Lock and Key(21)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“This place,” Nate said, looking at the bottles on the table, a lone cobweb stretching across the room between us, “it’s, like—”

Suddenly there was a gust of wind outside, and a few leaves blew in the open door, skittering in across the kitchen floor. I felt so shaken, unsettled, that my voice was sharp as I said, “Just wait in the car. All right?”

He looked at me for a second. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure thing.” Then he stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him.

Stop it, I told myself, feeling tears pricking my eyes, so stupid. I looked around the room, trying to clear my head and concentrate on what I should take with me, but everything was blurring, and I felt a sob work its way up my throat. I put my hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking, and forced my feet to move.

Think, think, I kept saying in my head as I walked back to the kitchen and began pulling stuff off the clothesline. Everything was stiff and smelly, and the more I took down the more I could see of the rest of the kitchen: the pots and pans piled in the sink, the buckets I’d used to collect water from the bathroom, the clothesline, now sagging over my head. I was doing just fine, I’d told Cora, and at the time, I’d believed it. But now, standing there with my stiff clothes in my arms, the smell of rotting food filling my nostrils, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

I reached up, wiping my eyes, and looked back out at Nate, who was sitting behind the wheel of his car, a cell phone to his ear. God only knew what he was thinking. I looked down at my clothes, knowing I couldn’t bring them with me, even though they, the few things in the next room, and that beat-up, broken-down Subaru were all I really had. As I dropped them onto the table, I told myself I’d come back for them and everything else, just as soon as I got settled. It was such an easy promise to make. So easy that I could almost imagine another person saying the same thing to themselves as they walked out that door, believing it, too. Almost.

I was not looking forward to the ride home, as God only knew what Nate would say to me, or how I would dodge the questions he would inevitably ask. So I decided, as I locked the door behind me, to go with a route I knew well: complete and total denial. I’d act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if this trip was exactly what I had expected it to be. If I was convincing enough, he’d have no choice but to see it the same way.

I was all casual as I walked back to the car, playing my part. When I got in, though, I realized it wasn’t even necessary. He still had the phone clamped to his ear and didn’t even glance at me as he shifted into reverse, backing away from the house.

While he was distracted, I took one last look at that window into my mom’s room. Talk about denial; even from a distance and in motion, I could tell there was no one inside. There’s something just obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

“It’s not a problem,” Nate said suddenly, and I glanced over at him. He had his eyes on the road, his mouth a thin line as he listened to whoever was speaking. “Look, I can be there in ten minutes. Maybe even less than that. Then I’ll just grab it from her, and—”

Whoever it was cut him off, their voice rising enough that I could hear it, though not make out specific words. Nate reached up, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, hitting the gas as we turned back onto the main road. “No . . .” He trailed off. “I just had to run this errand for school. Yeah. Yes. Okay.”

He flipped the phone shut, dropping it with a clank into the console between our seats. “Problem?” I said.

“Nah,” he said. “Just my dad. He’s a little . . . controlling about the business.”

“You forgot to frost some cupcakes?”

He glanced over at me, as if surprised I was capable of humor. “Something like that,” he said. “I have to make a stop on the way home. If you don’t mind.”

“It’s your car,” I said with a shrug.

As we merged onto the highway, the phone rang again. Nate grabbed it, glancing at the display, then flipped it open. “Hello? Yes. I’m on the way. On the highway. Ten minutes. Sure. Okay. Bye.”

This time, he didn’t put the phone down, instead just keeping it in his hand. After a moment, he said, “It’s just the two of us, you know. Living together, working together. It can get . . . kind of intense.”

“I know,” I said.

Maybe it was because my mother was on my mind, but this came out before I even realized it, an unconscious, immediate reaction. It was also the last thing I wanted to be talking about, especially with Nate, but of course then he said, “Yeah?”

I shrugged. “I used to work with my mom. I mean, for a while anyway.”

“Really?” I nodded. “What’d you do?”

“Delivered lost luggage for the airlines.”

He raised his eyebrows, either surprised or impressed. “People really do that?”

“What, you think they just get teleported to you or something? ”

“No,” he said slowly, shooting me a look. “I just mean . . . it’s one of those things you know gets done. You just don’t actually think of someone doing it.”

“Well,” I said, “I am that someone. Or was, anyway.”

We were taking an exit now, circling around to a stop-light. As we pulled up to it, Nate said, “So what happened?”

“With what?”

“The luggage delivery. Why did you quit?”

This time, I knew enough not to answer, only evade. “Just moved on,” I said. “That’s all.”

Thankfully, he did not pursue this further, instead just putting on his blinker and turning into the front entrance of the Vista Mall, a sprawling complex of stores and restaurants. The parking lot was packed as we zipped down a row of cars, then another before pulling up behind an old green Chevy Tahoe. The back door was open, revealing an extremely cluttered backseat piled with boxes and milk crates, which were in turn filled with various envelopes and packing materials. A woman with red hair coiled into a messy bun wearing a fuzzy pink sweater and holding a to-go coffee cup in one hand was bent over them, her back to us.

Nate rolled down his window. “Harriet,” he called out.

She didn’t hear him as she picked up a crate, shoving it farther back. An empty coffee cup popped out and started to roll away, but she grabbed it, stuffing it in another box.