The first time Callan Cross knocks on my front door, I’m not as terrified as I should be. Over the past six months, he’s walked me to school every morning but he catches up with me six blocks down the road, far enough from my house that my father has no hope of seeing us together. Every morning, he arrives breathless by my side, grinning from ear to ear, his Walkman headphones tangled in a mess around his throat, on the verge of strangling him, and every morning without fail he tells me I should ‘stop making eyes’ at him otherwise he’s going to kiss me.
I deny the making eyes part, but I secretly want him to kiss me. We haven’t come close to that—we haven’t even held hands—but it seems to me, and I sometimes think it seems to him too, that we’re more than just friends.
So yes. This morning is different because Callan doesn’t catch up with me down the street. It’s a Saturday, and he comes to the front door and knocks politely on the glass pane of the front door as though it’s completely normal and not a cause for concern at all. On any other day, his actions would be grounds for major anxiety. Not today, though. Today is special. I open the door and there he is in all his ripped-jeaned and t-shirted glory, brandishing a killer smile on his face and a parcel wrapped in blue paper in his hands.
“Happy birthday, weirdo,” he tells me.
My heart feels like a balloon floating up, up, up in my chest. “You’re the weirdo.” I step back in order to let him into the house, and Callan enters, not even trying to conceal his curiosity as he looks around the hallway and into the living room to our right.
“You realize,” he says, offering the blue paper wrapped parcel out to me, “that it’s really fucked up that your dad leaves town on your birthday every year. Most parents want to stick around and celebrate the birth of their kids with them.”
I take his gift, trying not to blush too fiercely when our fingers graze each other. “My dad’s not like everyone else’s dad. Obviously.”
A stormy look passes over Callan’s face, his eyebrows banking together to form a confused line. “Yeah. Well. Obviously.”
Strangely, my father’s been away more and more often recently. And he hasn’t raised his hand to me as often as usual either. That’s not to say that he’s left me be entirely, but my bruises have been more infrequent. Less vivid stories in black and blue and purple. I don’t want to talk about my father, though. I don’t even want to think about him. Not today. I curl my fingers around the shape of the parcel in my fingers, feeling odd layers and shapes inside. “Should I open this now?” I ask, whispering.
“You should absolutely open that now. I’ve been picturing the expression you’re gonna make when you see what’s inside all week. I must have my satisfaction. I demand it.”
I glance around, biting down on my lip. “Here? In the hallway?”
Callan waggles his eyebrows. “Nope. Upstairs in your bedroom. I want to see what kind of creature you are.”
“You know what kind of creature I am.”
“Wrong. I’ll only be able to tell when I’ve seen what band posters you have hanging on your walls.”
It’s ironic that he thinks I’d be allowed such things. Still, I angle my head up the wide staircase behind me, motioning that he should follow me; I like the idea of Callan Cross in my room. He whistles as he follows me inside my bedroom, a look of confusion and then despair flitting over his features. “Jesus, Coralie. I didn’t know you were from a long line of strict Quakers. Where’s all your stuff?”
I cast my own eyes around my room, trying to picture how he’s seeing it for the very first time, through brand new eyes: The plain white walls; the plain white bed sheets and duvet cover; the simple wooden chest of drawers at the far end of the room; my desk, where my schoolwork is neatly arranged; the tiny ottoman sitting at the end of my bed that used to be my mother’s, embroidered with birds.
“I know. It’s simple. Boring.”
Callan looks aghast as he pivots around on the balls of his feet, taking in the nothingness. “For someone who draws and paints so well, CT, this place is seriously lacking in color.”
“I know, I know. If it were up to me—”
Callan exhales, pushing out the air in his lungs in a slow, long sigh. “Right. Malcolm. He won’t let you have it the way you want it?”
I shake my head. “He says that when I move out and go to college, he should never know I was here.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
Callan walks over to the window and looks out of it, down onto the small area of roof where I sleep sometimes. “Can it take both of us?” he asks.
“Probably.”