On the Fence Read online

  I nodded and took the form, my eyes scanning over the words but not reading them.

  “You should tell your mom to come watch.”

  Every time she mentioned my mother, my stomach tightened. I should just tell her the truth and get it over with. Instead the words “My mom has to work Saturday so she won’t be able to make it” came out. My mouth had a mind of its own lately. I held up the form. “But I’ll get this signed.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s get to work.”

  That night I couldn’t sleep for two reasons: one, because I hadn’t run, and two, because the paper that I had forged my dead mother’s signature on screamed at me. It sat in my desk drawer, yelling at the top of its lungs. I should’ve just asked my dad to sign it. He would’ve . . . probably. After asking lots of questions.

  I remembered one time my dad came home with a bottle of conditioner and put it on the desk in front of me. “Do you need this? Carol at work said you might.” I stared at the bottle. Of course I knew what it was, I’d seen enough commercials, but I had never used it before. He had guilt in his eyes like he had somehow failed me. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know. It would’ve been so much easier if he had four boys. I knew that, and I knew he knew that. “No, I’m good. My hair doesn’t really get that tangled. But thanks. I’ll use it.” And I did. I couldn’t believe I had lived that long without it.

  I wondered if he’d feel just as guilty now for not buying me makeup. I sighed and stared at my desk as if the form Linda gave me was going to burn its way through the drawer. I finally rolled out of bed at one a.m. and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. What was wrong with me? I had justified the act by telling myself that the release was just a formality. I wasn’t going to have an allergic reaction, so it was unnecessary. And my dad would never find out. It wasn’t like this paper would be sent to the government to check and verify. It would get filed away in the ugly metal desk in the stockroom at Bazaar, never to be pulled out again.

  I made my way downstairs. Once in the kitchen, I had a clear view of Braden’s house. His bedroom light was on. I grabbed my phone and texted him. Up for a fence chat?

  Yep.

  “Hey,” he said when we stood separated by the wooden barrier.

  “Hi.” I waited for him to talk first, even though I was the one who’d called him out here. I felt embarrassed by the rashness of that decision. Instead of facing the fence, staring at his shadowy figure through the slats, I adopted our previous pose of sitting, back to the fence, then looked up at the moon. It was so much easier to talk to the moon than to Braden. At least about real stuff. I listened as he did the same thing.

  “So, you’re up late tonight,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He offered no explanation.

  My neck hurt, and I rubbed at it. “Have you ever done something stupid and then felt incredibly guilty about it?”

  “Yes.” Again, he didn’t expound. “What did you do?”

  Pretended my life was whole. “Lied.”

  “To who?”

  “My boss.”

  “About?”

  “About . . .” Why did the moon make me want to spill all my secrets to Braden? “. . . something really dumb, but now I don’t know how to tell her the truth.”

  “What’s your boss like?”

  “Weird. I think she took one of those spiritual journeys around the world or something and thinks she’s reached some sort of inner peace. Now her self-imposed job in life is to fix broken spirits.”

  Braden sometimes pulled on his bottom lip when he was thinking, and I could hear that he was doing that when he said, “And she thinks your spirit is broken?”

  The clouds around the moon glowed white. “No. Not mine. Well, yes, mine, but not just mine, everyone’s. She thinks everyone has a broken spirit.”

  “Everyone but her.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “So you lied to keep her out of your personal business?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then stop worrying about it. She doesn’t need to butt into your life anyway. If it’s nothing big then just forget about it.”

  I just reincarnated a dead person, that’s all, nothing big. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Is that a first?”

  “What?”

  “Me being right?”

  “Ha. Ha.” And then it was quiet. So quiet I could hear his breaths, deep and long. With each breath, it seemed, my shoulders relaxed.

  “But if it is something big . . .” He trailed off and my shoulders immediately tensed again. “It will just eat at you.”

  I knew this was true. It was already making a meal of my insides. “Well, as long as it starts with some of my more useless organs, then I have some time.”

  He laughed.

  “You eat a lot of carrots.”

  “Uh . . . what?”

  “You like carrots. That’s my fact about you. You know, in the game of proving I know more about you and your boring life than you know about mine.”

  “But carrots aren’t my favorite food.” He’d sounded smug when he said it, like he was announcing I had lost.

  “I didn’t say they were. I said you eat a lot of them. Maybe they’re not listed next to ‘Favorite Food’ in your ‘My Favorite Things’ diary entry, but you like them.”

  “No, they’re listed next to ‘Favorite Vegetable.’”

  “I knew it.”

  “Okay, my match . . . You are forever eating Cocoa Krispies. Loudly.”

  “It’s a loud cereal.”

  We spent the next several minutes listing off the other items that were in our fictitious Favorite Things diary entries. His: color—blue, subject—history, food—steak, and day—Saturday. Mine: red, PE, pizza, and Friday (previously Saturday until work butted in).

  “I have one,” he announced. “You hate girls who wear sparkly words across their butts.”

