Top Ten

by Katie Cotugno

  But Gabby wasn’t biting. “No,” she said. “Ryan. Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, Ryan did. She looked tired, makeup creeping down underneath her lower lashes. She also looked like she could fight a bear, should the need and opportunity arise. “Yeah.”

  “Your dad—and I have literally never said this about anyone’s parent before, but I am going to say it: your dad is a huge dick.”

  Ryan snorted, not entirely in amusement. “Okay . . . ?”

  “I mean it,” Gabby continued. “Every time he opened his mouth today, I wanted to punch him in the face. I can’t imagine what I’d do if my dad talked to me that way.”

  Ryan’s back prickled at that, like a cat or a porcupine; he felt his face go hot with shame. “He’s not that bad, if you get to know him.”

  “Really?” Gabby shook her head, dismissive. “Because I won’t lie to you, today seemed kind of bad.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Ryan said tightly. He didn’t like the tone she was using, like he was some dope from a white-trash family who wasn’t even smart enough to realize how tragic his life was. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Really?” Gabby asked, frowning. “Does that mean it’s usually worse?”

  “It means not everybody’s family is as civilized and pristine as yours, Gabby.”

  “Wait, what?” Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with my family?”

  “It’s not about your family,” Ryan said; he could hear his voice getting sharper, but it was like he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t have a bad temper, generally, but enough was enough. “It’s about you not knowing what you’re talking about.”

  “You realize I’m on your team here,” Gabby said, eyes flashing like he was being the unreasonable one. “I’m telling you as your friend that this wasn’t normal.”

  “And I’m telling you we’re not good enough friends for you to be telling me what’s normal about my life!”

  Gabby looked at him like he’d punched her. “We’re not?” she asked, and her voice was so quiet.

  That was when the bus began to smoke.

  GABBY

  Gabby stood miserably on the side of the highway twenty minutes later, stamping her feet against the cold and listening to the irritated murmur of the displaced crowd all around her. There was another bus coming to rescue them, allegedly, since theirs was still emitting great, billowing clouds of stinky black smoke from underneath its massive hood. The bus driver had assured them it wasn’t going to explode, but he’d also quickly ushered them all about a hundred yards down the shoulder, so Gabby wasn’t entirely impressed with his confidence. She had no idea how long they’d been waiting. Her phone was officially dead.

  She crossed her arms inside her hoodie, trying not to shiver as the frigid wind blew. She hated buses. She hated Albany. She hated hockey. And she hated Ryan most of all.

  God, she was so humiliated. He was right: she’d completely misjudged their relationship, just like she completely misjudged all social interactions, because she was a weird, awkward, mentally broken person who nobody actually liked. Who even Ryan didn’t actually like. She’d made the mistake of thinking that just because this friendship was important to her—was the most important, even—it was important to him, too. And she’d been wrong.

  It should have been a relief, Gabby thought, shoving her icy hands into the pockets of her hoodie. After all, she’d spent the last year waiting for the other shoe to drop—for this whole thing to come crashing down—and now it had. But instead she could feel the anxiety starting to close in all around her, like a pack of wild animals creeping out of the woods that ran along the edge of highway. Gabby gritted her teeth, tried to beat it back. She’d be home soon, she reminded herself urgently. She’d be fine.

  “Come here,” Ryan said suddenly. It was the first thing either one of them had said since they got off the bus; he’d been keeping his distance, staring out at the cars whizzing by, but when Gabby glanced over in his direction she found his dark gaze was fixed on hers.

  Gabby glared back. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because you’re freezing.”

  “I am not.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes, shrugging out of his varsity jacket and holding it out to her. “Here,” he said. “Take this.”

  Gabby scowled. “We’re not good enough friends for that,” she snapped.

  Ryan sighed noisily, coming closer. “I’m sorry,” he said, draping the jacket over a guardrail and reaching for her arm. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean that.”

  Gabby jerked her elbow away. “Didn’t you?”

