by Kit Frick
“Sex minutes?” Jenni asked, but I was already shoving my way through the bottleneck of freshmen and into the first-floor hallway. I bounded up the stairs two at a time, carefully balancing the coffee, watching out for teachers who might flag me for running.
Matthias was already at his desk in homeroom, using his backpack as a pillow. His not quite blond, not quite brown hair fanned out against the bag. Today was a flopped down day—no time for styling when you can barely drag yourself out of bed. He’d been out at a show until early this morning. I’d dozed in and out of sleep until his text came through at 4:13, letting me know he was home. His parents didn’t seem to care, but I did.
“Special delivery.” I waved the cardboard cup under his nose, the smell of strong black coffee seeping out through the little cutout in the lid.
“Hey, sunshine.” He opened his eyes and raised his head to grin up at me. Deep creases from the bag cut across his cheeks, and he looked unshowered as well as unstyled. He was imperfect and beautiful and mine. His hair smelled like cigarettes. It didn’t matter that Matthias didn’t smoke, or that technically smoking wasn’t allowed in most venues—the smell always clung to him after a show.
“You should take me with you,” I said. “Next time.”
He accepted the coffee and took a long swallow. “To a show?” He sounded surprised.
“I want to see what all the fuss is about.”
He frowned, then took another swig of coffee. “I don’t know. You’d have to break curfew. I don’t think it would really be your thing.”
“Please.” I could hear my voice slip dangerously close to a whine. “Let me decide what’s my thing.” Maybe he was right, maybe I’d hate it. But I wanted to know exactly what I was enabling. I wanted him to invite me in.
The first bell rang, signaling that I had exactly one minute to make it to the third floor. I had Mr. Samuels for homeroom, and he did not mess around with punctuality.
“I’ll think about it,” Matthias said.
I started backing away from his desk, toward the door. I wanted to stay, wanted to breathe in his smell a little longer, wanted him to promise to take me with him next time.
“Promise?” I asked.
“Promise.” Matthias raised his coffee as if in salute as I turned toward the door and slipped back into the hall. All around me, lockers were slamming and everyone else who’d waited until the last possible minute was rushing toward open classroom doors. As soon as I was outside, I sprinted toward the stairwell. I had twenty seconds to make it to homeroom, thirty if you counted to the end of the second bell. If I ran, I could just make it.
12
NOVEMBER, SENIOR YEAR
(NOW)
Saturday yawns out before me with no plans, no obligations, no expectations. I have an English paper due on Monday, but it’s already written. It’ll take an hour to edit, tops. My math homework is done, and I’m actually caught up in Spanish. This is what happens when you have no Friday night plans to speak of. When your only structured activities are weekly therapy sessions and the metal shop.
I push back the comforter and reach for the big navy sweatshirt crumpled at the foot of the bed. Shrugging it over my head, I stumble across the room to the air vent, push down the little lever, and let the heat blow full blast.
Down the hall, Mom and Dad have long finished breakfast, but there’s still fruit on the counter and a half-full bag of bagels. I pick out a whole-wheat everything and rummage in the fridge for the cream cheese while Bruiser weaves in and out around my ankles.
“There’s lox on the top shelf!” Mom’s voice rings out from the family room. “We saved some for you.”
As I fill up the coffeepot and plug in the toaster, I try to visualize the weekend in thirty-minute blocks. Breakfast with Jane Eyre keeping me company at the dining room table. Thirty minutes. Shower and put on real clothes. Thirty minutes. Fiddle around with my college apps. Two thirty-minute blocks. Then the day goes blank.
While the coffee brews, I peek my head into the family room. Mom is sitting on the sofa, a blanket pulled over her legs and a mug in her hands. She’s totally absorbed in an advance reader’s copy for the new Ruth Ware thriller. I can see her librarian wheels turning—how many copies to order for the branch she manages, how many in hardcover, how many ebooks.
