Chapter 4
A/N: I own nothing. Minor updates to be accurate.
A few hours later, I'm lying on my bed trying to sleep before we go over to help Emily and her father. I slept a couple hours when I came home from the bakery, but I'd like to get more sleep if I can. I look around my room at the paintings of houses on my wall: the split-level perched at the edge of the sand is my grandparents house in Hawaii, the cottage surrounded by the wall of trees is from a vacation we took to Oregon last year, the white Bungalow is our home in Hawaii. Was our home in Hawaii, I think sadly. I've texted my friends from Hawaii about Emily, but it's nine on a Saturday there and they're slow to respond. All I've told them so far is that I've met a cute girl and after the disaster that was Rachel last year, I know they'll be happy I'm moving on. I think about what I'd be doing back there today-probably surfing at the beach with my friends. I'm pretty sure the closest I'll get to an ocean around here is the Huckabee pool, where I plan on working this summer. We don't really need the money, but having a summer job where all the other seniors have a summer job is a great way for me to get to know some of my classmates this year. I wish Nina's bakery was hiring, but I checked when I was there this morning and they aren't.
I hear my phone ping and see it's a text from Claire in our group chat.
Oooh, who is she?, Claire texts. A month ago, she finally started dating someone new and I think she believes a lot more in romance again.
My dad's best friend's daughter I text back.
Call? Claire asks and I immediately punch the button to call her. Claire and I talk for a half hour about Emily and my move here. She's a perfect mixture of empathetic and excited and it makes me miss her immensely. Claire is transgender and so coming out to her was easy after I was there during her transition. She was my best friend back home and saying goodbye to her was difficult. Although I've never really had trouble making friends, it's time consuming and I just want the friends I already had.
"I hope you're still planning to apply to UCLA so we can go to school together because this long-distance thing really sucks," Claire says. "Convince Emily to go there too!"
When we're done, I go back to sketching Nina's bakery, with Emily at the counter. I'm a lot better at buildings than people and so this one is going a lot faster. I wish I had my easel set up; the notebook pictures are really doodles more than anything else. I picture Emily in my mind, stray tendrils of hair flying across her face until she pushed it back nervously. I'm pleased with the progress I made when my dad calls me down for lunch. Usually, I cook for him but my grandmother is taking every opportunity to make us feel like moving here was the right decision. For lunch today, she's made carnitas tacos that taste heavenly.
After lunch, I take Winston on a jog before we go over to the Clark's house. Despite having three legs, he's energetic and essentially normally-abled. I feel a lot better than I did yesterday, the extra sleep and the exercise battling the jetlag.
"Has it been okay so far?" my dad asks. "Like we could actually live here and you won't entirely hate me? We can go back to visit in the winter."
My dad knows me really well and he works really hard to make me happy. I think he worries that I'll hate him for changing schools my senior year but I genuinely want him to be happy too. He gave me a leather bracelet with seagulls when he told me we were moving here, a bracelet he wore all the time. He told me it's for luck, but it feels like his first step in ingratiating me into this new town. He didn't bat an eye moving to Hawaii to live with my mom and I know he misses the town with all her memories too.
"It's been fine, dad," I say, smiling. "And the Clarks seem great."
I am really fine with it. Ever since I met Emily anyways, I think to myself. He gives me a knowing smile and I suspect he may guess what I think of Emily. Dad was really supportive when I told him I was dating a girl. He has made it so easy to be myself and I'm grateful for that. Not all my friends back home had the same experience.
Shortly after, we drive over to the Clarks's house. It's an older split-level white house with peeling paint and a blossoming garden in the front. I take in every detail, thinking about how I could one day paint this for Emily as a memory. When we walk in, Joe is on the main floor, taping boxes shut.
"Thanks for coming," he says as he looks up, sweat dripping down his face. He hands me an empty box. "Blake, you can head upstairs to help Emily, first bedroom on the right."
I run up the stairs and look at the bedroom on the left first. It's obviously Emily's room, door partially open with a sign outside that's probably from childhood given the style. I can see an unmade bed of checkered black and red linens, a Huckabee High sweatshirt hanging on a chair, books crammed into a shelf. It feels like I'm invading into her space without asking so I turn to the door on the left, pausing at the doorway as I watch Emily hold a black cardigan, lost in thought. When she drops the cardigan into the box slowly, I speak.
"How's it going in there?" I ask and she jumps.
"Fine," she says and I see her scrambling to pull herself together and pulls something at random from the shelf. "About to get started on the shoes."
Each of these pieces of clothing must be memories for her and I can see pain written all over her face. She exhales so deeply I think she's trying to force the pain out.
I lean against the closet doorway and drop the box I'm holding behind me.
"Well, I am here to help," I say and my voice comes out all wrong. I don't know how to best help her process her sorrow and I cringe at the way I've tried to do it.
