The Other Way Around (22 page)

“We probably shouldn't,” I say.
There's a lot of daylight right now,
is what I'm thinking. I'm picturing the two of us fumbling around in this hayloft, and it just seems awkward and uncomfortable and maybe a little bit awful. “I mean, I'm staying with your parents,” I say as if to align myself with the other adults.

Lindsay rolls her eyes. “Not like they'd care. They're the ones who gave me the condoms anyway.”

“Yeah,” I say, although this idea is a little shocking to me. I try to imagine the headmistress giving me condoms. “But they probably didn't mean for you to use them with someone you just met.”

Lindsay sighs like I'm totally missing the point. “There's nothing wrong with having sex.”

“Is that what Skye and Jeremiah say?” I smile like I'm making a joke here. Like the conversation isn't that serious. Like she hasn't just seriously offered to have sex with me.

“Basically, and that it's like an act of divine love and deep emotional intimacy or some bullshit like that,” she adds.

“Yeah, see that's the part I don't think we'd really be getting.”

“Whatever,” Lindsay shrugs. “They were like two years older than I am now when they had me. You can't tell me they were out for divine love and deep emotional intimacy when they were sixteen. Besides, I just want to see what all the fuss is about. But if you don't want to, that's cool.” She looks down at the hay beside her and starts pulling individual strands out from beneath the twine.

Then I say something that I mean to be snarky. At least I think I do. “I think I'll hold out for deep emotional intimacy. You know, just in case it's worth it.”

“Do you love her?” Lindsay asks.

“Who?”

“Emily, duh.”

“Oh,” I pause. “I don't know.” What would I have said last night in the tent?

“Do you want a blow job?”

YES!
I think. “Um, now?”
Idiot, idiot, of course she means now.
“I probably shouldn't um, wouldn't be a good, to do that I mean.” I stammer out some poorly assembled words of rejection.
Idiot. How can I say no? What the hell is wrong with me? Maybe Annaliese Gerber isn't the curse. Maybe I've been the curse all along and I just didn't know it.

Lindsay sighs again. “All right, well, I told Skye I'd collect the eggs for breakfast so I should probably go do that.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Yeah, it is okay.” She looks annoyed. “Can you take my mug back to the kitchen?”

Finally, a simple question to which I can give a simple answer. I nod and take the empty coffee mug from her hand. I follow her down the metal stairs, the adrenaline shaking my hands, wondering with each step if I've made a huge mistake. But I don't think so.

For the rest of the week, I spend my days carefully avoiding being caught alone with Lindsay or Lyle, and my nights sweating up the Boy Scout tent with Emily. I learn how far apart to space beets and broccoli, how to cold-water wash greens and arugula, and what it feels like to fall asleep with someone's soft breath against my earlobe. All additions to my list, which I decorate with tiny sketches of the different vegetables we plant and harvest. There's not much to do on the farm at night. Some nights Jesse and Jeremiah play music, and one night we play team charades, an activity Lindsay declares unbelievably dorky before she joins in. Most of the time I stare across the group at Emily, waiting for her to yawn so we can both make excuses and head back to our tent. I try and tell myself that the physical part is as amazing as I want it to be, but it's pretty much always the same. After the third night I finish myself off keeping one hand cupped around Emily's breast. I think she pretends to sleep through it.

On the morning of our last day, we help Skye put together the orders for Hot Springs. Once we load everything into the walk-in, there's not much to do except pack up our tents. The afternoon air is cool and crisp, and a warm sun hangs low in
the sky even though it's only two o'clock. Emily and I wander back up to the apple orchard. After we pass Gus's sheep pasture, Emily takes my hand, loosely interlocking her fingers with mine. The sun warms my face, and I take deep breaths as if happiness were something I could store up and hold on to. I show her my spot in the apple tree, and we climb back up and lie across the branches, our legs overlapping. I close my eyes and try to feel the tree breathing again. It's so quiet. I'm aware of the crinkling of every dried-up wrinkly leaf that twists and rubs against the bark.

