Truest Page 7

  “He, ah, he told me about—what’s it called?—solipsism syndrome or whatever,” I admitted, as though it were shameful that I knew, shameful we’d discussed it. I reached for something to soften the blow. “He said you were depressed. You seem fine right now,” I pointed out, wondering if this was too forward but taking my cue from her candor.

  But Laurel only said, “I have good days and bad days.”

  “And today is a good day?”

  “I think so,” she said. “When I got out of bed this morning, I tripped over Silas’s guitar case that he left in my room, and I fell and hit my knee pretty hard.” I noticed for the first time that she had an ice pack—or no, it was a Ziploc bag of dollar-sign ice cubes—on her right knee. “Pain—when it’s a shock—is always good for me.”

  I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.

  Laurel shrugged. “When you trip, half asleep, over your brother’s stupid guitar case in the dark and smack your kneecap—you stop wondering whether the guitar case is real. So, a shock in the morning actually starts the day off better for me—although my knee hurts like hell.” She laughed, a little bitterly.

  “But,” I started, then stopped. I had no way of knowing what would or would not upset her. I felt sure that I couldn’t take on banshee-Laurel on my own.

  “But what?” she asked. She looked so . . . normal then, like any of my friends who simply hadn’t heard whatever I’d said.

  “But surprising things happen in dreams all the time,” I said, tentatively.

  “Yeah, but they’re not surprising in the dream. It all feels normal.”

  It was true, I realized. It had not shocked me in my dream to find I was wearing my bikini and “swimming” through the Green Lake High School hallway—I had recognized its strangeness only after I’d woken up. A shiver of panic ran up my spine. “Then what can help?” I blurted out. “I mean, is that okay for me to ask?”

  “Sure, I don’t care,” she said, then thought about it, her perfect mouth gathering to the side like you see in cartoons. “Socializing, although I don’t always like to do it. The more complex the person, the better. Makes me feel less sure that I could have invented them. Holy Communion, of course.”

  I waited for her explanation. She was reminding me of Silas right now, talking like no other teenager I’d ever met except for him.

  “A God who dies?” she asked emphatically, one brow raised in a brilliant arch. “A God who dies and then lives again? I don’t think I could invent that either. It’s like a declaration. Always a good reminder for me, you know?” Like her brother, she seemed to think of communion as an interaction, as dialogue.

  “You want to hang out with me and Silas later on?” I asked, a little surprised even as the invitation left my lips. Then doubly surprised to realize I assumed Silas and I would indeed be hanging out later on.

  She didn’t say anything for a while, but then she nodded. “Sure. We can use the telescope tonight. Dad said you can still see Saturn pretty well this month, even though April and May were better for it. And Mom and Dad will be glad I’m—”

  “Laur?” I heard Silas’s voice echo down the hall. “Have you seen my guitar?” He stepped into the sunroom, wearing shorts and no shirt, hair still wet and curling a little. “Oh, hey, West. Didn’t know you were here yet.” He didn’t seem to be embarrassed that he was shirtless, so I tried not to be either—although I felt my cheeks flare up. Laurel noticed and smirked. She was right—I wasn’t blind, and Silas was hot.

  “You left your guitar in my room,” Laurel said, and nodded toward her knee. “Found it this morning.” Her voice was laced with normal teenage cynicism.

  “Whoops!” he said, making a face to go along with it. “Sorry. You all right?”

  She nodded, and—like some strange gang symbol—put two fingers over her heart. It happened so quickly I wasn’t sure if it had been intentional or not. “West wants us all to hang out later on,” Laurel said. “That cool with you?”

  “Sure,” he said. I couldn’t quit staring at Silas, his long torso and jutting hip bones. His shoulders were marked with muscle, and the little shadow on his interior biceps made me swallow hard. Silas walked to the side of the sunroom, where there was a basket of unfolded laundry I hadn’t noticed before. He took a red T-shirt off the top and pulled it on over his head. “West Valley Cross Country” ran across his chest and the back read, “Follow the Wolfpack.”

