Say What You Will Read online

  “All set, Matthew?” Mr. Ilson said, watching Hannah count a pile of fives.

  The lobby was dark; the lights around the concession stand were off. Matthew was glad they couldn’t see how sweaty he’d gotten scrubbing around the urinal drains. He nodded.

  “We’ll see you Wednesday, then. Good job tonight.”

  “The manager said I did a good job.”

  Amy cocked her head. “THAT SEEMS STRANGE. OBVIOUSLY YOU DIDN’T IF YOU SPENT AN HOUR IN THE BATHROOM. THAT WASN’T YOUR JOB.”

  Why was she saying this? Why couldn’t she give him a break? Mr. Ilson obviously had. And Hannah hadn’t said anything, either. He’d done fine. He spent a night with new people, working a job that involved food, grease, and money handed to him by strangers who probably hadn’t washed their hands before opening their wallets. All things considered, it went as well anyone might have expected.

  The next morning, Amy wasted no time telling him what she’d found out. “CHLOE GOT A TEXT FROM HANNAH. YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT SHE SAID?”

  “No.”

  “SHE SAID, AND I QUOTE: ‘YOUR FRIEND HAS THE SAME THING MR. ILSON DOES.’ TURNS OUT HE DOES ALL THESE THINGS, LIKE HE MAKES THEM COUNT THE MONEY BECAUSE HE WON’T TOUCH IT. HE THINKS NO ONE NOTICES, BUT THEY TOTALLY DO. DON’T WORRY, I DIDN’T TELL CHLOE ABOUT YOU. WHEN SHE SHOWED ME THE TEXT I SAID, ‘NO, THAT’S NOT MATTHEW’S PROBLEM.’ BUT IT’S GREAT, RIGHT?”

  “Why is it great?”

  “BECAUSE HE WON’T FIRE YOU! MAYBE YOU CAN EVEN TALK TO HIM!”

  “But everyone hates him. He’s an awful manager. He’s got a million rules and they do nothing but make fun of him behind his back.”

  “OH.”

  “This makes me feel about a hundred times worse. Like now I know how people talk about me behind my back.”

  “NO ONE TALKS ABOUT YOU BEHIND YOUR BACK.”

  “You and Chloe just did. So did Hannah and Chloe.” He looked down at the food he’d lost all appetite for. “I feel like I can’t go back there now.”

  “OF COURSE YOU CAN!” She’d turned the volume up so it sounded as if her Pathway was yelling. “DON’T DO THAT!”

  “I feel like I’ve got to quit.”

  “I WON’T LET YOU QUIT.”

  “You’re not in charge of me, Amy.”

  “NO, BUT I’M A BETTER JUDGE THAN YOU ARE.”

  “I could quit this job with you, you know.” Just saying this made his heart begin to race. What would he do if he didn’t have his Amy days to look forward to? He didn’t even know. Why had he made a threat that would only hurt himself?

  She turned her Pathway way down. “I HOPE YOU DON’T QUIT THIS JOB,” she whispered. “I’M SORRY, MATTHEW. I WON’T ORDER YOU AROUND.”

  For the rest of that day, she gave Matthew no assignments and said no more about the movie theater. At the end of the day, just before her mother’s car pulled up, she said, “PLEASE DON’T QUIT THIS JOB.”

  He didn’t say anything until after he’d loaded her walker into the car and opened the car door for her. “I probably won’t quit,” he said, and smiled.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AS WET, GRAY FEBRUARY warmed into March, Amy noticed more changes with Matthew. Little ones at first, but gradually they began to seem more significant. He was looser. At night on IM he was funnier to talk to. At school, he was less preoccupied, though admittedly, he was still nervous sometimes. If their bodies accidentally touched—which happened all the time, opening doors, getting her books out—he flinched and blushed. “Sorry,” he’d say. “I don’t know why that just happened.”

  The more aware of it Amy became, the more it kept happening. Some days, she’d fixate on some part of his body—his hand or his knee—and stare at it until her wild, uncontrollable hand would reach out and touch him. She used to think his body communicated feelings his brain hadn’t acknowledged. Now she wondered if hers was doing the same: trying to say, Look at me. Would you ever consider being more than friends? Maybe it was okay for her body to do this, since how could she possibly type such a question and say it out loud? Plus it was thrilling to watch him blush and look down in confusion. Once she touched his elbow and he put his hand over the spot as if he’d gotten an electric shock. To her, it was a small gesture that said: He feels this, too. He notices these collisions.

