The Whole Golden World Page 4

  After the initial moping and the drama of the breakup, once summer vacation started, Morgan found she didn’t miss David that much. What she missed was feeling selected and favored, that out of the whole Arbor Valley High, he’d wanted to spend time with her, and hold her hand in the halls, and have her sit on his lap in the cafeteria while they joked with friends.

  She hung out with Ethan and Britney all summer instead and thought she was over David. And then she walked into calculus on Tuesday and felt like someone had punched her in the chest.

  Mr. Hill had been talking and her pencil had been taking notes, but she knew she’d have to reteach herself the lesson later. No big deal, as long as she had time to do so before helping one or both of the twins.

  Her phone buzzed in her backpack’s zipper pocket. Probably Britney texting her about plans later, though she should know better than to try that from Señora Graham’s class. Cómo se dice “hard ass” en Español?

  Another buzz, a few seconds later.

  And another.

  What the hell . . . ?

  Morgan glanced over at David, and he glanced up to look back at her. He even smiled, with one corner of his mouth.

  Mr. Hill had his back to the class, working out a problem on the whiteboard. Morgan was nearly at the back of the class and was sitting behind a girl named Marie who was, well, one of the bigger girls in class. Heavyset, her grandmother would say.

  She slipped her phone from the backpack and thumbed across the screen.

  The texts were from three different people. There was in fact one from David, saying,

  glad we’re in class hope we’re cool ok

  but the other two were from her mother and Ethan, time-stamped much earlier. Her phone must have lost service briefly and gotten the messages late.

  She answered David’s text so she could appear cool and worldly about it all.

  Sure. Cool. Nice to see you too.

  She didn’t notice the shadow over her until it was too late.

  Mr. Hill held out his hand for her phone. “Hand it over.”

  “Sorry,” she said, and started to put it away. This was a teacher who had thrown paper airplanes on the first day to illustrate a point about parabolas and now he was cracking down on the first phone offense?

  “Hand it to me. You can have it back at the end of the day.”

  She heard someone titter “Ooooooooh” in the back of the class.

  What are we, in third grade? she groaned to herself before shooting a glare in the direction of the idiot.

  She would start on her college applications that very night. She couldn’t wait to get away from these childish morons and their stupid little sandbox-level attitudes and self-important teachers who had to act like big shots.

  Getting her phone back would also make her late to meet her brothers, and late home, which meant a barrage of questioning from Detective Mom.

  She put her head down on her math and wished she had her poetry notebook.

  Her headache throbbed like jungle drums, drowning out whatever it was Mr. Hill was trying to tell them.

  With the slam of her locker door, Ethan’s face appeared from behind it, smiling at her, and waggling his eyebrows, inches from her face.

  Morgan’s gasp sounded disgustingly to her own ears like a mouse squeak, but any irritation dissolved in his smile.

  “Student dies of prank-induced startle,” she said. “Film at eleven.”

  “Entire school wreathed in black for mourning,” he replied. “Film at eleven.”

  Morgan’s heart continued to pound unnaturally fast for such a small thing.

  “Coming to the Den?” he asked.

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Can we not? I’m there enough, thanks.”

  Ethan stuck his hands into his pockets and shrugged. They began walking together toward the parking lot. He loped through the after-school crush without seeming to watch where he was going, yet never bumping into anyone. It seemed like he just knew where the crowd would part.

  “Nice day,” he said. “Park?”

  Morgan nodded, though Ethan was a couple of steps ahead and didn’t see her, but then he stopped, looked behind, didn’t see her right away. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, and his head rotated like a searchlight; then he saw her, and everything relaxed, his smile blossomed.

  Ethan held out his hand. “Here. So I don’t lose you again.”

  Morgan slipped her hand into his and allowed herself to be pulled along, train fashion.

