Twisted Fate Page 6

  Since he hung out with me while I was baking, I guess it was my turn to hang out with him while he tinkered with his car. Or that’s what I told myself when I wandered over to his garage and poked my head in. He smiled and waved for me to step inside and look at the Austin. I was impressed with how much he knew about fixing things, about technical stuff and engines. Not that I found any of it interesting myself. But I liked to watch him work.

  It was one more thing that made it obvious Syd was exaggerating when she told me he was using drugs. I told her to mind her own business and not be a gossip. Besides, he might just be tired or stressed out, and lots of people needed to take drugs for ADHD and things like that. Then she told me she’d seen him snorting drugs when he was over at our house. She said she told him she wouldn’t tell me, but I guess either jealousy or real concern made her do it. I thought her whole act was just really sad. Some attempt to get attention and make me not trust him at the same time.

  Standing out there with him while he worked, watching how serious and focused he was, I knew Syd was exaggerating. He didn’t act like Syd and her friends—laughing all the time and lying around listening to Death Cab and stuffing their faces with Doritos.

  Graham glanced up from the engine and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Whatcha thinking about?” he asked.

  “My sister.”

  “What about her?”

  “She thinks you’re using drugs,” I blurted out.

  He put down his tools and came and stood in front of me. Wiping his hands off on a towel.

  “She’s right. I am.”

  I shrugged awkwardly, waiting for him to tell me some secret.

  “I need them to concentrate and to not be anxious.”

  “That’s what I told her,” I said, and felt a flood of relief in my stomach.

  He looked at me and his eyes were so blue and beautiful. He looked so sad and I felt that familiar flutter. Then he reached out his hand and I took it. I had the sudden desire to take care of him. I wanted people to know who he really was.

  “I like Syd,” he said. “She’s fun. But I don’t want her coming between us.”

  I smiled. “Don’t worry. She won’t.”

  My mom called up to my room, and I ignored her, because I was writing code. It was one of those days where I would be wide-awake first thing in the morning with about a million ideas. And today I hadn’t even gone down for breakfast before getting right to it. The thing I love about coding is that you are building a whole world, a whole architecture, making something totally new. It seems like gibberish to other people, but really it’s very straightforward.

  I heard my mom call again and finally tore myself away from the computer and turned around and shouted, “What the hell? WHAT?!” just as the door was opening.

  Tate peeked her head in, and my mom’s voice yelled up the stairs, “I said, ‘Tate’s here!’”

  I rolled my eyes and Tate laughed, came in, set her skateboard down, and then flopped on my bed. “Thanks, Mom!” I yelled back.

  “Oh my God,” Tate said. “You’ve been up all night being a super nerd again, haven’t you? I swear, Becks, you are going to be awash in piles of sea glass jewelry and strands of computer code. Have you even combed your hair this week? And maybe change out of your pajamas?”

  “Just got up early,” I said distractedly, turning back to the computer. “I’ll be done soon. Check this out.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “I’m building an app that finds and gathers all the internet radio stations with indie music on them.”

  “Doesn’t something like that already exist?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Why didn’t you just buy it then?”

  “I can do this for free,” I told her.

  “But it probably took you ten hours to write the program. That’s a lot of free labor.”

  “Five hours,” I said. “And I wanted to see if I could do it.”

  “What else were you doing?”

  “I hacked into the public library and erased my fines.”

  “Why didn’t you just take your books back?” She was being contrary—Tate loved this kind of sneaky stuff.

  I shrugged and we started laughing. She said, “That’s seriously cool, though. What else can you do?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever I want, I guess.”

  “You’re something else, Becky. Most people would use those skills to do something that would benefit them more than finding places that are streaming Radiohead, or canceling a two-dollar fine.”

  “Baby steps,” I told her. “After I get a sweet job with the NSA, then I can do some really cool stuff. I could be the next what’s his name . . . that whistleblower guy who told everyone the government is spying on them.”

  “Edward Snowden?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure he can’t come back to the country ever because they’re going to put him straight in jail.”

  “Whatever. I’ll be like that guy but without the having-to-go-to-jail part.”

  I could tell Tate was getting interested in writing code and hacking now that I said I could do something that was really against the rules with my skills.

  “Can you show me how to do this stuff?”

  “Last time I tried you got bored and wanted to go to the skate park.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “I know, it’s pretty sweet, right? Pull up a chair. I’ll teach you how to pick some digital locks.”

  Tate grinned. She seemed more motivated to do this than ever before. And I really didn’t have a problem showing her or anyone else how to do it. It was so much fun. And usually she and Declan weren’t interested in the things that I was. We were all friends, but sometimes I felt like she and Declan were going at twice the speed of everyone else around them, and it could be really annoying sometimes. They were super fun to smoke up with, but both of them could be a little high-strung or even preachy when they were just doing schoolwork. I liked writing code because it was relaxing. And honestly, it was one of those things that I just understood right away. And it was a thing that Tate and Declan had no idea about. Declan was even worse than Tate. He was big into his hippie idea that we should get rid of technology altogether.

