Far from the Tree(16)

Maya’s parents always wanted to talk about her adoption, especially when she had been younger. Maya suspected that they were doing a lot of preventative work to make sure that they hadn’t monumentally screwed her up. That if one day she suddenly went berserk and slaughtered a roomful of people, they could hold up their hands and say, “We tried, really we did.” She had been to therapists, group sessions with other adopted kids, guided one-on-one discussions with her parents when Lauren was at friends’ houses. “Do you think about your birth mother?” they asked her, and Maya said, “Yes?” because she thought that was the correct answer. But the truth was far deeper. The truth was every single color in a rainbow spectrum, and Maya didn’t have the words to say what she felt.

So she didn’t say anything. It was just easier that way.

Grace picked Maya up just before noon on Saturday. The plan had been to meet at eleven thirty, but Maya had overslept, and when she eventually came downstairs, she felt like a cranky tornado, a swirl of grays. (She was pretty sure there was a Fifty Shades joke in there, but she was too tired to make it.) “Starbucks,” she said to Grace, her Ray-Bans already over her eyes even though they were still inside.

“Okay,” Grace said. Maya was pretty sure she agreed only because she was too scared of Maya’s uncaffeinated state to argue.

“So do you have a boyfriend?” Maya asked once they were in the car, a giant Frappuccino clutched in her hand.

“Nope,” Grace said in a sort of clipped way. There was something there pressing against the surface of her words, but Maya couldn’t tell what it was.

“Girlfriend, then?” she asked. “Did you inherit the same gene as your little sister?”

Grace smiled this time. “Nope. That’s all you.”

“Well, have you, though?”

“What?”

“Had a boyfriend. Or girlfriend.”

“Yes. And no.”

Maya wondered if Grace was lying. Grace seemed like the kind of girl who would wait her whole life so she could lose her virginity on her wedding night, who would read Cosmo articles about how to give him the best blow job of his life! but never actually say the word blow job. Which was fine—Maya wasn’t about to start telling someone what they should do with their body or whatever—but being next to someone that perfect made Maya just want to be messier, dirtier, louder.

For God’s sakes, Maya thought, her posture was perfect even while she was driving.

“But you don’t want to talk about this boyfriend?” Maya asked.

“Who said I don’t want to talk about him?”

“Well, you’re answering me like it’s a deposition.”

‘Well, you’re quizzing me like a lawyer.”

“Touchy, touchy,” she muttered, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. “Bad breakup?”

“You could say that.” Grace laughed again. “You could definitely say that.”

Maya nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I had a bad breakup, too, before I met Claire. There was this girl, Julia? Ugh, she was the worst. I don’t know what I saw in her.”

“Hmm,” Grace said, which is what Maya’s mom usually said to her dad whenever he was talking about something that didn’t interest her.

“I mean, I know what I saw in her,” Maya continued, rolling down her window. “It’s just that I saw the wrong things, you know?”

Grace glanced at her. “She was hot?”

“She was hot,” Maya confirmed. “Hey, speaking of. Can you put the AC on? You drive like my mom.”

“Pretty sure that’s not a compliment,” Grace said.

“You would be right.”

Grace sighed and reached over to turn on the air. “Any other requests?”

“Can we change the radio station?” Maya started pressing buttons on the dashboard. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not fifty-five years old. I don’t exactly want to listen to NPR, Grandma.”

Maya had no idea why she couldn’t stop talking. She liked Grace. Grace was fine. She had done nothing but drive Maya to meet their brother and buy her Starbucks on the way. But Maya had done the same thing when she and Grace first met at Maya’s house, her words coming out rapid fire, talking and talking, making fun of Lauren and her parents, never letting Grace get a word in edgewise. Please like me was what she had wanted to say. Please be my friend.

Maya didn’t have a lot of friends. There were girls she knew at school, but they mostly just said hello in the hallways, sometimes talked before class began and the teacher hadn’t yet arrived. Her old school had been kindergarten through eighth grade, and that was back when she and Lauren were inseparable, even dressing alike when they were really young. She hadn’t needed many friends because she had Lauren.

That had changed on the first day of ninth grade, when they were suddenly in two different schools and Maya found herself the odd girl out, surrounded by girls who had been learning together since preschool.

And having a mom who drank made it hard to bring anyone home after school, or to invite them over for pool parties or slumber parties. Maya hadn’t brought a friend over in years. Claire was the exception, but even she was rarely there.

Maya had eaten a lot of lunches alone those first few months. The sound of other girls giggling would make the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Are they making fun of me? she would wonder.