The Truth About You & Me Read online

  Like clockwork, the garage door hummed. Then the back door opened and swished shut, and I listened as my father’s sneakers strode across the aging hardwood floors, each board creaking as he passed.

  I crossed my legs and leaned forward on my elbows, picking up the syllabus to your class and staring at it as if it held the meaning of life.

  Dad stepped into my room, his shadow splashing across the floor, and I glanced up, feigning surprise. “Oh, hey,” I said, setting the syllabus down. For effect, I yawned and stretched.

  Dad smiled as his eyes swept over my books, playing his part to a T. “Getting ahead already?”

  I nodded, deciding that rubbing my eyes would be too much, so instead I played with a strand of my hair, twisting it around my fingers, remembering all the times Mom had pinned it up into a perfect, sleek bun back when I’d danced ballet. “Yeah. Some of my classes will be pretty tough, I think.”

  “Nothing you can’t handle,” he said, his eyes snapping up to meet mine.

  It wasn’t a question, just a simple statement. He expected me to agree, to rise to the challenge, just like I always did, because he’d been there to see me climb aboard that airplane and buckle up. He’d watched my trajectory for years, and this was just another mile closer to my destination.

  I’d never understood the phrase, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” To me, it seemed more like you can’t see the people standing right next to you if they’ve been there all along. Can’t see the moment they change, the moment they want to be someone else, because you’ll forever see them as the person they’ve been.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, sliding my legs out from under me so that I could lie on my stomach as I reached for my English text.

  And then just as the script progressed to exit stage left, he creaked his way back to the kitchen to go make dinner.

  Every day, Bennett, it went just like that. Every day, I did things just the right way. Living up to my potential. Challenging myself. Thinking of the future.

  Blah, blah, blah. Day after frustrating day, I stayed in the airplane, staring straight ahead, wondering why I no longer wanted to go to the place that had once seemed so promising.

  And that day, he never questioned my act because he only saw the person I’d been for years. The perfect, studious daughter I didn’t want to be anymore. I was six the first time he told me I’d go to an Ivy League school, just like Mom. I was going to make smart choices, like her—not have lofty, idiotic goals that could shatter just like his kneecap, not have dreams that could be stolen away like his dream of the NFL draft.

  I was going to chart a careful course and find success in a calculated way, or else I’d be cursed to a third-rate career as a football coach and PE teacher. Because to settle … that was to fail.

  See, Bennett, I was tired of all this. So tired.

  I chose Running Start because I saw the freedom in it. I saw the hours to myself. I saw escaping to a campus where my father wasn’t teaching in the B Gym.

  And that night as I fell asleep, I saw you.

  I hit traffic on the way to school the next day, and I whipped into the parking lot with my heart racing, worried, not sure if there was such a thing as a tardy slip in college.

  I was late, ten whole minutes, to my eight o’clock English 110 class. When I walked through the door, breathless, my professor was already at the front, talking about our first essay assignment. My face flamed hot as every student in the room looked up at me when the door squeaked open. I thought I’d be reprimanded, but I wasn’t.

  College really is different. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that no one cares if you come and go. If you chew gum, or stare out the window, or never turn in a scrap of homework. The more I got to know the rules of community college, the more I realized that high school teachers are sort of babysitters, and at college there is no babysitting.

  And I really liked the sound of that, liked the idea that maybe when no one was looking, I could become someone else.

  When class finally ended, I slipped out the door, ahead of the rest of the students, not wanting to be late for my second course of the day.

  It’s funny how, on that day, I was so consumed by the clock. If I could have a superpower, I think I’d wish for the ability to speed up time. Do you wish that, now? Now, when so much is happening so slowly, and you must be just sitting there waiting and thinking and waiting to see what happens next, what’s going to tumble down or be rebuilt?

  If I had that power, I’d give it to you. You must need it more than me.

  I strode across campus that morning, the dew sticking to my cute little black flats, pleased that I didn’t have to pull out the map again to remember where I was going. The campus, sprawled across a hill, was surrounded by evergreens. I felt so adult, so in control, as I navigated my route, cutting between buildings to get to the lab. There would be no bell ringing out the next class period, no hall monitors looking for passes.

  Lab 3A was empty when I walked in, or at least I thought so. But as I stepped past an open closet door, you turned into me, and we collided.

  You reached out to grab my arms, and you held me up.

  You touched me, to keep me from falling, and I was so close I could smell you, a clean, aspen-like cologne washing over me. Something so different from the Axe body spray favored by high school boys, that sort of burning, overwhelming smell that follows them around like a cloud. Yours was subtle, sophisticated.

  “Madelyn!” you said, your strong hands gripping my arms.

  I stared, wide-eyed, back at you as my cheeks flushed hot. I’d smashed right into you, like some dorky little high school girl who couldn’t look where she was going.

  “Sorry,” I said, hoping my face wasn’t nearly as red as it felt. And that’s when my brain caught up with my ears and I realized you’d said “Madelyn,” and it made me smile so wide I must have looked pretty crazy.

