On the Fence
Page 12I nodded slowly, still not sure I wanted to do this. “And I won’t have to talk?”
She threw her hands in the air in an excited gesture like she thought I’d made up my mind. “No. Just a canvas. It will be great. She’ll do the first class this Saturday morning.” She pulled a form out from beneath the counter, proving she knew I would agree. “Because you’re underage, I need your mother—well, either of your parents—to sign this consent form. For liability issues. Amber isn’t licensed, which is why she isn’t putting makeup on anyone but you during the class. And also, I’m not worried about it, but if you have some sort of allergic reaction, this says you won’t sue me.”
I nodded and took the form, my eyes scanning over the words but not reading them.
“You should tell your mom to come watch.”
Every time she mentioned my mother, my stomach tightened. I should just tell her the truth and get it over with. Instead the words “My mom has to work Saturday so she won’t be able to make it” came out. My mouth had a mind of its own lately. I held up the form. “But I’ll get this signed.”
“Sounds good. Let’s get to work.”
That night I couldn’t sleep for two reasons: one, because I hadn’t run, and two, because the paper that I had forged my dead mother’s signature on screamed at me. It sat in my desk drawer, yelling at the top of its lungs. I should’ve just asked my dad to sign it. He would’ve . . . probably. After asking lots of questions.
I remembered one time my dad came home with a bottle of conditioner and put it on the desk in front of me. “Do you need this? Carol at work said you might.” I stared at the bottle. Of course I knew what it was, I’d seen enough commercials, but I had never used it before. He had guilt in his eyes like he had somehow failed me. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know. It would’ve been so much easier if he had four boys. I knew that, and I knew he knew that. “No, I’m good. My hair doesn’t really get that tangled. But thanks. I’ll use it.” And I did. I couldn’t believe I had lived that long without it.
I wondered if he’d feel just as guilty now for not buying me makeup. I sighed and stared at my desk as if the form Linda gave me was going to burn its way through the drawer. I finally rolled out of bed at one a.m. and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. What was wrong with me? I had justified the act by telling myself that the release was just a formality. I wasn’t going to have an allergic reaction, so it was unnecessary. And my dad would never find out. It wasn’t like this paper would be sent to the government to check and verify. It would get filed away in the ugly metal desk in the stockroom at Bazaar, never to be pulled out again.
I made my way downstairs. Once in the kitchen, I had a clear view of Braden’s house. His bedroom light was on. I grabbed my phone and texted him. Up for a fence chat?
Yep.
“Hey,” he said when we stood separated by the wooden barrier.
“Hi.” I waited for him to talk first, even though I was the one who’d called him out here. I felt embarrassed by the rashness of that decision. Instead of facing the fence, staring at his shadowy figure through the slats, I adopted our previous pose of sitting, back to the fence, then looked up at the moon. It was so much easier to talk to the moon than to Braden. At least about real stuff. I listened as he did the same thing.
“Yeah.” He offered no explanation.
My neck hurt, and I rubbed at it. “Have you ever done something stupid and then felt incredibly guilty about it?”
“Yes.” Again, he didn’t expound. “What did you do?”
Pretended my life was whole. “Lied.”
“To who?”
“My boss.”
“About?”
“About . . .” Why did the moon make me want to spill all my secrets to Braden? “. . . something really dumb, but now I don’t know how to tell her the truth.”
“What’s your boss like?”
“Weird. I think she took one of those spiritual journeys around the world or something and thinks she’s reached some sort of inner peace. Now her self-imposed job in life is to fix broken spirits.”
Braden sometimes pulled on his bottom lip when he was thinking, and I could hear that he was doing that when he said, “And she thinks your spirit is broken?”
The clouds around the moon glowed white. “No. Not mine. Well, yes, mine, but not just mine, everyone’s. She thinks everyone has a broken spirit.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“So you lied to keep her out of your personal business?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop worrying about it. She doesn’t need to butt into your life anyway. If it’s nothing big then just forget about it.”
I just reincarnated a dead person, that’s all, nothing big. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Is that a first?”
“What?”
“Me being right?”
“Ha. Ha.” And then it was quiet. So quiet I could hear his breaths, deep and long. With each breath, it seemed, my shoulders relaxed.
“But if it is something big . . .” He trailed off and my shoulders immediately tensed again. “It will just eat at you.”
I knew this was true. It was already making a meal of my insides. “Well, as long as it starts with some of my more useless organs, then I have some time.”
He laughed.
“Uh . . . what?”
“You like carrots. That’s my fact about you. You know, in the game of proving I know more about you and your boring life than you know about mine.”
“But carrots aren’t my favorite food.” He’d sounded smug when he said it, like he was announcing I had lost.
“I didn’t say they were. I said you eat a lot of them. Maybe they’re not listed next to ‘Favorite Food’ in your ‘My Favorite Things’ diary entry, but you like them.”
“No, they’re listed next to ‘Favorite Vegetable.’”
“I knew it.”
“Okay, my match . . . You are forever eating Cocoa Krispies. Loudly.”
“It’s a loud cereal.”
We spent the next several minutes listing off the other items that were in our fictitious Favorite Things diary entries. His: color—blue, subject—history, food—steak, and day—Saturday. Mine: red, PE, pizza, and Friday (previously Saturday until work butted in).