15. Margo
Chapter 15
Margo
W hen I was seven, we moved into the Ashers’ guest house. It didn’t occur to me what it was at that point—I just thought it was cool that there was another house so close. We shared a driveway, and my mom happened to work right across the lawn in their home.
It didn’t make sense until I overheard my parents talking about Mom’s employers: the Ashers . We weren’t here by accident. This house didn’t magically become ours.
My mom pulled me out of my new room one day, maybe a week or two after moving in, and brought me across the grass to the Asher house.
She introduced me to Caleb. A boy with short, dark hair and huge, piercing blue eyes. He was in a school uniform, and his mom was there, too. She was waiting with him in the kitchen, trying to stop him from disappearing farther into his huge house.
He stopped fidgeting when we walked in.
Our moms smiled at each other, while Caleb and I just stared.
The next day, my mom presented me with a similar uniform—in dress form, though—and drove me to my new school. Caleb was in my kindergarten class, although he didn’t really look twice at me.
He was as odd as an alien. He ran around with boys twice his size and didn’t flinch. I made friends with some girls and stuck close to them. We played with dolls and dressed up, hanging out in their big rooms in their giant homes. Their closets were almost bigger than my entire room.
A month later, I left the house with my mom to find Caleb playing alone in the backyard.
Her finger pressed into my spine. She did it when I slouched. I snapped my back straight, if only to relieve the pressure.
“Go say hello,” she murmured.
I forced a smile and crossed the lawn to where he was playing with a firetruck.
“Hello, Caleb.”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“My mom said I should come talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to a dumb girl.”
I strode forward and smacked his shoulder. “I’m not dumb.”
Strange as it was, Caleb and I became fast friends after that. The way to a boy’s heart is through physical violence, apparently. He still hung out with his friends at school, and I stayed with Amelie and Savannah. On the playground, if their ball sometimes rolled in our direction, I’d be the one to climb to my feet and toss it back to him.
He’d give me a weird, appraising look and mutter a grudging thank you.
He also sat with me on the bus. After the first time driving me to school and registering me, Mom turned me over to their transportation system. Even rich kids have terrible buses, though.
I hadn’t realized how awful it was until he sat next to me.
Everything got better because of it.
We carried on that way until we were eight. At that point, our friendship got a little more immediate. I ate the occasional dinner with his family—prepared and served by my mother. He helped me with my history homework, and I helped him with math.
“I’ll only be friends with you if we play dress-up,” I declared one day. We were sitting in the yard by the pool, tossing grass into the water.
Caleb sighed, loud and dramatic. “Guess I don’t really have a choice then, huh?”
He followed me to his room.
I pointed to the door. “You need a suit.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so!” I chucked a shoe at him for good measure, but it soared wide. If he threw it back, he’d probably nail me in the chest. His aim was a lot better than mine.
He grunted and left the room, and I put on the special dress I had snuck out of the house.
When he came back, he was wearing one of his father’s suit jackets over his school uniform. It’s giant on him, the sleeves extending well past his fingertips.
Still.
He stopped dead. “What is this?”
I smoothed the old white fabric with my hands. I’d been a flower girl only a few months ago. My dad’s cousin got married, and I was apparently the only one eligible to walk down the aisle and throw flowers. The dress was lacy and frilly, with a full skirt and short sleeves.
“What does it look like?” I asked him.
He squinted at me, the tip of his tongue sliding out of his mouth with his concentration.
“We’re getting married?”
I grinned, but was he going to go through with it? He’d either be in or out—with Caleb, you never knew. I figured this was a good way to solve my dilemma of how much he actually liked me.
You know: friend -like or marriage -like.
He straightened his tie and came closer. “I didn’t get you a ring.”
I shook my head and reached into my pocket.
“Got it covered,” I said, showing him the two woven friendship bracelets in my hand.
I’d made one that was equal parts gold and blue, and the other was blue with a single cluster of gold thread. I struggled to make something so small it would fit around my finger, so I gave up and made bracelets.
“We’re married until these fall off.”
That was how those types of bracelets worked: keep them on until they fall off or it’s bad luck. For ever .
“Okay,” he agreed. He pushed the sleeves up on the suit jacket, exposing his hands. “But…”
Oh, no. He was about to back out. Or change the deal.
“What?” I held my breath.
“Do we have to kiss? To seal the deal?”
My eyebrows furrowed. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
He grinned and walked closer. The suit sleeves were falling back down, but he shoved them up to his elbows. “We could, you know.”
“Kiss?”
“Adults do it.”
My heart raced. “Do they?”
Mom and Dad didn’t really kiss in front of me. They barely touched. Do Caleb’s parents kiss in front of him? I’d seen it on movies, but I thought it was just that: fiction.
I knew the definition of fiction at age eight. I wasn’t dumb.
Some things just weren’t real: Santa, parents who really loved each other, and my future with Caleb. It was a fact I had already accepted before I came up with this idea. Before I decided to test what kind of like he had for me.
He picked up both bracelets. My dad had helped me singe the strings on each end so they wouldn’t unravel, but they were open and ready for tying. He seemed to debate for a moment, then held up the one with more gold.
“I want this one. It reminds me of you.”
He tied the mostly blue one around my wrist. He left it loose enough that I could’ve inched it over my hand, but I didn’t. I slid it farther up, until it got stuck on my forearm. I couldn’t lose it so quickly.
“Now me.” He pushed his claimed bracelet at me.
I tied it with clumsy fingers, as loose as he had made mine. Who knew when these things would fall off? I suddenly wished I had made them out of steel.
“Kiss me,” he demanded. “Make it official.”
I leaned in, my hand on his wrist and my gaze on his mouth.
Our lips touched, just the barest of brushes. So brief that I don’t think it counted. We both pulled back and stared at each other for a moment.
Then Caleb lifted my hand. “Wow. So this is what marriage feels like.”
I waited. And then it hit me.
The bond . We’d be linked, him and me, by our wrists and our lips, forever. I wasn’t mad about it. I was selfishly glad that he was mine.
Mine and no one else’s. I’d fight them, and he would come back to me. Because: marriage. Even if Mom and Dad’s marriage sucked, and Caleb’s parents’ marriage was rocky, sometimes fiction and real life could be the same.
We’d be the happy couple when we got into our older years. Twenties, thirties, forties. Hell, he’d probably love me through gray hair and wrinkles. I knew it, and judging from the look in his eye, he knew it, too.
And then, two years later, our lives imploded.