Chapter 11
I keep checking my phone under the single-sheet program.
I got home yesterday and Grub still hasn’t responded.
He’s always seemed ever present, perpetually reachable, and I realize now how false an impression that was.
I can’t reach him at all. It’s like I can feel the bulk of all the land between us, suddenly relevant now that technology isn’t working to connect us.
What am I supposed to do?
This may seem shocking, but I don’t know Grub’s name.
Not his real one.
All these years, he has refused to tell me.
Even when he was little. He was always so internet savvy.
I think he liked being mysterious at first, and then later he just didn’t want me to surprise him.
He was so determined to protect me. I always figured he’d tell me one day.
Now I hate myself for not making it a priority, for not prying it out of him, demanding it in return for my love.
How can I figure out if he’s okay?
I try to focus. Ella misses several notes but continues resolutely on.
A victory! She returns to her seat between Dee and me, vibrating with success and whispering frantically that she forgot to make the circle her teacher always emphasizes and start the following phrase with an up bow.
Maybe Ms. Nancy (the sweetest, gentlest teacher in the world) will be angry?
And my God, when we stand up at the end, Joel is there, in the back.
Appearing like a thick-shouldered, bespectacled ghost who is officially haunting me now.
His eyes meet mine and he smiles hesitantly, looking somehow happy to see me.
My mind takes me on a whiplash tour of our last interaction—my psychotic attempts to both kiss and not kiss him in the restaurant.
Why is he here? How did he know about it?
I remember through the flapping and sputtering of my broken-rudder brain that it was me.
Well, Ella and me. She begged him to come; I gave him the information weeks ago.
Who can keep track of these things when one is busy meeting one’s two-thousand-year-old alcoholic former rock star father for the first time?
Ella spots Joel and dashes over to him, uncharacteristically confident.
She hugs him, they high-five, and he hands her the flowers he’s holding.
I watch, frozen, as she proudly introduces him to Dee, who is glowing in an orange wrap dress.
Dee is tall and lush, full-lipped and elfin-eyed; her hair is a waterfall of health; she is automatically sexy in anything and everything.
We don’t look like sisters. Her father had brown skin and was tall. My father was only famous.
“What if you guys got married to each other one day?” Ella says, standing between Joel and Dee.
They both laugh too loudly. Dee hasn’t dated anyone since Ella’s father.
If I’m being totally honest, she hasn’t seemed very tempted to, either, but even so, I’ve made it abundantly clear that I don’t want her to be abstinent in solidarity or something.
Hurt stings me in a soft, hidden place. Why doesn’t Ella think I should be the one to marry Joel?
Because I am not her mother.
No matter how much time we spend together. No matter how many times I check her butt because she’s worried there’s still a little poop on it, and she’s scared to get poop on her undies. No matter what, I’m just a proxy. Just an aunt.
I re-snap the snap on the front of my old backpack purse and look down at my green corduroy pants that seemed more festive than jeans when I put them on earlier. I realize with sudden nausea that they will fall in love. That they are meant for one another.
But then he’s walking over to me and my body is trying to shuck itself, every organ running in a direction of its choosing. I don’t know how to look at him. I don’t know what to do with my face or how to have a face, really, at all.
“I wanted to stop by, for Ella,” he says from above me, where I am not looking.
His voice is like his couch—warm, soft leather.
If I had a recording of it, I would carry it with me through my whole life, listen to it in every quiet moment.
“But can we pretend I didn’t try to seduce you over coconuts? ”
I make a startled sound that is possibly enough like a laugh to pass for one.
He says quietly, only for me, “I’m good at pretending. Apparently pretty bad at seducing.”
I look up.
Colors spill across the room, people flowing together, conversation splashing into meaninglessness.
He is perfectly, horribly clear, though.
For a second, I feel like I’m dying: This is a near-death experience, my brain zooming in with impossible exactitude, extrasensory fixation. He is the center of everything.
The understated lines of his eyelids, the welcoming openness of his face with its faint freckling, sugared sunlight through stained glass consecrating the tiniest fibers at the edges of his white button-down shirt.
Now Ella is back. She’s filling Joel in on how I saw very blue water in Florida and also: “Titi’s airplane had to wait for a long time just sitting there.”
“That’s happening a lot.” Joel glances at me like he’s curious about my trip. No trace of his over-the-coconuts look. Or maybe just a trace of a trace. “I was on an airplane that did the same thing.”