  “Oh, crap,” she said, pulling on Ethan’s hand to stop him by the math hall. “I forgot, I gotta stop by Mr. Hill’s to get my phone. And I can’t text my brothers to tell them I’m running late. Will you go find them by the freshman door? I’ll drop them off at home and meet you at the park.”

  “Sure. How late will you be, you think?”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “I dunno, guess that depends how much I have to grovel to get my phone back. Lame.”

  As she approached Mr. Hill’s room, she heard voices and stopped just outside the door, allowing the kid ahead of her the dignity of the cell-phone begging, or other after-school scolding, in private. She wedged herself between the side of the adjacent locker and the doorway.

  Morgan wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, not really. But without her phone to amuse her for a few minutes, she found herself unable not to hear.

  One voice was a boy’s. It sounded kind of scrapey, like a shovel over asphalt. “I can’t do it! I’m an idiot and I’ll never get it.”

  Mr. Hill’s voice, somehow both soothing and firm: “No way. None of that. We don’t do ‘never’ and we don’t call ourselves names. I wouldn’t let anyone else call you an idiot, and I don’t allow you to do that either.”

  Morgan didn’t catch the next words, mumbled as they were.

  Mr. Hill again. “Dude, did you think I got this the first time? I had to take calculus three times in college. No joke. . . . I swear! Ask Mr. Monetti; I told him in the job interview. It just clicked, finally, because I stuck with it, and I had a teacher who was patient enough to teach it to me three times. The third time I aced it. And I used to run in school, back in my glory days.” Self-deprecating chuckle. “But at first I had skinny chicken legs and got winded after half a lap. I’m just saying, no one starts out brilliant at everything and if anyone seems like they do, they’re hiding the effort to seem like a big shot. Don’t feel bad, and no more idiot talk. Come back in the morning if you still don’t get it tonight, and I’ll walk you through it.”

  More mumbling, and Morgan turned away as the poor sap skittered out the door. She didn’t see who it was, but she had an uncomfortable sense this could be the case of Connor in a few years.

  Thinking of Connor reminded her how late and annoyed she was. She stepped into the room.

  He looked up from his desk and seemed confused for a moment. He also looked pale, and like he badly needed a shave. His dark hair was spiky and mussed, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it over and over. His physical appearance contrasted so much with his soothing authority she’d heard moments ago, she briefly wondered if she’d imagined that whole exchange.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Right. The phone.” He unlocked a drawer of his desk and held it out to her. “I assume this one’s yours, and not the other in here that’s covered in pink rhinestones?” He gave her a weak smile.

  “Yeah. Good guess.”

  He pulled it back slightly just as she reached out for it. “And . . . will you be texting in my class again?”

  Morgan sucked in a breath and exhaled. “No, sir, Mr. Hill,” she replied, letting sarcasm slip out.

  Her smart-off had a surprising effect. He handed over the phone but looked utterly defeated, like that time her sophomore year when she’d told a pimply freshman she’d never heard of that she didn’t want to go out with him.

  Morgan accepted the phone and glanced at it for messages. A few, none important. She stowed it in her pocket. “Hey, sorry. I had a tough
day.”

  Mr. Hill rubbed one hand over his face. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “My ex is in your class.”

  Morgan felt a flush climb up her face. Why had she said that?

  Mr. Hill looked up, and what looked like genuine concern was written in the furrow of his brow. “Oh. That sucks. Who . . . ? No, don’t tell me. None of my business.”

  Morgan was already answering. “David Archer.”

  Now Mr. Hill seemed to be studying her.

  “What?”

  “Huh. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

  “Yeah, well, since we broke up, apparently you’re right to not guess it.”

  Morgan knew she should leave. Her brothers would be getting antsy, her mom would be wondering why they were late.

  Yet she said, “Look, it’s none of my business, but are you okay?”

  In the pause, he’d been staring down at the surface of his desk, drumming his fingers. He startled back to life. “Huh?”

  Morgan brushed her hair forward on her scar side. “You just look like you’re not . . . feeling well.”

