Girl Against the Universe (14 page)

He pets my hair. “Shit. I guess I should've quit while you were making fun of my socks.”

I hug him even tighter. I never once considered that the past hurt Tom too, but it makes sense. Of course he would struggle with knowing that my mom never would have married him if my dad hadn't died, that so many of the things he loves are a product of tragedy.

“It is hard to be happy,” I whisper. “It's like I'm betraying them. Like I got to live, so that should be more than enough. Like wanting to feel good is almost greedy. God, you're one
of the only people who gets it. I had no idea.”

He pats my back tentatively. “Yeah, I don't think we've ever talked like this before.”

I shake my head. “Me neither.”

“Maybe we can do it again sometime when it's not two a.m.”

“I'd like that,” I say. And I mean it.

“I can't believe you do sessions on Sundays,” I tell Daniel.

He turns off his music. “I don't have a receptionist on the weekend, but when your clients are kids and teenagers, you have to work around a lot of school schedules.” He takes a sip of coffee. “I'm glad I could fit you in, because your mom made it sound urgent. What's going on?”

I swallow hard and start to tell him about what happened to Penn, but tears form in my eyes and I can't get the words out.

He hands me a box of tissues. And waits.

“Tell me about your music,” I say suddenly. I blot my eyes and then ball the tissue in my hand.

“You're not here to talk about my music.”

“I know, but I need a minute. I need to think about something other than me. So that guitar music you're always listening to—is it you?”

“It's my girlfriend,” Daniel says.

“Is she sad? It always sounds so sad.”

“I don't know,” he says. “I guess that's why I'm always playing it, trying to find her in the chords, trying to understand her. I'm not very creative. Sometimes I feel like our brains are wired completely differently.”

“You don't play too? But you have those music magazines. I thought maybe you had a secret second life.”

“I think everyone has a secret second life.” A smile touches his lips. “But no. I don't play. Reading music magazines is just my way of trying to see the world through her eyes. She gets mad when she catches me. She thinks I'm analyzing her.” He makes air quotes around the word “analyzing.”

“Are you?”

“Maybe?” Daniel shrugs. “I like to think of it as trying to appreciate something that means a lot to her.”

I nod. “That makes sense.”

“So what happened yesterday?”

I take a breath. “This girl on the tennis team invited me to go watch a tennis match. Jordy's sister, actually,” I admit. It seems pointless to keep hiding the fact that I know Jordy from Daniel. It's too hard to be honest if I have to keep half of everything a secret.

“And?”

“It started out okay. I told her about being afraid to drive with other people. She was really cool about it and we made it to the tennis complex just fine. Jordy won the first set easily. Then he lost the second set. We went downstairs to go
get food.” My lower lip trembles. “She tripped on the way back up. Her hands were full. She landed on her face.”

“Ouch,” Daniel says. “Is she okay?”

“She said she is, but there was all this blood.” I shudder just thinking about it. “Her mom took her to the hospital, and Jordy forfeited so he could go with her.” I inhale deeply. “And I feel like both of those things are my fault.”

Daniel drums his fingertips on the edge of his chair. Then he says basically everything I thought he would say about how what happened was unfortunate but wasn't on par with a fire or a major accident or eight people getting sick at a slumber party. “It sounds like she slipped because she had her hands full and was hurrying.”

“I know you're probably right,” I say. “But I can't help but think if I hadn't driven her, she wouldn't have gone. She wouldn't have gotten food. She wouldn't have gotten hurt. Jordy wouldn't have had to forfeit. It's just not fair.”

“Well, first off, your thought process is flawed,” Daniel says. “If you hadn't given her a ride, maybe she would've borrowed her parents' car and tried to drive herself and gotten in an accident. She could've gotten hurt worse.”

“I guess,” I mumble.

“No section for that in your luck notebook, is there? All the bad things that might have happened that you actually prevented?”

“I can't quantify things that don't happen,” I protest.

“Then it seems like your data is incomplete, which brings
me to my next point. Are you familiar with the concept of selective attention?”

“No.”

“So if I asked you to write down everything you've done in the past week, it'd include going to six classes a day for five days, tennis tryouts, going to and from school, dinner with your family, other stuff, I'm guessing, right?”

“Yeah?”

Daniel taps some notes into his tablet. “And nothing bad happened during any of that stuff.”

“True.”

