by Beth Turley
There were two sets of sneakers dangling over the edge of a splintery dock. One pair that left dirt on the floor of my language arts classroom. Another with my name on the toe.
Summer and Riah at the boat launch. Summer took Riah to the boat launch.
Cailin looked at the display on the camera and then at me.
“I think I caught something,” she said.
I put the phone facedown on the table and tore a piece off my donut.
“It’s nothing.”
Harlow narrowed her eyes, studying me like a subject in one of her stories.
“Your body language says different.” She pointed at my dismantled donut.
Tears sprung hot behind my eyes, making me feel mad and stupid and lonely all at once. I took a shallow breath of the chocolatey air.
“You can tell us,” Whitney said.
Something about the bright-colored plates, the city outside, the Flyers leaning in closer, made me feel safe. Heat wasn’t crawling into my cheeks. My throat wasn’t locked tight. It was like being in Summer’s sunroom—a space I thought I could trust.
“My best friend, Summer, and I have this place. The boat launch in our town. It’s ours. Or, it used to be.” I showed them the picture without looking at it again. I couldn’t stand to see the water shining under their shoes. “She brought someone else there.”
Cailin put James’s camera down to look closer.
“She used Poppy. Good filter.”
“I’m not sure that’s Elena’s point here,” Whitney said. She scooped a dollop of green frosting with her pinkie. “She’s lost something sacred.”
“You need to be honest with her about it,” Harlow said. Her voice was soft. “Send her a text.”
I gulped.
“What should I say?” I asked.
“Say that you saw the picture and want to know why of all the places in your town of…” She waited for me to finish the sentence.
“Franklin City, Connecticut.”
“Franklin City, she chose to hang out with someone else in your spot.”
I opened my messages. The thought of actually sending that to Summer scared me more than the extra credit poem reading. More than telling her what I overheard her say in the locker room. I typed that was our place and let the cursor blink a few times. The send button blurred into a green blob.
“It’s only scary until you do it,” Cailin said. “That’s what my coach says when he wants me to try new things.”
I pressed send.
The little bubble that showed Summer was typing popped up right away; it jumped on the screen for a few too many seconds before her answer appeared.
She’s my friend.
The answer made me madder. Made me want that dock to collapse and sink like a shipwreck. I typed without asking for advice. This time it poured out like lyrics.
Yeah, I know. But the boat launch?
Another bubble appeared. Harlow, Whitney, and Cailin watched me while I waited.
We don’t have to share everything, Elena.
I stared at the screen, wondered what the camera would catch if Cailin snapped this moment where the world crashed down on me like a wave.
“What did she say?” Whitney asked. Some sugar had tipped out of the jar by the napkin dispenser, and she drew a star into the grains with her pinkie.
“All good,” I answered quickly. “We’re always good.”
I smiled and took another bite of my donut to try to convince them that I was okay, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
Chapter Seventeen
The Party
I couldn’t sleep again. Mom used to tell me that when I wouldn’t sleep as a baby, she took me for walks up and down our street. Back and forth as many times as it took, no matter what color blue the sky was, until I drifted off.
The lights were out and the city shone in through the windows. Our room still smelled like the pizza we’d had delivered for dinner (half green pepper for Whitney, who was a vegetarian, and half pepperoni for us meat eaters). Whitney was curled on her side next to me, and Cailin’s soft snoring came from the other bed. I swung my legs out from under the satin sheets and slid my feet into the sandals I’d left on the floor. They clip-clopped too loudly when I walked, so I rose on my tiptoes and crept across the room, past the cardboard pizza boxes and Whitney’s duffel bag and Harlow’s clothes, until I made it to the hallway.
I took the stairs instead of the elevator. The stairwell was a different world from the rest of the hotel. It had white cement walls and scuffed linoleum floors like the classrooms at my school, like the builders forgot to come back and make this part pretty. I veered out of the stairwell to the second floor and walked toward the pool; I knew where it was and what it would smell like and I hoped that maybe that would be comforting.
“You lost?” a voice asked from behind me. A woman with a thick brown braid and white chef’s coat pushed a cart of dirty dishes.
“No, I’m just going to the pool,” I answered, even though I was wearing plaid pajamas and not a bathing suit.
“Closes pretty soon. It’s almost eleven.”
“I know. I just want to put my feet in.”
“Careful. Last girl who went in there alone right before closing time wound up drowning.” She pressed the button next to the elevator.
“Is that true?” I asked, my heart giving one big beat like it was gasping for breath.
The woman shrugged. The elevator beeped and the doors opened. She pushed her cart through. I heard her laugh when the doors closed.
I pressed my back into the wall and slid down to the floor, curling my legs up into my chest. My phone was in my pocket. I opened my messages with Summer and her last one was still there, still waiting for me to reply.
We don’t have to share everything, Elena.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like that to me.
When Summer and I went to the fateful Halloween party in Joey Demarco’s basement, I was a flapper and wore a fringy dress and Mom’s shortest heels. Summer dressed as a gumball machine in a red shirt with colored cotton balls glued on. We huddled together in the basement, eating Skittles and whispering. It was fun to get dressed up, and to be around our classmates outside of school, even if we weren’t talking to anyone but each other. The feeling was grown up and glowy all at the same time.
