Chapter 18 Lorna Now #2
Lorna stood in the middle of the kitchen, her hands fisted by her sides.
She felt odd in her skin. She didn’t fit in this room.
She didn’t fit in Callie’s life. It felt so strange not to fall back into the friendship they’d had, even now.
This was like walking onto a movie set where everything was make-believe.
But it wasn’t make-believe; it was Callie’s life.
The life that Lorna had always wanted.
Callie picked up a can of icing and began to spread it on the sheet cake with a knife. “So? How are you?” she asked. “I mean besides the unfortunate incident with the bird.”
“Fine. I’m fine.” Probably. Her eyes wandered around the room as her mind searched for words. “And you?” she asked after a moment.
Callie glanced up at her. “Great! Life has been good. Okay, I can’t wait another moment—what’s up?”
“Right.” Lorna was thankful for the task of explaining herself. It was better than standing and watching Callie ice a cake while her imagination ran amok. “This must be really strange.”
Callie paused icing the cake. “Not really. Other than wondering why now. Why not ten years ago, or twenty years ago, or hell, even thirty years ago?” She fell silent then, waiting for an answer.
Lorna swallowed. She didn’t know how to tell Callie she’d been carrying the guilt like a rock in her gut for all these years.
“Wait... you don’t need money or a kidney or something, do you?”
Lorna gaped at her. “What? Callie—no.”
“I was just kidding. Sort of,” Callie said, and resumed the icing of the cake. “I mean, the last time I really spoke to you was to remind you not to forget your Rubik’s Cube.” She chuckled.
Lorna gripped her hands together in front of her so she wouldn’t tremble. “About that. I want to apologize.”
“For forgetting your Rubik’s Cube?” Callie asked mildly without looking up from her cake.
The words Lorna had tried to rehearse earlier did not come. So she went the chicken route and said, “I think you know, right?”
Callie glanced up. “Umm... no? I don’t think so. Unless it’s...” She paused, wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Well. It was a long time ago.” She put the knife down, braced herself against the bar, and locked gazes with Lorna. “Go ahead.”
“I totally understand if you’re still angry,” Lorna said. “And I don’t blame you. I would be too. I’m angry at myself. I’m angry with myself all the time. And I hate myself for what happened.”
“Wow, okay. I’m not angry, Lorna, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whatever happened... we were thirteen. We were just girls. It’s pretty hard to hold a grudge that long.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not hard to hold a regret that long,” Lorna muttered. She sighed and shoved her fingers through her hair, probably making it worse.
“Listen,” Callie said softly, gesturing to the cake. “We’re leaving tomorrow for Red River, and I’ve got a million things to do. I appreciate you coming to see me, but—”
She was going to blow this chance. “Okay, I sincerely apologize for asking your mom if I could come live with you,” she blurted.
“Huh?”
“I honestly never anticipated that it would cause such a mess. And I regret more than anything that I didn’t just tell you then what I’d done. But I was so ashamed and so certain everyone at school knew, and I was a coward.”
Callie looked even more confused. “What?”
“I should have just talked to you, Callie, I know that. But I was in a bad way. I don’t remember if I told you that my dad had just rejected me—and I couldn’t take my house anymore, which I’m sure you do remember—and so I came up with this plan to move in with you.
So I could be like you. So I could be a Kleberg and not a Lott.
I had it all mapped out. But I shouldn’t have assumed we were so close that I could just.
.. just be you. Especially without talking to you first.”
Callie stared at her like she was speaking another language.
Lorna’s heart sank. She wasn’t responding.
Maybe she did still hate her. “I’m so sorry, Callie.
I loved being at your house, you know that.
I was there all the time. And there was so much warmth and laughter.
Oh my God, the laughter,” she said wistfully, remembering the Kleberg family dinners.
“You can’t imagine how alluring your family was to me.
We weren’t laughing much at my house in those days, and I really wanted to be a part of your family.
In my teenage brain, I couldn’t see why not. ”
Callie remained silent, but her hands were on her waist and she was looking heavenward, her mouth slightly open.
“But then, you know, your mom reported me to CPS, and they came, and I was absolutely mortified that your family didn’t want me, and I could imagine the whole school hearing about it and knowing what a loser I was.
