Chapter 7: Happy Place

The children's room has slanting windows, uneven boards and pale curtains. Two narrow beds stand against opposite walls under identical blue-gray quilts. It's my first week with my friends since coming home from Edinburgh. The person sleeping across from me is someone I barely know.

The room smells a little damp beneath the lemony furniture polish. Now there are other smells I notice too: cinnamon toothpaste, pine, clove, smoke from the fire outside. I know whose they are without looking toward his bed.

I've been trying very hard not to look at Rhys Callahan. His eyes are unusually pale. Sometimes he winks at me, which doesn't make it any easier.

Within a few hours of meeting him, I start finding jobs to do whenever he gets too close. Dishes need putting away. Something needs skimming out of the pool. Anything that lets me look somewhere other than directly at him.

From the misty mornings until everyone finally goes to bed, I know where he is. Even when I'm having a wonderful time, some part of my attention stays with him.

This week makes me happier than I've been in months. It also makes me so nervous that sometimes I can hardly stand it. Often both things happen at once.

Bianca and I float in the pool while she works through an artist's life story or a reference book devoted entirely to fungi. Livia takes me around town, through shops selling antiques, used things and homemade fudge. Dane and I go out for coffee and wait an hour at the small red stand that sells crab rolls.

We try to knock each other off shoulders in the pool. Around the fire we admit things during drinking games, passing bottles of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and rosé from person to person.

Rhys studies a label. "Are we supposed to be drinking your father's collection?"

I remember asking myself the same question on my first visit. Does he also wonder whether Livia might hand us an invoice before we leave? She could afford all this without thinking. None of the rest of us could.

"If he knew, he'd object," she says. "Fortunately he checks his overseas balances considerably more often than he checks on anything here."

"That's a remarkably boring way to be rich," Bianca says.

"I haven't had a single good evening inside a bank," Dane adds.

I look around at them. "I'm doing very well right here."

When the afternoon gets hot, we climb down beneath the bluff and jump off the pier. The water is so cold that not yelling becomes a competition. Then we dry ourselves on the warm boards and watch the clouds overhead.

Livia makes sure we always have the right food and something to drink. Dane supplies increasingly complicated rules for whatever we're doing. We call the jumping contest Stay Quiet. Bianca asks questions without warning.

"Do your dreams ever take you back to the same place?" she asks. Later she wants to know whether we'd repeat high school if someone let us.

Dane would. He enjoyed himself the first time. Bianca would too, for the opposite reason: she'd like another chance to make those years less awful. The rest of us had an unexceptional enough time that we'd require substantial payment before doing it again.

Then she asks, "What if you got a whole other life? Not instead of this one. An extra one. How would you spend it?"

"Playing music," Dane says immediately. "In a band."

Livia considers it. "I'd cook. Professionally."

She lies back with her face toward the sun. "Before my parents split up, Mom and I used to make these ridiculous dinners here. We'd spend the whole day on them. Nobody was waiting for us anywhere. We could just stay in the kitchen together."

Usually when she talks about her family, she makes a joke before anyone can feel sorry for her. She's explained more than one forceful opinion by saying she grew up with a father who stopped listening after half a minute, so she learned to hurry. This is different. She sounds fond and a little shy about it.

I'm glad she feels she can tell us. I don't move or interrupt.

Bianca says she'd grow things on a farm.

We laugh so hard she sits up to defend herself. "What? I actually would. I think I'd like it."

"You're going to have people paying a fortune to hang your illustrations in their houses," Livia says. "That's the future I've already planned for you."

When they ask me, I can't come up with anything. At fourteen I decided to become a veterinary surgeon. There hasn't been an alternative since.

"It doesn't have to be sensible, Mara," Livia says. "Choose something without analyzing it."

"But then I'd be abandoning my most developed skill."

She laughs. "Fine. Find someone who'll pay you to worry through every possible outcome."

"Or nobody needs to earn anything in the extra life," Bianca suggests. "We could do something just because we wanted to."

Dane reaches across for a high five without bothering to sit up.

