Year of Mistaken Discoveries (2 page)

“I’m fine.”

“Do you need a ride home?” He motioned to the door. “I can give you one if you want. I don’t mind leaving.”

I stared at him. Brody was slim, but fit. He had the body of a dancer; he moved like he had no joints, almost like he floated. His smile was crooked, with one side of his mouth pulling up higher than the other. He looked to me like he belonged in New York, not the middle of Michigan. He stood out in our school. I cocked my head to the side. He might have been different
enough to write down that odd description of me. I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t know if he meant it as a compliment, or a way to make fun of me.

“Aren’t you enjoying the party?” I asked.

Brody looked around the room. Shannon ran through the kitchen squealing until one of the football players grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder. She was beating on his back, laughing while he carried her into the living room. There was a splash and a loud cheer outside; it sounded like someone had either jumped into the pool or maybe tossed in one of the lounge chairs. Brody glanced over at me and raised an eyebrow.

“This is supposed to be the party of the year,” I told him.

“It’s only October. I’m holding out for better.”

The sound of someone vomiting in the powder room next door carried through the wall. “Sort of hard to top this,” I said.

“Dare to dream.” He smiled and I found myself smiling back.

Colton burst into the kitchen with Ryan and Karl, Lydia’s boyfriend. Brody took a step to the side. I hadn’t realized we were standing that close. Colton fell on his knees in front of me. “You gotta forgive me.” He turned around and motioned to his friends, who also went down on their knees, although Ryan almost fell over completely. “They want you to forgive me too.”

“Colton,” I said. “Get up.”

He shuffled forward on his knees. “Not until you forgive
me. I was being a pig.” Ryan started oinking loudly behind Colton. Karl tried to oink, but it came out more like a snort.

“I don’t really want to talk about this here,” I said, my voice low. I didn’t want to look up to see Brody’s expression.

“No problem.” Colton leaped up. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us.” His arm circled around me and he pulled me into the pantry. He shut the door behind us. He pressed me up against the shelves. The smells of cinnamon, basil, and pepper filled my nose from the spice rack behind me. “I was just joking around. I didn’t mean to piss you off,” he said.

Colton started to kiss my neck, his hands running along my side. This was another problem I had with Colton. Every time we were alone, it was like playing Whac-A-Mole with his hands. This wasn’t helped by the fact we didn’t have much to talk about with each other so making out seemed like the only thing to do. Colton did this thing where he would rub his thumb over my nipple rapidly as if he were using a video game controller. I think he thought it was supposed to be sexually exciting. Instead it felt like he was trying to start a fire Boy Scout style. I pushed his hand down.

It wasn’t that I was against sex, or that I was against the idea of sex with Colton in particular (although the nipple-chafing thing didn’t bode well). My official answer was I was waiting for it to be the right time. The truth was I wasn’t sure if there was a right time or place. I knew my birth mom had gotten pregnant in high school. She was only sixteen when I was born. What
the adoption information forms didn’t say was if my mom had tried to take precautions. Had she and my dad used a condom? What if she was hyperfertile and that was a trait I’d inherited? For all I knew, my eggs were six times the normal size, making the odds of any sperm missing them nearly nil. Or maybe my birth mom didn’t worry about birth control. Maybe she slept with everyone. What if I was genetically predisposed to being a slut? It was possible I would sleep with Colton and discover I was sex obsessed and wanton. I might not be able to stop. I might start having sex with everyone I met.

Then there was the fact I knew I didn’t love Colton. And I certainly didn’t love how he let all of his friends think that we were going at it all the time. If I was going to finally go all the way, it wasn’t going to be in Ryan Lee’s pantry with Colton smelling like cheap beer. I sighed.

Colton stopped kissing my neck and backed up a step. “Sorry if I’m bothering you.” His voice was annoyed.

“I don’t want to do this.”

He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in the back. “You know what, me neither.”

I was about to roll my eyes when I realized he wasn’t talking about making out. “You’re breaking up with me?”