“But something bad happened at the tennis tournament, so that's all your brain can focus on.” He continues before I can respond. “I am not trying to say what you went through when you were younger wasn't unusual or excessive. I'm simply saying this might be different. After all, it isn't like everyone else got hurt and you were the only person who didn't suffer. It just feels like that because Jordy and his sister are your friends.”

“Maybe.” I sigh. “Why am I like this?”

“I have my thoughts,” Daniel says. “But that answer needs to come from you.”

“How do I figure it out?”

“Keep going with your therapy challenges. You can do number three over if you want, but keep in mind that it's unrealistic to expect all of these to go off without a hitch. No one died. No one got seriously injured. That's what matters.
And I have an idea for number four: get angry at the Universe. Can you do that?”

I think about walking around the block with Jordy last night. How unfair it felt that I couldn't do anything without someone getting hurt. “That's my challenge? Get angry? Done.”

“Good,” Daniel says. “Now you need to take back something the Universe has stolen from you.”

“What do you suggest?”

“That's up to you.”

I think about all the things I've lost, all the things I've given up. My family, my friends, my hobbies . . . my personality. I'm not the person I would have grown up to be if I hadn't been in those accidents. The Universe has taken almost everything.

I like the idea of taking something back.

Back at school on Monday, I find myself dreading the end of the day and tennis practice.

Part of me needs to see Jordy, but part of me wants to avoid him forever. I try to put him out of my head.

But I fail. I fail in first hour and second hour. In third hour we have a test, so I manage to replace the hurt in his eyes and the tightness of his voice with trigonometric functions for about forty minutes. I'm just settling in on the steps outside of the school with my lunch and a book about an Irish girl who finds out she's part faerie when I see his car pull into the parking lot.

I half-expect him to avoid me, but he strolls up the steps in his warm-up pants and T-shirt almost like nothing happened. I want to look up at him, see him smile, hear him say that everything is fine. But instead I concentrate really hard on my sandwich, because that's easier.

He drops his backpack and tennis bag on the ground and
sits next to me on the steps. “Why do you always eat by yourself?”

“I like eating by myself. Gives me time to read.” Without having to monitor everything.

“I won't stay long then.” He nudges my flip-flop with his tennis shoe. “Are we cool?”

I look over at him. He's backlit by the sun so his form is shaded. He looks unreal, like a photograph of a shadow. It's impossible not to think about my face against his chest, and then, later, his jaw against my temple, his mouth in my hair. It is impossible not to stare at his lips and wonder.

Crap. He's waiting for me to answer, and I'm sitting here gawking at him like a freshman girl. I swallow hard as I try to figure out what to say. I want us to be friends.

I want more than that, but I know I can't keep pulling him close and then pushing him away when I get scared. “Well, from what I hear, you're cool,” I say finally. “I'm more of a work in progress.”

“You'll get there. You're still young.” He grins. “Sorry I went all sensitive guy on you. It was sort of an intense weekend.”

“Don't apologize for being you.” He's working so hard to hold on to his identity. The last thing I want is for him to feel like he has to censor himself around me.

He gasps in mock outrage. “Are you calling me a sensitive guy?”

“Don't worry.” I bump my knee against his “Your secret's safe with me.”

“You're the only girl who knows all my secrets. Well, you and my sister.” He snatches my sandwich right out of my hands and takes a bite out of it. “I've got to go barely pass a geometry exam,” he says through a mouthful of roast beef and cheese. He hands the sandwich back to me. “See you at practice.”

Coach ramps up our physical conditioning today, so we have to run a mile. I run with Jade as usual. We make our own pace—one quick enough to satisfy Coach but slow enough that we can talk without getting short of breath. I can't help but sneak a peek at Jordy as we run by the spot where he and Coach stand chatting.

Jade bursts out laughing as we round the far corner by the football goalposts for the third time. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What?” I ask, my footsteps and heart pounding in tandem.

“You too?” She glances over at me, her dark eyes wide with glee. “I thought I had finally . . . met someone else . . . immune to Jordy's charm.” The words come out in small gasps.

“I'm immune,” I say, struggling not to think about Saturday, about what it felt like to be wrapped in Jordy's sweaty
embrace. To hear him say that he likes me.

“Please. You look in his direction every time we pass. You are so not immune.”

I give Jade a little push as we pass the home team bleachers. “Am too.”

