Hiding Read online

  Just then I heard water coming through pipes, not loud and obnoxiously like in most houses, but pretty smoothly. I figured somebody had used the toilet or turned the water on in a sink.

  I heard voices.

  I had said I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I must admit that a sort of intense curiosity was building up in me. I really wanted to hear what they were saying. I had to get up and cross the room. I mean, lying on the dog bed, I knew I wasn’t going to learn too much about anything.

  I know I said I was afraid of wrecking my illusions about her; I know I sort of said that.

  But just hearing her voice again would be great.

  So I got up and went to the stairs.

  I had to kind of hold my crotch when I walked. That’s because I still had to pee. Already in my mind I was sort of factoring what I’d do when everybody left. I hoped they were all going to leave—that was something I figured I might find out if I listened in a little. I certainly hoped nobody was staying home for the day. Can you imagine what the headline would say if somebody happened to open the basement door? “Boy holding his crotch caught in ex-girlfriend’s house.”

  Boy, oh boy.

  But I was holding it just because I had to pee—don’t get any dirty ideas.

  I got up the stairs without too much difficulty, a step at a time. And when I was just behind the door I leaned forward and listened.

  They were all getting breakfast ready. I figured the kitchen must have been right behind the door where I was standing, because I heard the sink and plates clinking and the usual breakfast stuff like that. Laura’s dad was there, which was pretty unusual because she’d told me he traveled constantly and was never around that much. She actually sort of bragged about how much he flew, and how sometimes he did it on this private jet that was owned by his company on some kind of weird private jet time-share that I couldn’t ever understand anything about except that it sounded extremely glamorous.

  Anyways, he was talking in Spanish, actually not talking but sort of yelling, though not in an angry way, because he had to talk over his wife, Laura’s mom, who was talking even louder than he was. And in the background Jack was banging around with something made of metal, maybe a frying pan or something like that, and he was answering his mom with these little monosyllabic answers when she asked him, rapid-fire, “Have you packed your bags? Did you take your medicine? Did you put the brace on your foot? Well, did you?”

  I didn’t quite get that last part, because in the basement he hadn’t limped or anything, but I guessed maybe he’d banged up his foot being such a hotshot running back for the Stanford team.

  I was sort of getting an idea here of the family dynamic. I must admit it wasn’t anything like I’d thought. I mean, at my house, to tell the truth, everybody is always sort of still exhausted when we wake up and we all kind of slog around and practically bump into one another just trying to stay on our feet. But here there was this sort of frenzied panic, and nothing like the sort of cozy, loving family scene I’d imagined, with everybody sitting around the table like in a cereal commercial.

  But what was worst was that every few seconds all I heard was her mom yell, “LAURA!”

  She yelled it super loud—I mean earthshakingly loud—because I guess Laura had gone back upstairs and was still dawdling in bed or something. You’d figure yelling once was enough, but her mom must have thought she was deaf or something, because a second would pass and then there’d come another big blast: “LAURA!” I mean, I think she yelled it, like, ten times, and after yelling it she would say to Jack or to her husband these little needling comments about Laura and her habits—I mean these sort of nasty little comments that she said almost to herself, and I’m not even going to say what they were, because I hated hearing them.

  When Laura finally did come down, she had barely said good morning when her mom really just sort of jumped on her. “What was taking you so long? You know your brother has a flight this morning! You only think of yourself, young lady! We are a family here, unless you don’t know that. Do you know it? Have you forgotten?” Her voice sounded very sharp and unfriendly. And in the meantime, Laura’s dad wasn’t even paying attention and never broke in to come to her defense or anything; he was off somewhere in the background talking Spanish really fast on the phone, totally oblivious to what was happening between Laura and her mom.

  Jack, he couldn’t have cared less either, except that every once in a while he’d say something like “Hey, Laurs, can you toss me that juice?” or “Laurs, spin me that butter, will ya?”

  I mean, I got her mom’s point about making everybody late, and it’s certainly something I’ve been guilty of plenty of times at my house, but really her mom sort of jabbed at her when she spoke, and I couldn’t stand hearing her. I knew she was in a panic to get Jack to the airport, but she really did sound a little mean, and maybe more than a little. And to tell the truth, she didn’t even give Laura much time to answer, because obviously Laura hadn’t exactly jumped at what Jack was making in the frying pan and had grabbed something else to eat, and her mom just went at her again, saying, “Are you really going to eat that? Don’t you remember you have an eating disorder? Do you want to be fat—is that what you want, young lady? Now that you quit gymnastics, is your ambition to be fat?”

  By this time, even though I had to pee like a racehorse and was literally squirming on the top step standing on one foot, I was starting to get pretty upset. I don’t want to disrespect her mom or anything, but I was like, God almighty, what a bitch. I mean, here she is in this incredible house, and she has literally the most beautiful girl in the entire world for a daughter—at least that’s my personal opinion—and all she can do is say this nasty panicked junk, and Laura obviously can’t even answer except to sort of mutter sure once in a while, and yes ma’am, in such a quiet way that I could hardly hear her beautiful voice.

