by Mila Gray
I push past Toby into the store and walk over to the counter where I’ve stashed my bag. Giggling alerts me to the fact that there are customers in the store. I turn around. Two girls are over by the swimwear section. They can’t be older than fourteen, and they’re staring at me wide-eyed, nudging each other in the ribs. I turn back around, blood pounding, and reach inside my bag for a fresh T-shirt.
Toby is suddenly in my face. “You lied,” he says.
“What?” I say, pulling a Boston College T-shirt on over my head and trying to ignore the girls in the corner who are now whispering frantically between themselves.
“They didn’t Photoshop you.”
I grab my bag and head straight for the door.
“Don’t quit,” Toby calls out after me.
“Too late,” I answer.
I jump in my car. If Em’s gone to see Rob (don’t think about it, don’t think about it), then that means she won’t be home, so now’s the perfect time to go speak to her mom and tell her I’m quitting. It was stupid of me to ever come back here. What was I expecting?
* * *
On the way to Em’s I pass by my old house. I hit the brakes and crawl past, noting the swing set on the lawn. The new owners have painted the veranda a vile green color. A pang of nostalgia punches me hard in the gut at the sight of the place, but it’s tainted, like most of my family memories are now. Pulling up in front of Em’s house a few minutes later makes me feel even sadder, bringing with it another wave of anger. Or sadness. I don’t know what it is, only that it feels as if fire ants are marching beneath my skin.
Em’s house looks as worn as Mrs. Lowe. The paint is peeling, the gutters need clearing out, and the mailbox stands at a drunken angle. I climb out of my car—a Prius rental I picked up in Seattle—noticing with a twinge of guilt that Em’s mom is still driving the same car she had when Em was a kid: a beat-up Ford. Her dad’s truck is nowhere in sight. Hopefully, he’s out. I’m not sure I want to see him again or what I’d say if he answered the door.
I knock, but no one answers, and I’m about to give up and get back in my car when the door finally swings open.
Mrs. Lowe looks flustered, as well as surprised to see me. “Oh, Jake,” she says, her hand moving instinctively to smooth down her hair. “Hi. What are you doing here?”
“Um,” I say, words deserting me. Yeah, I should have planned this better.
“Here, come in, come in,” she says, and ushers me inside with a distracted smile.
I feel more comfortable standing outside on the veranda, but I can’t say no, so I follow her inside and wait for her to shut the door behind me.
“Is something the matter?” she asks. “Emerson isn’t here.”
“Oh, um, no,” I say. “I just wanted to tell you that I can’t do the job anymore.”
Her face falls. She looks at the ground, then back up at me, her blue eyes piercing right through me like a pair of knife blades. “You’re quitting?”
Oh man. She sounds just like my coach. I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Not exactly,” I say. “I just . . . I’m not sure it’s such a good idea after all.”
Mrs. Lowe studies me for a moment and then pats me on the arm. “Come on in and have a cup of coffee, Jake.”
“I . . . ,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at the door. “I don’t know if I should.” I don’t want to be here when Em gets home.
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Lowe says from the kitchen, where she’s already reaching for mugs. “She won’t be home until six.”
I cross the threshold into the kitchen and stand there, hovering, looking around. There’s the table I used to sit at with Em when we were toddlers, pressing out cookies, while our moms stood leaning against the counter drinking tea. There’s the refrigerator that used to be covered in our finger-painted masterpieces. There’s the ceramic flowerpot Em painted for her mom for Mother’s Day. There’s the back door that I put my hand through when I was ten and Em slammed it in my face. I still have a jagged scar running up the inside of my arm from the twelve stitches I needed as a result.
Most of the scars on my body were given to me by Em, I realize now. I’m not sure why that fact makes me smile, but it does. They’re like war wounds, but all from battles that I wanted to lose.
“Sit down, sit down,” Mrs. Lowe says, ushering me toward the table.
