The Truth About Fragile Things Page 10

  Every practice I saw Charlotte attempting, and increasingly failing, to be blasé toward me. It’s hard to do in an auditorium. I’ve tried it as an experiment; I pictured the homeliest, most annoying kids I know alone on a quiet stage, the spotlight shattering off their nervous faces. And each and every one transformed into someone poignant, meaningful, powerful. That is why they call the stage magic. It turns us into something more. What I couldn’t tell was if it made me more likeable or more contemptible.

  Charlotte usually worked on her homework from the middle of the auditorium or mouthed the words in unison with me. When Schatz directed scenes that didn’t involve our character, Belinda, Charlotte sometimes meandered backstage to mingle with the stage crew.

  “I think she’s getting her stage legs,” Phillip whispered as he took a seat in the audience next to me and stretched his arm over my shoulder.

  I leaned my head back, let it roll against his arm bone, and watched Charlotte as she held a piece of wood for a boy while he hammered. “Friday is almost here. I hate lying.”

  “Does it help at all that you’re lying to do something good?”

  “Yes,” I admitted reluctantly. “What if a snake crawls into our sleeping bags?”

  “Hence the hammocks. They came in the mail yesterday. Thank you.”

  I nodded, knowing my dad would ask about that little charge to BassPro Shops. But by the time he got the statement I could tell him it was for us to sleep in our backyards. With one lie, came many. “How do they look?”

  “Sturdy,” Phil said.

  “What about spiders? They could climb down from the trees. Can’t snakes drop from trees?” As the trip neared it was like twisting a telescope, making the details that felt soft and hazy at first come into a razor sharp focus. “We are going to die.”

  Phillip laughed. “Not on my watch. No snakes. Megan, did you even see that forecast I mailed you? Eighty degrees in October! This is a dream trip, not a nightmare.”

  “I can’t believe your parents are just letting you go.” I lowered my voice into a mocking imitation of Phillip. “I am going to cross the state and camp on a strange mountain. See you Sunday.”

  Phillip raised his voice to an insulting falsetto. “I’m Megan and I—” His sentence stopped abruptly and he shifted his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It was mean. Forget it.”

  “Whatever,” I mumbled, oddly touched he would give up a good joke to spare my feelings. I threw a crumb in gratitude. “You did great onstage today.”

  “Thanks,” he said as he watched Charlotte tie a bandanna around her hair. “You too,” he added absently, without shifting his eyes from her face which was half hidden in the shadows of the skeleton set.

  “What time do we leave Friday?”

  He rubbed his jaw and yawned. “Seven. We have to take my car or my parents will suspect something.”

  I wrinkled my nose. Phillip’s car was ten years older than mine with a cracked windshield. It also didn’t help that it smelled strongly of boy. “Will it make it?”

  Phillip twisted his shirt, right over his heart. “Women are cold, cold creatures. Insult me, but leave my car alone. What did she ever do to you?”

  “Love, I would never insult you.” I spoke the words gently, watched as the warmth of my breath shifted the tiny hairs at the top of his ears. “Let’s not fight before we spend a weekend under the stars.”

  At last he turned his face from the stage and his eyes flashed approval at my joke. “Of course not, my dear,” he drawled. “Don’t want to upset the child.” He nodded toward Charlotte.

  I stretched my back with a contented sigh and copied his bored accent. “It’s always the children that pay.”

  I took my supplies to Phillip’s house Thursday night so my parents wouldn’t see me load up his car with a sleeping bag and extra clothes the next morning. After a stern warning not to inspect, peruse, or even touch my backpack, I left, trying to control the jolts of electricity that shot through my stomach and somehow always ended up tingling at the tips of the hairs on my arms. Beneath the dread of getting caught in a lie I didn’t want to tell in the first place was an undeniable current of excitement.

  “I hope you like this,” I whispered to Bryon as I drove home. As the dead have a nasty habit of doing, he didn’t reply. Maybe that’s what it’s like to talk to me when I refuse to answer.