  “No, it’s my fault, I didn’t realize it was nine already. I was just hanging up my jacket.” You jutted your thumb over your shoulder at the closet behind you.

  That day you didn’t have a V-necked sweater over your button-down, and it was easier to see the line of you, the way that cotton hugged your body.

  “I’m actually a little early,” I said, to make you feel better.

  I’d never been more happy to be early, to get this serendipitous moment when our bodies collided. That’s how it was with us. One day we were two separate people and the next we collided, and neither of us stood a chance.

  I wish I could tell you I regretted everything that happened after that.

  I walked farther into that room, and instead of sitting in the back like I had the day before, I plunked down at a table right up front, so that when you sat down at a desk in the corner, we were just a few yards apart.

  I wanted to say something else to you, something witty, but a couple of other students arrived then, two guys who were laughing as they stepped through the door. It shattered whatever moment we could’ve had, whatever impression I could have made.

  They took the table in the back and the room filled up, and then Katie sat down next to me, flashing her pretty, easy smile. “Hey, Madelyn,” she said, tossing her backpack onto the table.

  “Hey,” I said, even though I was a thousand miles away.

  No, I was twelve feet away, in that place I’d stood when you touched me.

  “Cool if I sit here?” she asked, playing with the newly pink-streaked ends of her dark hair. How did she have time to add something so cute in the twenty-four hours since I’d seen her last? “I’m betting we’ll need lab partners.”

  “Sure,” I said, finally forcing myself back to the present. Katie looked cute that day, in figure-hugging jeans and a sweater that dipped low over her cleavage.

  I wondered, then, if I’d look like her, act like her, in a couple mor
e years. She seemed so comfortable in her skin, so casually confident. The girls in high school, the pretty ones … their confidence seemed forced, fragile, all smoke and mirrors.

  But not with Katie. With Katie, I’d bet anything she felt confident right down to her core.

  Katie kind of grimaced, then. “It’s only fair to tell you I’m miserable at science.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m really good at it. I took Advanced Bio last year.”

  She brightened. “Really? What school did you go to? I went to Kentlake. We had to do it as sophomores and that seems like a million years ago. I barely squeaked by then, and whatever I learned has officially leaked out of my brain by now.”

  “Oh,” I said, my voice kind of falling. “Uh, Enumclaw. We have Physical Science as sophomores and Biology as seniors, so the class just ended a few months ago.”

  It was my first out-and-out lie, and I’m not even sure why I said it. You weren’t listening or anything. But I liked Katie, I guess. I liked her warm smiles and easy chattiness. I didn’t want her to think I was too young to be worth her time.

  “Huh. Weird,” she said. “But I guess that makes it my lucky day!”

  But it was my lucky day, because friends didn’t come that easy to me, and yet that’s exactly how it seemed with her. I really was different, in college. I was changing and evolving, even on that second day.

  “Starburst?” she asked, fishing a piece out of the front pocket of her backpack.

  You watched me unwrap it. You watched me put it in my mouth. And then you looked away from me and stood up.

  “Okay, guys, before we start let’s go over a few ground rules for safety in the lab. Rule number one,” you said with an amused sort of lilt to your voice, “absolutely no food or drink.”

  Katie and I shared a look, and she shoved the still-wrapped candy she was clenching in her hand into her backpack.

  I used my tongue to push the Starburst to the side of my mouth, and I’m not even sure why because you’d already seen it.

  Why did you watch me eat that candy and not stop me, Bennett? Were you letting me get away with it, or were you being playful with me?

  “Rule number two: there are no make-up labs. Missed labs are simply going to show up as zeros, and that’s going to hurt your grade. If you miss a lecture day, you can read the textbook. If you miss a lab day, you miss the lab. Period.”

  You walked around the room, passing out little packets of stapled paper. You wore nice shoes that day: pretty brown leather ones, not quite boots, not quite loafers, but something between. I liked the way those steel-gray slacks brushed the soles.

  You dressed so differently than the boys at my high school, boys who wore nothing but ripped jeans and faded T-shirts. You cared about the way you looked, and it showed.

  Katie shuffled our packet in front of me, and I trained my eye on the paper as she leaned toward me. “Teachers should not be allowed to look that good,” she said.

  I giggled. “Seriously,” I whispered.

  You returned to the front of the room, and your shaggy hair slid into your eyes as I looked up at you. “Today’s lab is really quite simple, but it will provide you with the tools for future labs. We’re working on the basics of any good experiment: maintaining an adequate control group, creating reasonable hypotheses, and so forth. Please read over the material and then get to work. If you have any questions, please do see me, either during the lab today or during my office hours, which are outlined on the class syllabus. Today they’re noon to two,” you said.

  Katie and I leaned together so closely our heads nearly touched and she read the instructions out loud, quietly. “I can grab the beakers,” I said when she was finished.

  “Great. I’ll get the food coloring.”

  We shoved our chairs back and walked to opposite ends of the room, me to a bay of drawers right next to that closet housing your coat.

  In high school, boys wear letterman’s jackets, or fleece pullovers, or North Face snow jackets if it’s super cold. I wondered, as I fished out a cylinder and two beakers, what your coat looked like.