Feeling awkward and too big for the kitchen, I pull out a chair and sit down.
“You’ve gotten so tall,” Mrs. Lowe says, smiling at me fondly.
I squirm a little under her gaze. I wonder what she really thinks of me? Of my family? She and my mom were best friends—they met at the doctor’s when Em’s mom was pregnant and I was six months old—but now they don’t talk. There’s so much I want to say and ask her, but I can’t seem to find the right words.
Mrs. Lowe busies herself with making tea and I stare around at the kitchen feeling awkward. A cabinet door is hanging at an angle. Where’s Em’s dad?
“I’ve been keeping up with all your news,” Mrs. Lowe says.
I look up sharply. She has?
“How are you finding Boston?”
“It’s good,” I say, running my thumbnail over the groove in the table where Em once tried to carve her name with a butter knife. She got to EMERS before her mom discovered her and grabbed the knife from her hand. My finger traces out an invisible ON.
“And top of the draft prospect list. That’s great, Jake.”
I give her a wan smile.
“Your parents must be so proud of you,” she says, opening the refrigerator and reaching in for the milk. Is she fishing for information?
“Yeah,” I mumble. “I guess.”
“How’s your sister?”
“She’s okay. She just finished tenth grade.”
“And your parents are still in Toronto?”
I nod.
“And your grandmother?”
“She passed away a few years ago.”
I watch Mrs. Lowe pouring out the tea and I wonder how they managed to stay in Bainbridge after. How did Em cope? My face suddenly blazes.
If I were any kind of a friend, I would know the answer to that.
Emerson
Rob’s watching TV in the basement apartment of his parents’ house, where he’s lived ever since finishing college. I walk in without knocking and find him watching ESPN. . . . Rob tosses the remote aside and flashes his alligator grin when he sees me, the smile he uses when he thinks he has a chance of getting some. I flare my nostrils at him in reply.
“Rob,” I say, putting my hands on my hips and delivering the lines I rehearsed on the way here. “It’s over. We are over. You can’t keep coming around and acting like I’m still . . . yours.”
I was never yours, I want to add.
He’s on his feet instantly, his arms coming around my waist, pulling me close. My body tenses, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “Rob,” I protest. “Get off me.”
“Awww, babe, come on.” He nuzzles his lips against my neck and I jerk away. “What is it?” he asks, frowning at me. “Are you on your period or something?”
I shove him hard in the chest and he stumbles back toward the sofa, laughing. “Guess that answers that. Why don’t you go away and come back in three to five days?”
For a few seconds I stare at him dumbfounded. It’s as if the veil has finally been lifted from my eyes. What was I on? What did I ever see in this person? Jake’s expression when he saw Rob pawing me was the catalyst. He was horrified. And now I am too. Horrified that I ever let Rob touch me or talk to me this way.
“How can I get it through to you that we are over?” I say.
Rob smirks again. “You always say we’re over. You said it a week ago and then three days later you came running back, just like you always do.”
“I did not!” I yell. I need my head read. Why did I ever start dating him?
Because you had to, I remind myself. Because it was the only way to stop the noise. And because I wa
s lonely. I hate to admit it, but it’s true.
Rob Walsh made all the gossip and the bullying and the name-calling go away and he distracted me from thinking about Jake. That’s why I started dating him. But why am I still dating him? We have nothing in common, and after three years together neither of us has ever said the L word. It’s not that kind of relationship. I’m not sure what kind of relationship it is. One of convenience, I guess.
The truth is it felt like Rob was all I deserved. Most people told me it was more than I deserved. But comments like that were nothing compared to the nasty things hurled toward me up until then. Comments I won’t think about. Can’t think about. And from Rob’s perspective, he probably saw me as easy, in more ways than one. He’s never had to put in any effort, which was probably the appeal for him.
Rob drops down onto the sofa and reaches for the TV remote. He turns off the game and looks up at me, his expression unusually serious. “Is this about wonder boy?” he asks me.
