What If (19 page)

Nyelle shakes her head. “I just need some ice cream.”

“Okay. Let’s get ice cream,” I concede, deciding not to push it. “It makes everything better, right?”

She releases a broken laugh. “Exactly.”

I’m not sure what triggered the tears she refused to let fall, but Nyelle’s back to being her vibrant, carefree self as soon as we pull into the ice cream place, like nothing ever bothered her.

I haven’t figured how to get her to tell me all that she doesn’t want me to know. I like everything about Nyelle just as she is—despite the fact that I don’t know
why
she became her. And I’m not really sure I want to know anymore. I’d rather just let her be exactly who she needs to be.

*     *     *

The rest of week is over way too fast, and now I’m supposed to be flying to Oregon in the morning to spend Christmas with my family.

“Explain your family to me again,” Nyelle requests, sitting next to me with a bowl of popcorn and a box of Goobers. “Your mom is one of… six?”

“Seven,” I correct. “She’s the second oldest. The way we think of it is there’s
the uncles,
who are two years older and younger than her. Then the next three are
the aunts,
who are separated by four years and there’s two years between them. And then there’s Zac. He’s the mistake.”

“Cal, that’s awful,” she scolds.

“Well, he is. He’s eleven years younger than my aunt Helen. He’s only a year older than my brother Sean. There was nothing expected about him.”

“And it’s his house you’re going to tomorrow?”

“Yes. It was their family vacation home when they were growing up. But Zac lives there now. Half of us go there, and the other half goes to my aunt Livia’s in Ohio. We switch it up every year. There’s way too many people to put under one roof.”

“I’d love to be a part of a big family,” she says, her eyes cast up like she can picture it.

“You can borrow mine anytime you want.”

Nyelle stuffs a handful of popcorn in her mouth and shakes some Goobers in on top of it.

I cringe. “That can’t taste good.”

“It’s the best thing next to ice cream and frosting,” Nyelle claims. “Stick out your hand.”

I reluctantly obey. She places a few pieces of popcorn and a couple Goobers on my palm. Skeptical, I dump them in my mouth.

“Hmm,” I say, pleasantly surprised. “Way better than the chocolate-drizzled Fritos. That was disgusting.”

Nyelle laughs.

“You’re okay with staying at Elaine’s? I’ll leave you the key if you feel like coming back here.”

“No. It’s totally fine. We have some things planned.” She clenches her fists and her eyes light up like they do when she can barely contain her excitement. “She has this attic of antique clothes. I’m way overdue for a tea party.”

“Those words will never come out of my mouth.”

Nyelle smiles. “Yeah, you always disappeared when we picked flowers.” She stuffs more popcorn in her mouth.

I’m trying not to react. I’m trying so damn hard to let it slide. But I can’t.

“Do you remem—”

“Are you going to date Micha again? She’s waiting for you to call her,” Nyelle says, talking over me.

“What?” There’s no way I heard her correctly.

“Micha. She said she asked you to call her,” Nyelle repeats. “Didn’t you break up because she thought she was going to transfer? She’s not anymore. So, are you going to call her?”

“No,” I say quickly. “I’m not… What are you doing? Why would you want me to call her?” I’m staring at Nyelle in complete disbelief. “Seriously. You
want
me to… date her?”

“I like her,” she says with a simple shrug, avoiding the shock covering my face.

I need to clear my head. I stand up and walk to the refrigerator to get a beer. After chugging half the can, I ask with my voice coated in anger, “You’re okay if I date?”

“I’m leaving, Cal,” Nyelle replies, sounding way too calm. She’s doing that thing she does when she removes all emotion from her voice. She’s pulling away.

I feel like I just got sucker punched in the gut, and I’m trying to catch my breath. I drain the rest of the beer.

“Right,” is my only response.

“Want to watch a movie?” she asks, acting completely unaffected. “Before I eat all the popcorn?”

“Sure,” I say flatly and sit back down next to her on the couch.

She’s right. She
is
leaving. This, whatever
this
is between us, is… evidently nothing. Tell that to whatever it is that’s gutting my insides right now.

So when she lies down on the couch, resting her head on my leg, I can’t handle it. But instead of saying something to her, I shift out from under her and stand up.

“I think I’m going to pack. My flight’s pretty early.”

She looks at me oddly and nods. “Okay. Should I leave tonight? I can have Elaine pick me up.”

“Leave whenever,” I say, walking into my room and closing the door behind me. As soon as I do, I clench my teeth. I sounded like a dick and I know it.