“At the same time?” Ella is fascinated.
“Maybe!”
“Where did you go?” Ella and I both ask.
He smiles. “Jinx. I went to a work conference.”
“To learn how to be a better doctor?” Ella guesses.
“Exactly.” He’s wearing the brown pants that I like so much. I’m distracted by them, even in my state of suspended worry.
If only Dick Face had said, “Yeah, kid. There’s a cure.” I can hear his voice in my head now that I know what he sounds like.
“What did you learn at your . . .” I can tell she’s forgotten the unfamiliar word and am impressed when she takes a bold guess: “Constrance?”
“Hmm.” He thinks. “I learned about rising rates of autoimmune disease—which is when someone’s own body tries to fight itself.” He looks a little distant, as though remembering some concerning numbers from a presentation.
Ella’s brow creases. “Is my body doing that? Since I might have a gluten allergy.”
“No, I don’t think so,” says Joel.
“Can you check?”
“Absolutely.” He leans over. “May I touch your neck?”
She nods, surveying him trustingly. My heart is butter on a hot pan. Dee, talking with Ms. Nancy, glances over but seems charmed instead of concerned at the sight of this man she doesn’t even know touching Ella. That is the vibe of Joel: the good doctor.
He gently feels Ella’s lymph nodes, considers. “Very good. Now would you mind sticking out your tongue?”
He squints, adjusts his glasses. “Excellent. I would say you are in perfect health.”
He glances up, maybe feeling my abjectly miserable gaze.
I look quickly away.
Dick Face was so drunk, so out of his mind.
Maybe he was wrong. But how will I ever find the solution on my own?
Am I really supposed to track down an immortal?
Apparently they exist. Apparently they have bad taste in men.
I should probably be looking for her now.
But instead here I am, in a church, staring mournfully at the beautiful golden hairs on the backs of Joel’s hands.
“What’s in Florida?” He walks beside me as we exit the sanctuary, forcing me to attempt regular interaction. “Or just a quick vacation?”
“My biological father,” I say awkwardly. But it’s better than “my demonic father.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” He can sense it’s a big deal.
For a dizzy moment, I do want to. He would never believe me, of course, but he makes me feel like he would.
And right now I’m so worried about Grub, I want to blurt out every last detail.
Also, one of my best friends is a sixteen-year-old goth boy with terrible personal hygiene who lives in his parents’ basement and I’ve never met him IRL and I just found out he’s actually my brother and I’m scared someone got him.
Someone who is killing off people like us, people with dark powers.
“Long story.” My voice sounds strained.
We step outside into the shock of a crystalline October day, which feels more pronounced for its proximity to the murky humidity and emotions of my South Beach trip.
Our slate-roofed colonial town looks like a postcard from somewhere in New England, not the way people tend to picture New Jersey.
It looks like there must be apple cider from a local orchard at the farmers’ market. (There is.)
Joel surveys me for a moment, his eyes warm.
“You’re a mystery, Tempest,” he says very softly. His gaze clarifies, intensifies; he’s concerned about me, he wants me.
God.
I make a small sound. “I should— ”
His lips move. “I’ll go,” he says. “But I wanted to say: One day, if you feel like telling me, I’d love to learn your story.”
Maybe I nod. It’s hard to tell what my head is doing.
He leaves.
No, Joel, I think. That’s exactly what you can never know. You can never know my story.
“What the hell,” says Dee five minutes later, grabbing my elbow.
Mom and Ella are in the long line for the popular small-batch ice cream place in Palmer Square, Ella agonizing over which flavor to get, especially when she considers sprinkles.
Dee hauls me behind a nearby potted tree.
“I thought he was old! With the cat and the cello and being home on Mondays—I thought he was some lonely old man in a rocker.”
I think for an odd moment of Dick Face. A lonely old man in a cluttered penthouse.
I take a breath, scan Dee’s expression for evidence that she is also helplessly attracted to Joel. Her lipstick is pinkish plum—a shade that looks effortless on her.
“Oh my God, there’s kids everywhere,” says one whitesweatered twentysomething to another as they walk by. “At Yale there were, like, no children. I forgot children existed.”
“Yeah, it’s nice all these families come out,” says the other, like it’s the families who are just passing through this town.