Luke steps inside, arms open, but he looks less like he’s trying to touch me and more like he’s trying to round up a flock of spooked sheep.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask him, doubling over. I know there’s a science to this whole head-between-your-knees bit, but all it does is make me dizzy, so as quickly as I’m down, I’m back up.
‘Well,’ he says, dropping his arms. ‘I’m trying not to touch you but also kind of freaking out that you’re going to faint.’
‘Faint?’ What is this, a Brontë novel?
‘You know . . . pass out, hit the deck, kiss the floor?’
‘Yeah, but you said faint.’ I lower my butt on to the bottom step of the stairs, breathing like I’m giving birth.
‘Huh.’ Luke lifts his chin, tucks his hands behind his back, and starts strolling around the hall like a patrolling police officer in Victorian London. ‘You don’t seem impressed by my outdated idioms.’
My eyes follow him across the floor, but I keep the door in my peripheral vision, hope it picks up on the I’m-watching-you shade I’m throwing its way.
‘I prefer modern slang myself,’ I reply.
‘Word,’ he says with a grin so glorious I feel sorry for anyone in the world who will never get to see it.
When you take in air too quickly, it tends to have a hair dryer effect on your throat. Right now I could store sand in my mouth without compromising its consistency, but I’m not sure I can make it to the kitchen for a drink. I lean left, check the distance from the banister to the fridge.
‘You need something?’ Luke asks, killing the flirt that was apparent in his voice a few seconds ago. I can’t ask him to get me some orange juice. Can I? No. It’s too weird. He’s not working a shift at a restaurant.
‘No, thank you.’ I grab hold of the banister with both hands, squeeze it so tight I’m in danger of getting blisters. But when I heave my body up, my legs let go with a hell-no jerk. Luke lunges forward as my butt thumps back down, only this time I’m sitting on the second step from the bottom. That was embarrassing. And there’s no Mom here to buffer the impending awkwardness. Luke buries his hands in his pockets, I’m assuming because he doesn’t trust them not to reach for me a third time.
‘Norah, not that I’m not loving this gallant display of independence, but could you please let me go and get you what you need? Please?’ He might be about ready to throw himself at my feet.
‘I could use a glass of orange juice,’ I tell him, but talk to my curling toes.
‘Orange juice. Right. Where would I find that?’ he calls as he heads off towards the kitchen.
‘It’s in the fridge.’
‘Okay,’ he says and then starts humming. I hear him opening and closing cabinets. ‘Hey, Neighbour, where do you hide your glasses?’
‘Above the microwave,’ I reply.
‘Gotcha. Is it okay if I pour myself one?’
‘Sure.’ I smile because this must mean he’s staying a while.
Luke starts singing. Not lyrics, notes. A string of las and dees and das as he strolls around my kitchen. I’m imagining him juggling tumblers like a bartender in LA, shaking the carton of orange to the left and then to the right.
A couple of seconds later he falls silent and strolls back into the hall.
‘For Madame,’ he says, overenunciating. His fake French accent is adorable, almost as cute as his fake British. He hands me one of the two drinks he’s carrying, studying the exchange carefully so we don’t connect.
‘Dinner and a show,’ I tease. ‘Now I’m impressed.’ Maybe I’m not teasing as much as I am flirting. Talking while I glance up at him through my lashes and flashing a coy smile. I’ve definitely seen Mom work this face on Dave the delivery guy before. She makes eyes at him every time he drops off a box of sample rocks.
Luke throws me a one-shouldered shrug. ‘What can I say? It was only going to be a matter of time.’ He makes his way up the stairs, pressing his chest tight against the wall so he doesn’t graze me. I flush when I realize I’m checking out his butt. Luke takes a seat on the third step, leans forward on his knees, and smiles at me.
‘Shouldn’t you be heading to school?’ I ask, a little reluctantly.
‘Nah. I can cut. I’ll just tell them I had a medical emergency.’
‘You’re going to use my medical emergency as an excuse to cut class?’
He shrugs again. ‘Cut class, maybe . . . but I’m kind of hoping I can use it to hang around with you for a little bit. Do you mind?’