  “I’m stressed out, actually. This calculus stuff is hard.” He laughed darkly. “Probably not for you, though.”

  Morgan just shrugged. It hadn’t been that hard for her so far, but she didn’t want to act smarter than him, like she was bragging.

  Mr. Hill continued, “I just have to refresh myself on the details, you know? All those years teaching x + 7 = 14 in September have rotted my brain. And I’m worried the kids can tell. Can you tell? Is it obvious?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. You seem fine to me.” This was a lie, Morgan realized as soon as she said it. She’d already thought he looked nervous and unsure, his gaiety in the classroom more forced than she remembered from ninth grade. But he wasn’t putting up a front with her, for some reason, which Morgan found both weird and thrilling.

  He shook his head hard then, like a dog shaking off water. “Anyway, sorry. You don’t want to listen to some old man groan about his job.”

  Morgan laughed. “Oh, yeah, old. Get out the wheelchair, Gramps. You can’t be more than what, thirty?”

  “I’ll have you know I’m a mere twenty-nine years old. For another few months anyway. You sure know how to cheer up a person. Thanks, Morgan.” He was now smiling so wide she saw his cheek tuck in with a dimple. She’d never seen that before.

  Morgan felt a tingly wave of heat pouring down over her.

  Her phone chimed. Her brothers, she knew without looking.

  “Look, I gotta run, my brothers are expecting me. Sorry about the texting.”

  “Sure, Morgan. I understand. Happens to the best of us.”

  Morgan had to work hard not to skip out of the room. She turned back just at the doorway and saw him watching her. She turned away and tipped her head, letting her hair fall to hide her smile.

  She didn’t have time to revel, though, as the phone buzzed again. Connor. “Where the f are you? Stuck here with your fag friend.”

  Morgan broke another school rule by running through the hallways so she could let her brothers know what a couple of immature jackasses they were for saying such a thing about Ethan, about anybody, but especially about Ethan.

  7

  Rain turned away abruptly from Layla’s disappointed confusion and almost ran to the door of NYC. The new girl—lithe and young and earnest about her chakras—was under the impression everyone wanted her company every moment, and she had been trying to rope Rain into an awkward lunch in the cramped back room. Rain begged off, saying she wanted some air, and Layla had made to follow her even then. She was like a lonely puppy and in her dewy youth reminded Rain of how long ago she herself was so slender, cheerful, and fertile.

  Rain shoved open the door and stole a glance into the window of the adjacent jewelry shop as she took a right turn, marching off as if with purpose, going nowhere special. Her hair was looking thin and flat, and indeed so was the rest of her, though her stomach bumped out unattractively, due to last night’s garlicky pizza.

  Rain bypassed her blue VW Bug parked at the end of the lot and turned away from the row of businesses toward the tree-lined neighborhood nearby.

  She strode along until she found herself at the center of Arbor Valley: Richmond Park. The fanciest houses in town bordered this green, shady expanse. The founding fathers of the town had tried to echo Central Park in New York City. Known simply as “the park,” it featured a fountain in the center that in fact very much resembled the Central Park fountain.

  Rain settled on one of the green benches ringing the fountain space, facing inward. She and TJ—just like countless other Arbor Valley couples—had their wedding pictures taken here. In her very favorite, TJ was dipping her, and she was laughing, one arm around his neck, the other grabbing the top of her head because she feared her veil would slide off onto the pebbled ground. It was a spontaneous moment for TJ, an unguarded moment for her, and the photographer captured the exact apex of their joy.

  Rain’s attention was, as ever, drawn like a compass arrow to any babies or small children. Thus her gaze landed on a toddler with curlicue hair in two pigtails at the top of her head, like puppy ears. The girl was toddling in circles and giggling at her own delightful walking.

  After watching for a few moments, Rain looked up to find her watchful mother to send her a smile of isn’t she adorable?

  Odd. She did not see any such watchful parent nearby. Rain began to study the adults on the benches, looking for a mother, father, nanny, big sister. No one seemed to be paying any mind.

