Perfect Couple (Superlatives 2)

I knocked on the door of his bungalow, just as I had yesterday and the day before, holding my breath until he answered. He drove to the grocery store once a week, and sometimes he swung by the art supply store to pick up more oil paints. As far as I knew, those were the only times he left the house where he’d lived forever and where Mom had grown up.

Granddad and Mom argued a lot. She told him she wanted to make sure he was happy and safe, and he said she was being a nosy busybody. He told her she needed to get rid of that no-good cheat of a husband once and for all, and she said he was being an overbearing jerk. They were both right. In the middle of these fights, I was the only one checking on him. Sawyer lived next door, and Granddad paid him to cut the grass, but I doubted he thought to conduct a welfare check when Granddad didn’t leave the house for days on end. That took a certain level of granddaughterly paranoia.

I’d be the one to bang on Granddad’s door someday, grow suspicious when he didn’t answer, force open a window, and find him dead—though if he was dead already, I wasn’t sure why this idea made me so anxious. It wasn’t like finding him dead an hour earlier was going to help.

I knocked harder. “Granddad!” I yelled. “It’s Harper.” It couldn’t be anyone else, since I was his only grandchild.

I sighed with relief when I finally heard footsteps approaching. Even his footfalls sounded misanthropic, soft and shuffling, like he’d rather wrestle snakes than let his granddaughter into his house.

He turned the lock and opened the door a crack—not even as wide as the chain would allow. At a quick glance, I couldn’t see any reason for his secrecy. He looked the same as always, with his salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a streak of yellow paint drying in his beard. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Would you open the door?” I pleaded. “You didn’t let me in the house on Saturday, but at least you opened the door for me. You opened it only a crack on Sunday. This is a smaller crack. I can’t tell whether you’re less glad to see me or you’re trying to disguise the fact that you’re getting thinner.” He’d already started to close the door completely. Apparently he didn’t think I was as funny as I did. Quickly I asked, “May I borrow your car?”

“No.” The door shut.

“Granddad!” His footsteps didn’t retreat into the house, so I knew he was still listening. “Why not?” And why was I so determined to borrow his car? Why couldn’t I drive to the discount store to get contacts another day?

Because I was on a mission to be bikini clad and glasses free when I met Brody at the beach. And I was damned if this was the one day out of the year Granddad decided I couldn’t borrow his car.

“I don’t have to tell you why not,” he said through the door, which was the adult version of me changing the subject when Mom asked why I wanted contacts.

“You said when I turned sixteen that I could borrow your car whenever I wanted. That was your birthday gift to me. You wrote it on a scrap of paper and wrapped it up in a box.” If he didn’t remember that, we needed to have a talk about what he did remember, and what year it was, and whether he should be allowed to live alone and own a microwave oven.

“That was a fine idea of mine,” he said, “when you didn’t want to borrow my car.”

I demanded, “What are you doing with your car today?”

“I don’t have to tell you that, either. I’m sixty-eight years old.”

And you’re acting like you’re two, I thought, but that was Mom’s line. Really, he was acting like me. I took care never to be as mean as he was, but I wanted to be by myself a lot, and people probably took it as meanness. Tia had asked to hang out with me at my house in the past, and I’d told her no. She was so extroverted that after a few hours with her, I needed to be alone with my art. And I’d ruined some fledgling relationships back in ninth and tenth grade by complaining when guys with boyfriend potential called me and texted me and interrupted my thoughts. They were insulted when I turned my phone off.

Granddad was just dishing out the same antisocial behavior to me, and I couldn’t take it.

“All right,” I called through the door. “I’ll come back to check on you tomorrow.” The way things were progressing, he probably wouldn’t even open the door for me then. I would have to wave to him through the window. I turned for the stairs off the porch.

The lock turned. The door opened. He stuck his hand out with his car key dangling from one finger.

“Thank you,” I said, sliding the key ring off his pointer before he changed his mind. “I’m going shopping out on the highway and then to the beach. You can call me on my cell if you need the car back.”

Instead of answering, he shut the door and locked it.

*   *   *

A few hours later, I parked Granddad’s car way back from the beach in the nearly full lot and lugged my bag and cooler out of the trunk. I always brought thermoses of water so my friends didn’t have to throw away plastic bottles, which was bad for the environment. The smooth cooler felt strange on my bare tummy. In my teeny bikini, I struggled to haul my load onto the sand, across the beach, and around families and motorcycle gangs and groups of elderly drunken rabble-rousers. Finally I spotted the cluster of towels and umbrellas where my friends had settled.

As I walked, I squinted at the ocean. Compared with my glasses, my new contacts made the sun almost unbearably bright. But I recognized Aidan and Kaye in the waves. Her hair in black twists was easy to pick out. Then I saw the drum major of the marching band, DeMarcus, and his girlfriend, Chelsea, and the cheerleaders who’d run the race with Kaye that morning. Noah and Quinn and Kennedy sat in the sand with the tide flowing over their feet.