Nothing Like You Page 6

  Chapter 14

  As if on cosmic cue, the next day in World History, Saskia and I got stuck working together on this horrific group project—an Ancient Mesopotamia–themed collage.

  “Do you have any clue what we’re supposed to be doing?” She was staring at me, brushing her fingers over the tips of her hair.

  “Not really,” I said, giggling like a nervous twit. “Feels more like fourth grade arts and crafts.” I stood up and circled around to the back of my desk.

  “So we just, like, collect a bunch of images and paste them all together?”

  We were pushing our desks together and all I could think was this so isn’t my fault but Paul’s gonna kill me. “Yeah, basically,” I said. “I guess we can photocopy some stuff from the library. And there’s stuff in our books we can use too.”

  Saskia plopped down in her seat. “I mean I know we know each other, so it seems stupid me introducing myself to you, but I don’t think we’ve ever officially … talked. I’m Saskia.”

  “Holly.” I said, checking the clock on the wall. Crap, fifteen more minutes of this. Tick. Tock. Tick.

  “You went to my elementary, didn’t you?”

  “Same sixth-grade class.”

  “Ms. Shapiro?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I totally remember.”

  Saskia leaned forward, lightly touching one of my dangly silver earrings. “I love these,” she said. “Whenever you wear them I always stare. Have you noticed? I stare at people way too much.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” I wished I had.

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “What?”

  “Your earrings. In L.A.?”

  “Oh. They were my mother’s,” I said. And then that kind of killed the conversation because she totally knew about my mom. Everyone knew. No one ever knows what to say.

  We poked through our textbooks for the last ten minutes of class. I zoned out somewhere around page four hundred, rereading the same picture caption over and over, thinking about was how nice Saskia seemed, and about how Paul would freak if he ever found out about this—she and I paired up for class. Then I pictured Mom on her cloud. Then the bell rang and we pushed our desks back into place and Saskia turned toward me and said, “So, you wanna just bring a whole bunch of photos to class next time and I’ll do the same and then we’ll just start pasting stuff together?”

  “Sounds like a plan, “ I squeaked, grabbing my book bag and bolting for the exit.

  “Hey, wait!” she yelled after me. “We didn’t even divvy up the time line! Which half do you want?”

  I was already out the door. “Whichever,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. “I’ll take invasion of Greece and everything after!”

  “Okay!” she said, waving good-bye. And then that was it. Another secret to keep. Saskia Van Wyck: my brand-new best girl friend.

  “Where to?”

  Paul and I were driving into L.A. His idea. He said he was taking me somewhere great.

  “It’s not a place, exactly. I mean, it’s a place, it’s just not like, a place place.”

  We drove all the way up Sunset, away from the beach into the sticky city. We drove with the windows open and the music blaring and the air got hotter each mile we clocked on the odometer. We didn’t talk much on the drive there, which was fine because I didn’t really feel like talking, and then Paul finally stopped the car on this pretty little residential street somewhere in Hollywood.

  “Where are we?”

  “Hollywood and Sierra Bonita.”

  I looked at him, perplexed.

  “It’s haunted,” he said. “Supposedly. I figure we could sit here for a little while, just to see.”

  “See what?”

  “You know. Maybe if you concentrate really hard, you’ll be able to, like, feel your mom. Or something.”

  And that’s when I realized that this was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. I flung my arms around his neck and instantly wanted to cry but didn’t, I just held on to him, letting him rub my back, and then I sank back in my seat and looked across the sky at the sun, which was setting. He slipped a hand around my neck and turned the car off.

  I closed my eyes and I thought about Mom, but no more cloud fantasy. I thought about how she looked when she was still young and pretty, before the cancer had corroded her body. I pictured her healthy and perfect and then I said what I wanted to say to her from inside my head. I said, I miss you Mom I love you Mom nothing’s the same with you gone. I told her about Jeff and how sad he’d been these past few months, how the closets were still packed with her clothes and how the house still really smelled like her. I told her about how Jeff had said even Harry had cried the morning she died. And then I talked about school and about Paul and I told her how guilty I felt but isn’t he great because he’s brought me here. Maybe it’s all worthwhile, I thought, because really he’s brought me to you.

  And then I smelled smoke and looked to my left and Paul was smoking a cigarette, his feet kicked up on the dash, his eyes wide open staring out the window. And I said, “Hi. What’re you looking at?” And he just turned and smiled at me and said he wasn’t looking at anything.

  “Did you feel something?” he asked. And I said I did and then I grabbed his hands and said thank you a million times over and then I told him about the medium I wanted to see. I told him about the lady in the new-age shop in Topanga and how I wanted to see if her friend could bring me a message from my mother. “Will you come with me?” I asked.

  “You really want me there?” he said.

  And I said yes, and he said, “I’d be honored.”

