The Thirst Within Read online

  “Well, I’m glad I helped. Although I’m sure you would’ve found it eventually.”

  “Now we’ll never know,” he says mysteriously, smiling at me. I become self-conscious and look down, anywhere but at him. At least I’m able to mask it as me inspecting the book, and not that I’m dazzled by him. As I look down I notice the price of the journal in my hands. Twenty dollars! There’s no way I’m going to pay twenty dollars for a notebook. I mean, I shouldn’t.

  I move to put it down.

  “You’re going to leave yours?” He asks me, and he sounds surprised.

  The thought now makes me sad. It’s like we bonded over this journal. I don’t want him to think that I didn’t like it; I want to pretend that I can be cool, like him. I say, “No, I’m getting it,” with a smile.

  I figure I’ll put it back after he leaves.

  He doesn’t leave.

  He keeps talking about stationary, stickers, cursive and calligraphy.

  He finally moves as if to leave, and because he’s talking I feel like I have to go with him. I don’t put the book back.

  “Are you getting anything else?” He asks me, as we move down the aisle.

  Tricky question. If I say yes, he might ask what, and if he’s happening to look for the same thing, I’m so screwed, because I’ll have to end up buying that too, or fessing up. So I say, “No, I’m done,” and I hope he turns around to keep shopping before I get to the checkout.

  But he says, “Me too,” and keeps walking to the checkout counters.

  As we get there I start to panic. As much as I want it, I really shouldn’t buy this notebook; but I’d feel like an idiot if I don’t. It’s too late to tell the truth. Thinkofsomething thinkofsomething—

  A brilliant idea comes to mind. I pat my back pockets.

  “Oh! Bummer! I don’t have my cards with me,” I say. I even laugh, a little. “I do this every time.” I stop walking abruptly and he takes a few more steps before he stops. He’s a few feet ahead of me. “Hey, it was nice meeting you. I gotta go put this back.” I point back at the aisle, unnecessarily.

  “Oh, same here. But hey, I can get that for you,” he says.

  “What? No, I couldn’t.” It’s twenty dollars. Twenty. And he’s already getting one for himself.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not expensive,” he says, like it’s no big deal.

  Not expensive? Regular notebooks are less than a quarter of that price.

  I say, “Yeah, but don’t worry, I live nearby; I’ll just come back later.”

  “But it’s the last one!” He says, shaking his copy in the air dramatically.

  I have to return his smile again, tempted to say yes, but I shake my head. “You know they probably have more in the back, right?”

  “You can’t know for sure! Let me get it for you. It’s nothing, really. Or hey—you can pay me back.”

  Okay, for all my inner talk about hot guys and how much they turn me off, I have to say that the idea of this random guy paying for my notebook thrills me.

  “How do you know I’ll pay you back? You don’t even know me,” I reason with him.

  “Well, tell me who you are, then. I’m Thierry,” he introduces himself in what sounds to me like Tee-airy, but I don’t recognize the name.

  “Terry?” That’s what my brain says I must’ve heard.

  He grins, flashing perfect white teeth. He fishes out his wallet, pulls out a business card, and hands it to me.

  THIERRY COLBERT

  The card only has his name on the front. I flip it around and I see a number and an email address on the back.

  “Thierry,” he enounces it distinctively. He offers me his hand.

  “Tori,” I say. We shake hands.

  “Tiori?” He asks, and I laugh.

  “T-O-R-I. Sorry, I don’t have a business card. I’m seventeen and still in high school. Do you work?” I ask, because his business card is blank.

  “I don’t—I’m a college student. I’m twenty-one.” I think of twenty-one as old, but he doesn’t look old, not with that fantastic skin of his. He’s cute though. Maybe I’m forgiving him too easily. I don’t even point out the vainness of having a business card when he doesn’t have a business on it.

  We’re at the checkout counter. “Okay, Tori, now that I know you, you seem like the type of girl who’d pay a debt. So I’m lending you this money,” he says. I’m only a little upset that I’ll have to ultimately pay for the expensive journal, but I don’t mind too much if it means I get to see him again. I’ll chalk it up to an entertainment expense; paying for eye candy. Then I make a parallel with “paying for love” and have to wonder if sometime in the future I’ll look back at this moment like the onset of my downward spiral.

