The Foreseeable Future Page 21

“Yeah. In a couple of days. And the thing is . . . I think I might get it? Because it seems like they’re looking for a Certified Nurse Assistant who doubles as a viral video star?”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a shot,” Mom conceded.

  “Seth doesn’t want me to go.”

  “Did he ask you to stay?”

  “No,” I said, defensive. I knew she believed that a boy like Seth could only hold me back, could only keep me rooted in this town. But Seth would never ask me to stay if what I wanted was to go. We had to choose each other willingly or not at all.

  Her smile was distant, as if in response to some joke I wasn’t in on.

  “Do you want me to stay?” I asked her.

  Mom looked west, toward the water. Crescent Bay’s portion of the Pacific was the most violent stretch of ocean I had ever seen. Our waves were loud and whitecapped, and I was pretty sure they towered over the gentle surf in Los Angeles, the benign breakers in Florida. “You know I wanted you to live at home,” she said. “I wanted you to go to Whedon during the year and travel with me during the summers. I thought we’d drink wine at sidewalk cafés in Paris. I’d show you the catacombs, the Louvre. And every September I’d bring you right back to California with me.”

  My mother, I was beginning to realize, was susceptible to detailed fantasies. “You never mentioned the part about the wine.”

  She ignored me. “I still want those things for you, Audrey. But I also want you to move to Seattle and start your career. I want you to have everything.”

  It was both touching and intolerable, the sincerity with which my mother expressed her love. I wanted to mark her love as FACT and file it in a drawer for safekeeping; I did not particularly want to offer her a response.

  She didn’t even balk when all I offered her was a ride.

  We drove in comfortable silence toward Mom’s temporary home. She refrained from remarking on the state of the MINI, which was just shy of squalid. The flattened Styrofoam cups, empty except for the dried dregs of old coffee, were mine, but Dad was to blame for the library books littering the backseat, the gum wrappers filling the cup holders.

  Professor Hale’s cottage had brown shingles and bright red trim. Above the front door hung a varnished piece of driftwood inscribed with the assertion LIFE IS BETTER AT THE BEACH! There was something disorienting about seeing my brother’s sandals abandoned on a stranger’s porch.

  I told my mother I would talk to her soon.

  She asked me to promise that I would pick up my phone every time she called from now until the day she died.

  I said I would do my best.

  With her hand on the door, Mom hesitated. “Audrey, how did you find my blog?”

  I looked at her. Not for the first time this summer, I marveled at the innocence of old people. “So, when you sign up for a blog and you use your real e-mail address, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself in your profile. Unless you specifically tell it not to, the host site still matches you with all of your contacts who have ever registered for the same kind of blog. Then it sends out a message announcing your new blogging habit to all those people.”

  Mom appeared stricken.

  “Some of them might be your relatives,” I added.

  She was shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Sprung Free in Italy! was supposed to be private.”

  “It’s the Internet. There’s no such thing.”

  She threw a hand over her eyes and groaned. “I can’t believe you read that part about—”

  “Mom.” I cut her off. “Could we never talk about your blog again? Like, ever?”

  Iris squared her shoulders. Finally, she pushed open the car door and stepped into the crisp morning air. Her voice was sharp with professorial authority—no shame, no apologies—as she concluded, “I think that would be ideal.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Like most places in Crescent Bay, the Steeds County Regional Airport was always nearly deserted. After Sara’s father dropped us off outside the terminal, Tuesday morning, it took us all of five minutes to get our boarding passes, shove our backpacks through security’s lone scanner, and claim window-facing seats at the gate.

  Beyond the edge of the runway was the ocean. Waves thrashed against a jagged sea stack, half submerged at high tide. That the sky was, for once, clear and blue struck me as a good sign. I wasn’t scared of flying, but I generally appreciated being able to see the distance between the belly of the plane and the ground.

  As we waited, Sara fed me Skittles and asked me practice questions for tomorrow’s interview.

  “What’s your proudest accomplishment?”

  “Skipping every single pep rally in high school.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish in the next year?”

  “I wouldn’t mind another growth spurt.”

  “What’s the best part about working with the elderly?”

  “Showing them how to send selfies to their grandchildren.”

  Sara laughed. “Does that really happen?”

  “Constantly,” I said.

  When it was time to board, a flight attendant led us and approximately twelve other passengers through a set of glass doors and across the tarmac. We climbed a short set of stairs onto the tiny propeller plane that would take us to Portland for our connecting flight. Sara whispered to me that she felt like the president. The flight attendant overheard and chirped, “We strive to make all our customers feel presidential!”

  Sara had to struggle to keep it together.

  Twenty minutes later, as the plane was gathering speed, I leaned into her and said, “Did you know that Seth has never flown anywhere?”

  Sara was white-knuckling the armrest and seemed grateful for the distraction. “Makes sense,” she said. “O’Malley is so born and raised.”

  The plane lifted its nose. For a second, the wheels were still grazing the ground, and then we were aloft. “What does that even mean?” I asked. My best friend was in the habit of inventing idioms and inserting them casually into conversations, no disclaimer. Outside our window the runway and the water receded fast, until our view resembled a map of the coast.

