“Get set,” I say and smile along with her.
“GO!” we shout at once.
Then, we both jump forward and shove our ice creams into our mouths. I attack mine one giant bite at a time, ripping the cone in half and ignoring the rainbow sprinkle casualties. I eat way too fast, vanilla ice cream flying everywhere (and let me tell you: it is one hell of an ice cream.) I glance up at Cat, whose cone is down to about half. I rush to eat more but before I can, she devours the entire thing in a bite. I stare at her in horror.
She just shrugs. “I win,” she says.
“Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
“You heard me, Davenport,” I say, and finish my ice cream. The “loser’s bite,” we call it.
When I’m done eating, Cat and I move on to laughing about random things and, of course, trash talking each other in preparation for the next ice cream contest. Cat has vanilla all over her mouth and I’m sure I do too, but I don’t think either of us even cares.
“I change my mind,” Cat says. “We are so weird.”
“It’s pretttty freaking awesome. You know, being weird,” I say.
“It is.”
I wipe my mouth with the napkin. “So are you going to tell me about your Harry Potter apparel?”
“You mean my Hogwarts wardrobe?”
“Sure?”
“Oh, well, it’s nothing vital. Just a new line of nerd fashion that’s going to alter the lives of Harry Potter fans across the globe. NBD.” She says it all so blankly that I can’t help but laugh.
“Wow. That sounds bleak.”
“Also, with these new clothes, I’m probably going to attract some paparazzi and everyone is going to want to be me because of how incredibly hot I look. So, the usual. You wouldn’t understand,” she adds.
“I wouldn’t?”
“Oh yeah. You just don’t know what it’s like to be awesome.”
I toss my hair. “Bitch, I’m fabulous.”
I catch her stifling a giggle, which makes me smile, too.
“Sure thing, West. Sure thing. All the girls flock around you on your way to your kiddy ice cream shop, too, am I right?”
“Yep. They cling to my killer biceps the whole time.”
“I can’t even picture that.”
I shrug. “It’s only the natural reaction when you see a hot guy walking down the street.”
“No, I mean I can’t picture you having biceps.”
At that, I stick out my tongue at her like a true adult. “Okay. Fine. You got me there, Davenport.”
“I totally did.”
There’s a pause, and my gaze wanders to the scribbled-on white wall in front of me as I listen to the squeals of the kids and the methodic shushing of their parents. Surrounded by the smell of ice cream and the cool air of The Icecreamery, I realize once again how glad I am to have Cat and these Ice Cream Saturdays. Anything to keep me from being cooped up at home with my dad, with only my camera to escape to, is more than welcome.
I turn to Cat after another minute, opening my mouth to say something about her Harry Potter wardrobe, but I close it when I notice a sliver of vanilla ice cream still on her lips. “Oh,” I say, and I reach for my napkin. “I think you got something there…”Without even thinking, I grab the napkin, lean forward, press it to her lips, and gently dab the ice cream off. “There,” I murmur, and sit back down, the warmth of her lips seeping through the napkin and tickling, almost tempting, my fingers. “All better.”
It takes me a moment to realize how tense Cat’s body suddenly is, how she’s staring at me with those wide blue eyes of hers, a mix of alarm and a faint hint of curiosity on her face. My stomach drops, and I feel my muscles freeze, too. Shit. Did I do something wrong? Shit shit shit.
My whole face flushes when I realize she’s tensing over the napkin. Oh god, was that wrong? Too far? Too overfriendly? I wasn’t even thinking when I did it, I just assumed it would help and then… boom.
“I… um… am sorry,” I mutter and snap my gaze back down to my feet. I can’t help but notice how the warmth of her lips lingers on my fingertips. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just wanted to help…”
“It’s nothing,” she says quickly. “I was just surprised… is all. Yeah,” she says, nodding to herself. “Surprised. That’s it.”