  There were other things she noticed: he blushed and stammered more often in her presence while she nervously typed and deleted things she wasn’t sure she should say. She wanted to say something definitive but she didn’t want to scare him off. She had no experience, but she knew this much: You had to be cautious. You couldn’t scream, “I REALLY LIKE YOU, MATTHEW!” every time the impulse crossed your mind. You also couldn’t point out that his hand had stayed on her back for a longer period of time than was strictly necessary as he helped her stand up after lunch.

  As part of his gradual loosening up, Matthew started telling more stories, mostly from his days before OCD. She asked if he’d ever been to any of the boy/girl parties where people played kissing games. He blushed and nodded. “I’m pretty sure the whole thing was a joke,” he said. They were at a yearbook meeting, though these days, they no longer pretended to work on anything. They sat side by side, talking. “Because the bottle kept landing on me.”

  She loved the little crooked smile on this face. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

  He laughed and covered his face with his hands. “Sat there and waited for the person to kiss me.”

  “DID THEY?” She tried to imagine it and couldn’t.

  “Yes.”

  “AND THEN WHAT?”

  “And then nothing. It was the next person’s turn and they spun.”

  “NO ONE LAUGHED?”

  “No.”

  “THEN IT WASN’T A JOKE. THEY ALL WANTED TO KISS YOU.”

  “Hardly. More like there was a dent in the rug.”

  He told her he kissed about seven girls one night, but he wasn’t sure, which didn’t sound like him at all. Even in his good phases, when he wasn’t preoccupied by making deals with his brain, Matthew wouldn’t have lost count of something like kisses. When she pointed this out: “YOU COUNT EVERYTHING, MATTHEW. HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE COUNTED YOUR KISSES?” he said, “I don’t remember. That’s all.”

  She wondered if maybe it was a good sign. Maybe it meant that he could let go of all his compulsions when the situation was right. He was there, letting seven girls kiss him without bathroom trips or hand washing or sterilizing his mouth in between. Later, when Amy prodded, he could name five of the girls he’d kissed that night and even admitted to having a crush on one of them, Katie Morse. All of which meant: he had kissed a girl. Quite a few of them, in fact. It was possible.

  Amy watched for more signs that were hard to read, because he was never at his worst on his days with her. “With you, my brain takes a break,” he told her once. “I’m not sure why.”

  She wanted to say, Maybe your brain is trying to tell you something, but she didn’t because she had to be careful. “At last,” he once said, meeting her mother’s car in front of school. Because of a three-day weekend, she hadn’t talked to him in six days. “I thought this day would never come.”

  She knew what he meant, because she felt the same way after she hadn’t seen him for a while. Still she said, “WHY?” and he looked confused. Having said something so sweet—I couldn’t wait to see you again! Life is harder when I don’t spend passing periods with you!—he retracted like a turtle into his shell. “No reason. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Recently these moments happened more often. She felt as if something was shifting between them. He’d comment on her hair, how pretty it was, or he’d say he liked her necklace and then be embarrassed enough to explain: “It makes your neck look nice.” The first warm day in March, they ate lunch at a table where someo
ne had left a Glamour magazine open. Amy lay her fist on a photo spread of spring fashions. “HOW WOULD I LOOK IN TARTAN PLEATS?” she typed.

  Matthew looked at the picture. “Oh please. You’re a lot prettier than her.”

  “NO, I’M NOT.”

  He studied the picture again. There seemed to be no question in his mind. “Yes, you are. Her eyes look like they’re on the sides of her head.”

  Amy couldn’t believe he was saying this. Did he really think it? She pointed to another picture. “HOW ABOUT HER?”

  He shrugged. “She’s okay.”

  “PRETTIER THAN ME?” Why was she doing this? She lowered the volume on her Pathway so no one else could hear.

  “Different. Not my type.”

  “WHAT IS YOUR TYPE?”

  “I don’t like girls who wear a lot of makeup. Or if you can see their bra strap. I never understand that. Why do some girls do that?”