Dad is at the long table by the windows, his desk, his domain. I can’t see for sure from where I’m standing in the doorway, but it’s safe to say he has the science sections of at least three major papers spread out in front of him. Peter Holland is basically a professional science geek. He’s covered the science and tech beat for the local paper for the past decade, a job he calls “barely work,” which is not to say he isn’t always working. He was at the office late last night, so this is the first time I’ve seen him since before school on Friday.
He looks up and spots me in the doorway. “How was the end of your week, sugar?”
Splendid. Just super-duper. This is a variation on Dad’s favorite question—how was your day? It’s like someone—probably Dr. Marsha—told him that frequent check-ins are important to the ongoing assessment of my mental health, but he never quite got past pleasantries. I want Dad to stop asking how my day was so I can stop lying to his face. But I know it’s not his fault; he just wants me to be happy. I smile and try to give him what he wants.
“It was fine. I put in some more work on that new sculpture project, the one with the carburetor? I have some ideas for where it might go.” Lie. I’ve been messing around with that thing for weeks, and I have zero ideas for where it might go. It’s November, and I still can’t make myself focus. I’m losing my touch.
“That’s great, sweetie.”
Don’t ask anything hard, Dad. Don’t dig. Don’t press.
The coffee hisses, and I duck back into the kitchen. When I’m settled and two pages into my book, Mom comes into the dining room and sits across from me. Crap. Emma Holland is not content with pleasantries. She’s going to ask me what I’m doing today and look at me with that Worried Mom Face when I don’t come up with a good enough answer.
“What’s on the agenda for today, baby?” she asks, reaching out to pat my hand. Her smile is a tight line of concern. It makes me squirm in my seat, and I can feel my insides crackle and pop like Rice Krispies, but I can’t really blame her. I’ve looked like misery warmed over for months. If I were her, I’d look at me exactly the same way.
“I’m going to put in some work on my college apps. And there’s some stuff I’ve been wanting to check out on Netflix.”
Mom’s smile crumples.
“Ellory May, I’m starting to regret letting you sign up for that. Don’t you want to make plans with Bex? Go out to the mall?”
Right. The mall or the movies or all those other places I’ve been going with Bex when I’ve really been down at the river. What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll probably call Bex this afternoon.” I smile wide and take a big bite of bagel. “This is delicious,” I say through a full mouth.
Mom shakes her head and pushes herself up from the table.
“Try to get outside at least once today. Promise?”
“Promise.” And I mean it. It hits me that there is somewhere I need to go.
Mom stands in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen and looks at me for a long moment. She wants to say something else, I can tell. Something deep and meaningful. Something only a mom could say to make the world right.
Then she retreats back to her thriller, leaving me to my own devices. It’s not her fault for coming up empty. It would take more than mom-powers to make things right again.
* * *
Two hours later, I’m stashing the Subaru in its usual spot on a side street near my house and walking down to the river, two vanilla lattes in hand. Scrambling down the bank is a little precarious, but I manage to arrive safely at the bottom, lattes unscathed. Then I walk along the bank toward the hollow Ret likes, t
he spot where the grass now bears a permanent impression of her back. The river water smells dirtier than usual today, a mix of old fish and mud.
“Fancy meeting you here on a weekend,” she says.
She’s gotten started without me. Her grin is watery and warm, and she’s waving her favorite flask in greeting, the print of a pink cat face getting dull in the spots where her fingers have worn away the paint.
“Figured you could use some company.” I keep my voice light. “No fun drinking alone.”
Ret accepts one of the lattes and lifts the lid, then pours in a stream of amber liquid from her flask. I’ve brought my own nips of Bacardi, liberated from the back of the pantry where they’ve been gathering dust. I empty one into my cup without comment.
