Chapter 4 What Are You Doing on My Jeggings?
What Are You Doing on My Jeggings?
Fifteen Years Ago
I think I was the only one who saw the boys when Mom pulled into the driveway.
The two of them were standing in the street in front of the brick house next door.
The taller one was wearing a faded green jersey with a star on the front and holding a hockey stick.
He had tan skin and dark hair that he was pushing out of his face when he yelled “Car!” at the shorter boy standing in front of a torn net.
That was when they stopped playing to look into our car window while my mom turned off the ignition.
I knew the look on their faces well: the Are those new kids?
look. It was the small-town equivalent of a celebrity sighting.
I’d seen it enough times to know I’d never again be as fascinating to them as I was at that exact moment.
But then the shorter boy tilted his head and smiled—big and warm.
He had the kind of smile that crowded out the rest of his pale face.
It made me too aware of myself. Between the crusted drool on my chin from my seven-hour Dramamine-induced nap, the ginormous pimple on my forehead, and the once cute-messy bun that at some point in said nap had migrated across my scalp into something just regular-messy, I had no choice but to look down.
He rubbed his buzzed head and looked away too.
My mom twisted over the center console to look at Laurel and me. “You’re going to love the house,” she said.
We’d been driving for an eternity. That’s what Laurel kept saying. An eternity. But we’d finally made it to Lewellen, Minnesota.
“He sent me pictures of the place,” she told us. “There’s a big farmhouse table in the kitchen with a bell. Should I ring the bell for dinner every night?” Mom met my eyes in the mirror. She was happy, and I could see she wanted us to be happy.
But Laurel wasn’t happy. “Who cares about this house? It’s not like any of the stuff in it is ours.”
Dad had gotten a position at the nearby college as a photography and film professor and was renting a two-bedroom house “fully furnished.” I understood this to mean that the pull-out trundle and teal-painted dresser Laurel and I would be sharing were a stranger’s pull-out trundle and teal-painted dresser, but Mom didn’t like when we reminded her of that.
Mom closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “Don’t say that to your dad, Laurel. It’s rude.”
“How is that rude? It’s literally…”
Their argumentative jibber-jabber faded into the background like rain on a windshield. I looked for the boys again when I swung open the car door, but they were already gone.
Laurel sighed theatrically at the creak of the front door, and Dad spun clear of her, knowing his best chance at a warm reception was with me.
“My girls,” he said, squeezing me hard enough that my legs lifted off the ground. Laurel’s eye roll was so big, it got the whole neck and shoulders involved, and when he finally approached her, it was with a cautious, one-armed back pat that made her flinch.
Finally, he kissed Mom. It was one of those too-intense kisses I didn’t like.
He always kissed her like that after they fought, like he was a battle-worn soldier returning from war.
It seemed so strange to act like that when the war was only ever between the two of them.
The kiss was a stark reminder that we were in this furnished house in this tiny town I’d never heard of because my parents were “dating” again.
Mom had sounded excited about it when she first told Laurel and me. Laurel was not excited and made her opinions on the subject very clear. I, on the other hand, hadn’t known what to say, but only because I hadn’t understood what it meant.
Melanie Todrick, who was the fastest runner in seventh grade (until she got boobs), used to tell me all about her dates with ninth graders during Drop Everything and Read time.
“We go to Jamba Juice and talk about track,” she answered, smacking her gum.
“Or about summer camp, if they don’t run track.
” She braided the ends of her long, shiny hair when she talked, and I wondered if older boys liked that about her.
I always wore mine in a ponytail. “On dates, you have to get to know what the other person likes so you can decide if you want to go on more dates. Like to the movies.”
I couldn’t imagine my parents had anything left to learn about each other.
For as long as I could remember, they’d argued and then made up.
Argued. Made up. Until they stopped making up.
I wasn’t confident a movie and a Peanut Butter Moo’d smoothie would change things, though maybe old-people dates were different from Melanie Todrick’s.
Pangs of anxiety fluttered beneath my ribs as Laurel and I waited in the driveway for our parents’ kiss to end. The air was sticky and hot from the summer sun beating down overhead, and I could already feel beads of sweat building over my sunblock.
