The Beautiful Between Page 10

  “Oh,” I say. Maybe physics is actually an escape for Jeremy, time off from thinking about Kate.

  “We can take a break,” he offers.

  “It’s hardly a break when I haven’t been working.”

  “Well, let’s just give up on the illusion, then.” He reaches for the remote and starts flipping channels.

  There’s a reason Jeremy’s my first best friend. He’s the first person I’ve been friends with where there wasn’t this lie about my parents. It’s been so stupidly nice not to have to worry about slipping up; not to have to keep him away so that he won’t get too close, figure out my parents weren’t divorced, see something he wasn’t supposed to. With everyone else, I was so intent on maintaining the story that I never had a chance to think about finding out the truth. He’s the reason I’m going to find out. I want to tell him the whole story. I want just this one relationship, this one friendship, to be real.

  “Jer?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Mute the TV for a second.”

  “What’s up?” he asks, putting the remote down.

  I slide up onto the couch beside him. “I know you befriended me because you thought I knew about losing someone to cancer.”

  “Sternin, we’ve been over this—”

  “No, it’s okay. I don’t mind—we’re good friends now.” I take a deep breath. Even now, saying that makes me happy.

  I continue: “But I can’t help you.”

  “I know, Sternin. You were so young when your dad died.”

  “No, Jeremy, there’s more to it.” I pause. “I didn’t know my father had cancer until you told me.”

  Jeremy looks at me like I’m crazy. “I don’t understand.”

  “I pretended that I’d known. But my family never told me. I don’t know … I never knew how he died.”

  “Why didn’t your mother tell you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Haven’t you asked?”

  I don’t answer right away. I don’t want to lie, so I say, “Maybe, when I was younger … I think I always understood that she couldn’t tell me.” I can remember the exact age I was when that became clear, the exact day. Just turned eight years old, just started third grade.

  “Why on earth would she want to keep that from you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Is that why you lied?” he asks. “Is that why you told everyone your parents were divorced?”

  “Yeah. It seemed easier. That way, no one would ask questions I wouldn’t know the answers to. I could just make up the answers.”

  “And never have to worry about finding out the truth.”

  “Until now. This is the weirdest part—now I want to find out.”

  “Why is that the weirdest part?”

  I purse my lips and then try to explain. “Ever since that night when you told me you knew my father was dead—ever since then, I can’t explain it, I’ve needed to know. I’ve been so curious. Like, physically curious—like, it’s hard to sit still in my bedroom if I know there might be some clue in the living room that I haven’t looked for yet. Uncomfortably curious.”

  Jeremy shakes his head. “But, Connelly, that’s not strange.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I think it’s stranger that you never looked before.”

  This almost makes me laugh. Is it really more unnatural that I’ve never been curious before than it is to be filled with this alien sensation? Would it have been normal to be filled with it all my life?

  “I never needed to know before.” I mean that my body needs to know, that my body actually won’t let me relax until I know.

  “But I’ve told you about the cancer, so now you know. Why are you still trying to find things out? You have your answers.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t.”

  Jeremy speaks with certainty. “But it was cancer, I know it. I told you—the oncologist.”

  “No, there’s more to it. You said that he said it was a tragic story.”

  “I think he meant because of you—you know, a young daughter.” Jeremy’s uncomfortable, I can see, adding that last part.

  “No, he’s a cancer doctor. He must see that all the time. There must be something more, don’t you see?”

  Jeremy considers this, and I look straight at him as I continue.

  “I don’t think cancer killed him. Or at least not the cancer alone. There’s something else that makes it worse. I just have no idea—I can’t even make something up about it.”

  Jeremy grins at me. “And we all know that Connelly has an oh-so-active imagination.”

  I blush. I don’t know whether Jeremy is joking or if he realizes how true this is. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had so many real things going on, so many things I can’t fantasize my way away from, or out of.

  Jeremy continues, serious now. “Maybe your mom thought you were too young to know about death and then, by the time you were older, it seemed like—I don’t know, like she’d gone this long without telling you, so why bring it up?”

  “I think there’s something more to it. Think about it, Jeremy—there are no pictures of him up in my apartment. My mother’s mother won’t even talk about him. His own parents don’t talk about him—like about when he was young, old stories. It’s like they’re mad at him.”

  “Maybe they’re angry at him for leaving them. I’ve read about that, the stages of grief and all that stuff.”

  I shake my head. “No. It’s been too long. They wouldn’t be angry at him for that anymore. Certainly not all of them.” I pause. “It’s not anger. She’s, they’re—scared to talk about him. It feels like something about his death was humiliating, and something about it was, I don’t know, worse.”

  I hope Jeremy doesn’t think I mean that my father’s death was worse than mere cancer. Mere cancer is what’s hurting his sister, and I don’t mean that my father’s death was worse for my family than hers would be for his. But Jeremy doesn’t seem to interpret it that way. He’s still thinking of my family, not his.

  “Connie, that doesn’t make sense.”

  I don’t say anything, and Jeremy opens his mouth like he’s going to tell me I’m wrong again. Then he shuts it. I wonder if he’s conceding the point because I’ve convinced him, or because he just realized that it’s not his place to argue.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out like that,” he says. “About the cancer, I mean.”