I blow across the surface, and the steam swirls up into my face, the rich smell of coffee and the sweet bite of the booze dragging me back to last March. I’d stayed late in the metal shop, even later than normal, so when I emerged into the student lot, it was already getting dark. The Subaru was parked toward the back, where the pavement runs up against a thin strip of woods. It’s hardly a forest, just a densely planted thicket of trees about twenty feet deep, separating the school property from the residential area behind it. As I got close to my car, I could hear them. Voices in the woods. Come on, man. Plant was the seminal front man of the seventies. I don’t know how you can make that claim— What, are you fighting for Mercury again? Shit, Freddie Mercury does not even—
Boys, really? A new voice. Ret’s voice. Cutting through the banter, cutting sharp and deep into my heart.
I walked past the Subaru and straight into the woods. They were camped out a few feet in, backs pressed against trees, safe-for-school paper coffee cups raised to their lips. Unmistakable even through the half-light: Matthias, Dave, the Smurf, and Ret, holding her own with the guys, holding up a flask, holding a party without me.
“Ellory.” Matthias saw me first, scrambled to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
As if I needed an excuse. I jutted my chin toward the lot. “You’re practically tailgating on my bumper.”
Ret looked up at me through a haze of whiskey and caffeine. “The more the merrier. Come join the fun!” She leaned toward Dave, but misjudged the distance between them, and collapsed giggling into his lap, liquid sloshing out of her cup and into the pine needles. “Oops!”
I let my eyes wash over the two of them. Jonathan was nowhere in sight. Of course not. They were obviously drunk and asking to get caught. Their coffee cups weren’t fooling anyone. But whatever, let them get caught. No one had asked me to hang. Matthias hadn’t asked me. Ret’s invitation rang hollow in my ears, too little too late.
I stood there with a scowl on my face, the perfect girlfriend mask I’d perfected in recent weeks cracking to expose the depths of my hurt. Why was he shutting me out?
The next thing I knew, Matthias’s arm was around my shoulders, leading me through the trees, back toward the parking lot. “This isn’t your scene,” he murmured in my ear. “Let me drive you home.”
I shook his arm off. “You’re drunk,” I snapped. “I can drive myself.”
I waited for him to apologize. I waited for him to explain. I waited for him to offer to leave the others behind and come with me—his girlfriend. Not because he wanted me out of there. Because he wanted me.
Then I stopped waiting and got in the car. He was right. This wasn’t my scene.
* * *
“Ellory? Ellory May?” Ret is waving her coffee cup under my nose, luring me back to the present.
“I have to ask you something,” I say.
She leans back into the bank and takes a sip. “Thought I lost you there for a sec.”
There are so many questions I want to ask about last spring, but we made a promise. No wallowing in the past. But even more than that, I need to ask about Abigail. It’s the whole reason I came here today. I rationalize that eighth grade is hardly the past we meant; it’s basically ancient history. Ret’s history that’s slamming right up against my present.
I drain half my coffee in two swallows and lean back into the bank, my shoulder brushing up against hers. The booze rushes through my insides, warm and tingling.
“So hit me,” she says.
“It’s about Abigail.”
Ret doesn’t say anything. Her eyes sharpen, and she unscrews the cap on her flask. Instead of topping up her cup, she lifts it straight to her lips and tilts back her head. It’s a warning to keep my mouth shut, but I don’t care. Old Ellory would have fallen in line, played my part. But I’m not that girl anymore.
“What really happened between you two, that winter break?”
“Jesus, Ellory. We were practically babies. Who even remembers?”
“She came to talk to me,” I say. “The other week in shop.”
Ret’s head snaps toward me. “What did she say?”
I shrug. “You tell me. What happened over break, Ret?” Even as the words slip out of my mouth, I know she’s not going to say.
She scowls and puts her drink down so she can pick at her nails. “Nothing happened. I didn’t do anything, she stopped talking to me, no reason. She tricks everyone into thinking she’s all sweetness and pie, but she’s a stone cold bitch, Ellory. I don’t want you talking to her.”
I take another swallow and practically choke.
“You don’t get to tell me who to hang out with. I have no friends because of you. You get that, right?”