“What?”
“Jake. Is this about him?”
I swallow. What? “No.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Really?”
“Why would it be about Jake?”
“Because you guys were always hanging around when you were younger. You were best friends, weren’t you? And now he’s back and suddenly you’re breaking up with me.”
“I’m not suddenly breaking up with you. I already broke up with you last week. And probably a half dozen times over the last three years. It’s not like this is coming out of the blue.”
“Yeah, but you never mean it. We’ve established that.”
“Stop telling me what I do and don’t mean! You’re always doing that.”
He rolls his eyes at me, his sign for whatever. That’s another thing he always does: makes me feel like I’m some hysterical, nagging girlfriend all the time. “So if it’s not because of Jake, is it because I forgot your birthday?”
“You always forget my birthday.”
“No, I don’t.”
My eyes roll of their own accord. “Listen, we’ve broken up,” I say. “We’re not getting back together again. Ever. Okay?”
The puzzlement on Rob’s face is a picture. He frowns at me, his nose wrinkling. “Like, never ever?”
“Like, never ever,” I say, feeling as if I’m channeling Taylor Swift.
He studies me for a beat, slowly nodding to himself. “I was going to dump you anyway. You just beat me to it.” He reaches over and picks up the remote, switching the game back on and racking up the volume until the walls vibrate.
“Okay, then,” I say, my words instantly swallowed by the noise from the TV. “I guess I’ll see myself out.”
I head down the driveway, feeling a weight roll off my shoulders. As if I’m Atlas and someone just lifted the world off my stooped back. Why the hell didn’t I do that sooner? I think about texting Shay to let her know. She’ll be so thrilled. I can picture her doing her happy dance, whooping for joy.
As I’m unlocking my bike, I hear the angry growl of an engine and turn in time to see Reid Walsh howling up the street in his truck, music pumping through the open windows. He screeches into the driveway, missing me by bare inches, and hops out, twirling his keys in his hand.
“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” he says in the affected drawl he’s experimenting with.
“I’ve been busy,” I say, stuffing my bike lock into my bag. There’s still no love lost between Reid and me, though thankfully I don’t have to see him much these days as he’s at college in San Diego.
“How’s your dad?” he asks.
I turn to him. It looks like he’s smirking; his lip is turned up at the edge. My body quivers with rage. I step forward, hands clenching into fists. Reid feigns fright, backing into the car, holding up his hands in mock surrender.
“What?” he asks. “What did I say?”
Breathing hard and fast, I get within a step of him. My blood boils and my hand itches to ram itself into his smug, stupid face, but he’s taller than me and built like King Kong.
“Don’t ever talk about my father,” I growl at him through my teeth.
He laughs. “I hear it’s him who can’t talk.”
He pushes past me like I’m a piece of trash and heads toward the house, walking with a swagger that would, under normal circumstances, make me laugh.
My arms start shaking. My legs, too. Tears sting my eyes, threatening to fall. It’s the same feeling I had in the locker room all those years ago. I can’t move, can’t speak. I’m paralyzed.
“Asshole,” I finally manage to whisper as he slams the front door shut behind him.
Jake
An angry shout from the front room makes Mrs. Lowe jump, splashing boiling water from the kettle over herself. I’m halfway out of my seat, but she waves me back down with a short smile and hurries past me.
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” she says as she disappears into the hallway.
I stare after her. More noises issue from the front room. What the hell is going on? I get up and follow after her.
As soon as I push open the door, I see that the dining room is no longer the dining room but has been converted into some kind of bedroom. There’s a bed where the table used to be, and, over by the window where there used to be a sideboard, there’s a small table with a wheelchair pulled up to it.
It takes me several seconds to reconcile the shrunken, gray man with the twisted body sitting in the chair with the image I have of Em’s dad. What the . . . The breath slides out of my body. Jesus.
Mrs. Lowe is bent over the wheelchair talking quietly to her husband.
