When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (24 page)

We were both about to lose the game of chicken when Tom flicked his lights back on high beam, blinding our opponents. He then turned the wheel sharply until the SUV lurched sideways and we slid past the truck on two wheels, low hanging branches scratching the roof.

I was thankful I had buckled my seatbelt, as I hung sideways, suspended somewhere between my seat and Tom.

I hit my head on the ceiling as the tires reconnected with the road. “Ow.”

“Are you OK?” Tom asked, glancing between me and the road.

I nodded, holding a hand to my head and turning in my seat to watch as the truck lost control. It spun wildly, its taillights like lightning bugs and its headlights swinging through the forest until we heard a loud crash. The air seemed to vibrate with the collision, like rolling thunder.

“I think the question is, will Mr Green be OK?” I whispered.

Tom pressed down on the accelerator again and shrugged.

 

The lights were on at Rose Hill, lampposts lighting up the drive and floodlights illuminating the gardens.

“I thought you said you were OK,” Tom muttered as I climbed down from the SUV. He brushed his fingers across a graze on my forehead.

“I am.” I tilted my head until his lips were inches from mine. “As long as you stick around.”

He smiled and leaned down to kiss me. I kissed him back desperately, holding onto him as if we were a couple of kids standing on the edge of a high dive.

We were pushed into the deep end when we entered the foyer.

“Are you the boy claiming to be my grandson?” a voice asked.

The Red Queen, I thought as I took in an older woman wearing an expensive looking red pant-suit. A cream-colored silk scarf was knotted around her neck and in her lobes were drop earrings; pearls, of course.

I glanced at Tom. His face was waxen as he stared at Mrs Windsor-Smith.

His grandmother regarded me with an arched eyebrow, like I was running around her estate in my underwear. “I think the girl should go home.”

Tom blinked, as if a spell had been broken. “Come on, Lillie,” he said, putting a protective arm around my shoulder.

“Wait,” she said. “Lorraine!”

Lorraine poked her head out from an office behind the reception desk like a gopher from its hole. She looked at Tom and then at me, chewing her red lips nervously.

“Call the chauffer. For the girl.”

“For Lillie,” Tom corrected.

His grandmother waved his words away. “Lorraine,” she barked again and Lorraine let out a squeak and picked up the phone to call the chauffer.

Tom drew himself up, but I squeezed his arm and shook my head. He was going to have to charm the pant-suit off this woman and that was not going to happen with me at his side.

I patted his arm as it slid from my shoulders and nodded a farewell to his grandmother, before walking out of the door and down the front steps of Rose Hill. It was like leaving home for the first and last time.

 

There was no conversation from the chauffer during the car trip, except to ask my address. I told him a couple of doors down and then snuck back into my bedroom via the window.

I sat on the edge of my bed, moonlight from the window falling across me like a crisp white sheet. Who can say when I fell asleep? Three? Four? But when I woke up, fully dressed on my duvet, the light was tinged with gray.

I kicked off my shoes and crawled under the covers, dozing until the light turned yellow. Then I rolled out of bed and went to the landline, creeping through the house, which was full of the sounds of sleep. I could hear Blaze snoring loudly in the back room and a softer snore from Dawn. I knew Deb would be doing much the same in her bedroom.

I flipped through the phonebook and dialed the number for Rose Hill, listening to it ring out over and over again. The sound was shrill, as if the line was screaming his name in my ear. Tom! Tom! Tom!

 

I went to work again, spending the morning doing inventory. It took me an hour and a half to count the gemstones. I counted them one by one, as if counting the seconds until my lunch break. Today I was going to the bakery, whether Deb liked it or not.

At midday I slipped out while she was with a customer and half-walked, half-ran to the café. I pushed through the door, coming close to knocking over a mother with her kid.

I apologized breathlessly, my eyes scanning the room as I walked between the tables, knocking into two chairs and bumping into a waiter. But I knew before I reached the back of the café that Tom was a no-show.

I sat there for fifteen minutes and then walked slowly back to the store, looking for his SUV in the row of parked cars. I was sick to my stomach wondering how he was going with his doppelganger grandmother.