  And I just knew right then that what we were doing was really okay. That I wasn’t a bad person and that as nice as Saskia seemed, that this thing with me and Paul was bigger than either of us had expected it to be. I thought, Saskia’s sweet but she’ll have to step aside. And then Paul started the car. He threw his half-smoked cigarette out the window and laid into the gas and then we were driving; back down Sunset, all of L.A. going dark in Paul’s shiny rearview mirror.

  Everything was really great after that. For twenty-four straight hours I walked around feeling super cheery and together. I went home, had dinner with Jeff, slept through the night, made a whole bunch of photocopies at the library before school the next morning … then managed to cut, paste, and distance myself from Saskia Van Wyck all through World History.

  That night, Nils and I read next to each other in The Shack for about an hour or so. We picked at a plate of burnt brownies his mom had made—“reject brownies,” she’d called them—and moved around a whole bunch trying to get comfortable on the futon with our novels.

  After that I went back to the house. I crawled into bed. I waited for Paul.

  Paul’s visits were, for the most part, unplanned, but had become pretty predictable. Monday nights were always no good because of obligatory family crap and weekends were shit because weekends belonged to Saskia. So Tuesdays and Thursdays were gold, Wednesdays, too, but Wednesdays were wild cards and whether he showed up or not usually hinged on his mood. This was a Thursday, and since this had started Paul had never missed a Thursday. So I just sat in my bed and waited. I lay on the floor and waited. Time ticked by, the moon rose, I listened two and a half times over to a birthday mix Nils had made for me the year before, and then … nothing. It was one thirty a.m. I checked my phone. I looked out the window and checked the driveway. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and when I finally realized he wasn’t going to show, I got Harry out of his stinky little bed on the kitchen floor and made him sleep with me.

  The next morning I showered really quick and rushed to get to school early. I had twenty minutes before classes started. I sat on the hill by the parking lot and watched for Paul’s BMW. At last, he showed, at twenty to eight, and I skipped down the hill toward his car.

  “Hi,” I said, looking around before leaning in for a kiss.

  He pulled back, sinking his body back i
nto the car. “What’re you doing? Holly, seriously, get away.”

  I flinched, then quickly covered with a smile. “Why? No one can see us. What’s the big deal?”

  He grabbed his bag off the passenger side seat, stood up, and slammed his door shut. “Just, not at school, okay?”

  I looked down. I mumbled, “Wouldn’t want your precious Saskia to see …” Then, “Where were you last night, anyway?”

  “I was at home.”

  “Home home?

  “What? Speak English.” We were walking now. Toward the side entrance by the gym.

  “It was a Thursday.”

  “English , Holly.”

  “I just mean you could have called if you weren’t going to come by. I waited up for you.”

  He stopped and turned toward me. “Holly. We didn’t have plans. I didn’t ask you to wait up.”

  “But you always come by on Thursdays.”

  “Holly.” The way he kept saying my name over and over made me feel so totally small. “You’re not my girlfriend.” You’re not my girlfriend. You’re not my girlfriend. It echoed in my ear. I hate you, I thought as he dragged me across the taupe-colored field to the bleachers. We ducked underneath. “Do we need to set some ground rules?” It was cool now where we stood. Mostly shady save for a few skinny bars of gold light that fell across Paul’s body and onto the dry lawn beneath our feet. “I like you, Holly. I do. But I’m not gonna do all this girlfriend-boyfriend bullshit with you, okay? I already have one relationship I have to manage.” He pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. “What we have should be easy.”

  “So what ? What does that mean? I don’t get to have any expectations?”

  He lit a cigarette and with the filter pinched between his teeth he said, “Well, when you put it like that, you make me sound like a complete dick.”

  I glowered back.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he wheezed, taking a deep drag, then exhaling. “You knew what this was. You knew how this had to be. I’m not making you spend time with me, Holly. You want out, you say the word.”

  I looked down at the ground and kicked a pile of dirt.

  He slid his pointer finger under my chin. “Why do you have to be so adorable?” he asked, lifting my face up, then pressing his lips to my lips. “… Needy little girl,” he cooed. My stomach turned over. I’m not needy, I thought, pulling backward, slipping one hand around his head and grabbing on to this shaggy little chunk of hair he had hanging down the back of his neck. “That feels nice,” he whispered, so I tightened my grip and yanked down. “Fuck, Holly. What the hell?” He let out a small cry, then grabbed my face real quick and kissed me so hard that it hurt.

  “Ow, Christ ,” I squealed, pulling back and stumbling sideways.

  He laughed and shook his head, “You’re a funny little girl, you know that, Holly?” He wiped his mouth dry on his shirtsleeve. “See you around,” he said, sucking at the last of his cigarette and chucking it into a baked little patch of crud on the ground.