  I laughed. “How could you possibly know that?” I had never said that pet peeve out loud.

  “Because I see the look on your face when a girl with the word juicy on her butt is walking in front of us. It’s pretty funny.”

  “Yes, it’s true. I’m not a fan.” I raised a finger in the air even though he couldn’t see me. “Never date a girl who feels the need to make her butt a billboard.”

  He gave a little humming noise.

  “What?”

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever given an opinion about who I should date. What else should I avoid?”

  “I don’t know your type of girls, Braden.” Girly girls were so far out of my circle of friends that I didn’t even begin to try to understand them. “I have no idea what makes a girl undateable. Truthfully, I’m not even sure a girl with a sparkly announcement on her butt isn’t worthy, seeing as how I’ve never spent more than one minute talking to a girl like that.”

  “I’m sure Gage will bring one home eventually, and then you can find out.”

  I laughed. “True.”

  “What did you mean by that, anyway?”

  “By what?”

  “That you don’t know my type of girls?”

  “I hang out with athletes.”

  “And?”

  I paused, a little surprised. Was he saying he would date my teammates if I set him up? It had been a while since Braden had a girlfriend, but I was pretty sure his last one knew more about nail patterns than defensive patterns. “And . . . I guess I don’t know your type.”

  He chuckled. “I find that hard to believe.”

  My cheeks prickled and goose bumps formed on my arms. I didn’t let my mind follow that implication down any of the paths it seemed to want to go. That didn’t mean anything. It really didn’t. He just meant that I knew him well, so I knew exactly the type of girl he would date. And I did. One who did her hair and knew how to pick out cute clothes and didn’t wear running shoes everywhere.

  Braden cleared his throat. “Do you have a match for my fact, or did I win?”

  It to
ok me a minute to remember what his fact was. I had to backtrack to the sparkly-words-across-the-butt comment. “You honestly think you’re going to win that easily?” So did his fact mean that in order to match I had to figure out something he hated about guys? I pictured Braden at school. Even though he was a jock he was fairly inclusive. “Okay, so since I don’t really hate girls with the word juicy on their butts, I just think it’s a poor fashion choice, I’m going to match with loafers.”

  “Loafers?”

  “You think guys shouldn’t wear loafers.”

  He gave a breathy laugh. “I’ll give you credit for that one.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But it’s not quite right. So if it’s not poor fashion, what is it about loafers that you don’t like?”

  “It’s not so much the loafers as it is the guys wearing the loafers.”

  “Oh, really?” That was news to me. “What about them?”

  “They’re usually rich, preppy snobs who think the world owes them something. Frat types.”

  “Wow, all that from a pair of shoes? Are you generalizing, Braden?”

  “Maybe. Just be wary of useless shoes, Charlie. What someone wears on their feet says a lot about them.”

  I looked down at my bare feet and wiggled my toes. I wondered if that rule applied to girls, too, or just guys. “Noted. So no dating guys who drink V8, wear loafers or too-short jeans—”

  “Who set the too-short jeans rule?”

  “Gage.”

  “Good call.” I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “How many rules has he given you?”

  “Too many. I don’t remember half of them.” Most of them were jokes, I knew, but it was hard to feel like any guy would ever measure up to my brothers’ ridiculous guidelines.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping notes for you. I’ll add that one to the list.”

  I laughed.

  Braden let out a large yawn. “Okay. I better get to bed or you’re going to school me in soccer tomorrow.”

  I smiled. Considering how crappy I felt when I came outside, I was surprised at how my insides seemed to soar. “Make sure you wear the right shoes.”

  “Always.”

  Chapter 10

  “Here she comes.” Linda pointed at the door and a girl who carried a bag big enough to hold ten soccer balls. That was all makeup? “She’s a little chatty, by the way.”

  The door swung open, and the girl and her big bag came through it. She looked about my age. “Hello!” the girl said as she approached. “I almost got lost even though I’ve been here before and Old Town is tiny. For some reason I just thought you were past Fifth instead of Fourth and I was so turned around that I thought I was going to miss our time. I sent out a flyer and we should be packed this morning. I’m so excited. Where should I set up? That counter looks good. I’ll just unload there. You have a backed stool like we talked about, right?”

  A little chatty? She must’ve spoken at the rate of five hundred words a minute. She looked at me. “You must be Charlie. I’m Amber. Oh, look at you, you left yourself completely blank for me, no false lashes or anything. And I even get to shape your brows? This is going to be great.” She stepped closer and studied my face. “You have the perfect skin and bone structure for this. We are going to sell lots of makeup today.”

  Did she have to breathe like the rest of us? Because I didn’t hear a single breath during her speech. Deep-sea divers could train themselves to hold their breath for seven minutes at a time. Were Olympic-caliber talkers the same way?

  Linda laughed like she was very amused with Amber.