I grab my duffel bag out of the closet and start shoving clothes in it, not really paying attention to what I’m selecting. The sound of the television in the next room kills me. She has no idea how what she said affected me. None.

“Cal?” Nyelle’s head peeks into the room. “Are you okay?”

Okay, maybe she has
some
idea.

I nod, lowering my eyes.

“I called Elaine. She’s on her way.” She opens the door wider to enter and picks up her backpack from the end of the bed.

I close my eyes, trying to think clearly enough to say the right thing.

“Don’t go. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“No. It’s okay. She’s not much of a morning person anyway.”

Nyelle takes the backpack and suitcase into the living room. I drop my bag on the floor and sit on the end of the bed, running my hands through my hair, desperate to fix this. To convince her not to leave tonight.

Just as I stand up, Nyelle steps into my room. We look at each other for a long second. Her eyes shift to the floor with a saddened sigh. Then her brow creases. “What’s that?”

I turn toward the closet. There’s a folded note and a rolled-up piece of craft paper on the floor. They must have fallen out when I grabbed my duffel bag off the shelf. Nyelle bends down to pick them up. It hits me what she has in her hands right when she unrolls the paper.

“Nyelle, don’t—” rushes out at the same time her mouth opens in a silent gasp.

Nyelle looks from the painting to me. Her eyes flicker with confusion. She slowly lowers herself to sit on the bed, holding the paper like it might disintegrate between her fingers. It quivers in her grasp as she looks it over, a deep impression between her brow like she doesn’t know what to think or how to react.

With a small exhale, she gently strokes her fingers over our childhood. I watch as her fingertips brush over the girl with blond hair playing a guitar under the tree, and the girl with the blue ribbon in her hair and the boy wearing black glasses sitting in the treehouse, holding hands. Then her trembling hand hovers above Richelle, picking flowers in the field.

When she raises her head, I’m taken aback by the pain reflecting in her eyes. I’ve never seen someone hurt like this, and I don’t know how to save her from it. I’m tempted to tear the painting from her hands and shred it, to try to stop whatever it is that’s making her look like she’s shattering on the inside.

“Why’d you keep this?” she asks in a broken whisper, her attention back to the picture she made for me so many years ago.

“I don’t know,” I answer quietly.

“We had our first fight over this painting,” she murmurs, her voice fading, weighed with suffering. She picks up the letter Richelle wrote to me right before she moved away.

Nyelle closes her eyes and shakes her head, her face distorted in a tortured expression, her lips trembling and her jaw tight. This is hurting her more than I ever could have anticipated. And I want to make it stop.

“Nicole?” I say her name quietly. She keeps her eyes shut without responding.

When she does open her eyes again, the emotions she’s been fighting have disappeared. The pain and confusion possessing her a moment ago have been tucked back behind the mask. I’m too stunned by the transformation to speak. It’s like Nicole was here for a second, and now she’s gone.

A buzzing comes from her pocket. She removes the small black phone. “Elaine’s here.”

Nyelle sets the painting and letter on the bed, calm and devoid of emotion. She makes a move for the door, and I step in front of her. She refuses to look at me.

“Don’t go.”

“I have to,” she says in a whisper, stepping around me. I follow her into the living room, my heart pounding in full panic. If she walks out that door now, I’m going to lose her.

She grabs her jacket and shifts her backpack over a shoulder, rolling her suitcase toward the door.

“Nicole!”

She turns, propping the door open. Her eyes are ice, staring into mine. “I’m not her. Not anymore.”

I’m stunned, frozen in the middle of the living room, watching the door click shut. Panic pushes me forward and I reach for the door. But I stop with the door handle in my grasp, unable to turn it. I rest my forehead against the door, letting her walk away.

May—Eighth Grade

“So what are you going to do this summer?” I ask Nicole as she sits on the end of my bed, flipping through a magazine. She slept over last night, like she does the last weekend of every month since I moved to San Francisco. Her mom brings her here on the train. Sometimes she’s able to talk her mom into coming down more than once. But that almost never happens.

“I don’t know.” She shrugs, not looking up.

“Are you still friends with those girls?” I ask, pulling the blanket up on my lap, still tired. We didn’t get much sleep. We usually don’t when Nicole stays over, no matter how many times we’re told to go to sleep.

“They’re not really my friends,” she says. “You know that.”

