Evan visited her every afternoon. He was the only one Clara talked to. Beatrice hung around on the edges of whatever room Clara happened to be in at the moment, wanting desperately to talk to her sister. She knew Clara was mad at her, and she didn’t understand why. Why couldn’t Beatrice be happy that their mother was home?
Just in the short week of Ellen’s return, the house looked better. It was like Ellen was trying to apologize in as many ways as possible. She scrubbed everything from floor to ceiling, disinfecting the entire home, cleaning places that Beatrice and Clara never cleaned because they didn’t know those places existed. There was dinner every night, always something new, and Ellen sat with Beatrice each evening while she completed her homework. Beatrice had never asked Clara to check it, but she shoved every worksheet under her mother’s nose to have her look over. Beatrice was happy. Clara was miserable.
Ellen walked into Clara’s room at the end of the week and sat down on the edge of the bed. Clara glared at her over the top of her book.
“Sweetheart—”
“Don’t call me that,” Clara interrupted.
Ellen took a deep breath. “Clara, I want you to know that I got a job.”
Clara didn’t reply.
“It’s a secretary job at a chiropractor’s office,” she went on. “It’s full time and I have health insurance. For us.” She waited for Clara to respond. Clara kept reading her book.
“I start on Monday. They needed someone straight away,” Ellen said. “So Beatrice will still ride the bus home every day and let herself in until you or I get home. Okay?”
Nothing.
“Okay, Clara?” Ellen insisted.
“Whatever.”
Ellen looked over her daughter for a moment before leaving the room.
Chapter 20
The next few weeks at school were difficult for Clara. It was hard for her to look Evan in the eyes, and when he kissed her, she felt like crying into his mouth. The guilt she felt over that night in January would not go away. She could suppress it for a time, but it always surfaced like a dead body that refused to submerge within the waters of a back river, and her conscience was the killer, terrified of a discovery.
Evan knew the adjustment was not going well for her. She volunteered some information to him, but she mostly changed the subject when he tried to broach it with her. He felt her closing up, an oyster shut up with the pearl inside, and he was afraid that she would stay closed off forever in her confusion, anger and grief.
He also felt selfish. They had not been sexual in a long time, and he was hungry for her body. He wanted her—all of her—and didn’t know how to go about asking. He thought he would offend her, that she would look at him like he was crazy. She had just turned seventeen a few months ago.
He was elated when she agreed to come to his house one afternoon. They sat on the couch in his basement watching television. Clara seemed distracted, and Evan wanted to bring her back into focus. He reached over and gathered her in his arms. She didn’t resist as he pressed his lips to hers. She opened her mouth to him and felt his tongue search her, the familiar tingle in her belly, and the flash of memory—the man in the expensive dark suit looming over her beside the bed. She pushed Evan away and wiped at her mouth.
“Clara, what did I do?” Evan asked. He tried hard not to sound frustrated.
“You didn’t do anything,” she said looking at her lap.
“Then why don’t you want to kiss me anymore?” Evan replied. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“I want to kiss you,” she said quietly.
“You just pushed me away!” Evan exclaimed.
Clara thought for a moment. She could do it now. She could blurt out the truth, let him get angry and call her a whore, and then walk out of the basement and his life like it had all been a dream. Wasn’t it a dream anyway? She always thought at any moment she’d be jarred awake from it, back at school as the shy girl with no friends who sits alone in the cafeteria reading. Maybe she’d like to go back to that girl. It was lonely, but it was safe.
“Clara, please,” Evan pleaded.
“I . . . I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Tell me anything,” Evan replied.
But she couldn’t do it. She was more fearful of telling Evan than she was of losing her virginity to a complete stranger.
“I know I’ve been acting weird lately,” she said finally. “I’m still having issues with my mom being home. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. And I’m sorry.”
Evan took her hand. “It’s okay, Clara.”
She knew it would take great effort, but she had to. She leaned over and kissed her boyfriend. She let him kiss her all afternoon, but the man with the expensive dark suit was in the back of her eyes, watching with a sneer as she pretended to be a good, sweet girl when he knew she was not.
***
Clara suddenly discovered one day at school that she had a friend. She didn’t understand why it took her so long to realize it, but once she did, she didn’t know what to think of it.
Florence. Her lab partner. Florence with the smudgy glasses and stringy hair who always thought it was amazing to see Clara walking down the hall with Evan. She never got used to it, even though Evan and Clara had been together for several months. She blushed harder than Clara when Evan sent a dozen yellow roses to English class for Clara on Valentine’s Day.
“Yellow means friendship,” Clara said trying to dismiss the gesture as no big deal. She had no idea where to put them for the remainder of the day and asked her English teacher if she could keep them in the back of the classroom.
“To remind me what a pathetic love life I have?” Ms. Grady asked, then chuckled. “Of course you can.”
“Whatever, Clara,” Florence said, rolling her eyes. “That boy is head over heels in love with you.”
“He hasn’t said it.”
Florence whipped her head around and pointed to the flowers on the back table.
“What do you think that is?” she asked, and Clara laughed.
Florence started eating lunch with Clara and Evan, and sometimes Chris joined them. It was an odd mixture of people: two confident seniors and two socially awkward juniors.