  And then he put two fingers over his heart, just as quickly, just as naturally as Laurel had, before turning to me and asking, “Ready to go?”

  I nodded as Laurel smiled, more teen than mystery for the moment.

  ten

  When we stepped outside, Silas looked in both directions. “That must be it,” he said, nodding toward the black car to our left. “Dad said Mr. Jensen would leave the car in the driveway. Said it was a black one. A Forte or something.” We looked to the right—an empty driveway.

  I frowned suspiciously at the car to our left but held my tongue until we approached and I saw the trident emblem on the grill. “Do you know what kind of car this is?” I demanded.

  Silas shrugged. “A nice one?” He walked around the back and read the chrome letters. “Maserati?”

  “This is a Maserati Quattroporte. A Quattroporte, not a Forte,” I told my partner.

  “Cool,” he said.

  “Do you realize that this car is worth over a hundred thousand dollars?”

  Silas’s eyes widened. “Of course I don’t know that! I’m a writer.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Look, are you being serious right now?”

  “Yes. Silas, we cannot detail this car. What if we screw up?”

  “I will not use a vinyl product on leather seats,” he said in awe as he leaned forward and looked through the windows.

  “And you can bet your ass that these are leather,” I said, checking out the interior. “It doesn’t even need detailing. It’s perfect inside.”

  Silas shrugged. “Maybe they just want us to wash it or something? Just a regular old car wash?”

  “It’s locked,” I said, still looking in. “The car is locked.”

  “Did they forget?” Silas asked. Then he said, “If it’s locked, are we going to set the car alarm off? This has to have an alarm.”

  I held my breath, then reached out my hand as if I were about to touch an electric fence.

  Nothing.

  “The alarm must be off or something. What should we do?”

  “If this guy wants to pay us to wash his rich-ass car, then we should just do it,” insisted Silas. “Is our stuff quality enough?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I have a sheepskin wash mitt that I’ve never used. That’ll work. And we have microfiber towels. . . .” But I was still hesitant. “What if we scratch something? What if . . . what if it takes off the wax or the paint or something?”

  Silas looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s not going to do that. Come on, West. We did this with like four cars last week and you weren’t worried then.”

  “It’s just . . . scary to be responsible for something so valuable, you know?”

  He nodded very slightly. “Trust me. I know.”

  So we went to work. I washed; he dried right behind me before the sun could leave spots. When we finished, we cleaned up our supplies and sat on Silas’s front porch, relieved. “Nice work, partner,” he said, knocking knuckles with me just as a black Kia Forte pulled into the driveway of the house to our right.

  A redheaded kid got out of the driver’s seat. I recognized him even though he went to a private school in St. Cloud. His name was Jason, and he’d interviewed Trudy’s dad, Sgt. Kirkwood, for some career exploration project last semester. “Hi, sorry!” he said. “West, right? Are you two the ones cleaning our car today?”

  We stared at him.

  “Sorry if you’ve been waiting around,” he continued. “I had to run to the mini-mart, and it took longer
than I thought. Pocket was running the till, and you know how much he talks. You have to be frickin’ Houdini to escape him. Anyway, it’s all yours now.”

  The door to the house on our left opened, and a man in a business suit stepped outside and moved toward the Maserati. “What can I say?” the man said to the woman in the doorway. “I’m a terrible brother. You love me anyway. Hey, listen, I’ll come around more often, all right?” He glanced down at the cement. “Why’s your driveway wet?” he asked her.

  Silas and I didn’t wait for an answer or offer one. He let out a tiny cough as we hurried from the Harts’ porch over to Jason and took the Forte keys from him. “Got it, thanks,” I said. “We’ll get right to work on that.” When the Maserati rolled out and Jason had gone indoors, Silas and I started laughing, two lunatic Atlases who had each just dropped a world and let it roll into the street.

  The inside of the Forte was filthy and took four hours to detail; afterward, Silas and I took my family’s car to St. Cloud, where we bought a second sheepskin mitt (since the first had rather impressed us), then went to McDonald’s for Big Macs and ice cream, which we ate on a bench outdoors, enjoying the evening weather and the sound of the June bugs kamikaze-ing into the lit-up drive-through menu.

