“You beat me to that, too.” He grinned. “Okay. Well. Do you have any interest in walking around with me and doing some of this assignment together?”
“Sure.” I felt an edge of excitement at the back of my neck, and I told myself to calm down. “Oh, except that I’m having brunch with your cousin and her girlfriend at noon.”
He nodded as if this was not surprising. “Harold’s, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, they love that place. They say the coffee—”
“Oh, believe me, I remember the coffee discussion. That’s critical.” He screwed up his face like he had eaten a whole lemon, and I laughed. “I know. You’re not a fan.”
“I don’t get it. But come on. We’ll wander that way. You’ve got an hour or so.” He cast a sideways glance at me as we walked. “The blueberry waffles are great, by the way. At Harold’s.”
“I’ll keep them in mind.”
We walked to the park, and then we kept walking, turning left, turning right, sometimes looping around blocks in a complete circle. I had no idea where I was, so Sam led, though I kept an eye on my phone to make sure I wasn’t in the middle of the chillest kidnapping ever. But everything was fine. He was walking me to brunch, albeit in a long and winding path, pausing to stop and take photographs.
At first, I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. On a sidewalk with shabby little houses on either side, I saw nothing until he squatted down and pointed his camera at a tabby cat paused in its exit from under a porch. A few minutes later, he snapped a close-up of a pile of newspapers on a lawn, the newsprint on the bottom blurry and wet from dew. I hadn’t even noticed them.
The longer we walked, though, the more it started to make sense. Not his photos exactly—some I never would’ve thought of myself, and others I doubted would turn out well. But I liked the idea of every view containing something of value. I started aiming my camera at anything that caught my eye without worrying too much about the quality of the final image. A burnished brass knocker shaped like a dachshund on the door to a chiropractor’s office. A mailbox that someone had hit with their car, crushed and splintered in the middle, barely standing up. A puddle striped with gasoline shimmer.
“Is this supposed to be meaningful art?” I asked Sam at one point.
He shrugged. “Does it matter?” he answered, and I accepted that on this day, it didn’t.
The photography required us to stop and start often, which let us drop our conversation and pick it up again after a short break. It could have been awkward, but I found the pattern a relief. It meant that there was no pressure to be speaking constantly.
I learned that Sam was an only child and had grown up here, in a house a few miles away. Claire’s mom was his mom’s sister, and they had been close since they were young, though they’d only gotten to be real friends after she came to St. Anne’s. He liked books but was a slow reader. He liked video games but not as much as his friends. He played no sports and no musical instruments. “This is my instrument,” he said, patting his camera affectionately before making a face and saying, “That was corny as hell. I’m so sorry.”
I gave him a little more of the story that had led me here. I told him about the meetings with the school, my talks with my parents and Jess’s talks with hers, and the twins’ reaction to my going away. I left out the hard parts, which were—like all the most important things—in the details. I talked about Jess and how much I missed her. I did not tell him about the night in December after everything was settled when Jess and I sat together on the swings in the park, sobbing and shivering and holding each other’s hands. I told him it was a weird adjustment to live with my grandmother, but I didn’t mention the call last night or my walk along the beach.
Sam was a good listener. He paused after I finished each sentence, as if waiting to see if I would keep talking, before he said anything himself. He asked good questions. A couple of times, he shook his head in sympathy or said, “That really, really sucks.” But otherwise, he just listened. I hadn’t told the story to anyone before. Oma had gotten it from my parents, Ethan had seen it all happen, and Jess—well, Jess was the story.
By noon, we were a block away from Harold’s. Sam was on his second roll of film, and I had one shot left on my first. We rounded the corner and were greeted with a small, square building of electric-blue concrete. Sam gestured to it as if presenting a band on a stage.
“Here we are,” he said. “The only five-star breakfast in town.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Five stars from whom?”
“It speaks for itself.”
As we approached, I could see the painted lettering on the side of the building, HAROLD’S in thick white letters above the windows, and below them, five sturdy yellow stars. I put my camera to my eye and took a step forward, a step back, until the corner of the building was centered in the frame, the stars cascading down the bottom edge. Click. I advanced my film for the last time.
“Success,” I said. “Done.”
“Congratulations. How’s it feel?”
“Good. I think. I mean, I’m not a good photographer, but this was a fun morning. Thank you,” I added.
He looked down at his shoes or at his camera, I couldn’t tell. I thought for a moment I might have said something wrong, but then he said, “Anytime,” and he sounded so shy and pleased that I knew I was fine. “I’m not that great at it either, and I’ve been doing this for a while. But I love it. Glad you’re at least having a little bit of fun.”
“You were not invited to brunch!” The yell came from behind us, and we turned in unison to see Claire and Kitty walking toward us. For a panicked moment, I thought they meant me—that Kitty had not, in fact, told Claire that she’d asked me to come—and I was ready to run.
But Sam rolled his eyes and said, “Calm down, Claire. I’m not here to crash. June and I were both out doing our photography assignment this morning. We ran into each other.”
