by Robin Benway
“I know that you’re running away,” he challenged.
“I’m going to see my dad in Houston,” I scoffed. “Not exactly the same thing.”
“Are you gonna move there, though? Like, permanently?” Henry bent down and picked up the highlighter, setting it back on the table.
“Why? Would that just make your day?”
He stared at me, his eyes like a wounded puppy’s, deep and hurt. “No,” he said quietly. “Not really.”
“Yeah, right,” I huffed, starting to slam my books shut. “Yeah, I’m sure you’d love it if I stayed. I’m sure tutoring me makes you feel smarter than ever.”
“No, that’s not it!” he said, and I was almost relieved to hear Henry finally yell back. “That’s not it at all! You never listen to me. You never—”
I spun in my chair to look at him. “I’ve heard everything you’ve ever said!” I shouted back. “I know what you think about me!” Just thinking about that night at the party made me wince. Getting drunk wasn’t even the worst part of it, not after hearing Henry say, “Not her,” not after hearing everyone else laugh at the idea of me.
I grabbed the highlighter again and hurled it across the room once more, then snapped my eyes to meet his. “Look,” I told him. “You’re a jerk. You’re a complete asshole, and if you think I’m sticking around just so you can keep making fun of me behind my back, you’re crazier than I am. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be, Henry, but it’s definitely not here with you!”
Henry looked like I’d slapped him, which I sort of wanted to do. “Why,” he finally asked, “are you so mad at me just because I want you to stay?”
I sat back in my chair like a collapsed balloon, the words hitting my brain and my heart at the same time. I had wanted him to be angry, just like me, but all I had done was make him feel hurt.
Just like me.
“I-I’m gonna get some fresh air,” I said, scrambling out of my seat before the disappearing started, and I stood up and yanked the sliding glass door open, stumbling into the backyard. It was overgrown and weedy because my dad had always been the one doing all the lawnmower stuff.
I took some deep breaths and tried to stay in the shadow of the trees, just in case Henry was watching. I could feel my feet tingling, and I pressed through the soles of my shoes and down into the earth, trying to root myself. I had a vague memory suddenly, standing in our old backyard with April and June, hopping around on hot bricks. Me and my sisters. Happy.
Tears hit my eyes, and I couldn’t make them disappear, no matter how hard I tried.
After a few minutes, the back door slid open, and I heard someone come outside. “Go away,” I said, not even looking over my shoulder.
Henry took another step outside. “Are you okay? Do you want me to go call April? Or June? I can, if you want.” He sounded nervous and unsure, and I couldn’t blame him.
I shook my head and hastily wiped my eyes. “No.”
My right pinky finger tingled, and I shoved it back into my pocket while pulling my hoodie up over my hair, trying to hide as much as possible. It was getting darker earlier now, and colder, too. “I’m really fine.” Now my toes were sending out warning signals.
“Are you sure?” I heard Henry shut the door behind him. “Because I know you’re not, like, the friendliest person, but you …” He trailed off.
I took a deep breath and turned around to look at him. He looked sort of small and cautious, like I was a hurricane about to pick up and drop him far away from familiar things.
I knew how that felt, too.
“Everything is just so fucking confusing all the time,” I blurted out. “And it’s not getting easier, either. I mean, my parents got divorced, and we had to move here. And now I’m fighting with my sisters, and I don’t even recognize my family anymore. I don’t even recognize me anymore. And,” I added, taking a deep breath, “you really hurt my feelings.”
“What? When?”
“At the party!” I cried, and now it felt like I really was crying. “Mariah asked you if you wanted to sleep with me and you said, ‘Hell no, not her.’ Like I was this … this thing on the bottom of your shoe.”
Henry looked stricken. “You heard that?”
“Obviously!” I said.
“But I didn’t even see you—”
“Does that even matter? It’s okay to say that when I’m not there?”
Henry took a cautious step forward, and I took one back, trying to stay away lest my entire head disappear from the stress. “May,” he said carefully. “Did you really think I was gonna tell Mariah that I liked you? I mean, c’mon. Mariah?”
“You could have pleaded the Fifth,” I said, sniffling. “Just like all those tobacco executives do whenever they’re on trial.”
“Okay, yeah,” he admitted. “I could have done a lot of things. But Mariah, she totally caught me off guard. And all those stupid friends of hers were there, and I just didn’t want her to …”
“Didn’t want her to what?”
“I didn’t want her to know how much I liked you.”
Well, knock me over with a Cheese Puff.
“What?” I noticed tears were streaking my face, and I tried ungracefully to smear them away with my hoodie sleeve.
Henry took a deep breath. “You’re funny and you don’t care and you’re always doing your own thing. You’re kind of everything that Mariah wants to be, only she just does it all wrong.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Back the truck up. You like me?”
“Um, yeah. Is that okay?”
I didn’t know what it was. To the best of my knowledge, no one had ever liked me before, aside from the people who were biologically obligated.
It was sort of better than being in Houston, not gonna lie.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said. “Sure, yeah.”
Henry shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced towards the house. “Your dad’s not gonna fly out here and beat me up or anything, is he?”