I hover in the doorway, unsure what to do, but then Mrs. Lowe looks up at me. “Come and say hi, Jake,” she says.
She must see the look on my face.
“He was diagnosed with MS a couple of years ago.”
MS?
“Hi,” I say, trying to smile but aware that the horror of what I’m feeling must be reflected in my expression.
“Jake’s back for the summer,” Mrs. Lowe explains to him. “He’s working at the store.”
I shoot her a glance. I just quit, or doesn’t she remember?
“Em needed some help managing things,” she explains with a strained cheery voice as she fixes Mr. Lowe’s pillow so it supports his head at a better angle.
“I’m just going to get a glass of water for him,” she says to me, and before I can offer to do it for her, she’s gone.
I stand in front of Mr. Lowe, feeling like a soldier facing a firing squad.
“Sit,” he suddenly barks at me.
I’m so stunned I drop straight into the chair behind me. His words are a little slurred, but I can see the intelligence in Mr. Lowe’s eyes, along with the frustration and anger that’s so obviously eating at him.
“Why back?” Mr. Lowe slurs. Straight to the chase, then. That was always his way.
I feel like I’m strapped to a chair in an interrogation cell. I consider lying to him, but I can’t. I look him in the eye. “I wanted to see Em,” I tell him.
When my mom asked why I was going back to Bainbridge for the summer, I told her it was to see old friends. When my coach asked, I told him it was because I wanted to get back to my old training ground and reconnect with what I loved about the sport.
Really it was because I wanted to see Em. I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Hockey?” he asks next.
I nod. “Yeah, I’m still playing.”
“Top prospect.”
I frown in puzzlement. He would have to be following my career to know that. “Yeah,” I say. “For the moment.” It’s as easy as sliding on ice to drop from being top prospect to being a nobody, is what I’m thinking. Just ask Rob Walsh. An injury is all it takes. Or one stupid mistake.
“You signed already?” Mr. Lowe asks.
I nod. “Yeah, to the Red Wings.” I was a first-draft pick. When I finish college, I’ll hopefully start playing for them. Mr.
Lowe nods as if he’s hearing this for the first time, but something about his smile tells me he already knew this bit of information too.
“Em faster,” Mr. Lowe says now, and a bit of spittle appears on his bottom lip.
“What was that? I didn’t catch it,” I say, grinning.
He laughs.
“She might have been faster than me then, but not anymore,” I tell him.
He nods his head, but the laughter has died. I notice the spittle hanging from his lip is still there and impulsively grab the tissue from the table in front of him and lean forward to dab it away. “Does she still play?” I ask.
Mr. Lowe turns toward the window and grimaces.
No, I guess she doesn’t still play. I often wondered if Em had quit hockey. I couldn’t imagine how she’d be able to keep playing after what had happened. “So,” I say after a long quiet pause, “Rob Walsh, huh?”
I try to keep my tone light and conversational, but when Mr. Lowe turns back to face me, there’s no disguising the sneer pulling up his top lip. I’m kind of happy to see it there.
“I just—I don’t get it,” I say, shrugging at him.
He studies me for a long, hard moment. “You weren’t here,” he finally says, struggling to enunciate the words clearly.
I turn away and stare out the window at the wonky mailbox. Is that true?
I wonder how long Em and Rob have been dating. I wonder even more what the hell she sees in him. She must have had dozens of guys after her. I mean, we’re talking about Emerson Lowe. Every boy at school was equal parts terrified of her and in love with her. Or maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was awe. I know I felt all those things and more.
“How on earth did they end up dating?” I ask, though it’s more a whisper under my breath.
Mr. Lowe turns from the window to look at me. “He was the only one who was nice to her.”
I frown at him. The only one that was nice to her? Were things really that bad? I can’t imagine how bad they must have been for Em to think Rob Walsh was her best shot at happiness. Pretty goddamn horrific is the only answer I can come up with.