  “No!” he said, eyes widening like he was honestly horrified. “Of course not. Of course we’re good enough friends for you to be honest with me about stuff. You’re probably the only friend I have who would be that honest, actually.”

  “Clearly not.” Gabby didn’t want to be having this conversation. She wanted to go home and get in bed and never see him again in her life. “Look,” she said, voice shrill and brittle. “Obviously our whole friendship was a sideshow to begin with. It was weird while it lasted, and now it can be over and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Sound good? Here, we can start right now, even.”

  She was about to stalk away, but Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean it’s a sideshow?” he asked.

  Gabby scoffed. “Oh, come on. Look at us, Ryan.” She gestured widely. “Do we honestly strike you as people who should logically be hanging out together every weekend?”

  “I don’t get it,” Ryan said, sounding oddly wounded. “Why? Because you think I’m such an idiot?”

  “Because I—” Was he serious? “No,” she said, annoyed and embarrassed that she had to explain it. “Because you’re the jock fucking mayor of Colson High School and literally no one there would notice if I fell off the face of the earth.”

  “I’d notice,” Ryan said immediately.

  Well. Gabby opened her mouth and closed it again. She didn’t know what to say to that. She hugged herself and staring out at the highway. She felt like an exposed nerve.

  “Gabby,” Ryan said. “Come on.” He looked at her for a second. “Do you honestly think I just can’t get enough of Monopoly? Do you think that’s why I keep showing up to your house every week?”

  Gabby hadn’t thought about it, really. She hadn’t wanted to let herself. Even after all these months there was a part of her that felt like if she ever looked too hard at their friendship it would turn out to be a hologram, something she’d made up to distract herself from her own loneliness and fear. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

  Ryan laughed at that. “Monopoly is boring as all hell, Gabby. I keep coming over because I like hanging out with you. And I think you keep answering the door because you like hanging out with me, too.” He shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time thinking if it makes sense for me to logically hang out with somebody or not. I usually just think about if I like them.”

  Oh, for god’s sake. “You realize that not thinking about popularity is a luxury you only get if you’re already popular,” Gabby muttered. Still, she felt about two inches tall. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that the world might be a better place if more people looked at it like Ryan did.

  “I got defensive, is all,” he said now, sitting down on the guardrail and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “That’s why I said it. It’s complicated with my dad, okay? I mean, clearly it’s complicated with my dad. But he’s still my dad.”

  “I know,” Gabby said quietly. After a moment she perched on the guardrail beside him, the chill from the metal bleeding right through her jeans. “I’m sorry. I should have minded my business.”

  “No,” Ryan said. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to mind your business.”

  Gabby looked over at his profile in the darkness, surprised. “You don’t?”

  “No,” he said. “Look, I don’t always
understand why we’re friends either. I know you think I’m a clown. But I don’t want to go back to our regular programs, or whatever you called it. I don’t want to not be friends with you anymore just because we had a fight.”

  Gabby thought about that for a second. “I don’t think you’re a clown,” she finally told him, gazing out at the highway.

  “Sure you do,” Ryan said. “It’s fine.”

  “I don’t, actually,” Gabby said. “I think you’re smart and fun and nice and a good friend, which is why it pissed me off to hear somebody shit-talking you, even if that person was your dad.” She dragged in a ragged, gasping breath. “And you’re right, I don’t know anything about your family or your relationship with him, so maybe you’re used to it, maybe none of it even registers. But that’s what I was trying to tell you back there on the bus, okay? That stuff he said wasn’t true.”

  Ryan huffed a breath out, looked down at his busted-up knuckles. “Okay,” he finally said. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Gabby ordered. “I’m just being your friend.”

  The replacement bus rumbled up not long after that, its headlights like twin beacons in the dark. Looking at it, Gabby thought she might cry from relief. Instead she and Ryan shuffled aboard amid assorted groans and grumbles, the two of them finding a pair of seats near the back. This time when he offered her his jacket she took it, draping it over herself like a blanket and curling up into a ball underneath.

