Текст книги "On the Fence"

Автор книги: Kasie West

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Chapter 10

“Here she comes.” Linda pointed at the door and a girl who carried a bag big enough to hold ten soccer balls. That was all makeup? “She’s a little chatty, by the way.”

The door swung open, and the girl and her big bag came through it. She looked about my age. “Hello!” the girl said as she approached. “I almost got lost even though I’ve been here before and Old Town is tiny. For some reason I just thought you were past Fifth instead of Fourth and I was so turned around that I thought I was going to miss our time. I sent out a flyer and we should be packed this morning. I’m so excited. Where should I set up? That counter looks good. I’ll just unload there. You have a backed stool like we talked about, right?”

A little chatty? She must’ve spoken at the rate of five hundred words a minute. She looked at me. “You must be Charlie. I’m Amber. Oh, look at you, you left yourself completely blank for me, no false lashes or anything. And I even get to shape your brows? This is going to be great.” She stepped closer and studied my face. “You have the perfect skin and bone structure for this. We are going to sell lots of makeup today.”

Did she have to breathe like the rest of us? Because I didn’t hear a single breath during her speech. Deep-sea divers could train themselves to hold their breath for seven minutes at a time. Were Olympic-caliber talkers the same way?

Linda laughed like she was very amused with Amber.

“So we have about thirty minutes before the class starts. If we move some of these racks of clothes off to the side, we could set up some chairs here in the middle. Did the chairs get delivered? I called yesterday to make sure they were set to arrive this morning, but I don’t see them.”

“They’re in the back,” Linda said.

“I’ll start bringing them out.” I needed a break. She was exhausting.

“Thank you so much. I’ll get the makeup ready.”

We weren’t even five minutes into the class and I knew I never wanted to do it again. She was explaining to the group how to properly pluck eyebrows, and my face was raw from the pain. So far I had managed to keep from actually screaming out loud, but I wasn’t sure if I could keep that up. My nose itched and my eyes watered.

“Charlie already has a very nicely shaped eyebrow, so we won’t get carried away. Just a little cleaning up.”

I wondered what a lot of cleaning up would feel like. I went into a zone, completely shutting out everything around me. My brain went through basketball plays, and my shoulders immediately relaxed. Five more weeks until camp, when I was sure my dad would let me quit this job. It just wouldn’t be practical to keep it when I had to leave for a week and then start school right when I got back. He’d see the logic. Plus, by then, I’d have . . . I did the math in my head and knew I wouldn’t have quite enough to cover my tickets. Still, he’d let me off. He had to.

It was hard to tell how much time passed. I guess I could’ve counted Amber’s words and figured it out that way. She hadn’t stopped talking the entire time. But at one point she stepped to the side and said, “And that is a daytime look with the Max line.”

A couple of people said, “Ooh,” and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

“Next week we’ll showcase the evening look. There are order forms in your booklet, and please feel free to ask me any questions. Most of the products I have in stock. I’ll also be setting up a display here in Bazaar, in case you can’t buy all the things you have on your list today.”

I wondered how long I had to sit there before I could go to the back and wash my face. My leg bounced and twitched as I waited. I’d already been sitting for way too long. A couple of people walked over to talk to Amber and pointed out different things on my face like I wasn’t there. Not that I’d have been able to answer their questions, but it still felt weird.

Linda came over and patted my shoulder. “You did so well, and you look amazing.”

I shrugged.

“Sit still for a minute, I’m going to grab my camera from the back so I can take a picture for your mom.”

My stomach twisted with guilt.

When Linda left, Amber said, “Thanks, Charlie. You are the perfect canvas. Your features were made to show off makeup. I don’t believe how enormous your eyes look with mascara.”

And enormous eyes were a good thing?

Amber turned her attention to the line of people that had formed, orders in hand, and began working her way through them. Linda came back out with the camera and took several pictures of me. “I’m going to print one of these off across the street. Watch the store for me.”

“You really don’t need to do that,” I said.

But she waved her hand through the air and kept walking.

The line finally thinned and people clutching cute purple bags with tissue paper left the store, chatting. Amber said, “Don’t forget to tell your friends, and come back for the evening face next week,” as each of them walked away.

Two girls who looked as made-up as Amber joined us in front after everyone had left. “You did good, Amber.”

“So, what do you think, girls? Easy, right? You guys could each find your own store. Maybe one of you can hit a downtown shop. This is definitely going to earn me enough for my fall wardrobe.”

“So, Linda said you might have some good face wash for me?” I asked before she and her friends got too busy talking about clothes.

“You’re going to wash it off?” one of them said.

“Well, I’m playing ball after this, so it’s not really practical.”

