Lost Cause Page 3

  “France sucks,” Mari lamented, inspecting her manicure. “Everyone speaks French.”

  “There’s a shocker,” I mumbled.

  “What did you do all summer, Ari?” Claire asked, and I could sense the pity in her voice.

  I shrugged. “Same ol’ thing.”

  Jacy peered over the heads of the passengers toward the front of the bus. “That kid you were with . . . is he new?”

  I pulled off my glasses and wiped the smudges off them with the hem of my shirt. “Yeah. His parents just built a house right next to mine. His name is Noah Templeton.”

  Claire laughed. “Looks like a total dork.”

  “He’s all right,” I said in Noah’s defense, but I’d had a feeling from the beginning that Noah would have an uphill battle fitting in. Now, the difference was obvious. He was a full head shorter than any of his classmates. His pants were hemmed too short. He positively swam in his plaid farmer’s shirt. And he looked like he was actually enjoying spending time with his younger sibling.

  Still, over the couple weeks before school, I’d gotten to know Noah pretty well. We tubed a lot. My parents had his parents over for dinner, as my dad loves entertaining new people with hopes of wooing them to our parish. Noah’s parents stuck out just as much as Noah did. They were complete one-eighties from each other. His dad looked small and nerdy and barely said two words, but his stepmother—she was a sight. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful, with impossible, Barbie-Doll proportions. She towered over Mr. Templeton, and her sweater stretched dangerously over her perfect grapefruit breasts. She went on and on in her high-pitched voice, talking about places she’d visited—Milan, Rome, Brazil. As she did, her claw-fingernails scraped against Mr. Templeton’s back, and occasionally tangled affectionately in his hair. Her other hand held the fork that gracefully twirled her spaghetti but never actually raised any of it into her mouth, so her bright red-lacquered lips stayed that way. It was like having a movie star in our dining room. We all kind of sat there, in awe of her.

  But her stepson was, well, less than awe-inspiring. Sitting there, on the bus, watching him deep in conversation with his little sister at the front of the bus, I cringed.

  School was school, that day. Meaning it stunk, like always. My English teacher, Mrs. Waterman, was the devil on Earth. She kept us all in during recess because she didn’t like our attitude. In gym, we played dodgeball, and my team lost.

  I’d introduced Noah around to some of my friends. Things seemed to be going well for him; curious classmates seemed to gravitate toward him. They’d gathered around him, asking question after question. Where he was from? Why did he move here? What were his hobbies? By lunch, he had made a few new friends.

  But he had to bring that damn cupcake.

  Noah should have known that those little chocolate cupcakes with the white-cream filling are a hot commodity in grammar school. If you’re going to eat one, you must first check over both shoulders, and then quickly wolf it down without drawing attention to yourself. But poor, naïve Noah pulled the items from that brown paper bag one by one, setting each carefully on his desk. First he laid out a paper napkin. Then he placed the sandwich, wrapped in wax-paper, down over it. He set the cupcake on one corner of the desk, and the juice box on the other. Twenty little mouths began watering at the sight of that little package of pure chocolate delight, but Noah didn’t notice. He carefully unwrapped his sandwich and took a giant bite, leaving the cupcake exposed to attack.

  He probably didn’t even notice it when Jim Smith inched up behind him, until it was too late. Jim swiped the cupcake from his desk and growled, “So, you’re the new kid.”

  Instinctively, Noah grabbed for his snack, but Jim held it out of reach. “Give that back,” Noah protested.

  “I don’t think so, wimp,” he hissed through curled lips. He had curly blonde hair and abundant freckles, and was twice Noah’s size. He grabbed Noah by the throat and pushed him back against the cinderblock wall. “From now on, you give me your dessert every day.”

  The entire class had forgotten about the cupcake, which was now undoubtedly Jim Smith’s property. Everyone was intensely afraid of Jim. He was dumb as a stump, so he’d been held back two years, and was already growing facial hair. Once, he’d slapped a teacher. So now, everyone was watching Noah, wondering what he was going to do. Noah just gurgled, clutched his throat and began turning bright red.