  “So we have about thirty minutes before the class starts. If we move some of these racks of clothes off to the side, we could set up some chairs here in the middle. Did the chairs get delivered? I called yesterday to make sure they were set to arrive this morning, but I don’t see them.”

  “They’re in the back,” Linda said.

  “I’ll start bringing them out.” I needed a break. She was exhausting.

  “Thank you so much. I’ll get the makeup ready.”

  We weren’t even five minutes into the class and I knew I never wanted to do it again. She was explaining to the group how to properly pluck eyebrows, and my face was raw from the pain. So far I had managed to keep from actually screaming out loud, but I wasn’t sure if I could keep that up. My nose itched and my eyes watered.

  “Charlie already has a very nicely shaped eyebrow, so we won’t get carried away. Just a little cleaning up.”

  I wondered what a lot of cleaning up would feel like. I went into a zone, completely shutting out everything around me. My brain went through basketball plays, and my shoulders immediately relaxed. Five more weeks until camp, when I was sure my dad would let me quit this job. It just wouldn’t be practical to keep it when I had to leave for a week and then start school right when I got back. He’d see the logic. Plus, by then, I’d have . . . I did the math in my head and knew I wouldn’t have quite enough to cover my tickets. Still, he’d let me off. He had to.

  It was hard to tell how much time passed. I guess I could’ve counted Amber’s words and figured it out that way. She hadn’t stopped talking the entire time. But at one point she stepped to the side and said, “And that is a daytime look with the Max line.”

  A couple of people said, “Ooh,” and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

  “Next week we’ll showcase the evening look. There are order forms in your booklet, and please feel free to ask me any questions. Most of the products I have in stock. I’ll also be setting up a display here in Bazaar, in case you can’t buy all the things you have on your list today.”

  I wondered how long I had to sit there before I could go to the back and wash my face. My leg bounced and twitched as I waited. I’d already been sitting for way too long. A couple of people walked over to talk to Amber and pointed out different things on my face like I wasn’t there. Not that I’d have been able to answer their questions, but it still felt weird.

  Linda came over and patted my shoulder. “You did so well, and you look amazing.”

  I shrugged.

  “Sit still for a minute, I’m going to grab my camera from the back so I can take a picture for your mom.”

  My stomach twisted with guilt.

  When Linda left, Amber said, “Thanks, Charlie. You are the perfect canvas. Your features were made to show off makeup. I don’t believe how enormous your eyes look with mascara.”

  And enormous eyes were a good thing?

  Amber turned her attention to the line of people that had formed, orders in hand, and began working her way through them. Linda came back out with the camera and took several pictures of me. “I’m going to print one of these off across the street. Watch the store for me.”

  “You really don’t need to do that,” I said.

  But she waved her hand through the air and kept walking.

  The line finally thinned and people clutching cute purple bags with tissue paper left the store, chatting. Amber said, “Don’t forget to tell your friends, and come back for the evening face next week,” as each of them walked away.

  Two girls who looked as made-up as Amber joined us in front after everyone had left. “You did good, Amber.”

  “So, what do you think, girls? Easy, right? You guys could each find your own store. Maybe one of you can hit a downtown shop. This is definitely going to earn me enough for my fall wardrobe.”

  “So, Linda said you might have some good face wash for me?” I asked before she and her friends got too busy talking about clothes.

  “You’re going to wash it off?” one of them said.

  “Well, I’m playing ball after this, so it’s not really practical.”

  Amber smiled, reached into her bag, and pulled out a green package. “These are face wipes. You should need just one.”

  I took them. “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and if you want, Charlie, I’ll gi
ve you all the makeup I used on you today at cost.”

  “Um . . . I haven’t been paid yet.”

  She grabbed one of the thick catalogs of makeup, turned it to the front page where there was a picture of her, and circled her phone number. “Well, call me if you change your mind. I can deliver.” She handed it to me.

  Linda returned, and I pointed to the back. She nodded.

  I started to walk away.

  “Charlie,” Amber called. I turned around. “We’re going out to lunch, the three of us.” She pointed to her two friends. “Do you want to come?”

  I couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting with three girls I hardly knew and having to think of something to say. “I have plans today. Next time?”

  “Next Saturday.” She smiled. “I’m holding you to it.”

  As I walked away, I pulled out a wipe and started scrubbing my face immediately. When I got to the bathroom, I stopped in front of the sink. My breath caught when I saw myself in the mirror. The image reminded me of the picture hanging in our hallway—my mom on her wedding day. My heart clenched. I scrubbed faster.

  “What are you doing?” Gage asked, barging into my room after a single knock.

  I slammed the picture Linda had taken of me facedown on the table. “Nothing.”

  “Uh, okay. I’ll leave it alone because I don’t know if I want to know after a reaction like that.”

  “Yeah, you should. What do you want?”

  He fell back onto my bed. “Tomorrow we’re playing disc golf at Woodward Park. You in?”

  “Of course.” I looked at the clock. Ten. “Hey, will you go running with me?”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “No, but thanks for asking.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”