8. age twelve
age twelve
Iwas twelve the first time Nat accused me of having a crush on Atlas.
Truthfully, my crush started sometime between my tenth and eleventh birthday, so I was proud of myself for playing it cool for that long.
The problem was, with each and every year, my feelings for Atlas seemed to double.
I was convinced it had to stop at some point.
I couldn’t possibly like this boy more than I already did.
But then he’d do something terrible, like tell me I was good at the keyboard, and I’d melt into a puddle of hormones and adoration.
“Have you kissed him?” Nat asked me one night.
We were sitting in my bedroom, and we were growing dangerously near bedtime.
Once that came, Nat would be forced to return to her own room.
We used to sleep in the same bed every night, but Dad had recently decided we were too old. I cried when he told us at dinner.
Mom tried to reason with him, which led to a vicious argument, as things so often did with Dad. After he’d stormed out of the house, I asked Mom why he was so mean. She said I’d understand when I was older, and I hoped more than anything that she was wrong.
“Have you?” Nat pressed, and I blinked at her.
“Who?” I asked. Then, “I haven’t kissed anyone ever.”
“I meant Atlas, obviously.”
My whole body tensed, and my gaze darted to the open doorway.
Mom would tease me relentlessly if she overheard a conversation like this.
I didn’t even want to think of what Dad would say.
He’d freak out, that was for sure. He’d probably think I was having sex with Atlas, and I’d be forbidden from ever talking to my best friend again.
“Be quiet,” I hissed. Minutes ago, Nat had been telling me her sophomore-year bucket list items. She was sprawled out on her stomach, decorating the list with different color gel pens.
I was propped against my bed frame, scrolling endlessly on my phone.
I’d just gotten it for my birthday, and I imagined it was only a matter of time before Dad started limiting my access, like he did to Nat.
“Atlas doesn’t like me that way.” I glanced around my room. This conversation desperately required distraction. I couldn’t meet Nat’s eye, or I was going to combust from mortification.
I grabbed the ukulele I’d gotten for Christmas off the floor and started to strum.
I was terrible at it, especially pressing the right strings, but I planned to get better over the next year or two.
Maybe, if I got good enough, I’d go on one of those singing competitions.
Atlas told me I could win any one of them.
“Why do you say that?” Nat always framed conversations like this. Mom once said she would be a good therapist, but Dad was quick to shoot down the idea. Those people are scam artists, Shannon, he’d said. Nat’s going to do something useful with her time. Aren’t you, Nat?
And because it was Dad, Nat had no choice but to nod along with the fakest smile I’d ever seen. I wasn’t sure if Dad couldn’t tell the difference, or if he just didn’t care.
I rolled Nat’s question around my head. If I didn’t know better by now, I’d reply with something like this: because he’s too cool. Because I’m not pretty enough. Because we’ve been friends since forever, and girls like Riley Cresley are way more interesting.
“He just doesn’t.” I shrugged and attempted a D minor chord. It sounded awful, and my fingertips already hurt. They had the beginnings of calluses though. Once I got proper calluses, this wouldn’t hurt at all.
“He blushes all the time.” Nat shifted off her stomach, twisting until she faced me.
I pretended to focus on my strumming, even though I’d learned on YouTube it was better not to look at your hands.
Nat, unfortunately, was undeterred. “He got flustered just yesterday. You got excited over something and hugged him. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, Nat. It was yesterday. Obviously I remember.” I’d hugged him because we were finally going to share the same lunch period. He had seemed flustered, but I wasn’t letting myself read into it.
“Soooo,” she drawled. “Do you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine.” Nat huffed and shifted again, moving until her back was pressed against the wall. We were both wearing the same T-shirt, unintentionally of course, but something that happened often. Mom liked to joke that we shared the same brain.
Maybe that was why an entirely new thought entered my head, right as Nat started to change the subject.
“I guess Mrs. Lewis—”
“Did you kiss someone?” I shrieked. “You did, didn’t you? Is that—”
Nat lunged for me, pressing her palm firmly against my mouth. My eyes widened.
“Shut up, Vi.” It was her turn to look worriedly at my open door. There was nothing amused in her expression. “You did not just yell that. You’re going to get me killed.”
She kept her hand against my mouth until I licked her palm. Then she reeled back and scrunched her nose.
“Ew!” She leaned against the wall once more, attention darting to the door and then back. “You have to be quiet.”