“Drew,” Emily says, breaking the silence. “You really like me, don't you?”

“Well, yeah,” I say without opening my eyes.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” There's a scary quality to this question and answer, and I don't want to be the curse in my own life anymore.

“Never mind,” Emily says quickly. But there's a space that's opened up between us. A space for me to say just the right thing. And I know I have the right thing to say, because it's truly what I feel.

“Because you're strong. And you're fun, and funny. Because you care about things and believe in things, even if they're not the things I believe in. And that makes you beautiful, so amazingly beautiful. And you
are
, beautiful I mean. Like physically.” I can't open my eyes. I'm afraid to see how she'll react to all this. When I finally work up the courage to open my eyes, Emily is looking away. She's biting her lower lip and staring down at the grass. She wipes her eyes with her sleeve and finally looks at me.

“Wow,” she says. “I think I love you too.” It's a whisper. I almost don't hear it, but I can't ask her to repeat it. My heart is beating so hard in my chest. I reach over to take her hand; it's the only part of her I can reach from where I'm sitting. But she curls her fingers up so I'm wrapping my fingers around her fist instead. I'm so happy, I feel like my heart might explode against my ribs. When I close my eyes I imagine the two of us traveling the world together, backpacking in Europe, hiking mountains in Alaska, or lying on a deserted beach on some warm tropical island.

Emily clears her throat to say something else, and I give her what I imagine is an impassioned look. I'm ready for whatever other declarations she has to make. “We should head back,” she says. “I know Jesse wants to leave before it gets dark.”

It's not quite what I imagined she would say, and she only meets my smile with a little half-grin, but it doesn't matter. I was here and I heard her say it. She loves me. That's not something you just throw out there and then take back a minute later. I wonder if this makes her my girlfriend. I at least know Emily well enough not to ask. I hold her hand tightly even though her fingers don't quite return the pressure, and I give her big dopey grins all the way back through the fields.

While packing up to leave the farm, I look fondly at the grass that's been rolled flat in a perfect rectangle where the tent just stood.
I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this field
, I think as I roll up the Boy Scout tent.

Tim leans over my shoulder to see what I'm staring at. “I'm just glad I won't have to listen to Emily moaning and grunting anymore,” he says, as though reading my mind. My face turns bright red. Tim claps a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, man, I'm
all in favor of getting some nooky, but you two are loud. And I mean loud!”

It never occurred to me that everyone could hear us, but how could they not with the tents spaced just a few feet apart?

Nostalgia aside, I will be glad to head towards a bit of civilization. I owe Mom a phone call; there's no way around it. And she's going to rip me a new one for being out of touch for almost a week. It's almost finals time back at St. Mary's, and then it will be Christmas break. Even if I went back today, there's no way I'd pass the quarter. I hope she's been reading her book about the strong-willed teenager. Maybe she'll be a little less crazy when I finally talk to her.

I haul my tent and my backpack over to the edge of the field where G and Jesse are packing the van. G is stacking everything on top of the back and middle seats, leaving the way back next to the door free of stuff. “Why are you doing it like that?” I ask.

“The Geminids are tonight,” she says.

“Geminids?”

“Yeah, it's a meteor shower. We're going to be on the road, and I don't want to miss it. I figured if I sit back here, I'll catch less light from oncoming traffic, and I might have a shot at actually seeing something.”

“Cool. Can I fit too? I've never seen a meteor shower before.”

G shrugs. “Fine with me, if you think it's okay with everyone else.”

“Yeah, why wouldn't it be? Never mind, actually. Don't answer that,” I add quickly before she can say anything.

Our good-byes with Skye and Jeremiah are prolonged and kind of sweet. Skye gives us a big bag of granola that's still
warm from the pan she baked it in. They both seem interested in Burdock and talk loosely about going next year. Lindsay barely looks up from her book. “Good luck, hippies,” she calls from the sofa. We all wave back awkwardly. Despite her apparent indifference to our leaving, I imagine her life is about to get quieter and more boring once we're gone.