“So, how was the ice cream?” I say after another instant of us both blushing and not meeting each other’s gazes, changing the subject immediately.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and her face goes back to normal like nothing ever happened. She proceeds to look at me like I’m an idiot. “West,” Cat says. “It’s ice cream. What do you think my answer is going to be?”
“Along the lines of ‘badass’ and ‘best thing ever.’”
“You know it.”
“Dude, I totally do.”
We keep talking until the conversation slowly devolves into pulling out our phones and checking random memes. I sift through my vlog page without thinking and glance at some of the comments when an email pops up. It’s from Harper. Immediately, I click it.
from: Harper Knight
to: Sam Green
subject: OMG
I just saw an ad for a box-set of Stars Wars and Harry Potter mugs. Do you know what this means for my life?????? Awesome things, Sam Green. AWESOME THINGS.
I glance up at Cat, who is busy checking her phone, careful to make sure she doesn’t see what I’m doing. Like with my vlog, I’d rather her not know about Harper. I’m not sure why, but I almost feel like I’m somehow cheating on her with Harper. I mean, yeah, it’s stupid because Cat is strictly my best friend and Harper is, well… she is the girl I want, but I still feel like it.
That’s not a weird feeling to have, right?
I close my eyes. Oh who am I kidding? That’s totally weird. I have no idea why I feel that way, either.
Finally, I type my response.
from: Sam Green
to: Harper Knight
subject: RE: OMG
OMG is right. This is groundbreaking! Revolutionary! But when you buy it, promise to a) order a Harry Potter one for me and b) when you get it, put your feet on a table, get a Chewbacca glass, and drink orange soda from it like a boss.
from: Harper Knight
to: Sam Green
subject: RE: RE: OMG
OF COURSE I’ll get you one and OF COURSE I’ll drink from the Chewbacca glass like a boss. But it won’t be orange soda. I will, being the class girl I am, drink root beer instead.
Because let’s be honest here, root beer is a total turn-on.
from: Sam Green
to: Harper Knight
subject: WHAAAAT
I am now picturing you sitting on a beach chair and getting fanned with giant green leaves by servants on either side of you while you drink your root beer out of a Chewbacca glass (like a boss) and stare at a hot guy by the pool. (The hot guy being me, obviously, with ripped abs and biceps and perfectly tanned skin because that’s just how I look.)
Also: is this your screwed-up way of wooing me, Harper Knight?
from: Harper Knight
to: Sam Green
subject: RE: WHAAAAT
That’s exactly how it is. Then you get out of the pool and shake the water off your hair and perfectly chiseled stomach in slow motion with romantic music playing in the background. And after that you approach me equally slowly and we flirt via Chewbacca glass root beer because we are the cliché.
Also: yes, yes it is.
I grin, because Harper just has that effect on me. I’m about to type my response when Cat looks up from her phone and says, “You ready to go?”
“Um.” I glance down at the unanswered email. “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I guess. Le
t’s go.”
“Cool.” She smiles at me, grabs her shopping bags, and we march out of The Icecreamery, leaving a tired-looking Sharon and several weirded-out parents in our wake.
Chapter 3
The next morning is a total daze. My alarm goes off too late, and I roll out of bed only to find that school starts in just forty minutes. Just my luck.
I throw on a shirt, race down the stairs, and skid into the kitchen, armed with a glass of orange juice and a bowl of Lucky Charms. It’s a Monday, and I am exhausted. Harper and I spent the entire night emailing back and forth to each other, a conversation which started out about school and ended in making fun of celebrities at award shows and lusting for Girl Scout Cookies. I was too smiley while talking to her to sleep or even worry about how shitty I’d feel in the morning, so I guess this whole Curse of the Monday Fatigue thing I’m feeling is my fault. I swear, though, it was so worth it. Talking to Harper is always worth it.