  When I walked back to our table, you were standing there, asking Katie what our hypothesis was. She was stammering something about a rainbow, and when I approached, her eyes looked up at me, pleading.

  “We’re hypothesizing that each of the colors, combined with water, will boil at the same temperature,” I said, brushing past you to take my seat. It was a silly lab. A high school lab. But it accomplished what you wanted from us.

  “Good. Very good,” you said, your eyes meeting mine in a way that made it feel like a spark zipped between us. “I’ll leave you to it,” you said, going to the next table.

  It went like that for the rest of the morning, with you floating around the room, me always aware of precisely where you stood, who you talked to.

  Although Katie didn’t know a dang thing about science, she was a good partner. She did exactly what I told her to, and her handwriting was perfect. I trusted her with our log book and I explained the experiment as we went along, and when you caught me talking about the difference between the control group and the experimental group, comparing them to drug trials and sugar pills, you paused, smiling in that special way of yours.

  I wish I could see that smile now.

  I wonder if you even smile anymore.

  Saturday morning, you changed your routine, and for that reason, our paths crossed.

  Do you think it was fate, Bennett? Do you believe in fate?

  I do. The same way I believe in soul mates and love at first sight. I don’t think you can believe in just one of those things. Seems to me you have to believe in all three.

  I was leaning on the trunk of a gnarly, drooping cedar tree, trying to catch my breath. I was only halfway up Mt. Peak. You always called it Pinnacle Peak, remember? Because that’s what it’s called on the maps. But nobody from Enumclaw calls it that.

  To the locals, it’s just Mt. Peak. I guess that’s a weird name, like a river named water.

  In any case, I was looking down at my battered hiking boots, trying to calm my burning lungs, when I heard a dog barking. I glanced up as a gorgeous golden retriever bounded up the trail, his reddish-yellow fur waving in the wind, his long tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

  I’m not afraid of dogs or anything—you know how much I love that dog of yours—but when he jogged right over and put his paws up on my chest, nearly knocking me down, I was less than thrilled.

  “No! Down!” you said, and when I glanced up, my heart stopped. Doesn’t seem like a heart can beat when it’s way down in your knees, anyway.

  Your face was flushed and your long-sleeved T-shirt clung to your muscled frame, the faintest outline of sweat shadowing your shoulders. When you looked up and met my eyes, you’d been about to say sorry. But instead you smiled and said, “Oh, hey, Madelyn.”

  Like we knew each other, like we were friends. You stepped up close to me so you could snap a bright red leash onto your dog’s collar as he danced around at my feet. I no longer cared that he’d left two muddy paw prints on my T-shirt, that he was stomping on my feet.

  “Hi, Mr. Cartwright,” I said, wondering if my ponytail was jacked up, if my face looked as good as yours when flushed with exertion or if I just looked sweaty and ugly.

  “I think we can dispense with the formalities outside of class,” you said, reaching out like we were just meeting for the first time. “It’s Bennett.”

  You have a nice handshake, you know. A solid, firm grip.

  In that moment, an intense desire washed over me. I wanted our hands to be clasped in a different way. I wanted to casually hold yours, our fingers interlaced, and I wanted you to want that too.

  That’s what I was thinking, anyway. I don’t know what you thought as our skin touched, palm to palm. All the time we spent together, al
l those talks, and I never did ask you how you felt about the first time we’d really touched. Voluntarily, that is. The crash into each other in the lab hardly counted.

  Your dog chose that moment to take off, yanking you away from me, and you sort of pulled me with you for a moment before releasing my hand.

  That’s how we came to be hiking together on that quiet, foggy morning. They might think it was something you planned, that you asked to see me outside of class, but it was pure serendipity.

  Normally, Mt. Peak is busy, but maybe people didn’t want to climb the mountain knowing that the town was shrouded in fog and the view would be obscured. We only passed two hikers that morning, and neither of them paid much attention to us.

  I liked that, too. That neither of those hikers thought it was odd that we’d be together.

  “So, come here often?” you asked in a cheesy voice, as you cracked a smile.

  You have a great sense of humor. Maybe that’s past tense. I don’t know at this point.

  “Yeah. Most Saturdays,” I said. “I like the quiet of it. Before the rest of the world wakes up.”

  You looked at me then. Really looked. Your blue eyes have this way of seeming kind of intense, you know. Not in class, but when it was just me and you and you let your guard down, let me see who you really are. You’re more flippant in public, but that quiet sincerity of yours took over when it was just me and you.

  “I know what you mean,” you said. “It’s relaxing.”

  “Exactly.” We’d been hiking a few minutes, and our breathing had grown labored. We were only halfway up the mountain, but I made up my mind I would keep up with your long strides. You’re at least six inches taller than me, so it was no small feat (feet? Ha ha, get it?), but I couldn’t stand the idea of falling behind like some silly kid left in the dust. “How about you? You come up here a lot?” I asked.

  “I’ve been hiking it every weekend, but on the other side,” you said, jutting your thumb over your shoulder.