  It was about then that the toddler looked up in a searching kind of way, and her pudgy little face bunched up with confusion.

  Rain left the bench and approached the girl slowly, bending over as she came so by the time she reached her, she was crouched down to her level. “Are you okay, sweetie? Where’s your mommy?”

  The toddler regarded her with round, wary eyes and sniffed hard. She was angling her body slightly away, as if prepared to run screaming. “Where did your mommy go?” Rain prompted again, though she knew it might be a babysitter, grandma, or dad she was with.

  Rain looked around again. No one seemed to be noticing them. There were college-age kids with earbuds in, a few people reading on the benches, mothers absorbed with their own children. A jogger plodded by, his feet whapping heavily into the dirt. She looked around for an authority figure; a police officer, or even a park employee would do.

  No one. Rain rose to her feet but folded over so her face was still close to the girl’s. “Sweetie, let’s try to find your mommy. I’ll take you.” She held out her hand and offered the girl a soft smile.

  The girl seemed to relax at this gesture, and she slipped her dimpled hand into Rain’s.

  Rain started to walk toward a distant play structure, thinking that a likely place the girl had wandered from. The toddler scuffed her feet along slowly. She shifted her grasp of Rain’s hand so that her tiny fingers were wrapped around Rain’s pinky.

  Their progress was painfully slow. Rain paused and crouched down again. “Let me pick you up, sweetie, so we can go faster. Can I do that?”

  The girl didn’t reply, but nor did she seem upset by the idea. Rain put her hands under the child’s armpits. She didn’t react or seem alarmed. So Rain stood up and propped the little girl on her hip. She smelled of strawberries and tomato soup.

  A familiar pang registered in Rain’s chest at being this close to a child not her own. She looked down at the girl, those precious bouncy pigtails, and planted an impulsive kiss on the top of her head, the downy curls tickling her lips.

  A shriek shattered the air.

  “Let go of her!”

  A woman was running toward them, almost waddling with a preschooler on her hip, the older child bouncing along crazily.

  Rain set the girl down carefully, and the toddler ambled toward her mother, arms up and fingers flexing.

  The mother fell to her knees and dropped the older boy at once,
opening her arms for the girl. When her daughter was safely in her arms, she turned on Rain.

  “What were you doing with her? Where were you taking her!”

  Rain held her hands up, palms out. “I was trying to find you!”

  “You were walking her toward the parking lot.” The woman was half sobbing and had reached her other arm around her son, who looked to be maybe four years old, as if Rain might try to run away with him, too.

  Rain replied, half pleading, “No! The playground! I thought she’d come from the playground! She was by the fountain!”

  “Did you follow her there? Were you watching for a child to wander off? I should call the police.” She took out her cell phone and began to dial, but her hands were trembling and she dropped it.

  The girl—who had been placid throughout her walkabout and her brief journey with Rain—began to cling to her mother and wail. The boy popped a thumb in his mouth.

  “No, ma’am, please, I didn’t mean any harm . . .”

  Rain heard the rhythmic pounding of running feet and soon after, panting breath in her ear. Next to her was the jogger who had passed them earlier. “Ma’am?” he said, addressing the mother. “I have to say I watched this young lady with your daughter, and it’s clear she was only trying to help.”

  He jogged in place, keeping his heart rate up.

  The woman plopped down on her rear end and started to sob into her daughter’s neck. “I thought she was gone . . . Joey fell, and I . . . I didn’t know she could unbuckle the stroller . . .”

  The jogger nodded at Rain, one curt dip of the chin, and carried on with his run. She muttered “Thank you,” though he couldn’t have heard.

  Rain approached the woman as one might a wounded animal. “Ma’am? Is there anything you need me to help you with? Carry that diaper bag or anything?”

  The mother dried her face on her daughter’s hair, her hands still locked around her children. “No,” she croaked out. “Sorry. I . . . Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.”