 

I phoned Rose Hill again when I got home, but it rang out again. I considered calling Jo and asking her for a lift to the Open Valley, but given my run-in with Mr Green I thought it would be a dangerous decision.

I was going to have to wait until I went back to school the next day, if Tom was still here. My stomach somersaulted at the thought that he may have slid.

 

25

 

Tom was nowhere to be seen at school on Thursday. I wandered through the corridors and around the quad like a lost dog looking for its owner. I eyed his locker with a hollow in the pit of my stomach as I thought of Mr Green and the Windsor-Smith Matriarch.

“So did you and Tom do it on Sunday?” Sylv wanted to know.

“Sylv!”

Sylv rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I meant did you and Tom make love on Sunday?”

I was saved by a group of senior girls who walked past whispering insults like “slut” and “ho.” I thought they were talking about Sylv, but then the group changed course and one jostled Jo, making her drop her bag. She scooped it up and shuffled towards me with her head down. I eyed her warily.

I hated myself for hating Evacuee Jo. She looked like my Jo. She acted like my Jo. She was my Jo, except for the tattoo. The black mark that had given me Tom had also taken my best friend.

“Watch it,” Sylv snapped at the girls, but the taunts continued all morning.

When Jo got a good mark off our biology teacher, there was a snide comment. “Who do you have to sleep with around here to get a good mark?” The answer came back, “Ask Jo.”

It was when she was pushed from behind in the bathroom while walking into a cubicle and cracked her shin on the toilet that my heart of ice began to thaw.

“You should see the school nurse,” I suggested, as she rolled up her pant leg at lunch and applied a cold drink to the lump.

She shrugged. “Another day. Another bruise,” she said fatalistically.

Before I could respond, Sylv arrived wielding a magazine like some kind of medieval weapon. “What the fuck is this?” she asked, throwing it in front of Jo. It hit her bowl of pumpkin soup, splashing orange droplets onto her gray sweater.

Jo looked at the magazine like a grenade had landed on her lunch tray.

I tilted my head and saw an image of a rock chick holding a guitar and making the devil sign. The image slid from view as Sylv snatched it up and shook the magazine until its spine broke, repeating the question louder and louder until we had the attention of the entire cafeteria.

Jo flinched like a puppy being kicked as Sylv flung the magazine at her for a second time. She grabbed it with both hands, holding it against her stained sweater like a shield.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked Sylv.

“Page twelve!” Sylv shouted. “Show her page twelve!”

Jo shook her head, her short black hair whipping around her cheeks. Fantastic. World War III was about to begin in Green Grove.

“Show me page twelve,” I snapped, grabbing the magazine and flipping the pages frantically. My mouth fell open, as I saw the double page spread advertising a label called Dead Kitty. It was Jo, reclining on a red velvet chaise, dressed in a short black dress and black and white striped tights.

I looked from the glossy magazine to Jo, gob smacked. “Is this you? In a magazine? Modeling?”

Sylv made a “hrmph” sound.

Jo looked like she needed to go to the bathroom. She jiggled in her seat, her face screwed up as she begged us to hush. “I made friends with the girl at Grunge Ghetto and Dead Kitty is her new line. She needed models,” she explained. Jo had been shopping at Grunge Ghetto? That explained why she had been looking like Morticia Addams.

“Let me get this straight,” Sylv said, half-addressing Jo and half-addressing her audience of about fifty students. “When you get approached for a photo shoot you end up in a double spread, but when I get approached it's for a titty magazine?”

Jo blushed and stared into her bowl, like she wanted to dive into the orange mush.

Blake and Ethan start up a chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” from across the cafeteria.

Jo lifted her head and drew in a deep breath. “You should be thanking me,” she said with either complete bravery or utter stupidity. “I warned you about that dirtball and I was right.”

I grimaced at the implied “and you were wrong.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Sylv spat, “but I think I'll pass on taking advice from the competition.” She gave the table a shove before turning and striding towards the double doors. My strawberry milk toppled onto its side, gushing across the table towards Jo, who ironically burst into tears.