  At eleven o’clock, when I still couldn’t make my mind stop thinking, I snuck into Lauren’s room. “I can’t sleep,” I whispered. When she didn’t move I lifted her covers, easing one leg into her bed. Only when I gave her a firm press on her shoulder to move her aside did she grunt and flop toward her wall.

  “Go back to your own bed,” she mumbled.

  “I can’t sleep,” I repeated and pulled the covers over me.

  I laid still, hoping she wouldn’t order me to leave again. She just groaned and tucked the sheet under her chin. “You’re such a baby, Megan.”

  “What if someone gets hurt when we’re in the middle of nowhere?” My cold toe touched the back of her calf and she jerked.

  “No talking or I will kick you out,” she threatened.

  “Fine,” I sighed. But ten seconds later she shifted herself closer to me and let me circle my arm over her shoulders. She knew I needed something other than my own guilt to hold. I copied her breaths and she led me, inhale by exhale, to the safety of sleep.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Phillip and Charlotte are here,” I called from the living room when I saw his car coast up our driveway. I ran to my father who was making a smoothie and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Have fun with the animals. I will be fine. I will find some trouble to make.”

  He gave half a snort to show me how much faith he had in my troublemaking skills. “We’ll check in.” he told me. “Be safe. We’ll be home Sunday afternoon.”

  “Perfect,” I said as I swooped to give Mom a hug. “I love you.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked running her thumb over my forehead.

  I reassured her before I gave Lauren a tight squeeze. I breathed a fervent ‘thank you’ that was for her ears only and she gave me a look that meant I owed her every detail as soon as we were back together.

  “Break a leg,” Dad called as I opened the door. My face wrinkled. A perfect wish for a rehearsal; a very bad choice of words for hiking.

  I was surprised Charlotte left the front seat for me. I got in and tried to look normal in case anyone watched us pull away.

  “We did it,” Phil said in a steady voice as we left the neighborhood. “Three backpacks, three sleeping bags, three hammocks in the trunk. Gas in the tank. Food in the cooler. We make a life of crime look easy.”

  “I printed off maps,” I told him, digging in my purse.

  He pointed to his GPS, but I reminded him that electronics can break and every survivalist has backups. My hands shook as fastened my seatbelt.

  “We’re not surviving. We’re camping,” Charlotte piped up from the backseat.

  “We’re sneaking out,” I mumbled.

  Phillip steered us to I-70 and it wasn’t until he veered onto the exit ramp that my brain unclenched long enough to find the obvious question. “Charlotte, what did you say to your mom?”

  She adjusted her earbuds and pretended not to hear me, but she had to look at me eventually, the way I was twisted around, staring at her. She pressed her lips together, shifting them anxiously. “I left her a note.”

  “A note?” I asked. “What kind of note?”

  “I told her I had to do something on Dad’s list, I was totally safe and I would be back on Sunday.”

  It is so good that there are not brake pedals on the passenger side of cars because I would have sent us to a screeching, reckless stop. “You ran away?!” I grabbed Phillip’s arm. “She ran away! That means we’re accomplices. We’re taking a minor across state lines. We have to turn around.”

  Phillip’s eyebrows pushed down in conc
entration. “We’re minors, too. Relax for a second. What exactly did you say, Charlotte?” He had lost the lenient tone he usually used with her.

  “We are not turning around,” she insisted. “I told her I am safe and fine and I will call her. I told her I wanted to go see the meteor shower with some friends.”

  “Melissa will know it’s us. She will call our parents. We are dead.” I pushed my hands against my temples, grinding my teeth.

  “Call her,” Phillip demanded. “You call her and figure this out before we leave the city.”

  “Phillip,” Charlotte pleaded.

  He slowed down as he pulled into the right lane. Charlotte’s eyes glossed with angry tears and she ripped her phone from her pocket, muttering exactly what she thought about both of us. Phillip and I listened in silence as Charlotte started the conversation. Apparently her mother hadn’t even found the note yet because Charlotte had to tell her where to go look for it. Then her voice sped up, arguing, begging.