Bianca looks at his hand. "You know I'm fond of you. You also know I don't do that."

He lowers it to his stomach and asks Rhys.

Rhys is lying to my left. I don't turn, but I'm aware of the length of his body beside mine, the warmth where our arms nearly meet.

"I'd stay on the coast," he says drowsily.

Dane protests. "You grew up there. You get a spare lifetime and you don't even try somewhere new? Go help penguins in Antarctica."

"All right. I'll put in an application with the penguins."

"You don't have to change your answer," Bianca tells him. "Why would you stay?"

"Because I left this time. I wanted to do something my parents hadn't done. Find out who I'd be somewhere else." He pauses. "It'd be good to know what staying would have been like too."

I let myself look. His cheek rests on the boards, turned toward me. He catches me looking and doesn't look away.

For four slow breaths we lie there smiling at each other. Our damp arms make the slightest contact. Neither of us speaks.

I face the sky again and close my eyes.

By bedtime, I'm still restless from those few seconds on the pier. Across the children's room, Rhys is motionless under his quilt. I assume he's already asleep.

Then he asks, "Is there a reason you start tidying every time I come near you?"

I laugh too quickly. "I have no idea what you mean."

"You'll be alone in the kitchen doing nothing. I walk in and suddenly the counter needs washing."

"That's not true."

He rolls toward me. "I've watched it happen."

"Well, I like things clean. If it happens when you're there, that's accidental."

"They did tell me you liked cleaning."

"What an exciting introduction. Did you specifically request a fact nobody could possibly find interesting?"

"A few weeks after I moved into the apartment, I asked Livia how it had gotten so filthy. And I'm not particularly fussy. She said they'd probably become used to you doing everything."

His bedding shifts again. "I don't think anybody but me has emptied a bin in six months. Bianca sorts out her own things. She refuses to deal with Livia's."

I smile up at the ceiling. I miss living with those two so much.

"Bianca knows where to stop. She probably thinks that eventually Livia will notice how much toothpaste she's leaving around the sink."

"She hasn't noticed yet. I'd be brushing my teeth over toothpaste instead of a basin if I waited."

"Why stop there? Give her time. She has the rest of the apartment to cover."

"You sound remarkably affectionate about a person who does that."

"I don't mind cleaning. I didn't mind it as a child either."

"You liked it then?"

"My parents both worked a lot. Money worried them all the time, but my sister and I never went without what we needed. I couldn't do much about any of it. I could make the house less work for them."

I smooth the quilt between my fingers.

"And you can tell whether you've done a good job. It's dirty, then it isn't. You've helped. When I'm worried, that makes me feel better."

He doesn't answer for a while.

"Is that what happens with me? You get worried?"

"No. Why would I?"

"Because when I came upstairs tonight, you started organizing the drawers."

"Which happened to need organizing."

"So I don't make you nervous."

"I don't get nervous when I'm here."

Another quiet stretch passes before he asks about my family.

"You don't say much about them. Are they anything like you?"

I prop myself on an elbow and try to see his face. "What would that mean? What am I like?"

"I can't put it properly. I'm not much good at saying things."

"We could try gestures."

He lies on his back and opens his arms wide above him, then gives up.

"My elbows are the thing you noticed?"

He laughs. "No. I meant all of you. In a good way."

"Excellent. I was concerned you disapproved of my elbows."

He faces me again. In the dark, looking at him isn't quite so difficult.

"Does all of that run in the family?"

"I can't answer until I know what you're talking about. But they're nice. Dad repairs buses. Mom's a public librarian. They made sure we had everything we needed."

"That's twice you've said that."

I hesitate. He notices.

"You don't have to explain. Sorry."

"There's nothing very interesting to explain."

For a little while, I believe I'm going to leave it there.

Then I say, "They're not in love."

He waits. He doesn't make the quick, reassuring comment I half expect, and I find myself continuing.