I shook my head. “Nope. My mom might, but she’s on a date tonight. She’s seeing this guy named Chad. Chad.”
“Oh.” Henry shoved his hands in his own pockets. “So when did they get divorced?”
“Four months ago. We moved here in August.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I get it. My parents divorced when I was ten and Mariah was nine. It’s rough.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn’t know how rough it was, not really, but I started telling him other things instead. I told him about our last day of school, about how my parents had sat us down that night and looked back and forth at each other for a full minute before June finally blurted out, “Are you getting a divorce?”
I told him how April had cried and how June had been both sad and excited since most of her friends’ parents were divorced and now she could “totally relate” to them. Henry laughed when I said that, and I laughed, too, even though it hurt my throat.
I even told him about how I had gotten wasted at my friend’s house, how everyone was so worried that they didn’t know what to do, how my parents looked at me like they were scared of who I was becoming when I didn’t even know who I was. The details were so sharp that they were cutting right through me. They would never be dull.
They would never disappear.
“But June, June didn’t even cry until she found out we had to move here,” I told Henry. We were sitting in the grass now, side by side as the dew soaked through our jeans. “She liked her friends. She didn’t want to leave.”
“Yeah,” Henry agreed. “You know Mariah? She got all messed up when my parents split, too. It doesn’t help that my dad’s a douchebag. He doesn’t even call that much, not since he got remarried. Mariah keeps thinking that she’s gonna go down to his beach house in Cabo. She’s always inviting her friends down there, but we haven’t gone there in years. I don’t even know if he has it anymore.”
“June’s not messed up,” I told him, shaking my head. “Not lik
e me.”
He smiled. “You’re not that messed up.”
“Henry,” I told him. “You have no idea.”
“What about you?” he said. “Did you cry when you had to move?”
I shook my head. “I never cry. Well, except for right now.” I gave a shaky laugh and wiped my eyes again. “God, I’m such a girl right now, I’m sorry. This is totally not part of your tutoring responsibilities, I know.”
Henry just wrapped his arms around his knees. “Do you get to see your dad a lot in Houston?”
“Not really,” I said. “I was supposed to go there next month, but he got busy with work. I know he misses us, though.” I swallowed hard and tried not to think about that day, having to pick between two parents and break one of their hearts three times over. That was the sharpest blade of all.
“May.” Henry scooted closer to me. “It’s okay.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s fantastic,” I sniffled. “It’s great. Seriously, this has been the best twenty-four hours of my life.”
“No, I mean … no, it’s not okay. But it’s okay to not be okay.”
I just looked at him. He was peeking down at me beneath his hair, which had curled up in the evening air.
“Everyone’s messed up,” he continued. “My sister’s failing Spanish, and she’s hanging out with Blake. But she’s not a bad person, you know?” Henry sounded like he was trying to convince himself, not me. “It’s just how it is sometimes. Things hurt, and they hurt for a long time. You have to fight back, or it wins. Mariah doesn’t fight back. But you do. That’s why I like you.”
I watched Henry as his hand methodically pulled clumps of long grass out of the ground and let them fall back into the soil. “I kinda understand how your sister feels,” I said. “Much to my surprise.”
Henry grinned. “Yeah, maybe you do.”
“Like, what’s that saying? ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’ People do desperate things all the time.”
“Yeah,” Henry said softly. “I guess she’s desperate.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes with the cuff of my sweatshirt. “I don’t usually unload on people like this.”
“S’okay,” he said, just as quietly. “It’s nice. You’re always so sarcastic. It’s like you’re always lying about how you really feel.” He looked up from the grass and met my eyes. “I like it when you’re honest. It’s like I can really see you.”
“Sometimes it feels like I’m invisible,” I mumbled without thinking, and then it hit me.
“Oh my God!” I gasped, immediately looking down, wondering which parts of me were missing. But I was there, all fingers, all toes, and Henry was watching me with an odd expression on his face.
“What?” he asked.
“N-Nothing,” I stammered, feeling my heart start to speed. “I just, I thought I saw a bug.”
Henry just smiled. “Mariah hates bugs, too.”
“I don’t hate bugs,” I immediately said. “I just don’t like anything with more than eight legs.”
“So you’re anti-centipede?”
“Yes. And God help the millipede that crosses my path.”
Henry’s grin widened across his face. His front teeth were a little crooked, but it was charming and didn’t scream for an orthodontist. “I know what you mean,” he said after awhile. “About wanting to disappear somewhere.”
“Stanford?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he admitted. And then he began to tell me about his parents, how his mom doesn’t know what to do with Mariah. “They’re always fighting,” he said. “And Mariah just keeps hanging out with Blake.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You know, sometimes having a sister is worse than some stupid boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever because at least you can break up with him or her. With your sister, though?”
“It’s a life sentence.” Henry finished my thought with a sigh, and I laughed. “But at least Mariah’s hanging out with your sister tonight.”
I stopped laughing. “What?”
Henry shrugged. “I dunno, some party. I heard Mariah yelling on the phone to Blake that they have to pick up June at the movie theater.”
