“No,” I say. When I close the door, the lights shut off, and I see what she must have seen—back in the shadows, someone tall and lean is pulling himself up out of the leaves and dusting himself off.
36
I am reading Wuthering Heights. It was assigned for school, and I woke up this morning and decided to read the first chapter in bed. It is late afternoon and I am still there. An hour ago, I finished the novel and fell asleep. I dreamed fitfully of Heathcliff locking me away, and when I woke, I picked the book up again and started over.
I do not think Cathy is a monster.
Jamie calls to tell me that he has a present for me. He went to a movie with Sasha this afternoon, the kind with guns and explosions that I refuse to see and Sasha is always up for. After a day spent in bed reading, I have a groggy feeling of unreality, as if I am only watching everything that is happening.
“Are you okay?” Jamie says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You sound funny.”
“I was reading,” I say.
“Well, I’m coming over,” he says, “so try to be in one piece for me.”
After hanging up the phone, I stand in the middle of my room, unsure of what to do now. I stretch my arms above my head and my mind clears enough to think that I should get ready to see him. As I brush my hair, I think with some worry of Jamie driving in the snow, until I remember that it is a sunny autumn day; it was only snowing inside my book. It was snowing, and the narrator was seeing the remains of Cathy’s tragic mistake.
***
The sun is bright but the breeze carries the promise of a chill. Unaware that they have stayed past their season, my mother’s roses sway in this breeze and scatter a few petals among the red and gold leaves. I wonder if they can feel the cold. I wait for Jamie on the back porch steps.
I love Jamie just as much as I always have.
My love for Finny is buried like a stillborn child; it is just as cherished and just as real, but nothing will ever come of it. I imagine it wrapped up in lace, tucked away in a quiet corner of my heart. It will stay there for the rest of my life, and when I die, it will die with me.
One of the rose petals blows across the yellow leaves and stops on the toe of my boot.
I stare at that rose petal until I hear Jamie’s car stop in the driveway. I look up and see him smiling and closing the door.
“Hello, pretty girl,” he says, and I smile back. His handsome face surprises me as if I am seeing it for the first time. He sits down next to me and nudges me with his elbow.
“You awake?” he asks. I nod. This is my life, I realize. And I haven’t made any tragic mistakes yet. I’ve made a choice, yes, but no one suffers for it but me, and in the end, all will be well.
“How was the movie?” I ask.
“Awesome. And then we went to lunch and I got you this.” He hands me a hard plastic egg, the kind that snaps together that you get for a quarter from a machine outside of cheap diners. I laugh and Jamie grins at my response. It breaks open with a cracking sound. Inside is a poorly painted rubber dinosaur. Its eyes are wide as if it has been startled awake. I laugh again.
“I’ll name it after you and keep it on my desk,” I say.
“And this,” Jamie says, and he hands me a pink bouncy ball. Before I can throw it against the steps, he holds his fist out again. Jamie opens his fingers and a wire ring with a plastic stone drops into my palm. The stone is purple and as big as one of my knuckles.
“I spent all my quarters,” he says.
It almost sparkles in the weak light. He gave me another charm for our anniversary and he spent all his quarters for me on the afternoon we were apart. I cannot lose him.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll treasure it forever.”
Jamie kisses me and I lean against his shoulder and listen to him talk about the movie. He does not notice that my mind is far away.
37
Normally our group haphazardly trades Christmas presents the last week of school, but Angie convinced us to do something special this year. On the last day of the semester, we exchange gifts at our favorite restaurant.
Each of my friends gives me a tiara. They planned it out together and assigned colors. Two weeks before, my very first tiara slipped off my head as I ran across the school parking lot, and it was run over before I could grab it. Led by Jamie, my friends found my distress amusing, and now led by him, they each try to replace the lost favorite. Jamie gives me a shoe rack he has converted into a “tiara stand,” a cool rock that he found, and a burned CD of songs that have meaning to us.
My friends follow my suggestion to each wear the tiara they gave me so that I can better judge which is my new favorite. The waiters think we are celebrating a birthday.
I needed this; for the past few weeks, I’ve had this melancholy following me around. I’m happy today, and I think that maybe things will be better now.
I bought Alex a remote control car that does flips, Angie two vintage paperback romance novels, Noah a set of walkie-talkies, and Brooke a yellow silk scarf with brown flowers.
For Jamie, I found a Polaroid camera at a garage sale. He says he will use it to provide proof to win arguments and record important moments in his life, such as beating Noah at chess or stealing traffic cones.
I bought Sasha a rose bush, because she told me she always wanted one when she was a little girl. It’s sitting in a black plastic bucket and looks nearly dead this close to true winter. The boys laugh, but Sasha names it Judith and asks the waiter to bring another chair for it to sit in.
Sasha and Alex are real friends now, not just pretending to make things less awkward for us. Alex gives her plastic fruit, and they both laugh and will not tell us what the joke is about. Jamie vows to get it out of him later, and then to tell me.
Angie is still with Preppy Dave, and we all still like him. He’s meeting us at the movies after dinner. They are happy. They look and act so different yet something about them tells everyone they’re a couple, even if they’re just standing next to each other.
On our last double date with Noah and Brooke, we girls decided to have a double wedding. We draw sketches of our dresses on napkins and annoy the boys by making decisions every time we are together. Tonight we have agreed to have at least five swans wandering around the ceremony site, which will hopefully be in an abandoned church at midnight.
We are laughing, and I look around and I cannot believe that only a few years ago, I did not know a single one of them.
“I propose a toast,” Jamie says.
“You should stand on your chair,” Noah says.
“I think that would be the last straw for the staff,” Brooke says.