Everything That Makes You (12 page)

“Uh, Midtown.”

“High Point.” He rocked back on his heels, giving her an openmouthed, crooked smile and holding out a hand. “I'm Jackson King.”

Fiona took his hand. When his skin met hers, an almost-violent case of flutters coursed through her, stomach to throat. “Fiona. Doyle.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Fiona.” Affecting a thick southern accent, he folded his hand around hers. “Well, fellow Memphian, would you believe that I was headed to get something to eat, too? Before you distracted me?” He held up his hands, as if proving he wasn't armed. “I'm not a stalker, I swear.”

She hesitated—well, pretended to hesitate. Anyway, she had to say
yes,
right?

As they sat across a table from each other, Fiona tried to act like a normal person. It was hard, what with those green eyes. “You
do
look familiar,” she said, although she couldn't imagine from where. He certainly didn't go to her high school—he was too cute to forget. Trent-McKinnon-who? cute. “You're not in my lit class, are you?”

He shook his head. “Chemical engineering major.”

“I wonder why I didn't see you at orientation. People kept asking if I knew Elvis. Or they called me
y'all—
in the singular. I mean, it's got
all
in it.” She took a sip of coffee, shaking her head. “It would have been nice to have some backup.”

He laughed, nodding his head. “I got here late—a few days after classes started. I meant to defer but decided last minute to come.” He waved his hand, dismissing the question she hadn't asked. “Family stuff.”

“I guess I've just seen you around the dorm.”

He nodded and wavy hair dipped over green eyes. Looking guilty, he bit one side of his lip, making his smile all the more lopsided. “So, I have a confession.”

Oh no.
“What's that?”

“I wasn't going for coffee. I was heading to class.” He looked at his watch. “Which starts in four minutes.”

She laughed, feeling so, so fluttery. “You
were
being a stalker.”

The boy hung his head dramatically. “I know. Five minutes in and I've already broken my first promise. It's a bad start.”

“A bad start for what?”

He stood and began walking backward as Fiona stayed at the table. He backed nearly all the way to the automatic doors. They slid open, but he paused, those pretty green eyes still on Fiona. With a sly, uneven smile, he answered, “Not sure yet.”

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, Fi nestled Panda in her lap and absently picked at her comforter. “Where are you?” she asked, holding the phone away from her ear.

“The common room on my hall.” Trent spoke loudly, and still all the background noise threatened to drown him out completely. “There's a party later. People are hanging out.”

Fi's dramatic plans for the evening included hiding from her parents' “good intentions” and going to bed by nine, just as she'd done every night since May.

“Sounds fun,” she lied.

“And you'd be the expert,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she snapped.

Critiquing her mourning rituals was Ryan's job. All summer, he and Gwen had tried to coax her out of the house. By August, he was spouting platitudes, like
He's better off now the suffering's over
and
There are other fish in the sea!
All the while,
with his arm comfortably around Gwen's shoulder.

“Nothing. Sorry,” Trent said. “Hang on, I can't hear anything.” Muffled sounds came over—and then the background noise suddenly disappeared. “Okay, I'm back in the room.”

“You don't have to leave your party.”

“It's not a party yet.” She heard the groan of springs followed by a soft grunt. “I want to crash a minute anyway, I'm exhausted. The coach is sadistic. We practiced all day, and it's like a hundred and five outside.”

Fi sympathized. Doing anything outdoors in a Deep South summer—which could last till October sometimes—
sucked.
She had swimmer friends who claimed to sweat underwater. “Maybe it's payback,” she said. “Remember those awful workouts when you made yourself my personal trainer?
You
never showed any mercy.”

“You were in a climate-controlled gym, you wimp.” The mattress groaned again, and Fi pictured Trent's feet dangling off the end of the twin-sized dorm bed. He hardly fit in his queen bed at home, always complaining he had to sleep diagonally. “You have no idea—all the pads! Seriously, I could drop dead out there.”

Closing her eyes, Fi rubbed her fingers hard across her eyebrows, like she could massage out the dull throb she'd had since Marcus died.

“Man, Fi. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”

“It's fine. Don't worry about it.”

Actually, it wasn't fine.
She
wasn't fine. She was way on the other side of fine—upside down even. But dragging Trent down with her wouldn't get her right side up.

