Messed Up Read online

  “Hey Mister,” I said after seeing that it was Levi on my caller ID.

  “Hi,” he sounded cold, distant.

  “Are you still in Tahoe?” I asked conversationally.

  “Yup.”

  “You’re feeling quite chatty tonight,” I observed sarcastically.

  He was silent. For a moment I thought he’d hung up, but he finally said, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  There was something about the way he said it, so annoyed, that I felt like he already knew, which was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  “I’m going to the beach with my friend Conner,” I said casually, “He’s gonna teach me how to surf.” The phone was silent, so I continued, “I’m sure I will be terrible.”

  “Probably.” Nice, Levi.

  “Is there a problem?” I finally asked.

  “I’m just a little surprised. I leave you alone for two days and you go off with some other guy,” he said coldly.

  I could feel myself beginning to panic, “Levi, he’s just a friend. It’s no big deal, seriously. It’s not like that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Levi,” I could hear my voice shaking.

  “I’ll call you when I get back,” he said, his voice now disinterested.

  “When will you…” I heard the phone click off before I’d finished my sentence.

  11

  A wave of panic surged through my body as I looked down at my now silent phone. I tried to take a deep breath, but the tears began before I could contain them, big frustrated tears. I was mad at Levi for being so cold, but more I was furious at myself. Why was I complicating things when they were going so well? I put my face in my pillow, crying silently, wondering if I should call Conner and cancel or call Levi and beg him to forgive me.

  After calming down a bit, I tried to think rationally. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was clear with Conner that we were only going to be friends. I am allowed to have friends, I thought, getting a little angry again. Levi is just going to have to deal with that. He should trust me. Then I remembered Levi’s heartbreaking family drama, he couldn’t trust his parents, that’s for sure. It was probably hard for him to trust anyone. I wondered if I had ruined everything. The thought of his icy voice made my stomach recoil.

  The combination of allergy pills and conflicted emotions made my body feel suddenly exhausted. I could hardly keep my eyes opened. I dialed Levi’s phone in a daze. It rang twice and I was not surprised when it went to voicemail.

  “Levi,” I could hear my voice crack, “This is Chelsea. I really wish you could trust me. Please trust me. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Ever. If you really don’t want me to go, I won’t, but I think you should trust me. Please.” I shut the phone and let it drop to the floor. I closed my eyes and fell fast asleep.

  I was awoken early the next morning by a loud knocking on my bedroom door. I opened my eyes wearily, and grumbled, “I’m sleeping!”

  “Did you forget the surf lessons you signed up for?” asked Conner’s friendly voice.

  “Oh shoot! Sorry, Conner. I overslept,” I stumbled out of my bed and opened the door, not concerned in the slightest that my hair was probably a bird’s nest and my morning breath might knock him off his feet.

  He smiled at me, “Are you still up for going?”

  I went back to my bed and flopped onto my stomach covering my head with a pillow as last night’s conversation with Levi came flooding back into my mind.

  “Give me a second,” I mumbled.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked sounding concerned. From under a pillow, I replayed the conversation I’d had with Levi to Conner. He listened attentively and then said, “It’s up to you Chelsea. I obviously want to hang out with you today, and I think that you deserve to be with someone who trusts you. I know you really like Levi, but are you willing to give up friendships because it makes him jealous?” his question was sincere, not rhetorical.

  I thought about it for a second, “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  “You really like him, huh?”

  I nodded, tears filling my eyes. I could feel Conner’s warm hand rubbing my back, comforting me. I sat up and moved into his arms, he held me close, and once again, I felt all my troubles begin to melt away. We sat like that for a long time. I eventually pulled myself away and stood up.

  “So what all do I need for this surfing lesson,” I asked, tossing him my tattered copy of Catcher in the Rye. Conner grinned at me, his face happy.

  The road to the beach meandered through golden valleys spotted with cows and sheep, and curved over a steep mountain range. As we came down the other side of the mountain we entered a fog bank that signified the ocean was near.