Kendra Blair had come up to us in our spot by the stairs and tapped on Summer’s shoulder. She was dressed like a vampire with a trail of fake blood in the corner of her mouth.
“Joey wants to kiss you,” she said. Her voice was garbled by plastic fangs.
Summer’s eyes widened. She twisted up the Skittles wrapper in her hand.
“How do you know that?” Summer asked.
“He told me. Look, he’s going outside now.” Kendra pointed to the sliding door on the other end of the basement. Joey was walking out. He was dressed like a baseball player in a pinstriped uniform, and he waved before disappearing into the dark. “He wants you to meet him in the driveway.”
Summer glanced at me. I opened my mouth and shrugged, words lodged in my throat, unable to escape. Kendra giggled and it sounded as evil as she looked. Her vampire outfit billowed around her like a cloud of black smoke when she walked away, toward the snack table where Sara Smith and her other friends were standing.
I felt the Skittles melting in my palm. I looked down and saw the rainbow-colored stain on my skin. “Monster Mash” played on the radio.
“Should I go?” Summer asked. She adjusted her cotton-ball shirt. I saw goose bumps on her arms.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never… done that.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
The answer was braver than I felt. When I looked around the room, everyone’s costumes seemed scarier, like the make-believe part was gone and everything was real. The vampires and ghosts. My best friend was about to have her first kiss.
“Okay. I’
m going to go.” Summer took a breath and crossed the basement, leaving me alone by the stairs in my flapper dress and wobbly heels.
She wasn’t gone long. A few minutes later she slid the door open and walked fast back over to me, a pink cotton ball falling off her shirt to the dusty cement floor. Joey walked in right after her. He disappeared into a group of his friends, all dressed like baseball players too.
I handed Summer another pack of Skittles from the candy bowl nearby.
“Thanks,” she said. She tore the package and shoved a handful in her mouth, chewing slowly.
“So? Did you?” I asked. My heart beat hard under my flapper dress.
“Yeah,” she said. She ate another Skittle, this one as green as her eyes.
“And?” I realized how crazy my voice sounded, how out of control. Summer had done something I’d never done. Something that would make us different even though I’d always thought of us as two halves of the same person.
“It was fine.” She shrugged.
“That’s all I get? Summer, you just crossed the kissing line! I need to know everything.”
Summer’s eyes didn’t look right. They were far away and dark.
“We don’t have to tell each other everything.”
All the lights and the sounds in Joey’s basement faded away, until it was just me and Summer and those words between us. I guess we didn’t have to tell each other everything; I just thought we always would. I felt a rope wind itself around my waist, tugging me away from Summer.
“I know that,” I said.
“So let’s just forget about it,” Summer said, and started to dance with her eyes closed, the empty Skittles wrapper still balled up in her fist.
I stared at the blinking cursor in the text box on my phone, then typed I’m sorry. I backspaced until the message disappeared. I know this year has been different, I wrote, and deleted it. My eyes filled up with every attempt at a text, none of the words feeling right. What I really wanted to say was that I was mad. Mad at Summer for not telling me about her first kiss. Mad at her for the locker room, and the bus ride to the winter field trip where Kendra and Sara made fun of me and Summer joined in. Mad at myself for letting it all happen without saying a word.
Are we even still friends?
I sat in the hall and wrote and deleted messages to Summer until I finally felt tired enough to go upstairs and close my eyes. I drifted off to the sound of rushing cars.
Chapter Eighteen
The Team Meeting
Our itinerary on Tuesday morning said we’d spend most of the day at headquarters. All through our subway ride and our walk to the building I resisted the urge to text Summer, to send her pictures of the busy streets and that souvenir store with the snow globes. Diagnosis: silence. Treatment: fill it up with apologies. I wanted us to be fine. That’s all I’d ever wanted, even if it meant burying the hard stuff. But right now it felt like I was in that deep hole where I’d hidden the times Summer had hurt me, and I couldn’t find the way to climb out.
The office was busier than it was yesterday. Instead of sitting at cubicles, the staff was up and shuffling around with manila folders and laptops in their hands. They all seemed headed for a door farther down the hall than the conference room we’d been in yesterday.
“There are more people here,” Harlow noted. The four of us stood at the entrance to the office with Mindy, watching the world move at hyper-speed.
“Everyone is in the office on Tuesdays. It’s team meeting day.” Mindy spread her arms and guided us down the hall until we were part of the crowd, like bees buzzing around in a hive. I felt a little like I’d been stung.
“We’re part of the team,” Whitney whispered in my ear. She tugged on the hem of her red silky shirt. This morning she’d asked the rest of us which jeans to wear with it, and all of us picked the cropped ones with bedazzled butterflies on the front pockets. She’d put them on and stared at the butterflies in the mirror until the second we had to leave.