Amber smiled, reached into her bag, and pulled out a green package. “These are face wipes. You should need just one.”

I took them. “Thanks.”

“Oh, and if you want, Charlie, I’ll give you all the makeup I used on you today at cost.”

“Um . . . I haven’t been paid yet.”

She grabbed one of the thick catalogs of makeup, turned it to the front page where there was a picture of her, and circled her phone number. “Well, call me if you change your mind. I can deliver.” She handed it to me.

Linda returned, and I pointed to the back. She nodded.

I started to walk away.

“Charlie,” Amber called. I turned around. “We’re going out to lunch, the three of us.” She pointed to her two friends. “Do you want to come?”

I couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting with three girls I hardly knew and having to think of something to say. “I have plans today. Next time?”

“Next Saturday.” She smiled. “I’m holding you to it.”

As I walked away, I pulled out a wipe and started scrubbing my face immediately. When I got to the bathroom, I stopped in front of the sink. My breath caught when I saw myself in the mirror. The image reminded me of the picture hanging in our hallway—my mom on her wedding day. My heart clenched. I scrubbed faster.

“What are you doing?” Gage asked, barging into my room after a single knock.

I slammed the picture Linda had taken of me facedown on the table. “Nothing.”

“Uh, okay. I’ll leave it alone because I don’t know if I want to know after a reaction like that.”

“Yeah, you should. What do you want?”

He fell back onto my bed. “Tomorrow we’re playing disc golf at Woodward Park. You in?”

“Of course.” I looked at the clock. Ten. “Hey, will you go running with me?”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“No, but thanks for asking.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“It’s ten o’clock. If I go run right now I’ll be up all night.”

If I don’t go run right now, I will be. “Please, Gage. I’d love you forever.”

“Hmmm, I’m pretty sure I already have that one locked down, but maybe a different bribe would work. Like showing me whatever that is.” He pointed to the picture on my desk.

No. Way. “Yeah, not going to happen. I don’t need to go running after all.” I tucked the picture into my desk drawer.

“Huh. Really? Now it is my goal in life to find out what you’re hiding.”

“That’s a pretty lame goal.”

“True. But I have this tingly feeling right here”—he pointed to his heart—“that it will be worth it.”

“Get out of here before I have to kick your butt.”

On his way out he grabbed hold of my ponytail, pulling both me and my chair backward, then lowered the chair gently to the ground.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, staring up at him from my new position on my back.

Rain pounded my window. Red rain. So hard that a single crack formed at the top of the glass and slowly splintered down in a sharp line. I watched it, the white line splitting my window into equal parts. And then suddenly it shattered, sending glass spraying into my bedroom.

I sat up with a start.

If I could control my subconscious mind, I would never ever dream. There had to be some way to solve this problem. Hypnosis or something. Maybe just a treadmill. What were the odds my dad would buy me one of those?

Downstairs, I made some hot chocolate and turned on the laptop. I Googled dream interpretation and searched for the word rain. There was always rain in my dream. I read: Falling rain is a metaphor for tears, crying, or sadness. Yeah, whatever. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. I looked up recurring dreams.

Dreams are messages, things our minds want us to learn. Recurring dreams can be really important messages. They often come in the form of nightmares. Recurring dreams could represent a real-life problem that hasn’t been dealt with or resolved. Overcoming or resolving that problem could help one move past the recurring dream.

I read the paragraph again. What credentials did a stupid online dream interpreter have anyway? I could make up garbage like this. Closing the laptop, I moved to the back door and looked over at Braden’s house. It was two a.m.; there was no way he was up again. It would be completely selfish to text him. I knew this, and yet I got my phone and stared at his name for a long time.

I put the phone down, deciding against it, and went outside. His bedroom window was dark. The whole house was dark. Maybe he’d come out on his own like he did the first time. That wouldn’t be selfish of me. I craned my neck to see if his father’s car sat in his driveway.

Wait.

I was hoping his dad would come home drunk and drive Braden outside? That was more selfish than if I just texted him.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I hope he never comes home that way again.” I placed my palm on the fence as if I had somehow just sent that message to Braden. Then I sat down on the dirt. It felt warm between my fingers. “I dream about my mom,” I said to the moon. “How is it possible to miss someone I never knew?”

If Braden were out here, what would be my match? What did he dream about? Leaving this place? He was a year older than I was, like Gage. He’d be a senior this year. And then what? I knew in my heart he’d be gone as soon as he turned in his graduation robes. With a home life like his, what did he have to stay for? My heart sank with that thought. I hoped his friendship with our family, with Gage . . . with me, might keep him here.

