The One That I Want Page 8

  “God, it’s scary how little it’s changed,” she says, eyeing the placards above the gym upon which various team captains’ names are carved. She bites into the peanut butter sandwich I packed her this morning and swirls her tongue over her teeth when the bread lodges itself in her molars.

  “You only graduated five years ago. How much did you expect things to change in five years?” I say, my mind on a million other things.

  “Don’t kid yourself. This place is, like, frozen in a time warp,” she answers, one finger mining for stuck bread.

  I hold open the door to the locker room, and she saunters in, head bobbing every which way, absorbing all the tiny memories that she thought she left behind.

  “Jesus.” She inhales. “Do you know I nearly lost my virginity in here?”

  “No,” I say. “And that’s probably something you can keep to yourself.” I walk by the first stall, clogged with toilet paper, and into the next, then latch it behind me. My fingers tremble as I peel back the box flap, then unwrap the stick that could deliver the news of all that I’ve ever hoped for. My perfect baby. My perfect husband. My perfect life.

  I read the instructions twice, and both times, they assure me that even though I’m barely late, if late at all, this perfect combination of science and technology can determine if I’m pregnant even before I know it myself! And then, with Darcy still muttering under her breath in the background, I squat, aim, and fire.

  “You okay in there?” she says, shifting gears like a trucker, one moment consumed with her personal angst, then next, nothing but open concern for her older sister.

  “Fine,” I answer, staring down at the plastic fortune-teller, watching the water line to see if, by maybe a little touch of magic, it ebbs from a clear demarcation to something sort of pink, something sort of life-changing. “Just waiting.”

  Her footsteps tap over to me, so I can see the nose of her dilapidated black sneakers poke under the door. She slaps her hand up on the outside of the stall.

  “Whatever happens, Til, it’s not the end of the world,” she says. My sister, ever the pessimistic pragmatist.

  “Of course it’s not,” I mutter, focused on that damn pink line. “Watch the clock out there, tell me when three minutes have passed.”

  “Will do,” she answers, and then we both fall silent, the seconds moving forward, though I feel like I might be frozen in time. Finally, Darcy exhales and says, gently, kindly, “Time’s up,” and though my eyes haven’t strayed from the pregnancy test, I still force myself to look again, as if I might have missed something while I fixated on it for the last 180 seconds.

  But no. It’s empty. The same as it was in the box on the shelf at CVS. No perfect baby inside of me, no perfect husband to call and share in the joyous news. I’m surprised at the depth of my disappointment, at the gutting pang that echoes all the way into my bowels. I hold my hand gently on the door, mirroring Darcy, intuiting her resolve, thankful for her company, until finally, my mind grants my body reprieve, and I find the will to step forward, to step all the way the hell out of there.

  “Come on,” Darcy says, grabbing my elbow four minutes later, her solemn mood replaced by a forcefully sunny one. “It’s not the end of everything. Let’s go cheer up.”

  She hangs a left down the hall and steers toward the music lab, the place she ensconced herself through much of her high school years. Sometimes, she’d lose track of the hours, and before she had her driver’s license, I’d be dispatched to pick her up. I’d head toward the room and hear her playing long before I saw her, the melody weaving and whispering, booming and beckoning, her angst, of which she had so much, dissolving under the ivory keys. My mother always said she had a gift, but none of us really gave it much merit. We indulged Darcy’s endless hours of playing because to see her there, on the bench huddled over the lip of the piano, she morphed into someone so different: someone who hadn’t been scarred by all that she’d been scarred by. She was rounder, softer, rapt, and innocent all at once. But a gift? It was only when she was offered a full scholarship to Berklee that we understood just how precious her talent was. The letter arrived in the mail, and she held it up and said, “I told you so.” And then she walked out the front door, most likely to Dante’s, and it occurred to me just then that what should have been a triumphant moment in Darcy’s life was instead yet another hollow one. Even now, five years later, I remember so clearly wishing in that broken minute that I had known, that I had paid more attention to her talent, nurtured it rather than overlooking it, embraced it rather than assuming it was simply one more complicated yet maybe not quite remarkable attribute of Darcy.