  Conner and I talked about our families. I told him all about my sister and her tumultuous teenage years, starting with getting kicked out of high school for smoking pot in the girl’s restroom and ending with her rolling her boyfriend’s truck in the middle of the night on a drunken trip to the coast. Conner seemed most interested in how she had pulled her life together by working two jobs and getting good grades at the Junior College and eventually graduating from UC Berkeley.

  “Most people are more interested in the part where Julie’s getting into trouble, but you like the happy ending,” I observed.

  He thought about it for a second, “You know what I think? Being bad is easy. The hard part is doing the right thing, the decent, moral thing.”

  “Is it hard for you? Doing the right thing?” I asked inquisitively.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted, “I don’t always know what the right thing is.” I watched Conner’s face become serious as he pondered this. He looked so engrossed in his thoughts that I decided to let the conversation drop.

  We finally arrived at the little beach town of Bolinas. It consisted of nothing more than a small restaurant, a one cash register grocery store, and a couple dozen houses. Conner parked his truck and we began unloading the surfboards. The one that Conner had chosen for me was at least double my size. I could tell instantly that the board and I would not be becoming friends anytime soon. We made our way across the sand and to the edge of the water, Conner carrying both of our boards. I wondered how I was going to manage my surfboard in the turbulent water if I couldn’t on the safety of land.

  We stripped down to our bathing suits, my eyes cautiously taking in Conner’s body. It was nothing like Levi’s. Conner’s chest was not overtly muscular like Levi’s, but it was still defined. He was skinnier and at least six inches shorter. Conner was very tan, probably from spending so much time at the beach. His skin looked smooth and warm. He caught me looking at him, and instead of being embarrassed, as I should have been, I just said, “Looking good, Conner.”

  He laughed, “Why, thank you.”

  We pulled on our wetsuits and waded into the freezing water. I could feel myself holding my breath as I stood on tiptoes, attempting to keep as much of my body out of the water as possible. Conner reached down and strapped the Velcro band from my surfboard’s leash to my ankle.

  “Lay down on your board,” he instructed.

  “Is that totally necessary?” I asked as I hesitantly placed my body on the long surfboard, shivering in the iciness of the salty water.

  “Okay. When a wave comes, I am going to push you as hard as I can and then you start paddling,” he explained. I nodded silently as Conner looked out at a set coming in, “Here we go.”

  I felt my board being pushed forcefully as a wave tumbled under me. I could hear Conner yell for me to paddle and I did, as franticly as I could. All of a sudden, it felt like I was flying toward the shore. The speed at which I glided forward was exhilarating. I screamed with the thrill of the moment. My board skidded to a stop on the sand. Rolling to my side, I started laughing hysterically. Conner ran up, looking concerned at first, and then realizing I was laughing, he joined in.

  “Fun, right?” he asked after my laughter had subsided.

  “That was incredible. I didn’t real
ize that adrenaline could feel so good.” I thought of Levi and his obsession with living on the edge, the ultimate adrenaline junky. I was momentarily able to identify with that desire.

  We headed back out in the water. This time Conner explained how to stand up, first on my knees and then to my feet. I was content just gliding in on my belly, but I thought I would give it a try. After pushing me into a couple more waves, Conner made his way into deeper waters, while I practiced catching waves on my own. I was entirely unsuccessful in this pursuit and ended up lying on the soft foam board, gently bobbing up and down in the surf.

  My eyes scanned the contours of the beach. It looked so quiet and peaceful. I watched a woman walking with her dog as it danced around her with a stick in its mouth. My eyes moved to a group of small children with their mom; playing in the surf, running and jumping in the water. I looked up to the parking lot where a man was waxing his surfboard, getting ready to take to the water. Not far from him was a tall skinny boy with dark hair. He was staring out at the ocean. He looked about my age. Something was familiar about his posture. I squinted my eyes to see him more clearly. I couldn’t be sure, but he looked like Levi’s friend Calvin, whom I’d met the other night at The Valencia. How random, I thought, small world.