  “You know when, like, someone asks your grandpa if he’s always lived in Crescent Bay? And your grandpa thumps his chest and says, born and raised?”

  “My grandpa lives in Washington, DC,” I told her.

  Sara half rolled her eyes. “Well, the rest of us have chest-thumping grandpas. And someday, Seth O’Malley will be someone’s chest-thumping grandpa.”

  I thought that Sara was probably right. And at first I smiled, imagining Seth all wrinkled and gray ponytailed, proud of his seaside roots. But soon I became irrationally jealous of whatever local girl had turned him into a dad, then a grandpa. Jealous of the whole O’Malley brood—the kids and the grandkids and the dogs who would unambiguously belong to Seth.

  It wasn’t healthy, feeling jealous of my boyfriend’s future dog.

  The plane dipped dramatically to one side as we turned north. Sara took a sharp breath and I took her hand. For the first time all summer, I made an honest effort to forget about Seth.

  * * *

  * * *

  After our layover in Portland, we touched down at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport just after sunset. We took a light-rail train into downtown, then a bus all the way up Broadway Avenue toward Capitol Hill, where Sara had booked us a room in a hostel. The darkened windows of the bus mostly reflected our own faces, but we caught glimpses of the city’s broad brick buildings and steep, tree-lined hills.

  Still, it wasn’t until Sara unlocked the door to our room—on the fourth floor of an old house—that I really saw it. The city. The landscape of traffic lights and fire escapes and power lines easing into the dark expanse of the Puget Sound. The Space Needle, all lit up and looming.

  I hadn’t been here since I was fou
rteen, but I still loved it. Some things were instinctual. If I got the job, and if I gathered the nerve, moving to Seattle would be like walking into Mr. Longo’s classroom that morning in April and choosing to sit next to Seth—something I would do just because it felt right. Just because the notion made my heart pound while a voice in my head whispered, Excellent idea.

  “Am I a good planner, or what?”

  Sara flopped backward on the bed, which was covered in the ugliest duvet I’d ever seen—brown moths flying between green and yellow stripes.

  “You are,” I told her. She’d figured everything out, including the transportation from the airport and our plan for tomorrow.

  She threw her arms above her head. Her shirt rode up and exposed her soft stomach. I remembered an afternoon in ninth grade when Sara and I had been killing time at the Fish Shack with a bunch of kids from school. Some comment of Sara’s about feeling bloated had launched the two of us into one of those arguments over whose body was preferable, more desirable—each of us advocating for the other’s.

  A boy named Julian had tried to judiciously end our spat by declaring, “The truth is that Sara has the nicest legs, but Audrey’s stomach is flatter.”

  Sara and I had regarded him silently—this boy with pockmarks cratering his cheeks and a perpetual aroma of AXE body spray—before erupting with laughter. Because Julian didn’t get it. The boy was clueless. Our fight had not really been about our bodies; our fight had not even been a real fight. It had been more of a time-honored ritual, a way for Sara and me to assure each other: you are mine, and I love you.

  Now, I flopped beside my friend. “Thanks for bringing me here.”

  “Any time,” she said.

  We were quiet for a minute or two. Sara’s eyes were closed, and I was wondering if she’d fallen asleep when she finally asked, “So, how many times have you slept with him?”

  My endeavor to forget about Seth—to assess what I wanted, apart from him—was not going well. “I have no idea.”

  “You know exactly.”

  “Twelve times.”

  “And?”

  She wanted gritty, sticky details, but I had no desire to provide them. Maybe someday, when sex with Seth became routine—or at least, less overwhelming—I could talk to Sara about the mechanics involved. For now, I told her what I realized I had been dying to tell her.

  “So, a few mornings ago, we had sex. And afterward I wanted some water. And Seth swore up and down that his dad was at his girlfriend’s and wouldn’t be home for hours, so I went into the kitchen completely naked and got myself a glass.”

  “Bold,” Sara said.

  “I was, like, sprinting back down the hall and trying not to spill all over the carpet, and I could hear Seth cracking up in his room. And then once I was safely inside, I just stood there, hydrating. Nude. And at first I was like, What are you doing? Put some clothes on. But then I thought, why wouldn’t I stand naked in Seth O’Malley’s room and drink a glass of water? You don’t need any clothes to drink a glass of water, especially not when your boyfriend is looking at you like you’re the sexiest woman alive.”

  Sara rolled toward me, shielding her face. Through the cracks between her fingers I could see she was smiling.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just always thought sex would be more embarrassing. I didn’t know I could feel so comfortable with someone and so excited by him at the same time. I thought it was one or the other.”

  Sara hesitated, then said, “I know Seth makes you feel like a sexy hydration queen, or whatever, but maybe a lot of guys would make you feel that way? Maybe he’s just the first?”

  “Have you ever felt that way with someone?” I asked her.

  “No,” she admitted. “Never.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Before my interview the next morning, Sara took me to see an apartment. The studio she’d found would have struck me as perfect if I’d been able to forget, for one second, that it was laughably out of my price range. The place was small—just one room plus a kitchen and a bathroom, both closet-size—but, as the building manager pointed out, it was the details, like the original hardwood floors and glass doorknobs, that made the place truly special. The guy looked at Sara as he spoke. Of the two of us, I guess she appeared to be the most likely candidate for pricey city living.

