Chapter Twenty
Twenty
“Are you really not going to college?” I ask Marcus from where I’m now sitting on the bench in his garage, watching him work. It’s high enough that I can swing my legs off it like a little kid, and it’s strangely delightful.
Marcus looks up from where he’s leaning over the innards of a car and gives me a wary smile. “Having fun there?”
“You don’t even know,” I say.
We were in his living room trying to mind meld again after Joey left when Marcus started getting antsy about all the things he wasn’t doing.
I’d never have put Marcus down as a secret workaholic.
I should have taken the hint and gone home, but I was actually having fun hanging out with him, so here I am.
“Probably not,” he says, in answer to my question about college, and swipes the back of his wrist over a spot on his face.
“But what about soccer?” I ask.
“I know I’m important, Cartwright,” he says, “but the sport will continue on without me. Unlikely as it seems.”
I roll my eyes. “I bet you could get scholarships.”
“I’m still figuring it out,” Marcus says, with no sense of urgency. “I like making things, working with my hands. Helping my dad out. College-level soccer would probably also be great. And contrary to popular belief, my grades don’t suck that badly. I have a lot of options.”
As I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, he says, “It’s not mandatory, you know. College. Princeton.”
I feel a strange tightness in my chest at his words.
Most likely because this kind of talk is forbidden in my daily life, in my mind.
It takes me back to the night we met, the only time I’ve ever allowed myself to admit the truth about how and why I chose my future out loud.
That it was based on criteria that had nothing to do with me.
It still mortifies me to think I told him that, but I would have answered anything Marcus asked that night. I did answer everything Marcus asked.
“Do you know what I liked about you last year?” I ask him, voice soft.
“Like, a body part?”
I sigh. “Can you be serious for one second?”
“I’ve been told I have a trustworthy face,” Marcus says with a grin.
“Yeah, no, that wasn’t it,” I say. “I liked that you were a stranger.”
When I say this, he frowns. “So you would have talked to anyone?”
“Maybe at first,” I admit. “But then it seemed like you really wanted to know me.”
Sometimes people will ask you about yourself and all they really want to know is who you are on the surface.
In high school, it’s so often where you fit in the big picture: jock, nerd, valedictorian, president, teacher’s pet.
But with Marcus, I got the sense that he knew that stuff didn’t matter; he didn’t just care about the surface-level stuff.
He wanted the deep, the significant, the random, the weird.
The things that mean you really know a person.
That’s why he asked so many questions. That’s why This or That never went away.
And even though it’s been so long since then, everything I told him the July before last never got out. Neither has the Jason thing or the Princeton thing. Marcus is trustworthy.
He’s getting the inside look at all my memories, so he better be.
“Of course I wanted to know you,” he says softly.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask. “Why didn’t you want me to come to the game?”
“Next question. What else do you have?”
“No, seriously,” I say.
He sighs. “Because there was no way we were going to win. And people are used to Jason winning. It wasn’t just you I told to stay away.”
I don’t know if that feels better or worse, hearing that I was among a group of people he didn’t want there.
“You were worried about losing?”
“I wasn’t worried about losing,” he says. “It was about how we were going to lose. Badly. Brutally.”
“But you won.”
“The universe is a strange place.”
“Or,” I say, “or you’re kind of good at soccer.”
“Thanks, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Jason owns that team, and they carried us to the win.”
“What if you had lost?” I ask now.
“Well, that would have been on me.”
I frown. “So it’s the team if you win and you if you lose.”
Marcus shrugs.
“Wow, that is some egomaniac type of stuff,” I say.
A dull thumping has just started in my head. I ignore it and keep speaking.
“Seriously though,” I continue, “it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you guys had lost. I mean, it would have been sad but I’m not going to, like, think less of you if you lose a soccer match.”
“That’s what you say, but think about if it’s really true.
” I try to do just that—and I don’t think it does matter, but maybe there were times I let it seem like the Silvers winning, Jason winning, was the most important thing in the world.
Especially when to him it was. “My whole identity in people’s eyes is about how inferior my soccer skills are compared to Jason’s. ”
“Because you’re Plan B.”
I’m only repeating what people call him, but it seems to be the absolute wrong thing to say.
Marcus’s body stiffens, his eyes instantly losing their light, and for the first time today I feel like I’m talking to a stranger. But there’s a false joviality in his voice. “Or Backup Marcus. Pick your poison.”
