The Love That Split the World (13 page)

The story had upset me when I first heard it, but now it takes on a whole new meaning. I’m sure Grandmother knew what was going to happen today, how Matt’s feelings toward me
would change so violently that he’d seem like a different person, one who saw me as a stranger. She had to have—why else would she have told me that story? And how many of her other stories contain hidden warnings too?

When Mom and I get home from the movie, I go to my room and record the story of Brother Black and Brother Red for Alice. I’m in the middle of it when someone knocks on my door.

“Yeah,” I answer, and Coco pokes her strawberry blond head in the door, looking worried.

“Can I come in?”

I sit up and pat the bed. “What’s going on?”

She perches on the edge of the mattress and crosses her legs. She looks more and more like Mom every day, and while not on the school’s dance team, she takes ballet and jazz, and she definitely inherited Mom’s dignified grace. “Mom told me about the movies. That Matt has a girlfriend?”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”

“So weird—I’ve heard nothing about it.” Her pretty, deep blue eyes come up to mine. “Is it Rachel Hanson?”

I avoid her gaze, pulling a stray thread in my quilt. “I don’t know.”

Coco twirls her loose waves around her finger. “Abby told me what happened at Matt’s birthday—that they hooked up. I thought Matt was better than that. I
definitely
didn’t think they’d date.”

Of course Coco knows. “Matt and I were broken up,” I say. “I told him I didn’t want to date him. He’s free to be with anyone he likes.”

“Still,” Coco says. “Rachel? You guys are, like, friends. Or at
least in the same friend
group
. And I know you were upset. Everyone’s talking about how you snuck away from the party after.”

Ouch. So she hasn’t mastered Mom’s sensitivity training yet, but at least I know she cares. “Believe it or not, that was about something else. Or at least, it wasn’t
just
about him and Rachel. There was more to it.”

She scrunches up her mouth in thought. “It’s okay to be mad at her. I would be.”

“I’m not mad at her,” I insist, but I have no idea if I’m lying. “Rachel and I haven’t been close in a long time. It’d be weird if I expected her to choose me over Matt.”

Coco rolls her eyes. “Whatever. She used to come over all the time. Girl code stands.”

The strange thing is, that sounds like something Rachel would’ve said a couple of years ago. She’s always been tough and blunt—the type of teammate who wouldn’t hesitate to tell you you “sucked” at turns in second, or leapt like a grandma in need of a hip replacement—but she also has this enviably commanding confidence and fierce loyalty to her few select friends.

When Matt and I first broke up and Kara Van Vleck expressed interest in dating him, Rachel told Matt that Kara was being treated for a contagious flesh-eating bacteria. It was a completely appalling thing to do to Kara, and I doubt Matt believed it, but that was the sort of messed-up way Rachel showed love, even after she’d been so pissed at me for quitting dance, accusing me of being too good for anything other than the Ivy League. When I found out she was the source of that particular rumor, I’d felt a similar pain to the one I felt the night I broke up with Matt: like I’d realized how much I’d always love
someone at the same moment I realized that person and I might never fit together again.

Maybe that’s why I’m not mad at Rachel. Because Rachel can’t help but make it known when she’s trying to hurt you, just like she makes it known when she cares about you. The look on her face, in that horrible moment at Matt’s house, told me she was horrified that I had walked in, upset that I had seen them together, distressed that she’d been caught with Matt Kincaid. She hadn’t meant to hurt me, but that almost hurt worse. Rachel, it seemed, still had the inclination to protect me. Matt did not.

“I don’t know what Rachel and I are anymore,” I tell Coco, “but we’re not enemies.”

Coco nods silently for a few seconds, then stands. “Anyway, I wanted you to know I’m on your side. About the whole Matt thing.”

“Thanks.” I manage a weak smile, and she turns to go. “Hey, Coco?”

“Yeah?”

I’m not sure how to say this without it getting back to Mom and her putting the pieces together, which I don’t feel ready for, but I want Coco to hear it. “Sometimes you change your mind about a person,” I tell her. “Or your feelings for them change, or
they
change, or, I don’t know, you just want to make a different decision. And that’s always okay. You don’t owe anyone anything. You know that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” she says.

