Chapter 23
MOM, AGAIN? ARE YOU SERIOUS?” I ask the moment I step through my front door later that afternoon. I’m going to become that girl whose house and clothes just always smell like spaghetti and meatballs. We’ve literally eaten it three days this week.
“I know, I know, I know, but it has to be perfect because Monsignor just called and guess how many tickets have been sold for the dinner?” she asks as I round the corner into the kitchen.
“I don’t know. How many?” I ask.
“Guess!” She clasps her hands in front of her chest.
“Two hundred?”
“More!” Now she’s bouncing up and down on her toes.
“Three hundred?”
“Mo—”
“Oh my gosh, Mom, just tell me!”
“Six hundred tickets!” she screams. “Can you believe it? I went and invited a few other local churches and it really paid off! It’s going to be the biggest one yet!
We can’t even fit that many at once in the hall, so we’re going to have to do it in two shifts.
Which means I have a favor to ask. I know you were supposed to help in the kitchen, but we really need more servers than anything.
What do you think about asking some of your friends to do it with you, maybe Ryan, too? ” she asks expectantly.
I don’t know if Ryan will ever text me again after how I left things when he dropped me off. I don’t even know if I want him to text me… but I have other friends I could ask.
“Uh, sure. Okay. I’ll probably ask Nora next time I see her.” I smile to myself, imagining her in the mandatory black pants and white button-down, serving the public, carrying a tray full of plates and pouring glasses of red wine. It could actually be really fun.
“Great, and I already recruited Savannah and Rory. I called their moms this morning,” Mom says, and I deflate a little.
“Oh, uhh…” I try to imagine them hanging out with Nora, but I can’t.
“What? Did something happen between you three?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Not really, I guess. It just… feels like I’m growing apart from them,” I tell her, leaning against the counter. She turns the burner off under her sauce and comes to stand beside me.
“How so?” she asks.
I can’t very well tell her about Truck Night, because she thinks I went out to see a movie with them, but it really isn’t just that night.
“Things just don’t feel like they used to.
They’re just… different. We’re different.
We used to just be able to hang out at each other’s houses and eat snacks and watch movies and stay up late, and that was enough.
But now… well, they just like to spend their time in ways that I don’t, really.
And they don’t seem to care what I want or how I feel,” I tell her.
“Maybe it’s just part of this adjustment period, you know?”
“Maybe. But it feels like it was already happening before. I just wonder when it started, and how. I wonder about a lot of things, still,” I admit.
I’ve tried so hard not to want to know any more, but it’s impossible.
I wonder what it was I used to feel with Ryan.
I wonder what happened between my mom and me.
And I wonder why all of a sudden, it feels very much like Nora, the person I thought was a clean slate, might be hiding something from me too.
What was that at the meat shop today? She had something important to tell me and then she just completely shut down.
“Sweetheart, remember, whatever you’re wondering is in the past. Just be thankful for a second chance with them.
Move forward,” she says, as if that’s all there is to it.
I feel a flash of annoyance at her. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it.
Whatever happened between the two of us might have been my fault, but why is she assuming this thing with Savannah and Rory is too?
Like I’m the only one who needs to do things differently.
“Do you want me to make you up a plate before I take some over to your dad?” she asks.
“I think I’ll eat a little later.”
“Okay. Well, maybe I’ll make up two containers so I can eat with your dad, then.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to run up and take a shower, so I’ll see you tonight.”
I go upstairs to my room as my mom’s voice calls out behind me, “There’s something for you on the bed!”
I turn into my room, curious, and find… a Bower campus magazine, the cover featuring a group of students in navy-blue sweatshirts and matching beanies. Either those are natural smiles or they hired some grade-A models. I guess it doesn’t look like the worst place for me to spend a year or so.
I toss it aside for now, though, my mind set on something else as I look around my room, my space. There has to be something in here that could help me make sense of some of the questions I can’t get out of my head.
I can’t just move on. There is no moving on from this. I need to figure out the missing pieces of this puzzle and how they’re all connected.
I watch through the window as my mom pulls out of the driveway, then I get to work.
I start again with my computer, hoping there’s something I missed that might make sense now.
I comb through every one of my social media profiles, then move on to my email, then I open each file I have saved on my laptop.
Still nothing. There’s absolutely nothing here.
I rifle through my closet, digging to the bottom of each drawer and opening every box along my top shelf, but all I find are clothes and shoes and all the framed family photos that used to line the top of my desk.