Chapter 11

“I know how to play,” I said, shaking Braden’s hand off my arm. “Don’t be all condescending with me.”

“I’m just trying to help your technique, Charlie.”

“I’m sorry, did you become a professional disc golf instructor and forgot to tell any of us?”

He grunted. “You’re so stubborn.”

“If I had asked for help, I would accept your help.”

Jerom joined in. “That’s the issue—you never ask for help.”

“Because I don’t need help. Now back up before I whack you all in the head with this.”

Braden took a large, deliberate step back.

I analyzed the positions of the trees around us, hoping I didn’t hit any of them and prove him right. Nature had provided plenty of obstacles in this park. A dog to our left barked and then ran past us chasing a tennis ball; its owner let out a whistle.

I shook off the distractions, stood up straighter, then threw the Frisbee. It landed within five feet of the basket. Way closer than where Braden’s sat at least ten feet from mine. “So there.”

He rolled his eyes like he wished Fate had taught me a lesson right then and he was frustrated it didn’t. Maybe he should open his eyes and see that Fate might’ve been trying to teach him a lesson.

Gage and Braden exchanged a look, and based on Gage’s sly smile, I knew they had secretly agreed on some form of punishment for my behavior.

“I’m up,” Gage said. He started to throw when Nathan stopped him.

“Your foot is over your marker.”

We all looked down at his foot, which was several inches past where his marker indicated it should be. “Nathan, don’t be anal,” Gage said.

“Fine, if you want to cheat, that’s on you.”

Gage growled and inched his foot back. He chucked his Frisbee. It careened into a bush off to the right. Nathan laughed.

“You got in my head, Nathan.”

“You let me in, sucker.”

Gage tromped off to find his Frisbee. When he came out of the bush, leaves all over his shirt, he held up his own tie-dyed Frisbee and an additional bright red one. “I found a lost soul.”

“The owner’s info should be on the back,” Jerom said.

Gage turned it over. “Lookie here. This Frisbee belongs to a Miss Lauren Fletcher.”

“A girl who plays disc golf?” Jerom said. “That’s hot.”

Gage curled his lip. “I don’t know. A girl who plays disc golf? She’s probably a dog. Some aggressive, burly thing.”

The guys laughed, not seeming to realize I was standing right there . . . playing disc golf. Maybe that’s how they saw me. Maybe that’s how most guys saw me.

Nathan grabbed the disc from Gage and shoved it in his equipment bag. “The least we can do is return her Frisbee.”

“Be my guest,” Gage said.

It wasn’t until close to the end of the course that I knew what Braden and Gage had secretly agreed to earlier. As we passed a muddy pond that tried to pretend it was a scenic lake, Braden grabbed me by my arms and Gage took hold of my feet. I kicked and struggled, but they held tight.

“You see, Jerom,” Braden said, “let me teach you the proper way to throw someone into a body of water.”

“I’ve always wondered if my technique was a little off,” he said, rubbing the patch of scruffy hair he had grown out on his chin. “Please share ways I can improve.”

“Well, first,” Gage piped up, and I managed to get a leg free and kick him in the chest. He gasped, but grabbed my leg again. “You swing them. Like so.” I moved from side to side in a big, arching swing.

“Okay, yes, I see.”

“We’re going to get kicked off the course if you throw her in,” Nathan said.

“Yes, listen to Nathan, please,” I begged. The cattails that filled the pond loomed in my peripheral vision on every downward swing.

Gage laughed. “Who’s going to kick us out? The park police?”

“Then,” Braden continued, “right when your subject reaches the height of the swing, you let go.” And they did just that. I landed with a smack in the shallow water, crushing cattails beneath me. A couple of ducks took flight and I let myself sink into the muddy water that the summer sun had turned into a warm swamp. It oozed between my fingers as I pushed myself off the bottom.

“You two are excellent teachers,” Jerom said. “Thank you for imparting your knowledge to me.”

I stood, large globs of mud splatting back to their home. “Who needs a spa treatment when I have disc golf mud therapy?” I ran a hand from my shoulder to my wrist, scraping off more mud, and then did the same on the other arm. When I exited I went straight for Gage, ready to give him a big hug. He knew that game and took off running. In my pursuit of Gage, I managed to catch Braden off guard by doubling back. I wrapped my arms around him from behind. “Whose car did we drive today?” I said, my cheek pressed against his back. “Oh, that’s right. I call shotgun.” I felt him groan.

“Your trunk is pretty big,” Nathan spoke up.

I gasped and let go of Braden. “Nathan!”

His cheeks colored. “I wasn’t serious.”

I smiled. As if he needed to clarify that. Gage came slinking back, keeping a good distance between us.