“A likely story,” Claire said cheerfully. “Hey, June. Are you good with hugs?”
“Hi and yes,” I said.
“Excellent,” she said, and she gave me a tight embrace, squeezing me around the shoulders. Kitty greeted me the same way. They traded hugs with Sam before all of us pulled back to stand in a circle, Claire bouncing a little on her toes.
“Shall we breakfast?” Kitty asked.
“Yes, please,” I said. I couldn’t have walked more than two or three miles with Sam, but I was still starving.
“Come on, y’all,” Claire said, starting toward the restaurant.
“See you later,” Sam said.
“No, you’re here now. Come on,” Claire called over her shoulder.
“I thought I wasn’t invited!” Sam said, grinning and following her.
Kitty hung back to walk with me. “He does this all the time,” she told me. “Crashes our brunch. He’s lucky I like him.”
“So it’s not weird to have your girlfriend’s cousin around all the time?”
She shrugged. “Nah. It’s really a pretty small percentage of the time we spend together, and they’re best friends. And I like him.”
We stepped inside Harold’s, and I shrugged off my coat. The alcove was small and loud and pleasantly stuffy, lit only by the sun streaming in through the windows. The walls were covered with vintage ads and photographs of people posing with food. A harried-looking man stood at a host stand, phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. As we walked in, he held up three fingers, then added a fourth as his eyes flickered to me, and he raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Claire gave him a thumbs-up, and he pointed to his right wordlessly.
I followed the others into the main dining room, which was ringed with windows and much brighter, though just as loud. We sat down at the only empty booth, Claire and Sam on one side and me and Kitty opposite. It still had a few half-empty water glas
ses and crumpled napkins, but no one seemed to mind.
“We are seriously lucky,” Claire said, grabbing an enormous laminated menu.
“Yeah, we almost always have to wait on the weekends,” Kitty told me.
An older woman appeared at the edge of the table, briskly clearing away the remainder of the last meal. “Welcome back, y’all,” she said.
“Thanks, Leah,” Claire said. “How was your Christmas?”
“Oh, good. Relaxing. We were closed for a week, you know.” She pointed at each of us in turn. “Coffee, coffee, no coffee…” She got to me. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I said fervently.
“This is June. It’s her first time at Harold’s,” Kitty said.
“Leah. Nice to meet you,” Leah said, smiling. “Welcome to town.”
“You too. And thanks.”
“I’ll be back in a sec,” she said before disappearing.
Claire gave the menu a cursory glance, and then put it back down. “I don’t know why I’m looking at this. I already know exactly what I want.”
“Same,” Sam said.
Kitty, however, was still reviewing her menu, her eyes carefully scanning each and every item. “I like to try something new every time,” she explained to me. “They have so many options.”
“I maintain that is a wild way to live,” Claire said. “Why take a chance when you know for absolute certain what the best thing on the menu is?”
“What’s the best thing on the menu?” I asked, looking up from long lists of breakfast and lunch plates.
“Waffles,” said Sam at the same time as Claire answered, “Pancakes.” They looked at each other and burst into laughter. Kitty shook her head at her menu, smiling.
Leah returned to take our orders—Sam and Claire had their usuals, I got some kind of biscuit and grits combination, and Kitty selected a plate of meat, eggs, and breads called the Banjo Special. Then Leah grabbed a pot of coffee from a nearby cart and started filling our mugs. I scooted mine toward me as soon as she walked away and inhaled the steam. The smell alone was bitter and fresh, a holy blessing.
“Wait’ll you taste it,” Kitty said, blowing on hers.
“I didn’t like coffee until Harold’s,” Claire added.
“Yeah, I converted her.”
“How long have y’all been together?” I asked, lifting my cup to my lips before realizing it was still too hot.
“Fifteen…sixteen months?” Kitty answered, making eye contact with Claire.
“Over a year,” Claire said.
“Seems like forever,” Sam commented, not unkindly.
“But we want to hear more about you,” Kitty said, nudging me with her shoulder. “We know why you’re here. But that’s all. What do you like, what do you hate, does your grandmother yell at you for using your phone at home like she does in the classroom…”
“I like being outside, when it’s not freezing. I like reading. Back at home, I mostly study and hang out with Jess.” I took a sip of my coffee. It scalded my tongue, but I could tell even through the sharp heat that it was as good as it smelled. “I hate…um, I hate team sports. Celery. Hypocrites,” I added, thinking of all the girls who had whispered about me and Jess getting caught when they spent every Friday night drunk on their parents’ wine. “Oma does not police my phone behavior at home, no. But hey, can I ask you something?”
“Those were excellent answers, so sure.”
“You said the other day that you had a New Year’s resolution to make friends. Is that—” I looked among the three of them. I wasn’t sure where I was going, already starting to regret the question. “Don’t get me wrong. This is great. Thank you for inviting me to brunch. This coffee is unbelievable—”
“Another convert,” Kitty said triumphantly.
