Candor (10 page)

“Big word. I bet you’re good at Scrabble.”

“Dad’s an English professor. There’s too much pressure. When I was six, I ate the
X
tile.” She mimes popping something in her mouth and swallowing.

“I ate the yellow guy from Candyland in kindergarten,” I tell her. I’d forgotten until now. “Well, half of him. Just the head, really.”

She laughs. A real laugh. It makes me think of strawberries and bubbles.

We start in the laundry room. I show her the panel that controls all the lights and music in the house. The digital readout says Dad’s Music Mix 9 is playing. Your basic reinforcement Messages. “Music. Minimum volume,” I say.

The house goes quiet—almost. You can barely hear the music. It’s possible to ignore it, if you want. Though your subconscious will keep listening.

Nia rolls her head back and closes her eyes. Her shoulders sag. “Thank you. I’m so sick of music, all the time.”

“Are you listening to my music?”

She makes a face. “Yeah. My parents took all my good music away. So I’m stuck with yours.”

“Good. Keep listening.”

The jazz is decent. “You have good taste, even if you are a positive influence.”

I show her the oven that refrigerates food until it’s ready to cook. The pantry with shelves that light up when a box gets too light—time to replace it. Upstairs, we stop by the home theater with the massage chairs.

“Where’s your room?” she asks.

“It’s not exciting.” But she insists, so I show her. White walls. Twin bed. A desk with plenty of room for thick textbooks.

She looks for a minute. “It’s basic.” Her voice is too nice, like she feels sorry for me.

“It used to be great,” I tell her. “There were these model train tracks hanging from the ceiling, and a bed shaped like a caboose.”

“What happened?”

“I grew up.” And people weren’t touring our house anymore.

She walks over to my desk. “It’s so empty.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The shed is my real hideout now.

“I could paint something for you. Or draw something on the wall,” she says.

“That’s, um, nice of you,” I say. Surprised, I guess. And wondering what my father would do if a piece of art showed up in our house.

“Or not.” She rolls her eyes.

But then she spots it. A corner of paper showing below the Yale calendar on my wall. Her drawing, where my dad would never notice.

“You kept it.” She yanks down the calendar. “You liked it.”

“You’re a crazy stalker,” I tell her.

“Crazy
artist
stalker.” She’s got a smile on her face that I bet tastes like champagne.

I pin the calendar back up. “Come on. My dad won’t be gone forever.”

We finish the tour in Dad’s bathroom. It’s bigger than our kitchen back in Chicago, with countertops ripped from some mountain in Brazil. Nia pushes the button to turn on the shower. We watch all thirty jets pulse water against the tiny Italian tiles.

The noise fills my head. Pushes everything else out. Whatever I say belongs to me. I can be the guy with the orange paint can.

“It’s made for two people,” I tell her. “I could show you.”

She gives me a shove. “You talk to your girlfriend that way?”

“She never notices. We’re not … like that.”

“Show me the backyard.” Nia pushes past me. Before I know it, she’s at the sliding-glass doors at the back of the house.

The backyard is the one place I don’t want to be with her. Or anyone.

“Maybe we should study,” I shout.

But she’s already gone outside.

SHE’S STARING AT the pool when I catch up. “Why did you waste my time with the pervy shower? It’s amazing out here.”

I swallow. The spit barely slides down.

Nia looks up at the porch ceiling. “Hey, house. Turn some lights on.” Nothing happens.

“Lighting,” I say. “Backyard. Mid-level ambience. Spots on the trees.”

Her eyes get huge as the lights brighten and fade to their new settings. “It’s like you have a movie set in your backyard.”

Our pool is top-of-the-line. There are two waterfalls, and an island in the middle with a built-in cooler. It’s exactly what you would expect Campbell Banks to have in his backyard. Unless you knew his family history. But nobody knows that here. Nobody but him. And me.

“Are these real?” Nia skips over to the boulders around the edge of the water. I follow. Slowly.

“They’re fake.” I run my finger over the bumpy, cool surface. “It took three men a month to sculpt them.”

She sits on the edge of the water and unlaces her ripped black sneakers. Then she slides her feet in the water, toes pointed. “You must swim here every day.”

“We never use it.” I can see the red ambulance lights, bouncing off another pool’s water. I take one step back. Then another.

“Liar!” She flips her foot back and water spots my shirt.

“Careful!” I jump back another step. But I still don’t feel safe.

“Do you fill it with acid?” She laughs.

“We aren’t big swimmers.” My voice cracks, and I have to look away. I squeeze my eyes shut. Don’t cry. Don’t think about it.

It helps until I open my eyes and see the brick patio. Old Chicago bricks, from our last place. I never understood why Mom made Dad bring them here.

Dad cried the day they were delivered. That was the day he started playing the Messages.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice is gentle.

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Let’s talk over here.” I walk over and perch on the edge of a wicker lounge chair. But she doesn’t move.

“You want to talk?” she says. “Then come put your feet in.”

She stirs the water with her feet. Flashes of black-painted toe-nails. Pale skin, almost white under the water.

I shake my head.

“Sit,” she says. “That’s all.”

So I sit next to her. I sit so close, our hips touch.

“My name isn’t Mandi.” She edges away.

“You want me to sit or not?” I meant to sound tough. But my voice cracks.

She comes closer. “Put your feet in.”

“I don’t swim.”

Then she squeezes my hand tight, just once, and lets go. “I’ll keep you safe.”

I’m nervous. So nervous I barely notice the five seconds of hand-holding.

The water doesn’t own me. Nothing will happen. I can take care of myself.

I kick off my sandals. Slide my feet into the pool. It’s warm. Soft. My muscles relax, just a little. “I never knew it was heated.”