  I realized suddenly that my board had drifted further out to sea than was safe for my amateur surfer self. The waves began to pick up power. I started to paddle toward the shore, but I felt suspended in space, unable to make any progress forward, the sensation was not unlike one of my nightmares. I began to panic and looked around desperately for Conner. My board tipped to the side almost knocking me off. I adjusted myself, but overcompensated, flipping over in the other direction and into the freezing water.

  I came to the surface just as a huge wave crashed over me, forcing my body beneath the water. Each time I tried to get to the surface my body was tossed with such velocity that I couldn’t tell up from down. I tumbled helplessly in the waves, being knocked from side to side. I could feel the surfboard leash thrashing at my ankle, pulling me like a rag doll in one direction and then the next. The board flew up into the sky then came crashing down knocking me violently in the head.

  Just then I felt two hands grab my waist and push me forcefully toward the surface. I took a huge breath of air before being consumed by another wave. I felt the hands once more, and again I was thrown to the surface. This time I saw Conner, as he grabbed my arm and swung it around his neck. He shouted for me to hold on. He didn’t need to say that; I had no intention of letting go. Somehow he was able to reach down and unfasten the ankle strap. I felt my leg become light as the surfboard’s grasp on me was released.

  As we approached the shore, the waves calmed, but I continued to grip tightly onto Conner’s neck. He swung me around, so he was carrying me like a baby in his arms. We got to the sand and he carefully put me down. He wrapped a towel around me. My body was now shivering. I reached up to my head to feel the golf ball sized lump where the surfboard had clobbered me.

  “You okay?” he asked as he rubbed my arms, trying to warm me.

  I nodded, my jaw chattering.

  “That was freaky,” he admitted, “For a minute there, I thought I was going to lose you.”

  “Thanks for saving me,” I said between shivers, “I owe you.”

  Conner helped me into the cab of his truck and turned on the heater. I defrosted there while he loaded his surfboard. I felt awful about losing the one I’d used. Conner had attempted to retrieve it, but it had drifted far out into the ocean. He tried to make me feel better by insisting that it would wash up on a beach somewhere and make somebody very happy. “Easy come, easy go,” he said shrugging his shoulders.

  “I’ll replace it,” I promised.

  “No worries,” he insisted.

  When I was back to a comfortable 98.6 degrees, we walked over to the little restaurant to get some lunch. We ordered sandwiches from an aging hippy with dread locks and a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt. I followed Conner to an old wooden table that was ornamented with the carved initials of hundreds of patrons. We examined the letters, making up the names they stood for, “BS+GB. Must be Britney Spears plus George Bush,” I surmised.

  “Or Bart Simpson plus Greg Brady,” Conner suggested.

  “Oh come on Conner,” I joked, “That doesn’t even make sense,”

  “True,” he smiled, “So, do you think your surfing days are over?”

  “Until I grow a pair of fins and can breathe underwater,”

  “That shouldn’t take too long. Was it scary? Being thrashed around like that?”

  “It was pretty bad. The worst part was trying to paddle back to shore and not being able to get anywhere. It was exactly the way I feel in these nightmares I’ve been having,” I went on to describe my recent nightmares to Conner.

  “Do you know what any of it means?” he wondered.

  “Yeah, most of it is pretty obvious. Stuff that’s happened lately,” I thought about it for a minute and added, “Actually, it’s kinda of strange. The dreams started after I met Levi. Probably has something to do with my insecurities, you know?”

  “What do you have to be insecure about?” he asked.

  “For starters Levi is like runway model hot. And then he’s really…” my voice trailed off as I searched for the word.

  “Really what?” Conner pushed.

  “Kind of scary sometimes,” I said, almost in a whisper. It wasn’t until I spoke those words that the realization hit me. A small part of me wondered if all his attentions were a lead up to some terrible and frightening practical joke. Conner listened quietly as I slowly began to describe the incident with Toby and the masked men. I was surprised by his calm reaction to the disgusting prank.

