How to Love (6 page)

“No kidding,” I imagined replying, hitching my backpack up on one shoulder and heading down the hall toward English. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

I spent all morning with a hard little knot of anxiety lodged someplace in my middle, then knocked tentatively on the door of the office at the beginning of my lunch period. The air smelled like coffee and dust. I was expecting to meet with Mrs. Ortum, the older, slightly daffy-looking counselor who’d run all our ninth-grade seminars and whose husband, apparently, had made a hundred million dollars in tech stocks, but in her place was a dark-haired young woman I’d never seen before, a little plaque printed with
MS. BOWEN
on the desk.

“Hi, Serena,” she said, smiling warmly. “Come on in.” I had no idea how she knew who I was, but she was pretty and smart-looking in a way that immediately made me want to please her. I found myself smiling back.

“You’re not in trouble,” she said, as soon as I was seated. The sleeves of her starchy white button-down were rolled halfway up her arms. “Everybody I’ve had in here so far keeps thinking they’re in trouble.” She picked up a file folder, tapped it against her desk for a moment. Reading upside down, I could see that it contained my transcripts. “I’m new here, so I’m just kind of going through my lists and trying to get to know everyone I can.”

She asked me how my classes were going and if I had an after-school job, taking notes on a yellow legal pad as I answered as vaguely as possible. A bright turquoise costume ring glittered on the middle finger of her left hand. There was a carafe of water on the desk beside her, the fancy kind we used at the restaurant, with round slices of lemon floating inside. It seemed weirdly glamorous for school. Most of the faculty carried plastic travel mugs with bank logos on them.

“Have you given much thought yet to college?” she asked finally, sitting back in her uncomfortable-looking chair and gazing at me shrewdly. She’d put the pen and paper back down on the desk.

“A little,” I told her, which was a lie. In fact, I thought about college constantly, of where I might go and the
people I might meet there. There was, at this very moment, a course catalog from Northwestern on my desk at home so well-thumbed it was basically falling apart, the writing program bookmarked with a neon yellow Post-it. I could have recited their arts and sciences requirements from memory. “But I’m only a sophomore, so I figured I had some time.”

“Well,” Ms. Bowen said, “that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been looking at your records, Serena, and they’re really impressive. A 4.0 GPA every semester you’ve been here, straight honors track since last year. I’d like to see you participating in an extracurricular or two, but the fact is that if you stay on this track, keep taking those APs and doing well on them, you could be eligible for graduation a full year early.” She leaned forward a bit, almost conspiratorial. She looked excited for me. “Is that something you might be interested in working toward?”

It took me a minute to absorb that information.
A full year early. Eligible for graduation
. I stared at her for a moment, blinking; in the outer office I could hear the sounds of the copier jamming, an assistant’s frustrated
dang
.

Ms. Bowen took my hesitation as reluctance; she cocked her glossy head to the side, the same sympathetic pose I’d imagined earlier. “Of course, you certainly don’t have to,” she amended. “I know plenty of students who wouldn’t want to miss out on being a senior, and everything that goes with it. I just wanted to let you know that you had the opt—”

“I’d love to,” I interrupted quickly. I thought of airplanes and huge, drafty lecture halls, locks on cages springing free. “What do you need me to do?”

*

What Ms. Bowen needed me to do was pretty simple, at least for the time being: keep doing well in my classes, make a list of the schools I wanted to apply to, and get myself an SAT study book. “We’ll find you some volunteer work for the summer,” she promised, eyes shining like maybe she was just as excited about the prospect of pulling this off as I was. “Beef up your transcripts a bit.”

*

In May, two of the waitresses quit, so on top of the extra studying I worked like a demon, three nights a week and then doubles every weekend. I lived in black pants and a starchy white shirt. My father and Roger bought Antonia’s when I was a little girl and I’d been waiting tables just about that long, knew the menu and the regulars all by heart. The truth is, I’d always liked being there: the place all tin ceiling and subway tiles, white linen tablecloths like a hundred communion dresses. There was always a band set up by the bar.