  “Mmm,” said Silas, finishing his burger. “Damn, do I miss chain restaurants. I mean, Fairbanks isn’t big, but it’s a frickin’ metropolis compared to Green Lake.”

  “Green Lake’s not that bad,” I argued.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You said yourself there was nothing to do there.”

  It was that classic double standard that forbade others from disrespecting the same family/home/town that you insulted freely. I have cousins who live in St. Paul, where their high school is twice as big as our whole town, and even though Trudy and I rag on Green Lake all we want, when Monty and Mae say, “Oh my gosh, it is so boring here,” my face gets hot, and I’m ready to defend small-town life with everything I have.

  “I mean, you did, didn’t you?” he pressed. He could tell I was annoyed and bumped my elbow so that my ice cream cone hit my nose.

  “Knock it off!” I said, wiping ice cream off my nose, but he gave me one of those brilliant smiles of his—the kind that knocked me upside the head—and I had to smile back.

  “I will admit,” he said, “having things to do isn’t as important as having people to do things with. Glad we’re being good to each other.” Then he winked.

  My face grew warm, and I blinked shyly at my cone. “Me too,” I muttered, wondering again if he was trying to flirt, if he did this with all the girls. “Someone has to keep you in line,” I said, then mimicked our conversation from earlier in the day: “‘Do you know what kind of car this is?’ ‘A nice one? Maserati?’”

  Silas laughed. “Well, how was I supposed to know?!”

  I smiled. “When I said how it was scary to be responsible for something valuable . . . you were thinking of Laurel, weren’t you?”

  He pressed his lips together, crinkled his nose up in this adorable way, then nodded. “Call me Captain Obvious.”

  “But you know you’re not really responsible for her, don’t you?”

  He was quiet for a while, stirring the ice cream around his dish. “I guess,” he finally said.

  I was sorry I’d destroyed the mood with my change of topic and didn’t push it further. “Haven’t been here since spring,” I said, looking up at the golden arches. “Back before Tru decided to be adventurous.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “A lot,” I said. “But especially Friday nights. I’ve spent almost every Friday night at her house for the last three years.”

  “No kidding?”

  I was relieved that the normalcy had returned to his voice. “We’d go to Elliot’s football game or to a dance or drive around with friends, and then afterward we’d go back to her house and crawl into bed and whisper till three a.m.”

  “About?”

  “Secrets,” I said in as coy a voice as I dared, which made Silas grin.

  It was always in those moments—those early-morning revelations—that I felt closest to Trudy. Somehow in the dark, when we couldn’t see each other’s reactions, we felt freest to share secrets. As daughters of respected Green Lake men, we understood responsibility and expectations and regretted the way our decisions were tied up with our parents’ reputations. She’d tell me how much she hated that her dad was a cop, how she worried about him all the time, and I’d fret over my own obscurity. We’d talk about boys and insecurities; she hated her eyebrows, I hated feeling so plain. We would shed all our problems that way, every week, just like a heavy fur coat. From time to time, one of us would hear the telltale noises of stifled weeping, and we would reach out, hold hands, and fall asleep that way.

  “Speaking of secrets,” he said, “I know something you don’t know.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, my heart racing. I hated that it was racing. Why was it racing?

  He pointed to a particularly bright golden star. “That’s Saturn.”

  “Really?” I asked, slightly disappointed, but still intrigued. “How do you know?”

  “My dad is Glen Hart,” he responded, as if that were reason enough. “And over there—see that cluster of stars, the bright ones? That’s Pleiades. The story goes, Orion pursued the Seven Sisters, so Zeus turned them into swans—or maybe doves—and they flew up into the sky and became stars.”

  “Swans or doves?”

  “I’ve heard both.”

  I looked at the constellation. “So, you’re telling me I am essentially looking at a lamentation, right?”

  “Ha! I guess so. Have you used a telescope before?”

  “Trudy had one of those little FirstScope things from Scholastic when we were in third grade.”

