Here Without You

All four of them looked unconvinced, bat boy cocking an eyebrow and leaning forward to glance into the room. Shayma, giant earpads nesting under her jaw on either side, nodded. ‘I, uh, just had the volume up too high when I started a video.’

‘You’re wearing headphones,’ he said.

She scowled. ‘They weren’t plugged in.’

‘Good thing, or you wouldn’t have working eardrums any more.’ He tapped the bat against his palm, his body flooded with unnecessary adrenalin, no doubt. ‘Okay, well. Keep it down in here. Unless we’re invited.’ He winked at us before I shut the door.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d seen me come and go from the shower –’

She shook her head. ‘Didn’t see you. You’re sure nothing like my last roommate. She was like a whole herd of elephants every time she came into the room. I’ve never been around a person who made so much noise.’ Gesturing to the headphones, she added, ‘That’s why I got these. Otherwise, I couldn’t hear a damned thing when she was around. Not even my own thoughts.’

I laughed. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have that problem with me. I’m pretty unobtrusive.’

Smiling, she shook her head. ‘No shit. Me too. I think we’re gonna get along just fine.’ She narrowed her eyes, still smiling, which made her face look slightly squashed, like a Muppet. ‘Um. Did you just say … barnacles?’

Reid: Last chance to come to my premiere. I’m not going to beg.

Me: :(

Reid: Okay fine I’m begging. John thinks he’s second in line, and it would be so wrong to make that true.

Me: What about your mom?

Reid: Hmm. I don’t know that she’d want to go.

Me: I would if I were her!

Reid: Then why don’t you want to go if you were you?

Me: I told you, I would love to go, but I don’t want to miss class. Stop being a bad influence.

Reid: NEVER.

Me: *sigh*

Reid: I’ll think about asking her. Calling you later. Be there.

Me: Don’t tell me what to do, Mr Alexander.

Reid: Cut, cut, cut! You’re supposed to say ‘make me!’.

Me: I forgot my lines. Sorry.

Reid: You’re forgiven. Vixen.

Me: Hahaha – no! You are so sexist.

Reid: That sounds naughty when you say it.

Me: You’re impossible.

Reid: Oh, trust me. I’m SO possible. Please consent to answer my telephone call later this evening and I shall show you, Miss Cantrell.

Me: That’s better.

‘So where are you tonight?’ I keep my voice low, despite the fact that Shayma’s got her headphones in place and wouldn’t hear a word I say if I was conducting this call in song.

‘New York. We have Good Morning America tomorrow.’

I glance at the time, which is approaching 10:00 p.m. ‘Isn’t it getting late there?’

‘Yeah, I’m three hours ahead of you right now.’

‘What time is your interview?’

‘Not sure what time they’ll do the interview – but we head for the studio in about four hours.’

‘Four hours – don’t you need your beauty sleep?’

‘Do I? Hold on – I’ve got another call –’ There’s a pause while he checks the display. ‘Never mind. That can go to voicemail.’

‘It’s not your mom, is it?’

‘No,’ he laughs. ‘Looking out for my mom now, Dori? God, you’re cute. It’s just Brooke.’ He clears his throat. ‘No big deal. I can talk to her tomorrow – or whenever.’

‘Brooke … Cameron? Why is she calling you? Wait. Scratch that. It sounds like something a jealous girlfriend would say.’

‘Jealous? Rawr. I like the sound of that,’ he encourages, and I wish he wouldn’t. ‘So, classes begin tomorrow? What’s up first?’

Outwardly, I launch into a loose explanation of my schedule: intro courses in statistics, psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology. I tested out of a number of required prereqs. Advanced English took care of reading and comprehension, and my four years of Spanish – in addition to the fact that I used it nearly daily during community service projects – dispatched my foreign language requirement. I’m not as behind as I feared I would be, starting a semester late.

Internally, I’m wondering why Reid is getting late-night calls from Brooke Cameron, who is exactly the sort of girl I’d have imagined him with months ago, when he showed up – condescending, obnoxious and oh-so beautiful – on my Habitat project. The fact that they used to date, and I dare not even think about what else, just makes it more difficult to ignore the fear.

What competition would you be, if a girl like that decides she wants him?

‘I miss you,’ he says then, and I mash my insecurity into a corner.

‘I miss you too.’

10

RIVER

I don’t remember Mama’s face. I remember parts of it, but not all of it together. Sometimes I dream about her and I know I can see her in the dream, but when I wake up I can’t remember. Even if I squeeze my eyes closed really tight and try.

I don’t remember Daddy at all.

Harry told me I didn’t even have a daddy and that I am a bastard. He told me that a lot of times. I don’t know what bastard means, but I know it’s bad because Wendy’s eyes got big when Sean grabbed my shirt and called me that.

Now he has to do a time-out.

I feel bad because I took Sean’s Fruit Roll-Up and hid it in my pyjama drawer. I don’t know how he knows I took it, but he does. He tells Wendy, ‘But he stole my cherry Roll-Up!’