  “So you’re really gonna do Grease?” She strides into the dilapidated music room.

  “Yeah, I think so. It’ll be fun. Like when Susie and I were seniors.”

  “Not exactly groundbreaking,” she says.

  “Why does it have to be groundbreaking?” I retort. “It’s just a musical. It’s just supposed to be fun.”

  She shrugs. “It’s just boring. That’s all. Typical Westlake.”

  “Hey.” I bite. “I love it here.”

  “Of course you do,” she says, pulling out a piano bench and plunking down. “Of course you do.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning nothing ever changes,” she says, and then her fingers curve over the keys and her shoulders melt into her upper back and her entire body shifts, almost imperceptibly, into an alter ego of sorts.

  I want to dig back at her, but I clamp down because I know she can’t help herself, that she’s simply wired to rebel against the straight and narrow, against the choices I’ve built my life upon. And anyway, she is lost in her music.

  It’s a tune I don’t recognize, likely one of her own. She hums under her breath, and I lean into the wall and watch her, this contradiction in the flesh. Her music weaves its way into me, too, transports me to a time when Tyler and I had just married, heady with lust and assuredness and hope for everything that had yet to unfold. Our bubble still intact. On weeknights, we’d sometimes convene at my dad’s house. Luanne would rush back from nursing school, and Tyler would pick up a six-pack after his shift at the store. After my dad grilled T-bones out in the yard, the scent of broiled, barbecued meat loitering through the back windows, Darcy would polish off a bowl of ice cream and play for us. Sometimes it was jazz, sometimes it was Mozart, sometimes it was improv—the melodies taking shape per her mood, offering us insight into whatever was going on inside of that tangled mind of hers—and we’d all recline in my dad’s living room, sink into the cushiness of the couch, and listen. In those cloudless moments, it was easy to think that life could be sunny forever. Or could be sunny again. Maybe that’s what it was: that if you pieced everything back closely enough, you wouldn’t actually notice the seams that exposed themselves when it all had ripped apart.

  I watch her now, folded over the piano keys, and want to shake her from her trance. I want to pull her up and scream, “Don’t you understand that if nothing changes, nothing will ever go astray!” But then she starts in on some bass notes, like a harbinger of my frustration, and I realize that of course it’s too late; everything has already twisted loose, even if I can’t pinpoint where or why or how it even began.

  The door beside me jiggers open, and a lanky man sporting faded cords that fall low on his hips moseys in. He doesn’t see me, just Darcy, who takes no notice of him, so he rechecks a paper he holds in his hand and shuffles around in a semicircle, like a broken compass, lost.

  “Can I help you?” I whisper.

  He pushes his tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose and flits his free hand through his cropped, burnished blond hair.

  “I’m sorry,” he says in a muted tone echoing mine, and then he smiles, a white, wide, beckoning beam. “I’m looking for the art room. Kelsey in the front office drew me a little map.” He holds up his crumpled piece of paper. “But I think I’ve missed it.”

  “Oh, I can show you,�
� I say. “Follow me.” I slip out the door and click it closed behind us. The door has been soundproofed, so, just like that, poof, Darcy and her music evaporate.

  “She’s amazing,” he says, gesturing behind us.

  “She is,” I say with a grin that I then let slide, that solitary pink line and the hopes I’d placed on its invisible twin pressing into my mind. “Um, if you don’t mind my asking, who are you?” I start toward the direction of the arts room.

  “Oh, apologies.” He extends his right hand. “I’m Eli Matthews. Taking over for Mr. Ransom for the summer and into the fall.”

  “Oh, I forgot!” I say, reciprocating his shake. Mr. Ransom, the arts teacher at Westlake for over thirty-five years, has taken leave to tend to his wife, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. “Well, welcome to Westlake High. I’m Tilly. The guidance counselor.”

  “Ah, the guidance counselor. You always know what’s up with everyone. You’re the one I have to get an in with.” He smiles again, and I’m immediately at ease, leaving my shadowing gloom behind me.