“Then why are you grinning like you just won Wimbledon right now?”

“Maybe I'm having fun,” I shoot back.

“No one has fun running. It's unnatural.”

I laugh. “Maybe I'm having fun with you.”

Jade starts to speak and then stops as Colleen and her doubles partner, Luisa, pass us on the inside. She slows until they're a few yards ahead of us and then says, “Maybe you're having fun with Mr. Off Limits.” She leaps over a crack in the asphalt. “You'd tell me, wouldn't you?”

“There's nothing to tell,” I say firmly, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt. No need to start up a bunch of team gossip, especially not with Kimber acting like Jordy belongs to her.

“Well, he sure did a number on your serve,” Jade says. “Just be careful. Like I said before, he's got a bit of a reputation, and it's obvious he likes you.”

We finish our last lap and slow to a walk. “So what have you heard exactly?” I ask.

“Nothing specific. Just that he's been known to hook up with girls at parties and then make like it never happened afterward. Probably an overblown rumor, like everything else.”

“Girls including Kimber?”

“Maybe. Don't they seem awfully tight to you?” Jade threads her fingers together behind her head and takes big gulps of air. “I swear Coach is trying to kill us with all this conditioning.”

“It's helping though, right?” I say absentmindedly. I'm trying to reconcile the Jordy I know with the kind of guy who hooks up at parties and then pretends it didn't happen.
We kissed once.
It's a struggle. Nothing about the way he acts makes me think he would treat a girl like that.

“Helping me think I should have gone out for softball instead,” Jade mutters.

Coach Hoffman is standing right inside the gate as we enter the tennis courts. His clipboard has a list of hitting partners. Almost everyone else has paired off already. “Go ahead and get to work,” he says. “Everyone should play as much of a set as they can in the next hour.”

Jade gives me a little wave and then meets up with her doubles partner. I'm assigned to Penn, but she showed up late and is still finishing her mile run. I take a seat on the far side of the court and do a little extra stretching while I wait.

I fold one leg behind me and lie back on the ground. It's a beautiful day as usual, the bright sun warming the asphalt beneath me, fluffy white clouds floating in a perfect blue sky. I switch legs and then lie back again, inhaling deeply. A butterfly floats by—a monarch with brilliant orange wings. I reach for it, but a gust of wind pushes it beyond my fingertips.
I close my eyes and listen to the sound of shoes squeaking, the rhythmic thwapping of tennis balls.

It occurs to me that this is nice, that occasionally the Universe gives me a serene and peaceful moment. Then I open my eyes and sit up. I do a five-second check, just in case.

“Hey, sleepyhead!” Penn shouts

I bounce to my feet as I see her approach. I suck in a sharp breath as she draws near. Half her face is swollen; the skin around her eye is an ugly bluish-green color.

“Oh my God. Can you see out of that?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “It looks worse than it is.”

“I still can't believe you fell.”

“I can't believe Jordy forfeited just to come to the hospital.” She swishes her braid back over her shoulder. “He is the best brother ever.”

“Yeah, that was pretty great of him.”

She pulls a ball out of a pocket in her trunks and bounces it repeatedly on the strings of her racquet. “You don't know the half of it. My mom yelled at him for like an hour for doing that, and for once he didn't apologize to her. He just took it and then asked me what I wanted to do on my birthday. Which was the best birthday ever.”

“You had the best birthday ever with a broken face?”

“Girls. Less talk, more play,” Coach calls from the next court.

“I'll tell you later,” Penn says. She hits both tennis balls
in my direction. “You serve first.”

I try my hardest, but Penn is a lot better than I am, and she quickly wins our set 6–2. Still, I manage to squeak in a couple of service winners, so I'm not completely bummed about losing. Despite starting late, we're one of the first pairs to finish, so Coach has us do some extra calisthenics up on the field while we wait for everyone else.

We each do twenty-five push-ups and then hold each other's feet while we do fifty sit-ups. Penn cranks out her first forty-five at high speed. Then she collapses back to the ground, breathing heavily. “So anyway, about my birthday.” Her tanned skin is flushed red as she slowly rises up to touch her elbows to her knees again. “There was this band I wanted to see play up in LA, but my parents said no way since my friend only has a provisional license and wouldn't legally be able to drive us. But then Jordy totally agreed to play chauffeur since he didn't have anywhere to be.”

