One
I cannot believe that Joshua Stallings has somehow managed to ruin school supplies for me.
Me, of all people. The girl whose divorced parents draw straws every year over who’s stuck dragging her around for back-to-school shopping. It takes up at least half a day while I float down every single aisle and caress each paper clip and mechanical pencil like a benediction. I have a legitimate sticky-note addiction. I ask for gel pens in my Christmas stocking.
I grab a pack of highlighters like they’re a life raft and squeeze my eyes shut. See? This is still exciting! You can color-code your notes with this pastel multipack and the serotonin from that will practically drown you.
“Momma, Marlowe’s praying to some highlighters!”
Eyes are open and highlighters are back on the shelf before my very Methodist mother can round the corner and see another thing to be concerned about.
“I’m not praying, Blue,” I say, asking God and the pristine shelves of the Super Buy to find me a sliver of patience. “I was just testing something.”
“You are so weird,” she exhales through fourteen years of despair from having been saddled with me as an older sister. She’s recently taken to correcting people with a quick “Marlowe is my half sister,” as if that other set of genes made a world of difference. “Can’t you just pick some notebooks like a normal person?”
Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? At least for Josh.
We’re all just clumps of stars and carbon, but my particular flavor of cosmic particles is not exactly popular. Almost as if there were a few substandard atoms tucked away in the curve of my clavicle, or the shell of my ear. A strangeness that poisons the whole batch.
I smile, my skin stretched so tight I could burst. “Why don’t you just pick some out for me?” The entire experience is already ruined, and I need to pull the lever and eject myself from this day before it takes me down with it.
She perks up, blood in the water. “You’ve never let me do that before.”
I shrug. “Surprise me.”
She spins, her lime-green bodysuit twinkling. The lighting here would be unflattering on anyone else, but my baby sister shines. Even after an hour of gymnastics practice, she’s glowing, and I have no concerns about her starting her first year of high school with anything less than complete adoration from everyone she meets. She’s every inch our mother’s daughter: a peacock, or a swan, or—a unicorn. Sunny blond hair, a golden Georgia tan, and a wall full of equestrian medals, pageant crowns, and cheerleading trophies. The perfect River Haven girl.
I, on the other hand, am solidly in badger territory. There’s a lot to be said for that, though. I’m smart, efficient, and reliable. Usually solitary but can work with a group in a pinch. The type of River Haven girl who was happily on the sidelines, quietly winning medals in math and spending all her time with her two badger best friends, until another peacock pulled her into the spotlight with him.
Blue grabs notebooks, pressing their covers tightly against her spandex so I can’t see.
“Nothing too crazy,” I tell her, already regretting this but desperate to get out of the store.
She laughs and twists away as I try to take a closer look.
“Not the pink one,” I say, as she reaches for one that loudly declares I LOVE BOYS in a font that makes my skin crawl.
“No peeking!”
“Name two boys I love, and you can get it.”
She scowls, stumped, and I grab my phone like it’s an EpiPen and I need an injection of sanity stat.
I duck behind a pallet of binders while she’s trying to scrounge up a single name and slide boneless to the linoleum. I don’t even breathe until FaceTime connects and their faces fill the screen.
“I thought you were shopping with your mom today,” Odette says, her eyes narrowing. “And where the hell are you? Is something behind you Saran Wrapped?”
“Is this some kind of murder-house-hostage situation?” Poppy asks, eating popcorn way too casually to be contemplating my imminent demise.
“Can’t it be both?” I ask, ducking lower as Blue shouts to the surrounding aisles, “What about this one with two dolphins making out?”
Odette’s eyebrows escape up into her beanie, and I decide silence is golden. “Dolphin erotica aside,” she continues, “are you sure you’re okay?”
My face, haunting this conversation from the upper corner of the screen, is pinched tight. Ghostly white, with auburn hair that topples forward into a red that’s barely believable as natural. A joke, a self-deprecating comment, almost slips through my teeth but I think, Why bother.