  We turn a corner to the farthest room in the right wing of the school. The bell bleats above us, and doors down the hall all spring open, teenagers swarming like bees from the hive.

  “Well, this is it,” I say. I jimmy the knob, but it sticks. I bend down to eyeball the tiny widget next to the knob that used to automatically unlock the door from the outside. “Give me a second. When I went here, I figured out how to break in.” I rotate my neck to crane up at him. “I spent a lot of time back here until my senior year.”

  “Art nerd?” he says jokingly.

  “Closet art nerd, I guess. Recovering art nerd, maybe. More like a cheerleader,” I say. The lock won’t give.

  “Keys,” he says, tapping my back and tugging them from his pants pocket. He wiggles his eyebrows as if he has just the cure for what ails me. Oh, Jesus, like he might have anything close to the cure for what ails me.

  The bell rings again, indicating five minutes until next period, and I remember Darcy, lost in her haze of melodies in the music lab.

  “I better go,” I say. “Glad you found it.”

  “Glad you helped,” he says as the bolt unclicks itself.

  “Anytime,” I answer, doing my best to reciprocate his cheer, and then head on my way. Of course I helped, I think. That’s what I do.

  nine

  Tyler calls and wakes me the next morning. I am dreaming that I’m pregnant, that my belly is round as a watermelon, my breasts like swollen gourds, my cheeks rose-petal pink, and that Tyler and I are still perfect. My cell vibrates on my abdomen. I fell asleep waiting for him to call, with my hands cupping my stomach, my phone tucked inside my palms.

  “Hey,” I croak.

  “It’s nine thirty. I woke you?”

  I swivel to face the nightstand and my alarm clock. “I haven’t been feeling well. I guess I slept in. Didn’t have to work today.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Everything okay?”

  I think of the failed pregnancy test. No.

  “Yes,” I say. “Everything’s fine. How’s fishing?”

  “Good, great, so good we thought we’d stay through Sunday if you don’t mind. I don’t have to be back at the store until next week.”

  “Oh, I thought we could spend the weekend together.” I close my eyes because they seem better suited to being shut right now.

  “I know …” He pauses, waiting for me to make it easier on him. “It’s just, you know, prime trout season. They’re practically jumping out of the lake for us.”

  “Okay.” I sigh. “Sure, it’s just a few days.” I throw my free hand over my face, wishing I could block out the light entirely.

  “Awesome. I love you.” He hesitates, his voice catching. “Um, listen, there’s also something else.” He coughs twice, which doesn’t sound like a real cough, more like he’s biding his time. “So, yeah, um, Jamie Rosato called.”

  I sit up quickly, too quickly, and my bedroom spins at the back of my eyes. Jamie Rosato! He and Tyler played together at the UW, back before Tyler blew out his left ACL and never fully recovered, watching his sure-thing prospect for the majors, or at the very least the minors, dissipate in one agonizing slide to home gone wrong.

  “He called, you know, like he does every year, and wanted me to come out and take a look. Their assistant fielding coach just quit to go to Oregon State.” He wavers, waiting for my response, of which I have none because I am too busy trying to process this, trying to figure out why the hell this feels a little too close to déjà vu when I know, I know, that, other than discussing Jamie Rosato’s annual phone call in which he tries to get Tyler to move to Seattle and coach at the UW, we have never had this—this exact—conversation before.

  “So, um, the thing is,” Tyler continues, “I think this year, I might consider it. Consider going. You know, maybe take a trip to Seattle and see what they say.”

  “We can’t move to Seattle!” I squeak, finally having found my voice.

  “I never said anything about moving to Seattle,” he says, a little too composed, like he envisioned this conversation and already has his answers, his bullets, wedged inside his armor. “I just, you know, want to go see what they’re offering.”

  My mouth is dry, too dry, my rotten morning breath sticky on my tongue, and I can’t answer, can’t speak.