Moral dilemma. Do I argue and tell him he should get to class, or do I keep my mouth shut and sit here drinking orange juice with him?
No contest. I bite my lip, trying to hold back the grin that’s threatening to expand and swallow my face.
‘So, have you ever met the Great and Powerful Amy Cavanaugh before?’ Luke asks.
‘No. Today was the first time.’
‘And how was it?’
I swish the orange juice around in my glass. The box claims it’s pulp-free, but you can never be too careful. ‘Most people scare and/or intimidate me. She was no exception.’
He gets lost for a second, staring vacantly at the swirling pattern on our wallpaper.
‘How does it work?’ he asks. ‘I mean, have you always been afraid?’ I look at his face and see a bubbling stew of kindness and sincerity with just a dash of curiosity.
‘You don’t want to hear all this.’ I’m not sure if I’m saying that for him or me.
‘Yes, I do. I want to know who you are.’
I want to make progress. I want to, should do some explaining. It’s not like it’s a secret any more. He’s already seen me melt down a handful of times in our brief friendship, and he’s still coming over, asking questions, sitting next to me on a staircase drinking orange juice. That has to count for something. Plus, once I know how he feels, I’ll know. Constantly trying to guess what he’ll make of my so-called life seems to be destroying my brain cells. Literally. Mom and I were doing the crossword at breakfast this morning and I couldn’t answer a single clue. That never happens, but I started sketching cartoon hearts and my mind went totally blank.
The buttons in my brain that control the crazy must think it’s time to open up too – at least, they can’t seem to find a counterargument strong enough to make my mouth stay shut.
‘I wasn’t always afraid. I mean, sometimes I might have closed down a little, or preferred my own company to anyone else’s. I wasn’t scared, but maybe I was shy.’
‘Did something happen?’ The one question I wish I could answer in the affirmative. Not that I want some tragic story to tell. I just mean, it would make it easier to explain to everyone else. There are no sceptical questions for the guy who developed a fear of reptiles after he was bitten by a snake.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘So, you just woke up one day and were afraid to leave the house?’
The fingers of my free hand curl around the lip of the step. I hold on tight, worried the force of his question will blow me away.
‘Wait . . .’ he says, shaking his head. ‘That came out wrong. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound so . . . dismissive.’ Regret streaks his forehead, and a nervous hand, fidgeting around like it’s forgotten what it’s used for, slaps his knee. He’s being sincere. I can recover.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him, smiling. If I was brassy enough, I’d throw in a wink. ‘At least you didn’t ask me why I don’t “just get over it”. Or, my personal favourite, “Why don’t you just not think about it?’’’ I click my tongue, fire finger-guns at the empty space in front of me. ‘Sure. I’ll get right on that,’ I say to all the hundreds of sceptical voices that seem to think I’m living like this for fun.
Luke tucks his hands between his legs, presses his knees tightly together so they make a prison, and I wonder if maybe it’s because he wants to reach out and touch me. Save me from a different kind of fall.
‘Does that happen a lot?’
‘It’s happened a few times. Friends – former friends – have said it before.’ I shrug. That was a day that started out with popcorn and a movie, but ended with tears and heartbreak.
Mercy Carr, a girl I’d only known since kindergarten, began the discussion before the opening credits had even begun. Mercy liked to talk with her hands. They began flapping as she casually mentioned that she and a couple of the girls were talking – aka questioning the legitimacy of what was wrong with me. Apparently they couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just tell myself not to be afraid. She compared my situation to her disliking the colour purple. Then one day, her mom bought her the cutest pair of lavender capri pants and she got over her aversion. Just like that. I didn’t see Mercy again after that. I didn’t see any of my friends again after that.
‘My grandma said it to me once.’
Luke’s eyes pop with shock. Mine did too at the time. I kind of expected Mercy Acts-Like-She’s-Eighteen-but-Thinks-Like-She’s-Eight Carr to question what she often referred to as my head drama, but when my gran did it, I died a little inside.
‘Yeah,’ I say, smiling.
‘Bet that was hard to swallow.’