The players on the course behind us laughed as they took in the scene, then asked, “Uh, can we play through?”

“Yes,” I said, water still squishing between my toes as I walked. “Feel free. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” Braden said, faking incredulity. “But we only have two holes left. Come on, Charlie, we can’t stop now.”

I knew he was making fun of me and what I had done to Dave a few weeks ago in football, when he got the call about his grandma. The veiled rebuke stung. “Okay, let’s keep playing.”

“I was just kidding.” He put his arm around my shoulder.

I shrugged it off. “No, I want to play. You’re right, we’re almost done.”

“But you have mud dropping out of your shorts,” Braden said. “And the image isn’t a good one.”

“Shut up. Who’s up?” I asked as the players now ahead of us finished the hole. I picked up a Frisbee and marched to the throwing point.

At the car when we were finished, Braden opened the trunk.

“Don’t be a jerk,” I said. “I’m not getting in there.”

He shot me angry eyes and pulled out a blanket. “I was just getting something for you to sit on.” He handed me the blanket.

“Oh. Thanks.” I took it and wrapped it around my entire backside. “Sorry.” I shouldn’t have called him a jerk, even playfully. I knew that word bugged him.

The guys piled into the car, but Jerom stopped me, nodding his head toward where Braden sat in the driver’s seat. “How hard is it to let a guy feel useful every once in a while?”

“What?”

“Would it have killed you to listen to his pointers back there?”

I looked at Braden, then back to Jerom. Why would Braden need to feel useful? Had something made him feel un-useful? Was something going on with him that he’d talked to Jerom, the “really good listener,” about? A surge of jealousy that Jerom might know something about Braden that I didn’t coursed through me. “Yes. It might’ve killed me.”

He rolled his eyes and headed for the passenger seat.

Chapter 12

When I got to work the next Tuesday, Linda’s face was beaming with a smile of giddy anticipation.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Go change and I’ll tell you when you get done.”

She probably thought it was weird that I brought my work clothes in my backpack and came in wearing my sloppy T-shirts. But I still cared more about what my brothers thought than what she did. And I didn’t live in my mind . . . or whatever she had said. I lived in a house full of guys who loved to make fun of me. I walked out after changing and looked at her expectantly.

“Okay, close your eyes,” she said.

Playing along, I closed my eyes.

“Ready? Open them.”

I did, and she held up a check for a hundred and fifteen dollars. It was made out to me. “What’s this?”

“Your cut of the makeup session we did the other day.”

I took the check and stared at the number. And here I thought I was going to tell Linda I didn’t want to do it anymore. But if I could make over a hundred bucks just sitting there, I could handle it. It meant I’d be able to pay off my dad quicker.

“We did so well, we’re going to hold at least two more classes and see how it goes.” She pulled a flyer out from under the cupboard and handed it to me. On the upper right-hand corner of the flyer was a picture of me in full makeup.

“Whoa. What’s that?”

“Your picture. I thought you were okay with it. It’s the one we took the other day.”

“I just thought you printed off a few for my . . . family . . .” I would not mention my mom again. It really was eating me up. “. . . to see.”

“Did she like them?”

“Yeah. They were great.” That wasn’t a lie, right?

“I apologize. I should’ve asked you. It just turned out so well, I offered it to Amber.”

I stared at the picture again. It was just a dumb flyer. Hopefully no one would recognize me. My friends and brothers weren’t exactly in the market for makeup.

That night I couldn’t sleep. My brain kept spinning. It was only midnight, earlier than my normal middle-of-the-night waking, so when I looked out the window and saw the light on in Braden’s room, I texted: Up?

Yeah, see you in one minute, he texted back almost immediately.

I heard his back door shut right after mine. We arrived at the fence together. He leaned his shoulder against the board and I could smell his deodorant. It was a sharp, clean scent.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Feeling restless.” I sat down, back to the fence, and listened as he did the same.

“No run again today?”

“No.”

“Are you out here every night you don’t run?”

“No. Aside from the two nights with you, I’ve only been out here one other time.”

“You should’ve texted me.”

“It was two in the morning.”

“So?”

“I may be selfish, but even I felt bad about that.”

He laughed.

I didn’t know why I texted him to come out here. It wasn’t like I had anything important to discuss. In a way it was nice to know I wasn’t alone in my middle-of-the-night world. My brothers slept like the dead. How was it that my brain wouldn’t shut off? I felt guilty asking my brothers about my mom. I didn’t want to be the one to make everyone else miserable when they had moved on. Maybe they’d moved on because they had real memories to hang on to while my brain had to make up its own. Why did my brain have to be so morbid about it?