  I was totally shocked. Because the big thing is that when she was with me, Laura had done nothing but compliment her mother, just like with her dad. I mean, she complimented and praised her all the time. She even bragged about her, saying how she was so into exercise and health food and organics and yoga and meditation. I mean, she would literally sit me down and lecture me on her mom’s good points, like maybe I should take notes for my personal enrichment. And the truth is that whenever I’d complain about my parents, which, though I hate to say it, was probably like the main staple topic of every-thing I ever had to say, or at least close to it, Laura would sort of roll her eyes and look at me like my parents having any problems really had to be in the final analysis my fault, and what I should do is clean up my act and not be so disrespectful because of, you know, how much effort it took to raise a kid and all that sort of stuff. Which was exactly what Laura’s mom talked about next, saying, “We wouldn’t have to be in such a hurry if we didn’t have to drop you off for school, and with your grades where they are, I don’t see why we go on paying that tuition! Don’t you care what we do for you, young lady? Don’t you appreciate it?”

  I’d had enough. I really couldn’t stand it anymore.

  I mean, I swear to god. I hoped it was just an off day.

  It probably was.

  It had to be. I was sure of it.

  I went back downstairs.

  I felt pretty lousy. But even though I was, like, really, really mad at Laura’s mom, I want you to know that I still didn’t pee in her damn basement sink.

  I waited.

  For, like, twenty minutes, I waited.

  Then I heard them all leave. Through the basement wall I heard them in the garage attached to the house, and I heard their car drive off, and after that I was alone.

  Chapter

  Eight

  Now, I’m sure you’re going to believe me when I say that the first thing that came into my mind after I heard them leave was, This is my opportunity to get out of here.

  And I would have.

  Really.

  I mean, after hearing what went on in
the kitchen I was certainly ready for it. I didn’t like what I’d heard at all.

  But more than just not liking it, it had totally confused me.

  I won’t say it contradicted what I’d expected, because that’s not how I looked at it.

  Had it been a contradiction, I just would have heard a bunch of morose voices, or no voices at all, and not the happy loving family scene I’d anticipated, and that would have been just a simple contradiction.

  But that wasn’t it.

  What I’d heard was the whole family dumping on Laura.

  Or ignoring her.

  And I was surprised.

  Totally surprised.

  Had it just been like a game of opposites and they all hated each other or acted coldly to each other, I would have just been wrong and felt like an idiot, which in truth wouldn’t have been hard for me to feel, because I already felt like a total and complete idiot for just still being there.

  But what I heard I had no precedent for, if you get what I mean. Laura had always talked about her family as if they were the greatest people in the world.

  But great people don’t treat their daughter like that.

  And that’s when a certain thought came to me.

  I hardly know how it all added up in my mind, but they say the mind is always working, you know, and sort of factoring all these different thoughts and putting them together until they make sense, so right about then I sort of put a bunch of those thoughts together, and bingo, something made sense.

  I got an answer to a question I’d always asked myself about her.

  Because I’d always had a question about Laura, especially when I had believed, and I really, really had believed, all the wonderful things she’d said about her family. And I was sure, sure, that getting the answer to my question was, even though you’ll think I’m crazy for saying it, part of the reason why I’d come in the house in the first place.

  The question was, What the hell does she see in me?

  I know a lot of guys ask themselves this same question. I mean, especially with your first real girlfriend. You look at her and see this beautiful girl who could have any guy she wants, so you sort of have to ask it—I mean, circumstances sort of compel you to.

  And I never knew the answer. Until now, when I was sitting at the bottom of her basement steps and staring up at the hopper window, wishing to hell I hadn’t heard those five ominous beeps, followed by a long beeeeep, right before they left the house to get in their car.

  I can honestly say that that was the question I asked myself about her the night when we first met.

  I’m still amazed we actually did meet, because at the time I was doing one of my greatest performances of hiding that I’d ever managed to pull off, and was quite certain that I couldn’t possibly be noticed by anybody.

  I was at this party I really shouldn’t have been at, thrown by this guy named Walton Roberts, called Biff by his friends for some completely incomprehensible reason, and his parents must have been out of town, because with what was going on in his house when we arrived—my friend Carol and me, we were back to hanging out a lot together then—I knew from the start that no parent in their right mind would ever allow it.

  To be really exact, I would never have even been able to get into the party in the first place except for Carol, because he’d gone to the same Catholic middle school as Biff, before Biff went off to be a big shot at Ivy Hill Prep, which is the most exclusive school in my neighborhood, and those guys at Prep never, ever associate with anybody like me who goes to Ivy Hill Public; it would be like some kind of heresy for them even to allow themselves to be seen with a kid like me.