  Thierry pays and we get two bags. He hands me one with a wink. We step outside to the mall corridor. Our time is over.

  But I don’t want it to end. I realize this is the first time I’ve smiled since I came to the South.

  “Where are you headed?” I ask him. Anything, to keep him next to me a little longer.

  “I was going to grab something to drink,” he says. “How about you?” Then he snickers at some inside joke.

  “I have to meet my”—I struggle, searching for the right word—“cousin. She’s with her friends shopping for clothes.”

  “Where are your friends?” He looks left and right, as though expecting a group of people to come running down the corridor looking for me, holding “Tori is the best!!” banners.

  I look down sadly. “I have no friends here.”

  He makes a sympathetic aww sound. “What do you mean, here?”

  “I just moved to New Orleans from Iowa. Or Illinois. Like, yesterday.”

  “You don’t know where you moved from?” Now he’s laughing at me.

  “No, I do! Illinois, officially. But I was there only like a week.” I sigh. “It’s a long story.”

  “I collect long stories. You should tell me yours someday.”

  “I definitely could,” I say, and I grin. Aw hell, I’m flirting with him.

  “So where in Nola?” He asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where’s your new house?”

  “Oh. Um, the Garden District.” I remember Ms. Johnson telling me what a nice area it was. “What’s Nola?”

  He grins at my ignorance. I should be miffed, but I like his grin too much. I’m stupid, I know. “Nola’s just another nickname for New Orleans,” he explains. “It’s technically an acronym for New Orleans, Louisiana. N, O, L, A,” he writes the letters in the air. At the end of the A he draws invisible flourish. Cute.

  Damn cute boys.

  “Oh. I only know The Big Easy. And Nawlins.” I say, thinking of Ms. Johnson again.

  “Well, now you know a third. How about Crescent City?”

  “Oh, I guess I’ve heard that one too.”

  “See? You’re not so bad. So tell me more about your lack of friends.”

  I snicker. “Nothing to tell. I have a lack of friends.”

  “I’ll be your friend,” he offers simply, and shrugs as if to say “Problem solved.” My heart does a stupid little flip.

  “You will?” I say, joining my hands over my heart with mock enthusiasm, but I know a little of it is authentic. “But you’re so old,” I add with fake sadness, like it’s a terminal disease, and our friendship will never work.

  “Rocks are much older than trees, and look how well they get along.”

  “That’s profound,” I say.

  “I just made that up,” he says, and he laughs.

  Is this really happening? I’m laughing with him like we’re really friends. There’s something wrong with this picture. I say, “Still. I’m in high school. You’re in college.”

  “So you’re saying… we’ll be the very first friends that are one in high school and the other one in college.”

  “No. What?” He’s messing with me. “No, I didn’t say we couldn’t be friends because you’re
in college and I’m in high school,” I protest.

  “That is exactly what you said.”

  “Not exactly exactly….” Did I? “No, what I meant was, how are we supposed to hang out? We wouldn’t have like, the same schedules. If we’re not in the same—” I stop myself, and roll my eyes. “You know what? Whatever, we’ll be friends.”

  “Really? Great! So we’re friends then.” He beams.

  “Do you really want to be friends?” I ask, doubtfully. But I can’t seem to stop smiling.

  “Sure. Tori and Thierry, BFFs.” He points to the air with his open palm, as though our names were written over us.

  “No, no; you can only have one BFF,” I argue.

  “But you don’t have any friends!”

  “Me? No, I meant you. You’ve got to have friends, like a regular person, right?”

  He pauses for a second. “Maybe I’m not a regular person.”

  “Yeah, right. You don’t have any friends? C’mon.”

  “Come on what? I can be friendless if I want to. Besides, aren’t we working on that? I thought we were making a deal here.”

  “You’re insane if you think I believe you don’t have any friends,” I say, ignoring his attempt at evading the question.

  “Well, I really don’t,” he insists. “Why do you think I need a journal?”—He shakes his bag—“To vent. It’s hard for me to get along with people. At Tulane—that’s the college I go to—sometimes I feel like I’m an outcast.”