“It’s nice,” she says. “Dad filled my pool with a hose, when I was little. We got it for five bucks at the grocery store.”

I risk a kick. Watch the water fly off my toes.

“So you like my drawing?” she asks. Shy, for once.

“It’s amazing.” I wish I could make something from nothing. But all I do is work the system. I take what’s been dealt and do my best.

“I can teach you,” she says.

“Don’t bother.” It’s not supposed to sound mean.

But she bites her lip and looks away.

I feel like I owe her an explanation. “My mother tried, for years. But my brother was the artistic one.”

“You have a brother? Where do you keep him, under a rock?” She thumps one of the boulders. It makes a hollow thud.

“I don’t have a brother. Not anymore.” Or ever, as far as anyone in Candor knows. I pull one foot out of the water and hug my knee close. I don’t know why I told her that.

“Is that why you hate the water?” she asks.

My legs feel heavy. Like they could pull the rest of me in the pool. And the rest of my body doesn’t care.

I slide my foot back in.

“I mean, I do have a brother.” It feels good to say it. I haven’t told anyone here about Winston. “But he’s dead.”

Nia doesn’t say anything. Nothing about being sorry, or any of those other awkward things people said to me at the funeral. She just looks at me. Patient. Like she knows there’s more I want to say.

There is more. It’s all been protected inside me. Waiting for someone to listen. Someone who won’t say I’m crazy.

So I tell her.

I tell her why we’d never used our diving board or gone in the pool. I tell her how I never got to open my birthday presents that day. We spent the day at the hospital. And then we went home, without him. Mom started crying. She never really stopped.

Not until we moved here.

When I finish, she finally speaks. “Do you hate him?”

“No.” Yes, sometimes. “I miss him.”

“Of course you miss him.” She shrugs. “But your whole life would have been different if he’d just done a cannonball.”

“Or stayed out of the pool.”

“Too boring.” Nia swirls the water with pointed toes.

“You’re right. Winston didn’t know how to be boring.”

I don’t hate him for that. But she’s right—sometimes I hate him for other things. For not being here. It feels like a broken promise. And sometimes I hate him for what happened after he died.

“My mom left us because of him.” It comes out like a confession.

“Why? He was already gone.”

“Not gone from her head. But my father was trying to make us forget.”

I don’t know how she found out. But one night, she confronted him. It was after we grilled burgers and ate corn on the cob. After she kissed me good night. After she closed the door to my room, so soft that you couldn’t hear the latch click.

They yelled a lot that night. But nobody heard them except me. Our street was full of half-finished houses.

“You’re erasing him!” she shouted. “You want us to forget he ever existed!”

Dad was just as loud. “You can’t handle this on your own. All you talk about is Winston!”

I knew about the Messages before that night. I’d poked around in his study. Read things on his computer while he walked construction sites. It was strange. Interesting.

But I hadn’t realized that the Messages were invented to fix us.

They said a lot of things that night. But there’s one thing that I still think about, almost every day. Something Dad said. “Who’s more important?” he asked. “The dead kid? Or the one who’s still alive?”

I couldn’t hear her answer. But she was gone in the morning.

Nia squeezes my hand, just for a second. “You can’t forget loving somebody.”

“The Messages can do anything.” A shiver makes me wrap my arms around my middle.

“You’re almost making me believe you,” she says. “Except that it’s impossible.”

“It’s true. Everyone has to listen to them. Me. You.”

“Not me.” She turns to look at me. Our noses nearly touch. “I only do what I want.”

Only because she listens to the special Messages I made her. But I sense I shouldn’t say it.

“Why are you here if you only do what you want?” I ask.

She lets out a long sigh and pulls back. Our faces are a polite distance now. “Part of me wanted to come.”

“And the other part?”

“That part doesn’t do what my parents want. Ever.” She stares at me, eyes hard. “And they’d like nothing more than for me to hook up with you.”

“You should do what it takes to make your parents happy,” I say. Wiggle my eyebrows to show it’s a joke. But she’s looking at the water now.

“My whole life, there’s only been one thing I’ve wanted,” she says. “Know what it is?”

Fantasies race through my mind. But I keep quiet and just shake my head.

“To do whatever my parents don’t want.” A little smile twists her lips. “And I’m very good at that.”

“Like what?”

“It started with M&M’s.” She shoots me a sly look from the side of her eyes. “I used to buy a pound bag with my allowance and eat them on the way home from school. They were everything I wasn’t supposed to have. Candy. Preservatives. And definitely not organic.”

“Crazy girl.”

“It got crazier.” She swallows so hard I can hear it over the waterfall.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“You told me.” Nia shrugs. “Besides, you should know what a loser I am.”

“You’re not a—”

“Drinking. Drugs. Sex. Think of everything good Catholic parents don’t want for their little girl. I did it all. Over and over again.” She keeps her eyes on the water. “Now do you see what a loser I am? It wasn’t even fun, most of it.”

Because I don’t. I’ll never know what I would have been like, if I’d been given the chance to be normal. Everyone comes here screwed up some way. I would have been, too.

“I don’t think you’re a loser.”

“I do.” She says it quietly.

“But I think you should make up your own mind about what you want,” I tell her.

She folds her arms over her stomach and kicks both feet up at the same time. “I only do what I want.”

“No. You only do what pisses off your parents. Maybe you should do what you want—no matter if they’d like it or not.”

Now she stares at me, hard. I return the look. “You’re not scared of me.”

“So quit trying,” I tell her.

She edges closer. So do I. And then she kisses me.

It’s soft. Slow. But it’s like our bodies have been planning this. We press closer together. She rests one hand against my cheek, fingers spread out.

I can’t hear anything except my breathing. And hers. The Messages are gone. But the rest of my brain is screaming.
Stop right now
, it warns me.
This is dangerous
.