She shakes her head. ‘Then you come talk to me. You know that word is on the Never List, and furthermore you can’t go all vigilante justice in this house.’

‘Huh?’ he says.

She shakes her head again and sighs like she’s tired, and then she takes his arm and puts him on a kitchen chair. She sets the timer for six minutes because Sean is six so that’s how many time-out minutes he gets. His face is as red as that cherry Roll-Up and his eyes are angry and looking at me.

‘River. Come with me,’ Wendy says, and I follow her to the bedroom. When we get there, she stands in the middle of the floor and opens her hand. I go to the drawer and get Sean’s Roll-Up and give it to her. It still has the wrapper on. I’m glad I didn’t eat it.

She slips the Roll-Up into her shirt pocket and takes my hand. We sit on my bed.

Her mouth makes a straight line, like she’s holding her words in. You don’t have to press your lips together to hold words in, though. I opened my mouth wide one time to see if the words I was thinking would fall out, but they wouldn’t. If words don’t want to come out, they don’t. I don’t understand when people say things and then they say, I didn’t mean to say that. Words don’t just fall out. You have to push them out. And sometimes, you can’t push them out, even if you want to.

I count to nine in my head before Wendy says, ‘River, you can’t take other people’s things. It’s bad enough when you hide your own food, but you can’t take other people’s food and hide it too. Do you understand?’

My eyes get full of tears and I nod once and look down at my lap, which makes them run down my face. I wipe them on my T-shirt sleeve and chew my bottom lip. It tastes like the tears now. Like salt.

‘All righty then.’ She pats my knee and looks at her watch. ‘You sit right there till you hear Sean’s timer ding. Time out. Four minutes.’

I want to ask her what a bastard is. Maybe a bastard is somebody who steals other people’s food. Or just somebody you hate.

I hate Harry, and I would like to call him a word from the Never List. I remember his face, and I wish I didn’t. I remember his face, and I can’t remember Mama’s. Harry is a bastard, I think. I wish I could forget him.

REID

On the elevator up to my manager’s office, I was at war with myself – should I tell him about Brooke, the kid, the adoption … or not? I knew from the start that if there was any possibility of my alleged paternity going public, George would have to know to have any shot at doing career damage control.

I’ve never worried that what I tell him will leave his office – it’s like a confessional, without the claustrophobic booth or the Hail Marys. Even so, uncomfortable revelations made to George – or my parents – have always been on a need-to-know basis. There’s a shitload that none of them knows, but the fact that I have a four-year-old son dwarfs everything else to hell.

Undecided one way or the other, I found my manager in a rare, unfocused frame of mind. He didn’t inspect me for indications of suppression, though I knew it was rolling off me like overzealously applied body spray. If he was paying attention, he’d be able to tell, every time. Sitting back, he’d just eye me patiently and wait for me to come clean.

I realized uneasily that he was starting to trust me.

All I could think was Damn, what crap timing for that.

George detailed the bitch of a promotion schedule for Mercy Killing (killer promo is a good thing, because if no one wants to talk to you, your movie is dead in the water), while inside the front pocket of my jeans, my hand gripped my phone like it was either a grenade or a gold bar. Damn if Brooke wasn’t the queen of mind-blowing text photos. As my manager droned, I struggled to concentrate on the three weeks of heavy promotion Chelsea Radin and I were about to do and prayed that something would stop Brooke from her insane resolution.

George and I spoke about Dori, of course – he’d seen the gossip sites, and I told him that yes, we were dating, and yes, it was serious. After a moment spent eyeing me like he was waiting for the punchline to an unfunny joke, his mouth quirked. ‘Huh.’

I told him I was inviting her to the premiere, but called five minutes ago to let him know I’m taking my mother instead, at Dori’s suggestion.

After a moment of silence, he scoffed, ‘Who is this, and what have you done with Reid Alexander?’

‘Haha,’ I said.

*

Standing in the hotel bathroom post-shower, I wrap a towel around my waist. My razor is charged and ready to give me the perfect shaved-yesterday trim. While I wait for the steam to subside, I shift between watching myself gradually emerge in the steamed-up mirror, like a suspended, developing image in a darkroom, and staring, again, at the photo Brooke texted.

Some children don’t resemble their fathers. I look nothing like Mark Alexander, for example. But this child, next to me, would be like seeing John next to his dark lord CFO father – too much resemblance to be anything but related.

Zooming in on the kid’s face, I compare his features to mine. Similar face shape. Same eye colour. Same mouth – full, almost feminine. I got into my fair share of fights as a boy over my girly lips. Until I got to be around eleven and it became clear that girls weren’t bothered by that fullness. Quite the opposite, in fact. I wonder if anyone will tell him that.

River’s mouth isn’t smiling, and I wonder if he ever laughs. The straight, pale lines of his eyebrows are barely there at all, and their shape, too, matches mine. But where my straight brows express confidence, and when necessary – conceit, he just looks … solemn.