Chapter 7
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Will shows up at the agreed-upon hour and doesn’t even turn off his car before lowering the window, narrowing his emerald-green eyes, and telling me to get in.
I drop the skates in the back seat with everything else, and he roars off as if there’s no time to spare.
The acceleration pushes me back into the seat.
It’s thrilling, but it scares me, and I try to distract myself by nitpicking.
“How long has it been since you cleaned your car? It’s full of junk. It’s supposed to be a five-seater, and you can barely squeeze the two of us in here.”
“Mind your own business, Greta.”
I ignore him and grab a book. “Raymond Carver. You’ve read him?” He nods. “He leaves a mark. And kind of like everything in life, it’s more what he doesn’t say than what he does say.”
Instead of replying, Will keeps driving.
I can feel the disappointment in my throat.
I guess it’s like in one of those stories from the book I’m holding; I’d have liked to have some crazy conversation with him that would quell my curiosity and loneliness for a moment—that would maybe even lead to something more.
But probably it’s better to follow his example and keep my distance.
So even though I see other interesting names on the piles of books thrown in the back—names like F.
Scott Fitzgerald and Joan Didion—I don’t say anything else.
The rink is in the next town over in front of the only mall.
I know it well. Every time I had practice, my parents had to drive me there, and it was a problem once skating quit being a hobby and I started competing at the state level.
But telling that story would be like reading the last pages of a crime novel, so I should rewind first, go back to the beginning.
The first time I glided across the ice, it was random.
Lucy was turning ten and she was in a good phase, so my mother decided to surprise her and invited her three best friends from school to go to lunch and spend the afternoon at the ice rink.
We drank hot chocolate and then we rented our skates. And then the following happened:
They had fun.
But me, I understood what a bird feels when it takes flight.
Moving over the ice, the first thing I felt was that nothing could ever stop me.
The second thing was freedom, even if I was just seven and couldn’t really grasp all the depths that word contains.
I discovered that afternoon that a person could have sensations they could never put a name to.
I was a small, voracious bird moving across the ice while the cold lashed my skin.
I didn’t care how many times I fell, how many bruises I got, how many times my sister and her friends laughed at me.
They didn’t seem to want to skate, really, and spent most of the time holding on to the railing around the ice.
That night, when we were eating in the dining room, I asked:
“When can we go back to the ice-skating rink?”
“I don’t know, Greta.” Mom poured more water.
“Can’t you give me a date?”
“Why?”
“So I can put it on my calendar.”
“We’ll see, honey.”
I ignored my mother and tried my father. Every time I wanted something, I used that technique, going back and forth between them, and if that got me nowhere, I’d turn to my grandfather.
“Dad, you always say we need to have goals.”
“Of course you do, Grasshopper.”
“Well, my goal is to go to the ice rink.”
“Someone’s got a screw loose.” Lucy giggled but then when silent again when Mom looked over at her. She pushed aside a piece of broccoli with her fork and said, “It wasn’t that fun, if you want to know what I think.”
“I don’t,” I replied without glancing over.
“Enough,” Dad said. “Greta, I’ll take you again if you do your chores this week. That means taking out the trash, cleaning your room, setting the table, and doing your homework.”
“Our history teacher told us that’s slavery.”
Lucy grinned at my response, and I grinned back.
I read somewhere that there are twins who can feel what each other’s feeling, and I’ve always wondered since then if the fact that I gave my sister my own cells had something to do with how easily we got in sync despite being so different.
Sometimes, when I had a bad day, just knowing she was in a good mood was enough to make me feel better, and vice versa.
I remember that weird sensation as Will parks the car in front of the rink. The sign is faded. The place has seen better days.
“I think it’s closed,” I say.
He doesn’t answer before getting out, so I follow him in resignation. He walks over to the door and tries in vain to open it. Then he knocks. Pushes with his shoulder. I’m surprised the For Rent sign doesn’t stop him.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Shit.” Will runs his hand through his hair and looks around, as though he thinks someone will come around the corner and open up for us. “What now?”