“Not great,” I say finally. “Momma’s made me try on four pink dresses so far, as if a few ruffles will have Josh stampeding back to me.”
Poppy coughs, popcorn catching in her throat. “Like you’re a matador? That somehow seeing you in pink for once will whip him into enough of a frenzy to trample you with his love?”
“Nobody said it was a good plan.”
Part of me wants to say that if a dress could put my life back together, I would clutch it with both hands, but it feels pathetic to admit it out loud.
“You are not a ruffled pink dress, Marlowe,” Poppy says, making me suspect she’s better at body language than she pretends to be.
And I know that. I do know that. I still can’t explain it in a way that will make sense to them.
We’d found each other in kindergarten, and that was all she wrote. Gravitated to each other, like magnets who’d finally found a home after years of sliding off the surface of other kids. While our classmates filled recess with screeching and feats of bravery, we’d meticulously excavated a portion of the playground before we were forced to stop, but we walked away with sharp stones, muddy hands, and each other.
Not much has changed. Except I’m now older, none the wiser, and huddled behind school supplies while my kid sister shouts about flirty-poop-emoji notebooks.
“There you are.” Blue rounds the corner, breathless. “Don’t worry, I picked the horniest dolphins for you, specifically.”
“Phenomenal,” I manage, looking at the stack of notebooks in her arms, and knowing I only have myself to blame.
“Get off the floor, Marlowe,” Odette says, her heart-shaped face filling the frame. “Take the flirty poop, the promiscuous dolphins, even the inevitable girl-power notebook, and get the hell out of there.”
I wilt under the fluorescent lights and the mounting pressure of walking into school tomorrow. Of passing locker 118 and seeing all of them gathering as if I’d never even existed. But she’s right, and I’m not going to collapse with a whimper on the floor of the Super Buy.
I get back on my feet, mostly to smooth the concern off their faces.
“I’m up, focused, and ready to truly disturb someone with my new school supplies.”
“That’s the spirit,” Poppy says, sliding glittery purple frames up the bridge of her nose.
“Girls, can we please wrap this up?” Momma walks up, dumping ribbons and mason jars into the cart. I know she’s going to fill them with cookies and have us give them to our teachers tomorrow with an equally sugary smile to remind them that they’re appreciated. She’s always being the most. The most thoughtful parent, the most doting mother, the most fashionably dressed in the early-morning drop-off line. Even here in the Super Buy, with her peony-pink sheath dress, pearls, and perfectly coiffed blond bob that hides any sign of the same burnished red erupting from my own scalp. She’s Bunny Thompson, and she’s made it her life’s work to be perfect at being perfect.
“Gotta go,” I mumble, and toss my phone back in the bag.
She turns forty-five years of patience and polish in my direction. “Did you get what you need? I told your father I would take care of this since he didn’t have time while you were in Denver.”
Perfectly polite, but always a small dig at Dad. That’s the reason she divorced him back when I was a baby: Time. She couldn’t excuse the time and attention he gave his patients as he provided them with new hearts, and so she found a tan, loud car dealership owner named Stuart who would give her every second he possessed. Then they had Bluebell, and the gangly, redheaded badger who will always be too much like her father became a little easier to ignore.
“Momma, I’ll be fine. Blue is picking out some notebooks for me, and I have everything else.”
She nods, already on to the next problem to solve, when Darleen Bridgers almost runs her over with her cart.
“Bunny!” she exclaims, with a heavy-handed sprinkle of delight that makes my teeth hurt. “Don’t you look divine?”
Momma looks up, her photo-ready smile already in place. “Darleen! Why, it’s been a dog’s age. How are Carl and the girls?”
“Oh, they’re just the best, and the girls can’t wait for school tomorrow!” She turns to me and attempts to soften years of Botox into a sad face. “How are you, Marlowe? I was so sorry to hear about you and Josh. Imagine breaking up right before summer! Tiffany was disappointed to not see you at all the get-togethers over the break.”
My Tiffany tolerance is about twelve minutes max, but I know my role in this conversation and smile. “It’ll be nice to catch up with her tomorrow.”