‘Like nails coated in acid.’
‘Ouch.’
She didn’t mean to say it. Gran was like a replacement parent. My dad’s mom, she never forgave him for leaving us. When I was growing up, she tried everything to get him to come back and take responsibility for me, even threatened to cut him out of her will. Which I assume is why a week later I got that letter.
‘She freaked out one day when I passed out over black bits in my food. But she was actually kind of the shit.’ I laugh because besides this one, almost every memory I have of her is funny.
‘Oh, really?’ He arches his eyebrows.
‘She was Katie Maine, of K. Maine Bath and Beauty products.’ At one time, her Sugar Sand Scrub was in every bathroom in America. Her beeswax lip balms bought Mom and me this house.
‘No way. My mom has a ton of that stuff on her shelf.’
‘Yeah?’
He nods while taking a swig of his orange juice, and I hear his teeth click against the glass. I’m about to get all anxious about it shattering in his mouth, splitting and slicing through his strawberry lips, when he pulls it away and sets it back down on the step.
‘She took good care of me and my mom.’ I think about the summer when I turned nine and she took us to Disneyland. She came on all the rides with me because Mom was too afraid. She lost her false teeth on the log flume. ‘She was super-quirky and kind of impossible to stay mad at. And when all this started, everybody got scared, you know? It took a lot of effort and adjusting.’ My gran’s heart was so big, I was shocked to discover that’s what killed her.
We stop talking. He lets what I just told him sink in. The seconds drag on and my body starts to fidget, trying to get comfortable in the uncomfortable silence.
‘My gran lives in Gray Oaks,’ he says, and I am beyond grateful that he’s good at reading body language.
‘Gray Oaks?’
‘It’s a retirement complex.’ Of course it is. The guys that name those places have less tact than a cold sore. ‘Whenever I go over there these days, she calls me Matthew.’
‘Why?’ I ask, exercising caution because I’ve read about the damage dementia does. Assuming that’s what she has.
‘Her mind isn’t what it used to be,’ he says. ‘And I guess I look a lot like my dad when he was younger.’ Right. Matthew is his dad’s name. He touches the finger where the football ring was. Doesn’t take a genius to work out that the gaudy chunk of jewellery he was wearing the first time we talked belonged to his father. There isn’t much you miss when you’re really looking.
‘Last I heard, my dad was in the Alps, squandering his inheritance on a twenty-one-year-old blonde named Anika,’ I say. Nice. There are artists who work delicately, painting thousands of fine lines, and then there are artists who throw globs of colour across a room in the hope that it will hit something. In this moment, I definitely fall into the latter.
‘Ouch. That’s gotta sting,’ he says.
‘Nah. I decided to take a pragmatic approach to the whole thing. I can’t miss a man I never met, right?’
‘Do you think maybe I could borrow your no-bullshit shield for school sometime?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll mail it to you. What’s your address?’ I reply. His grin is hella hypnotic. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m not trained in the art of ice-breaking.
‘Luke, what did you mean when you said your dad disappears?’ The question is out of my mouth before I realize the weight of it. It tumbles down the stairs like a boulder and smashes straight through the laminate floor. I’m flustered; my cheeks burn bright red. I was always going to ask, just maybe not now, when tact is in such short supply.
‘Nice memory you’ve got there,’ he replies, all lighthearted.
I wince. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. When I start thinking about stuff, when my mind gets too busy, more often than not I forget to engage a filter—’
‘Norah, it’s okay,’ he interjects. ‘You don’t have to panic. I don’t mind talking about it. Besides, I think I owe you a little bit of background, right?’ He smiles and I wonder if it’s too soon to suggest we get married. ‘My dad has what my mom calls wanderlust.’
‘Wanderlust?’
‘He likes to travel. Like, he really likes to travel.’ He’s looking at me as though I should understand. I don’t think he realizes how little he’s said, but the puzzled expression on my face clues him in.
‘This is going to sound so messed-up,’ he says right before he jams his thumb knuckle in his mouth and starts chewing on it.
