Chapter 15

"Did you know that part of our tax money actually goes to asteroid impact avoidance?" Bert asked in his characteristically loud whisper, his serving tray teetering dangerously in his haste to keep up with me. "People don't actually think about these things, but seriously, Wes. Look at what happened to the dinosaurs."

My brother had been following me around the party for the past fifteen minutes spewing his usual apocalyptic fanaticisms. We were catering for an academic cocktail party at the home of a world-renowned paleontologist named Dr. Sanders, who was marketing for her book titled -wait for it- Extinction. According to Bert, who had read, re-read and re-re-read the book, it was all about how civilization was doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs.

"Bert, I swear to God, I will personally hunt down an asteroid and give it a freaking roadmap to Earth if you don't shut up," Kristy hissed as we sidled up to the kitchen counter to exchange our empty trays for full ones. Kristy was scooping crab cakes off of a baking sheet while Macy and Monica polished champagne flutes.

"Dr. Sanders is a genius, Kristy," Bert said as though her threat had somehow put this up for debate. "Her theory on patterned species extinction is the most reviewed topic amongst scientists right now. She actually developed an algorithm that shows NEO's follow a distinct timeline that dates all the way back to the prehistoric era."

Macy cocked an eyebrow in a way that leaned more towards genuine curiosity than dry judgment. "NEO's?"

"Near-Earth Objects," Bert said.

Kristy threw her head back and groaned. "I would be so totally okay if the world ended right now," she said. Flipping her head back up, she pointed her spatula at Bert. "That's what you do to me, Bert. You make me okay about the world ending. Because if the world ends, then guess what? I don't have to listen to you talk about the world ending!" With that and a final huff, she grabbed a full tray and threw herself out of the kitchen.

Bert – never one to pick up on social cues - was quick to follow her, already gearing up for his next argument. As they went out of sight, we heard Kristy exclaim, "Stop following me!"

Delia came out of the bathroom for what might have been the tenth time that night. "This baby keeps mistaking my bladder for a pillow," she said by way of explanation, lowering herself into a kitchen chair while holding her belly. She looked down at her ballooned stomach and scolded, "Stop using Mommy's bladder as a pillow."

"You look nice," Macy said, taking in Delia's makeup and curled hair. "Going somewhere tonight?"

Delia smiled, her eyes brightening at the compliment. I felt a pang of guilt. Living with three males meant that haircuts or new clothes usually went unnoticed. "Thank you, Macy! Pete is taking me to dinner at a fancy restaurant after we get done here. It's been a long time since we had a date night. It's always nice to have something to get dressed up for, isn't it?"

Monica said, "Mmm-hmmm."

Macy smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Sure," she replied, turning her focus back to her careful polishing. I wondered if she was thinking about Jason. Did he take her to fancy restaurants? Did she ever get dressed up for him? I twisted my mouth as I realized I was dwelling. I was wrestling with the jealousy of him taking her out as well as the subtle anger that perhaps he wasn't.

"So," Macy said a bit later into the event. We were alone in the kitchen now that Delia and Monica had left to bring more supplies from the van.

"So," I replied.

"What's with Bert's fixation on the apocalypse?" she asked as she carefully arranged finger sandwiches on a serving tray. She shifted them minutely, lining them up with an endearingly Type A determination that made me smile to myself. I was sure that if I whipped out a measuring tape, each one would be perfectly spaced away from one another.

I clumsily speared another hot wing with a toothpick and set it on my own tray. "I think he's just fascinated by it," I replied.

She shot me a dry look from beneath her eyelashes. "Wes," she said. "Come on."

"What?" I asked.

"That's such a canned answer."

"What's a canned answer?"

She shrugged, her eyes darting to the ceiling like the right description might be floating up there. "Like a response you give someone when you don't think they'll understand the real one."

"Use it in a sentence," I said.

"Sure. 'Stop giving me canned answers,'" she said. I laughed, but she was still staring at me expectantly. "Bert's obsession with extinction goes beyond just fascination. So what is it?"

My mouth shaped into a sardonic smile. "I'm not really sure," I admitted, unashamed. While I still struggled to understand my brother, I was certain that I knew him better than anyone and had a better shot of interpreting him than others did. Even Delia, with her remarkable capacity for empathy, still turned to me for guidance whenever she was at a loss for how to deal with his eccentrics. "It started right after our mom died. It was kinda like, the more he knew about death, the more in control he felt. If you see the asteroid or NEO or whatever coming, then maybe it doesn't feel so out of your hands. Even if it is inevitable."

