Nothing Like You Read online

  He reached across the seat and slid a finger under my chin. “Oh yeah? What about you, Holly?”

  I shrugged. “I’m guessing this is about what I deserve.”

  Paul flicked his cigarette out the open window. I propped one leg up on the dash.

  After I got dropped off, I did something I know I shouldn’t have done. I plopped down on my living room floor, dumped the entire contents of my book bag out onto Mom’s pretty red woven rug, and there, amidst the heap of plastic folders, spiral notebooks, loose Tic Tacs and tampons, was the crumpled little piece of loose-leaf Saskia had written her phone number on, just weeks before. I smoothed out its creases, fished my cell out of my pocket, and dialed. It rang. And it rang. And then, just as I was prepping myself to leave a message on her voice mail, she picked up. “Hello?”

  “It’s Holly.”

  “Holly!” Such surprise. “Hi.”

  I knew she’d be alone. I knew that even if Paul had left me and gone directly to her, I had, at minimum, a twenty-minute window before he’d reach her doorstep.

  “I’m sorry to call.”

  “Holly, why? I’m glad. That’s why I gave you my number. So you’d use it. What’s up?”

  I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, so at first, I didn’t say anything. Then that made things awkward, so finally I just blurted, “I have this thing I have to do tomorrow and I can’t go alone.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

  “I won’t. Tell me,” she said. Quickly followed by, “Wait, hold on a sec, I’m going outside.” I heard a screen door squeak and then slam. “Okay. I’m ready. Go ahead.”

  So I told her about the psychic. How I’d been looking for signs from my mother. How I’d made this appointment and how I was scared to go alone and that it was scheduled for tomorrow at three and would she be willing to come along?

  “Of course I would. I’d love to go,” she said.

  My whole body relaxed. I felt fantastic. I had a friend.

  I spent the morning preparing myself. I woke up and went out to The Shack and imagined Mom on the cloud and I talked to her. I said, I’m going to see this guy today and he’s going to make it so you and I can have an actual conversation and if it’s really you coming through, say something about Harry. I’ll know it’s you for real if you just say something cute about Harry. Then I went inside and cooked breakfast for Jeff. I ate strips of bacon standing up while rehearsing in my head the things I wanted Frank Gellar to ask my mom. Mainly just: Is your fate my fate? And:Why won’t you send me a sign? Then I twiddled my thumbs, watched an episode of The Twilight Zone , and ate a small bag of cherry tomatoes. Then, at two fifteen, I left to pick up Saskia.

  I hadn’t been to her house in about six years. But it looked exactly the same from the outside. Pink adobe. Big. Old. I got out of the car and followed a trail of wide, flat rocks to her doorstep and rang the bell.

  Fifteen seconds later, the door swung open. There she was, blindingly blond. She smiled, hugged me hello, and followed me back out to my car.

  “I forgot to mention … can you please not tell anyone about this?”

  She was buckling her seat belt. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” She drew a cross over her heart with her polished pointer finger.

  “Not even your brother, or like, Paul, for example… .” Especially not Paul , please god NO, not Paul , I thought.

  “I’m very trustworthy,” she insisted.

  Unlike me.

  I started the car.

  Frank Gellar’s place wasn’t all that impressive, but his neighborhood was a suburban dream. Sidewalks and tidy gardens with clay gnomes and multicolored pinwheels. I pulled the car to a stop and rechecked the street number.

  “Is that it?” Saskia asked, pointing out the window at the small, brown house.

  “That’s the one,” I said. We looked at each other.

  “What time is it?”

  I checked the digital clock on my dash. “Two fifty.” I paused. “Maybe we could just sit here for a bit. We still have time.”

  “Whatever you want to do.”

  I turned on the radio and searched for a good song but couldn’t find anything I liked. Saskia talked a little bit about her stepdad but I was distracted and couldn’t hear what she was saying. I watched while she spoke, her lips sliding over her smooth white teeth. Then I pulled two pieces of cinnamon gum out of the glove compartment.

  “You ready? It’s almost three.”

  “I feel sick,” I said. I did. Suddenly. My stomach was looping around itself like an unbalanced washing machine.

  “You want something? A mint?” She opened her purse and started fishing around inside.

  I grabbed her hand. “What if he tells me something I don’t want to hear?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t want to know how I’m going to die.”

  “He won’t tell you that.”

  “But what if he does?” I looked at her. “Or what if he can’t make contact at all? What if she’s just, like, not there … ? Or anywhere?” I swallowed, continuing. “Let’s say he does make contact, great, awesome , only she’s not at peace. What if”—I tightened my grip on Saskia’s hand—“what if I’m not living up to her expectations. She might be disappointed in me.”