  I didn’t know what exactly Tate would do with the things I taught her. She could be wild sometimes, but I’d known Tate all my life. She had been my friend since we were little girls, and she could be unpredictable. But there was one thing I did know—she was good at everything she did. I had no reason to think it would be any other way for learning how to hack.

  It’s not like me and Ally had some great relationship before Graham moved in next door. But things got weird after that. Really weird. Since Graham showed up, Allyson was always around. Suddenly she’s just there. I’d look up at the skate park and there she was sitting on the rim. Watching us with that cute sheepish look she used to have when we were kids. That almost never happened before. I can probably count on one hand the number of times she’d come with me to skate—and usually it’s to guilt me into going home and doing homework, which I have to say worked. I mean it would make me mad that she was just sitting there quietly exerting her goody-goody power over me, but it did make me go write papers I needed to hand in. But that day I remember it was just whacked-out. I thought she was supposed to be at work! Anyway, I rolled my eyes and waved to her—didn’t want to be rude. But then the next time I went up the arc she was gone.

  And again another time—I thought she was out with her friends after school. Dad was gone as always down by the harbor and Mom was God knows where—off to some Rah-Rah-Rockland event—and I thought I had the room and Declan all to myself.

  The autumn sun was shining in the window, the air was cool and crisp, warm light spilled across the bed, and I had unbuttoned the top button of his jeans. He slid his thigh between my legs and pressed against me and pulled my shirt up over my head. His breath was sweet and smoky and I pulled him tighter to me and then . . .

 
; Ally barged into the fucking room and just stood there with her mouth open in shock!

  “Ugh!” I shouted, leaning over and grabbing my shoe and hurtling it at the door just as she shut it.

  “What?” Declan asked. “God, chill, baby.”

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  He tried to kiss me again, but I just laid my head on his chest. Ally ruined the mood. I should have known something was up right then. I should have figured out why she was interrupting me, why she was hanging around. Why we seemed to be getting closer and yet more angry and annoyed with each other. It was like I could feel her feelings for Graham and they were somehow pulling me closer to him too.

  But it would take another few weeks for me to put it together. Graham provided both the problem and the answer. Like I said before, he brought us together in a way we hadn’t been since we were very, very little girls.

  NEVER. Never in the nine months that I worked at Pine Grove had Syd ever showed up to say hi. It was a thing I dreaded—and I had imagined many times the mortifying embarrassing moment when Syd stopped by in her strange clothes with her hair tangled, talking loud with her headphones on, not caring at all about other people’s peace and quiet or whether or not this was a place of business. And then finally she did it. I was sitting down at the front desk, thank God, so she didn’t have to go looking for me somewhere, which I imagine would have been a nightmare.

  At least she kept her voice down. “I think you better watch out for Graham,” she said. “He’s not some sweet broken doofus from the suburbs—he’s all kinds of fucked-up.”

  “I think I can make up my own mind about these things,” I told her.

  “Ha!” she said. “As. If. If I wasn’t here you’d already be dead.”

  This is just the type of melodramatic thing she says. “You’d be dead” or “I’d rather be dead” or “This is the worst thing in the entire world” or “I hate/love that more than anything in the world.”

  Then to make her point she brought up her stupid list of ways she’s “saved” me, which started with a trip our day school took—how was I supposed to know some kinds of toads are poisonous?—and ended with her writing the personal essay part of my Emerson application. Which I did not even ask her to do and how can we know that has anything to do with whether I’ll get in or not? I was completely exasperated with her.

  Finally I just said, “What the hell do you want?”

  “I want you to stay away from Graham! How many ways do I have to say it? He did some creepy thing with Becky—filming her and writing about it in a little notebook—and I think he’s got some weird fucked-up stuff going on. I’ve been watching him.”

  “It sounds like YOU have some weird stuff going on,” I told her. “It sounds like you’re the one people should watch out for, spying on him. Maybe he should watch out for you.”

  She slapped her forehead dramatically. Another thing she always does.

  “Listen,” I said, quietly and reasonably. “Why don’t you just try being honest for once in your life and admit that you don’t want me around him because you’ve got a crush on him.”

  “That’s not true! I totally do not have a crush on him. C’mon, have you seen Declan Wells? Do you think I need someone like Graham when I’ve got Declan? Hello? Declan Wells? Dec. Lan. Wells?”

  “You’re jealous,” I said simply. “I don’t know exactly how or why but you are.”

  She said, “Just try to use your head, okay?” Another thing she says all the time to me: “try and use your head”—as if I’m a complete idiot. I was starting to lose my patience.

  “And you try to calm down,” I whispered fiercely. “You can’t come to my work. You may get away with everything at home, but you can’t bring your weird problems here. Okay? Can’t you just wait until I get home to talk about this stuff? Why don’t you listen to anyone EVER?”

