Chapter Nine
Nine
Jason’s friends are on the soccer field after school the next day, warming up before practice, and I am, ostensibly, taking pictures for the yearbook.
“I have a question for you guys,” I say.
“For the last time, Zadie,” Holden says, “no, I will not break up with Bennett to date you.”
I roll my eyes but fight a smile. “That’s not the question.”
“Oh, fine. Yes, I will,” he says, putting an arm around my shoulder.
“Aww,” Josh says. “I thought you were going to ask why I wasn’t wearing any underwear and if it’s because my mom didn’t do my laundry.”
“Not my question either.” I love being around Jason’s friends, being accepted by them. Before dating Jason, the soccer jocks intimidated me. Now I know they’re mostly secret softies.
“I really think we’d get away with it if you posed as me to write my Spanish test next week,” another of the boys says. “And all my tests.”
“So anyway,” I say, speaking over all of them. I play with my black heart necklace, today’s open secret. “Do guys like it when girls make the first move?”
“Yes,” Holden says unilaterally. “Is your friend Amber coming? I heard she brought cupcakes today.”
I ignore his question. “Yes? That’s it? That’s the official answer?”
“Yes,” Holden says, stretching his calves.
“Go on,” I implore. Softies or not, boys are the worst to have a serious conversation with. “Explain.”
But just then Coach Kyle appears, and practice starts. I sigh in frustration, then go into official yearbook photographer mode, walking around and taking pictures. I am packing up the school’s digital camera at the end of the day when Holden runs up to me. “So the consensus is yeah.”
“Huh?”
“On girls making the first move. Everyone said yes except Tyler, who said no, and Josh, who said, ‘Depends.’ And Marcus, who said, ‘It’s hot as hell.’ ”
“Marcus?” I’ve been trying not to pay him any attention the last couple of days, given that I feel like I’m walking around with a giant neon sign that screams I Have Been Dreaming About Marcus Riddick.
As if summoned by the mention of his name, Marcus looks over at exactly that moment.
He’s laughing at something someone is saying, and his smile fades.
His T-shirt is tight across his broad chest, hair pulled out of his face, and I inhale as if I’m the one breathing hard from playing.
Our eyes are like fingers, light and lingering, brushing a second too long on a handshake.
I should roll my eyes or something, but I don’t.
“That’s…good to know” is my lame response, as I finally tear my gaze away.
Holden’s methodology is the furthest thing from scientific, but I don’t think it’s wrong either. Jason might not have liked something about our first kiss, but I highly doubt it was me liking it too much.
Then because I have nothing else to lose, and because it’s easier than checking if Marcus is still looking over here, I tell the truth. “I just remembered Jason asked for us to take it slow on our first date. He seemed, like, hesitant. I wish I could ask him what that was about.”
Holden gives me a suspicious look. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Your dad had just died, right? I’m pretty sure he wanted to make sure you weren’t rushing into anything.”
It’s weird because Jason and I never really talked about my father’s death.
It came up here and there, of course, but it was never something we sat around and specifically discussed.
To be honest, I doubted Jason—or anyone—wanted the boring, undignified details of how I was crying myself to sleep or trying to remember the last thing I’d ever said to my dad or thinking about random lines from random books Dad and I had spent hours dissecting over the phone.
But hearing Holden’s take, hearing that Jason was taking it into consideration even when it didn’t seem like he was, feels like the sudden clearing of an overcast sky.
It makes total sense. Why didn’t I ask Holden sooner?
“You really think so?” I say, close to tearing up.
I feel completely stupid for ever thinking Jason might be old-fashioned or anything but thoughtful.
It’s just the coma, I tell myself. It’s missing him and not being able to hear his reassuring voice.
But what it shows me is that reading an unconscious boy’s mind might not be as impossible as it sounds. If I ask the right questions, I can absolutely figure out what Jason was thinking.
* * *
“I love that you visit every day,” Jason’s mother tells me, holding my hand with the ring when I stop by the hospital later that week. It’s part of my daily routine—wake up an hour earlier than normal, go for a run, go to the hospital, then go to school.
“He would do the same thing for me,” I say, because I do think he would. Before we broke up, anyway.
I have taken up conversing with Jason as if he is awake.
I almost feel like if I just keep talking, at some point he’s going to be forced to give in and speak back.
So I make all sorts of bargains with him in my head.
I fill him in on trivial school news and silly student council drama in exchange for the answer to whether he still loves me.
I read him the scores of his favorite soccer teams in the hopes that he’ll tell me when the thought of breaking up first crossed his mind.
I even play some of the country music he likes, and that one is for the ultimate truth: why he broke my heart.
The thing I’ll never admit to Mrs. R or to anyone is that most of the time I feel like I’m playing pretend. I don’t know that Jason can hear me. I feel like I’m shouting across the Grand Canyon, across consciousness, across waking and sleeping, and all I hear is the echo of my own voice.
“That’s the beautiful thing about finding your life partner so young,” Mrs. R is saying. “Everything is so simple.”
The words life partner make me choke on my saliva.
An image of two mules being chained together for eternity suddenly flits through my brain.
I mean, sure, a promise ring is a commitment, but life is, like, so many more decades.
It’s college and marriage and kids and houses and retirement.
Things I can’t even begin to think about when I’m in high school.
We talk about forever all the time, but I have no idea if I want all those things with Jason.
Or if he wants them with me. The realization that he probably didn’t at the very end doesn’t even sting, because what does either of us know about the future?
