At least you know what you want. I don't know what I want." Then he was quiet for a long time. We were almost home before he said, "Just want to be with you. Like this."
My heart sped up. I made a joke. "That's probably not a viable career option."
"Yeah," he said, laughing a little. "Probably not.
I'm going to check on you in the night," he said. "At random intervals of my choosing."
"I figured.
I don't understand, Jenna, why you couldn't give him a ride home?" Mom struck the archetypal Mom pose-hands on hips, perplexed look on face, head tilted at that I cannot believe you came from my womb angle. "He walked home in the pouring rain. With a cold, I might add."
"I didn't know he had a cold. I was at the JCC with Steph," I said, knowing that was not going to fly. Cameron padded into the kitchen on bare feet, rubbing his hair dry with a towel.
"It's fine," he said. "I didn't have to walk that far."
Mom shook her head. "It's not fine. While you're living with us, you're part of the family, and we don't leave each other stranded in the rain.
Because we were having a family crisis."
"Your family had a crisis?"
"Yes, Ethan. My family. Had a crisis. A crisis was had by my family.
Remember that time we got snowed in at school? Everyone had to wait for their parents to get them, but our parents didn't come."
"God," I said, "I'd forgotten. Why can't I remember any of this stuff without being reminded?"
"School bus driver had to take us home eventually. We were the only two kids on the bus."
"I can picture us," I said, "sitting next to each other on that backseat. It's such a sad scene, really."
I felt him look at me. "I don't think so. I never thought of it as sad."
"But Cameron, every single kid in the school got picked up by their parents except us!" I was laughing now at the tragic ridiculousness of it. "It was pathetic!"
"We head each other. I never needed anyone else. That's the difference between you and me," he said. "You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed that one person. Only ever needed you."
"Not everyone has to like me," I protested. "It's just..." We'd arrived at my house. "Imagine if you'd believed I died," I said. "Trust me, you'd start to need other people. You had the luxury of always knowing I was alive, knowing where I was and what I was doing. I didn't have that, Cameron."
"I didn't think of it that way when it was happening," he said. "Didn't ever think you needed me much as I needed you."
"I did."
"I'm sorry," he said. "But I knew you'd be okay."
"How, Cameron? How did you know that?"
"Look at you. From the day you marched across the school yard to talk to me," he said, starting to smile a little at the memory. "I knew you were stronger than I'd ever be."
"You're the one who got yourself away from your parents in the long run. You're the one supporting yourself, being an adult."
"Maybe. Hey," he said, teasing, "ain't a competition, anyway. We can both be strong."
I smiled. "Yeah. Good.
I thought of what Cameron said about the day I came across the yard to him to ask him to be in my club. About how I had guts. About how I was brave and strong. He was around to tell me these things now, to remind me, but I was going to have to learn to remember them myself, and believe them.
I got up, crept to Alan's office, and went in.
"Cameron? Cam?"
He didn't move, and appeared to be fast asleep.
I'm not sure what I wanted. To look at him, I guess, and talk. I sat on the floor by the sofa bed so that my face was level with his. His breath came in short, toothpaste-minty sighs.
"Cameron Quick," I whispered, just wanting to hear his name. He still didn't move. I touched his face, following the curve of his jaw, the bow of his lips. This was the boy who made my childhood less lonely, who made me feel loved. And known. And accepted. Who had stared into my most terrifying moment right beside me, while my most terrifying moment was his everyday life. And I pictured him patting that baby doll by a cold window, showing it comfort by instinct. I felt overwhelmed with sadness for his life and what it could have been, even though I knew he wouldn't want me to feel that way. He'd say it was all right, that he'd get by, that he could take care of himself. That he didn't need anyone to fix it. But I still wanted to, to somehow make up for that infinite, infinite well of helplessness that I'd spent most of my life believing had swallowed us up.
It hadn't, though, because we were here, weren't we? Wiser and braver and more ready for life than our friends or parents or anyone we knew, than even I had realized until he came back to show me.
I touched his wrist lightly, his elbow. I tucked the blanket up around his shoulder.
"I love you, Cameron," I whispered.
I can't believe this crap. Jolly ranchers? Gummy worms?" Katy rifled through the pile of candy she'd dumped onto Steph's floor. "Where's the chocolate? Where's the candy corn?"
"I like Jolly Rangers," Steph said, helping herself to Katy's rejects, her boobs in danger of breaking loose from her Renaissance dress.
Gil watched, fascinated. "Remind me who you are again?"
"Um, Juliet? From Romeo and Juliet?" She popped a candy into her mouth. "Shakespeare?"
"Did they really dress like that back then?" Gil asked. "It seems kind of like something that might get you burned at the stake."
"I'm pre-Puritan, baby."
Ethan unwrapped a peanut butter cup from his own candy pile. "You've obviously never been to a Renaissance fair, dude. I went to one in New York with my cousin. Boobs galore."
"We gotta get one of those in Utah," Gil said.
I, Deanna Lambert, belong to no one and no one belongs to me.
I don't know what to do.
Apparently, the world was perfect in 1958.
Sara ZarrWhat did it feel like, I wondered, to be kissed like that right out in public? Not like some passionate tongue-wrestling thing, just a kiss to declare: We are each other’s. I’d never been kissed like that, not by him or anyone else. No one had declared me his, not for the whole world to see, anyway.
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