So... so I panicked, I guess. I was a coward.
I couldn’t face you because I couldn’t bear to see the disgust or hate in your eyes.
I avoided you. And I’ve regretted it every waking day since. ”
Callie looked around the kitchen, as if she was trying to find something. Her cannon, maybe.
“You probably had no idea how important you were to me, but you truly were the one person in my life I could trust then. You were the only person who cared about me, I think. My whole life has been about Kristen, and I get it now—I get that I was making you fill a void that you shouldn’t have had to fill, and didn’t even know you were filling.
I’m working on all that, and part of the work is to say what I should have said then: I loved you, and I never would have done anything to intentionally hurt you, and I’m so, so sorry I didn’t have the courage to face you after it got so messy.
I’m just so sorry, Callie. I hope you can forgive me. ”
There. She’d gotten it all out. Not as eloquently as she’d hoped—it was a bit of a word salad, actually—but she felt confident there was nothing left to say. She was depleted. Limp. But all the dread and fear of seeing Callie again after all this time had evaporated. The hard part was done.
Callie was still staring at her like she was talking gibberish.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Are you talking about that week between Christmas and New Year’s?
Eighth grade? I’m talking about the time you left my house, like a day or two before school started again, and you never spoke to me again. Are we talking about the same thing?”
Lorna nodded.
Callie suddenly planted both hands on the countertop and leaned so far over her cake that her shirt brushed against the icing. “What the hell, Lorna? You’re saying my mom called child protective services? When did she do that? What do you mean you asked if you could live with us?”
Wait a minute. Lorna could not have this wrong.
How could she? Her heart started to race as she tried to understand.
To remember . Could she have been so wrong about what happened?
All these years she’d been walking around feeling horrible about herself, and Callie didn’t even know.
“You must remember,” she insisted. “Because... because you didn’t talk to me either.
You hated me for it, remember? Almost as much as I hated me for it. ”
Callie was shaking her head. “This is wild. No, that’s not what happened. I mean, it is, in a way, because I did hate you, Lorna. For a little while, I did. But not for that. I didn’t even know that! Are you sure it was my mom?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Lorna said. “They said a trusted adult, and she was the only one I talked to about my life.”
Callie rubbed her face with her hands. “I suppose it’s possible. My mom cared a lot about you, and it was no secret that your family was a total trainwreck.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Lorna said, trying to process this. “But if your mom didn’t tell you, then why did you hate me?”
Callie sighed. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t.”
“Because I was gay, remember?”
That made no sense. “Yes, you were gay. You told me. But even if you hadn’t, I knew it.”
“Lorna!” Callie exclaimed, as if she was being intentionally obtuse. “You were the first person I ever told! You were my best friend, and I confided in you. I trusted you. And you just disappeared on me.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lorna said as puzzle pieces slowly started to fall into place. She remembered the way Callie would look at her across a classroom. It wasn’t anger in her eyes; it was hurt. “Oh my God, Callie... you thought I didn’t talk to you because you were gay?”
“Well, yes! What was I supposed to think? All I know is that I told you my deep, dark, shameful secret, and you never spoke to me again. My mom would call your mom and ask if you could come over, and your mom said no, that you weren’t feeling well, or you were at your dad’s, or you were busy.
I knew why, Lorna. Do you even know what happened to me that year?
How Leslie Pratt spread rumors about me?
Do you have any idea the names they called me?
Did you know that two girls tried to jump me, and if it hadn’t been for my brothers intervening, they could have killed me? ”
Lorna was stunned. How could she have known that?
She’d been living in her own nightmare. “No,” she said softly.
“I didn’t know any of that.” Her mother had never told her about Mrs. Kleberg’s calls.
And Lorna had hidden herself from everyone, afraid her terrible homelife would be discovered and she would be humiliated.
“Your sexual orientation was never a thing to me, Callie. I’d always known it—it was just who you were.
” She’d been so mired in her own mortification that she’d turned into a hermit that year and hadn’t really come out of her self-imposed prison until later in high school, when Mr. Sanders, the choir teacher, took notice of her.