The Secret Side of Empty (8 page)

“Yeah, they said we’d meet by the vending machines outside the gym. But we shouldn’t move in too big a pack or you’ll look too intimidating for him to come up to you,” says Chelsea. I wonder where she got the Boy Decoder Ring and if she’ll let me borrow it.

Chelsea has had three Serious Boyfriends, including the last one, the unfortunate Jonathan. I’ve been sworn to keep her from him even if she goes temporarily insane and latches on to his leg as he tries to get away.

I have had none. I had my first kiss in the eighth grade with creepy little Matthew Gibbons. Plus that weird email thing with the kid from chemistry last year who used to write me all these sappy things but then never actually wanted to see me in person. I’ve had my share of “my friend says his friend says he says you might be cute”s along the way, but nothing that has ever turned into anything.

Laurie and her friends aren’t by the vending machines. I take in a deep breath when Chelsea says, “Let’s see if they’re inside,” and we step in the yawning jaws of their gym.

It’s even bigger than I remember. If that’s even possible. Giant banners line the top of walls: willow falls regional, home of the raiders. state champions. regional champions. Lacrosse, football, baseball. I guess if you’ve got, like, 200,000 students, a few of them must be good at everything.

The music bounces off the walls, tinny and uninspiring radio songs. Unless these guys have stadium-quality sound, there’s no way they’re going to get the volume high enough to matter. Everyone is in pockets, like I remember them, except for one group of surfer haircut guys who are dancing like maniacs right at the entrance, either hopelessly in need of attention or completely high. The freshmen look about four years old, hovering near the door, intimidated.

Finally, Chelsea spots them.

“Hey,” says Laurie, “you made it.”

“Yeah,” says Chelsea.

“I don’t know why we come to these. They’re so lame.”

“Habit?” I say.

“I guess. Plus it’s weird that there will only be a few more of these and then we’re all off to college.”

Well, some of us. Isn’t
somebody
going to slack in this crowd?

“You all right after practice?” says Joon, one of our best forwards, to Chelsea. Chels had an epic crash with someone’s elbow during our last practice that looked like it might have rattled one of her eyeballs loose. I tried to get her to sit out for the rest of the practice but she wouldn’t.

“Yeah, fine.”

“I can’t wait for college guys,” says Laurie. “Everyone here is so useless.”

I don’t want to break it to her that it’s these high school guys and guys just like these who will be college guys next year.

“No one interesting?” asks Chelsea. Good, Chelsea, good. I have instructed her to get whatever intel she can on Nate, but not to reveal my interest. “What about those tennis guys? We had the weirdest thing with them on the strip the other day.”

“Who?”

“Ferriss. And some kid Nate. A few others.”

“Oh, probably Jackson was there. Crazy, kind of hyper?”

“Curly black hair?”

“Yep, him.”

“Yeah, he totally terrorized my cousin while she was visiting.”

“He’s nuts. The other ones are marginally normal. Ferriss has been going out with Tracy for, like, two years. Nate was seeing that girl from chem, what was her name?”

“Naomi,” offers Joon helpfully.

Argh. Kick to the stomach.

“I thought they broke up?” says Laurie.

“I don’t know. I thought someone said they saw them at the movies.”

“No, they broke up at the end of the summer,” says Laurie. “Anyway, he’s cute, right?”

I shrug. I don’t know these girls well enough to trust them with my hots for Nate. Plus, Nate and I had, like, one conversation. I don’t want to seem all stalker-y and pathetic. Which I am, but he doesn’t need to know.

The dance goes on like this, no sign of Nate, no dancing, just gossip and soccer talk, college visit stories. The Nate question is forgotten after three spectacular break-up stories, one involving an overdose of aspirin and a guy pulled out of school for a month of rehab. By the end of the dance, I’m tired of hoping. I’m feeling kind of stupid for making Chelesa suffer through a Willow dance for nothing.

“C’mon, Chels, we’ve got to get home.”

“You sure you guys don’t want to go to the diner?” asks Laurie.

“No,” says Chelsea, “we should get home.” I am sleeping over at Chelsea’s house, and her parents are pretty strict on curfew.

We pull into Chelsea’s drive, say a quick hello to her dad, who is watching a Vietnam documentary on what can only be described as a movie theater screen. We go up to her room. I change into sweats and a T-shirt, and Chelsea puts on pink pajama bottoms with hot pink monkeys on it and an old T-shirt from Boston College. She pulls her laptop on her lap while she chews on a Twizzler.

“So he didn’t go,” she says.

“I know, whatever.”

She stares at her screen, then gets in closer.

“M, check it out. Laurie just posted a picture on her wall. Isn’t that him?”

I scoot in next to her and look. Yes, it’s him in a red sweater, crammed into a booth with Laurie, Joon, and a few other guys, all grinning wide for the camera. God, he looks good in red.

“Isn’t that the diner? Laurie just posted it from her phone.”

“Whatever.”

“You should friend him,” she says.

“I’m not friending him.”

“I’m logging out and you’re friending him.”

“No, Chels! That’s desperate. I don’t want to.”

“Fine, okay.” She drops it, and I’m grateful. “But check your account if you want. I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

As she pads off down the hall, I log into Facebook. The friend request icon is lit up with a red 1. I click on it.

Friend request from Nate Robinson. With an email. It says:

“Hey, Laurie said you were at the dance but I looked and looked and didn’t see you. I got there kind of late, I guess that’s why. I can’t keep chasing you around town, so how about we be friends on here?”

I lift my hopes back up and hold them in my hands as I click “Accept.”