Next I pull out a spoon from the drawer by the sink, hop up on the kitchen counter, and speed-eat my breakfast. Milk and cereal go flying everywhere and I’m sure I look like the breakfast equivalent of the Cookie Monster, but I don’t care. It’s not like the manner standards without Mom here are all that high.
My dad sits at the opposite end of the room. He eats his breakfast of toast and hardboiled eggs without meeting my gaze or so much as acknowledging my presence in the slightest. Dark circles rim his eyes, and even his glasses, which sit atop his thin nose, can’t hide the faint bloodshot tone to them. He’s been drinking again, I can tell. He’s always drinking nowadays.
After a second, a wave of nausea comes over me and I can’t look at him anymore, so I try to focus on something else in the room, anything but seeing his face. I shift my gaze to the refrigerator.
It’s white and peeling, with photos of Mom scattered all across it. I lean in, squinting a little. Some of them are older, fading pictures of Mom and Dad when they first met as teenagers, of them chasing each other on the beach post-college, and even snippets of their wedding where they’re smiling and hugging and looking so happy together—like a real couple. Like they used to be.
Then there are some pictures of me with her, me with dad, me with both of them. A drawing I made of Mom in second grade hangs in the corner of the refrigerator, depicting what’s really a stick figure with a straight line over her head that’s apparently supposed to symbolize hair, and beside it the note I wrote to her before I left for slumber camp for the first time, as well as a picture I took of Mom wearing shutter-shade glasses about a year ago, after she informed me she was going to become a hipster and “follow the teenage trends.” I laughed at her then and made fun of the insane poses she did with those glasses. I mean, she looked like a complete idiot, but she had no shame about it, either. And that’s what I miss—how she was her own person, how she never cared what anyone thought, only what she thought of herself.
I’m smiling now, but I’m not laughing with her anymore. Just like I have every day for the past six months, instantly, I regret taking her for granted. I regret just assuming she’d be there for me when I wake up in the morning, thinking she’d always be home cooking dinner for me and humming Elvis songs to herself since according to her, “Elvis is a god.” I regret not telling her how much she meant to me, how much I’d miss her, how devastated I’d be to see her go. If I could have one more second more with her, I would spend it whispering how much I love her into her ear and hugging her, just hugging her, and not letting go until she’s finally slipped away into nothing.
Most of all, I regret losing her. I regret letting her go without a fight, just like that. I don’t want to make those mistakes again. I don’t want to see anyone else leave, don’t want my heart to be ripped to shreds all over again.
I’m almost… afraid to love anyone else again. I want to be happy, and all love has done for me in life is stab me in the back.
After a while Dad looks up from his newspaper and glares at me from the kitchen table. I feel his gaze on me, and I sigh a little, pushing away the memories of Mom. I turn back to him, not wanting to look at him but not having the energy to fight it.
He looks terrible, as usual. Between his fading gray hair, his worn face, and the sad, empty look in his eyes, he looks so bad that I’m almost tempted to pity him. Hell, I would pity him, but after treating me and my mom like shit for the past year, the man is going to have to look a hell of lot worse to get any sympathy from me.
“Going to school?” Dad says, scowling.
This time, I don’t meet his gaze. I drop my spoon into my half-empty bowl of cereal, suddenly not hungry anymore. “Yes, Dad, it’s a Monday. That’s what normal people do on Mondays: they go to school. Or to work,” I add. There is nothing I dislike more than talking to him. Hearing his voice never fails to bring the taste of bile into my mouth, and all of my conversations with him seem to leave me nauseous. I hate my dad, hate how he ignores me, hate what he did to Mom and how he doesn’t even seem to care.
“Are you trying to say something about me?” he asks.
“No,” I say, hopping off the counter and moving toward the sink, bowl of cereal in hand. The spoon hangs from my mouth. “Of course not.”
He glares at me, but I ignore him. “I told you,” he says slowly, gritting his teeth. “I can’t get a job because I’m busy.”
“I can sure see that,” I say as I drop the bowl into the sink and turn on the hot water. “That newspaper has been keeping you busy for the last six months.”