“You’re the one who brought this up. So. Who did you kiss?” I was careful to whisper. “Is it someone I know? Is it Devin?”
“Sydney’s brother?” Nat looked repulsed, but I didn’t understand why. Devin was nice and he had cute dimples. “No, gross, Violet.”
“Was it Phoebe?” Buried deep with my crush on Atlas, I loved the idea of me one day marrying him, and Nat one day marrying Phoebe. Then we’d all be a family, and maybe we could be neighbors. With a tunnel between our basements. You know, nothing fancy.
“What? No. Obviously not.” Nat looked down at her hands, at her fingers as she twined them together. “Do you remember Michael?”
“Michael…” I trailed off. There was only one Michael I knew, but he couldn’t possibly be who she meant. I moved my ukulele to the floor and crawled to her side.
“From tennis.” Nat’s throat bobbed so intensely I could see it.
“You mean…” I bent slightly, trying to catch her eye. She wouldn’t look at me. “But h-he’s old.”
“Not really.” Nat shook her head. “He’s only twenty-one.”
I blinked. I didn’t know how to make sense of what she was saying.
“You’re fifteen.”
“Whatever.” Nat’s face screwed up into an ugly scowl. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
She shoved off my bed, making it only a few steps before she whirled around.
“Don’t tell anyone, or I’ll never tell you anything ever again.”
I stared after her in shock, long after she’d closed her bedroom door across the hall. I couldn’t decide which was worse: the fact Nat had kissed an older guy or the fact she’d trusted me enough to tell me…and I’d ruined it.
“I’m worried about Nat.” I sat beside Atlas on his back porch, watching our sisters arrange their lawn chairs against his family’s back fence. They’d originally been tanning up here on the porch, but as soon as we arrived, they went as far as the yard would allow, just to get some ‘privacy’.
The Blake’s backyard was a near-perfect replica of ours.
A square yard of neatly mowed grass. A small corner garden, though theirs was filled with vegetables and flowers and ours was filled with dried dirt.
Dad had been scolding Mom about that just last night.
Despite the fact Mrs. Blake had a full-time job, she had a nicer garden than Mom. It was embarrassing, Shannon.
Nat and Phoebe were right next to that garden.
My sister kept looking at it, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was.
Or maybe she was thinking about Michael.
Had she told Phoebe about him? Did she say he was her boyfriend?
Boyfriend felt like the wrong word. I watched Michael at our tennis practice last night.
He wasn’t a boy at all. And from what I could tell, he didn’t look at Nat any differently than he looked at the rest of us.
Maybe Nat had made it up. I kind of hoped she had.
“Nat?” Atlas repeated. He was playing a game on his Nintendo Switch, which he’d gotten a few months ago. He hadn’t gone a day without playing it since. At the mention of my sister, his attention flicked briefly from his game to the back fence. “She looks fine to me.”
“I know. It’s not that.” I hugged my knees to my chest. From here, Nat did look fine. She and Phoebe were wearing their new swimsuits, which they’d gotten at the mall. I’d bought a new swimsuit then too. My first bikini that I was equal parts excited and mortified to wear in front of Atlas.
I’d thought about tanning with Phoebe and Nat, but now that it was clear they wanted to be alone, I was glad I didn’t ask.
“Is she sick or something?” Atlas grunted, then muttered a curse. When I glanced at him, his attention was wholly fixed on his video game. The cussing was new. He’d picked it up from his dumb friend Ryan, who’d started at our school in the spring.
It was stupid, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt like I’d get struck by lightning if I so much as whispered the word shit.
“No, it’s not…” I struggled to find the right words before accepting there weren’t any. Nat had a weirdly old boyfriend, but so what? They’d probably break up in a couple weeks anyway.
Besides, Nat explicitly told me not to tell anyone. I wanted her to confide stuff in me, and I wasn’t about to ruin that by gossiping. Not even with Atlas. Not even when I really was worried.
The back sliding door swooshed open.
Atlas and I turned. I expected to see Mrs. Blake, either to call us for lunch or to tell Nat and Phoebe to bring those chairs back when they were done. Instead it was dumb Ryan Mitchell and some other guy I didn’t know. The one I didn’t recognize seemed older. Maybe Nat’s age or even Phoebe’s.
“Hey, I thought you couldn’t come!” Atlas launched to his feet, taking his Nintendo Switch with him. I remained on the steps and watched the three of them as they excitedly made plans to set up a makeshift slip-n-slide.