Truest Page 5

  Silas was getting out of the cab and coming around the back of the pickup.

  “Hey,” Elliot said, still with me dangling off him. His voice was cold and unfriendly and embarrassed me a little.

  “Hey,” Silas said. “Silas Hart.” He reached to shake Elliot’s hand, but Elliot just stared at his hand. Silas pointed an awkward finger at him and muttered, “Right.”

  “This is Elliot, my boyfriend,” I said to Silas.

  “Awesome,” Silas said, unimpressed.

  Silas and Elliot both went for my bike at the same moment, but Silas got to it first. He looked a little smug as he set it down in front of me. “There you go,” he said to me. “Nice to meet you, man,” he said to Elliot. “See you tomorrow, West.”

  Then he was back in the truck, pulling out of my driveway with the music obnoxiously loud. I put my bike away in the garage, then turned around to see my boyfriend, still with his brow furrowed.

  “Hey,” I said, and held out my hand.

  He took it, and I led him over to our front steps, where we both sat. Elliot pulled my hand into his lap and began to knead it absentmindedly. His hands were rough and calloused but so gentle. This action was older than our relationship; he’d done so ever since we were in the ninth grade and my hands hurt from taking notes. We weren’t even dating then, but his hands had always been so strong and tender, and he would massage my palm, fingers, and wrists to relax me. Now it was just his conditioned response, done without thought.

  “He’s frickin’ tall,” Elliot said.

  “Silas? Yeah.”

  “Does he play basketball?”

  “I don’t know. He runs.”

  Elliot muttered a disapproving hmph.

  “You run,” I reminded him.

  “Sort of. What’s his problem anyway?”

  “Nothing. Why do you say that?”

  “He was flirting with you in the truck.”

  I smiled. “You’re always imagining things,” I told him, then kissed him on the cheek. “Remember the time you thought Tony from Enger Mills liked me and you got all jealous when really Tru was the one he liked?”

  “Tony Caprizi,” Elliot said. “I still think he liked you.”

  “Not a week later, he was feeling up Trudy in his car!”

  Elliot laughed a little, calming down. His thumbs started making wider, softer circles on my wrist.

  “Tell me about your day,” I said.

  “We’re baling hay.”

  “Already?”

  “Warm spring,” he said. “Today and tomorrow, Mickey and me are stuck in the hayloft with some kids, and it sucks. Suffocating as hell and Mickey forgot his gloves today, so the twine was murdering his hands. The elevator drops the bales about fifteen feet, and we all took turns getting a running start and trying to catch the bale midair.”

  “That’s so dangerous!”

  “Yeah, Dad would kill us if he knew. Toby tripped doing it, and a bale fell right on top of his head. He went down like he’d been hit by a sniper, and he just laid there. Mickey’s all, ‘Holy shit, he broke his neck!’ and we were freaking out, and bales kept dropping on Toby. Then a couple of us grabbed his legs and dragged him out of there like a scene in some war movie.”

  My eyes were wide in shock. “Was he okay?”

  “Yeah,” Elliot said, laughing a little. “It was scary, though, so we stopped playing it for today.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m sure we’ll do it again tomorrow.”

  I rolled my eyes as Elliot laughed. I leaned into his side so I could feel his laughter in my own ribs. “I have bad news,” he said suddenly.

  I jerked away. “What?” I demanded.

  Elliot laughed again. “Calm down,” he said. “I was just teasing. Here’s my bad news.” He rolled up his T-shirt sleeve, revealing swollen muscles with the beginnings of a horrendous farmer’s tan.

  We both laughed.

  “What about you? Is he still a pain in the ass?” Elliot jerked his head in the direction Silas had left. I traced his tan lines, and even though his arms were sore, I knew he liked it. “What were you doing with him anyway? Detailing?”

  He sounded a little hopeful, and I hated to admit, “No. We watched some stupid TV show he likes.”

  Elliot was about to say something more when my mom appeared on the other side of the screen door and said, “West? Dinner’s ready. Elliot, you can stay if you want.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Beck,” Elliot said, grinning at her. “I’m late for lifting though.”