“You don’t have to laugh about it, if you don’t think it’s funny.”
“Oh, I think it’s funny. I think it’s hilarious.”
Something about his belief that he has to take the comments makes me feel sad for him. I want to ask more questions, but he says, “Do you know what I liked about you that night? Jason didn’t come up once. I can count the number of conversations I’ve had in this town where Jason didn’t come up.”
He’s right. I didn’t even know he was related to Jason when we met.
“When he found out we were moving here, Jay told me in no uncertain terms that he ran this town. He owned it, and there wouldn’t be any room for me. I tried to convince my dad to let us stay in California, but he wanted to come back because of his health.
“Meeting you felt like this…sign that it would be okay. That I could find a way to belong here.”
I’m surprised about the picture he has of Jason in his mind. The Jason I know is tough, sometimes cocky, but would he tell his cousin that there’s no space for him in Sterlingwood? I don’t think so.
“It must suck to constantly be compared when you both have your own strengths,” I say, treading carefully.
And it’s true. There are things I’m sure I can go to Marcus for that I can’t go to Jason for.
Conversations I’ve had with Marcus that I would never have with Jason, and it’s not because one is better than the other. They’re just different.
Marcus looks horrified. “I hope you’re not feeling bad for me.”
“I’m feeling bad for me. I think the mind melding is starting to work,” I say as I massage my temples.
“Why would you say that?” Marcus asks, frowning when I tell him about the headache.
“They seem connected somehow. I’m not totally sure how, but it does seem like every time I get a bad headache, I dream. We dream. I went to the doctor a few days ago and got some pills, but I’m waiting till I figure out the Jason thing before I start taking them.”
Marcus frowns. “Please tell me you’re joking, Zadie.”
“It’s not like I’m giving myself migraines. I just know that…”
“And you’re getting one now?” he interrupts. “I’m taking you to urgent care.”
“Oh, relax,” I say. “It’s completely fine. I occasionally get migraines. They just might happen more since the accident but…”
Marcus walks over and bends so he’s looking me right in the eye.
“Zadie, I don’t care if you never dream again,” Marcus says, no hint of levity in his voice or expression, “but I’m not going to stand by and watch while you mess with your brain.”
I give an incredulous laugh, because this is all a little too much now. “Marcus, I’m fine. Worry about your own brain.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it does not involve Marcus rubbing the back of his neck and saying, “The night Jay broke up with you, I felt so…powerless. Like there was nothing I could do to make things better. To make sure…everyone was going to be okay.”
I frown. “Because of the accident?”
“Uh, yeah,” he says. “Because of that. It happened again the day you were sick. And I know you don’t want my help. I get it. Jason is your person.”
The words jolt my chest awake.
I haven’t thought about Jason the last five minutes, and I’ve thought about Jason every hour every day since we started dating.
Does that mean he’s not my person anymore?
No. No, I’m not having this conversation with myself. I banish the thought before it takes root. I’m supposed to be fixing the breakup, not asking questions, creating doubts.
Marcus is still talking. “…and so if there’s a way I can think of to help, I want to.”
It’s like these two versions of him keep shape-shifting into one another, contradicting one another.
Nobody hides their true self better than Marcus Riddick, and I just don’t get why. Why be this half-hearted, careless guy who laughs everything off, when he could be thoughtful, sincere Marcus?
I open my mouth to ask just that, to reprimand him and bring up everything I’ve been thinking the last year, but he’s already speaking.
“Do you need me to beg? Because I’ll do it,” he says.
“Oh my God, fine,” I say, like this is the biggest sacrifice of all time on my part. “I’ll go home and take a pill. I should get going, anyway.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Let me give you a ride home at least,” Marcus says, but I shake my head.
“Nope. It’s just a tiny headache. I also think you know too much about my life. Too much ammunition.”
Marcus grins, earnest and warm.
“I know too much? How come all I want is to know more?” He says the last part quietly, and I bet if I look hard enough, I’ll find something sweet in that comment. Instead, I stick my tongue out at him.
The pain in my head is growing, but I hop off the bench and start out of the garage.
I walk past Marcus’s truck, parked on the side of the street. I had to leave my car almost down the block because of all the cars in front of The Fix. I see my white Ford when I reach the end of the driveway, so I turn and wave to Marcus.
He gives me a smile that I feel all the way to my toes.
But when I look up again, my car is gone.