Macy was nodding before I'd even finished talking. "That makes sense."

"Does it?"

She looked up at me with eyes wide with sincerity. "Of course," she said adamantly. "People do weird things when someone they love dies."

"What did you do?" I froze as the question escaped my mouth, feeling like I'd overstepped a line that shouldn't have had to be drawn in the first place.

To my surprise and relief, Macy didn't seem to mind the question. She sighed, her slender fingers continuing their work on the spacing of the sandwiches, fixing imperfections that only she could see. I'd never noticed how long her fingers were. There was a gracefulness to them that fit the rest of her. "I stopped running."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I dunno."

I smirked at her. "Who's giving the jarred answers now?"

She shot me a look of playful disdain. "Canned. It's canned, not jarred. And I guess – no, I know - it reminded me of my dad. It was our thing, you know? In a weird way I felt like it had, I dunno, let me down or something."

I nodded. It was strange and tragic how the things we adore take on such a sinister quality when the person we once adored them with are gone. It made it hard to enjoy the present, knowing that every moment of happiness could one day be painted over with layers of grief or resentment.

"I know what you mean," I said. And I did.

We were done in a few more hours, by which time the academics had already had plenty to drink and were now involved in slurred-yet-intelligent conversations and red-faced debates about whether or not the T-Rex had been a solitary hunter or, in light of recent evidence, a pack animal.

After we loaded everything into the van and assured Delia that she wasn't forgetting anything, our quirky caravan consisting of the Bertmobile and the catering van pulled out of the opulent mansion's driveway, en route to a party that Kristy had promised was "full of extraordinary boys."

Macy and I were alone in the van. It was silent, which was something I never minded in the car. Now, though, I felt the inexplicable need to fill the silence, make use of this time. Macy was staring intently out the window, thinking hard about something. I wondered what it was she was so deep in thought about.

She threw me off when suddenly she opened her mouth and said, "So-"

And then the engine died. Right there. In the dark. In the middle of the road. In the middle of nowhere.

"So," I said, my eyes quickly finding the gas gauge, the arrow almost smugly set on the E side. "That's what Delia forgot."

"What?"

I pointed needlessly at the taunting gauge. "Gas."

Macy followed my finger and pursed her lips, nodding once. "Gas."

We both got out of the car, rounding the van to meet in the middle of the road. It was eerie how far away we seemed from the rest of the world. No signs of civilization in sight. There was no rumble of an interstate in the distance. Above, the stars and full moon shone brightly in the absence of any nearby light pollution, limning everything in the area with a supernatural glow.

Her eyes on the moon as well, Macy asked, "How far would you say it is to the nearest gas station?"

I squinted down the way we'd come, then did the same in the other direction. I was about to make an extremely uninformed guess when I remembered one of my mom's golden rules: never pretend to know something you don't. "No idea." I shrugged. "Guess we'll find out, though."

We moved the van over to the side of the road and began walking. The road crunched beneath our feet.

We passed the time by playing games, where I discovered Macy's competitiveness was almost on par with how smart she was. It was surprising, though not at all off-putting. I assumed if I possessed that level of intelligence, I too would be getting worked up over a rousing game of Last Letter, First Letter.

"You're a rule person," I pointed out, not unkindly.

Macy's mouth quirked. "My sister was a cheater," she explained, shoving her hands in the pockets of her black work slacks. "It sort of became necessary."

"She cheated at this game?"

Macy let out a surprised laugh. "She cheated at everything. When we played Monopoly, she always insisted on being banker, then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate transaction. I was, like, ten or eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do that."

I laughed, then caught her smiling to herself. I couldn't help but notice how animated she'd become while talking. It was clear her sister was very dear to her. I wondered if she wore that secret smile whenever she thought of her loved ones' endearing quirks. I wondered if I could ever be someone she smiled about to herself like that.

Wes, you idiot, I groaned to myself.

But Macy wasn't done. "During staring contests," she blurted out, as if unable to keep the barrage of stories to herself. "She always blinked. Always. But then she'd swear up and down she hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied. Blatantly."

"Truth? What's that?"

Macy gave me a bewildered look. "You never played Truth, either?" she asked, physically stopping in the road as if she needed all of her mental facilities focused on this. "God, what did you do on long car trips?"