  “I’m sure it never occurred to you that I didn’t know.”

  “No. But it should have.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but he stops me. “No, Sternin. I come from a family where everyone talks about everything—talks too much, if you ask me. I didn’t even think that yours might be a different kind of family. One where you don’t talk about things like that. It was selfish of me not to think past myself.”

  I shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Really,” I add when he looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Anyway, I’m happy I know. Well, I mean, ‘happy’ isn’t the right word.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I smile at him. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “It’s funny, though. You’d think she’d—I don’t know.” Jeremy thinks for a minute, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I don’t know, that she’d have made something up or something. So you’d know—something. Or at least, I mean, why not tell you about the cancer? Then you wouldn’t be searching for some other … some bigger thing.”

  I consider this, then shake my head. “No, I don’t think she would.”

  “Why not?”

  I wait to answer, doing with my body the opposite of what Jeremy is doing with his: curling my arms around my legs, making myself small, resting my chin on my knees. I look at my feet. “I haven’t given her any reason to make something up. She’d only have to do that if I insisted on knowing, if I asked questions, and I haven’t. I made up a lie so that I wouldn’t have to ask her, so that t
he truth wouldn’t even matter.” I look up at Jeremy. “Plus, I don’t think she’d want to lie to me about it. I think she’d prefer this to having told me a lie.”

  Jeremy leans forward, considering what I’ve said. “There’s something kind of nice about that—your mom not wanting to lie to you.”

  I nod. “I know. But I need to know the truth now.”

  “I understand. I’ll help you, if I can.”

  I smile. “I know you will.”

  Jeremy sits back again. “Thank you for telling me. I’m glad you feel like … I don’t know, that you can trust me.”

  And Jeremy and I smile at each other, and finally I’m able to pick up my physics textbook and complete the problem I’d been staring at for so long. We work for the rest of the day, and Jeremy says he’ll take me out to celebrate if I get higher than an 86.

  When I get a 95, we decide it has to be a major celebration. We invite Kate out for ice cream sundaes.

  I’m standing in the Coles’ foyer again. It’s very different from the first time—I feel comfortable here now; there’s no chance I’ll be forgotten or ignored. I could have walked all the way inside if no one had been here to greet me. But that’s not what has happened today. Today I’m still in the foyer because I’m waiting to leave, and I’m working up a sweat under my winter coat. Kate is still getting ready because a few minutes ago, Mrs. Cole saw the three of us waiting for the elevator and said that Kate wasn’t dressed warmly enough. Kate didn’t like the coat Mrs. Cole wanted her to wear. So they disappeared into Kate’s room to negotiate what she’d been wearing underneath the lighter coat. Jeremy trotted after them. And so I’m waiting by the elevator.

  Mr. Cole walks by and sees me.

  “Connelly, how are you?”

  “Fine. How are you?”

  “Very fine indeed. You waiting for Kate?”

  “Yup.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. She’s become pretty picky about what she wears since she lost her hair—I mean …” He seems flustered suddenly, to have said it so simply. I feel sorry for him and interrupt.

  “Hey, twelve-year-old girls can be very stubborn about their sense of style,” I say, as though I don’t know that this is a bigger deal than that. But he seems to appreciate my feigned ignorance.

  “Exactly.” He smiles at me. “Well, I’m sure they won’t be much longer. You might want to settle in, take off your coat, grab some provisions from the kitchen—just in case you end up camped out here, you know.”

  I laugh at his joke and he moves past me, and I’m alone in the foyer again. I hear Kate yell, “No I won’t!” and I wonder what’s happened. She and Jeremy are walking toward me, Kate’s face obviously red from crying, but she’s wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing earlier.

  “Come on, let’s get going,” Jeremy says. I press for the elevator.

  Jeremy insists on taking a cab, even though the restaurant is just a few blocks away. I see that even though he’s allied himself with Kate in this fight, he’s worried about her getting cold too, and wants to spend as little time as possible outdoors.

  It’s awkward in the cab. None of us says anything. Everything I can think of to say has to do with Kate’s outfit—like, Great coat; cute boots.

  “What kind of sundae you gonna get, Connie?” Jeremy asks finally.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “No fun. I know exactly what Kate’s getting.” The cab arrives, and Jeremy pays the driver, and Kate and I scoot out and into the restaurant. Kate doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t respond to her brother’s teasing her about her order. She stays silent, still angry at her mom. You’d think she was being a brat if you didn’t know the whole story.

  Jeremy continues as we’re led to the table, ignoring the serious turn this outing has taken, still trying to joke. “Kate always gets scoops of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and coffee, with hot fudge, nuts, and whipped cream, and then swirls it all together until it is a very, very disgusting shade of dark pink.”

  “God, Kate,” I say, trying to get in on the joke. “Can you eat all that?”

  “Yes!” she says defensively.

  “Well,” I continue, desperate to say something right, “I’ll be full after two bites. My eyes are much bigger than my stomach.”