  “Wake me up when we get home,” she said, and Ryan nodded. The sound of his steady breathing was the last thing Gabby heard before she fell asleep.

  NUMBER 6

  THE REUNION

  JUNIOR YEAR, SPRING

  GABBY

  Gabby was camped out in the computer lab after school on Thursday putting the finishing touches on a photo series she was working on for the spring art show. It was of all the women in her family, and she was oddly pleased with the shots she’d gotten: a close-up of the nape of Celia’s neck, the fall of her long yellow braid over her shoulder; one of her mom and her aunt Liz from back at Christmas reading magazines side by side on the living room sofa, their faces tilted at the exact same angle; Kristina standing up on her bike in an oversized hoodie, laughing at something Gabby had said. Since everything that had happened with Ryan back in the winter, her life was extra girl-heavy lately, a blur of pore strips and fleece-lined leggings and Sandra Bullock movies on cable. Gabby told herself she didn’t miss him at all.

  She chewed her bottom lip now, twirling the ends of her ponytail around two fingers as she concentrated. She loved photography: the chance to frame a shot exactly how you wanted, to crop out what didn’t belong. To keep on clicking over and over until you got things right, subject and light and composition. She wished actual life was more like that.

  “Oh!” said Mr. Chan, coming into the lab with his jacket slung over his arm, messenger bag hanging off one shoulder. “You’re still here.”

  Gabby looked up. “Sorry,” she said. “I can leave if you need to lock up. I’m just finishing.”

  “Take your time,” he said, coming into the lab and peering over her shoulder for a moment. “Looking good.”

  “Thanks.” Gabby felt herself grin. She liked Mr. Chan, who taught web design and ran the yearbook: he was cool in that he was interesting and knew stuff, but not in that I too am a young person! way she found so grating in some of her other teachers. He had a four-year-old son named Garth who he was always talking about.

  “Oh, hey, Gabby, while I have you here.” Mr. Chan set his bag down on a chair and rummaged through it for a moment before coming up with a wrinkled computer printout and handing it over. “I wanted you to take a look at this. They emailed it to me and I thought of you.”

  Gabby was surprised. She’d never been the kind of student teachers saw things and thought of; she was smart enough and quiet enough, and she never got in trouble, and that was it. “Thanks,” she said slowly, scanning the page: UCLA Summer Program for Young Photographers. Six Weeks. California. “What is it?” she asked, a little shiver of anxiety already zinging through her. “Like, a summer camp?”

  “It’s a summer intensive,” Mr. Chan explained. “You’d be working with professional photographers, getting feedback, workshopping in a group.”

  “Workshopping?” Gabby repeated.

  “Yeah, showing your work to your peers and getting critiques.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Gabby blurted, then cringed.

  But Mr. Chan grinned. “That’s how you get better,” he pointed out. “You’re talented, Gabby. You have a great eye. And if you think you might like to pursue photography after high school, this is a great place to get started.”

  Gabby blinked. Did she want to pursue photography after high school? She’d never really thought about it before. Whenever Gabby tried to think about the future her brain shorted out a little, like the TV at her grandma’s house used to during a thunderstorm. Like a power surge overloading the board.

  “It’s in Los Angeles?” she asked finally, still looking at the paper. It might as well have been on the other side of the world. Just the thought of it had her heart pounding, like suddenly there wasn’t quite enough air in the computer lab: all those new people, hundreds of miles from home. A room full of strangers looking at her photos. A room full of strangers looking at her.

  “There are scholarship options available,” Mr. Chan offered, as if that might be the source of her hesitation. Right away, Gabby felt like a jerk. Her parents would probably pay for this, she knew, if she said she wanted to do it. Hell, they’d probably be delighted she was considering leaving the house. Since she and Ryan had stopped speaking, she knew she was being even more hermit-y than usual, hardly ever straying farther than school or Shay’s house for a movie night.