  “You just got here,” I whined as Mom left. “Everyone is always leaving.”

  “I was already here for a while, waiting for you. Your mom and I had a thorough conversation about my siblings—and the DII recruiters who’ve been calling.” Elliot rolled his eyes a little—all my parents ever talked to him about were those two things: family and football. “Then Libby emerged.” He shuddered. Elliot, my big, strong running-back boyfriend, was scared of my sister because she was “skittish like a cat.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m s—”

  But he kissed me on my lips, surprising me, and I closed my eyes and kissed him back. Then he left the steps, leaving me there missing him, missing his lips—and, oddly, missing Trudy even, missing normalcy. He walked backward toward his parents’ minivan and said, “Don’t forget about me while you’re spending time with that kid.”

  “Silas,” I called back. “He can be kind of a prick actually. You don’t have to—”

  “Don’t say ‘prick’!” came Mom’s voice through the screen door.

  seven

  It didn’t take long to confirm that Silas was absolutely crazy.

  One morning he showed up at my house wearing an honest-to-goodness windbreaker suit straight out of the nineties: purple, mint green, and what is best described as neon salmon. I curbed a grin while Silas gathered our detailing supplies from my garage. “What?” he deadpanned. “What are you staring at?”

  “Your windbreaker is just so . . .”

  “Fetching?” he interjected. “Voguish? Swanky?”

  “Hot,” I said, playing along. “The nineties neon just exudes sex appeal.”

  “Well, I thought so myself.”

  And after the sun was high in the sky and the pavement was heating up, he took off the wind suit, revealing shorts and a New Moon T-shirt beneath, Edward Cullen’s pale face dramatically printed across the front. “Vader’s competition,” he said, shrugged, and started vacuuming the floors of the Corolla left in our care.

  He also talked about the strangest things: “Can you ever really prove anything? How?” or “I read about this composer who said his abstract music went ‘to the brink’—that beyond it lay complete chaos. What would that look like? Complete chaos?” or “You know how in Shakespeare Romeo says, ‘Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized’? He’s talking about his name, but baptism’s bigger than that; it has to be. It’s about identity, and wonder, and favor, you know?” or “A group of moles is called a labor; a group of toads is called a knot. Who comes up with this stuff? It’s a bouquet of pheasants, a murder of crows, a charm of finches, a lamentation of swans. A lamentation of swans, West!”

  One morning I was late coming downstairs, and Shea got to Silas first. The two of them sat drinking orange juice on the front steps and discussing Shea’s question of whether fish have boobs. “I think,” Silas said, sounding like a scholar, “they do not, since they’re not mammals. But mermaids do, since they’re half fish, half mammal.”

  “Mermaids aren’t real though,” Shea said, the tiniest bit of hope in his voice that Silas would prove him wrong.

  “Who told you that?” said Silas sternly.

  “You think they’re real?” Shea asked.

  “I can’t be sure,” Silas said, “but I might have seen one when I used to live in Florida. Probably best not to jump to any conclusions either way.”

  Behind me, Libby giggled. Silas glanced at us over his shoulder through the
screen door and grinned. “Libby,” he said, “what do you say? Mermaids, real or not?”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions either way,” my shy sister said, then turned bright red.

  “Smart girl,” said Silas.

  That afternoon, Silas and I sat in the backseat of a dusty Saturn, trading off the handheld vacuum as we talked—or rather, shouted—over its noise. I ran the hand vac over the back of the driver’s seat while Silas said, “I used to think I was the only one with a crush on Emily Dickinson until a couple years ago.”

  “You have a crush on Emily Dickinson?”

  “Durr.”

  “Did you just ‘durr’ me? Is that like a ‘duh’?”

  He nodded as I handed him the Dirt Devil. “But then I read this book that says it’s a rite of passage for any thinking American man. And then I read a poem called ‘Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.’”

  Just the title made me blush; I averted my eyes to focus on the vacuum’s trajectory.