I had never felt more present in my body than I did right that second. “June’s going to a party with your sister?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh,” I said, but I was starting to get a strange creepy-crawly feeling in my bones. Mariah and June were out with Blake, and no one was watching. I was 99.9 percent sure that April didn’t know about June being at this party, seeing as how she hadn’t organized another spy mission, and I also knew about her accident visions, the red lights and sirens that kept her up at night.
But I also knew that June was a mindreader! She was always telling us how no one could lie to her, that she was—
And I suddenly realized the one thing that June didn’t know.
Anyone could lie to June. All she hears is what people think. She doesn’t know if it’s the truth.
If Mariah and I were—and I couldn’t believe I was even admitting this—anything alike, she had to have a lot of denial packed into that brain of hers. (I mean, anyone who thinks Blake’s a great guy is probably not skilled at seeing the big picture.) But could June see through that? She hadn’t even realized what I had been up to, packing for Houston and wanting to leave. What was she missing with Mariah?
I stood up and started looking for my phone. “Shit,” I muttered. “Shit shit shit.”
“Wait, what’s—?” Henry tried to ask.
But I was too busy digging my phone out of my pocket to answer. “Stupid skinny jeans,” I muttered. My heart was starting to wallop my ribs again, and I felt kind of sick, just like when I almost hit Avery with the car.
“Are you all right?” Henry asked me. “Is June supposed to be grounded or something?”
I shook my head at him and turned away. “Pick up,” I said to the phone. “Pick up now, June!”
But it just went to voicemail. “Damnit!” I said, then called April. Same thing, four rings followed by voicemail. “April always puts her fricking phone on ‘vibrate’ when she studies!” I whirled around to look at Henry. “Do you know where Mariah and June are?”
“Probably Blake’s friend’s apartment,” Henry frowned. “That’s where she hangs out with him.”
“Okay, but do you know where that is?” I could hear my voice getting higher, more panicked.
“Yeah, I’ve gone to get Mariah a few times. Wait, May, why, what’s—?”
But I was already grabbing his hand and dragging him into the house. “C’mon,” I said. “We’ve gotta go, Henry. We’ve gotta go right now.”
chapter 21
“This was a very, very bad idea.” june
We had been at this party for two hours already, and I was ready to go.
First of all, it smelled weird, like old beer and someone’s bong and I don’t know what else, maybe bad food in the refrigerator. There wasn’t even any art on the walls, and I was pretty sure the couch had been brought up from the dumpster outside. The carpet didn’t look any better, so I was leaning against the wall, trying to make sure that I never actually touched it.
I was going to douse myself in hand sanitizer when I got home, that was for sure.
I guess it would have been better if I could have hung out with Mariah, but she and Blake had been fighting nonstop since we got to the party and Blake started answering a bunch of texts from someone. At first, Mariah teased him, saying, “Ooh, do you have a new love interest?” But then they each had a couple of beers, and, well, it sort of devolved. “Who are you talking to?” Mariah started yelling at him, and no matter who he said it was, Mariah thought he was lying.
I could hear them screaming down the hall even while I pretended to be interested in the episode of Project Runway that was on the TV screen. Someone’s iPod speakers were playing loud, so loud that it distorted the bass and kind of hurt in that not-good way, but I could still hear Mariah
. I have to say, I was sort of impressed at her yelling abilities. That’s just a God-given talent; you can’t teach that sort of skill.
“It’s a girl, isn’t it?!” she was screaming. “You’re talking to some skank, some fucking bitch who probably—!”
“I’m talking to Mike!” Blake yelled back.
They were just about to bring the models out for final judging when Blake and Mariah argued their way into the living room. Mariah was all teary-eyed and furious, her empty beer bottle danging at her side, her brain still kind of sober but completely hurt. She was flipping through girls in her mind like a stack of cards, trying to figure out who it was that now had Blake’s attention.
Blake’s mind, on the other hand, was only thinking of one girl, and it wasn’t Mariah.
It was Avery, the girl May had almost hit with the car. I could see him thinking about her, kissing her upstairs at Mariah’s party before someone walked in on them. It was sort of gross to see the way he thought about her, like she consisted of body parts and nothing else.
“Let me see your phone then!” Mariah said, holding out her hand to Blake. “If it’s just Mike, let me see it!”
“Would you leave me the fuck alone?!” Blake shouted back.
“It’s final judging, shut up!” some guy from the couch yelled, his bong balanced on his knees. “Show a little respect!”
I turned to Mariah. “Um, Mariah, maybe we should—”
She didn’t even look at me. “Let me see your phone!” she said again. “I mean it! You’re lying to me. I know you’re lying to me! June!” She suddenly whirled, glaring at me. “Don’t you think he’s lying?”
“Uh,” I said, trying to stall. “I don’t think he’s lying, per se—” It wasn’t technically a lie; I knew Blake was lying. I didn’t have to think it.
Blake’s phone suddenly beeped again, and he flipped it open while finishing the last of his beer. Big mistake.
Mariah flew into a rage, going after him with her fists. “Let me see it!” she screamed as she started to pummel him, and a few guys and I tried to pull her off of him. Well, I halfheartedly tugged at her shoulder, since I personally wouldn’t have minded seeing Blake get a stray punch or two.