27. Delia
Twenty Seven
Delia
L angdon leaves but not before thoroughly devouring me with kisses and groping. The kind that can only be described as hot and heavy. My whole body felt like it was on fire. A heady woosh of lust and desire and adrenaline. I didn’t even stop to think about his family and mine just downstairs, that anyone could have walked in on us at any moment. I didn’t think about anything except Langdon’s body and mine.
His mom had yelled upstairs that they were getting ready to head out and we’d both leaped so far apart from each other that you would have thought we’d been shocked by an electric fence. I’d laughed as he smoothed his hair and shirt into place in the dresser mirror while I just laid on the bed and watched him. Langdon was sexy as hell all rumpled and mussed and if I had to guess, he thought the same about me, judging from the tormented look in his eyes as he took me in on the bed while he said goodnight.
Mom’s mix CD was weirdly sexy as far as mood music goes. Even if it pains me to admit it. Mom . Ugh. I will my brain to stop thinking before I spiral out of control.
Heath comes to talk to me. He sits on the end of my bed and apologizes for sending me to my room and embarrassing me in front of company. I appreciate the effort, but the damage is done.
“What can we do, Delia? How do we build a relationship?” he asks.
I’m pressed against the wall at the opposite end of the bed from him. I shrug. “I’ve never had family. I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this,” I admit.
“Well, maybe we should have a weekly date? You can ask me whatever you want and we can just, try?” he suggests.
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. Touched at the effort. The suggestion. “Yeah. We can do that.”
“It’s settled then. Do Tuesday evening’s work for you?”
I nod.
“Ok then. I’ll leave you to it. Night.” He stands in the door frame watching me.
“Goodnight,” I say.
He shuts the door quietly and I listen to his footsteps fade down the hall.
I move to the windowsill and stare out the window. I wonder how many times Mom stared out this window at this same view growing up. Langdon’s iPod is at the other end of the seat and my mind wanders back to the Olivia playlist I discovered on it.
Really down in the dumps, sad, ugly cry songs. He never did answer me about it when I asked. I don’t think there are any Olivia’s in our class but if not an ex-girlfriend, then who was she and why is the list so sad? A tiny seed of jealousy at some girl I’ve never met pricks my belly.
The room is a mess. Piles of clothes—that need to be laundered—cover the floor. There’s nick-nack junk strewn about most of the surfaces too. I sigh and decide it’s time to tidy up. I’ve let everything go lately. I start with the surfaces and move on to the clothes.
Under one of the piles is that spiral-bound notebook that says MATH on it in Mom’s handwriting. I crouch with it on the edge of the bed. Mom always said she was terrible at math. Why would she have kept this? The CD stops. I pop in a new one—another mix presumably created by my mom and press play. I flip open the notebook. The first page is notes from class.
I flip the page.
Journal of Jennifer Brickell
September 2003
A small gasp comes out of me. Mom kept a journal? I nearly laugh with delirium. All her poking fun at me about keeping one and here is proof that she did the same thing.
Journal of Jennifer Brickell
September 2003
I went to the beach today with friends. And Indian summer is what they call it. I was splashing in the ocean. The water was chilly and this guy I recognized from our school but didn’t know waded in near me, told me his name, and that I must be the most exciting woman on the beach.
I laughed and told him my name. He repeated it as if it were a prayer. Everyone else was sunning on their towels but I always wanted to be in and a part of the water anywhere we went.
He grinned and splashed me and I laughed and then he laughed. He had these eyes that smoldered—which sounds corny but I swear they actually did. And he didn’t look at anyone else. So many girls on the beach and he didn’t bother glancing at a single one. He just kept on smoldering at me .
It was disorienting. I had this intense feeling that my bikini was likely to whoosh off if he shot one more sultry look at me. He splashed me. I splashed him back. He told me jokes and pulled me close and Lord, I remember thinking how eager I was to give my heart and have my body touched by him as we were yanked around by the waves. It was the best day ever. He took my number before he left.
I hope he calls. I’ve been keeping my phone on me and charged at all times.
There are several pages torn from the notebook followed by two blank pages after the entry until the next one. I lie on my belly on the bed and read the next entry. Could this guy she met be my dad? Who was she at the beach with ?
Journal of Jennifer Brickell
January 2004
I am in love and we are together! I can’t imagine life without him. My gawd, the things he does to me. Someday we’re going to leave this town and all the naysayers. Mom and Dad think he’s worthless. Comes from bad stock, whatever the hell that means.