"Sounds good," Emily says as she starts pulling shoes from the shelf. I don't want to touch the wrong shoes, to ruin her memories of her mother with my hands or with carelessness.
"Anything off limits?" I ask, my hands carefully on my hips, away from the shoes.
"No," she says but I can hear the crack in her voice. "No, the new place won't have space for a bunch of clothes that no one will wear and if I start picking and choosing, I'll want all of it."
The only item my dad kept was my mother's wedding dress, a dress I've now worn countless times when I want to feel closer to her. We start pulling the shoes off the shelf in silence, my eyes careful to never look over at her. Every so often, I lightly brush my hand against hers, just for a second, to feel that she is still here, to ground myself. I feel her watching me and I decide to try shooting a pair of flip-flops into the box, basketball-style, but I miss.
"Nice try, Lebron," Emily says as she grabs the flip-flops and duplicates the shot, making it.
I laugh and roll my eyes, then look away.
"How's the jetlag?" she asks and I wonder how weary I look.
"Better. The donut definitely helped," I quip. It actually was a really good donut.
"I didn't even know Nina's was on yelp," Emily says and I know I've been caught in my lie, but I'm surprised to find I don't mind.
"It's not. I just remember your dad said you were working this morning and I thought I'd swing by. It's not like I have anything else to do," I say and I continue working on the shoes. I think of Jay and Claire riding their bikes to the ocean with a pang in my chest. "I mean what do you do for fun around here?"
"This year I'm not doing much, just working at the bakery and waiting for school to start," she says and I want to ask what the story is there. She is personable enough that I can't believe she doesn't have any friends here. Her ex-boyfriend must have a lot of sway in this town.
"You're telling me you don't do anything, like with your friends?" I ask. I'm hoping to give her a chance to talk about whatever is bothering her. Emily doesn't immediately answer but turns her attention to the top shelf of the closet instead.
"Well, my best friend goes to this sleep away camp in the middle of absolute nowhere for half the summer," she says, not really answering my question. She cringes at the hat she's holding before throwing it to me. Kiera must be her only friend right now and the thought makes me sad. I'll be your friend this summer, I vow silently. "So aside from a phone call every Sunday and the occasional letter in the mail, I don't really have anything planned until she gets back."
Emily suddenly goes quiet, looking at a box in the corner of the top shelf that she can't quite reach. She nearly falls off the small stool as she tries to grab it.
"Here," I say, not wanting her to face-plant. I set the box I'm holding down and I cross her, breathing in the scent of cake mixed with flowers. I use my full height of 5'9" to grab the box down and hand it to her reverently. It's obvious this box means something important to her. Emily walks out of the closet slowly and sets the box on the floor, kneeling in front of it. I sit down across from her, not wanting to pry into the box until she's ready to show me what's inside. I smile when I see the soccer accolades pulled out of the box; I'm a soccer player and maybe Emily is too. Everyone says she's just like her mother.
"Can I?" I say, reaching for the soccer team photo Emily placed down. I want to see what her mother looked like at our age.
"Sure," Emily says and I pick it up, surprised when I look at it. If the track suits didn't age them, I would think I was looking at a picture of Emily.
"Wow, you do look just like your mom." I wonder if she can hear the envy in my voice. My mother was a beautiful Japanese woman, short and slender with chocolate eyes and straight, jet black hair. Nothing about me says Asian woman the way I wish it would. It's why I've spent my life trying to embody her spirit instead.
"Yeah," she says with some amount of venom in her voice.
"Do you hate it?" I ask. She looks up at me startled and suddenly I'm blown away by the intensity of those chocolate brown eyes. They're filled with an indescribable number of emotions but at least one of them is sadness and I feel the urge to hold her and tell her everything will be okay.
"No. It just makes me feel like a walking memorial card." I see what she means, but at the same time, I'd rather be that then related in name only.
"It's kind of cool, though, isn't it? That people see her in you? That you keep her memory alive without even trying?" I'm not entirely sure I'm telling her this since I haven't even told my dad the disconnect I feel from my mom. There's nothing he'd be able to do about it anyways.
"Yeah," she says, nodding. "I guess it is."
She pulls out a ton of papers showing her mom's many achievements and I whistle. "Jeez, what didn't your mom do? I'm surprised someone like that was hanging out with my high school dropout of a dad."
My dad's now a successful CIO for a tech firm, but he wasn't always this guy. Although he did actually finish high school, he didn't go to college until he was in his mid-twenties, a single dad to a toddler. I hear her musical laugh before she says, "Well, it was our dads who put a stop to all this. Look, nothing after her junior year."
"What did she do instead?" I ask, pulling out a certificate that says hall monitor. I didn't even think high schools had those.
"Started living the life she actually wanted to, I guess. Started doing the things she actually wanted to do instead of trying to be president of every club on campus and having panic attacks over AP English presentations," she says and I wonder if that's what Emily is like at school. I'm certainly not.