  I cringed. Then I inched closer, trying to think of something to say.

  Jim looked at me and snarled. That was all I needed; I nearly peed my pants. I backed away quickly.

  Jim turned to Noah, who was closing his eyes as tightly as he could. Finally, Jim released him. “Well?”

  Noah sputtered, coughed, and then shook his head. “I don’t see why I have to –“

  “Because I’ll kill you otherwise,” Jim boomed. “How’s that?”

  Noah looked at me, his eyes moist with tears. I mouthed the words, “Just say okay” to him. Looking defeated, he sunk deeper into his chair and stared at the ground. “Okay,” he whispered, and sniffled.

  “Good,” he said, grinning. He removed the plastic wrapping from the cupcake and devoured it in one effortless bite. With his mouth still full and black crumbs scattered upon his lips, he said, “Ask your mom for Twinkies, next time.”

  When Jim had disappeared, I approached Noah with some words of comfort. He was unresponsive and still in a state of shock. I carried on a one-sided conversation for a few minutes, and then returned to my seat.

  In the weeks following that first altercation, a routine evolved. Every day at noon, Jim would swoop by Noah’s desk with an outstretched hand, and Noah would drop a Twinkie or cupcake into it. This sealed Noah’s reputation. The curious people who had surrounded him on the first day of school soon did all they could to avoid him. Even I began to avoid him. At school, I would try to make contact with him as little as possible, which was easy because he was in the Academically Talented group and I was in the B-level classes. At home, though, we were like the best of friends. It was odd. Either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care. Any type of friendship he could get, I guess, was good enough for him.

  Chapter Three

  But things changed. How soon after that?

  For six months, it was like . . . heaven. I’d never seen my dad so happy. He spared no expense on her. The house on the Delaware was for her, a wedding present. He was constantly buying her stuff—you know, jewelry and flowers. The wild kind you’d find in Hawaii. The house always smelled like a flower shop. They did a lot of jet-setting around to islands and stuff, leaving me and my sister with our neighbor across the street. And pretty soon . . .

  He ran into financial difficulty?

  Yeah.

  How did you know?

  I had all these expensive train models on the walls of my bedroom. My dad would buy them for me when I got an A on a test or for my birthday. He and I had been planning to make a huge model layout in the basement. When we talked, it was about that. About how awesome it was going to be. I couldn’t wait. But then, one by one, the train models started disappearing.

  He was selling them to pay his debts.

  Yeah. He started to stay late at the office. We just thought he was working overtime—looking back, I guess he’d already begun skimming money from his clients, money that belonged to the firm, thinking he could pay it back, later—so Annie had the responsibility of taking care of us. Waking us up, getting us ready for school, seeing we had our homework done.

  And she did okay with that?

  Yeah. I mean, the best she could. Sometimes she forgot things, and she packed us crap lunches. She went from being a jet-setting model to a twenty-five year old mom of two kids, literally overnight. You could tell she was lonely.

  You sound sympathetic to her.

  Yeah. Well, I called her mom. I mean, I guess that’s the way, right? If someone is responsible for your happiest moments, you tend to forgive them for being responsible for your worst
ones.

  Did your father notice that she was lonely?

  Yeah.

  And what did he do?

  He suggested we get a housekeeper.

  #

  Woo boy. I’m wide awake now. Actually, my lady parts are. Because, hello, hottie. He’s wearing this old U2 t-shirt that’s too tight in a good way, adoring and clinging to every ripple underneath. This kind of package doesn’t normally go traipsing around the streets of Lambertville at six in the morning—usually it’s the same shriveled old men, with their copies of the Trenton Times tucked under their arms.

  “It’s all right,” he says, his voice low and liquid enough to bathe in. He’s wearing dark sunglasses, which he pulls off in the shade of the awning.

  Then he just stands there, hands in his back pockets, forcing me to look at him. He fidgets a little, which, hello? A guy like this doesn’t need to fidget, doesn’t need to express any uncertainty because he’s undeniably hot, the end. And yet, there’s something so sweet and fragile about that crooked smile of his, creepy as it is, considering he doesn’t know me.