  Silas, unruffled, sighed unhappily.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, frowning, chancing a glance at him.

  “I finally made it into the backseat with a girl,” Silas cracked, looking hard at the Dirt Devil. “This is not all I was hoping it would be.”

  I slugged him in the arm, and his wry smile gave way to laughter.

  “Want to come over after this, watch some WARegon?” he asked.

  “I guess,” I said, but suddenly he turned the vacuum off and answered his phone, which apparently had been vibrating. It had to be Beth, since Silas scrambled out of the car and wandered over toward the church parking lot, where he’d be out of earshot.

  I closed the car doors and finished the job, looking from time to time at Silas, whose brow was furrowed as he listened. When he spoke, his face looked diplomatic and impartial. One time he glanced over at the car and noticed me watching; he gave me a big, goofy smile—and then turned his back.

  His call ended as I finished vacuuming. We started to work on the car’s exterior, and I probed, “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, totally. Why?”

  “Who was that—Beth?”

  He nodded.

  “Does she call a lot?”

  “More often than Elliot, that’s for sure.”

  “Elliot is working.” I paused, then accused, “Why do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked as he stretched over the roof of the car with a soapy sponge.

  “Be such an ass about things. I was just asking an innocent question.”

  He squinted at me from the other side of the car, the corner of his mouth curling up. “Were you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I hissed back. “Of course.” Well, maybe.

  “What do you two even have in common?” Silas asked as he continued to wash the car. “The big football jock and . . . oh hell, you’re not a cheerleader, are you?” He glanced at me with curious wariness.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “I don’t believe you. I just feel like—hey, where are you going?”

  I lobbed my sponge back into the bucket, climbed my front steps. “Finish it yourself.”

  “I thought you were coming over for WARegon!” he complained.

  With the door halfway open, I turned around and gave him a blistering glare. “Put the supplies away before you leave.”

  Later that night, when I was almost asleep, I got a text from Silas, the first he’d sent since getting my cell number that week: Sorry.

  I wrote back: It’s fine.

  He texted: Sleep well. Then, a minute later: Are you really a cheerleader?

  I let out a laugh and wrote back: Not on your life.

  eight

  I hated the dreary gray carpet of the church, the musty smell of old hymnals, and the social hour before the service, when old ladies crowded around my dad as if he were a rock star. I tried to dodge the chattering congregants on the way into the sanctuary, but it was nearly impossible.

  “West!” said Mrs. Callahan, flagging me down. “In case I don’t get a chance to speak with him today, please pass along our thanks to your dad. He bailed us out on our mortgage last month. Not even from the benevolent fund—just wrote us a check! Such a good man.”

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. Callahan. He was happy to do it,” I replied.

  Mr. Tennant, who lived alone with his troublemaker son, whispered to me conspiratorially, “I’m sure you’ve heard that Jacob got picked up for shoplifting last week. But Pastor Beck knew just what to say to him. I don’t know what we would have done without your dad. You’re one lucky girl!”

  “I really am,” I agreed with a painted-on smile. “Thanks for coming today.” My standard response.

  I steered clear of James and Rhiannon Raymond, who’d once had the impudence to tell me that my dad saved their marriage. Rhiannon had gotten teary-eyed, and I’d desperately wanted to cover my ears and say, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” I gave the couple a wide berth as I made it to the front row, where I sat between my mom and Libby, letting out a huge breath as if I’d just survived running the gauntlet.

  Beside me, Libby was giggling when someone in the row behind us kept sneakily tapping her shoulder. I glanced over my shoulder to see who it was.

  “Hey,” said Silas Hart to me, finally getting caught by my sister. He winked at her.

  “You came!” I said, a little surprised.

  “I said I would.”

  I looked down his row. His parents sat beside him; beyond them, his grandparents.

  “Where’s your sister?” I asked, lowering my voice as the service music started.

  “At the house.”

  Mom turned to me and Libs, put a finger to her lips, and gave us a look we knew well: Eyes forward. Set a good example. I turned to the front where the worship leaders were crowding behind the pulpit.