I clean out all the dirty clothes that got shoved under my bed.
I open every drawer and fan through every book on my desk, but again, there’s nothing of any new value to me.
It’s almost… too empty. Where are my mementos?
Where are the things I’ve wanted to keep from my high school years?
Where did I put anything that’s personal to me?
I’m an eighteen-year-old girl; surely I have something hidden around here that was just for me and no one else.
But the only thing that even sort of stands out is the little orange-and-black rock that matches the one I picked out of the grass at the farm that day.
I let out a sigh, pick it up, and toss it up in the air over and over, catching it in my hand as I look around my room for more potential hiding places.
Why do I have this? Does it connect to why I was at the farm?
On the next toss the rock slips through my fingers and lands on the floor by the wall. As I bend over to pick it up, I notice that all four screws on the AC vent are stripped down to nothing. Odd.
I grab the pocketknife from the ring toss off my desk and use it to loosen each one until the vent falls onto the floor and…
What the fuck is that?
An orange Nike shoe box inside the duct sends my heart hammering in my chest.
I reach in and slide it out. The corners and hinges are so worn that it’s been taped back together in several places, the brown cardboard showing through the orange outer coating on the sides.
I double-check that my mom’s car is still gone as I place it on my bed. Whatever is in here, I certainly didn’t want anyone to find it.
I reach for the lid but draw my hand back, too nervous to find out what’s inside.
This box.
This tiny little shoe box could be holding all the answers to every question I’ve been asking. But what if I don’t like them?
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, reaching for the lid again.
Please, God. Please. Please. Please.
Slowly I flip the lid back on its hinges, revealing…
Well… I’m not really sure.
It’s a whole pile of all kinds of stuff. Papers and photos and other random things that I’ve never seen before.
Is all this stuff mine?
I pull out a yellow hair tie from the top, slipping it over my wrist before lifting up a pink Instax camera to reveal a popcorn bag underneath it, a Central Catholic football ticket, and a paperback book with a pressed violet between the pages. None of it means anything to me.
“What is all this shit?” I whisper to myself. And why did I keep it hidden away?
Underneath the book, though, I find a whole pile of small rectangular photographs.
The first one I flip up is a photo of me, surrounded by trees, a handful of wildflowers clutched in my hand. I’m about to flip to the next one, when I look more closely—the tall grass and those trees… I guess it could be a lot of places in Wyatt.
But… it could also be the woods on the Martin farm.
I slide it up to reveal the next one. A side-profile silhouette of a girl looking over her shoulder at the camera. I hold it closer, the smooth line of her nose feeling familiar, but the lighting is too dark to make out any features.
I flip again to the next one, and at first I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at, but there’s a lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow.
I hold it closer, inspecting the blurry face in the corner of the photo.
Dirty-blond hair.
Freckled cheeks.
My palms break out in a nervous sweat.
I shuffle through the next few photos, holding my breath the whole time, my vision shaking.
Nora standing in the middle of two yellow lines running down a street, Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers illuminating the background.
Nora swimming, greenery filling the space behind her, her bare shoulders peeking just above the waterline.
Nora sitting on the hood of my Volvo next to a plastic Sheetz bag filled with Doritos and pop.
Nora. Nora. Nora.
I put the stack down for a second, letting my breath out, my head aching for oxygen.
We were friends.
She’s been lying to me this whole time.
Why would she lie to me?
When my head settles down, I move on to the next photograph, trying to make sense of this, and reveal Nora…
Nora and…
My jaw drops open.
The stack slips through my fingers, each photo floating down onto my bed, but my eyes are still glued onto the back of the photo I just saw. I reach down, but my fingers are shaking so bad that I have to use both hands to pick it back up.
I shake my head.
I don’t… I can’t…
It’s… It’s Nora…
And me.
She’s…
We’re…
Kissing.
What the fuck.
I can finally see where all the pieces of the puzzle belong, but I don’t want to snap them into place. A chill crawls up my spine as I stand there frozen.
Move, Stevie!
All at once, my eyes are darting around my bed and my hands must’ve developed a mind of their own, because I am not in control of my own body right now. I watch as they manically gather up every last remnant and shove it back into the box as quickly as humanly possible.
I step backward away from it all until I knock into my desk. I jump, thinking it’s my mom, and scare the absolute shit out of myself.
I need to get it out of here. Get rid of it before anyone sees.
I shouldn’t have gone looking in the first place.
I should have just let it go.
Because now my clean slate is gone. For good.