“Yeah, it really was,” I say. “And I don’t practice screaming all that much. I guess I’m a natural.”
Sarah motions over my shoulder to the house. “So? Do they fight a lot?”
The yelling inside the house had disappeared for a moment. Everything in the world became my scream and Sarah’s eyes and her laugh. Nothing more. But now it’s back. Glen is almost-yelling something about respect, and the other mother is telling Glen about how proud she is of him, which means that she’s probably made him feel exactly the opposite. This is what Mom does all the time. Says things—true things—that make Glen feel bad about himself, and then takes it all back once he starts believing her. Back and forth like a tug-of-war.
I don’t know about the other mother, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being proud of Glen. Deep down, I think Glen knows this. I don’t think he’s very proud of himself, either. It’s probably why he’s an asshole.
“Yeah,” I say. “They fight a lot.” This is technically a lie, since as far as I know, this is the first time the other mother and Glen have fought, but I’m not going to tell Sarah that my mother is actually a pod person, so maybe the lie is okay. “And they always fight about the same stuff. It’s so stupid.”
“My parents don’t fight at all,” Sarah says. “But that might be just as bad. Maybe worse. They walk around the house not talking to each other until they aren’t mad anymore. Sometimes it can take a day or two. Do you know how silence can sometimes be so loud?”
I nod. I do. I know exactly what she means.
“That’s what it sounds like in my house.” She bites her lip. “But they don’t fight a lot. And don’t all parents fight at least a little?”
“I think so.”
From inside, I hear Asshole Glen shout, “Goddamn it!” Then there’s a bang.
Sarah jumps.
“It’s okay,” I say. “He loves to hit things in frustration. Walls. Tables. Countertops. But never people. He just likes to scare them.”
“Your poor mom.”
I want to tell Sarah that Mom didn’t have to marry this asshole. I want to tell her that Glen was so clearly an asshole long before their stupid backyard wedding with more musicians playing “Here Comes the Bride” than there were guests. I want to tell her that Mom knew exactly what she was getting into. Knew what she was getting us all into.
“Are Charlie and Julia okay?” Sarah asks. “Are they inside?”
“They’re fine. Upstairs, I’m sure. Charlie wouldn’t notice if the house was burning down, and if it gets real bad, Julia will put on her headphones and listen to music. But this isn’t so bad, and it sounds like it’ll be done soon. I just hate walking into it.”
Sarah nods. It’s one of those tiny little motions—just a quick bobbing of the head—that says so much. She understands what it’s like to walk into a parental war zone. “You want to go over to my place for a while?” she asks. “Wait for things to cool down?”
“What do you mean?”
She smiles. “I mean … do you want to hang out at my house for a while?”
I don’t say anything. It’s probably just a second or two, but it feels like the longest pause ever. Big enough to march armies through.
Sarah laughs. Shakes her head. Grabs me by the wrist, which is almost like holding my hand. So close to holding my hand. “C’mon,” she says. She pulls. We walk away from the shouting and toward her house.
I look ahead. I peer an hour into the future. There are so many opportunities for me to make a fool of myself.
seven
My sister read somewhere that only two people in the whole world know the secret recipe for Coke. The company says that two people know in case one of them dies, but I believe it’s because the recipe is too big a secret for just one person. Having to carry around something like that all alone could kill a person. It’s killing me. I just want to tell someone. It’s kind of like wanting to write my secrets down on a piece of paper, stuff them into a bottle, and throw them into the ocean, except I want that ocean to be a human being.
What I really want to do is just walk into some restaurant in some faraway town, sit down at a booth with some stranger, and tell that person all my secrets. I just want the chance to say my secrets out loud to someone so I won’t feel like the only person in the world carrying them. It’s hard to be alone with secrets. I know it sounds weird, but secrets are heavy. They have real weight.
And I’m good at keeping secrets. I might be the best secret keeper ever, because mine are really starting to pile up, and I haven’t told a single person. And they’re big secrets, too. Serious ones. Life and death kinds of secrets. Not just “Johnny likes Jane” kind of stuff.
My list of secrets:
My mother disappeared and another mother has taken her place.
Brian Marcotte has a very not good plan that scares me.
I have a letter in a yellow envelope that would change the world if I showed anyone.
I thought for a second that Sarah could be my stranger. She could be the person in the restaurant booth who I tell everything to. She’s the closest I’ve got to someone I know but don’t know, and I wouldn’t have to travel to some faraway town to find her.
But now I know I can’t tell Sarah any of my secrets. Sarah isn’t a secret keeper. She’s a problem solver. A fixer. She worries a lot about other people. You can’t be a person who wants to save the world and keep secrets at the same time. I had an asshole science teacher last year who said he liked to watch the world burn. He would stand in front of the class like he was on some stage and say, “Study for the test or don’t. Your choice. If you don’t pass, that’s on you. I love to watch the world burn.”
He was a jerk, but I bet he was a good secret keeper, too. Guys like him—they’re almost always guys—have no problem watching people suffer and fail. They say stuff like, “Struggle builds character” or “Everyone needs to experience failure.” But most of them didn’t grow up poor or hungry or with an asshole stepfather. They like to watch the world burn because their world has never burned.
Sarah isn’t like that. I know this already. I knew it from the moment we sat on that rock on Barracuda Island. If I told Sarah my secrets, she would spring into action like some superhero. She would try to save me, when all I really want is for someone to listen to me.
This is what I am thinking as I sit in a chair in the corner of Sarah’s bedroom, waiting for her to come back with soda. It’s a small chair made of wood and wicker. I had to move her teddy bear aside to sit down. It seems like a chair made for a teddy bear. I feel awkward sitting on it, stuffed into the corner of the room, but I can’t sit on Sarah’s bed, and there’s no other place in the room to sit.
Sitting on Sarah’s bed would be presumptuous, which means thinking you belong somewhere before anyone says you do. That’s not how Mrs. Newfang explained it, but she likes to use nine hundred words when just a few will do.
While I wait, I stare at the bed that Sarah Flaherty sleeps in every night. Maybe in a nightgown, or maybe, on summer nights, in just her underwear. I’ve seen porn before on the internet, accidentally at first and then on purpose sometimes, but somehow staring at Sarah Flaherty’s empty bed seems more like sex than all the sex I’ve ever seen on my computer screen.