The guys playing tonight were some of my favorites, a quasi-ridiculous oldies ensemble who covered a lot of Sam Cooke, and I sang along under my breath while I zipped a couple of credit cards through the computer beside the bar. Sometime during the second verse I realized I wasn’t alone:
Sawyer was leaning against the hatch and watching me, a wry, secret smile on his face.

I snapped my jaw shut, blushing and surprised: Sawyer wasn’t even
working
tonight. He hadn’t been on the schedule. I hadn’t done anything nice to my hair. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, street clothes. He was giving off the heat from outside. “Don’t tease,” I ordered, bouncing back after a minute, trying like hell not to let on that my feelings for him hadn’t let up even a little, though he’d been dating Allie for more than seven months. “It’s not nice.”

Sawyer shrugged and just kept standing, like he had no place in the world to be other than here. “I’m not teasing,” he told me, and in truth, he didn’t actually seem to be. “‘Bring It On Home to Me’? That’s a good song.”

“That’s a
great
song,” I corrected, and he grinned.

“You sound like your dad.”

“Nah. He likes Otis Redding.” I tore a receipt out of the printer, smiled back. “What are you doing here?”

Sawyer tilted his head. “Looking for you.”

“Right.” I snorted, slipping the cards back into the billfolds. “Your mom was floating around earlier.” Lydia wasn’t super involved in the day-to-day running of the restaurant, though her fingerprints were everywhere if you knew where to look: the formal antique portraits affixed to the doors of the restrooms, the Edison bulbs hanging above the bar. Lydia was an artist herself, a photographer, but her family
had made a fortune with a chain of successful steak houses up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and she probably had a better head for the food business than either Roger or my dad. She’d turn up from time to time, watchful, an expression on her face like she was working out secret sums in her mind. The busboys were all terrified of her; Shelby called her Dragon Lady behind her back. I tried to stay out of her way.

The one person Lydia never seemed to turn her cool, eagle-eyed artist’s scrutiny on was Sawyer. He was her only son, her Best Beloved: He’d had surgery when he was a baby to repair a literal hole in his heart, a fact Allie and I had always thought was enormously, unbearably romantic, and as long as I’d known Lydia she’d been ferociously protective of him. “She probably makes you have a blood test before you’re allowed to be his girlfriend,” Allie’d hypothesized at my house late one night, both of us dissolving into giggles—not that it seemed to have stopped her, in the end.

I was about to head back toward the floor when Sawyer reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. “Reena.” There was something urgent and unexpected about the way he said it, like he’d almost told me a secret and then changed his mind. “Why don’t I ever see you around anymore?”

I blinked at him, disbelieving. He was still holding on to my arm. “Maybe I’m better at hiding than you thought.”

Sawyer took just long enough to answer that I was sure he had no idea what I was talking about: It had been a
long time since that night in Allie’s yard, after all, and he’d probably forgotten it immediately. I was about to back-pedal when he smiled. “Maybe,” he said, letting go but not moving away at all. “But I’m serious.”

“Yeah, well.” I felt my eyebrows arc. “Me, too.”

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

I cocked my head, glanced around. The band had segued into “It’s All Right.” I could see my father talking to a couple of regulars at the other end of the bar. “Working?” I said.

Sawyer rolled his eyes at me. “Thank you, princess. I mean after that.”

“Going home?”

“Come hang out.”

“With you?” I blurted, and Sawyer smirked, lazy as the Cheshire cat disappearing from the tree.

“Yeah, Reena. With me.”

In all the years I had known him—and I’d known him, more or less, since I was born—Sawyer had never once asked me to go anywhere. It took me a second to recover. Still, I shook my head like an instinct, like something I knew in my gut. I thought of the party at Allie’s, Lauren Werner and the crowds of people I didn’t know how to navigate. “Listen, Sawyer. Allie and I don’t really …” I trailed off, tried again, wondered what she’d told him. “I mean, we’re not so much … hanging out.”

Sawyer frowned, and there was that expression again,
like he’d come here to tell me something specific. “I didn’t mean with Allie,” he said.

Oh.

“Oh,” I said. I looked at him for a moment, then back over at my father with his coffee and his grin. “Sawyer—”

“Come on, Reena,” he said, already slightly impatient. I got the feeling this was all the convincing he was going to try to do. “It’s just me.”