“I mean, like with Matt. I wanted to date him, and then I didn’t want to anymore, and some people made me feel guilty
for that. As if he just deserved whatever he wanted, and I was being selfish for not giving it to him.”

“Are you talking about sex?” she asks matter-of-factly.

“No,” I say. “Yes. Kind of. I’m talking about everything: dating, kissing, sex. All of it. You never owe another person something, no matter how nice they are to you. Relationships aren’t transactions.”

“Mom already covered all this,” she says, “in the grossest, most uncomfortable way you could imagine. I thought I was prepared for it, but you honestly can’t imagine how bad it was.”

“Oh, trust me,” I say. “I can. I got that talk immediately after my first date with Matt.”

Coco scrunches up her dainty eyebrows and crosses her arms. “I guess you get more of it than me and Jack, huh?”

“More of what?”

“That Mom-the-psychoanalyst crap.”

“I hate to break this to you, but I’m pretty sure I’m the
origin
of that particular alter ego.”

Coco glances over her shoulder at the door then lowers her voice. “You mean ’cause of Grandmother.”

Wow, right there, out in the open. It’s the first time Coco’s ever brought my alleged hallucinations up to me. “Yeah, her,” I say. “And just the whole adoption thing. Perhaps you’ve noticed our expansive library on that topic.”

Coco rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I think Mom just cares too much.”

“We’re lucky,” I reply, thinking about Megan’s obscenely rich but virtually absent parents, Rachel’s single mom who’s worked the night shift as long as I can remember, Matt’s dad
screaming at him from the sidelines during football practice despite Coach’s pleas for him to leave.

“I know,” Coco relents, turning back toward the door. “But
still.
Like, give us some room once in a while. Maybe don’t try to tell me about sex while I’m eating a bagel.”

I laugh. “Hey,” I say, stopping her again. “Thanks again. For being on my side.”

“We’re sisters,” she says. “I know you’d be on mine.”

14

“You look horrible,” Alice greets me the following Tuesday.

“Thanks,” I say. “I wanted to fit in with your interior decorating scheme.”

“Have you been sleeping?”

“No,” I tell her. Having still not heard from Beau, I’ve had a particularly easy time occupying my mind with things other than sleep at night.

“Good girl,” she says.

I tell her about Mom’s feet disappearing in the bathroom, and a slew of littler things—flickers of changing colors, flashes of trees where they shouldn’t be and construction sites where there should be buildings. I also tell her about Brother Black and Brother Red, and how it was all I could think of after Matt acted like a completely different person at the movie theater,
even going so far as to pretend he didn’t know me. Not to mention the terrifying feeling I have that maybe he actually
had
forgotten me. “I mean, could he have a split-personality disorder or something?”

Alice wobbles her head uncertainly. “Without more information, I couldn’t guess. But, like you said, it could be that Grandmother knows something about Matt, or about your future, events that are going to happen to you. Or the story could be a complete coincidence. We’re getting closer, though. I can feel it.”

Thursday brings my first hypnotherapy session. I’m both nervous and hopeful. I can’t help feeling that if there’s something dark hidden in my past, there’s probably a reason I’ve forgotten it. I guess that’s the point, though. Once I find and face this hidden memory, Alice expects there to be some sort of reaction—the exact kick in the proverbial pants that I need
to get Grandmother back. I’ve been sleeping more and more during the day, staying awake all night, waiting for a flash of her face, her wrinkled hands, her gray shawl in the rocking chair, but I’ve had no luck.

When I step into Alice’s office that morning, the first thing I see is Dr. Wolfgang, a white-haired hypnotherapist who’s been living in the area for three decades but still has a German accent so thick he might as well be speaking without using his tongue. Alice seems to catch every syllable, but I have to use context clues as he prepares for the session. When Dr. Wolfgang says something that sounds like
“Gerrfansittanonzecurch,”
Alice’s eyes flick forcefully toward the leather sofa, and I take the combination to mean “Go sit on the couch.”

I shuffle a bunch of papers aside and plop down. Dr.
Wolfgang drags a stool toward me and sits down, leaning over his own belly. His scratchy voice, speaking words I rarely catch, quickly lulls me toward something like sleep, but next thing I know, I’m coming to, feeling like someone just spritzed me with cold water. Alice looks annoyed, and Dr. Wolfgang looks bored.

