The Obsession(17)

And while she liked kissing—if the boy was any good at it—she wasn’t ready to be touched. Thought maybe she never would be.

She had let Mark Ryder touch her breast—she’d finally grown some, but accepted that they were never going to amount to much. She’d wanted to see what it felt like, but instead of making her excited, it just made her nervous and uncomfortable.

Mark hadn’t been happy that was all she let him do—and not much of that. Naomi figured that was his damage and ignored him when he accused her of being a tease, being frigid, being a freak.

At sixteen she hit five-ten—most of it leg—and was willow slim and pretty enough that boys wanted to touch her breasts. She’d let her hair grow to shoulder length, mostly so she could tie it back when she took pictures.

When she won a photography competition, Seth rewarded her with a trip to the salon for highlights and lowlights in her dark blonde hair.

Mason hit a growth spurt around twelve and was first-string center of his school’s basketball team.

Sometimes it irritated her to know that her little brother was smarter than she was. Sometimes it made her proud. Either way, he was whip-smart, good-looking, and affable. So he enjoyed the attention and admiration of the girls who fluttered around him, and he had a core circle of guys to hang with.

Days could go by without her giving Pine Meadows and all that had happened there a thought. For days she was just a regular teenager, worrying about her grades, her wardrobe, listening to music, meeting friends for pizza.

She kept in touch with Ashley, mostly through email. Ashley had never gone back to Morgantown and lost a whole year before she’d transferred to Penn State.

When she’d graduated, Naomi sent her a card and a framed photo she’d taken herself of a cherry tree full of pink blooms and promise.

On her twenty-first birthday, in the first spring of the new century, Ashley gave herself a gift. She took the train to New York to spend a whole day with Naomi.

Whenever she looked back at that day, Naomi remembered her own nerves—what should she wear, what should she say—and the speechless pleasure of seeing Ashley waiting, as promised, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

So pretty, Naomi thought, with long, long blonde hair dancing in the crazy spring breeze. All the nerves, the sudden shyness, vanished the instant Ashley saw her, rushed to her, arms wide.

“You’re so tall! You’re taller than me. Half of everybody is, but I— Naomi.” She held tight, swayed back and forth, back and forth.

“You came. It’s the most special birthday there is, and you came here.”

“I’m having the most special birthday there is because of you. I wanted to spend it with you. I wanted to meet you here, even though it’s awesome corny, because I wanted to say that everything I can see from here is because of you. And I wanted to give you this.”

Ashley took a small wrapped box out of her purse.

“But it’s your birthday. I have a present for you.”

“Let’s save mine for later—over lunch maybe. I really want you to have this now, and here, high in the sky. You brought me out of the ground, Naomi, and now we’re standing high in the sky. Open it, okay?”

Overwhelmed, Naomi opened the box and stared at the pendant. Three thin silver chains held an oval with a purple iris suspended in its center.

“It’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful.”

“I have to say it was my mom’s idea. She said how flowers have meanings. This one, the iris, it has a couple of them. One of the meanings is valor, and another is friendship. You qualify for both. I hope you like it.”

“I do. I love it. Ashley—”

“Let’s not cry. I want to cry, too, but let’s not cry today. Let’s put the necklace on, and then you have to show me some of the city. I’ve never been to New York.”

“Okay. Okay.” It was as hard, she learned, to hold back happy tears as tears of misery. “Where do you want to go first? It’s your special day.”

“I’m a girl. I want to go shopping!” Ashley laughed as she helped Naomi fasten the necklace. “And I want to go someplace where I can have a glass of champagne at lunch. I’m legal!”

“I love you,” Naomi blurted out, then flushed. “That sounds weird, I—”

“No, no, it doesn’t. We’ve got something between us nobody else does. We’re the only ones who really understand what it took for both of us to get right here, right now. I love you back. We’re going to be friends forever.”

The therapist—she had gone back for nearly a year after her mother hit one of those deep dips—asked Naomi how she felt when she saw Ashley; Naomi said it made her remember the light.

Her mother worked as a waitress in Harry’s restaurant. She did all right—except when she didn’t. Her mother sometimes went into the dark, and forgot to remember the light. But she had a job, and when she went into the dark, Harry held the job for her.

Her doctor called it depression, but Naomi knew that as bad as depression could be, the dark times were worse.

In the dark times her mother took too many pills. Once when she’d taken too many she’d had to go to the hospital. She’d taken the too many pills right after Simon Vance’s book came out, and there were big ads for it all over the city.