‘Messed-up is kind of my default.’ I smile, can’t help it. Can’t help noticing that he just inadvertently told me he doesn’t see all the things that are wrong with me.
‘So my mom’s been a flight attendant all her life,’ he says. ‘She met my dad on board a flight to Argentina when they were in their early twenties. He’s a traveller. A real home-is-where-I-hang-my-hat type of guy.’
‘The souvenir stickers on his van?’
‘All the places he’s been.’ Wow. There were a lot of stickers. ‘My mom doesn’t think he’ll stop moving until he’s been everywhere there is to be and seen everything there is to see.’ You can tell his mom said that. The words are romantic, spoken by a woman in love. His hands ball into fists; he pushes his knuckles together and they pop.
‘Are you angry at him?’
‘No. Not any more, but I used to be.’ Luke turns his chin and looks at me, his eyes narrow, pain clouding the usually luminous jade of them. ‘It’s a sickness. He tried to stay with us, build a home. Actually, he’s tried it a few times, but he gets so depressed when he stops moving.’
Huh. He’s like me, only in reverse.
‘So, your parents, are they separated?’
‘They’re separated in the sense that there is physical distance between them. But they’re still married. Still madly in love. That is, he’s not trawling the world looking for a new family. He says it’s not about us, that he loves us both unconditionally.’ Luke takes a breath. ‘It’s such a noble word, unconditional. Brave. Blindly committing to situations it knows nothing about.’ He gets lost staring at the space in front of him, focusing on nothing in particular. I don’t know where his head is. I’m not sure he does either. I wish I could lace my fingers through his and lead him back to the safety of my stairs.
‘I used to get mad at my mom because she wouldn’t make him stay. She would tell me I was too young to understand. But what was there to understand? He couldn’t have loved us because he kept leaving us.’ He dusts his bottom lip with his thumb, and for a second, I wonder if he’s going to start snacking on his nails. Because I would. Instead, he stands up, trots down the stairs, and starts pacing. I don’t hold him back. I don’t hold him back or try to make him sit because I hate it when I’m spinning and people try to make me be still.
‘Then, three years ago, the summer I turned fifteen, he comes home, rolls up the drive in his camper, bearing gifts of ice cream cake and a replica Super Bowl ring. There’s something different about this visit, though . . .’ He turns to look at me for the first time since he started moving. ‘I mean, he’s always happy to see us, but this particular time I remember thinking, He’s not just happy, he’s relieved.
‘One week turns into two, two turns into three, and he’s still hanging around eight weeks later.’ His eyes twinkle as he relives the memory. I like this part of the story.
‘We didn’t even do anything, just hung out at the old house like a pair of losers, eating Cheetos and watching Cartoon Network. My dad is a nice guy, you know? Not like one of those phony family guys on infomercials, with the blindingly white teeth and side parting. I mean, he forgets to shave and has zero sense of style, but he’s warm. He smiles a lot, sees the good in everything and everyone. He hurts for people he’s never met, pays it forward like it’s his religion. I think you’d like him.’ I nod because I think I would too.
‘So my mom gets him this job at the airport, working in security, and I get the biggest kick out of seeing him at the breakfast table every morning. Both of them grabbing coffee before they head off to work. Real Rockwell kind of moments, you know? I thought, this is it; he’s staying for sure. Whatever crazy stuff was happening inside his head has vanished, and he’s going to be able to stay happy here now.’ Luke stops moving, like he’s bumped into a brick wall. I don’t speak because I can see he’s trying really hard to work through his thoughts, possibly push down some unwanted emotion.
He closes his eyes, inhales strength, exhales sadness. ‘The smiling happy faces made it easy to ignore him pacing around at night, skipping meals, all the sudden onsets of silence. I’d never seen him cry until the week before he went again, when I found him curled up on our kitchen floor, drawing circles in some sugar that he’d spilt. See, the plan was for him to come home and stay home. But the depression came back and started kicking his ass until he couldn’t stand it.