Ret takes my hand, pries my gloved fingers apart, slips hers between mine. “You have no friends because of you, Ellory. And anyway, you have me. Abigail will poison you against me. Do you want to lose me all over again?”
That’s it. Coming here this afternoon was a mistake. Her words are lies and truth all tangled up together, and it’s too much. What am I even doing, crawling back to Ret, letting her slip beneath my skin, letting her make me feel like hell all over again?
I extract my fingers from hers and lurch onto my hands and knees, the booze suddenly sour in my stomach. I crawl toward the river, and the smell hits me hard, fish and mud, and then my own vomit, pouring out of my stomach into the water and weeds. When I’m done, I drag my coat sleeve across my mouth. My eyes are stinging.
I don’t look at Ret, don’t give her the satisfaction. I pull myself to my feet and start walking toward the break in the guardrail.
“Two roads diverged in a wood,” she calls out behind me. It’s her idea of an apology, a do-over, but I leave her hanging. I keep walking.
13
OCTOBER, JUNIOR YEAR
(THEN)
I parked the Subaru outside Matthias’s house and waited. He had made it apologetically but firmly clear that I was not allowed inside the Cole’s “sad museum of neglect.” The house looked like it had the potential to be nice, with a little TLC. It was a two-story, for one thing, half siding and half stone. But the paint was cracked and flaking, and the roof tile was peeling up in large flaps. The small front yard was brown in some spots and overgrown in others. I didn’t care about any of that, but Matthias held firm.
Then, just when I was starting to think he’d forgotten, he opened an even better door. Two tickets to a show: My Name Is Molly, Friday night at the Crow. As he jogged across the lawn and slid into the Subaru, I glanced up to the second floor, where a window had just snapped from black to yellow light.
“Is that your parents’ room?”
He leaned across me to check. I wondered if they wanted to get a look at me as much as I wanted to get a look at them. Before he could answer, a small hand pulled the lacy curtain aside, and Cordelia’s face appeared in the window. I watched as he pulled out his phone and started to type.
Go back to bed, C. I’ll be home before you wake up.
Pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, promise.
In a minute, the window went dark again, and I pulled the car into a three-point turn and headed toward the bridge.
“It’s not like she’s alone.�
�� I glanced over at his frown reflected in the window glass. “Your parents are home.”
“I know, I know,” he agreed. “I still feel bad.”
I got it. I worried about Matthias, and Matthias worried about Cordelia. “We should take her out again soon, the two of us. I want her to actually get to know me.”
“We’ll go to a movie or something next week. She can take a while to warm up to people.” But I’m not just people. I’m your girlfriend.
I nodded. “It’s a date.”
He plugged his phone into the MP3 port and started searching for the right track. “This is from FlipFest last August. Consider this the preshow.”
I leaned back into the seat and let the music fill up the car. I’d never been to a club before, unless you counted waiting for Matthias outside Sally’s Pub, which I didn’t. They were all eighteen plus if not twenty-one plus, and I didn’t have a fake ID. But Matthias knew the guys who worked the door and said not to worry. Tonight, he’d given them a heads-up about me. Tonight, I was going inside. I was finally going to find out where and how my boyfriend spent so much of his life while I was watching Center Stage at Jenni’s for the fourteenth time.
Once Matthias had warmed up to the idea, he’d given me a sweet and meticulously detailed rundown on the selection process for tonight’s after-hours excursion:
1. There were exactly four venues worth going to downtown, and Crowbar—known as the Crow to its regulars—was at the top of that list. (Sally’s was apparently number four out of four.)
2. The Crow was still pretty shitty. But the broken neon fixtures and plastic palm trees were part of its charm.
3. My Name Is Molly was an indie band from Philly that was “worth checking out” now, before they got signed and inevitably sold out to the corporate machine.
4. The lead singer was a dude, not named Molly. The band did have a girl drummer, which was cool, and she was also not named Molly.
5. Matthias thought Molly might be a reference to MDMA, but there was nothing on the blogosphere to definitively support the drug hypothesis.