Page 16 of Better Than Revenge
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“NO, GRANDMA, JENSEN WON’T BEcoming over today. Remember, we broke up?”
“You broke up?” Her eyes went glassy. “Why?”
We sat in my room at my desk. I hooked up the headphones and microphones and powered them on, making sure everything was properly plugged into the soundboard.
“Long story, Grandma.” And regardless of the things I was doing to get back at him, like the call Max had placed after school on Monday, leaving a bad review at his work, making him pay was still the first thing I thought about when I woke up. It didn’t help that the gossip and comments hadn’t settled at school even though it had been almost a week.
She flipped the headphones over but didn’t put them on. “I like long stories.”
It hadn’t occurred to me at first, but I now realized that at thisstage in my grandma’s illness this would be a story I was going to have to tell over and over again. So far, I had told her every day since Friday. It was now Wednesday. And yet my stomach still clenched as I said it. “He didn’t care about me. That’s the bottom line.”
“Of course he did, honey. He told me he did all the time.”
“But at the end of the day, when he had to show it, he proved that words are just words. Actions are more important.”
“Actions are very important,” she said.
“Let’s talk about you now,” I said, ready to change the subject. Maybe this would help me forget about my problems for at least a little while. I put my headphones on, and she followed suit.
My interviews with my grandma were a history of her life. We’d talked about her parents and their love story and what she remembered about them; then we’d moved on to her and her childhood. Her early school years. We’d left off with her moving with her family to California from the Midwest when she turned fourteen and how out of place she’d felt.
“How long did it take you to make friends once you were here, Grandma?”
“We moved into this little yellow house by the beach. You’ve seen it.” Grandma always played with the cord of the headphones when she talked. Sometimes it made a scratchy sound on the recording that I had to minimize in edits.
“I have. It was so cute.”
“I miss that house.”
“Did you love it right from the start?”
“I didn’t love anything about this place from the start. I missedmy friends and my grandparents. I missed the trees and how it would get so cold in the winter that I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t feel that here. Every day I would go out to the beach and wish I was back at my old house in my old life.”
“The Pacific Ocean is very offended by that,” I said with a smile.
“The ocean got over it years ago,” she joked back.
“What happened to change your feelings about this place?”
“Time, I guess. And exploring. I’d spend hours in the rocks and tidepools. Sometimes the sand on the hill was smooth like glass and I’d slide down it on my bare feet, leaving trails behind me. During off season, I’d sit on the deck of one of the locked lifeguard towers and watch the surfers. It was there I met a surfer named Andrew for the first time. He walked over, his board tucked under his arm, and asked if I was ready to save him should the need arise.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said,I’m not equipped to save anyone. We’d both end up drowning.Then he said,So you’d just watch me go down.I responded withI’d scream, at the very least.”
I laughed. “A very morbid first conversation, Grandma.”
“He liked to joke around, I learned. It was part of his personality. Everyone seemed to know and like him. He’d secure us free baked goods from the shopkeepers and free boat rides.”
“You went on boat rides with strangers?”
“Yes, especially during whale-watching season. The wind was cold and would whip through my hair as I stood searching the water for them. We once went on a fishing boat too and helped pull up traps. It was a different time.”
“Not that different. Never go on boat rides with strangers, listeners.”
“Who is listening?” Grandma asked. “Anyone we know?”