Collide Read online



  “No, that’s not it.” She pulled a package of wipes from her bag and busily cleaned each finger.

  “He was…an actor,” I added hesitantly.

  Her brows raised. “A famous actor? Like…Tom Cruise?”

  “Not quite like that. But pretty famous, yeah,” I said, thinking of the articles, the websites, the fan pages. “A long time ago, though.”

  “How long ago?” She sounded suspicious. She looked suspicious, too.

  “Um…” I hedged. “In the seventies.”

  My mom sat back in her chair, arms crossed. “I assume he wasn’t a child actor?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Emmaline!” She stopped, brow furrowed. “Not the guy who’s in all those late-night cable movies? The ones where he shows his…you-know-whats?”

  “Um…”

  “Emmaline Marie Moser,” my mother said, aghast.

  No matter how old you are, the use of your three names will always be shaming.

  “I can’t believe you.” She hitched forward in her chair, voice lowered like we were talking about something filthy. “He’s got to be as old as your dad, at least!”

  “He’s not,” I insisted. “Dad’s fifty-nine. Johnny’s only fifty-seven.”

  “Oh, God. Oh, my God.” She put a hand over her heart, then shook herself. “Thank God he doesn’t like you. He shouldn’t like you! If he did he’d be more than a jerk, he’d be a…pedophile!”

  “Mom!”

  “He’s too old for you, Emmaline!”

  “Mom,” I said, quieter. “I’m almost thirty-two years old. It would hardly make him a pedophile.”

  “Still too old for you,” she said stubbornly.

  I frowned. “You’d be okay with me dating a girl, but not an older guy?”

  This stumped her. She glowered further. At least she was scolding me, not fussing over me.

  “He doesn’t like me,” I repeated.

  “Then he’s a jerk!”

  “Oh, Mom.” I laughed, shaking my head. “Yeah. He’s a jerk. And it’s good he doesn’t like me.”

  I thought of how much he hadn’t liked me when his fingers were deep up inside me, making me come, and had to study my melted yogurt very carefully. There are some things you just never want to share with your mom, no matter how much you love and get along with her, or no matter what else you could share. I forced myself to eat a bite of creamy, chocolate fudgy goodness, but didn’t enjoy it.

  “You really like him, huh?” She knew me too well. It was annoying.

  “Well…yeah. I told you…”

  “He’s special. I know. But aren’t they all, at first?”

  I looked up at her. “They don’t stay special?”

  She smiled, her gaze going a little dreamy. “Some do. I mean, I still think your dad’s pretty sexy.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Um, hello, not your bestie here. That’s my dad.”

  She laughed. “You asked.”

  I was glad their marriage was good. I was a lucky daughter to have parents who loved each other. And it wasn’t wrong to want that, I knew it.

  “C’mon. If chocolate doesn’t make you feel better, maybe some retail therapy will.” My mom got up to toss her trash, and I followed.

  “Yeah, too bad I’m broke.”

  “Emm, if that’s a blatant way of getting me to buy you a pair of shoes, that stopped working in eighth grade.”

  I smiled and gave her puppy eyes as we gathered her packages and left the food court behind. “No, it didn’t.”

  “Just don’t tell your dad. He’s already having a freak-out about this trip,” my mom counseled me.

  I didn’t really want or need her to buy me anything, but it was nice to know she might be persuaded to. “What’s he freaking out about?”

  She started telling me, but a kiosk just past the food court stole my attention from her. I’d passed it dozens of times without a second look, never having a need for a hand-tooled leather belt or bracelet, but today…today, as so much seemed to be lately, was different.

  “Wait a minute,” I murmured even as my mom, still chatting, kept walking toward the bookstore. “Mom, hold on.”

  “Hey,” said the boy working at the kiosk. He was supercute, with emo bangs over one eye and a hint of guyliner that would’ve set my heart aflutter not too long ago.

  Now he just looked too young.

  “Hey,” I said. “Can I see one of those?”

  I pointed at the hair clips. Made of molded leather in a half circle and punctured through two drilled holes by a small, spiked dowel, they were nothing like I’d ever bought or would ever have worn. At least, not here, in this now. But apparently my mind thought they’d suit me, because it had manufactured one for me in one of the fugues.

  “Sure.” He hooked one off the rack with a finger and held it out. “They can be personalized, too.”

  I glanced up at him as I took the clip. I paused. He was totally giving me the once-over, and it felt good. Really good. I hadn’t been looked at like that since…well, since the last time I went dark. I frowned.

  “I don’t need it personalized.” I slid the wooden dowel in and out of the holes, trying to remember if this was like the one in my fugue. I hadn’t paid much attention to it and couldn’t recall if it had any designs on it.

  “It would look great on you.” He sounded sincere. “You have really thick hair.”

  “Thanks,” I said after a second. I touched the ponytail hanging over my shoulder. I did have thick hair, sometimes too thick for a regular elastic band. They were always breaking at random moments. “I’ll take it.”

  I paid him less than ten bucks for it, which wasn’t quite pocket change for a hair clip but was less than what I’d seen some go for. I tugged the elastic from my hair and it fell around my face and shoulders in a familiar weight before I gathered it in my fingers and twisted it on the back of my head and clipped it in place. I turned my head from side to side, testing to see if it would slip out, but it seemed to be holding firmly.

  “Looks great,” he said. “Sure you don’t want it personalized? You could get a picture, or your initials. Something like that.”

  “What are you buying?” my mom, back from her trip to the bookstore, said. “Oh, my God, Emm. What is that thing?”

  “It’s a hair clip.”

  She laughed. “I wore one just like it when I was dating your dad. Good Lord.”

  I smiled. “Did you have yours personalized with your name?”

  She laughed again. “I don’t think so. I think it had a flower on it. I think they all had flowers on them. Or maybe they were marijuana plants, I don’t remember.”

  The kiosk guy choked laughter behind his hand. I knew I shouldn’t have been so shocked, but I was, anyway. “Mom!”

  “What?” she said, all innocent. “I’m not saying I smoked it. I’m just saying there were a lot of things with that picture on them. That’s all. Emm, c’mon, it was the seventies.”

  “I definitely don’t want a picture of weed on my hair clip.” I looked at him. “How much to personalize it?”

  “Free,” he said. “Which is why, you know, you should do it. Because it’s included.”

  “How about my initials, then,” I told him. “E.M.M.”

  It took only a few minutes, but when he handed it back to me he looked apologetic. “Something got screwed up with the machine. I put in your initials but I must’ve hit the wrong code, because it came up with this.”

  Flowers and vines. It was still pretty. It was familiar, and I swallowed a bitter taste. “Actually, this is fine.”

  “You sure? I can make another one….”

  “No.” I shook my head. “This is fine.”

  He gave me the clip along with something else. His phone number. I waited until we’d passed out of sight before I tossed it in the trash.

  “Why’d you do that?” my mom asked. “He was such a cute boy.”

  “He was a cute boy,” I said.