“It’s just so riveting,” he spits.
I shake my head and ignore him, not wanting to engage any further. While the water is still running, I kick open the dishwasher and slip my bowl inside. Then I switch off the water, reach into the refrigerator to my left, and grab a ham sandwich lunch I prepared last night. In one single motion, I slip it into my bag and turn toward the door. “Well, I’m off to do something productive with my life. You should consider doing the same,” I say, then grab my backpack and walk out the door.
He doesn’t respond to that, but I can feel his glare on me as I walk down the front steps, into the driveway, and over to his old car he “lets me use.” I’m used to his looks by now, though. It’s been like this every morning since Mom’s death, so I know the drill.
It’s not that my dad’s abusive. He’s never laid a hand on me, and he most certainly isn’t ever going to. He’s not that kind of person; he barely even yells at me. He’s just in the background, a bitter nonfactor in my life. He makes me do it all alone, drinks his beer and makes snide remarks, and never does anything for me—but we don’t fight. That should be a good thing and maybe it is, but sometimes, I think his complete lack of caring is worse than fighting.
Fighting, at least, means I still matter to him.
Not caring doesn’t.
Right before I step into the car, I turn around. Through the foggy kitchen window, I meet his gaze and feel my throat catch. He just looks at me, his eyes hard, his lips curled.
***
I pull into the parking lot of my tiny high school a few minutes later and look around.
The school itself is only two buildings, a main one with two floors that are each divided up by subject and with a miniscule gym sitting behind the first. There is an athletic field surrounding the gym, but it’s the only field we have—depending on the season, it serves as the football field, the soccer field, the lacrosse field, and the field to every other sport students play here. The school is old, red-brick, and constantly surrounded by a thick mist, and as I step out of Dad’s car and walk up to the front entrance, the dew-covered grass wets my sneakers. The school is isolated atop a steep hill (known simply as “Hill Street”), like a special little sanctuary that achieves my one goal at the moment: to get away from the rest of the world.
Technically my school is a private school, but it costs almost nothing and teaches at just about the same pace as the local public high school. The only difference is this high school is
much smaller, only about fifty kids per class, which is why my mom wanted to send me here. It isn’t a bad school, though. The kids are nice, even if I don’t really connect with them, and the work here is decently-challenging. Plus, the small class sizes and the fact that I rarely ever socialize with the other kids in town who don’t go here means no one knows about my vlog series.
A cool breeze brushes past me as I race up the steps to the school entrance. This early in the morning, the smell of moss is everywhere, probably from one of the trees surrounding the school.
It’s still too early to function beyond sleep-zombie status, I remind myself as I step inside, yawn, and make my way down to my locker. Cat’s is only a few away from mine, decorated on the inside with pictures of chocolate cake and pizza (it’s like she’s trying to kill me.) She nods at me as I approach. The faint scent of her vanilla shampoo fills my nose.
“Monday,” she says with fake enthusiasm and gives a small pump of her fist.
I grimace and quirk my eyebrow. “Fun times.” Then I turn, empty my backpack into my locker, and pull out my laptop. There are still a few minutes before class, so I lean against the wall, sit down, and scroll over to my vlog page. No new messages from Harper. My heart sinks.
Cat’s locker slams above me. “Well, I gotta get to Math,” she murmurs, grabs her backpack, and walks in the opposite direction down the hall. “Bye. Talk later?”
“See you,” I say without looking up. “And yeah, we’ll talk later.”
She disappears after that.
A few other kids trickle down the hall after me, grab books from their lockers, and head to class, but instead of following their lead I wait and focus in on my computer. The faint hum of the heater reverberates throughout the hallway, and it’s working so hard it smells like something is burning.
Next I check my email, hoping to find something new from Harper in my inbox. Sure enough, I am right. I grin a little as I click on it, already giddy to see what she has to say this time.
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