“It wasn’t a hard sell. But I honestly did not expect to even speak to anyone here for the first month. So…”
“Here it is.” Claire had been rummaging around in her tote bag as I talked, and she extracted a small spiral notebook covered in a print of leaves and ladybugs. She flipped about halfway through before turning it around to show me the page, her finger on the words at the top. There, in neat block script, was written, C + K’s New Year’s Goals.
“Number one: Make new friends,” Claire said. It was indeed at the top of the list. Immediately underneath it were a few bullets (not just Sam’s friends; who/how???) and then the list moved on to number two, spend more time outside. The page was crammed with writing, and I couldn’t help scanning it. Number five was be less stressed. Number seven: figure out college. Claire closed the notebook and tucked it away before I could read everything.
“The issue,” Kitty explained, “is that we spend all our time together, which is great, but we realized last year that we didn’t really have anyone else to hang out with at school. Only Sam—”
“Who barely counts.”
“Hey!”
“Well, he isn’t at school most of the time.”
“We both get along fine with the girls there.” Claire picked up the narrative. “Like, my roommate is great. But I wasn’t that close with anyone before Kitty started here last year, and as soon as we got together, I think I just…”
“Did not make an effort to have friends,” Kitty finished. “I didn’t, either.”
“You are both far too weird to have friends apart from me,” Sam said. Kitty threw a small container of butter at him, which he caught deftly.
“Make space.” The waitress appeared with a tray overflowing with food and started setting down plates as we scrambled to move our water glasses.
My egg and cheese biscuit was preternaturally fluffy and at least four inches tall, and my grits bowl could’ve been a meal on its own. As much as I missed McDonald’s breakfast biscuits, I couldn’t pretend they held a candle to the plate in front of me. After my first bite, I took out my phone to send a quick picture to Jess, who was, if her Saturday habits held, still asleep. this biscuit is the best thing I’ve ever eaten, I texted, then put my phone away. These three rarely seemed to have their phones out, and I didn’t want them to judge me for always being on mine.
“It’s perfect,” Claire said, swallowing and breaking the sudden silence.
“Mine too,” Sam echoed.
“This might be my favorite thing here,” Kitty said.
“You get something new every time, and you always say that.”
“Well, it’s true every time.”
“Here, June, try some pancakes. You have to.”
“Honestly, the waffles are better. Here—”
We all traded food around, forks crossing over each other in midair as we dropped bites on each other’s plates. It felt comfortable and familiar, and when the conversation started up again, I wasn’t as worried about judgment. Sun streamed in through the window and my glass of water, making the surface of the table shimmer. Someone made a joke and I laughed. I made a joke and they laughed. Leah kept filling my coffee cup until I was shimmering too, shaking from the caffeine, the kind of stomachache that felt good.
I read an old book once that said the best way to get to know someone was to break bread with them. That was what came to mind—that old-fashioned phrasing—at this table. I passed around my grits bowl like an offering; half an egg appeared in front of me from Sam, the yellow yolk spilling from its center. Claire sliced a cinnamon roll into four equal pieces and placed them on a paper napkin in the center of us. Kitty tore off a piece of buttered toast, slipped it onto my overflowing plate.
Eight
Sam went home after lunch, citing homework and a nap, so Claire, Kitty, and I wandered back toward school together. The air was a little warmer and the streets a little busier, and I wore my coat unbuttoned as we walked. An antique store had opened its doors and set out some old pieces of furniture. We passed a few other group
s of girls our age, and Claire and Kitty waved to some of them.
“How many girls go to St. Anne’s?” I asked as we approached the campus.
“Um…” Claire scrunched up her face. “I guess four hundred or so? About a hundred per class. Not that big.”
“Big compared to my old school,” Kitty said. “I went to a Montessori school until last year. My class was twenty people.”
“My school before this was about the same size,” I said. “But I went to public school until high school. I miss being someplace bigger.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like how everyone knows everyone else in a smaller place. At least at home, Jess sort of took all the attention. Here, everyone knows I’m new. I feel like everyone is looking at me.”
“They’re not,” Kitty said bluntly.
“It’s truly not that big a deal,” Claire said. “It’s just that so little happens here that almost anything feels like an event.” We reached the campus wall, and she turned to me. “Do you want the campus tour, now that we have some decent weather to walk around in?”
“Oh, Oma told me what all the buildings are.”
“I bet we can do better.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. What are we going to do, homework?”
I had no counterargument, though I was thinking with some anxiety about my pile of reading back home. But there is tomorrow, I told myself. If I was at home with Jess right now, we would be at the park or Patrick’s house. I wouldn’t be doing homework. Or I would be, but I would be with her, TV on in the background, bowl of Goldfish crackers in front of us, barely productive enough to justify all the distractions. As I followed Claire and Kitty past the wall and toward the farthest building, I felt a wave of homesickness so strong it made me nauseous.
I checked my phone. Jess had responded, finally. omg I am hungover and that looks amazing. I think I am going to make Patrick come over and make pancakes. it’s really for the best that you were not here for this party last night. it was not good and I do not feel good now.
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