  “Mom, if you don’t let me, Megan’s going to turn around right now. I didn’t tell her you didn’t know.” Her voice broke, slipped on a small sob and she swept the tears from her face with a fierce fist. “It’s a meteor shower. And I bought a hammock. And I just need to do this.” After a long pause, “No, there’s no adults.”

  I could hear Melissa’s urgent voice between Charlotte’s words. “Can I take the punishment when I get home? Can we agree that I shouldn’t go and I’m in big trouble and you’ll let me go if I take the punishment?”

  They battled for more than ten minutes before Charlotte raised her wet face to mine and held out the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

  I handled the phone like a grenade. “Hello?” I asked, each syllable an apology.

  “Megan, do your parents know about this?”

  My mind ran in fast circles. “I wanted to tell them, but Charlotte said if I told anyone I couldn’t help her. And I wanted her to be safe.” My hand shook against the phone. “We’ll turn around if you want us to. We’re only half an hour away.”

  Melissa sighed into the phone and said Charlotte’s name like a curse. “Now if I know and your parents don’t, I’m responsible. You have to come home.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed sadly. “We’ll come back.” Charlotte’s eyes flashed violently as soon as I said it. It was an expression I’d never seen. Something desperate. It gave me the power to speak. “Melissa, she’s got it in her head to do this. She won’t do it with a parent. And if I don’t go she’ll go alone…I just didn’t want her to do it alone.” There was a frantic sound over the phone, and I imagined Melissa clutching her teeth to hold back a mangled yelp of frustration. “I am going to stay with her every minute and call you if anything goes wrong. If she goes alone, no one will do that.” Except for the 17-year-old boy no one’s mentioned yet. I looked to Phil, the elephant in the driver’s seat.

  Charlotte held out her hand for the phone and I gave it to her. “Mom, I’ll be home Sunday. Pretend it’s a sleepover. Pretend I’m in my room.” Her voice hiccupped into tears. “Pretend you trust me.”

  She stopped talking and wiped her eyes, covering them with a hand like whatever she was hearing gave her a monstrous headache. But after a moment, she moved again, gave a nod and said okay several times before hanging up the phone.

  She took a deep breath and announced, “We’re going.”

  “We’re going?” Phillip asked, his eyes disbelieving.

  “Does she know we’re going? Did she actually say we could?” I kept my gaze on her face, looking for clues.

  Charlotte clapped her hands over her mouth like she was holding back a triumphant yell and then slumped sideways onto the bench seat in relief. “We’re going,” she whispered and covered her eyes so we wouldn’t see the happiness. “She won’t call your parents, Megan. We just have to call her and tell her where we are all weekend. And she might not know Phillip is with us.”

  I was in too deep now. “Yeah, I noticed. This is going to blow up in our faces.”

  “Fireworks blow up. Everyone likes fireworks,” Phillip pointed out, relaxing back into a smile.

  “I think this is more of a bomb,” I mumbled.

  The strain of that little incident shut us all up for almost an hour. Phillip drove and tried to keep me from changing the radio station and Charlotte read. I took in the scenery, watched the rolling landscape as the highway cut a black path between farms and fields, all the while rehearsing what I wished I could say to Melissa. By the time we hit the middle of Missouri I’d had seven very productive conversations with her.

  I didn’t get completely antsy until we had been in the car for four hours. My butt went numb and Phillip’s small car seemed to shrink with mileage. The farther we got the closer I felt him breathing next to me. I called for a restroom break and did a quick walk around the rest stop just to get the blood in my legs pumping again. “I’ve never been inside a rest stop before,” I mentioned as Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s gritty,” I said with a smile. I realized I had rarely been anywhere gritty. There’s a vegan restaurant downtown my mom and I tried and it had a decidedly “natural” air to it, but not quite gritty.

  “It’s kind of like that poetry reading we went to,” I told Phillip. “That was scary.”