  A tiny smile toyed on Silas’s lips. “Yeeeeeah,” he said. “Let’s go back to my house and use the big-kid scope. I think it will surprise you.”

  Silas’s grandparents were over at his house when we returned to Heaton Ridge. “Silas,” Arty Mayhew shouted from the kitchen, “that you? Come help us out.”

  I followed Silas into the kitchen, where his grandparents, mom, and sister were all sitting around the island, snacking on some fruit. “Hi, Papa. Hi, Oma,” Silas greeted his grandparents, then kissed Lillian on the cheek. She and Teresa and Silas all looked alike—dark eyes, clever mouths—but Laurel looked like her grandpa.

  “Silas,” said Oma Lil, “you need a haircut. You look like a vagrant. Teresa, you let them stay out this late?”

  “It’s summer, Mom,” said Mrs. Hart.

  Silas gave his grandma an exaggerated pout. “Papa’s was longer. I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Don’t even get me started on him,” Oma Lil said.

  “Vagrants,” his grandpa said to Silas, eyes twinkling. “You and me, kid.”

  Silas laughed. “Where’s Dad?” he asked.

  “Up on the roof,” said Teresa. “Setting up the telescope for you.”

  “Perfect,” Silas said, grabbing some grapes from the island and popping a few into his mouth. He held out the bowl to me. “Want some?” I shook my head.

  “Silas, help us out,” Papa Arty said again. “Laurel’s looking for a toy she says she used to play with at our house when she was little. Describe it to him, Sweet Pea.”

  “It was a doll,” said Laurel, slightly flushed. “A ballerina in a red dress with silver toe shoes.”

  Silas shook his head. “You played with dolls?”

  “That’s what I said,” Teresa said to her son. To Laurel, she added, “You wouldn’t touch a Barbie with a ten-foot pole. It was always books.”

  “There were some books—” Oma Lil started.

  “—no,” interrupted Laurel. Lillian looked offended. “It was a doll. I remember it because of the red and silver, when every other ballerina I’d ever seen wore pink. There were little lace gloves too—fingerless ones. I just—I just need to find it.”

  “Maybe it’s in the
attic somewhere,” Papa Arty said. “You can come over and look if you want, Sweet Pea.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bring a shovel,” he added. Lillian rolled her eyes.

  “What do you want a doll for?” Silas asked Laurel.

  “I just—it would be nice to find it,” she said, evading his question. “Let’s go to the roof.”

  Silas bolted up the stairs, grabbing his guitar case, which sat just outside his sister’s bedroom door. Laurel and I followed at a normal pace, stopping at the den for her to get a blanket.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  “It was . . . interesting,” I said, walking onto the roof with her. I still had all this nervous excitement from being around her, as if she were a land mine I had to tiptoe around. “Yours?”

  She shrugged, tucking a large tweed throw blanket beneath her arm. “I’m not doing so well right now.” We had just stepped outside, so I couldn’t tell if it was the cool evening air or Laurel’s words that gave me a chill. It felt strange to have Laurel be so honest with me; we’d had our first and only real conversation that same morning, but apparently she had decided I was someone she could trust.

  Or—as I thought harder about her issues—maybe she didn’t even think I really existed, in which case, keeping secrets was just silly. There was no reason not to introduce one “imaginary” friend to an “imaginary” issue. It would be like letting your thoughts play hide-and-seek together.

  Silas was already starting a fire, one foot on the ring of the fire pit as he poked kindling under some logs. Laurel wrapped the blanket she’d brought around herself and sat down in one of the patio chairs. Their dad stood at the telescope—which was the size of a small cannon—finding the right bearings to view Saturn. “Sure looks pretty tonight!” he said. “Who wants to look?”

  Silas added another log to the fire and nodded at me. “West?”

  Glen showed me how to look through the eyepiece, and I tried to remember the last time my dad had spent any of his free time with me and my siblings. I honestly couldn’t recall. I’d hardly even seen him this summer, outside of Sundays. “It’s in the upper-right corner. See it?” he asked. “It’s just tiny.” With Mr. Hart standing near, I missed my dad so much that I almost wanted to go home and be with my own family.