She'd gotten used to the awkward pause that always followed these situations. The thoughtless gaffe—usually something harmless, like
I'd rather die than see that movie
or
A little broccoli won't kill you—
followed by the stammering apology. Then overcompensating conversation immediately after, usually about something trite like the weather or tomorrow night's dinner.

“Tell me about the drills,” she said. Her finger looped around a loose thread in the bedspread, and she snapped it free.

“I got the playbook today. Hang on.” She heard another grunt followed by shuffling and another groan of springs. “Well, there's the Flip.”

For the next twenty minutes, Trent talked her through the Ole Miss lacrosse playbook. Some were pretty clever; a few could even be adapted for a girls' team. She could picture one in particular, a low double cut while the center—Fi—plowed to goal.

Only, when she tried to visualize this happening with her Milton teammates, Fi groaned.

“What's wrong?” Trent asked.

“Nothing.” She'd been snapping threads this whole time. Now, there was a knuckle-sized hole in her bedspread. “Just trying to picture the Milton girls trying to pull off the Flip.”

“They're really that bad?”

“Some are still trying to keep the ball in their sticks. Which come from Walmart.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. Today, the goalie missed two easy blocks
because she was texting.
After practice, they rolled out a keg.”

“I told—”

“Don't. Please.”

Milton had always been a hard choice, but it was worth it. Because Marcus was worth it. But then he died, and everything unraveled. It sounded melodramatic but it was true—she'd lost everything.

“So . . . how are classes?” Trent asked. He used the voice he saved for adults—politely non-sarcastic.

This conversation wasn't going to be any better than one about dead boyfriends. “Okay, I guess.”

“How's calc?”

“It continues to be the bane of my existence.”

During registration, she hadn't paid much attention to her advisor's suggestions, just said “Sounds good” to each one. Spanish and sociology were fine, and creative writing had been a pleasant surprise. But calculus was god-awful.

“I'm sure Ryan could help out,” Trent said. “He's how you passed precalc anyway.”

“I don't need Ryan,” she snapped. “I'll be fine.”

She heard Trent snort. “Wouldn't want anyone to know you're not perfect.”

“Who said I thought I was perfect?” What a terribly misinformed conclusion.

“Never mind.”

With that polite, placating voice, he talked about his classes—Spanish, a geology class he called “Rocks for Jocks,” a business class. Some shouts interrupted him, and after a muffled conversation—it sounded like his hand was over the phone—he said, “I gotta go soon.”

“Okay.”

“Weekends down here are awesome,” he said. “You should come sometime.”

Fi had no interest in hanging out with a group of people she didn't know. Anyway, Trent would probably abandon her ten minutes into a party, what with all the inevitable swooning girls following him around. “I don't know any girls down there. Where would I sleep?”

“It's not church camp, you dork. You could sleep with me.”

For the first time during the conversation, Fi's hands stilled. A thread wrapped around three fingers at once, turning the tips purple. “Uh—”

Trent sighed. “Do you think I'm a total asshole? Your boyfriend just
died.
”

It was the first time he'd stated the obvious out loud. It was refreshing.

“I can kick my roommate out,” he continued. “He's got a girlfriend. You can sleep on his bed. Anyway, it's only an hour from home. You wouldn't even need to spend the night if your
hermit self went into freak-out mode.”

She tried to picture sleeping over at Trent's—him sprawled across a too-little bed, snores bouncing against concrete walls. She imagined their comingled body heat in a small, stuffy room; how they'd groggily maneuver around each other the next morning.

“I'm not a hermit,” she said.

She heard more muffled in-and-out sounds, like he was pulling on a shirt. “When's the last time you left the house?”

“I leave the house all the time. I've got class.”

“To do something social?”

Fi didn't answer. Did the funeral count as a social event?

After another round of bangs and shouts, he said, “Right. Really gotta go now.”

“Have fun.”

“Seriously, think about it.” And then he hung up.

Fi tossed her phone on the bedside table. She slouched down, bringing Panda with her, and swallowed back the need to cry.

Before he left for school, Trent felt almost like a
place
to her—the only place she could just
be.
They watched TV or played Wii or sat around eating popcorn. If she happened to crack a joke or act like an otherwise-normal person, he didn't fake-smile at her and say, “See, it's all going to be okay.”

He just let the moment be the moment. Then, when she remembered that everything was terrible and her heart was broken and her life wasn't anywhere near where it was
supposed
to be, he went along with that, too.

Now, he had a new life—without her. And she had what? A school she didn't really want? Helicopter parents? Wallowing?