They won’t even bother to get to know him. They know the family name and the reputation isn’t suitable for their daughter. Everyone’s sooo concerned about me. Have I lost my mind?
I quit the cheer squad and picked up a job at Jesse’s café after school. Terms like white trash and poor and no good are tossed around as if they make up someone’s character—their personality. Those only describe circumstances not substance, and he has all the substance in the world to offer.
If I can’t count on my parents, and his aren’t helpful at all, then we’ll make our own money to start our own life. Let them try to stop us. We lie under the stars at night in the back field where my parents don’t visit and talk about all the things we’ll have in life.
A little house on a lot of land somewhere. Babies. All the babies. We’ll be popular too, the kind of couple that other couples flock to and host dinners followed by lounging together in bed the next morning. Cheerleader and Soccer star marry and live happily ever after.
I glance at the clock. Eleven. I need to go to sleep but Dammit, Mom, why do you never use his name?! What kind of bullcrap is that? I toss the notebook on the floor next to the bed and grab my journal.
Mom, I binged you today and now I feel full (but not in a good way). You left me. You left me here in this house that you hated so much apparently. With nothing but useless clues to my own past.
In my own sordid news, Langdon kissed me. Thoroughly. Unyieldingly. My stomach had been twisted in knots. Fluttering, pulsating. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he kissed me, squeezed him in closer to me. Everything felt weightless there like that. As soon as his lips touched mine you didn’t exist—Mom. Not my pain or hurt, nothing existed except Langdon and me and our skin.
I close my journal and set it on top of Mom’s before lighting a candle. I root around in the tiny box mom left with my things.
Her special box.
I was pissed when I saw it originally, but tonight I feel like it’s a gift. I turn out all the lights, strip off my clothes and light the joint by the flame of the candle, climb into bed with it, then blow the candle out.
Mom liked to smoke like this, naked in the cool sheets, with only the hot red tip to light her fingers in the dark. I caught her once. She’d laughed and laughed at me and how prudish I was. That surely, I couldn’t be her daughter.
Jokes on her.
***
My heart is perky with the new day and the new information. I have a clue. The library must have yearbooks and yearbooks have pictures. A soccer start must be pictured. At school Miles and Lyra flank me in the hallway just after I arrive, each looping an arm through my elbow and steering me into the nearest bathroom. A flutter of panic stirs in my belly.
“Whoa, guys, what’s up?” I ask as they release me.
Lyra and Miles look at each other before nodding. “We spent the weekend digging for you a little. I mean, you know, after the diner Friday, we just…needed to help,” Lyra begins.
For a brief moment I forget that I’d told them about my mom disappearing over dinner. That I told them everything I know—which isn’t much. But I catch up and nod at them.
“I might have a clue too. Found my mom’s old journal this weekend. My dad played soccer. Here.”
Lyra gasps. Miles’s eyebrows hike up to his hairline. “Dang that’s way better than our news,” Miles says.
“Tell me yours,” I say.
“Town rumor is that Anna Nash was with your mom the day she disappeared,” Miles says.
“Who’s Anna Nash?”
They look to each other before looking at me. “Langdon’s mom.”
My nose wrinkles. “Langdon’s last name is Nash?”
Lyra giggles. “How did you not know that?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Why would I? He probably doesn’t know mine either.”
“Um,” Miles snorts, “everyone knows the Brickells.”
I roll my eyes. “Right. God, I hate myself sometimes,” I lament. “Uh, while we’re at it… what are your last names?”
Lyra cackles with laughter. “Spektor.”
“Allen,” Miles says .
“Great. Now we all know each other,” I say.
“So, what’s your dad’s… or potential dad’s name?” Lyra asks.
I frown. “No name mentioned. Just a dude she was dating and loved according to her. All I know is that he was in her class and played soccer.”
Now Miles and Lyra are frowning too. “That’s like a lot of potential dads. A whole team of potential dads,” Miles says.
“Yeah but before it was any male aged around thirty-six in the country. Now it’s like what? A pool of maybe twenty and who attended this high school,” I point out.
The bell rings. “Shit, we’re all going to be late. After school, library?” Miles asks.
“Definitely,” I answer before Miles heads out.
Lyra and I walk out together toward our classes in the same hall. “See you next period,” she says, dipping into her classroom.
When I walk into mine, Langdon is already seated watching the door. Watching for me.
I grin as I head for my seat. He doesn’t talk to me or wave, but he looks mildly relieved that I appeared. I pull out my notebook and my brain starts running. Why was my mom at Langdon’s house the day she left? I Need to talk to Anna. Definitely not at Sunday dinner though.