Just as he kisses me, hands in my hair, he fades into Mean Jake, the delivery boy. We’re in his vintage Trans Am, and it smells like pizza and cigarettes, but I don’t care because we’re tearing off each other’s clothes, and suddenly he blurs into Mr. Darcy.
No. Mr. Rochester. Only I’m not Jane Eyre, I’m me in some sort of riding costume, and he’s kissing me by candlelight. We’re in front of the fireplace, and suddenly there’s a bear rug, only I’m not sure why there’s a bear rug. Is there one in the book? I’m staring at the bear, and the bear is staring back like, You murderer, and it’s just so depressing, so I get rid of the rug, and now we’re lying on the floor, Rochester and me, but it’s freezing because Thornfield Hall is, after all, a castle in the English countryside. Rochester produces a blanket, but it’s too late; I send him away.
And now it’s Wyatt again, sauntering toward me like he does in the halls at school, and his eyes are on me, and they are so intense and serious that I know this is it. And we’re in his room and his parents aren’t home, and things slow down so much that I can hear my own breathing, short and fast, and I can almost hear his as he looks me in the eye and I can see everything—him, me, us—reflected there.
He says, Claude.
Claudine?
Claudine.
And then I can feel him. All of him. And I don’t worry if I’m too small or too big anywhere because he doesn’t even have to say, You’re beautiful. He’s already telling me.
And it’s Wyatt and me, closer than I’ve ever been to anyone, and I’m wrapped around him and into him, and all at once I breathe, Yes! as my entire body lifts off the bed. It just rockets right off and hovers there in midair, shooting off fireworks of every color. I am an explosion of color and fire, and my room spins with light. A million fireflies of light swirling and sparkling around me, holding me in the air.
I want to live up here, circled by this flickering light storm. I want it to last forever, but one by one the fireflies start to ghost out and die away. I try to catch them and keep them, but gently, gently, I feel myself floating back down to the bed.
Gradually, the bed absorbs me, head to toe, and I go limp and still.
I open my eyes and the only light is coming from the moon. My body is heavy now, so heavy, and I feel myself drifting away in these daisy sheets, thinking I should have studied more for Mr. Callum’s class and I never did find my left sneaker and I can’t forget to bring Alannis her green sweater on Monday. And then my mind drifts to Shane and the barn and my wet, wet thigh, and what if some of it got in me and I get pregnant and have to have a baby and marry Shane Waller and live in Ohio forever?
The last thing I remember as I drift off to sleep, underneath daisy sheets, in navy blue pajamas, is Wyatt saying, See you around, then, which could mean anything because as of today the entire world is still possible.
7 DAYS TILL GRADUATION
It is almost eleven a.m. and I am in my room, talking to Saz on the phone. We are talking specifically about our summer plans. First and foremost, our road trip, which will be the two of us exploring the entire state of Ohio before we bid it goodbye forever, or at least for the next four years. We’ve bought matching bikinis (black for me, red for her) and Kånken backpacks (sky blue for me, yellow for her), and Saz is getting permission to borrow the car for a week or two. She wants to start north and I want to start south, and we’re both talking and laughing at once, which is why I don’t hear the knock on the door.
Suddenly it opens and my dad is standing there, and there is this look on his face as he takes in the posters on the walls and the T-shirts and jeans and dresses all over my floor and the books everywhere and me standing on a mountain of clothes like I’m on the peak of Kilimanjaro, and I’m still laughing but also trying to remember when in the hell he was last in my room, if ever.
I should suspect something then, but I don’t. Instead I say, “I’m on the phone.”
He says, “I need to talk to you.”
And now I’m not laughing and neither is Saz, who goes, “Is that your dad?”
She sounds every bit as surprised as I am.
* * *
—
He perches on the corner of the bed, feet on the floor, looking like he might spring up and away at any moment. At first I think something horrible has happened to my mom. Or that he’s going to tell me the dog is dead or the cat is dead or my grandparents are dead. I rummage through my memories, trying to unearth the last time he sat down like this to talk to me, and I can’t remember anything prior to age thirteen, when he looked at my mom and said, “I didn’t speak teenager even when I was one. She’s in your hands now.”
I sit down next to him, several inches between us. I am wondering where my mom is and if she knows he’s here, and then he says, “Your mom asked me to talk to you….”
For some reason my mind goes immediately to Shane and the hayloft. Please don’t let them know. It is the worst thing I can imagine, because my life so far has been reasonably quiet and reasonably uneventful, which is apparently why I can’t write with any sort of feeling. I’ve never even had a cavity.
And then my dad clears his throat and begins talking in this low, serious voice, which is not at all like his usual voice. And as he talks, he starts to cry, something I’ve never seen him do before.
I’m thinking, Stop this. Don’t cry. Not you. Dads don’t cry. Which is stupid, really, but there you go.
I think I say, “Don’t cry.”
Or maybe I say nothing.
Because he is telling me that he doesn’t love us anymore, my mom and me.
That the past eighteen years of my life—
the eighteen years that make up my entire life—
have been a really horrible joke and that he never actually loved us at all, not once,
or that maybe he did for a tiny while but love dies when the objects of that love are as unlovable as my mom and I are,
and unfortunately, it’s our fault that we can’t be his family anymore.
That he needs us to go far away so he never has to look at us again because our mere presence makes him ill. He’s still talking, but I’m not listening. I’m too focused on the way the tears are rolling into the stubbly beard on his chin and disappearing. Where are they going?
“Clew,” he says. My nickname. The one that only he calls me. Our special name, the one just for us and secret bakery runs before school and secret ice creams before dinner and driving too fast and watching scary movies. All the things my mom is too momish to allow. Even though all my life it’s always been Claudine and Lauren, Lauren and Claudine, the Llewelyn women, because Mom never actually took Dad’s name, and we’ve always been more Llewelyn than Henry. Which basically means we believe in possibility and magic instead of always looking at the practical (i.e., darkly realistic) side of things.