T
HE
KITCHEN
IN
C
HELSEA
’
S
HOUSE
IS
BLINDINGLY
,
SPARKLY
WHITE
.
There is a slab of marble on a giant island holding a bowl of apples big enough to stock the produce section of any reasonably sized supermarket. No one family could ever eat that many. Food as decor.

Chelsea grabs some frozen waffles and puts them in a toaster oven which is magically hidden behind some cabinet doors, like the refrigerator and everything else.

“So . . .” You can tell she’s been holding the conversation off until the right time. “We’re going to Siobhan’s, right?”

“Yeah.” I’m still a little stunned my parents agreed. But they did.

“So here’s what I think we should do today. How about we go to the DMV so you can take your written test? We can practice driving all weekend and see if they’ll take you for a driving test before we go on the road trip. We should have two drivers, just in case.”

I can’t get a driver’s license, but I can’t explain why to Chelsea. I’ve looked at the list of “points” you need even to apply to take the test. I don’t have any of them. Social Security card. Passport. Birth certificate. I take a moment to throw little hate daggers in the general direction of my parents. For the thousandth time.

As we all started turning sixteen and a half, everyone began to take their driver’s test. When my turn came, I blew it off with lame excuses. Chelsea was relentless for a while, but then she got old enough for her license and got her Beemer as a reward. She had dropped it. Until now.

“There’s no way I can take the test before next weekend,” I say.

“You never know. Let’s go and ask.”

“I haven’t studied for the test.”

“Oh, please, M, you helped me study so much you probably have that book memorized.”

“Yeah, yellow means speed up, right?”

“I’ll drive you by your place and you can get your birth certificate.”

Why is Chelsea being a pitbull all of a sudden? My heart is pounding so hard I am afraid I might pass out.

“I don’t think my mom keeps it there. I . . .”

“You wanna call her? We can drive her to the bank deposit box if she doesn’t keep it at home.”

Bank deposit box. That’s funny. She’s both my best friend and also someone who lives on a completely different planet. It’s like she’s a native and I’m trying to explain where I come from to her, but she’s got no words for “road” or “building.”

“Chels, seriously, I just don’t want to.”

“I don’t get it. You can practice in my car.”

She looks at me for a minute, then goes further than she’s gone before. “M, you act like it’s this big difference, that because my parents have more money than yours do it’s, like, a thing.”

“An ironic conversation to be starting over a slab of marble that took six guys to carry in here. And we’re talking about cars and licenses anyway.”

“You think this stuff
means
anything? This is my parents’ stuff. When I leave here, it stays with them. I’m probably going to go into the Peace Corps or Teach for America or something and live in a ratty apartment and eat ramen noodles. I just happen to have this car right now that you could just happen to drive so I don’t have to drive the whole time there and back. Whose stuff is whose doesn’t matter.”

“Jeez, Chels, can you just
drop
it? I don’t want to, okay? ‘Whose stuff is whose doesn’t matter’ is the kind of condescending bullshit only people who have money say, first off. And second off, not everyone wants to drive around in a BMW terrorizing old ladies, okay?” As soon as I say it, I regret it. I’m such an idiot. It comes out so much meaner than I intended it to sound.

“Okay, fine, M, fine. I just thought it would be fun sharing the driving. You don’t have to be snippy.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Forget it.”

O
ne of the many good things about Chelsea is that after the very few times we’ve had a fight, she is over it fast. Like it never happened. Plus, Chelsea is Excited with a capital E about this college visit. After school on the Thursday of the drive, Chelsea is like a kindergartener who has just gotten a bag full of candy. I feel like I’m about to take a whole lot of gross-tasting medicine. For three straight days.

“Okay, I’ve gotten an oil change, had the tires rebalanced, my phone’s fully charged, I have my car charger, jeans, a skirt, makeup, road trip food. Have I forgotten anything?”

We’ve had this conversation eighteen times in the last week, and given the NASA-level charts and checklists she’s compiled, I doubt it.

“Pepper spray?”

“M.T., you must be excited. Why are you being such a downer?”

Once we hit the road, though, it kind of is fun. Route 95 curves wide and unlovely in front of us as we head north, across the stop-and-crawl George Washington Bridge traffic and into New York State. The leaves are turning and the radio is playing good music. Chelsea is driving slow by the rules of the Chelsea-verse, keeping on the right side of the road and holding the wheel with both hands.

“Siobhan kicked out one of her roommates so we could bunk with her. Not sure about the other one. You and I can share the one bunk if we have to.”

“Okay.”

“And she says there’s some kind of frat party we should go to.”

Not excited about the frat party.

“And Siobhan is going to her Women in Antiquity class tomorrow if you want to go with her. She asked her professor and it’s okay.”

“We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Chelsea says mockingly, trying to get me to laugh. I know I am being un-fun, but I can’t seem to get into it.

Chelsea waits until we’re almost at the Connecticut border to ask, “So what’s with the no college thing, M?”

Uh-oh
.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going to Argentina and you don’t want to tell me, right?”

“No! Wait, what?”

“I’ve been scared about that since you said you weren’t going to college.”

“Where did that come from?”

“Well, you always used to say that.”

“I did not.”

“Of course you did. At the end of every school year. Starting in kindergarten. Don’t you remember? You would say good-bye because you were going to live in your . . . it was something about an oval house or something? Do they make houses oval over there?”

“God, Chels, no. My dad had this crazy idea about building us a round house.
La Casa Redonda
,
he called it. And that was like a million years ago. When was the last time you heard me say that? I only said that because my dad would tell me to say good-bye to all my friends because we were moving away.”

“I don’t know, you looked pretty happy about it.”

“I did not. I was a dumb kid anyway.”