Avoid All Entanglements

“Mom, Dad’s gonna be working late tonight, okay? And I’m going...out for a little while. If you need dinner you can warm up last night’s spaghetti.” I waited, hoping to hear some kind of response from Mom.

There was no sound. With a door separating us, I couldn’t even tell what kind of mood she was in. I sighed, not even able to muster up enough emotion to be upset. I had spent the day trying to figure out what books I needed for senior year at Rosewood and tried to get whatever I didn’t have from downtown while trying not to get lost. It was a crazy day for me, running around town.

I had almost forgotten about Tyler Evans’ party too. At least, until I had noticed the thumping beats from next door, remembered what was happening and the promise I made to Dad.

Then I got dressed, wearing an old halter neck blue sundress and a pair of blue wedges I’d gotten a while but never worn. I did my make-up as simply as possible. It was strange, going through this ritual of getting dressed up and made up for a party by myself. At times, it even felt like there was something in the air that reminded me of Cora.

Whatever it was, I tried to shake it off, just like how I had shook Cora off, ignoring her calls and texts after the accident.

“Well, if you don’t need anything, I’ll be leaving now.”

There was still no response.

I left the house, slipping my key into a white clutch I was bringing with me. Then I walked next door.

The door was wide open, which surprised me. But then I thought about it—this was Rosewood, California, nobody lacked anything. They had all perfect families, perfect lives, perfect everything. I half-smiled to myself, wondering when I had turned into such a cynic.

I walked in, surveying Tyler’s house.

It looked very much like my own—homely but immaculate—aside from how there were lots of pictures of two kids, a girl and a boy, on the walls. My smile grew when I saw a photo of Tyler, who was probably in middle school, and Delia. He was yanking on her pigtails. A quick scan showed that there really were a lot of photos of them. His family had practically documented every moment of their kids’ lives.

Maybe my own family had been like this once. But it seemed like such a long time ago that I couldn’t remember how it felt anymore. Had I liked it, the attention and the care? All along, I’d known that after I left for college, I wouldn’t be able to replicate those feelings anymore. I hadn’t known that it would end even before my senior year started though.

“Are you new here?”

The girl’s voice startled me and I nearly dropped my clutch. She smiled when she saw this. Her dirty blonde hair was long and wavy, reaching the small of her back and she was wearing a purple dress that was a little too low cut for my tastes. But what caught my attention were her eyes—a shade between blue and green that were so striking I couldn’t help but to feel like I was being sucked in.

“You’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Sasha McKinley.”

“...um, yeah, I’m Spencer Thompson.”

She nodded slowly. “Well, if you want something to drink you can head to the kitchen or something. People are still coming in and all, but mostly they’re sticking to the backyard.”

I wanted to ask her where Tyler was but I didn’t. Instead, I simply nodded and smiled. Then I went to the kitchen.

There were the stereotypical red cups on the tables, already filled. I wrinkled my nose at them, hoping that they weren’t the only drinks available. One thing that hadn’t changed from Before to Now was how I didn’t like to drink. Sneaking a look around me to make sure that there wasn’t anybody around, I opened the fridge to see if I could find any bottled water.

I grabbed one out of the fridge and was about to take a swig from it when I noticed that I wasn’t alone in the kitchen anymore. Instead, there was a dirty blonde-haired boy seated at the table, with his arms folded and one hand nursing a red cup. He was looking directly at me. Then he said, “I see you’re already making yourself comfortable.”

Flushing, I wondered if it would be impolite to leave Tyler’s house immediately. But then I wasn’t doing anything wrong. So I squared my shoulders and sat opposite Riley. “Nice to see you again.”

Riley nodded and his expression remained guarded. I couldn’t tell if he believed what I said.

Feeling incredibly awkward, I took a sip of the water. Then I asked, “Um, so what are you doing here instead of being out there?”

“Avoiding Tyler, he’s in the backyard if you want to see him.” His tone was careless and he took a gulp from the red cup. Then he crumpled it and grabbed another. “Did you see a blonde girl with wavy hair on your way in, Spencer?”

There was something about the way he spoke my name that confirmed my suspicions. He didn’t like me and it stung. He was still steadily looking at me though; making me feel like I needed to reply him. “Yeah, Sasha McKinley, right? Are you looking for her?”

“Nope.” He popped the p sound of the word, which made me think that he’d been drinking for a while. “I’m avoiding her too. You should go look for Tyler. He’s probably wondering where you are.”

I took his hint and left him alone. Then I wandered into the backyard, where the music was the loudest. There were a lot of people, talking and mingling and laughing. Couples held each other’s hands and friends clustered in groups, gossiping. Something in my chest hurt and again, I thought about Cora and the rest of my track friends whom I had left behind, not thinking to say goodbye.

Then I spotted Tyler amongst the group of people. He was listening to some guys talk and it didn’t seem like he’d noticed me yet.

Just at that moment, he looked up and caught sight of me. He smiled easily, saying something to his group of guy friends. They glanced at me too and one of them laughed and shoved him. Tyler’s smile never slipped. Then he left them and ambled to me.

“Hey, how’re things?”

I said the same thing I had for months now, that I felt fine.

“Well let me introduce you to some people.” Tyler gestured to a cluster of people milling about the barbeque pit. “Those are my friends from the track team, let’s go meet them.”

I followed him hesitantly, not sure that this was what I wanted to get into.

To his friends, Tyler said, “Hey guys, this is Spencer. She just moved here from Kingston, Florida.”

They said their hellos and introduced themselves, which I couldn’t really remember. But one of them, a girl with short, dark red hair narrowed her eyes at me and asked, “Hey I was from Florida too. Any chance you ran track previously? Because you look really familiar, like you ran in state finals.”

“... um, I-”

“Nope, she didn’t,” said Tyler, smoothly. To me, he rolled his eyes good-naturedly and said, “Nat’s probably a little drunk right now. Don’t take it like an insult or anything.”

His friends laughed, along with the girl though she didn’t lose the look of thoughtfulness in her eyes.

We made small talk for a while before we moved onto another group of his friends. But I couldn’t lose the feeling that there had been more to Tyler at the moment when he covered up for me. He hadn’t known that I had ran track before and that I was uncomfortable talking about it. But he’d tried to help me hide about it too. Why?

I asked him that later that night and his reply came, accompanied with a half-smile, “You didn’t look comfortable in there. I thought you needed some help. But was Natalie right? Did you really track?”

I nodded and said nothing else, mulling over his words. Something about them made me feel uneasy; maybe it was how Tyler preferred to keep the situation comfortable rather than honest. But I’d appreciated his help so who was I to say that it wasn’t the right thing to do?

When I got home later, Dad wasn’t home yet. He really was working late.

I checked on the spaghetti and found that it was gone, so she had heard me after all. I listened at Mom’s door to see if she was still awake. The sound I heard scared me— she was quietly sobbing, so unlike the way she had cried all out at the funeral.

Previously I had thought it was bad, that her crying broke whatever façade of normalcy I was trying to feel. But now, her quiet crying made me feel worse, that I didn’t want my mother to be like this. I wanted her to be strong, to tell me how to handle things and not to be the one that needed help. I didn’t want things to be like this.

Backing away from her door, I went to my room and slammed the door, making sure that she knew I was home.