  “How about you, Jeremy?” I ask as we sit down. “What are you gonna get?”

  “Hey, I’m on your side—I can’t finish one of those huge things. Want to split something?”

  “Perfect.”

  We split a hot fudge sundae. Kate’s sundae comes and she does in fact swirl it all together, and it does turn a gross color, and she does begin slurping it up, but after a few spoonfuls she loses interest. I wish Jeremy and I had never suggested this outing of ours. Kate looks like she’s about to cry. I nudge Jeremy, who’s up to his elbows in our sundae. He looks at his sister.

  “Kate?” he says quietly.

  “I don’t think I can eat this,” she says. She’s staring at the sundae as though finishing it is a matter of life and death: finish it and prove you’re the same girl you used to be; don’t finish it and admit just how sick you really are.

  “That’s okay,” Jeremy says firmly. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does,” Kate says, and a couple of tears slip down her cheeks.

  I hate how important the sundae has become. It feels intensely like this could be the last time Kate will ever come here, like it might be the last time she’ll ever turn a sundae pink, the way she’s been doing since she was a little girl. This place will never be the same for her, no matter what happens with her illness. When Jeremy and I go back to my place later, he chain-smokes on my terrace, almost a whole pack of cigarettes. I’ve never seen him so upset, and I feel awful that I was the reason for it. My stupid physics score prompted the whole thing.

  15

  My mother and I don’t look alike. I’m always fascinated when you see parents with their children and their relationship is very obvious. The Coles are obviously related. Just take one look at Jeremy’s mother and you can tell where he got his eyes, his mouth, and his hair. His hands match his father’s. Kate’s chin and lips match her brother’s.

  But it’s more than that, more than just the way that they look. Kate makes the same gestures as Jeremy when she speaks, has the same spark in her eye when she’s teasing her brother that her brother has when he’s teasing me. When I call Jeremy’s house and his father picks up, he always makes small talk before passing the phone to his son, and when he asks how school is and how my day was, I can hear the same intonations that are in Jeremy’s voice when he asks those questions.

  I wonder if my mother and I share traits like that. The kind that you pick up from living with the same person for a long time. I must have something of my mother’s, some habit, like the way she makes little swishing noises with her lips when she’s walking around the apartment, looking for a lost pair of shoes. But I’ve never noticed myself doing that. Technically, I guess it’s an unconscious habit, but still. I’ve lived with her all my life. I don’t question why we don’t look alike—that’s just some trick of genetics—but I do wonder what traits of hers I may have picked up over the years.

  I start going to the Coles’ after school; Jeremy and I are still studying together and he likes us to go to his apartment now, not mine. Neither of us would ever say the reason, but of course it’s to spend more time with Kate.

  Last week, Jeremy’s cell phone rang around nine. Kate and I were eating ice cream on the couch, eavesdropping.

  “Hey, Fisher, what’s up?”

  Kate and I could hear Brent Fisher screaming through the phone; he was someplace noisy.

  “No way! I’ve been dying to go there!”

  Brent screamed some more.

  “Tonight?” Jeremy stood up, looked back at Kate and me on the couch, then headed for the door, holding the phone. “No, man,” we could hear him say as he left the room. “Nah, not tonight.”

  Kate waited
until we couldn’t hear Jeremy anymore and said, “He doesn’t go out like he used to.” She sounded like she felt guilty.

  “I know. But it’s not your fault.”

  “Sure it’s my fault,” she said, almost shrugging.

  “Not any more than it’s mine,” I said, wanting to make a joke. “Seriously, the minute your brother decided to hang out with me must have also been the minute he gave up going to lots of parties. I am not a party girl.”

  Kate giggled. “I guess you’re not.”

  “Hey,” I said, feigning offense, “I could go to plenty of parties if I wanted.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t really want to.”

  “Once in a while,” I said honestly.

  “Once in a while,” Kate echoed thoughtfully. Then she said, “It’s just … he used to have so much fun all the time. It used to be important.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it used to be important’?”

  Kate shoved her ice cream bowl onto the coffee table; we both ignored that it was mostly full.

  “I mean, he used to be important. Whether or not he went to these parties was important. It mattered. People wanted him to be there.”

  “They still do—they still always invite him.”

  “But it’s not the same now.”

  I thought about this. Kate was right; it did used to matter—a party wasn’t a party unless Jeremy Cole was there. You weren’t cool unless the prince validated your party with his presence. And Kate understood that.

  “You know,” I said slowly, “I had this theory about your brother, about high school.”

  Kate looked intrigued now, excited. “What?”

  I was excited too. I was going to tell Kate something I’d never told anyone. I leaned in conspiratorially. “That the school was like a kingdom, and that Jeremy was, like, Prince Charming, and everyone else—”

  Kate cut me off. “Like in a fairy tale. Like the girls wanted to be Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Exactly!” It was exciting—it was fun—confiding this to Kate. Maybe making all this stuff up in my head didn’t mean I was weird, or crazy.

  “That makes perfect sense!” Kate said, almost shouting. “Jeremy is totally the prince at school. Like, at parties, girls want to spend time with him, just like Cinderella at the ball.”