  Saskia didn’t say anything for a minute and then she put her face close to my face. “No way. Your mom is proud. Look at you, Holly.” She fixed her eyes on me.

  I sucked in a whole bunch of air. “I don’t want to go in.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I just don’t. I can’t.”

  Saskia looked at me for a bit. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused. “You hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Eating always helps when I feel nauseous. Burritos are especially soothing.”

  I turned the ignition and rolled down my window. “Burritos? Really?”

  “Bean and cheese. Trust me.” She picked her phone out of her purse. “You want me to call this guy and cancel?”

  “Call him,” I said, passing her his card then pulling a quick U-turn.

  We sped back toward Sunset, stopping at Pepe’s on our way to the beach. Saskia bought me a bean and cheese burrito and a potato taco for herself.

  I ate my burrito in the car.

  The beach with Saskia was different from the beach with Paul. It felt more like the beach had felt with my mom when I was a kid. We lay on our backs in the sand. Clothes on, shoes off. We made sand angels.

  “Do you regret leaving?” she asked me, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.

  I thought about it. “I feel relieved.”

  “Relieved, really?” She turned onto her side.

  I shrugged, picking up a handful of sand.

  Saskia didn’t say anything for a while, then said, finally, “I’m glad you asked me, anyway.”

  I looked at her.

  “I mean I’m glad you called.”

  I grinned. I dug some sand out from beneath my thumbnail.

  “My brother,” she said, looking down. “He has this … kind of issue with depression.” She picked at her cuticles.

  “Oh.”

  “And when you told me about the psychic I kind of wondered how I’d feel knowing my own destiny. Or knowing Sean’s destiny. Like if I knew he’d be fine one day? Maybe then I could relax and stop worrying. Seems so nice, not having to worry.” She lay back down. “It’s like my dream ,” she said, which made me feel really sad.

  “Has he always been like that? Depressed?”

  She nodded. “He’s always been medicated. But lately he’s just been extra bad. He hides stuff… .” She took a breath. “It all sounds so dramatic, I know.”

  I watched her for a while as she drilled her finger into a little hole in the sand. Drilling and drilling and then she pulled her finger back and flicked a few stray grains of sand out from under her pinkie nail. She
looked so ladylike doing it too. And she must have felt me watching her because suddenly she was peering up, asking, “What?! What’s wrong?” So I said, “Nothing,” and she just made a face at me, then went back to picking her cuticles.

  I thought about Paul. Then about Paul and Saskia together. He wasn’t with her because she’d break if they broke up. It wasn’t because her brother was crazy or because she couldn’t survive on her own. Being with her had nothing to do with some misguided sense of moral obligation. He was with her because he loved her. Of course, and who wouldn’t? I loved her. It was sudden and unexpected but it was true. I would trade him for her, I thought. In an instant.

  I slid my hand over the stiff material of my jeans. I felt happy. Grateful. I’d lose a boy but I’d gain a friend. The choice was clear.

  Paul had to go.

  Chapter 23

  At first, I didn’t really do anything different. I just stopped paying attention to him. Every time I thought about him I’d think about her instead. What I’d be losing if I continued to see him—a real friend. One that I didn’t share a tool shed with. Or feed Snausages to after school.

  So when Paul didn’t look at me when we passed each other in the hall on Monday, I tried not to care. And when Tuesday came and went without a visit to my bed, I danced around my bedroom to Mom’s albums instead.

  On Wednesday, though, Wednesday he was out by my car, waiting for me in the school parking lot after gym. “Hi,” he said, leaning in for a kiss.

  “Aren’t you scared someone might see?” I quipped.

  “No one’s around, come on.” He dragged me forward by the waistband on my shorts.

  “Don’t.” I squirmed, pulling at his fingers.

  “You look great, though … all sweaty.” He grinned and ruffled my hair. “Let’s go to the beach. Come on, I’ll drive.”

  I took a step back. “I can’t go to the beach with you.”

  “Why not?” He lit a cigarette, inhaled extra deep, and slipped the lighter back into his shirt pocket.

  “I just don’t feel good about it anymore. I want to stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  I darted my eyes down. I thought if I looked at him for too long I might not be able to say what I had to say. “Seeing each other. We can’t see each other anymore.”

  Paul wasn’t saying anything, so I glanced up.

  He was fidgeting with the lid on his Zippo. “Why not?”

  “A lot of reasons.”

  “Like?”

  “Like … it’s not really good for me, I don’t think.”

  “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t I get a say?”

  “You have a girlfriend. You don’t need me.”

  He wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me into him. “Maybe I want you.”

  “I see you once a week,” I scoffed. “You don’t even talk to me anymore.”

  “Is this about the psychic?”