  Then I notice the tiny, sad-clown birthmark on his cheek.

  Oh, my God.

  Oh my freaking God.

  My heart jumps into my throat, choking me. I can barely get the word out. “Noah?”

  He nods.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, dizzy. I might collapse right here.

  He raises an eyebrow, digs his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and gives a short laugh. “For what?”

  It should be obvious. He’s been back a week and I haven’t made contact. But beside that, even when we were best friends, I was a terrible best friend. The worst. Does he not remember that? Guilt bears down on me. I look at the stupid monkey, for guidance? For reprieve? I don’t know. It’s silent. Deformed and silent.

  And then I remember, Noah used to be an artist. The best one in our class. He’d start out drawing a few innocent lines that looked like nothing, and a few minutes later, he’d have a masterpiece. Blushing harder, I point to the picture. “For that. It looks like . . .”

  He inspects it, stroking his cleft chin. God, Noah has stubble. Real stubble. I’d seen it on television but up close, in person . . . it’s terrifyingly sexy. Noah, sexy? “Like what? It looks like a monkey eating a banana.”

  My face is hot. It’s actually chilly for mid-June because it’s so early, but I’m in danger of melting. “It does?”

  “Why? What were you thinking?” he says, very seriously.

  Something runs through my mind, then, a little snippet of something he’d told Dinah Seaver on that primetime special. Something I never thought I’d hear from my old best friend Noah Templeton’s pristine lips. I can’t remember it exactly because I’d raced to turn the television set off after that, feeling anxious. The signs were all there. How could I have ignored them?

  “Um. Nothing.” I can’t believe he’s here, in front of me. He has his old familiar ten-speed propped against his hip—the one that had been way too big for him, but he’d managed, the one his dad stuffed way in the back of the shed when it became clear he’d never ride it again. And his clothes are hopelessly wrinkled like everything he’d worn when he was thirteen. But this time, it all fits him. The last time we were on this street, right by the steel bridge to Pennsy, I’d gotten bullseye caramels in the five and ten and walked down here with our bikes. It was after school, though, and he’d probably had a hard day, having ass kicked all over the playground by one bully or another. We’d usually eat enough caramels to make us queasy—just as queasy as I feel now. “You surprised me. Are you . . . here for breakfast?”

  He shrugs. “No,” he says softly. “I’m here for you.”

  “Oh.” Now I’m really blushing. Especially because he’s looking at my chest. I cross my arms over my tank top. “You . . .”

  “Followed you?” He grins. “Yeah. You drive like a maniac.”

  “I do not,” I say, swatting his arm, then quickly going back to shielding my boobs. He’s still looking at them. What the heck? “I . . .”

  “You hated pink,” he says, pointing at my shirt.

  Oh. “Yeah, well. I grew up.”

  “You don’t wear glasses anymore? Contacts?”

  “No, nothing actually. I grew out of them.” Someone taps on the glass. It’s Thelma, looking like I just failed her in a major way, again. “I’ve got to go.”

  “You work here?” he asks, running a hand through his thick mop of hair. He’s . . . gosh. So not the little boy I once knew. “Really? At Thelma’s place?”

  I nod, and look at Thelma. She’s giving Noah the stink-eye, now. I’d say it’s because she recognizes him from the Primetime news special, but she gives everyone that look. “It was good seeing you, though.”

  He looks disappointed. Then he says, “I could do with breakfast.”

  Feelings war inside me—the desire to wrap my arms around him, the desire to run away. That’s probably why I freeze. I can’t just shoo him away like an insect. “Oh. Well, then come in.”

  The bell above the door jingles as he holds it open so I can pass through, and it’s then I realize I’m trying so hard to smile like nothing’s wrong that my cheek muscles are sore from overuse. He’s so tall now that his head nearly smacks the valance of dried eucalyptus springs Thelma’s hung over the door. Ever the hostess, Thelma clucks her tongue at him, then groans, “No discounts for friends and family.”