  An outcast. Hard to believe, but I kinda want to believe. So we can be friends, for real.

  I don’t say anything, still debating the truth of his words, so he adds, “Besides, why do you have to own the corner of friendlessness?”

  “I don’t! It’s just I find it so hard to believe that you’re friendless. I mean, you’re….” He’s….

  Shit. Of course the reason I think he’s lying is because he’s too good-looking to be friendless. Hell no, he probably has many friends. And girlfriends he cheats on, let’s not forget that. Girlfriends he cheats on… with me?

  The thought is so stupid that I want to facepalm myself. Does he want me? No way. He shows interest in me, but he can’t possibly want me that way. He’s only talking to me because he’s a horndog that can’t be satisfied unless he constantly hears praise from girls like me. And I’m the only girl in the store dumb enough to fall for his charade like some eager hormonal female. Stupid, stupid.

  “Hey, I gotta go.” I tell myself to move, to snap out of it.

  “Wait! I’m what?”

  “Nothing. It’s been fun, but my cousin’s prolly waiting for me. And we’re standing here in the middle of the aisle.”

  “Okay, Tori.” He has a hurt look in his eyes. Only momentarily—he suddenly brightens up. And I notice his eyes are gray, not blue like I thought at first. Right now they’re shining with enthusiasm. “Hey, but you’ll call me, right? Or email me about that money you owe me.”

  He means it playfully, I know, but I’m embarrassed. I start to turn around. “Let’s just return it—”

  He grabs my arm. “Please, Tori!” He laughs. “You know I don’t care. I don’t want your money anyway.”

  The touch sends a thrill up my arm, and I realize I’m dangerously close to being a goner. I’m actually upset that I’m wearing a long sleeve sweater. It would have felt nice to feel his fingers on my bare skin.

  What am I saying? I have to go.

  I sigh. “I know. I’ll pay you back, anyway. It was nice meeting you, Thierry.”

  He lets me go, almost reluctantly. “Same here, Tori.”

  I walk away, feeling his gray eyes on my back.

  ***

  I drift back towards the shops in the area where Fiona and Pals should be, all the while thinking about my new best friend. If only. I know that he isn’t, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking about him. It did feel like he wanted to be my friend.

  “Tori! Over here,” Fiona calls from some distance.

  I’m smiling like an idiot. “Hey, guys,” I say as I approach them.

  “We’re not guys,” says one of the girls. Laura, I think. Or Lauren. Or Megan (whatever—the pale one). She scoffs. “Northerners.”

  Her bitchiness actually goes over my head. I can’t care about it. “Girls. Y’all. Whatever,” I say dismissively.

  Fiona says, “I’m sorry you had to go off by yourself. We could’ve gone with you, you know.”

  No! Would Thierry have spoken to me? Worse, would he have preferred to talk to Fiona? The other two girls are pretty, but Fiona’s clearly the cutest one. I haven’t observed them long enough to figure out who’s the leader, but it’s probably her. “Nah,” I say like it’s not a big deal. “I didn’t mind being by myself in there, at all. I hate making people wait for me.”

  Fiona asks me, “So how was your shopping? I see you got something.”

  “Yeah, a notebook.” I don’t say it’s a journal. I figure, if I use it to write personal stuff in it, the less people that know about it the better.

  “That’s all?” Asks the other girl, Megan (or Lauren? The Asian).

  “It’s the best notebook ever, though.” It got me a hot guy’s number.

  Then Fiona looks at me questioningly. Is it just me or do I detect…? She seems confused. Like she expected me to be…. How? Gloomy?

  Oh. I realize I’m still smiling.

  4. The New Girl

  The first weekend comes by and I haven’t called Thierry. Every day I think of calling him, but I don’t want to use the house phone. I start thinking about getting my own phone, just to call him. I especially want to call him every night after dinner, the only time when the whole family sits together. Quality time with the Harris—the Harrises (thank you, Fiona)—is nothing but awkwardness and intolerance on a plate.