Her expression goes from concentration to joy as she completes her last sit-up. She lowers her head to the grass and mimics taking a nap. “And before that I practiced driving with him and my dad. And Jordy and I went to lunch with my parents and hit the climbing gym for a couple of hours. I had so much fun.”

We switch positions and I begin my sit-ups. “That sounds like a very busy day. Weren't you still sore from falling?”

“A little bit, but my brother is always out of town for my birthday. It was so cool to have him home that I didn't want
to waste it. The whole family took turns picking stuff to do.”

“So you guys are into rock climbing?” I can't keep the envy out of my voice. I've driven past the climbing gym a couple of times since we moved here and always wished I felt safe enough to give it a try.

Penn tosses her hair back from her face. “More him than me. My mom hates it because she says it's dangerous. He hardly ever goes anymore.”

“That's too bad,” I say. My abs are beginning to burn, but I'm not even halfway finished. “Your parents like to control everything, huh?”

She adjusts her hold on my shoes. “They like to control Jordy for sure. Forget arranged marriages; my brother has an arranged life. I guess he feels like they made a lot of sacrifices for him, so now he owes them.”

I nod. Luisa and Colleen join us on the field, with the second doubles team right behind them. Penn looks over her shoulder at her brother. “Those two must be playing a whole match. There's no way he hasn't smoked her by now.”

I watch Kimber run back and forth from corner to corner, refusing to give up as Jordy drills shot after shot back across the net, seemingly with ease. She manages to win the point when he aims for the sidelines and hits the ball just wide. She does a little cheer, and Penn rolls her eyes.

“You're supposed to cheer when you hit a winner. Not when someone else screws up,” she says.

Coach whistles and motions for everyone to gather around Court One. We all jog back down the hill and onto the first court, where Kimber is mopping the sweat from her brow.

“You went easy on me,” Kimber tells Jordy. “I've never won more than one point in a row off you before.”

“Not that easy,” he says teasingly. “What can I say? You're finally getting good.” He slings an arm around her shoulder, and she smiles; it's maybe the happiest I've ever seen Kimber.

I wonder about their relationship again. It's obvious she's crazy about him. But if he hooked up with her while having no intention of dating her, why would she still like him so much? Kimber does not strike me as a girl who would let herself be manipulated or used.

After Coach dismisses us, part of the team heads for the parking lot and the rest of us head for the locker room. I'm walking with Jade and Penn, with Colleen and Luisa right behind us.

“Maguire?”

I turn to see Jordy loping across the blacktop. “Yeah?” I say.

He stops a few feet back from us. “Can I ask you something?”

Jade gives me a sideways glance, her mouth curling into a smile.

I shoot her a glare in response. “Catch up with you guys
in a few,” I say. I fall back alongside Jordy. “What's up?”

“So are you still going to let me help you with your shrink assignments?”

“I'm not sure if that's a good idea.”

He slouches a little. “Oh. I was going to ask for your help again with mine, but you probably don't want to do that either.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Just hanging out sometime.”

“Jordy, come on. Your therapy challenges are not to hang out with me.”

“Well, technically I'm supposed to hang out with someone who makes me feel stronger.”

I laugh out loud. “And that's me? Why? Because I'm so weak?”

He slugs me in the arm. “Yeah. You and your home run ground strokes. That's you because I don't feel like I'm constantly letting you down.”

I don't respond right away. I'm staring at the silver carabiner clipping his water bottle to his tennis bag. I hear Daniel telling me to take something back. I haven't rock climbed since the car accident. And Jordy—he's fun to be around. I like him. I don't want to have to avoid him. I don't want the Universe to steal him too. What about taking back two things? “Do you want to go rock climbing with me?” I blurt out.

Jordy's eyes light up. “Seriously? I would love to.”

“Penn told me you guys went on her birthday, that it's something you really like.” I shrug. “I haven't gone in years, but I have all the gear.”

He fiddles with the strap of his backpack. “The gym actually has everything we'd need.”

“Forget the gym,” I say. “Have you ever been to Joshua Tree?”

“Yeah. Penn and I drove through with my parents. The scenery is beautiful, but I don't know enough to rig climbs there.”

“I know enough,” I say. “My dad and uncle used to bring my brother and me with them to parks all over California, but I quit climbing when they died. I'm supposed to take back something the Universe stole from me. Maybe we can help each other at the same time.”