But I have to act like I deserve the ring she gave me. I have to act like I deserve Jason.
“So simple,” I tell Mrs. R, though the truth is that nothing feels simple at all.
When I get home that afternoon, I go for a shorter stress run, sweating out all the questions and frustration and uncertainty.
After, I’m legitimately researching mind-reading when someone knocks.
Three precisely spaced raps are my only warning before my door swings open and Mom walks in. “You decent?”
“Yep!” I say, eyes immediately jerking over the pile of laundry I haven’t put away yet on my computer chair.
I also haven’t vacuumed in almost a week or finished my homework.
My immediate thought is to reach for the “near-death experience” excuse, but thankfully I don’t need to.
Mom doesn’t mention any of the things we can both see I haven’t done.
It’s evening but she’s still dressed in her work suit, hair styled, makeup on. “I have a proposition for you,” she says, sitting on the edge of my bed. “What do you say we get dinner together, just the two of us?”
I immediately sit up straighter. “Right now?”
The last time Mom and I went out to dinner was my birthday, and Mom’s assistant, A.J.
, joined us so they could “work out some things” while we ate.
I felt like a third wheel, unnecessary, on a night that was supposed to be mine.
Mom’s schedule is insane since she’s campaigning for reelection in addition to her regular duties, so the idea of having her full attention for even a couple of hours sounds like a dream.
Maybe I actually will tell her I’ve been feeling off.
Or maybe I can tell her something bigger, like about how I’ve gotten in further with the Jason lie than I ever meant to.
Maybe she’ll be able to help me figure some way out, or tell me that it’s not as big a deal as I think it is, and we’ll just laugh about the whole thing.
The thought makes me feel something I haven’t felt since the accident: hopeful.
“Not tonight,” she says quickly, “but let’s aim for as soon as you send your last college application in.”
I force a smile. “That sounds great.”
“We can do an early fall lobster dinner since we finally have our town back,” Mom says sassily.
She’s referring to the fact that Sterlingwood—like most coastal towns in New England, really—is overrun by visitors from May to August. As mayor, she actually loves this increase in tourism, but people who live here have been known to use words like insects, deluge, and vermin.
Real Sterlingwooders know, though, that you just have to wait out the summer, that the lobster will still be there after everyone has gone home.
Peak season is not four months long, as many people think, but all the way up to December most years.
“We’ll make a thing of it,” Mom promises. “But anyway, I have something for you.”
My stomach is as tight as a clenched fist. “You do?”
She hands me a piece of paper with a name and email address scribbled in her slanty handwriting.
“This is the contact information of my friend who went to Princeton.
You should write him and find out about his experience, let it whet your appetite.
Actually, his daughter started at NYU last year.
She might have tips on the process in general.
“She might even make a good case for New York,” Mom says with a wink.
I feel hot and itchy, like I might be breaking out in hives. I know Mom is trying to help, but lately the sheer act of talking about college fills me with dread. Talking to one of Mom’s friends about it or having someone suggest more options will only make that worse.
“Oh, um, thanks.”
“You should write tonight.”
I take a risk and try being honest. “I actually think I need, like, a weeklong break from thinking about college. I’m pretty overwhelmed with school and Jason and stuff.”
“I understand,” Mom says, and I can tell she’s trying very hard to be sympathetic. To not tell me what she thinks I should do, the way she might order a staffer to do something. “It is October, though, Zadie.”
“I know,” I say in a small voice.
“I don’t need to tell you how important early decision is,” she says. “Not to mention that this is one of the biggest choices you’ll ever make in your life.”
I shrink in my skin. “That’s why I’m taking my time.”
“Take all the time you need, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “But don’t waste it.”
Before they divorced, Mom used to call Dad out for wasting time.
He was forever late, for one thing. Then, when he wasn’t trying to write that elusive second book, he always had big ideas, new products that he was working on or investing in at any given time.
For years, I heard my parents fighting about bad investments, bad deals, but nothing seemed to piss Mom off as much as the time that Dad wasn’t using to get a real job or go back to school or “show Zadie what responsibility looks like.” And then, one morning when I was thirteen, Dad’s things were laid out in small stacks all over the living room.
I cried as he stuffed his old Mazda full of his belongings.
Pages and pages of abandoned manuscripts, copies of Moon Over Hanover, books Dad loved, books to cure writer’s block.
The Turbo-JuiSIR, a toothbrush that doubled as speakers, a failed prototype for an e-reader.
A lamp with a broken shade. The World’s Greatest Dad mug with no handle.
So much of the clutter we lived with belonged to him, and now he was gone.
Everything that remained in his stead had to be faultless.
I take a breath. “I just…how do you decide the rest of your life? I want to make the best choice.”
She runs her hand over my head. “And you will. You know the right thing to do.”
Except that I don’t.
I groan in frustration after Mom leaves, because this feels like a calculus problem I can’t solve. And suddenly there are no formulas that work, no helpful equations or examples, just this one huge dilemma that feels impossible to figure out.
“What’s the right thing to do, Dad?” I whisper.
I know he’d say something about love—do something you love, probably—but I don’t know what I love.
And besides, Dad spent his life trying to write a second book, trying to replicate this dream he achieved in his twenties, trying to do what he loved, and he ended up dying alone.
After the breakup, he moved to Portland, had to make a whole new set of friends, worked temp jobs to never make ends meet, and became the one-time writer who couldn’t write.
There’s nothing worse than loving the wrong thing.