I stared her down. ‘She’s on a trip. No big deal.’
Mrs Ryan blinked hard, as if she’d just run smack into a wall without noticing it was there.
‘I mean, it’s not even worth talking about,’ I went on. ‘Like, not to Claire or anything. She probably has enough on her mind anyway, right?’
Mrs Ryan shifted her weight. Then, she peered into the hall. ‘Oh. Here we are, honey.’ She gestured Claire inside.
Claire wore a heavy blue polo shirt and a long black crinkle skirt. The elastic band stretched hard against her waist. There was a blossom of acne around her mouth. Before she left, Claire’s skin was clear and glowing. Maybe France poisoned her.
‘How about I get a picture of you two?’ Mrs Ryan suggested, holding the Fun Saver to her face. ‘The friends reunited.’
Claire rolled her eyes. ‘God, Mom. No.’
‘Come on. Just one. Stand together.’
There was a frozen beat. Finally, I took a step to Claire. We used to pose for pictures with our arms thrown around each other, our tongues stuck out. Now, it felt like the corners of my mouth were being held down by lead weights. Claire gave off a heated radiance, as if shame had a temperature. There was a fluttering sound. When the flash went off, bright, burnt spots appeared in front of my eyes.
‘Beautiful.’ Mrs Ryan advanced the film and placed the camera on the little table in the hall. Claire and I shot apart fast.
My father emerged, saying, ‘Hi Liz’, and that he’d put a pot of coffee on. The adults migrated toward the kitchen. Suddenly, I didn’t want my father hanging around Mrs Ryan. Sometimes he gave up too much of himself. And Mrs Ryan was tainted with marital strife. Some of it might somehow rub off on him, like a grass stain.
Claire disappeared down the hall to the bathroom, but I stayed where I was, glowering at the Fun Saver on the hall table. I wanted to tear off the wrapping and rip it into thousands of pieces. I slid the camera into my pocket. If Mrs Ryan asked, I would tell her I had no idea where it went.
I found Claire standing in my bedroom doorway. Her eyes swept over the piles of clothes in the corner and the holiday trees and singing Santa Clauses on my dresser-I had Christmasized my room as well. ‘I forgot how big your room was,’ she said after a pause. ‘My room on Avenue A is so small. And my room in Paris was even smaller.’
There was a flowered bra on the floor, the kind that hooked in the front. I noticed a gray flannel nightgown, too, the one with the kitten silk-screened across the chest. A speech bubble above the kitten said, ‘I love to sleep’. I stood on top of it.
‘So,’ I muttered. ‘Biology?’
Claire shrugged. ‘Sure, if you want.’
‘So what’s the deal? Didn’t you take it last year?’
‘Yeah. But I totally sucked at it.’
But you used to be so good at everything, I wanted to say.
I looked around my room and realized there was nowhere for us both to sit. This probably would’ve made more sense at the kitchen table. Finally, I pulled my chair over to the bed, and Claire sat down. I plopped on the bed, pulled my biology book out of my bag, and opened it. ‘How far behind are you?’
‘I got lost around cells and genetics.’ Claire sat very upright in the chair, her hands folded in her lap.
‘Because it was in French?’ I asked.
‘No.’
Because you’re fat? I pictured fat clogging up her brain, impairing her memory.
I flipped to the start of the genetics chapter. Claire leaned over and tapped a drawing of a tightly wound coil of DNA. ‘I heard a Peninsula sub freaked out about genetics on Monday.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Kind of. I was in the class.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was this guy, Mr Rice. He was subbing for Mrs Hewes -she’s on maternity leave. He told us that DNA is magnetic. We’re stuck with our parents, and they’re stuck with us, whether we like it or not. DNA can explain everything we do, except we’re too stupid to understand that yet. Only the aliens can understand it.’
‘Aliens?’ Claire giggled. ‘Even my teachers in France weren’t that messed up.’
‘He didn’t seem messed up, really.’ I clutched a pillow close to my chest, curling away from Claire. ‘Maybe our school is just being narrow-minded.’
Claire stared at me. ‘You believe him?’
‘I just think it’s an interesting theory. I don’t believe the part about the aliens.’
She shifted positions, moving closer. ‘So why do you think it’s interesting?’ Her tone of voice was curious but delicate. It was the same voice she’d used when we were friends, as if I were the most fascinating person in the world.
After a thoughtful moment, Claire added, ‘Is it because you like the idea of everything happening for a reason? Or that, if you looked hard enough, you’d be able to understand why people do the stuff that they do? Like why they go away without telling you where they’re going?’
If she said one more thing, I would punch her puffy face. I would point out that she wasn’t one to talk-she’d found her mother fooling around with that young Frenchman, after all. I pictured Claire throwing open the double doors to her parents’ bedroom, seeing Mrs Ryan and the boulangerie baker tangled in bed together, the sheets on the floor. The baker was wearing a black beret and nothing else. The soles of his bare feet were dirty, and so were his hands.
Claire pressed her lips together coyly. Even in her current state, she could be her old self with me-the one who always said, It’s okay. You can tell me. I’ll still like you. But she didn’t like me in the end, did she? She didn’t let me into her world; there was something horribly wrong with me. Maybe it was an obvious thing, something a lot of people saw.
Still, I thought about the thing bumping around inside of me. The thing I was afraid to admit, even to myself. Part of me wanted to tell her. Part of me needed someone to tell.
‘Do you remember when we used to roll down the hill in the park?’ Claire asked quietly.
I bit my lip hard, startled. ‘We used to have races.’
‘Rolling races.’ Claire made a small smile. ‘That was fun.’
‘And we used to play a lot of Monopoly,’ I said, as if just recalling.
‘You were always the guy on the horse.’
‘And you were always the shoe.’
‘And I used to tickle you.’ Claire giggled.
‘I hated that.’
‘C’mon. It was so much fun.’ Claire looked thoughtful, then wily, almost like she was considering tickling me right then. She moved toward me. In anticipation, I moved back on the bed and jerked my foot away quickly, sideswiping the softness of her stomach. It felt substantial and…mushy.
Claire jumped back and crossed her arms over the spot on her stomach that I’d kicked. I tucked my foot underneath the bed skirt. ‘Sorry.’
‘I was just getting my highlighter,’ Claire mumbled. It had fallen on the floor; she reached down for it. At that moment, the holiday tree came on. It was on a timer, playing a different Christmas song every fifteen minutes. This time, it was Perry Como singing ‘Mistletoe and Holly’. Claire and I both jumped.
The mood changed fast, from light to awkward. Claire sat back down and we went through the