Jo pushed back her chair, its legs shuddering on the vinyl, and ran to the bathroom, the sound of the spilt milk dripping off the table mimicking the sound of her shoes slapping on the floor.

 

That afternoon, Jo ditched track to walk home with Yours Truly.

I knew not to talk about the double spread. If Evacuee Jo wanted to be a model in this dimension that was between her and Sylv. As we walked, I unwrapped my scarf, letting the cold air circulate around my neck.

“I like your necklace.”

My hand went to the key. “Thanks. It was a present from Tom.” My eyes suddenly misted and I busied myself with my scarf again, looping it around my neck until it was a bitch to breathe.

“You want to talk about it?”

“About what?” I asked with a sniff.

Jo shrugged and we continued on without speaking until the end of the street.

We paused at the pedestrian crossing, the toes of our sneakers hanging over the edge of the curb.

Jo held out her cell. “Call Rose Hill.”

“I have,” I said, a whine in my voice. “Like a thousand times.”

“Then make it a thousand and one.”

I took her cell. I knew the number by heart. The tone of each key had become my theme song over the past twenty-four hours or so.

“Good afternoon, Rose Hill. This is Lorraine.”

It took me a second to speak.

“Lillie. Hi,” she answered warmly. Was it warmly? It sounded like it was warmly. “Let me see if Tom can take the call.”

I tried to read between the lines as I listened to the hold music. Did she mean let me see if Tom wants to take the call? Or if his grandmother will let him take the call?

Lorraine came back on the line. “Sorry, Lillie.”

I hung up, my thumb pushing on the button until the skin around my nail turned white.

Jo frowned. “Bastard.”

I shrugged, like I could care less. As if.

“You want to come in?” I asked when we reached my front gate.

Jo looked embarrassed. “I have a date.”

My eyes widened. “A date?”

“With Jackson.” She winced, as if I was going to dissolve into tears again. Ironic, considering she had been mood-swing central since she had became Evacuee Jo. “Are you mad at me, Lillie? Please say no. Please say no. Please say no.” As if
she
needed the rule of repetition.

“No!”

“Are you sure?” She raised her eyes to the heavens. “Phew. I was worried. I mean I know you have… had Tom.” Her eyes widened as she realized what a kick in the guts her correction from present to past tense had been.

“Jackson is a friend. Period,” I said quickly. At least in this dimension, I thought.

Jo did a tap dance on the sidewalk. Yes. You heard me. Jo. A tap dance. If I had not already known about evacuees I would have guessed then and there that she was not my Jo. “He said he's liked me since Elementary. Can you believe it?”

I was still having a hard time believing the tap dance, but I nodded as I suddenly recalled his drawing of Wal-Mart and Jo. And how he had remembered that Jo and I had gone to the Rainbow Retreat. God. How stupid had I been to think he liked me? Very.

And maybe Jo had liked him all along too, I thought, as I recalled her words, “Maybe you could spare a few for the rest of us”.

 

That night I lay awake in bed, holding the key around my neck like a good-luck charm and watching for the headlights of the Benz. Whenever a car went past, I propped myself up on my elbows, waiting for the driver to flash a message to me. A love letter in Morse code.

By the early hours of the morning I had fallen into a rare dreamless sleep. It seemed Tom had also abandoned me in my dreams.

 

26

 

I phoned Rose Hill again on my lunch break from Tree of Life.

“He literally drove out of the gates two minutes ago,” Lorraine told me.

Uh-huh. And you can call me Lillie Windsor-Smith.

I walked down to the bakery. It was blowing a gale, the icy wind making a noose of my hair.

I ordered a pineapple juice at the counter before taking a seat at my usual table in the back corner. I was onto my second juice when the door opened and in walked Tom.

His eyes found me in an instant, like he knew I would be there waiting. Of course he did. I was always waiting for him. In every dimension, I thought miserably.

“I think we should go for a drive,” he said. This time, there was no hesitation.

 

The luxurious interior of his SUV seemed to shrink as we headed towards the Open Valley, the silence between us filling its nooks and crannies until it was like a third person in the vehicle.