"They married when they were still in college. They hardly knew each other. Mom was pregnant with Tessa. She'd been planning on medical school. Dad wanted to do graduate work in astrophysics. Instead, she put her studies aside to look after the baby, and he took a full-time job at a garage. They needed money right then."

I stare toward the shape of his bed.

"By the time they had me, they didn't seem to expect anything from being married except that we'd all keep living in the same house."

"Do they argue?"

"Not much. Not with each other. My sister's six years older than I am. They argued with her. She gave them plenty of opportunities."

There were the advanced classes she dropped without asking them. The ring through her navel. The announcement that she intended to spend a year backpacking instead of going straight to college.

Our parents didn't yell. Tessa did. Eventually they'd send her upstairs, or she'd leave the house. Afterward, I was afraid to make even a small noise. I couldn't tell whether it would start everything again.

They weren't unkind people. They were strict and exhausted. If the minivan needed repairs, or Tessa broke a tooth, or my virus turned into pneumonia and I needed chest X-rays, somebody had to find extra weekend work. At nine, I didn't understand insurance deductibles. I knew the word meant my parents would spend the evening at the kitchen table with bills spread in front of them, rubbing their foreheads.

Dad couldn't bear hearing Mom sigh. Mom couldn't bear hearing him do it. Neither seemed to have enough left to offer comfort. I listened carefully for changes in their voices and learned to guess what sort of mood they were in before they said much at all.

Tessa had been gone for years now, since the fight when she'd told them she wasn't going to college. Things had improved. They still hadn't quite forgiven her for leaving that way. I wasn't sure she'd forgiven them either.

"They were good to us," I tell Rhys. "They showed up for everything I did. In fifth grade I entered the talent show with a set of science experiments I pretended were magic tricks. They were so proud you would have thought I'd done something important."

"We hardly ever went out to eat. That night they took me to the ice-cream place in our neighborhood."

I hadn't expected to tell him any of this. Now that I have, I don't feel as exposed as I thought I would.

I can just see his smile. "Your dessert habit started early, then."

"It wasn't just me. We all kept ordering more. Another round, another flavor. Nobody wanted to go home."

We stayed until closing, long past the time I should have been in bed. I fell asleep in the back seat afterward, still happy that I'd made them happy.

I remembered those evenings better than almost anything else: all of us enjoying ourselves, nobody checking what something cost or worrying about what happened next.

After I won the science fair in tenth grade, Dad and I toasted marshmallows over the stove and watched one jellyfish documentary after another. When I graduated second in my class, Mom and the reception staff at Dr. Kessler's clinic arranged a little party. She made a cake shaped like an animal heart. It was horrifying to look at and she'd worked so hard on it.

When Alderbrook offered me the scholarship, we stayed up over the online catalog, looking at classes together.

Mom told me I was going to do something wonderful. Dad said they'd never doubted it.

I ask Rhys about his family before I can dwell on that.

"They used to grow fruit, didn't they? And now they restore boats? What are they like at home?"

"Noisy."

Apparently that's the whole answer. My first impression was right: he would much rather ask questions than answer them. I want to know more anyway. Not just the things our friends have told me, or the things I can see when he looks at me.

"The good kind of noisy? Or the angry kind?"

He smiles. "Good. Also, Dad can't hear out of one ear and still tries having conversations from a different room. Sometimes we're just yelling so he'll hear."

After a pause he adds, "I've got two sisters. Morgan's older. Nell's younger. They're just as bad about the noise. They'd like you."

"For my contribution to the shouting?"

"Because they're smart and so are you. Also, your laugh would make them very happy. I think we could hear it from the workshop."

I laugh, which doesn't help my case.

"That's enough, Rhys. You can't possibly expect that to work as flirting."

"I like hearing it."

My face gets hot.

"That was much more effective. You should stop."

"You seem to think I can just decide to do that."

"I'm sure you have it in you."

"It's good to have your support. Especially under these difficult circumstances."

I roll over and hide my smile against the pillow.

"Go to sleep, Rhys."

"Good night, Mara."

The following night, we lie down, go quiet and eventually turn toward each other again.