"We discussed politics and current events," I said, continuing walking so she had no choice but to follow. I wasn't trying to have a run-in with a coyote anytime soon. "And engaged in scintillating discourse." There was an SAT word. Good job, Wes. I mentally patted myself on the back.

She looked thoughtful. "Oh."

I bumped her shoulder with mine. "I'm kidding," I whispered. In a normal voice, I continued, "We usually read comics and beat the crap out of each other until my dad threatened to pull over and 'settle things once and for all.'" I smiled at the memory, my dad's angry, red face. Bert and I quieting down, even though we knew that my father had never and would never demonstrate what he actually meant. Honestly, I think we quieted down just to spare him the embarrassment of having to admit he had no punishment in mind, that the threat was empty. There were a lot of things kids liked to test their parents on, but I don't think any kid truly enjoyed seeing their parents fumble. Not until teen years, of course. "Then, when it was just my mom, we sang folk songs."

Macy looked taken aback. "You sang folk songs."

I laughed. "I didn't have a choice," I said, kicking a rock. It skidded ahead of us, highlighted by the eerie blue glow of the moon. "It was like the lentil loaf , no other options. I know the entire Woodie Guthrie catalog."

Macy gave me a sly smile and nudged me with her dainty elbow. "Sing something for me." When I didn't reply, she nudged me a few more times. "You know you want to."

"No."

"Come on," she pleaded. "I bet you have a lovely singing voice."

I leveled a glare at her. "I don't."

"Wes," she said, her pleading tone taking on a firm and stern one, like a schoolteacher.

"Macy," I replied. "No."

We were quiet. When I chanced a glance at her again, I hoped to find her with a secret smile on her face. Instead, I found her squinting her eyes down the road. I followed her gaze, saw headlights turn, going west.

I cleared my throat. "Okay, so Truth," I said. "How do you play?" Up ahead, I could see the early signs of civilization, a sight that came as both a relief and a disappointment. Relief that we likely weren't going to be murdered roadside. Disappointment that my alone time with Macy was coming to an end.

"Is this because you can't think up another I food?" Macy said.

"No," I snapped playfully. "Maybe…How do you play?"

But Macy was already shaking her head, pulling her jacket tighter around her despite the balmy summer night's air. "We can't play Truth," she said definitively.

I shot her an incredulous look. "Why not?" I asked.

"Because...it can get really ugly."

We walked as we argued. The more vehemently she argued that we shouldn't play, the more I wanted to. She'd brought it up, after all. And while it seemed strangely intimate for an innocent game, there still wasn't a gas station in sight. What else would we talk about, if not the truth?

"To win," Macy finally said after conceding defeat. "One person has to refuse to answer a question. So, for example, let's say I ask you a question and you don't answer it. Then you get to ask me a question, and if I answer it, I win."

I furrowed my brow, confused. "But that's too simple," I pointed out. "What if I ask you something easy?"

"You wouldn't," she said slowly. "It has to be a really hard question, because you don't want me to win."

I made a noise of agreement, finally understanding. "Man, this is diabolical."

"It's a girl's game. Always good for a little drama at the slumber party." She was looking up at the night sky, and, as I looked at her, I noticed that the moonlight seemed to do the impossible by bringing out the color in her eyes. An odd grey in the daylight, they were now a vibrant silver, catching and almost refracting the light like a cat. It seemed fitting for the girl I was coming to know and understand. Macy had seemed so muted and self-contained when I had first met her, but more and more I was discovering these pockets of liveliness.

I realized she must have mistaken my silence for trepidation when she said suddenly, "I told you, you don't want to play."

I shook my head in an effort to clear my thoughts. "No. I do. I can handle it."

"You think?" she asked me, that smile in her voice.

"Yup," I said. "Hit me."

She nodded, sliding her hands back in her slacks. "What's your favorite color?"

I gave her a sidelong glance. "Don't coddle," I scolded. "It's insulting."

She smiled. "I'm trying to ease you in."

"Don't ease. Ask something real," I said. I sounded earnest, even to my own ears. But here, under the moonlight, under the cast of her eerie silver gaze, I wanted her to know me just as much as I wanted to know her. This game may have caused drama at slumber parties, but it also could help me defuse the enigma that was Macy.

Maybe if I just understood her better, I could stop thinking about her.

"Okay," she said. "Why'd you get sent to Myers School?"