I thought of Allie and of valuables gone missing: of lip gloss slipped in pockets and crushes filched right out from under your nose. No matter how I tried to justify it, this was a capital crime of friendship. It was treason, even if she’d done it first.

“Yeah,” I said. Behind me the music was ending, one final chord and the crash of a snare. “Yeah, I can hang out.”

After church I take Hannah back to the house for lunch and strap her into the high chair, slicing some fruit to keep her busy while I toast some wheat bread. “Hey, lady, can you say
banana
?” I ask her, and Hannah repeats it back obediently. “Good girl,” I tell her happily, holding my hand up for a high five. Dumb as it sounds, I didn’t totally realize when I was pregnant that Hannah would have an actual personality separate from mine, but sure enough it comes out more and more every day: She likes ice cream and avocados and dancing to Beyoncé in the back of the car, her small body moving with surprising enthusiasm inside the confines of her safety seat. She’s talking more and more now, baby jabber and snatches of
conversation repeated back to me. It’s kind of the coolest thing ever.

Soledad comes in and drops her purse on the counter, swipes a chunk of banana off the cutting board. I snort. “That’s for Hannah.”

“Sorry. Starving.” She smooths an affectionate hand over the top of Hannah’s head. “So, Lydia talked to me when we were leaving,” she tells me, not bothering to work her way up to it at all. “She wants to take Hannah to the library one day this week to get her a card.”

“What? Why?” I spread a little bit of peanut butter on the toast and cut it into tiny triangles, then put it on the tray of the high chair. “There you go, baby girl.” I glance at Soledad, wrinkle my nose. “What does she need a card for? She’s fourteen months old.
I
take out books for her.”

“I know that. But I guess Lyd wants to spend some time with her.”

My spine straightens. “Really.”

Sol stares back. “Really.”

“How special.”

Growing up, I spent more time with Lydia than with any of my aunts or cousins, which is why it doesn’t totally make sense that I’ve never gotten over being afraid of her. When I was ten and eleven she and Soledad and I used to go out to expensive lunches and get pedicures, reading gossip magazines and picking out our favorite dresses on each page. She’s got a successful photography business and trolls flea markets
looking for cool antique rugs for her hallways; she bought me an incredible rose-quartz necklace when I turned thirteen. She’s never turned the full force of her dragon-lady tendencies on me, not exactly, but still I’ve always found her totally terrifying, the way I’d be scared of a she-wolf or a teacher I couldn’t impress. I can’t get over the notion that there’s something huge and important about me that she finds totally lacking.

On top of which, until this morning she’s showed about as much interest in Hannah as one might show for memorizing the finer details of the Terms and Conditions agreement on iTunes. So it’s possible I’m not feeling a whole lot of Catholic charity toward one Lydia LeGrande at this particular juncture.

“I think we’re busy that day,” I announce grandly, and my stepmother rolls her eyes.

“I didn’t tell you a day.”

“Well, Hannah and I have a very busy social calendar.”

Soledad smirks, just the tiniest bit. “Reena.”

“Sawyer’s been back for a
day
and suddenly she’s angling for a Grandmother of the Year Award? Seriously?” I scowl, pouring milk into Hannah’s sippy cup. “When was the last time you even saw her
hold
this kid?
Never
is the answer, in case you were wondering.
Never
.”

“Never,” Hannah echoes cheerfully, tossing some peanut butter toast onto the floor.

Soledad raises her eyebrows. “Reena,” she says again, more quietly this time. “Calm down.”

“You calm down.” God, that makes me mad. “No. I say no. And why was she talking to you, anyway? If she wants to talk to me she can talk to me. I’m right here. I’ve
been
right here, if you remember, for the last
two years
.”

Soledad nods slowly. I can’t tell if she’s disapproving or maybe a little impressed. “Yes, sweetheart,” she says after a moment, and presses a kiss to my temple before she goes. “I remember.”

*

My cell rings just as Hannah goes down for her nap, and I dig it out from the bottom of my bag, where it vibrates beneath a bottle of ibuprofen and a board book of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
. It’s Aaron. I smile. “Hey, mister,” I say, wedging the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I dash down the stairs. I wave good-bye to Soledad and hurry out the back door. “What’s up?”