Colton sighed. “At least try and sound upset about it.”

chapter two

T
ime seemed to freeze. Colton stood against the pantry shelves, boxes of cereal lined up behind him. It was like he’d brought his posse of the Lucky Charms leprechaun, Tony the Tiger, and the Rice Krispies boys to stick up for him.

“You seriously want to break up?” I asked.

Colton sighed. “Maybe.” We stood in the pantry a few inches apart, staring at each other. “All we do is fight.”

I wanted to argue with him, but the irony of fighting about if we fight too much wasn’t lost on me. Half of me wanted to jump at what Colton was suggesting and end it, and the other half of me was freaking out and wanting to grab ahold of him before he could leave. I felt myself starting to tear up. It wasn’t that I was sad. It was that I was frustrated. How could I not know what I wanted?

“Hey, don’t cry.” Colton shifted nervously. He looked around and grabbed a roll of paper towels and passed them over to me.

I wanted to throw the paper towels or scream, but if tears were making him uncomfortable, me losing it would really make him flee. “We’ve been together a long time,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to date someone else?” I asked.

His eyes shifted away from mine. “No.” I would bet money he was lying, but I wasn’t sure if it was to me or to himself. Colton liked to think of himself as one of the good guys, and he was. I’d never worried about him cheating on me.

My throat felt tight, like I couldn’t squeeze out any more words. I was like a prisoner waiting for a judge to pass sentence. Now I wanted it over. If he was going to dump me, I wanted him to do it and get it over with. This felt like waiting for the doctor to give you a shot; you know it’s coming, you know it’s going to hurt, but the waiting is the worst. The horrid part is that I wanted him to do it.

“Jeez, I’m wasted. Do we have to do the serious stuff now?” Colton rubbed his forehead. “Maybe we could just take a break,” Colton finally said. “Talk about it some other time.”

“A break?” What did that even mean? We were going to put our relationship on hold?

“You know, take some time. Sort out what we want to do. Sometime when we’re both sober.” I could see the idea growing
on him. It sounded really reasonable and didn’t make any real decision. No wonder Colton was the president of our class. He was born to be a politician.

“Okay, sure. We’ll take a break.” It seemed easier to agree since I didn’t know what I wanted either.

Colton let out a low breath; he was relieved. “You’ll be okay?”

“Me?” I squeaked. I wiped my eyes with a wad of paper towels. What would make him think I wasn’t okay? Just because I was standing in a pantry crying? I shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Colton was already stepping out of the pantry, making his escape. “We’ll talk in a couple days, okay?”

I smiled and nodded like I couldn’t imagine anything I’d rather do. He squeezed my hand and then ducked out. I shut the door behind him and slid down so I was sitting on the floor. I stared at the giant bag of organic dog kibble across from me. I wondered how long it would take the news to spread at the party. I didn’t want to ever leave the pantry. Heck, I might not need to. There was plenty of food in here, a couple of cases of Diet Coke on the floor, and even a bucket. I’d become a pantry hermit. I’d come out only in the middle of the night when the rest of the world was sleeping to take a shower and then come right back to live on stale Froot Loops and dried beans. I wondered how Ryan’s parents would feel about me moving in here. If I offered to do a few chores around the place, they might let me stay.

I let myself sit there for a few more minutes. I needed to find Shannon and Lydia and tell them what happened. This was the kind of situation that called for good friends. Maybe an ice-cream binge. Maybe they could both come over and stay the night. I licked my finger and ran it under my eyes to make sure I didn’t have a huge mascara smear and fluffed my hair.

I flung open the pantry door. There was a group of band girls standing by the sink. They went instantly still when they saw me, like animals under the glare of a predator. I stared at them, waiting to see if they would say anything, but they suddenly acted fascinated by pouring the bag of Doritos they had into a bowl.

I peeked casually around the corner into the living room. There was still a group of people playing some kind of game, but I didn’t see either Lydia or Shannon. I could hear Colton’s voice outside, so I slid past the patio door and went looking through the rest of the house. The dining room table was surrounded by people playing quarters, but no sign of my friends. I knew they wouldn’t have left. One, they both had later curfews than me, and two, I could still see Karl’s car parked right outside in the driveway. There were a few people slipping upstairs, but most of those were couples looking for an empty bedroom.