Suddenly, Laurel was right beside me.
“We’ll be okay if this doesn’t work, Charley. I promise,” she whispered.
She walked into the house before I could say anything back, but for the first time since Mom told us about dating Dad and moving to this town, I was grateful to be sharing a trundle bed with Laurel. My sister’s unshakable confidence had that effect on me.
“I have something special for you, Charlotte,” Dad said, tilting his head in the direction of the back door.
I followed him through the house and onto the deck.
Wood planks creaked beneath my feet with each step.
“I can teach you how to use it this summer,” he said, holding up a digital camera that barely fit in my hands.
“That sounds good. But it’s okay if you can’t,” I told him, anticipating how plans with Dad had a tendency to change.
He cleared his throat in a way that made me stand a bit straighter. “It’s going to be different here, okay? I promised your mom it would be. I’m not going anywhere this time.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but if my face showed any doubt, he didn’t seem to notice.
“The most important thing about photography is the light.” He nudged my feet toward the edge of the deck and stood behind me, lifting the viewfinder up to my face.
“If you only know light, you know most of it. And the shutter button. You have to hold it to focus, but first…”
He was going on about aperture size and framing my shot as I tilted the camera a little, searching for the angle where the setting sun didn’t blow out the trees and houses but instead coated the world in an ethereal honey, when those boys appeared on the back porch seemingly out of nowhere.
The one with the nearly shaved head waved at me in the viewfinder.
I took a picture of him without thinking, enjoying the satisfying click under my finger. Even though I didn’t know the boy and probably wouldn’t remember him whenever we moved on, it felt good to preserve that wave while it was meant for me. Magic. Like capturing a fairy in a jar.
“Do you guys live here now?” the other boy shouted from behind him.
“Yeah,” I shouted back, because we did, and maybe it would be different this time.
“Good,” the first boy said. “That’s Petey.” He pointed at his friend. “And I’m Ethan.”
“Here two minutes, and you’re already attracting the neighborhood boys,” Dad cut in. I lowered my camera, feeling my face get hot. “I’m just messing with you kids. Why don’t you two come in where there’s air-conditioning and meet the girls. I’m about to put some hot dogs on the grill.”
The boy in the hockey jersey opened his mouth to say something but the shorter one, Ethan, spoke first. “Thank you, sir,” he answered. Then both boys crossed the lawn, wordlessly following me into the house and then in the direction of my new bedroom.
They watched me closely as though it was my space and they were waiting to see how they fit. I sat in the beanbag chair, pretending I always sat there like that.
They took this as their cue to plop themselves onto the lower trundle mattress.
The room looked cramped with all of us in it.
Somehow, in the ten minutes I’d been outside with Dad, Laurel had already managed to scatter clothes on every surface.
Chipped teal paint peeked out beneath the explosion of skinny jeans, PINK sweats, and distressed band tees from concerts we hadn’t attended.
The curling iron Laurel used to achieve her perfect Serena van der Woodsen waves was already plugged in and staking a claim on the space in front of the single mirror.
It wasn’t turned on, though. Of that, I was mostly sure.
“Apparently”—Laurel swung herself inside the room, clutching the door frame for support, like her entrance was part of a dance—“?‘Minnesota Derek’ cooks. Oh!” she blurted, eyeing the two strangers I’d collected from the backyard like they were the toads I’d hidden in the closet of our Florida house when I was nine.
“Who are you, and what are you doing on my jeggings?” she asked, leveling an accusatory glare at Petey and yanking the denim-looking fabric out from under his leg.
Laurel was fifteen, and though she’d also never had a boyfriend, she was comfortable around boys in a way I, at thirteen, was not.
She could be funny and enchanting and not at all affected by the way their throats looked different when they swallowed.
I felt edgy around boys, like I was on one of those talent shows with a panel of judges, paralyzed by the pressure to impress as sweat collected on my upper lip.
“Is Derek your dad?” Petey asked Laurel, ignoring her jeggings-related inquiry.
Laurel was calling our dad “Derek” as a form of rebellion, but as Mom cared about it way more than Dad seemed to, she’d likely be switching strategies soon.
“Dad invited Ethan and Petey in for hot dogs,” I said, answering both of their questions.