  June hasn’t been warm towards me at all. I feel like she actually makes sure I remember my place as The Leech by not making an effort to treat me as she does her children. Fiona can walk up to her mother and ask for money, and she gets handed a ten-dollar bill. Uncle Roland doesn’t say much. He pays more attention to Jack than Fiona, I’ve noticed, and during dinner he mostly talks to the little brat—who’s never talked to me, and that’s somehow okay with everyone—about football. Gotta start ’em young.

  And that’s it. No money, no attention for me. Nothing. My new family’s fubar, but at least no one has tried to get nasty with me or died, so that’s an improvement.

  I’m poor, and I don’t have the nerve to ask for money, so I decide I need some form of income. One evening during dinner, in one of those rare moments when my uncle asks me how I am, and whether I’m adjusting to New Orleans, I tell him that I’d like to get a job. June decides to chime in and she commends me for my effort—first time June says something nice about me—and pretends to be disappointed at Fiona’s lack of similar enthusiasm. June even offers Fiona’s laptop if I need to search for jobs.

  So after dinner I follow Fiona to her bedroom. I’ve seen it since I got here, and as I suspected, yes, it’s as big as Jack’s. She doesn’t tell me to take the computer with me, so I sit at her desk where she can watch me. I wonder what she’s hiding.

  Or maybe she just wants someone to talk to, says a little voice inside my head.

  No, she’s mean; don’t trust her, counters the voice of reason.

  I nod wisely at the voice of reason and search for jobs in Fiona’s computer while she chats nonstop from her full-sized bed. She tells me it’s so cool that I’m going to work. She wishes she did, because I’m going to meet new people and get to be out of the house.

  Yeah, I’m going to be a freaking rock star.

  She stretches on her bed and says, “Ugh. These sheets are too soft.” Why would anyone complain about sheets? Mine smell like pee, and you don’t hear me complaining. I just assume old smelly sheets are a given. “I miss my old sheets,” she adds with a sigh.

  “Why? What happened, did someone throw them away?” I ask because
apparently Fiona wants to talk about sheets.

  “Yeah, Mom’s like, ‘Blah blah blah, your sheets are nasty, anything less than three hundred count is prison clothes’. So she ordered these for me when she got Jack’s. Then she threw mine out.”

  “Oh, so Jack got new sheets too?” I ask. I can’t help but feel hurt and angry at this information. Jack and Fiona get new sheets, but I, the new person, nothing? Just the old pee-smelling sheets.

  “Yeah, but you know, he had to, ’cause the old ones didn’t fit. He’s got a new bed. I think you’re using his old bed.”

  My nose suddenly feels a hundred degrees and totally embarrassing tears pool in my eyes.

  “Oh, yeah, well, that makes sense.” I’m extremely proud of myself for keeping it cool when what I want to do is scream. “Which bed was in my room before, then?”

  “None. Your room used to be Mom’s crafts room. She gave it up for you,” Fiona says, and she almost sounds proud of her mother for showing me such fondness.

  “That’s so nice of her. Hey, um, I’m gonna use the bathroom.” Thankfully, she’s not looking directly at my face, and my voice hasn’t betrayed me like my stupid nose wants to.

  I get up and turn away from Fiona just as she turns towards me and says, “Okay, but come back and find a totally awesome job, for me! I need to live vicariously through you!”

  I hate her—I hate them all so much.

  I don’t return to Fiona’s bedroom. I looked for jobs for almost an hour and didn’t find one in this neighborhood that I can walk to. So I’ll tell her (if she asks) that I got tired and went to bed. And I do that, except I don’t fall asleep. I stay up thinking about my life.

  Ohmigod my new family sucks so bad. The mother put me in the smallest room in the house with her son’s old bed and smelly-ass bed sheets, the son is a spoiled little psycho, the daughter is totally uncaring and selfish and may or may not have issues with her stepfather, and said stepfather, my uncle, I’m still trying to figure out. Even if he’s nice to me, he doesn’t show it much; and anyway, given my luck he’ll probably have an accident and die. Then I’ll be stuck with the evil stepmother and stepsisters, Cinderella-style; just replace “mother” with “aunt”, and “sisters” with “cousins,” except that I’m pretty sure there is no Prince Charming that would take me when the older sister is actually the one that looks like a princess.