All Adults Here(23)
Cecelia froze. “Is this a setup?” she whispered to Porter. “You said we were just going shopping.”
“We are,” Porter said. “We’re shopping for clothes and friends.”
“August is very nice,” John said. “I promise.”
“What do you need, you think, Cecelia?” Porter asked, moving next to her niece. “Jeans? I kind of love bell-bottoms again; is that weird, John?”
“You know how it works,” John said. “If you’re old enough to have worn it the last time around, it’s probably ready to come back. The nineties were a fertile time for sailor jeans.”
“I’m old. You’re telling me that I’m old.” Porter mimed strangling herself. “But, really, I like them.” She had worn bell-bottoms on her first day of high school, with a shrunken baby-blue T-shirt that read SKATEBOARD on it, even though she’d never ridden a skateboard in her life.
There was another set of footsteps on the stairs, and then August appeared with a weightless leap. He was all arms and legs, like a puppy with comically large paws—his body, like Cecelia’s, was still in the midst of figuring out what it looked like. His face was just like Ruth’s—he had dark eyes and a pointed chin and eyebrows like em dashes across his pale forehead. His hair swung out from behind his ears, and then settled onto his shoulders like a medieval prince in slow motion.
“August, this is Cecelia, Porter’s niece. Show her around?”
August mimed irritation with an eye roll, which made Cecelia’s shoulders contract into her body like a pangolin rolling into a little armored knot; Porter watched it happen. But then he nodded amiably and tugged her on the elbow. “Let’s start with T-shirts.” He spun on his heels and headed toward the stairs, Cecelia following behind like a person being sent to death row.
“We’re going to run across the street and grab some coffee,” John said. “Okay?”
“Okay,” August said.
John patted Porter on the back. “It’ll be easier without us, trust me.”
She had so much to learn from him. Porter would have stayed to shop, but apparently that wasn’t what parents did.
* * *
—
“Want to look at clothes?” August said, not unkindly. “Come on.” He was so comfortable in the space that Cecelia had no choice but to pretend she was too. She’d never really been friends with boys, not since she was in preschool. Even then, there always seemed to be a threat of kissing, or being punched, like boys had no agency over their own bodies and were being controlled by tiny aliens who lived in their brains. Of course, now the girls were even worse, and the boys at her old school now seemed like stuffed animals in comparison, docile idiots for whom pizza solved any emotional difficulty. Maybe it was time to give boys another try. Upstairs, August flipped quickly through the racks. Cecelia wondered if she should start making a list of all the times in her life that she’d felt left behind. How long would it take to run out of paper and ink? The bell tinkled again downstairs, which meant that she was now alone again, with this new person. She watched him from behind, his thin fingers moving so quickly they were nearly blurry. He didn’t turn or acknowledge her presence for a few minutes, which actually made Cecelia feel better about the whole thing, as though he might have forgotten that she was there, and she could slowly back out the way she’d come.
“Try this one,” he said, slipping a shirt off its hanger and tossing it over his shoulder.
Cecelia stumbled to catch the flying cotton ball, and then unwound it to look. It felt like it had been washed a thousand times, as soft as a piece of clothing could get before total disintegration. There was a drawing of the Statue of Liberty, and underneath, in script, NEW YORK CITY.
“I love it,” Cecelia said, Lady Liberty waving at her from home. They—her parents—hadn’t said how long this would go on, their little experiment, removing her from her native environment to see if she would grow roots or wilt in the new soil. A year, she guessed. But they hadn’t said. A tear began to form way down at the base of Cecelia’s throat and she swallowed and swallowed until it disappeared.
“I’m good at this,” August said. “It’s my summer job. And my fall job. Et cetera. If a job can be something you don’t get paid for.”
“That’s so cool,” Cecelia said, and then wished she hadn’t. She didn’t understand what made something cool, but she did understand that calling something cool instantly undid whatever magic had been at work. August turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow. “I mean, if you’re into, like, wearing stuff.”
“Right,” August said. “And Clapham’s nudist scene is really coming along, I don’t know if your aunt told you.” He tossed something else.
“What?” Cecelia said as she caught it.
“I’m joking.” He moved on to the next rack and pulled a few more things off hangers, placing the empty hangers in a neat pile on the floor. “Here, try them on.” August shoved aside a heavy velvet curtain and put the things on an overstuffed chair. Cecelia waited for him to leave before she walked in.
It had been six months since Cecelia’s best friend had met someone. Met someone. As if that was a normal thing for a seventh grader to do outside the confines of school or gymnastics class or someone’s birthday party. Katherine was the first to get her period, first to get a bra, first to get a phone, first to kiss a boy in Truth or Dare, first to get her own Snapchat account.