Where I Want to Be by Adele Griffin Page B

Caleb to tell her secret things, like what it felt like to be almost dead. She thought he looked so brave, with his face chewed up and his staring eyes. But he never told her anything. She’d probed him with questions and he’d glared and was silent.
    When he returned to school, Caleb kept to himself. But he still didn’t want to be friends with her, or tell her his secrets. She made herself forget about him.
    Then he fell in love with Lily, and suddenly Caleb Price—taller, with a new, deep voice and a swimmer’s wide shoulders—was a constant, bothersome presence at her house. Whenever she turned around, there he was. After school, weekends, dinnertime, all the time, too much of the time.
    If anyone had bothered to ask, which nobody did, Jane would have said that Caleb annoyed her on purpose. Like at the dinner table, when he’d steal the vegetables that Jane had banished to the side—“You don’t mind, do you? If you’re not gonna eat ’em.” And before she could answer, he’d pop a soggy floret of broccoli or brownish lettuce leaf straight into his mouth. Smiling as he chewed, while Lily giggled behind her hand.
    Most of the time, though, Caleb was as private as he’d been that day in the hospital. Like the way he’d just disappear into the Calverts’ walk-in linen closet, putting his hand on the doorknob and entering it like it was another room: “Hey, back in a few. I’m going to meditate.”
    Then twenty minutes later, out he’d come, cheerful and relaxed.
    “Why the linen closet?” Jane had asked him once.
    “Good energy,” he’d answered.
    “Caleb’s read that our house was built where there used to be a Native American community,” Lily had explained proudly. “He thinks the best spiritual flow is centered right under the closet.”
    “Probably it was a cooking area,” Caleb added. “Guided by a gentle spirit, female, I think. Real nurturing.”
    “I’ve always wanted to learn how to meditate,” said Jane.
    “I’ll teach you,” said Caleb. “Anytime you want.”
    But
anytime
really meant
no time.
Jane knew. Caleb didn’t want to spend a minute with Jane, because it would take a minute away from Lily.
    She felt too stupid to remind him, so she tried to teach herself. Wedging herself in the closet with the light off, waiting for the spirit and the energy. Instead, she detected the scent of Caleb’s aftershave. And then a trickle of music from Lily’s room, where Caleb and Lily were pretending to do homework. Jane squeezed her eyes shut to send a message for Caleb to find her. But he did not—or would not—pick up her signals. The gentle, Native American cooking lady never showed up, either. Eventually, the linen closet became hot and stuffy and lonely, and she got out, finished with meditation for good.
    Remembering this, Jane realized that she had never actuallycaught Caleb in the act of meditating. But she could tell that this was his plan right now. Right here by the pool. She watched. Once Caleb had picked his position, he went still. He looked asleep and awake at the same time. That didn’t seem so hard. Not like something that would have taken too much time to teach her.
    “Go away,” Jane said out loud, breaking the silence. “This is my place. Not yours.”
    Caleb’s eyes were almost closed. His eyelids were baby-skin thin. Dropped into the middle of her perfect day, he was as confusing as he’d ever been.
    But he didn’t deserve to find her, if that’s what he was after.
    “Go away!” She forced from each word all the meaning she could muster. Her anger was like a fiery dart shot straight from the core of her heart. “You weren’t invited here!”
    Now his eyes were open. Now he was looking right at her. Pinpointing her. One eye the same washed aquamarine of the pool water, the other a mottled navy, dark as a distant planet, like in those posters of Earth in her father’s classroom.
    But no, Jane decided. No, he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t have