I start sifting through the things on the floor, now curious about one of my dad's best friends. A metal number plate with Henry Huckabee Lodge and the number 5 catches my eye.
"Henry Huckabee lodge?" I ask. I flip the plate back and forth for more information. "What's that?"
"It's this big lodge three hours that the family of Huckabee's founders still own. My school has a lake trip there every August as a congrats you almost survived high school kind of thing. It's a tradition. They've done it for like a hundred and sixteen years. My parents actually started dating during their senior lake trip."
She tosses me the moose, grinning. "Our school, rather," she amends.
I grin back at her as I look at the moose. "It kind of looks like you dad."
She mock frowns as I imagine us together at a lake, lounging in floats or paddling in a canoe or cannon-balling into the water.
"So, are you going on the lake trip?" I ask.
"Absolutely not!" she says emphatically while grimacing. I'm surprised.
"Why not?" I ask.
"Do you have any idea how much bacteria is in a lake?" Emily asks. "When I was in middle school, Huckabee lake was shut down for the whole summer because of a massive breakout of carp herpes. The shore was literally lined with dead fish. Carp herpes is no joke."
I snort. "I didn't even know carp could get herpes."
"Oh my gosh," Emily, says suddenly and I see she is looking at pictures of a high school yearbook. It's a picture of our dads. Mine's is from before he gained muscle and height, which mostly coincided with his love for surfing. "I can't believe your dad was so tiny."
"He grew five inches the year after he left for Hawaii," I inform her as I take the yearbook. I suddenly want to show her a picture of my mother and I pull out my phone, looking for one of them together. "I actually have a picture."
I show her one of them both from when they were dating. My dad has given me every photo of my mom he could find.
"That's your mom?" Emily asks and I try not to cringe with the knowledge that our relationship is certainly not obvious in a picture.
"Yup," I say and I look at the picture too and she stares into my eyes for a moment and I'm pretty sure she can read the pain and loss and longing still in my face.
"Well, it's good to know the whole crushing puberty thing is genetic for you Carters. All I got was boobs and a tick mark over 5'3."
She thinks I've crushed puberty too? What does that mean? I force my eyes not to drift down to the breasts she just mentioned.
"Fine, a tick mark over 5'2," she amends and I hand her back the yearbook, but a piece of paper falls out.
"What is it?" I ask.
"It's like a bucket list," Emily says, holding it up for me to read. "From the summer before their senior year. I read a list of to-do items like going on a picnic and getting a tattoo and kissing someone. It sounds like an epic summer to me.
Emily's dad's voice makes us jump when he asks how we're doing.
"Fine!" Emily calls back and begins packing away all the things. I help her with the last few things, not making eye contact. "We'll be right down."
I grab the first box of shoes and head towards the door, but Emily stops me, yelling "wait". I watch her as she runs towards me and removes the black cardigan from the box.
"All good?" I ask and she nods. We head down together with the boxes which are then loaded into Joe's truck. Emily has an unsettled expression on her face the entire time, like she's about to either cry or scream.
When they drive away, I turn my attention back to the Clark home, taking in every detail for the painting I'm planning.
"This is a pretty house," I say, breaking the silence that has fallen between Emily and me, now alone at her home. Emily glares at the for-sale sign in the yard, before walking back towards the house. She grabs water from the fridge and starts pouring some for me. I watch her, straight brown hair spilling over her shoulders.
"So, why don't you want to move?" I ask for something to say. I can think of a million reasons why someone wouldn't want to move from this home.
"Who said I don't want to move?" she asks, handing me one of the cups.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe just the look of disgust you gave the for-sale sign five minutes ago?" I say. "Or maybe it was the look you gave the pile of boxes at the back of the truck."
"Jeez Blake," Emily says with a laugh. "You didn't have to call me out like that. Because all of this just feels like I'm getting farther and farther away from my mom. The move, cleaning out her closet, all of it."
I'm silent after that, pulling my hair into a bun for something to do. I felt exactly the same way when we left the home where my mom lived, even though I have no memories of her being in the home. I think of all the things I've done to be closer to my mom, like learning to rock climb and cliff jumping and kayaking down Grade Five rapids. I tell Emily about those memories.
"You know I never met my mom but whenever I wanted to feel close to her I went rock climbing at that spot," I tell her and suddenly feel ineffably sad, realizing I will never be able to do that again. Well, not anytime soon anyways. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that you should do something to feel close to her in a new way, new memories that substitute for that house-shaped void you're feeling."
I suddenly think of the list and grin wildly as I point to the list in Emily's pocket. "Actually, you could even do that bucket list. I mean, what have you got to lose?"
She laughs and the conversation moves to more amiable topics like Schitt's Creek and our dad's epic bromance.
When I head home that night, I flip to a new page of my sketchpad and begin on Emily's house.