  “Very.” Phillip twisted the word with sarcasm. “Megan thinks coffee shops with incense are along the same lines as Mexican drug cartels,” he told Charlotte as he held her door open. “We will be there in less than two hours. Do you mind driving for a while, Megan?”

  I took his place behind the wheel and eased back onto the smaller highway that pulled us south into steeper hills and forested cliffs. I made Charlotte text her mother and tell her that we were just coming up to Highway 44 and doing fine. “Tell her we are obeying the speed limit,” I added. She just shot me an exasperated glare.

  “This road is getting smaller,” I told Phillip as the tangled trees crept up closer to the street. “Where did our shoulder go? I think I am getting claustrophobic in this car.”

  We passed homes with cardboard plastered in the windows and metal patches hammered to the outside. One roof tilted off one side, sagging dangerously. Other homes were tidy with gardens, but utterly alone, spread far from civilization. “I would never make it out here,” I declared after we saw one home made out of a school bus and old camper patched together with sheet metal.

  Phillip pat my knee. “Come on. Give them some points for creativity. And wait till it’s just us and the hills. We are about to see one of the prettiest parts of the country.”

  “I didn’t know you were so appreciative of the outdoors,” I told him.

  “I didn’t know you were so adverse to nature.” Phil curled his tongue, played with the words. “It’s nice to get you out of school. You’re too comfortable there. Everything comes too easy. You need a little challenge.”

  The car veered slightly to the side as I processed his statement and forgot to steer. I waited for the punch line but his face was completely earnest. “How am I comfortable? I fit in less than anyone I know. I have to ask my mom if my t-shirts look grungy enough.”

  “You were going for grungy?” Phillip studied my shirt, lingering too long on my small chest. I hit him hard in the arm.

  “I can’t believe you said you’re uncomfortable,” Charlotte joined in. “You walk around the school like you own it.”

  I flexed my fingers against the steering wheel. “Are we all talking about the same person? I am not stuck up.”

  “Not stuck up,” Phillip agreed. “She means collected. You are never upset, never embarrassed, never get teased. The oceans part for you.”

  “You tease me every day,” I argued.

  “I’m the one and only person not entirely scared of you.” Just to prove his point he flicked me in the back of the head.

  “I’m not scared of her,” Charlotte argued.

  “No one is scared of me.”

  “In a good way,” Phillip amended.
“They copy you.”

  “There’s no good way to be scared of someone. No one copies me. You’re both hallucinating.” The heat expanded up my chest, filling up my voice.

  “That is irresistible. You are the only person I know who truly,” Phillip put his hands up to emphasize his point, “truly, doesn’t pay attention to the way people treat you. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “I think I want you to drive again,” I replied, spying a sign for a cross street at the bottom of the hill. I slowed down to make the turn and pulled over, opening my door in escape. I took slow steps around the back of the car, appreciating the fresh air and a view of the world not split by the cracked glass of the windshield. I hated to get back in. In a quick second I imagined a script for myself and lowered myself into the passenger seat, determined to deliver my lines.

  “I think you are giving me credit I don’t deserve. High school isn’t easy for me.” It came out cool and blank.

  “Really?” Charlotte asked. “What’s hard?”

  And it felt like I was trying to swallow glue because the only answer I could think of was, “sitting here with you,” but it wouldn’t come out.

  “See?” Phillip exulted when I remained quiet.

  I just gave a futile sigh. No wonder I just shut up half the time. No one really hears you, even when you talk.

  CHAPTER 18

  “This is our first stop,” Phillip announced as he pulled up to a wooden booth to pay our camping fees. They gave us a sticker to park overnight and Phillip pulled into a spot near the trail head.

  “I need to pee so bad,” Charlotte cried and jumped from the car, racing for the building in front of us.

  That, believe it or not, is the first time I really thought through that little detail. I felt my face whiten. “Phillip, there are restrooms at the campsites, right? Or, like along the trail?”