  No Laurel. Maybe Lillian Mayhew—“Oma Lil”—had no power over her. Or maybe Laurel was, as I’d guessed, too sick to leave the house. I imagined her in Heaton Ridge, sitting on the wicker couch, staring straight ahead with those hollow eyes that had glanced off me like a rock skipping across the water.

  Behind me, Silas sang with conviction:

  “It is well with my soul

  It is well, it is well with my soul.”

  He wasn’t loud, drew no attention to himself, but I heard every note as if he were singing into my ear. His voice was a paradox—at once angry and brave, sorrowing and confident—and yet, the song spread over him like a blanket and rushed forth like an anthem.

  Laurel’s absence was like a secret that followed Silas, like dice that he jostled in his hand but never tossed onto the table. But Green Lake was a town of two thousand. I knew as well as anyone that you can’t hold big secrets in such a small hand.

  Agoraphobia, I thought at first—that anxiety disorder that keeps its victims chained to a safe, controlled space. But no. I felt pretty confident the move from Fairbanks to Green Lake was for Laurel (and not for Mrs. Hart’s job, whatever Silas said); if Laurel had agoraphobia, she’d have wanted to stay put. Or maybe she’s just really shy—but then I remembered how she had introduced herself to Dad, held out a confident hand to shake his, how her eyes had met mine with ferocity.

  Oh my gosh: Was she crazy? Like, legitimately, certifiably insane?

  Or maybe it was something really different—like an allergy to sunlight. It was possible: there were two girls in Enger Mills, a couple towns away, who had this. I always forgot what it was called, but the school had to put this special film over all the windows in the building, and they had to wear helmets and gloves outside.

  Such speculations even prompted a dream: a strange one where I followed Laurel around the high school halls (in my bathing suit, no less), wondering about the large brass key she carried in her hands. The halls were not filled with water, but I did the front crawl nevertheless, and that detail made me laugh out loud when I woke up and remembered it.

  I visited Mark Whitby
at the mini-mart that week while he was working, and he—correctly—assumed I was checking up on him. Whit was the loose cannon of our group—the biggest sweetheart, but also the most unpredictable. As Elliot and I had guessed, he’d been partying over at Simon Sloane’s back forty.

  “But you almost got a minor there last fall!” I complained. “I wish you wouldn’t drink like—”

  Whit gave me a look, his dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes, daring me to finish my sentence like your dad.

  “—like a fish,” I revised lamely. Whit’s dad was a very tricky subject, best left for conversations not happening in the candy aisle of the mini-mart.

  Whit gave me a big grin, all teeth, then took my face in his hands, kissed my forehead with a loud muah! “I’ve got everything under control,” he said, which made me worry more.

  That same day, I took my family’s car to Enger Mills and picked up a toasted sub sandwich to surprise Elliot while he worked, but when I got to the Thomas farm, he was nowhere to be found, even with Caleb and Greg and Mrs. Thomas all helping me look. I called him and texted him for half an hour before giving up, going home, and eating the cold sandwich alone in the church bell tower.

  I tried calling Trudy, but—as usual—it went straight to voice mail. But a minute later, she sent a text: Can’t talk now, but miss you! I’m coming home for the 4th of July!

  This news buoyed me after a rough afternoon and filled me with such a generous spirit that when Silas called soon after and asked me to come over, I said yes.

  Silas’s parents were very welcoming; Mr. and Mrs. Hart invited me to call them Glen and Teresa, which was nice but a little too chummy—I’d known Elliot’s parents my whole life but would never call them by their first names. Silas’s parents were an attractive couple, both with dark hair like his, and they were rarely home during the day, as Glen was doing research for an astronomy article and Teresa was already advising graduate students at her new job at the university. They told me to keep Silas in line and to make myself at home in their house, to help myself to whatever was in the fridge, to let myself in whenever the front door was unlocked. “Which it usually will be,” Teresa said, smiling. “I know how this town works.”