  Recently there had been a change in the school dress policy addressing this very issue, because the nice weather meant spaghetti straps and tank tops and bras were visible everywhere. “YOU DON’T LIKE SEEING A WOMAN’S LINGERIE?”

  “Not in calc, no. Not right before lunch, either.” He smiled as if he knew he sounded prissy. “Most boys aren’t interested in models. It’s girls who think they’re so beautiful. Boys look at that and see a paper-thin nothing. We’re not interested in that.”

  “WHAT ARE YOU INTERESTED IN?”

  He leaned across the table and whispered, “Their soul, of course.” He flashed a smile and she laughed. The whole conversation made her so happy that she forgot to close her mouth, and drool slipped out and onto her shirt. She flinched when she felt it and her bad arm spazzed out. “Oops,” he said, wiping her chin.

  • • •

  That night she brought the magazine home with her. She even tore out the picture and stuck it in the frame of her full-length standing mirror so she could study it and compare herself. For a long time she stood with her walker to the side, and hung her head in the same way the model did. Her hair was prettier. Her good arm was good. Everything else, not so great. She couldn’t will her bad arm to uncurl, couldn’t loosen her fist or relax the tendons that stood out with the effort of holding her head up. Nor could she do the one thing that would have helped the most: soften her face so that it was pliable and capable of showing the expressions other people took for granted. Her face had only a handful of options: raised eyebrows (for surprise and joy); a closed-mouth O (for worry and concentration); and a wide-open mouth that filled in for everything else. She had no smile of approval, no soft frown of disapproval, nothing subtle. In every photograph of her, she wore one of these three expressions. The only exception was a picture taken when she was asleep, and then her face softened, like she didn’t have CP at all. Why was that possible in her sleep but impossible awake? She couldn’t say. Just as she couldn’t say why her parents continued to purchase large sets of her school-picture packages, as an annual reminder of her inability to smile.

  She wasn’t prettier than this model: anyone could see that. But their conversation opened up a new possibility: Matthew saw the world differently. He didn’t like girls with makeup because he would have been afraid of touching anything that could rub off onto his hands. He didn’t like bras showing in public because it went against the rules. He couldn’t be with one of those girls. But maybe, she began to think, he could be with me.

  The Monday after their magazine conversation, he greeted her with a four-leaf clover and laid it carefully on her board. “YOU’RE GIVING THIS TO ME?” she typed.

  “Yes.” When she asked him why, he said, “Because you believe in optimistic signs. It’s better off staying with you.”

  Was that a sign? She wasn’t sure. But she hoped so.

  About a month after starting his movie theater job, Matthew surprised her again. “Can I ask you something?”

  She squinted at him. “SURE.”

  “Do you ever think about prom?”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

  “You know. Going.”

  Her heart began to race. She shouldn’t presume this was his way of asking her. He might be looking for her advice on asking someone else.

  She told him the truth. “NO. DO YOU?”

  His expression changed. “No. I mean, not really. It was stupid.”

  The conversation ended as quickly as it started, but she couldn’t get it out of her mind. For weeks now, she’d been making jokes about prom with all her peer helpers. This year, the theme was “What a Feeling!”

  “HOW DO YOU DECORATE FOR THAT?” Amy asked them all. “WHAT DO YOU WEAR?” According to Sarah, who had gone two years ago, prom was famous for being an overpriced disappointment where most people had no fun. It was also famous for being incredibly strict about alcohol and drugs.

  The next day she talked about prom with Sarah over lunch.

  “Because no one’s ever gotten any booze into the actual event, everyone makes a big deal about trying,” Sarah told her. “Girls stick little bottles in their bras, or guys hide them in the lining of their jacket. Then they always get caught. It’s stupid.”

  “SO ARE YOU GOING?” Amy asked. Lately Sarah had gotten harder to read. Suddenly she was wearing makeup to school and dressing in new, tighter clothes. She looked like all the other girls, glancing around the cafeteria, waiting for something to happen. Amy wished she could just ask: Is there someone here you like? But she couldn’t. After that one conversation about her old boyfriend, the twenty-three-year-old, Sarah had never talked about her love life.

  “I doubt it,” Sarah said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to ask me this year.”

  There was someone; Amy could tell. “WHO DO YOU WANT TO GO WITH?”

  Sarah blushed. “It’s stupid. You’d laugh if I told you.”