What the hell was she
doing
?

Fi was an Otherlands regular now. She'd spend her free afternoons there, drinking black coffee—and hiding from her parents—while apathetically studying. Today wasn't so bad, though. Another creative writing assignment.

At first, the assignments seemed bizarre:
Write five hundred words from the perspective of an old lady who's lost her cat, but don't mention the cat. Describe the color blue. Write a conversation where one person talks, and the other only thinks.
But they were fun—and she was sort of good at it.

She pulled the latest topic from her bag.
Write five hundred words around the following statement: I should have known better than to let you go alone. Use the second person and present tense.

Well,
this
one might be depressing.

“Hey.”

She looked up. Jackson stood awkwardly on the other side of her table. He pointed to the chair in front of him. “Can I sit?”

Fi hesitated a moment. Looking up at him, she saw just the littlest bit of Marcus floating around in that doubtful expression and hunch of broad shoulders.

She nodded, and Jackson screeched the chair backward and
sat, putting his mug and a bowl of fruit in front of him. He pointed to the papers in front of Fi, one eyebrow up.

She answered the question he didn't ask. “Creative writing assignment.”

He nodded. “How's school?”

“All right, I guess.” She shrugged. “I've never been much of a school person, really.”

“I like it,” Jackson said between bites. “Liked it. Well, the math and science parts. Probably wouldn't have been great with creative writing.”

What was happening here? Were she and Jackson
small-talking
?

Fi was even on the verge of confessing her failure with calculus before she stopped herself. She didn't want him to think she wanted tutoring or anything. As much as she hated getting help from Ryan, getting it from Jackson would be twenty times worse.

“Liked it?” she asked instead.

He shrugged. “Homeschool didn't really cut it—kind of a waste. I mean, Ellen King as high school teacher? I don't know which is her bigger weakness—teaching or cooking.”

Despite herself Fi smiled, picturing Mrs. King elbow-deep in that battered enamel pot, boiling up some monstrous concoction. Marcus called it the Voodoo Pot. “But you got into Northwestern.”

“Good SATs,” he said. “The my-brother-is-dying essay probably didn't hurt either.”

They looked each other in the eyes then—a steady gaze, with none of the awkward spaces that came when people didn't understand.

“Why aren't you there now?” she asked.

“I deferred.”

“Right, but . . . well, there's no reason to anymore.”

“I don't know,” he said with a frown. “You tell me. You're here, too.”

Fi's eyes narrowed. “I go to
school
here, Jackson. I never applied to Northwestern.”

Jackson—surprisingly—didn't seem inclined to argue. “I figured I wouldn't be good for much. Maybe next year.”

“You think it'll feel better by then?”

“I hope so.” She could tell by the way his lower lip dipped in that he was chewing the inside of his cheek. Marcus did that, too. “I don't think I'll have much choice, though. Mom already threatened to rent out my room if I don't go.”

“She
wants
you to leave?”

“Yes and no. She and Dad, they're both a mess. When I leave—Jesus, I can't imagine, how
quiet
everything will be. The two of them alone in that big house? But they say I need to get on with it.”

“With what?”

“Life.”

“Sounds familiar,” she said, feeling the scratch in the back of her throat, the sting in her eyes. She supposed this was an improvement, since a month ago, she'd have burst into tears
the second Jackson walked up to her table.

He spun his mug where it rested, absently staring into it. “It's surreal to think about. Like I might wake up one day and not think about him till lunch or something. Because right now, he's everywhere.” He looked up, gesturing vaguely to the tables behind Fi. “I can't even look at people without making some kind of Marcus observation. That guy's about as fair as he was. The girl's reading a book I checked out of the library for him last year. That fat guy with the cane, would Marcus have been able to beat him up the stairs?”

Fi wiped a tear from her cheek, looked over her shoulder, and studied the people Jackson listed.

“And it gets grimmer,” he went on. “Like, who got his organs—or the ones that worked, at least? Who's wearing his clothes that Mom donated to Goodwill?”

Envisioning all these people carrying around bits and pieces of Marcus, Fi lost it.

Jackson's mouth had been open, like he was preparing to say something else. He closed it slowly. “Sorry.”

She shook her head, wiping away the tears. She had become nothing but a pathetic lump of wallowing sorrow. “Is this ever going to end?”

She wasn't expecting a response. And Jackson didn't give one.