“Why do you run so much, anyway?”

“I need to stay in shape for basketball or I’m in pain those first several weeks of practice.”

“So you run, what, six . . . seven miles a day to save yourself from two weeks of pain? It seems like you’re training for a marathon, not a basketball game.”

“Well, it helps me sleep, too.”

“Most people don’t need to exhaust themselves in order to sleep.”

“True. A lot of people just take sleeping pills.”

He let out a single laugh, the way he always did when something someone said surprised him. “Yes. I guess your way is more natural.” There was a long pause. “You’re good at avoiding questions, but what I’m asking is why you can’t sleep.”

He was just a disembodied voice, I told myself. I could talk to a disembodied voice. Or the moon. I could always talk to the moon. I found it in the sky, minding its own business, only half lit.

Finally, I said, “I have nightmares.” He must’ve sensed it was better to talk as little as possible, because he just waited. “About my mom and the night she died. My brain seems to think it’s fun to give me every scenario, even impossible ones. It’s pretty much the only memory I have from when I was little . . . that night. I don’t even know if any of it is real or if my mind has made all of it up.” I had never told anyone about my nightmares, not even Gage, who knew more than most about the inner workings of my brain. It felt strangely freeing, like I was putting it out there for the moon to deal with.

“What happens in them?”

“Different things—rain and breaking windows and cars. And my mom, of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate it. Running equals dreamless nights.”

“Well, that makes a lot more sense than the basketball excuse.”

“It helps for basketball too.”

“I’m sure.” After several minutes he said, “You learned how to ride your bike when you were four. I was so jealous because I still had training wheels.”

I was relieved he had switched to our useless-facts game and said, “I remember your training wheels.”

“You do? Because right after you learned how to ride your bike, I spent that entire Saturday learning how to ride without them. You shamed me into it.”

I smiled and tried to think of something I remembered about him as a child, to match his fact. “How about in the first grade when you told your teacher that my dad was really your dad and you yelled ‘This man is trying to kidnap me’ when your father tried to take you home? Your dad was so embarrassed.”

“Yes, that was back in the days when I was jealous you all had each other and I didn’t have any siblings.”

“Now you’re trapped in the craziness. You’re one of us, baby, whether you want to be or . . .” I trailed off as his real intention of bringing up my bike-riding hit me. He wasn’t jumping back into the game. “Wait. I was four?”

“Yes.”

“So my mom was alive when I learned how to ride my bike.” I searched my memory, trying hard to picture her there, out in front of the house, watching me learn. I could clearly picture my dad holding on to the back of my bike, running along beside me. I kept telling him to let go. He wouldn’t. Was my mom watching us?

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just let me ride around the block,” I had said. “I’ll go with her,” Jerom offered. He had been riding circles around me. He must’ve been almost nine at the time. We went around the block, and it wasn’t until the first corner that I realized I hadn’t practiced turning without training wheels yet. Fear stopped me from trying and I ran straight into the street sign. Jerom picked me up, put me back on the bike, and pointed me in the right direction. I crashed on every single corner, but made it home with only one scraped knee.

Had my mom taken care of it?

No. It was my dad. I knew that. I remembered sitting on the counter as he blew on it and told me I was tough. How was it possible I could have these detailed memories and not remember different times, different events, where my mom spent time with me?

“She looked a lot like you do now.”

My throat constricted a little. “Yeah.” I already knew that. Aside from the wedding picture in the hall, we had a box of pictures of her. That’s how I remembered her, in still snapshots—standing next to me when I blew out three candles on a cake, looking up in surprise from where she sat on the couch reading a book, wearing a baseball cap and cheering on Jerom at his Little League game. I remembered the pictures, not the events. “What else do you remember about her?”

“She was quiet. . . .” He hesitated. “She used to come over and talk to my mom. One time I went into the kitchen where they were talking and she was crying.”

“What?”

“I remember it clearly because I was afraid my mom would get mad at me for interrupting them.”

“What would my mom have to be sad about?”

“I’m not sure. My mom was rubbing her back and she was—”

“How old were you?” I adjusted my back against the fence.

“I don’t know. Around seven, I guess.”

“How could you remember that?”

“It’s just one of those vivid memories.”

Irrational anger surged in my chest and I wasn’t sure why. “Well, maybe she was worried about your mom. Maybe she was pleading with your mom to leave your jerk of a dad.”

“My dad didn’t start drinking until his back injury five years ago.” His voice was tight, hurt.

I stood. “Well, my mom had a perfect life, so I don’t know what she’d have to be sad about.”

“Charlie.”

“I’m tired.” I went back in the house, letting the door shut harder than I should’ve.