We pile into Shirley. Jesse has to shut me and G into the back. It's tight quarters, but it's also kind of cozy wedged between the trunk door and the piles of bags and tents. We can hear everyone else but we can't see them. “Holler if you gotta pee,” Jesse says from the driver's seat. If Emily is annoyed by my seat choice, she doesn't say anything, so I figure I'm in the clear. It's already getting dusky by the time we finish our goodbyes, and Shirley bumps back down the long, grassy driveway.

Being out of the van for a week has been nicer than I realized. After the first hour my back is cramped and my butt feels like I'm sitting on golf balls. There's not much room to shift positions in the little cave we've created for ourselves. I stare at the sky, waiting for it to erupt in the silver confetti that G has described.

“We probably won't see anything until after midnight,” G says when she sees me looking up. “Wanna play cards?” We play an endless game of war that evolves into Spit, which evolves into rummy. I try to read for a while, but it's too dark even with the lights on the highway. It's all right, though. There are things about the book that are irking me in ways they never did before. McCandless was kind of an asexual guy—something his few close friends attest to in the book, and something I used to find kind of comforting. Not all cool guys get girls. But the closer I get to Emily, and all the Freegans, the more unnatural
his celibacy seems to me. Not just his celibacy, but his complete lack of closeness to anybody except these people whose lives he passed through. It's like he could only get close to people he knew he was going to leave.

Jesse gives a little hoot when we cross into Oklahoma and then again when we reach Texas. After that it's pretty quiet until we stop for a bathroom break around Wichita Falls. Everyone stumbles in and out of the gas station, bathroom trying to go without fully waking up. Lyle offers to drive, but Jesse insists he's fine and says he'd rather just keep going and try to make New Mexico by dawn. No one really argues. We're all happy to crawl back into the van and pass out again.

The next time I wake up, the road is dark, but the sky is bright with starlight. G is awake, her face pressed against the side of the van, her dark eyes reflecting the tiny pinpricks of light. “What are you looking at?” I whisper.

“Cassiopeia.”

“Cassio wah?”

“Cassiopeia, right there, looks like a
W
.” She jabs at the window with her thumb towards a zigzag line of stars. “She was a queen who was really vain. She was jealous of her own daughter so she farmed her out to marry some sea monster. Then the head of all the gods put her in the sky upside down to punish her for her vanity.”

“She's upside down?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It's kind of hard to see.”

“I can never see what people are talking about when they point out those things.”

“Constellations?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn't matter,” G says. “You can make up your own. Like that one right there. See the four bright stars that kind of make a boot shape? I'm going to call that Andrew's Boot. Now you have to tell me the story of how it got there.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Make it good.”

“Okay,” I pause and think for a minute. “Okay, once there was this kid named Andrew, and everyone thought they knew who he was. His teachers thought he was a good student who was just unmotivated. His parents thought he didn't mind that they were divorced, and his mom thought it didn't matter that he switched schools every three years. Most of the kids at his school thought he was gay or a goth or a snob, and he just went along with all of it. Then one day he cracked and went off on a road trip with a crew of total hippie freaks.” I stop for a moment and check that G is still smiling. She is. “And his mom got so mad after she didn't hear from him for a week that she threw all of his stuff out onto the curb, and one of his shoes bounced really high into the sky and it stuck. The end.”

“Not bad,” G says.

“Not bad? Just not bad?”

“You really think your mom is still mad at this point?” she asks.

“I think she's going to kill me.”

“Maybe,” G says. “Maybe she's just really worried at this point, about where you are and when you're coming home.”

“I thought this was
my
story,” I said somewhat sulkily.

“Okay, well, I didn't really like the ending. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Andrew. Like what happens when he finally goes back to his real life?”