  Chapter 15

  I spent my open block fifth period sitting on the basketball court, folding and unfolding that psychic’s business card. FRAN K GELLAR: PSYCHIC MEDIUM. I read the words over and over again. Then I riffled around in my bag for my phone, which I found and fondled for one solid, excruciating minute before working up the nerve to finally dial.

  “Hi, this is Frank …” blah blah blah… My call had gone straight to voice mail. “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can. Thanks and god bless.” I’d expected a pretty pervy-sounding guy. For him to sound the way most new-age dudes around Topanga sound—super breathy and sexed out. Frank, though, just sounded old.

  “Hi,” I chirped in response to the mechanical beep. “My name is Holly Hirsh. I got your number from—” and then I realized I didn’t know the name of the woman I’d gotten his card from, so I said, “well, I got your number and was hoping to make an appointment to … well, I was hoping to make an appointment.” I left my cell number before hanging up.

  So Frank was old. I found this comforting. Old Frank , I thought, feeling triumphant. I’d called! I’d done something proactive! I’d taken a step in a direction that would lead me somewhere really terrific. Or enlightening. Or something.

  In the car after school with Nils and Nora, I told them both what I’d done.

  “Jesus, Holly. I thought we talked about this.”

  “So? You think every action I take has to be filtered through you? I can make my own decisions.” I turned up Pawnee Lane. “It felt right.”

  “Oh, well … if it feels right.”

  Nora reached into the backseat and slapped Nils on the thigh. “Don’t be a dick, I think it’s great.”

  I glanced to my side. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I love that guy on TV. What’s his name? Who helps all those people talk to their dead family members? There was this one episode where this lady’s son had killed himself and she was just really hysterical, like, crying and crying. But then her son came through in the reading and talked about this little private joke they’d had about Gruyère? You know, the cheese? And the lady was just, like, at peace after that. Really amazing.”

  I glanced back at Nils in my rearview. He was shaking his head.

  “Do you have, like, specific questions you wanna ask the guy?”

  “Specific questions?”

  “Yeah, like, I mean, do you want to ask your mom something specific? Or maybe you want to ask about your future? I always want to know about my love life. My cousin took me to this guy once who does Tarot. Incredible. So crazy accurate. He totally predicted I was gonna date this guy—I can’t tell you who because you guys sort of know him—but anyways, I did, I dated him. And he had predicted our problems and everything. So crazy.”

  I pushed down on the brake, then shifted the car into first. “I don’t have any specific questions, I don’t think. I just want to know if she exists still.” I turned into Nora’s driveway and pulled the car to a stop.

  “Well, good luck, Holly. Let me know how it goes.” Nora got out of the car. Nils stayed put. “You coming?” she asked. She was standing in her driveway now, one hand resting on her hip, her body bent over so she could see inside my backseat.

  “I don’t feel great,” Nils said, stepping out of the car and onto Nora’s pebble paved driveway. “I’ll call you later.”

  “You’re seriously not gonna come in?”

  Nils opened the passenger side door, then slid in next to me. “I’ll call you,” he said again.

  She nodded. But then she just stood there. I waved sheepishly, pushing down on the gas, watching her shrink smaller and smaller in my rearview the farther away we drove.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?” said Nils, buckling his seat belt.

  “Why’d you just leave her there like that? Didn’t you guys have plans?”

  “I guess.” He picked at a microscopic zit on his chin. “We have plans every day, though. And she was annoying me.”

  “Annoying you how?”

  “Holly, it’s not that big a deal. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t just the psychic thing. She’s been bugging me all week.” He rolled up his window. “Anyways, I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  We drove and we drove and we drove without talking, then I slowed the car to a stop, slipped the stick shift into neutral and tugged on the emergency brake. We were home. “Do I annoy you?” I asked, laughing in an effort to undercut the desperation in my voice.

  Nils unbuckled his seat belt and turned his whole body toward me. “Why would you ask me that?”

  I shrugged, turning off the ignition. “Just suddenly feeling a little … I dunno. I need a boost, please.”

  “Holly. You don’t ever annoy me. You could never annoy me.”

  I looked at him.

  “Day after day and I never get sick of seeing your face,” he said, grabbing me by my chin. Then he looked at me in this fun
ny way that made my stomach go bananas. I don’t know why. And he must have felt it too, because after that he snatched his hand away superquick and got out of the car.

  Most of that weekend I kept to myself. I lay on the couch with Harry and watched Mystery! on PBS. I went to the farmers’ market with Jeff and bought corn and heirloom tomatoes and homemade soap.

  I hadn’t spoken to Paul since Friday under the bleachers. So when it came time for World History/arts and crafts, Monday morning, I made it a point to be super friendly to Saskia. Just to spite him, I guess.

  “How was your weekend?” I asked, looking down at our collage.