She gives me another attempt at a frown. You poor thing. “Girls have to stick together, right?”
“Why, Darleen, you know how teenagers are,” Momma says. “Off one day, and on the next, who can keep up?”
Darleen’s smile droops a little, and I know Tiffany has told her she likes Josh. A poorly kept secret among our friends. Well, Josh’s friends.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” She gives us a small nod and wheels away.
“Are you really going to let Tiffany try to steal your boyfriend?” Blue drops the notebooks in the cart, face down.
“Josh should be allowed to decide who he does and doesn’t date, don’t you think?” I say, throwing in the highlighters to break the tension.
“Boys don’t know what they want,” she says, with a terrifying conviction that has me wondering exactly what she’s been up to in junior high. She does a small pirouette, her interest already moving on to something else.
“I really don’t see what the problem is,” Momma says, inspecting me like I’m a dented package and she’s looking for damage. “I never heard you two have a single argument.”
“No, arguing was never the problem.”
Josh had very set opinions, and when he explained them so passionately, sometimes they became my opinions too. He had a lot more data and experience to fall back on, at least from a romantic standpoint. It made sense that every Friday night should be reserved for date night, and it made sense that he felt it was lazy to say “I love you too,” so the correct response was always a definitive “I love you.” An active declaration. A war of words back and forth, escalating in earnestness.
It wasn’t unreasonable to accept that Robert trying out for quarterback was a betrayal to their friendship and should be repaid in kind, and that when standing in a group it was appropriate to always hold hands. It was so easy. I understood rules. I loved rules. For the first time, I didn’t have to think about what the correct response to something, or somebody, was, and I could just float along in his wake.
“And it just came out of nowhere?” Momma asks, as if my answer will be different from the ten times she’s asked prior. I could be honest. I could tell her that Josh had sat me down and let me know exactly where I fell short, and that it was terrifyingly similar to the complaints she’d had about Dad.
* * *
“Marlowe, you know you’re really important to me, but I think we need to go ahead and take a break,” Josh said, sitting next to me on the porch swing. I swayed, his words and weight knocking me off-balance.
We’d just come back from a day at the beach with his friends, and I was pink from the sun and from watching him, framed by sand and spray and everyone’s attention. Golden-blond hair, a body whose dips and curves I’d carefully measured the angles of, and cerulean eyes that missed nothing.
Unlike me, who missed everything, and didn’t see this coming until it was on top of me.
“What do you mean, I’m important to you? We’re in love.” I shied away from the word “break.” It was too ugly to even look at. I knew we were in love. He’d told me.
His hand pressed mine, and I stilled.
“I’m going to be at our house in Hilton Head for most of the summer, you’ll be with your dad in Denver, and we need to take some time to see if this is actually working.” His fingers, still grainy with sand, scraped the inside of my wrist.
“But I love you,” I said, the words falling out. No embellishments, no apologies. Just the facts as I knew them.
“Do you?” he asked kindly. “Marlowe, you say it, but I rarely feel it. I don’t think you’ve ever done anything romantic for me. Sometimes I wonder if you’re even really that interested.”
I sat there, frozen in place. My brain cataloguing two years of dates, football-game attendance, I-love-yous, and girlfriend tutelage under his careful expertise. I didn’t know which assignment I’d failed. He gave my hand another squeeze.
“It’s all right, Marlowe, not everyone’s built for it.”
* * *
I shake off the cobwebs of his pitying eyes, and the way he skipped down the steps of my house and didn’t look back once. I dig deep and smile back at Momma, a photocopy of her own. “It’s a mystery.” I give her nothing but what she wants to hear. “You’re right, these things are always on and off, and who knows what will happen tomorrow.”
I say it with so much conviction I almost convince myself. After all, he just said a break. That he just needed some time. Maybe I’ll walk in the door tomorrow and he’ll appear next to me, his warm hand finding mine through the crowd.
Copyright © 2024 by Serena Kaylor
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