I almost tripped on the smooth pavement. Damn, diabolical indeed.

Another one of my mom's many golden rules was to take ownership of my actions, a rule that coincided with my counselor's at the time of my wrongdoing. So, I braced myself and said, "I broke into a house. With a couple of guys I used to hang out with. We didn't take anything, just drank a couple of beers, but a neighbor saw us and called the cops. We ran but they caught us."

I chanced a glance at her, expecting to see disapproval written on her face. Instead, she just looked thoughtful. "Why'd you do that?"

I blinked. "What, run?"

"No. Break in."

I sighed and shrugged. "I don't know," I admitted lamely. "These guys I was friends with, they'd done it a couple of times, but I never had before. I was there, so I went along. It was my first offense, my only offense, but the county was on this whole thing where they were punishing right off, to scare you out of doing more, so I got sent away." I paused, then added, "Six months, let out after four." Yippee, I thought to myself. The memory of it still burned deeply, the shame of the whole thing. Kids will be kids, sure, but the whole thing had been so pointless. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking them, the thrill of illegality. I doubted Macy had broken a rule in her life.

"My boyfriend," she said suddenly, then paused. "Sort-of-boyfriend, he used to tutor there."

"Really."

"Yup."

"So what's the deal with that? The boyfriend." I hoped I sounded nonchalant.

"What?"

"I get to ask a question now," I said. "That's how the game goes, correct?"

"Um…Yes, I guess."

I gestured for her to continue, but she stared ahead in silence. I couldn't tell if she was gathering her thoughts or waiting for the pavement to split open and swallow her whole. Quite frankly, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "I'm waiting. Does this mean you pass."

She shot me a glare. "No," she snapped, and my eyebrows shot up in amusement. "I mean, no. I'm answering. I'm just collecting my response."

An owl hooted behind us. Up ahead, headlights appeared. I tensed, realizing how much I didn't want our time together to be interrupted just yet. To my relief, the lights swiveled away, headed towards the highway. Macy didn't seem to notice.

"Is there a time limit for this?" She shot me another withering look. She was good at those looks, I was beginning to learn. "Just wondering."

"Fine," she said at last, squaring her shoulders. The words seemed to tumble out. "We've been dating for about a year and a half. And he's just, you know, a genius. Really smart, and driven. He went away for the summer, and I was just, you know, being a little too clingy or something I guess, and it sort of freaked him out. He's very independent."

I had to stop myself from snorting. "Define clingy."

"You don't know what clingy is?"

"I know what it means to me, but it's different for different people." I'd known Kristy long enough to see her endure the same self-doubt that Macy was experiencing. It was baffling to me how often she allowed herself to think she was the problem, that she was too demanding, too needy, too whatever. In reality, these men had been nothing but boys who would always hide behind calling a girl "crazy" rather than addressing their own aloofness and ambivalence.

"Well…First," Macy began haltingly. "He was upset that I wasn't taking my job, which had been his job, more seriously. And then, I said I loved him in an email, and that made him a little skittish."

What in the…who was this guy? "Skittish?" I said out loud, trying to keep the judgment out of my voice.

She huffed grumpily, kicking at a rock. "Do you need a definition of that, too?"

I smiled despite myself. "Nope. Know it." I looked up at the night sky thoughtfully, wondering how skittish this Poindexter kid would be if he knew his girlfriend was out walking the streets alone at night with some handsome gentleman.

Well, okay. Country back road, not street. And maybe not quite so gentlemanly. But the "handsome" part still stood.

"So, things went sour because you said those three words, and because you weren't as serious about the library as he wanted you to be." Again, I tried to keep the judgment out my voice. Yet, this time, I didn't think it mattered. It was clear Macy knew how silly the whole thing sounded as soon as she let the words leave her mouth.

She squared her shoulders. "Right," she said, confident as ever. Then, "Wait. I never said anything about the library."

Crap.

"Yeah, you did," I said, kicking myself for screwing up and then gaslighting her. "You-"

She stopped walking. "Nope. I didn't."

We stood there for a moment, her steady gaze piercing me to the spot, her jaw set. And although her hands were shoved casually into her pockets, I knew there was nothing casual about her stance at all. I could tell from those grey, intelligent eyes that she had about a hundred arguments and a hundred facts at her beck and call should I try to back out of this any further.

She was always beautiful, but when she was like this - rid of her self-doubt, in charge of her own reality, of her own presence – she was stunning.