  “Why doesn’t anyone listen to ME?” She actually looked pained, like she might cry. It was the first time since we were children that I saw her look so vulnerable. And that of course is my weakness. No matter how hard it is to deal with her, I always have compassion for her in the end. Somewhere deep down I know she means well. I wanted to listen to her, I wanted to work it out. But this was my job. She could disrupt our home life, but she couldn’t come around disrupting my job.

  “All right. All right,” I said, coming around the desk and putting my arm around her. “We’ll talk about this at home, okay? We can talk all about it. I’m serious.”

  “Forget it, Ally.” Her face was calm again and she looked around as if she didn’t know why she was there either. She started putting her headphones back on.

  I reached out and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Even though we live in the same room in the same house we barely touch each other. We don’t usually hug. We don’t dance or wrestle or put our arms around each other anymore. She pulled away and in that moment she looked like she totally understood about why she had to go.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to me. And that was another first.

  Richards called me into her office again and I swear if it was anyone else I just would have skipped it entirely. I was really beginning to be sick of all this go-to-the-office bullshit. They could threaten me all they want. I have to do this or I have to do that. But really, what are they going to take away from me? I am second in the class behind Declan and if he keeps on smoking weed the way he does, I’ll be valedictorian by senior year. Even if I stop going to detention what are they going to do? Kick me out of school? And find someone else to win the Odyssey of the Mind competition for them all? Hardly. This stupid school owes me more than I owe it. Rules are for people stupid enough to follow them.

  So anyway talking to Richards is not that bad because I think she actually gets all that stuff. She’s not like other teachers. With her weird licorice candy and her cigarette breath and her funky shoes, she kinda stands out. I bet she’s got tattoos underneath those pretty blouses she wears. Richards is cool. And if I ever doubted it, that day she called me in to talk about my “attitude” confirmed it.

  “Tate, you are killing me,” she said as she shut the door. “Are you trying to kill me? I swear you are.”

  “I assume this is about Letorno’s class?”

  She raised her eyebrows and sighed heavily. “Oh, great. Is there some new report I haven’t gotten on you yet?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and laughed a little.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “This isn’t about Letorno. It’s about skateboarding between classes, not wearing your shoes, and taking down flags that are hanging in the classroom. I have six different reports today alone about you skateboarding in the halls, skating on the front steps at lunch, and smoking on school grounds. Once again, girl: that board is supposed to be: In. Your. Locker.”

  I shrugged.

  “Listen. We got just a little more time to get through and then I swear to God, Tate, I swear. Look at me. After that you can go be a professional skater or an astrophysicist or whatever the heck it is you want to be, but here at RHS you gotta. Chill. Out.”

  “Why?” I didn’t mean to sound like a snot or to just be contrary. I really was just curious. “I mean why do I have to stop all the things I do?”

  “Because when you apply to schools you will have a disciplinary record that makes you look like someone who can’t handle the organization and pressure of academia. You’ll look like someone very inconsistent—why do you think? I’m not worried that Letorno is pissed about something or that you might fall and get hurt boarding in the halls. I don’t care what you wear or if you don’t wear shoes. I don’t care about that stuff. I know you’re competent at what you do. I know you understand things really quickly and you want to go outside instead of reviewing things in class. But I just care about you being able to leave Rockland and go where you’ll be happy and get a good education and be around people who will appreciate you for who you are.”

  I nodded. No one had said anything like t
hat to me and it actually made sense and I really did want Richards to feel better. I did. But I honestly didn’t know if I could do what people at school wanted. That was Ally’s job.

  I shrugged. “I’m not one of those girls who does what everybody wants,” I tried to explain, and for some reason my voice came out all hoarse and weird.

  Richards nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Exactly. I see what’s going on. There’s the problem right there. Thinking that there are kinds of girls who do kinds of things. Let me ask you something: You might not be doing what other people want, but are you actually doing what you want?”

  I shrugged again.

  She said, “You know, Tate. There are no kinds of girls. That’s something people make up to get women to behave in certain ways. Something people make up so they can control what you do.”

  “The slut or the virgin,” I said. I knew about that stuff. I knew there were double standards. Big deal. I didn’t think I really had any part in those things.

  “Right,” she said. “There’s lots of stupid ideas about girls, but we don’t have to pay attention to them, because they don’t make sense. And the more we ignore them, the more we tell people they’re wrong when they try to tell us there are two ways of being, the freer we all get. Got it? This attitude of yours doesn’t make a lot of sense either. You’re not going to become some obedient, weak person if you just follow some of the school rules so you can get into a good college. You’ll still be yourself. You use what the school gives you to get somewhere else. Hell, Tate, I don’t think you could get a bad grade if you tried. But you can sure make yourself get stuck here by other means, and you seem to be working hard at it. You don’t have to wrestle with being a certain way, with being good or bad. You’re just who you are.”

  “Okay. But who I am is someone who skips classes and skateboards in the hall.”

  “Look,” Richards said. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I understand that you have different feelings at different times. I’m just saying, don’t let some weird idea about how girls are supposed to act dictate the way you live. You don’t have to be a tough guy all the time. You get what I’m saying?”