“How’d I do?” I ask.

“Ve vill hahv to try hotta,” he says. “Zis may take some time.”

Alice says her mantra for the end of our sessions: “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Grandmother or the Universe seems willing to oblige me: On my way home, the clanking in the front of my car reaches new heights, and the gas pedal seems to stop working. I’m lucky to manage to get to the shoulder of the highway, but I’m down in a valley surrounded by scrubby hills and fairly light traffic. I pull my phone out to call my parents, and while I see that I have service, when I press Mom’s name I hear that same infuriating message I got when I called Megan the night of the party.
We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service
.
Please hang up and dial again.

I get out of my car and slam the door, stress mounting so fast a headache starts to spin behind my skull. It’s eighty-five degrees out with ninety percent humidity. I flip open the hood, knowing this will do me exactly no good, then call my dad. “Come on, come on, come on.”

“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is not in serv—
” I hang up and run my hands through my hair, weighing my options.

I don’t want to get in a car with a stranger. Under no circumstances will I get into a car with a stranger, no way in hell after seeing that abduction movie.

I can walk up to the next exit, two miles off, or I can flag someone down and try to borrow a working phone. I turn back to the road and wave my arms at a truck coming my way.

The driver pulls off onto the gravelly shoulder right behind the Jeep, and my stomach drops to the ground as Beau opens his door and gets out.

The Universe has to be kidding me right now.

“Hi,” he says, smiling. It’s the same smile he gave me that night in the band room, all night on the football field, and I don’t understand why he thinks it’s okay to smile at me like that after ignoring my phone number for three weeks.

He shouldn’t be making my heart speed up. He shouldn’t be looking at me like he wants to kiss me, because if he’s wanted to, he would have called me.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I shout over to him. “I mean, I assume you still have a phone, right? I need to call my parents to come get me.”

He leaves the truck door open and comes over to me, looking me up and down before turning his eyes to the open hood. “You want me to take a look at it?”

“No thanks,” I say. “I just want to call my parents.”

“I can give you a ride,” he says. “I was on my way back to Union anyway.”

“That’s okay. I’ll just call them.”

The space between his eyebrows knits together, and he passes me his phone. I walk off a few yards and call my mom first.

“We’re sorry. The number—”

I try my dad, Jack, and Coco, and get the same thing. I pace along the shoulder, outwardly sighing and inwardly groaning as I try to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve Beau.

“Natalie, let me take you home.”

I look back. Beau’s leaning against the Jeep, arms crossed over his chest. He wears worn-out jeans and a white T-shirt, like a Calvin Klein model, which infuriates me. I toss him his phone and stalk back to his truck.

I climb in without a word, and he watches then follows, wordlessly starting the truck up again and pulling back into the lane. For a while we both remain silent, but not in the comfortable way we were the night of the party. “You should let me look at your car,” he says finally. “I might be stupid, but I know cars.”

“You’re not stupid,” I say begrudgingly.

“So just not your type,” he says. “You’re more into golden boys like Matt Kincaid.”

“I am
not
into Matt Kincaid,” I snap. “Not now, not ever again.” Beau looks over at me for a second, and I fight a stutter in my chest. His eyes drop down to the space between us before trailing back to the road. After a long silence, I gather my courage and say, “You didn’t have to ask for my number.”

“Oh, that’s real nice, Natalie,” he says. “Thanks for that. You know what? I have some advice for you too. Next time someone asks for your number and you don’t wanna give it to him, say so instead of giving him a fake one.”

“What? I didn’t give you a fake number,” I almost shout. “What kind of bullshit excuse is that?”

He slides his phone out of his pocket, messing with it
while he drives, then holds it out to me. The screen says “Calling Natalie . . .”

“And?” I say.

“Go ahead,” he says, pushing the phone closer to me. “While we’re callin’ bullshit.”

I take the phone and hold it up to my ear just as the ringing stops. “
We’re sorry. The—
”

“You have to be kidding me,” I say, looking down at the screen. I double-check the contact info. “Beau, this is the right number. I don’t know what’s going on with my phone.”

