I found a book once, its unlined pages filled with her flowy script, and a second—sometimes illegible—chunky text. Some pages were poems, some were letters, but both people wrote flowery words of love. My mom and this person were going to spend their lives together, they were both certain of it.
Whoever the man was who wrote those things to my mother, he wasn’t my father. My dad left soon after I was born, and from what my mother says, it was the nicest thing he ever could’ve done for us. She doesn’t talk much about him, only to say he had a penchant for making bad choices.
The words in that book, the larger-than-life promises, came from a man my mother refuses to talk about. A few months ago our building’s fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, and as we hurried from the apartment, my mother had the book clutched to her chest.
When the tenants trudged back to their apartments after the false alarm, I watched my mother lift the cover to her face and briefly hold it against her cheek.
I don’t think I ever want that for myself. To be so hung up on someone I can’t move on. To let the past keep me in its clutches. I also don’t want to be in the clutches of what’s gripping Sky right now. With her hand over her heart, she draws in a gulp of air. Her slow exhale rattles out of her.
“Are you okay?” I flip on the light and go sit beside her on my bed. I don’t know why she chooses my bed whenever this happens, but she does it without fail.
“Getting there,” she says, placing her free hand on mine.
I stay with her, listening to her draw in a breath. I hold her hand, breathe with her, and do the only thing I know to do to help her.
“I met someone.” Met? Such a passive word for what happened when he dragged me from the lake. Hedemolishedmy senses.Fracturedmy sanity. I wasshatteredby his stoicism, and the desire for excitement that run through him like an undercurrent.
Her head snaps up. Surprised eyes search my face for the possibility of a joke.
“For real?”
“Um hmm.” I dig my big toe into the purple cloud-shaped rug that lies between our twin beds.
“Well, come on. Tell me more.” She turns so she’s facing me, one leg up on the bed. Her face doesn’t look stricken anymore, the way it did when she let me in.
“He was nice. Really nice.” Another lame word.Hypnotizing. Soul-infiltrating. Agonizingly beautiful.We’ve gone to school together for almost four years, so I already knew he was gorgeous. He became beautiful when he thought he was rescuing me. When I saw his need to understand my swim, subsequent dance, and his curiosity and desire to experience it too. When he shed the skin of unflappable soccer god, and looked at me like I held the key to his whole life, he stopped being merely gorgeous.
His face when he thought I needed saving… Determined, persistent. In that moment, I was the most important thing in the world to him. A stranger mattered enough to dive into a lake fully dressed.
It’s hard to explain why I got in the lake. Mostly just to do it. To experience the chilly water, my limbs dancing despite the temperature. I heard that cold water is invigorating, so I thought,why not?
Turns out, the person who made that claim about cold water is right. I was full of energy after being in the lake. Full enough that I asked Noah Sutton to dance with me. Even knowing he has a girlfriend. It didn’t mean anything. Yet in that moment, the way he was looking at me as if he didn’t believe a person could move their body without hearing music, it seemed like I owed it to him to show him how unimportant real music could be. After all, he did think he was saving me from drowning. The least I could do was remove some of his blinders.
“I need more than nice,” Sky complains. “Flannel socks are nice. So is the check grandma sends on my birthday. Give me more.” She’s animated now, no longer frightened of the feeling in her chest.
“He was at the lake. I went there to…”
I don’t want to lie, but I also don’t want to anger Sky. She hates it when I follow through on my wild ideas.Just like Mom, she says, with disapproval she doesn't attempt to conceal. Sky see’s Mom’s sense of adventure as irresponsible. She doesn't like it when Mom brings home cake for dinner, or saves boxes because maybe we could cover them with washi tape and make a magazine holder. Sky believes in roles, and to her, our mother is not fulfilling hers.
“I went there to be alone for a while. Meditate. Be one with nature. That crunchy stuff.” I smile when I say it.Crunchyis her favorite word when it comes to describing me, even though I tell her she’s wrong. I wash my hair, and I don’t make my own shoes out of cardboard and rope.
She barks a laugh, and tells me to stop stalling.
I settle back, my palms on the bed behind me. “There was a guy there jogging. I recognized him, of course.” I sayof coursebecause who wouldn't know who Noah Sutton is?
He’s a legend at Northmount. With thick hair the color of straw, and wide shoulders that seem to stretch into forever, he walks the halls of our high school as if they were made for him to step foot there. The girls whisper about him, the guys boast about his abilities on the soccer field. The only person people talk more about is Tripp Benson. He’s a carbon copy of Noah, except he has white-blond hair and no desire to do well in school. The girls fall all over him, too, and he rules the soccer field.
None of this is information I’ve learned firsthand. It’s amazing what you can glean when you don’t talk to anybody.
“It was Noah Sutton. He didn’t know who I was, of course.” Thisof courseis because I go out of my way to stay hidden. Paired with the fact that we've never had a class together, this means I’ve pretty much been transparent to him.
Sky groans, her hands on her eyes. She shakes her head. “Why him, Ember?”
“What are you talking about?” The image of Noah standing on the shore, water droplets from the bottom of his soaked shorts making polka-dots in the sand, sticks to my mind. I want to protect it from my sister’s dubiousness, from whatever she thinks she has to be skeptical about.
Her eyes are on me, her hands placed on the bed between us. “We’re talking about Brody Sutton’s little brother, right?”
“I think so,” I say slowly. The name sounds vaguely familiar.