This time he asks, "Why veterinary surgery? Out of everything you could do?"

"I may have wanted the most impressive answer possible when people asked about my plans. I could be unbearable at parties. Someone mentions a complicated problem, and I get to explain what I intend to do all day."

"You don't need the career for that. You're already—"

He makes the same helpless, wide-armed gesture.

"Yes, I brought both elbows on holiday."

His laugh is low and rough with tiredness.

"Did you really choose it because it was the hardest thing you could come up with?"

"Do you notice how much you ask me and how little you tell me?"

He sits against the wall, smiling just enough to show the dents in his cheeks.

"Your turn. Ask something."

I sit up too.

"When we met, why didn't you want to guess what they'd said about you?"

For once, he stops moving. He doesn't touch his hair or shift a knee. I have time to notice how beautiful he is before he answers.

"I thought they'd probably said I was pleasant enough. Not particularly clever. Got into Alderbrook by very little, couldn't finish the credits to get out of it. Might not finish them at all."

"They're your friends. They love you. They wouldn't describe you like that."

"It wouldn't make it untrue. Dane starts law school next year. I was going to move to Seattle with him. Now I've failed the same general-education math course twice. I don't know if I'll graduate."

"Is mathematics really necessary?"

"Somebody probably uses it. People with mathematics degrees."

"Were you hoping for one of those?"

"Not recently, no."

"Then you're safe. There's a calculator for the rest of us. I don't care whether you can pass that class, Rhys."

He looks up. "I might have liked you to hear something better about me first."

"I don't believe you have ever had trouble getting somebody to like you when you meet them."

He pushes his hair away from his face. Most of it stays back. One piece falls beside his eyebrow again.

"You might be an exception. You make me nervous."

My back tingles. "Of course I do."

"I don't have to start washing a floor to notice that you've walked into a room."

My stomach contracts. My pulse changes so abruptly that I concentrate on explaining it to myself. Blood vessels. Ordinary physical responses. Nothing I need to act on.

"What is there to be nervous about?"

"I don't know how to say it. And I'm not attempting another demonstration with my arms."

I look down at my hands.

"It happens to me too. With you."

He waits for more. Now that I've said that much, I want to say far too much. My chest aches with how much I already want from someone I only just met.

"What about me?" he asks at last.

"Your face is a problem."

His expression changes. I think I've disappointed him. He looks away.

"I didn't have a great deal to do with that."

"I know. That's why it's unfair. You shouldn't get to look like that and also be—"

He raises an eyebrow. "Also be what?"

I open my arms, as uselessly as he did.

"You want my opinion of your elbows now?"

"All of you," I say. "Not just how you look. You're funny. I want to hear what you think. It seems excessive that you get all of those things."

He laughs and throws a pillow at me.

"I didn't know you had such rigid standards for attractive people, Mara."

"Extremely rigid. I have a whole set of restrictions."

I return the pillow with one hand, still gesturing with the other. It drops several feet short of his bed.

He looks at it, then at me. "Please tell me you weren't aiming for here."

"You sent it to me. I was returning it."

"I understand the purpose. I'm concerned about the execution."

"So now you're judging my sporting ability."

"We're throwing bedding across a room, Mara. Not qualifying for anything. There can't be more than four feet between us."

"There's at least ten."

He gets up to count it out, moving toward my bed. I notice his bare stomach, his arms, the bones above the waistband of his shorts.

"Three. Four. Five."

"Those are enormous steps."

I get out of bed to demonstrate. We brush elbows passing each other. The skin along my arm prickles.

I count nine smaller steps aloud. When I turn around, he's right behind me.

I don't move away. My nipples have tightened, and I can't decide whether I'm more afraid he'll notice or that he won't. I want him to look at me. I'm terrified of what happens if he does.

He clears his throat.

"We'll settle it tomorrow."

"Settle what?"

"The distance. Find a tape measure. Closest guess wins."

"And what's the prize?"

He makes a small movement with one shoulder, smiling a little.

"That depends. What would you like, Mara?"

"You keep using my name."