“Right,” I say. She seems quieter than usual today. It’s probably something to do with her father. “You don’t have to hang out with them if you don’t want to.”

“It makes my mom happy,” she says quietly. “She’s wanted me to be friends with them since we moved there, because my father works for one of their dads. And she likes having their mothers over. They’re in the PTA together… It doesn’t matter.”

No. This is about Cal and Rae.

“Nicole,” I say, making her look up at me. “You can talk to them, you know? Cal and Rae. You just can’t tell them everything.”

“I can’t be friends them,” she says sadly.

“He asks about you when I talk to him.” This only seems to make her sadder. I hate that they stopped being friends. It’s not what was supposed to happen.

Nicole smiles to make me feel better, but I know it’s fake. “It’s fine. I swear. It won’t be forever, right?”

“Right,” I agree. Then an idea comes to me that spreads a real smile across my face. “Want to do something crazy?”

Nicole nods slowly, without saying anything.

“Want to cut off my hair? You know, like Britney did when she went all crazy? Just maybe not as short. Then we can dye it blue. Rae will be so pissed she didn’t do it first.”

“You want me to cut your hair supershort?” Nicole asks like she can’t believe I’m even suggesting it, forget about being serious. I know it will make her laugh, and I like it when she laughs.

“Yeah. It’s only hair. And it’ll look so cool when we’re done,” I tell her, excited by the idea. “Get my dad’s clippers from the hall closet. Just don’t let my mom see you.”

“Why is there a moving truck in front of the Nelsons’ house?” I ask my mother, eating breakfast and watching the men load wrapped furniture into the back of the truck.

Mom peers out the window. She doesn’t answer me for a moment. “Oh, Cal. I’m sorry. Rick must have gotten that job in San Francisco. I wonder why Diane didn’t call to tell me.”

“What?!” I exclaim. I’m up from the table and out the front door before my mom can yell at me for not putting my bowl in the dishwasher. I sprint to Richelle’s house.

I’m about to walk through the front door when I hear, “Can I help you, Cal?”

I turn toward the truck to find Richelle’s dad.

“Um, hi, Mr. Nelson. Is Richelle around?” I ask, my heart racing, and not just because I ran as fast as I could over here.

“No. Sorry, Cal,” he says quietly without looking at me. “She’s already in San Francisco with her mother, getting the new place ready for when the truck arrives.”

“I didn’t know you were moving,” I say, trying not to sound as angry as I am.

“It happened pretty fast,” he explains, walking past me toward the house with his shoulders slumped forward. “You can always e-mail her, Cal. I really am sorry about this.” But he sounds flat and tired, like he doesn’t mean it.

“Thanks,” I mutter, shoving my hands in my jeans pockets and walking back to my house with my head down.

“What’s going on?” Rae asks from the end of her driveway.

“The Nelsons are moving to San Francisco.” The words taste bitter in my mouth.

“Why are they moving?” Rae demands, like the thought of it doesn’t make sense.

“I guess her dad got a new job or something,” I mumble.

“You didn’t know?”

“Did you?” I snap.

“No,” Rae grumbles.

“That’s messed up. We’re supposed to be her friends. I’m supposed to be her
boyfriend.
You’d think she would’ve said something.” My voice is getting louder as the anger reaches the surface.

“It’s not her fault.”

I turn to find Nicole behind me. She looks like she’s been crying—her eyes are red and puffy. “She didn’t want this to happen. It’s not like she had a choice or anything. So you can’t be mad at her.”

“Then why are you upset?”

Nicole doesn’t answer. She wipes a tear off her cheek. “She wanted you to have this.” She hands me a folded piece of paper and walks away.

*     *     *

“Are you going to mope all week?” Rae asks, sitting next to me on the leather couch in my uncle’s office.

“I’m not moping,” I reply defensively, staring out the window.

“You’re afraid she’s not going to be there when you get back, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” My voice is barely audible.

“Why didn’t you go after her when she walked out on you, Cal? Why did you let her leave like that? Especially after what she said about being Nicole.”

“No. She told me she
wasn’t
, remember?” I haven’t been able to get that pained look on her face out of my head.

“But she also said,
not anymore
. Which means she’s running away from something.”

“What was I supposed to say, Rae? Huh?” I demand, raising my voice. “I asked her not to leave. I…”

“But you didn’t ask her what happened to her,” Rae argues back. “You didn’t ask why she’s not at Harvard, or home with her family, or why she’s pretending her life before never happened. You didn’t ask her anything, Cal! And now… she’s probably gone, and if anything happens to her—”

I stand up, cutting her off. I never told her how hard it was to watch Nyelle struggle with the memories of our childhood, like going back there was some form of torture.