  “NO, I WON’T.” Amy felt her right side tighten up with a new fear. What if it’s Matthew? What if Sarah decided on that lunch date that she liked him? “DO I KNOW HIM?”

  “Yes.” Sarah leaned across the lunch table. She smiled as if she was going to say it, and then changed her mind and shook her head. “I can’t explain it. It makes no sense—”

  Amy could already feel her heart break.

  Sarah kept going. “He’s not anyone I would have pictured myself with, but we’ve started talking more. We went out once, and I can’t help it: I just keep thinking about him.”

  It was Matthew. It had to be. If Amy really cared about him, she’d have to let Sarah have him. Taking Sarah to prom would show Matthew what Amy had been trying to get him to see all year—that he was wonderful and sweet and handsome and desirable. With Sarah, he would feel this. With Amy, not so much. “YOU SHOULD ASK HIM TO PROM. HE WANTS TO GO. DON’T WAIT FOR HIM TO ASK YOU.”

  “I have no idea what he’d say. I mean—no idea at all. He might say great, but he might say he’d rather go with someone else. Look at me—I’m never like this about a boy. I hate myself.” It was true. Amy never had seen Sarah like this before. Her cheeks looked flush as if she might start to either laugh or cry; she wasn’t sure which. “I just wish he wasn’t so obsessed with stupid cheerleaders.”

  Amy looked up. Did she just say cheerleaders? “IS IT SANJAY? YOU LIKE SANJAY?”

  There was a line of tears in Sarah’s eyes. “It’s so stupid, right? I can’t help it. He makes me laugh and he’s so good-looking. People don’t even see it because he’s Indian or whatever, but I’m sorry, he is.”

  “I SEE IT.”

  “You do?”

  “OF COURSE. HE IS GOOD-LOOKING. HE’D GO TO PROM WITH YOU. HE’D BE CRAZY NOT TO.”

  “You really think so?” Sarah smiled as a tear fell down her cheeks. “I swore I wasn’t going to say any of this to you.”

  “WHY NOT?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I signed up for this job so I could meet guys.”

  Amy could hardly contain her relief. “I DON’T THINK THAT.” Even as she typed, though, her heart hammere
d with a new thought. Maybe this wasn’t such a far-fetched idea—that these peer helpers signed up for this job looking for something more than friendship. Maybe Matthew had been about to ask her to prom. “I HAVE AN IDEA,” she said to Sarah. “I DARE YOU TO ASK SANJAY. IF YOU DO, I’LL ASK SOMEONE, TOO.”

  Sarah looked surprised. “Who?”

  “I’LL TELL YOU WHO IT IS IF I GET HIM TO SAY YES.”

  That night, they stayed up late, IM’ing their plans for over an hour. (“I think I’m going to make it like a joke,” Sarah wrote. “Or else I’m just going to tell him you suggested it.”

  “DO THAT,” Amy wrote back. “TELL HIM I THINK YOU’D MAKE A CUTE COUPLE.”)

  Amy had never had a girlfriend before. It was electrifying. She liked hearing how Sarah got so worked up and nervous. It made her feel less alone, pining for Matthew.

  After three days, Amy got a text from Sarah on the way to school:

  I did it! He said yes. Ur turn now.

  “I DON’T KNOW,” Amy wrote back.

  U have 2. U promised. Just ask.

  Thursday wasn’t a Matthew day, but Amy saw him that afternoon for yearbook club. He met her outside her last class, with one hand outstretched to scoop her backpack off her walker and onto his shoulder. “Ready to continue our seminal work on the Gryphon?” he asked.

  Instead of walking, she stopped and sat down on one of the benches outside the nurse’s office. “I HAVE TO ASK YOU SOMETHING.”

  “Okay.” He sat down next to her.

  “DID YOU BRING UP PROM THE OTHER DAY BECAUSE YOU’D LIKE TO GO?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “BECAUSE I’M WONDERING WHO YOU WERE GOING TO ASK. I’M WONDERING IF IT WAS ME.”

  He blushed and looked away. “I was thinking about it, but I’ve changed my mind now.”

  “WHY?”

  “Because as you keep pointing out, prom is a joke. They’ve picked a terrible theme. There’s no way to decorate or dress for a theme like that. I don’t know who’s in charge—”