  So you can imagine how uncomfortable I felt in this huge house, in The Oaks, of course, and really just about five blocks from Laura’s place, and you can probably believe, when I looked through the crowd—and the whole house was incredibly crowded with about a zillion kids, just swarming with them—that I felt totally out of place and uncomfortable, and when I say uncomfortable, I mean like triple-root-canal-dentist’s-office uncomfortable.

  All I could say to Carol, when I wasn’t just trying to steady myself and not be knocked over by the crowd, was, “Hey, Carol, why don’t we just get out of here?”

  He looked at me with a screwed-up face like I was nuts, and yelled, “C’mon, we just showed up!” He had to yell because the crowd was so loud.

  I didn’t even know how to answer him. I just wanted to vanish.

  “Ease up, bro!” Carol said. “This party’s epic! Stop flipping out and get into it!”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered.

  All around me were hundreds of kids I had nothing in common with. First of all, they all dressed better than me, with super expensive stuff, especially this certain sort of flannel coat they all wore back then but wouldn’t be caught dead in now that sort of felt like a comforter. It wasn’t even very cold then. I mean, it was already March and things were starting to warm up, but they were wearing these coats anyways just for show, and I will say that the whole party had this sort of serious B.O. problem almost like a mist in the air, but nobody seemed to mind.

  I just stood there like a pillar.

  I didn’t talk.

  There was no point in my even trying to talk to anybody, because just from what I overheard about sports and travel and driving their new cars, I knew in advance I didn’t have much to add to what was being said, except to, like, display myself as the most unimpressive person at the party, because I wasn’t much involved with any of that sort of stuff and never had been. Anyways, just hearing was tough, because Biff had hired this DJ and the music was crazy loud. He was stamping around, I mean Biff, either holding court over all his jock friends in a corner of the room or jumping up and yelling because somebody had knocked over a glass cabinet or something, and so he would come bolting forward to rectify the problem in this really loud, bossy, super authoritative way, as if the person who knocked it over had made the biggest error in the world. Which I thought was kind of stupid, because really when you got down to it, any damage would have been Biff’s own stupid fault for throwing the party in the first place.

  To be honest, I felt like I’d landed in a nest of alien beings, and even though Carol was keeping up the patter with about a hundred people he knew because he had gone to school with them, I was just standing there, almost pretending I was like some sort of astronaut who’d landed on a planet inhabited by bizarre alien beings I had nothing in common with whatsoever.

  And that’s when I saw her through the crowd.

  She was looking at me.

  She was talking to somebody else—a big guy in one of those coats I told you about—but her eyes were turned to me.

  When I looked, she looked away.

  But I kept looking, and she looked back.

  Then Carol, who as you’ve probably gathered never misses anything because he’s been, like, primed by his mom to catch all the little details, said, “That girl likes you.”

  I said the great and famous “No, she doesn’t.”

  He talked from the corner of his mouth and looked askance at her from the corner of his eye so she couldn’t tell he was watching her. I was impressed by that.

  “Uhh, yes she does,” he sort of muttered right in my ear. “And, uh—here she comes!”

  He looked past me and grinned when he said that, and made this little laugh in his throat he always did when he knew he was completely right about something and had another reason to believe he was totally clever.

  I just stood there.

  Because he was right.

  She was coming over.

  She was moving through the crowd, and when she passed people, she’d look at me.

  How was this possible? With my nonspeaking pillar routine I was supposed to be utterly unnoticeable.

  But not to her.

  She came walking up, and when she was right in front of me, I was really surprised at how short she was, because I swear she’d looked like a giant coming
through the crowd.

  “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Laura. I think I’ve seen you around before, maybe at the grocery store.”

  Now, something weird happened.

  It’s kind of hard to say just what it was.

  We actually got along with each other.

  I don’t mean to say that our first conversation went smoothly. It didn’t. There were plenty of gaps. But Carol always made up for that. He could toss in talk to keep things going about subjects I knew nothing about.

  I told her my name, and she asked where I went to school, and I told her, even though I knew it would wreck everything, but it didn’t wreck anything—she just nodded like she’d heard a fact. And like I said earlier, she had this bottle of lotion, and she was putting it on her nose, so I asked her what it was for. “Dry skin,” she said. Her eyes were, like, studying me. I saw how deep and dark they were, like pools. My breath caught for a second. She said, “Sunburn. It peels, you know? I spent too much time in the sun in the Bahamas over spring break.”

  I had nothing to say to that, but Carol did. It turned out he already knew her a little, and they talked about the Bahamas for a while because he’d been there too, but even when she talked to him she was looking at me, with this kind of curious, serious look.

  She never smiled.

  Or even grinned.

  I will say that neither of us ever got goofy or laughy—we just sort of kept looking at each other. And she told me a bit about her family, which impressed me a lot, and I told her about mine, and she gave these little nods to everything I said, still looking at me, right in my eyes.