I cross my arms, standing in front of him, not wanting to make a suggestion.
Anything would be better than letting him see how relieved I am not to have to put on my skates.
Not to have to relive those memories that are so sweet and so painful.
Not to have to show him that side of me that’s so vulnerable.
“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the quote-unquote messenger, after all. Even though I’m still trying to figure out why my sister would choose you to do all this.”
“That makes two of us,” he replies, irritated.
He’s so purple…such a deep purple.
One of the characteristics of people with that aura is the perfect balance they maintain between red and blue.
Control. Power. Arrogance. Under the first layer of melancholy, Will has a bit of all those things.
Maybe that’s why it’s hard for him to be flexible and look for alternatives.
He’s someone whose ideas are set in stone.
“It’s not the end of the world. How does the game work?”
“It’s like…a series of boxes.”
“Then let’s go to the next one.”
“Okay, but it’ll have to be another time.” He looks around. “You want to try and find a place for a bite? I think we both could use it.”
We walk into the mall. Most of the stores followed the ice-skating rink’s lead and shut their doors a long time ago, which makes the place look like it’s falling into the ground, but we do find a diner that’s still open.
I watch Will while he looks at the menu.
He’s good-looking in a way that’s almost irritating to me—it isn’t fair to just be born that way.
I’ve always wondered what those good-looking people feel, the ones like him who clearly know it and can use it to their advantage whenever they wish.
Do they stand in front of the mirror and admire themselves, or do they have the same complexes and insecurities as everyone else, but we just don’t see them?
Why are some people blessed with physical beauty?
And what the hell is beauty anyway? You can ask that question, but deep down you must know the answer. I certainly know it when I look at him.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
His voice, deep and scratchy, startles me. He’s laid the menu on the table and is staring at me. Into me. I think he really wants to know. I’m so used to not being noticed that he’s thrown me off. I freeze.
“Isn’t it weird that we’re sharing something so intimate when we barely know anything about each other?” I ask.
Will shrugs. “Define intimate.”
“My sister left me this mission impossible, and you’re supposed to be on my side throughout it, and you’re a total stranger.”
“Would you feel better if I told you my shoe size, my age, and my favorite food?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
We stare at each other with a strange intensity as the waiter comes over. Will looks away first.
“I’ll have scrambled eggs,” he says.
“I’ll take a coffee, thanks.”
The silence envelops us until Will clears his throat and murmurs.
“I wear a size ten, I’m twenty-five years old, and I like cheese.”
“Wow, you can even be nice…”
Will smiles as they serve us. His eggs look delicious, and he must be hungry because he lays into them. “How about you?”
“Me?” I repeat.
“Yeah. What’s this whole thing with the skating rink about? Was it, like, your and your sister’s hobby?”
“No, Lucy hated skating.”
“So…?”
I realize now’s the time. When you meet a person, there’s always a moment when you’re holding the door and you have to decide whether to close it or throw it open.
I’m usually the type who slams it. I might let someone peek through the crack a moment first, but before they can get close to me, I turn the key in the lock so they can’t see what’s inside me.
I’ve never wanted anyone to know every part of me.
That’s something you can only want from a soulmate, and I’ve never felt any other human being was that for me.
I didn’t even feel that way about my sister, close as we were.
The idea that no one will ever know the real Greta Peterson is stifling but comforting at the same time.
There’s an emptiness, sure, like when a swamp dries up, but this is also the simplest way to inhabit the fortress I’ve built around myself brick by brick, never stopping to rest and catch my breath.
And yet, this time, I hesitate.
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because Will seems almost like a ghost from out of nowhere.
Or maybe it’s because we don’t know each other, we’d never even seen each other before recently, and so when I look at him, I just see a blank page.
It’s strange, though—that must be what he sees when he looks at me too.
So why do I feel the urge to fill in that space, to tell him who I am, and why does a part of me hope he’ll do the same?
There’s something about him that holds me in suspense, that tells me to keep back, but his aura being my favorite color compels me to throw the door open.