I heard a roar coming from the basement. There was a media room down there, and it sounded like they were playing some kind of video game. Most likely shooting zombies. What could be more fun on a Friday night than blowing away
the undead? I slipped through the crowd, heading toward the stairs, smiling vaguely at people I knew but not stopping so that I wouldn’t get sucked into a conversation.

“Avery!”

I froze in place. I knew that voice. I turned around. It was Nora. She was standing next to Brody.

“Look who showed up—the Grim Reaper,” said a voice next to me with a snicker.

Nora was waving across the room at me like we were still best friends. I wanted to drop to the floor and crawl away, but it was too late. There wasn’t a moment when I decided I didn’t want to be friends with Nora anymore. It happened by degrees. At some point the only thing we had in common was the fact that we used to be friends, and that had a tendency to make things awkward.

Nora was already weaving her way through the crowd. I could see a few people looking over, surprised to see her. Nora wasn’t the type to typically show up at a house party. She wasn’t picked on or bullied at school, but she didn’t really fit in, either. Not that Nora tried to fit in. If anything, she seemed to go out of her way to be as different as possible from everyone else. She tended to wear head-to-toe black, and last year she’d gotten an eyebrow ring. She sent out a vibe that practically screamed,
Back off
. It was hard for me to believe there’d been a time when we’d been inseparable.

When I met Nora in first grade, I desperately wanted to be
best friends with her, partly because she said she was going to be a mermaid when she grew up, but mostly because she was also adopted.

Our teacher, Ms. Klee, had told us to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we became adults. The class bent over their papers and turned out drawings of police officers, race-car drivers, doctors, football players, and even one president complete with a billowing flag in the background. I sat there, sniffing the end of my Pacific Blue crayon, hoping that the waxy smell would inspire me. I had no idea what I wanted to be. I shifted in my seat, the sound of everyone else hard at work making me anxious. I finally started a picture of a teacher, not because I had an interest in teaching, but because I thought it might make Ms. Klee happy.

“Pssst. Can I borrow your silver?” Nora’s fingers pinched the top of the crayon lined up with the others like a church choir in my box.

They were new crayons. My mom had gotten me the giant sixty-four colors box, complete with built-in sharpener, but it seemed stingy not to share. I nodded and Nora pulled the crayon out and went back to work. Ms. Klee stopped between our desks, smiling as she glanced at my page. Her eyebrow went up when she looked down at Nora’s.

“It’s a mermaid,” Nora explained, outlining the scales on the tail with my crayon.

“It’s a very pretty mermaid,” Ms. Klee acknowledged.
“But you know you can’t be one when you grow up. They’re make-believe.”

Nora didn’t even look up from her picture, but I could see her fingers gripping the crayon tighter.

“My mom says we can be whatever we want, as long as we’re willing to work for it,” I said, sitting up straight. Nora shot me a look of gratitude. Ms. Klee moved down the aisle without another word, not willing to enter into an argument with a six-year-old on the viability of her career prospects.

At lunch Nora plunked down next to me, pulling items out of her bag. She had egg-salad sandwiches sprinkled with bright fuchsia pickled beets. My sliced turkey with Swiss cheese looked practically gray in comparison.

“Do you really want to be a mermaid when you grow up?” I asked.

Nora shrugged. “Maybe. I like to swim. I might miss having legs, though. And you can’t have a TV underwater. Not having a TV would get boring, I think.”

I nodded. You couldn’t argue with logic like that.

“Do you really want to be a teacher?” she asked.

“Not really. I don’t know what I want to do.”

Nora’s lips were tinted pink from the beets. “My mom’s a mermaid; that’s why I put it down.”

I looked at her out the side of my eyes, trying to figure out if she was teasing me.

“Well, my real mom
might
be a mermaid,” Nora admitted.
“I don’t really know anything about her. I’m adopted.”

The bite of sandwich I had in my mouth fell onto my wax paper with a wet plop. I almost couldn’t believe the coincidence. “I’m adopted too.”

Nora reached over and stole one of my grapes. “Well then, your birth mom could have been a mermaid too. You never know. Those things can happen.”