  We were still standing close, his arm around my hips. “I just think it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Yes. Girlfriend ,” I said again, slow and loud, hoping he’d hear me this time.

  He leaned forward to kiss me. And I’m not sure why, but I let him. Then I stepped backward, pulled my keys out of my book bag, and said, “I have to go.”

  “So that’s it?”

  I got into my car and slammed the door shut. Then I rolled down my window and looked at him.

  He said, “You think this is over, but it’s not.”

  You’re wrong, I thought. Then I turned the ignition and put the car into first. “See you around,” I said, laying into the gas pedal.

  Chapter 24

  Saskia and I were in the hills by my house, winding up a narrow, dusty path covered with dry brush and pricker bushes. It was dark out.

  “What time is it?”

  “I dunno. Not late. Eight?” I guessed.

  Saskia skipped around me and ran up ahead toward a clearing at the top of the hill. “You wanna sit for a bit?” she asked, breathless from the climb.

  “Okay.” I nodded, hiking up the extra ten yards or so. She was kneeling in a puddle of dusty dirt. I dropped down next to her. For a minute or two we just sat side by side, breathing dry air.

  “We’re lucky, huh?”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, pulling on a dead root, ripping it out of the ground and snapping it in two.

  “All this?” she pointed at our view: mountains, ocean, dry grassy hills and valleys. “We lived in New York when I was a kid. Until I was, like, six or so? Suburbia. Nothing like this. I mean, there were beaches, but they were different. And it was flat.”

  I nodded. I’d never been to New York. I’d only ever lived here and couldn’t imagine life outside Southern California. I broke my dead root into fours.

  “Look, planes,” said Saskia, pointing at the tiny blinking lights floating over the ocean. There were four or five at least, small specs of light that barely looked as if they were moving. “They look like fireflies,” she said, sinking further down to the ground.

  “I’ve never seen a firefly,” I said.

  “Yeah, we don’t have those here, do we?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, they look like that,” said Saskia, pointing at the glowing dots of light speckled over the sea. “Exactly. They’re small and they blink like planes do. That’s the one thing I miss. Bugs”—she laughed—“that glow.”

  “They sound unreal. Like magic critters.”

  “They are,” she said, turning to face me. “That’s exactly what they are,” she murmured, pulling on a lock of long, sandy hair.

  Chapter 25

  When I was really small, before we lived in the house we have now, Jeff, Mom, and I lived in one of those two-story townhouse complexes by the beach. I don’t remember much about that place other than the ocean out back, our spiral staircase, and this really red, rectangular table where we ate all our meals, but lately, I’d been thinking a lot about that apartment.

  “You okay?”

  Jeff and I were in the kitchen eating brown rice and beans. I took a sip of water. “Fine,” I said. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  I’d been picturing dinners at that old apartment. Me, Mom, Jeff. Mounds of Italian takeout. I had the perfect memory fixed in my head: the three of us slurping spaghetti around our chintzy table. “Nothing interesting,” I said. “School stuff. Do we have any soy sauce?”

  “Fridge,” Jeff said, taking a bite of rice.

  I got up and shuffled forward, drifting back to my memory—spaghetti, old apartment—I swapped out my image of Jeff and replaced him with visions of Ballanoff— rewriting my memory so that the new version went something like: me, Mom, and Ballanoff, together, eating sizzling Szechuan chicken with chopsticks. “You want chili sauce?” I asked, my hand hovering over the huge orange bottle on the door of the fridge.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  I grabbed both bottles and kicked the door shut with my sneaker sole. “Maybe we can get Chinese sometime this week.”

  “You want Chinese? I thought you didn’t like Chinese.”

  “No, I do.” I pictured Ballanoff lifting a white, doughy dumpling to his lips. “I like Szechuan chicken. Dumplings, too.” I dropped back down in my chair, then slid the chili sauce across the table toward Jeff.

  “Then, okay, yeah, sounds great, Hols.”

  I nodded, satisfied, lifting my cup to my lips.

  Chapter 26

  Tap tap tap.

  I’d been asleep. I opened one eye and stared up at my window. Tap tap tap. Paul was wearing this ratty, old red T-shirt I’d loved. Still did. It was thin and had holes at the armpits.

  “Holly,” he mouthed. My window was shut.

  “Go away,” I said back. He’d been calling nonstop lately. Every day, sometimes twice a day. I hadn’t been answering his calls.

  He shook his head. I turned over so I was facing
away from the window. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. I turned back around. “Holly,” he said again. I sat up, slipped on my slippers, and ran down the hall to the front door. He was waiting when I got there. I cracked the door a smidge a slid outside. “You have to leave,” I whispered, folding my arms over my chest and leaning my back against the side of the house.