  “Understood,” I mutter under my breath as she struggles to her feet and grabs a menu like she’d rather not.

  “That’s okay, I already know what I want,” he says to her.

  She stops, then points to the table in the corner, and he takes the seat facing the kitchen. Facing me and all my movements through the dining room. I just stare until Thelma clears her throat at me. Grabbing my pen and pad, I scurry to his table and lay a napkin-wrapped package of utensils at his elbow.

  He has his hands folded in front of him, like he’s praying, which reminds me of something I read in the newspaper. They’d asked him how he made it through, and he said he prayed a lot. Noah Templeton, who never prayed a day when he knew me. He’s changed so much. And yet when he gives me that half-grin, he’s shockingly the same. “Guess,” he says, like any ten-year old.

  “Guess? Guess what?” I ask, perplexed.

  “What I want for breakfast.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t guess that . . .” I start, but suddenly, it occurs to me. I know exactly what he’d have, what we’d both have, because once upon a time, we were that in tune. “Banana walnut pancakes, extra butter and syrup?”

  He grins, and the corners of his eyes crinkle like tissue paper. That’s something I’ve never noticed on him. “Bingo.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Orange juice.”

  I smile unsurely. “Coming right up.”

  I back away from the table, colliding with the table behind me and narrowly saving the bud vase on the center from crashing to the ground. When I rush to the door to the kitchen, I slam it with too much force and wind up slumping against it, gulping the air like a fish. Tom looks at me. “It can’t be a rough day, it’s not even six-thirty.”

  “I know,” I sigh, tearing the order from my pad and handing it to him.

  But the day just gets rougher. The place fills to its ten-person capacity with the normal old fogies who usually stay here and nurse their coffees for my entire shift, and I spend a maddening few hours trying to be worthy of receiving a fifty-cent tip from them while also tending to Noah. Every time I approach his table, he’s watching me like a hawk, so much so that I nearly trip over nothing and end up splattering his pancakes all over the far wall, come an inch from spilling a refill of orange juice in his lap, and say something like, “Can I anything get you else?”

  Red-letter day in my waitressing career, for sure.

  And he doesn’t leave. After he pays the check, I expect him to go, but he doesn’t. Every time I come out the doo
rs, he looks up at me. Finally, I go up to him and say, “How are we doing here?”

  Speaking for me: Terribly.

  He says “Good,” just as Thelma starts to harrumph at him, even though we don’t have any other customers waiting. “Am I disturbing you?”

  Yes. “No,” I say nonchalantly, even though my tips have been for shit. If he keeps showing up for my shifts, I won’t even have enough fun money at the end of the summer to buy myself a Slinky. “But don’t you have other things to do?”

  “If I go home, the vultures will jump on me,” he says. “Haven’t you seen them?”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve been bus—“

  “You don’t know the trouble I went through to get here.” He holds up his arm. The entire underside is scraped red, dotted with blood. “This was from crawling through the woods like a sniper.”

  “Oh. Do you need a bandage or something?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. I’m good.”

  Thelma clears her throat. He looks at her and wipes his mouth with the napkin and starts to push away from the table. “I guess I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I say, realizing how dumb I must sound. Do I have to start every sentence with Oh? “Well, then, I’ll see you . . . around, I guess.”

  He nods. “See you, Ari-Bari,” he says, using my old nickname. The name only he called me. I worry he’ll see me shivering, but he doesn’t look back. He steps out the door and into the sunlight, then collects his bike from the rack and walks it down the sidewalk, out of view.

  I stand there for a moment, breathing hard, until Thelma starts to tap her fingers impatiently on the podium. She says, “That shaggy boy is no good for you. What’s with boys and tattoos these days? What would your father think?”

  “He’s just a friend,” I murmur, knowing exactly what my father would think. Okay, so he may be a little tough-looking, but he’s still polite as the Noah I remember. Knowing his story, no one can deny that boy is ripe for his own reality television show, or a lifetime of therapy. He’s the kind of boy my father would welcome into our congregation—in fact, he’d be the first to offer him support. But he would never offer him his daughter. No way.