  “Till? Tilly? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” I say, feeling like I might be sick, feeling like I might just puke all over this perfect crisp white comforter in my perfect bedroom in my perfect house, minus my perfect freaking stupid husband. I start to launch into him, my newfound temper anxious to be test-driven, but he’s already beaten me to the punch, cut me off before I can steer us down that road.

  “It’s not a big deal. Not like I’ve committed to anything,” he repeats. “But listen, we’re driving into town for some tackle. The line gets shitty here. We’ll talk about this on Sunday, I promise.” His voice cuts in and out on those last few words, I promise, more like, I p—om—is, but I know what he’s saying, even though I don’t believe him, don’t believe one single word out of his stinking mouth.

  The line goes dead, and I hurl the phone to the other side of the bed, where it lands on his pillow, then somersaults off to the floor.

  Slowly, then very very quickly, the events, the visions, this sickness that is eating away at me, these germs of anger and of honesty that are flaring inside of me, crystallize in my mind. No, no, no, of course I’m not pregnant! That would have been way too easy. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have kept telling myself these stupid, stupid fucking lies, deluding myself like being pregnant was the answer to anything!

  I replay my dream about my father and how I somehow intuited the events that had yet to happen, and then I consider Tyler and that U-Haul and the boxes toting the anthology of our lives, and it is all too clear what has happened. Ashley Simmons—her insidious, duplicitous, wan, sweaty face—flashes in my mind, and I am sure, I am as certain as I have been about anything: she changed something inside of me, virtually promised, with that smug tone of voice and omniscient mumbo-jumbo, that she was going to alter me, alter my destiny! Is this what she did? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I want to vomit, I want to punch something, I want to fly up and roar and rip someone’s face off. Instead, I grab a pillow and slam it down, which makes a pathetic thud on the bed, nothing at all representative of my fear, of my bafflement, of my anger at what she has done. It was Ashley Simmons and her idiotic judgments of my life! With that subtle smile of condescension! “I’m giving you clarity,” she said! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  This isn’t clarity, I think. This is a curse.

  It’s only later, much later, long after I’ve thrown a mishmash of clothes over my jittery limbs, long after I’ve hurled the SUV down the driveway and am on my way, long after I’ve replayed Tyler’s words and my vision and then his words again, that I stop to wonder what the most cursed part of this is: th
at I have started to see the future, or the future that I have started to see.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  My knuckles have gone white from the force with which I am pounding on Ashley Simmons’ front door. The best part of living in a town like Westlake is that even at 9:30 A.M., you are always able to track someone down via the local gossip grapevine. One call to Susanna, who made one call to Eleanor Franklin, who then made one call to Alyson Martin, and by the time I was done with my coffee, Ashley’s address—a run-down apartment complex three blocks from the high school—was mine. She lives on the second floor, the guardrail rusty and rain-faded, with a view of the Dumpster in the parking lot. The air just outside her door smells like pot, a tiny cartoonlike mushroom cloud of marijuana fumes.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  I hear a rustling from inside and someone distantly muttering, “Hang on, Jesus Christ,” and then two locks unlatch, and the door swings open.

  “What the hell time is it?” she says, her hair matted into a giant knotty ponytail smack on top of her head, like Pebbles from the Flintstones, her face smeared with yesterday’s makeup. When she glances up to see me, though, her expression evolves from chagrined to delighted, as if there is no one she’d rather greet on this early summer morning than me. “Silly Tilly Everett! I was almost expecting you!”

  From two feet away, I can smell her breath, like meat left out two days too long.

  “A) Stop calling me that. And B) whatever you did to me, undo it,” I seethe. There it is, that seed of vitriol that is spreading inside of me, that venomous bug that she unleashed when she cast her spell. Stupid, stinking Ashley Simmons!

  “Impressive,” she says, as if transcribing my thoughts. “I didn’t know you had this in you. Sweet Tilly Everett. I’ve never even heard of you losing your temper.” She smiles, cunningly, knowingly. “Never once during cheerleading practice, never once during student council, never once … ever!” She giggles, accelerating my discontent to a perilous, dangerous threshold.