‘I love him . . . unconditionally. I mean, yeah, sometimes I see how miserable his calls to cancel a trip home make my mom. And sometimes, as you know, I lose my shit and yell at him over the phone in the middle of the night. But then I remember that I would give back those eight weeks, every single minute of every single day, if it meant never having to see him that broken again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to say. I’m not sure there even is a right thing to say.
‘Don’t be.’ He pauses. ‘This might sound odd, but I can’t wish he were any different, you know? Like, I can’t start wishing away pieces of his personality, because then he wouldn’t be my dad.’
The bridge of my nose pricks. I keep my eyes wide open because I know if I blink, I’ll leak tears. Mom’s said the same thing to me, about me, more than once, usually after I’ve apologized for acting like a freak.
‘You must think I’m awful.’ Luke’s chin touches his chest. ‘Shouting at him like that when he can’t help the way his brain is wired.’
‘No!’ I counter vehemently, clinging to the banister bars and pushing my face up to the gap. ‘Are you kidding? Some days I wonder how my mom hasn’t killed me. We’ve only argued a couple of times since I got sick, and hell, we scream the place down. But no matter how loud we yell, we never love each other any less. I totally get it. It’s hard from both sides. I understand. I really do.’
‘Wow.’ He chuckles through the following few moments of awkwardness, then comes back and sits down on the stairs beside me. ‘You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever told about all of this.’ I feel honoured. Privileged. I know how hard it is to part with private information. ‘He’s not around often. I’m pretty sure that’s left most of my friends thinking he’s dead.’
‘They’ve never met him?’
‘No. You’re the first to even see him, which feels kind of odd.’ He looks up, looks down, picks at the seam on the side of his jeans before turning to me again. ‘It feels kind of good to get it off my chest too.
‘Anyway . . .’ he says, clearing his throat. He straightens his shoulders and coughs testosterone around the room. ‘He’s coming back at Christmas. Has promised to stick around an entire week this time.’
‘That’s awesome.’ I fix a fake smile and nod enthusiastically. The urge to cushion a potential fall with clichéd warnings about not getting his hopes up is strong, but somehow I swallow it.
I’m exhausted. I try to sit up straight, but my spine is made of sponge, so instead I slump forward, lean on my knees, and stare idly out of the porch windows. He does the same.
‘You know those people who bring down a banging party by singing ultra-slow, bleeding-heart ballads on the karaoke?’ I ask him.
‘Yeah?’
‘We should do that as a job, but, like, tell our stories instead of singing,’ I tease. He bursts out laughing. Like a yawn, I catch it, start laughing until my sides split open and all the misery that’s been burning my lungs spills out on to the stairs.
‘Well, Neighbour, it’s been a ton of fun, but I gotta make tracks. Face the music.’ He’s nearly two hours late for school already. I guess it wouldn’t be fair of me to suggest he stay until we run out of words. Plus, I have grades that are in serious need of inflation.
We stroll towards the door in silence, both trying to make the walk last longer by taking slow steps. Well, that’s what I’m doing, and despite having longer legs, he keeps pace beside me, so I think it’s safe to assume it’s what he’s doing too.
‘I have a question,’ Luke says as he heads out on to the porch. I’m kind of impressed he can fight the friction enough to spin on the balls of his boots, but he does. ‘It’s hypothetical.’
‘Okay.’
This might be serious. His lips pull into a straight line and I brace myself against the door frame, ready, for the past hour, to be blasted to smithereens by what he has to ask.
‘How does a person, let’s say a guy, in this case, go about making plans with a girl who can’t leave her house?’ He lowers his chin, looks at me from under his eyebrows. ‘Hypothetically,’ he reminds me. It’s lucky I’m holding on to something so I can’t fall down dead. Her heart just exploded is what they’d have to engrave on my headstone.
‘Well,’ I whisper, because this has to be a dream and I’m afraid talking too loud will wake me up. ‘Hypothetically speaking, he would probably have to ask her. Then, I don’t know, maybe if the girl likes movies, they could watch one together?’ I shrug, wish I were wearing a sweater so I’d have a sleeve to hide behind. I toe the brass runner at the bottom of the door.
‘Hey, Norah, you wanna watch a movie with me on Friday?’
‘Yes.’