“Hold on, what?” Ruby asks.
“He didn’t break my wrist,” I say. “His brother, Johnny, did.”
“But didn’t he get expelled for attacking a teacher?” Charlie asks.
“Again: his brother.”
Charlie lets out his breath in a scoff. “Come on. Finn’s still a Casper. Wasn’t their dad in jail for running a meth lab?”
“I don’t know,” I say, purposefully focusing on my bowl of chili.
Ruby gives me a doubtful look before turning back to Charlie. “When he’s not being an asshat, Finn’s actually a really good person. It sucks he has the family he does, but he’s more than just them.”
Charlie ignores her, focused on me. He lets out a smug chuckle. “This is amazing. My perfect little sister’s associating with the Caspers.”
I fix him with a furious glare. “I’m not perfect. And I’m not associating with Finn Casper!”
Ruby looks surprised. “You and Finn aren’t friends?”
“We are,” I start.
But Charlie snickers, muttering to himself. “?‘Not perfect’? As if.”
“What does that mean?”
“Four point oh? Weekends spent cramming for the SATs? Harvard? Scholarships? Future doctor? Never once disappointing Mom and Dad? Your noble, noble life?”
If he only knew about the internship, about the e-mail Em sent me telling me to tell my parents, about the way my eyelid twitches and my heart races.
“That’s not true,” I say, but he ignores me, turning to Ruby.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the real kid and Parker’s the cyborg version, the one our parents ordered from a factory, customized with ‘good grades and a friendly disposition’!”
Ruby smiles awkwardly, and Charlie takes it as encouragement, getting even more animated, adopting an infomercial voice.
“Our Parker four-point-oh model does her chores, has excellent manners, and never ever talks back. Plus, she has a four-point-oh average, hence the name!” He winks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“Parker four-point-oh model is the perfect child to make all your parenting dreams come true!”
“Stop it.”
“And don’t worry, kids. Parker four-point-oh will always do the right thing, no matter whose future it screws up.”
“Well, have you ever thought I’m this way because you got cancer?” I snap, then stop, surprised at the words that just came out of my mouth.
Charlie lets out a slow whistle between his teeth, shaking his head, satisfied. “Finally, there it is. After all these years, a glitch in the system. Honesty.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“At least I’m being an honest one. You should try it sometime.”
Ruby glances between us, tapping her fingers uneasily on the table, her bracelets chiming, and then she must make a decision, because she leans toward Charlie, holding out the bottle of hot sauce.
“Tell me, what do you do with this again?”
Charlie looks like he’s not done with me, but Ruby shakes the bottle so insistently at him, it’s clear he doesn’t have a choice. He sighs and begins an elaborate demonstration of how you find the ideal oyster cracker and add the perfect amount of sauce. Ruby tries the concoction, her nose wrinkling up.
“Why in the world would you want to do that?” she asks, after gulping down half her glass of water.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Charlie asks.
I only half listen to Charlie enumerating all the reasons eating oyster crackers with hot sauce is awesome and then Ruby sharing all her counter-reasons for why it violates the “sacred integrity of the oyster cracker.”
I’m not hungry anymore.
Instead, I’m too busy thinking about the words I just said, the unbidden truth in them.
It’s like when you surprise a flock of birds, how they swoop out of rafters and eaves in a wave of flustered feathers, half squawks, how they leave you standing there, heart startled and terrified, as they take flight.
Thirty-One
THE NEXT DAY, MY shift at Carla’s is quiet. The ladies from Wild Meadows Retirement Community have a field trip to see the butterfly exhibit at Krohn Conservatory, and the kids’ birthday party I was supposed to supervise canceled late yesterday. I offered to stay home in case Carla didn’t need me, but much to my happiness, she insisted I come in anyway.
Each day, I love being at Carla’s more and more. And it’s not just the fact that no one there calls me Dr. McCullough or that my eyelid never twitches when I’m around the Wild Meadows ladies. It’s more that Carla’s feels like home, a place where my shoulders aren’t tight, where I laugh without thinking about it, where I can simply breathe.
After I finish dusting and straightening the front room, I sit at the counter for a second, watching the dust motes in the sun coming through the room, then reread the e-mail I got from Em last night.
Park, so I haven’t written you back since you told me you were a grown-up and I shouldn’t worry about you, as I figured I pissed you off and you needed some space. But I miss you too much to give you any more space, so here I am! Seriously, I’m sorry if my advice rubbed you the wrong way. I still think you should tell your parents (sorry not sorry), but I will try not to push you on it. That being said, I cannot promise I will stop worrying, because you are my best friend and I want good things for you and that’s just how I’m wired. But please know that whatever you decide, I’m here for you no matter what, okay?
Things here are good. We’ve been hiking in the Lake District. I know! I’m all naturey now! Do you remember when we read that Wordsworth poem in Mr. Fontana’s English class about the lake and the sublime? At the time, I thought, “Ugh, another white guy poet,” and I still maintain that our syllabus that semester was crap, but being here, I kind of get part of it now. It’s otherworldly. This morning I got up and sat by the lake and just sketched. There was mist coming off the lake and I honestly expected a sword to rise out of the water, like it was Excalibur. It was totally badass.
Also, maybe, just maybe, I met a very nice Scottish girl named Tamsin who is also backpacking through Europe this summer and is going to school at Indiana University next year and perhaps we might have made out a little bit before promising to stay in touch when she moves to the States this fall.
Maybe.
(Actually, totally. She is gorgeous. And smart. And kind. I think you’d like her.)
Please write back and let me know you’re okay, that we’re okay.
Miss you bunches,
E.
PS: Matty says hi to you and Charlie. Evidently, Charlie e-mailed him and the two of them are getting along again? Who knows. Boys are weird.
PPS: Your parents will love you no matter what.
I don’t know how to respond.
I wish she’d stop pushing me to talk with Mom and Dad.
If she really trusted me, like she says, she’d drop it.
I let out a frustrated sigh, deleting her e-mail, and then decide to see what Carla’s up to.
I make sure the register is locked before I call out her name down the steps.
“Come on down, Parker,” she calls.
I walk carefully down the narrow basement steps.
The studio downstairs is a completely different world from the one upstairs. While the main room is bright and cluttery, crowded with shelves of white to-be-painted ceramics, this room is shady and cool and organized, eight pottery wheels accompanied by stools arranged in a half circle in the space, the door in the back opening directly to a patch of grass in front of the creek. I see a picnic table out there covered with lumps of clay drying in the sun.
Carla’s currently hunched over one of the wheels, a lump of wet red clay smacking against her hands as the wheel spins.
Her arms push strong against the clay—I can see her muscles working as she shapes the mess. She lifts her hands, sprinkles water over the clay, and then drills a finger down the middle, opening it up.
She sees me, nudges her head toward an empty stool.
I can’t take my eyes away from the wheel spinning.