He looks over at me again then back to the road, and says nothing.

“I promise,” I say. He glances over at me again, face grave. Per usual, I feel near to tears, maybe because I’m relieved Beau tried to call or maybe because I’m worried he won’t believe me. “Really, I promise.”

We stare at each other for a few seconds, and when he looks back at the road, he starts to smile. “So no QB1 for Natalie Cleary?”

“A quarterback is literally half of a halfback, Beau,” I say. “It’s simple math.”

“Simple for you, maybe,” he says. “You should probably know it took me five years to graduate from high school before you start overestimating me.”

“You should probably know I couldn’t possibly care less.”

A full, bright smile breaks across his face, and I look out the window, feeling my own grin spreading. We’re about five minutes from my house when I see something that makes my smile falter. “Can you pull over?” I ask.

He looks hesitantly over at me then to the parking lot on our right. “Sure,” he says, pulling off. As soon as he stops the car, I get out and walk toward the building on the far side.

“You okay?” he calls after me.

I turn back to face him. “It’s a daycare.”

“I can read,” he says. “That much, I got down.”

“No, I mean, it used to be a nursery.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A plant nursery,” I say. “Lindenbergers’ Nursery. My mom brokered the deal when the Lindenbergers bought the land.”

He scratches the back of his head and looks around. “Someone else must’ve bought it since then.”

“What happened to all the greenhouses?”

He shrugs. “Bulldozed them, probably.”

“Since yesterday?”

“I don’t know, Natalie.”

“You are seeing this, though, aren’t you? I’m not imagining it.”

He laughs and crosses his arms. “No, it’s there. What’s your point?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “Sorry, it’s just weird. My mom is friends with Rhonda Lindenberger. I feel bad that they went out of business.”

Beau looks almost suspicious, but he doesn’t ask any questions, and we get back in his pickup. Five minutes later we pull up to my house, and everything looks how it should, but I’m eager to talk to Alice again. It’s the last day of June, and time is speeding past.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime,” Beau says.

“So I guess you’ll just find me next time I need you?” I say.

“Or
you
could call
me
.”

I take out my phone and hand it to him. I’m going to have to get a new one, but at least I’ll have Beau’s number. He saves it in my phone then passes it back to me.

“When should I call?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Whenever you want me to come pick you up next. So maybe in, like, five minutes.”

I laugh, and he rests his forehead against mine, his hand on the back of my neck. “Okay, five minutes.” Our mouths are almost touching when I hear the porch door open, and I scoot backward abruptly.

“Nat?” Dad calls from the doorway. “Where’s your car?”

“Thanks again for the ride,” I tell Beau, climbing out of the truck.

“Five minutes,” he mouths through the glass, holding up as many fingers, and I nod.

My parents get the Jeep towed to the house on Thursday afternoon, but they make no motion to take it into a shop until Saturday morning, after Dad’s spent a few hours tinkering and swearing at it. When he’s convinced
no one’s gonna be able to fix the piece of sh-junk
, he skips right over the possibility of taking it to an actual mechanic and starts talking about all his friends and colleagues who might be able to cut us a deal on a new car.

Mom stands in the kitchen, one hand on her hip, making this face of patient disapproval that is the closest she ever gets
to glowering. When Dad’s done rifling through the pantry for the healthy potato chips he hates but Mom insists on buying, she says calmly, “I want to have it looked at first.”

Before I even know what I’m doing, I say, “I have a friend.”

Dad’s stony frustration cracks into a smile. “Well, that’s great, sugar. Always knew you had it in you.”

“A friend who does car things,” I amend.

“Car things?” Dad repeats skeptically.

“Yeah, you know, drag racing and assembling historically accurate plastic models.” Mom misses the joke and starts to gently explain that those things don’t qualify a person to work on her teenage daughter’s potential death trap. “I’m kidding, Mom. My friend Beau—the one who picked me up when I broke down—he does tires and brakes and that sort of thing mostly, but he offered to look at the Jeep.”

Dad shrugs, as if to say
if I can’t fix it, no one can!
Mom sets a hand on his shoulder and says, “Sure. Call your friend,” then smiles as if to say
and I will also call a mechanic regardless of whether your friend appears to fix the problem
.