We walked into a conference room with a long, wide table and extra chairs stuffed inside. There were stars on the wall like the room we’d been in yesterday, but the paint was blue instead of purple. Akshita was at the front of the room in a white suit. She waved us over to four empty chairs. The whiteboard on the wall and the murmur of conversation reminded me of stepping into a classroom, but I didn’t have a textbook to hide behind.
“Everyone’s so excited you’re here,” Akshita said when we sat down. I was closest to her at the edge of the table. Her mug steamed in front of me. “We love Flyer week.”
“Do we get to be part of this meeting?” Harlow asked. She already had her notebook out.
Akshita twisted the tea bag in her mug around her pinkie.
“Of course. You can participate as much as you’d like.”
I thought about Mrs. Parekh’s syllabus, how participation was ten percent of our final grade. I didn’t want to Elena-fail at being a Flyer. Akshita cleared her throat and the room quieted down.
“Happy Tuesday,” she said. “Before the fun stuff—any big-deal dilemmas we need to sort?”
“The October issue is going to be too long. Something’s going to have to get cut,” a guy with dreadlocks and a pink polo shirt said.
I looked around the room at everyone. I saw the nice writer with the shaved head and superhero stickers, and some others who I’d seen at their cubicles. But mostly I saw faces I didn’t know.
“Any suggestions?” Akshita asked.
Whitney’s and Cailin’s eyes followed the voices in the room as the staff threw out ideas. Akshita was at the whiteboard, writing them in black marker.
Harlow raised her hand.
“No need to hand raise, Harlow. Just shout it out,” Mindy said from across the table. Her shirt had a picture of a magic lamp.
I liked the idea of a room with no hand raising. A place where you couldn’t get caught off guard.
“Sorry.” She drew a dot on the notebook page in front of her, under the words Staff Meeting. “Is there a way to tell which sections your readers like the most? Maybe you can cut from their least favorite.”
Akshita added Harlow’s idea to the list on the board, and Harlow didn’t stop smiling through the rest of the meeting, not when the group decided to cut the “What Pizza Topping Are You?” personality quiz, not when Mindy made all ten of her Disney jokes, and not when Akshita said it was time to wrap up. She turned to face us.
“Flyers, our photography, fashion, feature writing, and production departments are open for you to experience today. Pick which one interests you the most, and you’ll be matched with a staff member from that department.”
“Fashion!” Whitney blurted. The lights above made lines on the shiny material of her shirt.
“Follow Izzy.” Akshita pointed across the room to a woman by the door with a white-blond bob, pointy glasses, and a dress with a bunch of silver buttons. One by one the rest of the Flyers left with a staff member, left to do what they’d been chosen to come here to do, until it was just me. The broken piece of this Flyer foursome. The one who didn’t fit anywhere.
“What are you thinking, Elena?” Akshita asked. Everyone had filed out of the room except for Mindy, who waited by the door.
Diagnosis: not knowing where you belong.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You must’ve had some idea what part of the magazine you might be interested in when you applied. What’s your favorite aspect?” She took another sip from her mug, and it slurped a little. Seeing someone as glamorous as Akshita slurp their tea cracked my crab shell open a tiny bit.
“I love everything about the magazine.” I looked down at the smooth surface of the table. “Honestly, I have no idea why you picked me.”
“It was your paper,” Mindy said.
“Right. Your writing. It was such a compassionate piece on why you wanted to be a therapist. The Spread Your Wings team knew we wanted to meet the person behind it.”
My h
eart fluttered. I felt warm, like the sun had found its way through the crack in my shell. Mindy crossed the room and said something quietly in Akshita’s ear. Akshita’s palm slapped the table.
“That’s perfect.” Akshita looked at me. “Elena, we know exactly where we need you.”
Treatment: will hopefully be found wherever Akshita is sending me.
Chapter Nineteen
The Purpose
Mindy led me down the maze of cubicles near the entrance. I saw Harlow in a huddle of writers in rolling desk chairs, her pencil never leaving her notebook. Whitney was in a room full of racks of clothing like the ones from the photo shoot. There was a door farther down labeled PHOTO STUDIO with the door closed, and I imagined Cailin learning about camera angles on the other side.
We stopped at a regular cubicle. I saw a woman not much older than Mindy with bronze skin and flower tattoos up and down her arms. She had a diamond stud in her nose that glinted in the light from her computer. I recognized her from the team meeting. She had sat in the back of the room.
“Hey, Gertrude,” Mindy said. Gertrude swiveled in her chair to face us. “This is Elena. She’s going to work with you.”
Gertrude shook my hand and grinned. There was a tattoo of a violet on her middle finger.
“Super. I’m usually a one-person show back here.”
“It’s a spectacular show though.” Mindy bowed. Gertrude laughed, snorting a little, and took the chair from an empty cubicle for me to sit in. Mindy walked away smiling.
I sat in the chair and looked around. Gertrude had pictures of a gray bulldog tacked to a corkboard and a pale purple cushion on her chair.
“That’s Bruno,” she said, pointing to the dog pictures. “He’s the best boy.”
“He’s cute.” My eyes wandered some more, looking for evidence of what her job at Spread Your Wings was.
“Thanks for helping me out,” she said.