  “I can’t afford this place,” I whispered in her ear.

  Whoever had recently vacated the apartment had left a bed pushed against the wall beneath the window. A fitted sheet had slipped from one corner, revealing the blue, scaly mattress underneath.

  “Well, not now,” Sara agreed. “But a year from now? After you’ve worked for a while?”

  We were speaking under our breath, but even our whispers echoed in the empty space. The building manager shook his collection of keys. “A basement unit is opening up soon,” he said, “if you’re looking for something a little more economical.”

  “That would be great,” I said, pivoting, ready to follow him back into the hall. Sara grabbed my shoulders and turned me around for one last look.

  “Goals,” she insisted.

  But all I saw was the abandoned bed.

  Seth and I had only ever slept together—literally slept together—in one bed, at the Paradise Cove Motel. I wanted to share more beds with him. My bottom bunk at home, the lumpy bed back at the hostel. Beds in guest rooms, dorm rooms. Hospital beds. Air mattresses in tents. Our own bed.

  It wasn’t like I wanted to select the man with whom I’d share every bed, forever. I had absolutely no desire to fast-forward time, or to be a day older than I already was.

  I just wanted to choose Seth, right now. And again tomorrow. And possibly every day after that.

  * * *

  * * *

  My interview with Greg lasted seven minutes, during which he did not ask me a single question.

  Maybe my reasoning had been naive, but I hadn’t actually expected the director of Capitol Hill Assisted Living to mention the video. Obviously, he had seen it, but I didn’t think that selecting his employees based on their accidental Internet fame was a hiring policy Greg would necessarily own.

  His hair was short and gelled, and he was wearing a silky wine-colored shirt, a black tie thrown over his shoulder. After I shook Greg’s hand and sank into the plastic chair across from his messy desk, he opened a laptop and navigated to YouTube. Even as it dawned on me what was happening, I held out hope. Maybe he only wanted to show me a promotional video for his business, or a conversational parrot.

  Greg sat back in his chair as California Teen Hero Saves Life of a Friend began to play. I didn’t particularly want to watch it, but I didn’t know where else to look. The top comment—which I’d checked last night, while Sara was showering in our hostel’s moldy bathroom—was still, I want them to take turns sucking my ****.

  Why had DoomChild97 censored himself? Did he imagine he was, by any definition, being polite?

  Normally, when I watched the video I watched myself. It was impossible to forget that hundreds of thousands of strangers had seen this version of me—pit-stained and unattractively hunched, but also calm, also resolute. Watching the video with Greg forced me to see those sixty seconds through a stranger’s eyes. Namely, I saw Cameron. Her discolored face, slack and unresponsive. And I remembered how, despite appearances, I hadn’t felt calm and resolute; I had felt simply terrified.

  Neither of us had requested that the moment be filmed and aired on television, or uploaded to the Internet, but Cameron was the only victim. Of her own body, of all the unwanted attention. Her life had almost ended, and then—maybe thanks to me, or maybe thanks to a team of highly trained medical professionals—it hadn’t. Wasn’t that the whole story?

  Seth had been right. Instead of accepting an invitation to appear on the Steed County News, I should have gone to see Cameron in the hospital,
accepted her thanks. Nothing more.

  I lowered my gaze to a dark smudge on the fake wood of Greg’s desk. I listened to the tinny sound of the waves crashing, until the video’s line of dialogue promised it was almost over.

  Greg closed the computer, satisfied. “Obviously you’re a quick thinker. You have a good memory for detailed instructions. You can stay calm under pressure.”

  He was listing the qualifications from his own Craigslist ad.

  “You’re skilled, courageous. If there’s anything else you want to add . . .”

  Greg was on the verge of offering me the job. Did he think that by hiring me, he’d be adding a hero to his staff? Or did he just enjoy the novelty of my face having been viewed three million times?

  I’m barely famous, I wanted to tell him. I’m actually no one.

  Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “Uh, no. I guess not. I guess that covers it.”

  “Can you start in two weeks, day after Labor Day?”

  I froze. If he needed an answer right now, the answer was no.

  “Want some time to think it over?” he asked.

  I nodded, numb.

  “Fair enough.” He heaved a sigh, like nothing was fair or ever would be. “It’s a big move. Let us know by Monday morning, okay?”

  Monday morning was five days away.

  I nodded again, standing and leaning across the desk to shake Greg’s hand again. Mine was clammy, cold. Greg looked surprised, then curious, wondering how a girl with such gross hands could have used them to save a life.

  * * *

  * * *

  That night, after having dinner in a Thai restaurant downtown, Sara and I followed 1st Avenue all the way up to Pine Street, making a left where the road plunged into Pike Place Market. Beneath our feet were red bricks, all slippery with rain. Sara grabbed my hand so we didn’t get separated as we entered the market and wove through throngs of people waiting to buy bouquets of roses, or fish with their eyeballs still intact. Above us, neon signs pointed to bakeries and butcher shops. The air smelled like mold, coffee beans, and patchouli.