Chapter 7 #2
So instead of ducking him, making up some nonsense, I say:
“When I was little, I got my parents to sign me up for skating classes. I loved it. And I was good at it. As the years passed, I started competing at the state level. I trained in the city, and my parents had to make sacrifices to get me there. When I was fifteen, I got the offer to enter a national competition, but I skipped it because a week before, during a competition in Omaha, my sister got sick. We came back home and found her almost unconscious. She had a really bad urinary tract infection. I remember we called the ambulance, they took her to the hospital, and my mother kept holding her head in her hands and saying we never should have left her alone… I realized ice-skating wasn’t a priority, and I stopped training. End of story. Can I try your eggs?”
Will slides his plate toward me. “And now your sister wants you to start skating again.”
“Weird, right?”
I’m glad Will remains more or less inexpressive, as if we were talking about the news or the weather. But I think he can tell this is important for me. The words aren’t heavy now, they float between us, and I have to say, it feels liberating.
“Depends on your perspective,” he says.
Nothing else. He doesn’t give me some speech full of hope about what Lucy wanted; he doesn’t try to change my mind. I like that.
“I think I’m starting to understand why she made up this game. My sister was a dreamer, you know? I mean, she was always imagining parallel lives. I do that sometimes too. But Lucy thought she was wasting her time.”
“And you?”
“The concept is kind of ambiguous, don’t you think? How do you measure how much a person does or doesn’t take advantage of their life? For some people, happiness is sitting down every day to read a novel on the same bench, and other people need to skydive out of a plane.”
“You could stop talking about other people and say something about yourself.”
“You’re a nosy one, Will Tucker.” I try not to smile.
He doesn’t, though. For the second time, his lips tug upward, and I notice they’re thin and the upper one is curved and it makes him look mischievous, and I almost worry I could get tired of so much beauty. “It’s my obligation to be interested, that’s all.”
“I’m not your obligation, let’s make that clear. And I’m being serious—I don’t know. Who can be sure they’re using their time on Earth wisely? Can you?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“We are now.”
Will sighs and examines me as though I were a puzzle that needed solving. He hasn’t finished his food, but he crosses his arms over his chest.
“What do you do?” he asks.
“At the moment, I’m a dog walker.”
“A dog walker,” he repeats slowly.
“Right now, it’s only one dog. I need to walk him and feed him this afternoon. I’ve had several jobs this year. I’m not good at holding on to them, as you may imagine. Jobs, money, all that stuff is a total bore.”
“How so?”
“Like…from the time you’re little, people always want to know what you want to be when you grow up.
Didn’t that used to bother you? I remember telling a neighbor once I want to be a Tyrannosaurus and crush people’s heads.
She never asked about my future again. What I’m trying to say, and I think you’ll agree, is that deciding what you want to do when you’ve barely lived is stupid. ”
Will’s stare is making me uncomfortable. “So I ask you about skating, and all this comes out.”
“No, you’re not getting it. What we were really talking about was…
” I think for a few seconds and notice the satisfaction on his face.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter. If what you’re thinking is that my life’s dream was to be an ice skater and it got destroyed and now I’m resentful, you’re wrong.
I liked it. But remember the Tyrannosaurus: I came up with that when I was just a kid, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“To plead your case.”
“What, are we debating now?”
“I told you what I thought about the future, my doubts. Now I want to know yours.”
“Let’s see…” Will bites his lower lip, and there’s something so sexy about it, I think he must have practiced the gesture a million times in front of the mirror.
“That hesitation you’re talking about, how you said you barely lived, that’s all foreign to me.
I was always the type where if I liked something, I just went for it. ”
“Tell me some of the things you liked, then.”
“Who’s nosy now?”
I stand and throw up the hood of my sweatshirt. It’s purple, and on the back it says What the hell are you looking at?
“Forget it,” I say. “You’re right. I don’t care.”
We don’t talk on the way home, but the silence is soothing. A song called “Hummingbird” is playing, and the notes seem to wrap around us like a warm blanket. It ends just as he stops in front of my house. Then he takes an envelope out of the glove box and hands it to me.
“It’s from Lucy,” he explains when he sees my face.
I manage to stay patient as Will tells me, more gently than he ever has, that he’ll be in touch soon about the next step after the disaster of the ice-skating rink. We say goodbye, and when I walk through the door, I tear open the paper and look at the note inside.