents and my sister Veronica,” he said. “She’s at Brown, a junior. What else?”

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Why?”

“Nothing.” He pressed up against me and we made out a little. “I can’t wait to get you alone, a whole weekend of freedom in the mountains. You want to go, don’t you?”

“I have to ask my parents,” I said.

“I’m asking
you
,” he said. “Not your parents. Do you want to go?”

I hesitated, thinking for a sec,
Do I want to go?
I might have a party scheduled for one of those days, I couldn’t remember, I would have to check on my Tallulah calendar, and anyway, what would my parents say if I even asked them,
Hey, can I go away for the weekend with my boyfriend?
. . .

“I knew it,” Carson said, backing away from me. “I am so stupid.”

“What? I just, I think I have a party scheduled that weekend, and anyway I’m not sure my parents . . .”

Carson shook his head. “Forget it.” He walked out of the kitchen past the garage door to another room and slammed the door. I followed him, opened the door, and found him sitting against the laundry machine. I closed the door behind me and sat down next to him. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

He wouldn’t look at me. “Nothing. I can’t do it anymore, Josie, that’s all. Everything I ask you, you say no. You toy with me like I’m a mouse and you’re a kitten just having some fun.”

“No,” I said. “How can you say . . .”

“It’s true. I thought maybe you were just scared, you have this incredible vulnerability under all your independence and strength and that’s part of what turned me on, turns me on, but, I don’t know. Maybe you’re too young. Maybe I’m an idiot for . . .”

“For what?”

“For telling Frankie I think I could, I could, fall in love with you.”

“You told him that?”

He looked at me. “I told him I’m falling in love with you, Josie. Isn’t that stupid?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “He said I hardly knew you, how could I be falling in love with you, I was just horny, and I punched him for it. It’s not lust, I was telling him, it’s this, connection, we’re connected, me and Josie. There’s a word my grandmother uses for it:
Beschert
. Meant to be.”

“Beschert,” I said.

Carson shook his head. “He thinks that’s idiotic. But you know what I think?”

“Tell me,” I said.
We are beschert, we are meant for each other.

“I think it’s stupid to fall in love with someone who isn’t in love with you.”

“How do you know I’m not?” I whispered.

“You’re not,” he said. “Everything I ask, you say no. Come to my house, come to the movies, come away for the weekend. All my friends will be there but my own girlfriend doesn’t even want to come, doesn’t even want to be with me!” He pounded the washing machine behind him with his fist. It didn’t dent but it made a loud noise. It scared me.

“I just said I have to ask my parents!”

“Right. That’s the first thing you said. I asked you if you
want
to come, you still haven’t answered. Forget it. I have your answer.” He shook his head. “You don’t love me.”

“Carson.”

He wouldn’t look at me. He studied his can of soda as if every answer might be printed on its side.

“Carson, listen to me.”

“Forget it,” he whispered.

“No,” I said. “Listen to me. I have never felt this way before. You have me all riled up, and confused. I’m not used to feeling this way. Yes, it started out as a game, as playing, flirting, fun. That’s all I ever expected it to be. But you know that flower you gave me?”

He didn’t move, but I could tell he was listening to me.

“I kept it, Carson.” I couldn’t believe I was actually admitting this, but he was listening, and I was telling him, and it felt intimate, adult, right. “The petals started to turn black, on the edges, but I keep it in water, I change the water every evening, and bring it to my room. I fall asleep each night looking at that rose, and it’s the first thing I see every morning when I wake up. It still has a little scent left in it, and I close my eyes and smell it and I think of you, Carson, and maybe you’re right, maybe I say no to you too much. I’m sorry. Yes, you scare me. Not because I’m too young. Not because I hate you, though sometimes I wish I did. Sometimes I think,
Why did he have to change it, why couldn’t we just hook up sometimes?
But then I realize how much I want to see you, be with you, all the time, how much I want to touch your fingers with my skin.”

He looked up at me then.

“When you look at me, Carson, I know I belong to you. I know I’ll do anything for you. I love you.”

There. I said it. I waited, staring back into his eyes, thinking
Please say you love me, too
.

“No,” Carson said. “You don’t love me.”

“How can you say that?”

“You don’t,” he said, standing up. “You don’t love me. Forget it.”

He started to leave the laundry room. I grabbed him by the arm. “Why? How can you say that? I left my best friend on his birthday. I broke his heart, to be with you here today, because you asked me to. What do you want from me?”

He pulled his arm away from mine. “Go back to him, then.”

“Carson, why are you doing this?”

“Do you really?” he asked. “You really think you love me?”

“Yes,” I said. I tried to hug him, but he didn’t bend to me.

“I thought maybe you did,” he said. “I brought you here, everybody was like, really, a tenth grader? Who dresses up like a clown and runs away from you? But I was like no, you don’t know her. She’s the most extraordinary girl, mature and real and unlike anybody I’ve ever known. I think I’m falling in love with her. I’ve been making an ass of myself.”

“No.”

“I . . . God! I sang to you. In the locker room! I have never sung in my life to anybody, not since fourth grade. I made a fool of myself for you. Following you around like your little mouse, toy with me, toy with me. But I was wrong. God help me, I thought I loved you, and I thought you loved me.”

“I do,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You don’t love me.”

He stormed out of the room, almost ripping the door off its hinges on his way out. It swung open and shut in his wake. I stood there alone in the laundry room for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do next.

And then I knew.

I went to the bulletin board in the kitchen and found a pen, hanging by a string, and an envelope with an old invitation left over from New Year’s Eve. I crossed out the address on the front and wrote Carson’s name in big letters. I turned over the envelope and inside, in the white space under the flap, I wrote:

Yes. I do.

Then I reached up to my ear and for the first time all year, unfastened my great-grandmother’s diamond stud from my ear. It was beautiful, perfect and round and glittery, the most beautiful and valuable thing I have ever owned. Half of a perfect pair. I screwed the back onto the post and dropped it into the envelope. I sealed it shut and stuck it, with a pig magnet, to the front of Carson’s refrigerator. I grabbed my jacket and left quickly, before I could change my mind.