  Ugh, she did not want to be thinking about Ryan right now.

  Mr. Chan was still looking at her, waiting. Gabby offered a weak, treacly smile. She thought of all the excuses she’d made over the years for why she couldn’t go to dances or birthday parties or out with Ryan, back when she and Ryan were still friends: I can’t go because my mom needs me to do something. I can’t go because my stomach hurts.

  I can’t go because I’m too afraid.

  “I’ll think about it,” Gabby lied finally, sticking the paper in her bookbag and turning back to the computer, hitting Save As and then Quit. “Thanks.”

  RYAN

  Ryan had a doctor’s appointment after school on Friday, one of the periodic checkups he’d been going in for since January to reassure everybody that his brain wasn’t turning to pea soup. “Any double vision?” the doctor asked, shining a penlight into both his eyes as Ryan sat on the exam table, bored, kicking his heels lightly against the medical supply drawers underneath. “Having a hard time remembering stuff in school?”

  “Well, always,” Ryan joked. “But no more than usual.”

  The doctor ignored him. “Headaches?” he asked.

  Ryan shook his head. “Nope,” he lied. “I’m totally good.”

  He went for a run afterward—he’d made a point of working out every day for the last four months, wanting to make sure he was in better shape than ever when they finally let him rejoin the hockey team come fall. He’d been benched since last winter thanks to Gabby; he hadn’t played in almost five months and was losing it a little bit, not being out on the ice every day while the other guys were.

  He did five miles, then headed home to shower before meeting up with Chelsea and a bunch of her friends at the Applebee’s near the movie theater. They went there almost every weekend; the waitresses hated them because they always ordered one appetizer sampler and fourteen plates and stayed for three hours being noisy.

  “You’re here!” Chelsea called when she saw him, sliding out of the massive round booth, her curly hair riotous around her face. They’d been dating since way back in December, which was longer than Ryan had ever managed to stay interested in one girl before; there was
a tiny part of him that kept expecting to get tired of her, but so far it hadn’t happened at all. Chelsea was just really fun. When it wasn’t swim season, she played Ultimate Frisbee after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays; they went for runs through her neighborhood on Saturday afternoons and wrestled in the ball pit at Arcade World when her boss was out on his smoke break. It was cool, to be with somebody who lived so much in her body. It was cool to be with somebody who lived so much.

  “How was the doc?” she asked now, perching on his lap and scraping her nails lightly through the super-short hair at the back of his neck. Ryan shivered. He’d gotten it all cut off earlier that spring—new guy, fresh start, whatever—and he still wasn’t entirely used to it.

  “Good,” Ryan said, then thought a little guiltily of the lie he’d told about getting headaches. He didn’t exactly have a choice—he needed a clean bill of health so they’d let him start playing again—and it wasn’t like he got them all the time or anything. But he still felt kind of weird and unsettled about it. Doctors were like priests, Ryan thought. You were supposed to tell them the truth no matter what. “Although honestly—”

  “Chelsea!” screeched Chelsea’s friend Sam from across the restaurant. “Come here! I need you to take a picture with me.”

  Chelsea sighed theatrically. “Duty calls,” she said, and pecked him on the temple. “Save me a chicken finger.”

  Ryan grinned at her retreating back. Chelsea was quite possibly the only person he’d ever met who was more social than he was. She was part of a big group of friends who did basically everything together, including using the bathroom. They called themselves the Magnificent Seven, which Ryan secretly thought was a little dorky. He always cringed when he thought about what Gabby would say if she heard it, then scolded himself: First of all, Gabby wasn’t really in a position to judge, seeing as how last time he’d checked she didn’t have seven friends to give a stupid group nickname to. And second of all, there was no reason for Gabby to ever find out about it, because he hadn’t spoken to Gabby at all since the night of their giant fight last winter.