“We have to tell Maura,” Rae states adamantly.

“No.” I glare at her.

“Why are you being so stubborn?!” Rae yells in frustration.

“Because I don’t care!”

Rae doesn’t move. Anything she’s about to say is frozen in her mouth.

“Maybe I like her the way she is and don’t care what happened to make her this way! Maybe I don’t want to know.”

And I won’t force her to remember if it’s going to hurt her. I can’t put her through that again.

“What’s going on?” my mother asks from the doorway. “What are you arguing about?”

Rae stands up.

“Rae,” I say sternly. “Don’t. You promised to give me a month.”

My mother looks from Rae to me, questioning.

“You’re being stupid, Cal,” Rae snaps, walking past my mother out the door. “I need a drink.”

“Hey, you’re not twenty-one
yet,
young lady,” my mother calls to her over her shoulder. She turns to me. “What was that all about? Why are you driving Raelyn to drink?”

I sit back down on the couch and run my hands over my face.

“Cal?” my mother prods carefully. “Is this about that girl? The one you’re going back to Crenshaw for tomorrow? What’s her name anyway?”

“Yeah,” I respond, resting my head on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “Her name’s Nyelle.” My mother sits next me and sets a hand on my knee.

“I know you never talk to me about girls. But I haven’t seen you this upset over one since Richelle left when you were in eighth grade. So if you need to…”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ll be fine, Mom. Thanks.”

“Okay,” she says, standing up. Before she reaches the door, she turns to face me. “You really care about this girl… Nyelle, don’t you?”

I let out a heavy breath. “Yeah. Since the first day I saw her.”

*     *     *

Sean opens the office door two hours later. “Come on, GQ. We’re playing football.”

I sit up on the couch.

“No more being lame, man. Let’s go,” he demands.

There’s no arguing with Sean. He’s used to getting his way. So I stand up and follow him out of the house.

Sean messes up the hair on top of my head. “I like this new look, man. It’s sexy as hell.”

I knock is hand away. “Shut up, Sean.”

“You get Cal,” Devin declares. “He can’t catch worth a damn.”

“Screw you,” I argue, hopping down the steps, holding up a hand to my uncle Zac. He tosses a spiral right at me and I catch it, flipping my brother off.

“Cal!” my mother scolds from the porch.

Devin and Sean laugh at me for getting caught.

“Rae, you gonna play?” Devin calls to her.

“I’m all set,” Rae says, sitting next to my mother and her sisters on the porch with Henley curled up at her feet. Her mother and Liam must’ve left while I was in the office.

She refuses to make eye contact when I look at her. I hate it when she’s pissed at me.

“Hey, do you want to earn back some of that money you wasted changing your flights for a girl?” Zac asks when we stop for a water break. “You’re never going to afford that custom drum kit for Rae if you keep spending the money you’ve saved for it.”

I look to the porch where Rae continues to glower at me with her arms crossed.

“I’m heading back tomorrow,” I tell him. “But I’ll be here for spring break.”

“Well, if you change your mind, I could use your help in the garage. Custom orders have been picking up. I’ll be away on a hiking trip next weekend, but I plan to be around other than that. You can bring the girl with you if you want.”

“Wouldn’t that be spending even more money to fly the two of us out here?” I counter.

“Well, I want to see this girl for myself,” he admits. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Like what?” I ask uncomfortably.

“Hey! Are you playing? Or are you still crying over the girl who dumped you?” Devin calls to us. Zac looks to me and chuckles.

I check to see that Mom’s not looking before flipping him off again. Nothing’s sacred in this family.

*     *     *

The game ended up being a good distraction. When I climb the porch steps after the guys, I’m sweaty and tired.

I collapse on the rocking chair vacated by my mother moments before. Rae’s still sitting there with her arms wrapped around her legs. I can’t take her being upset with me.

“Still mad at me?” I ask her.

“No,” she says quietly. “I still think you’re being stupid, but I’m not mad at you.”

After a moment of rocking in silence, she asks, “Can I ask you something? And you can’t give me some lame answer.”

“Okay.”

“Why’d you really go to Crenshaw? You were all set to go to UCLA. It was even listed on the college board in the office. What made you change your mind?”

I take in the view of the tall evergreens surrounding the property, continuing to rock.