  “But part of what you like about him is his dangerous side,” he stated.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  He shook his head, not saying anything for a long time, “I just hope you don’t get hurt, Chelsea,” he finally said.

  After spending the afternoon lying out on the beach, Conner drove back to my house. I invited him in for dinner. We sat down to barbequed hamburgers and potato salad with my parents. I knew my mom would love Conner, and I was right. He was polite and respectful without being an obvious kiss-ass. We all discussed the merits of the British version of the, The Office, over its American counterpart. Conner sided with me that the American version was more entertaining because it wasn’t nearly as painfully embarrassing. My parents were stanch Ricky Gervais fans and could not be persuaded by my argument.

  I strong-armed Conner into watching my DVDs of Arrested Development, the best TV show ever, which he hadn’t even seen, but I was certain he would love. Conner flopped onto my bed as I started the DVD. I obsessively checked my cell phone for the hundredth time that day. I hadn’t gotten any calls or texts from Levi. I knew the reality that Levi was finished with me would set in as soon as I was alone, which was part of the reason that I was practically holding Conner hostage.

  We were just beginning the third episode of the first season when I heard the doorbell ring. My heart leaped as I dashed down the stairs, allowing myself a moment of optimism that it might be Levi. I answered the door to a goofy looking delivery boy in thick rimmed glasses, he held out a huge bouquet of white calla lilies.

  “Chelsea Mallory?” he asked forcing a clipboard at me, “Sign please.”

  I took the flowers and closed the door. Sitting down on the steps, I removed a small envelope from the center of the paper like flowers. There was no question in my mind who they were from. I sensed Conner sitting down next to me. I passed him the flowers as I opened the envelope carefully. On the small white card, in neat print was written: I trust you. I love you.

  12

  My little flock of butterflies danced around in my belly as I smiled at the note. Conner watched me carefully. I handed him the note and went to get a vase for the flowers.

  “They’re really beautiful don’t you think?” I said feeling
pure elation course through every vein and artery in my small body as I arranged the flowers in a deep blue glass pitcher.

  “Mmm,” he agreed quietly, “Deadly though. Poisonous.”

  “Remind me not to dice them up for a salad.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” he asked, “Does he really love you?”

  I shrugged, “At this point I’m just happy he doesn’t hate me,” and then I added seriously, “I hope so.”

  Conner and I went back to my room to finish the rest of the first season of Arrested Development. I had a hard time concentrating though, as I kept willing my phone to ring; desperate, starving even, to hear Levi’s voice. I looked at the small simple note every so often, just to be absolutely certain I had read it correctly. After switching off the DVD, I convinced Conner to play cards with me for a bit. Having him there made time go by faster, it kept me distracted. Eventually, Conner stood up stretching and announced he was about to pass out from fatigue. I hugged him tightly and for too long, before he left me alone in my room.

  The next morning I had to wake up early for the opening shift at the Yogurt Heaven. I was not surprised to find the food court completely empty, aside from two elderly ladies reading their papers and shaking their heads at the discouraging news they read. What need is there for frozen yogurt at nine o’clock in the morning, I wondered, as I cut strawberries into tiny bite sized pieces. Once I had meticulously cleaned every surface in the front of the store, including between the keys of the cash register, I dug through my back pack for a book. I nearly cursed myself aloud when I realized I had forgotten to pack any reading material that morning. That’s what I get for being so preoccupied by the visions of Levi that danced before me every time I shut my eyes.

  I sat dejectedly on a stool, wondering what in the world I would do for the next four and half hours. The day was already destined to be painfully long as I waited for a call from Levi. It had now just doubled in length. If Hannah were still around, I would have made her come to the shop to talk to me, or at least convinced her to bring me a book. It wouldn’t have been difficult to persuade her with the lure of free food. I wondered if Conner would be willing to do me the favor. I thought about it for a fraction of half a second before flipping open my phone.