“I don’t really have a great answer. I accepted on an impulse. No other reason than that. But Richelle’s why I applied in the first place,” I confess.

“Uh… what?”

What I’m about to tell her isn’t going to make sense, but she asked, so I’ll tell her the truth.

*     *     *

“Hey,” I say, answering the phone.

“Hi,” Richelle replies. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just watching basketball.” I lean back on my pillow with my arm behind my head. “What are you doing?”

“Watching paint dry.”

“Seriously?”

“On my toes.” I can hear the smile in her voice.

“Funny.”

“How were the campuses you visited?”

“Fine. Just like every other campus.” I pick up the Nerf basketball and start tossing it in the air.

“Still don’t know where you want to go? This is our junior year. We’re supposed to have some idea what we want to do with the rest of our lives,” Richelle says mockingly.

“Yeah, right. And I have so much life experience. How am I supposed to make a decision like that? It really doesn’t matter where I go. What about you? Have you decided?”

Richelle is quiet for a minute. “Going to any college sounds good to me. Except Harvard.”

I laugh. “Do you still talk to Nicole?” We haven’t mentioned Nicole in a long time. It’s hard, knowing Richelle’s been able to stay friends with her, while she treats Rae and me like we don’t exist.

“Yeah. She had a ballet recital in San Francisco last weekend.”

“Really? I didn’t know she still danced.”

“You would if you talked to her.”

Now I wish I hadn’t brought her up.

“I know. I promised to let it go,” she says when I stay quiet. “I just hate that you’re not friends anymore.”

“Whatever,” I reply. I’m not going to admit that I miss Nicole. Not when she hasn’t even looked at me in three years. I’m not about to beg her to be friends with me again.

“Let’s pick a college, and we’ll go there together,” Richelle says pulling me out of my angry thoughts. “Pick any college. And if we both get in, and don’t have a better option, then that’s where we’ll accept.”

I laugh. “Why not? Where are you thinking?”

“Um… what teams are playing right now?”

I look up at the TV on top of my dresser. “Memphis and Crenshaw.”

“Where’s Crenshaw?”

“New York. A little north of Ithaca and Cornell, I think.”

“Sounds good to me.” She laughs. “Out in the middle of nowhere. I love it.”

“You’re really going to apply?”

“I promise.”

“All right. Let’s do it.” I know this is never going to happen. We’ll end up somewhere local, most likely at completely different universities. But there’s something about the randomness of it, doing something I never would have done, that made me agree.

“Cal, you won’t even send in an application.”

As soon as she challenges me, I’m committed to this ridiculous pact. And it’s… liberating to do something for no other reason than just… because.

“What if I do?”

She laughs. “Then I guess I’ll see you at Crenshaw.”

*     *     *

“But Richelle didn’t go to Crenshaw,” Rae says, confused.

“I know. When I accepted, I was hoping she’d be there,” I reply. “I’m not sure where she ended up. She stopped talking to me not long after that.”

“You never told me what you did to make her stop talking to you.”

I shrug.

“Did you ask her? Or did you just let her walk away, like you always do?”

“I
did
try, Rae. But she never responded to anything I sent.”

I called Richelle and sent her texts and e-mails for weeks. She never responded, not once. And then I got too angry to keep trying. It pissed me off that she just blew me off like that, for no reason… at least not one that I understood.

“You had to have done
something
.”

“Then I have no idea what it was. Did
you
ever hear from her?”

“We communicated through you, remember? We were friends, but it wasn’t like the two of you. She was fricken in love with you even when we were little kids.”

“No, she wasn’t,” I scoff.

“Are you serious?” Rae counters, sitting up to gawk at me. “
Yes,
she was. How could you not know?”

“Umm… the letter made it pretty clear she wasn’t,” I countered, still feeling the burn of rejection, even after all this time.

“What letter?”

“The one she had Nicole give me after she moved, breaking up with me,” I explain. It was bad enough not knowing she was moving until after she already left, but then to have her break up with me in a stupid letter was even worse. I have no idea why I kept it.

“Oh.
That
letter. You changed after she left, you know,” Rae says, recalling the worst summer of my life.

“We don’t need to talk about it.”

“We never did then either,” Rae says. “You just shut down and refused to talk to anyone for, like, a week.”

“Seriously. Let’s not go there, Rae,” I reply. I know we were just in middle school, but I lost my girlfriend and best friend that day. It took a while to recover… or maybe I never did.