by Hanna Dare
Conor had his doubts about how much Tori actually had done in his absence, but instead nodded over to the old piano in the corner of the room. “Why don’t you play something for me? I bet you haven’t practiced at all while I was gone.”
“I have to been practicing.”
“Prove it.”
She sat down at the piano and Conor turned the vacuum back on. “Hey!” Tori said. “You won’t be able to hear me.”
“Exactly,” Conor replied and continued vacuuming.
Monday morning, Conor got his bike out of the garage. It had never really recovered from the time he’d abandoned it at the bus stop, and a winter unused in the garage had left the bike rusty and stiff. Still, it was better than the school bus.
He climbed on, wobbly after all this time, and winced as the chain creaked. A battered car abruptly pulled up in front of the driveway and honked. Conor looked up, heart in his throat.
His friend Megan leaned out of the driver’s side window and fluttered her eyelashes. “Going my way, stud?”
Once in the car she punched him—hard—in the shoulder.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“That’s for not calling or texting or chatting or anything in so long. Do you know how I found out you were coming back to school? My mom ran into your aunt at the supermarket yesterday. That’s cold, Conor. Freezer section cold.”
“Sorry! Honestly, I didn’t even know I was going in today until last night. My dad was kinda insistent.”
Megan looked the same. Her dark hair was still long and a little messy and her face under the heavy bangs, was pale. She was wearing an army surplus jacket he remembered finding in thrift store with her last year. She kept her hands on the steering wheel at the same careful ten and two that they’d learned together in Drivers’ Ed. The frown on her usually easily excitable face was new.
He quickly tried to think of the last time he’d contacted her. He remembered that she’d sent him a text after he’d come out. It’d been full of heart and hug emojis but the main message had been that she was happy for him. Queasily, he couldn’t remember if he’d actually replied.
“Sorry,” he said again.
Her voice grew sad. “It was weird seeing you on TV. You seemed so different—it felt like watching a character in a movie, not someone that I knew. Random people would come up to me at school, around town, and ask about you: did I know you? What’s Conor like? And after a while I realized, no, I don’t know Conor.”
“You do,” he insisted. “You and Ali were my only friends. You were all I had.”
“But we didn’t have you, not really, it turns out. And then you were gone. Stuff happened here, too, you know? Maybe not TV-level things, but big stuff. Senior year, life-changing events. It felt like you didn’t care. You’d checked out.”
“I didn’t mean to. Seriously. It’s just that so many things happened—”
She lifted a hand off the wheel to stop his rush of words. “You know what? I do want to hear about it at some point, but right now, this is me ranting. I feel like I have a good grasp of the highlights of Conor Gillis’ life for the past few months, but you have no idea, not one single clue, what’s been going on with me.”
“So tell me,” Conor asked a little desperately. This wasn’t how he imagined his reunion with his friends going. “Please, I want to know. What’s been going on?”
She shrugged. “Not much.”
He laughed and it immediately felt better between them. Not okay, definitely, but like Megan was still there and reaching out.
“The future, Conor,” she said, more in her old Megan voice of peaks and valleys, “the future is what’s been happening. I’ve made decisions. Bold moves.”
“Like what?”
“College. And no, not the community one.”
“You got into Wisconsin? That’s great.”
“Actually,” she turned her head towards him, face open and happy, “I’m going to film school at USC. That’s in California, FYI.”
“What? That’s—Wow. I had no idea.” Megan been into old movies for years, watching them in her basement had been a weekly ritual for the three of them, but she’d never said anything about wanting to do more than just watch them.
“Well, it stands for University of Southern California so—”
“Megan.”
She grinned. “It was one of those things that I’d thought about for a long time. Years, actually. But it seemed impossible. Like stupid to even mention it impossible.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I guess there was a lot of that going around.”
Conor nodded. “It’s hard to tell people what your dreams are. Hard to even tell yourself sometimes.”
“Well, after you did your impossible thing, I figured I should too. It couldn’t hurt, right? Except in a way that would cost time, money, and damage to my self-esteem.”
“But you did it.”
“Yeah,” she said, voice proud. “I did. I just found out last month.”
“You should have told me.”
“Well, you’ve been busy,” she said, in a way that made Conor suddenly aware of how many of his messages to her had started out by saying just that. “And I’ve been busy, too. My application was super last minute, which was stressful. Then I was on a wait-list, that was stress-fuller. And my parents weren’t sure about the money, which was the stress-fullest of all … but I’m in. I’ll be in debt for the rest of my life, of course, and I’m probably completely in over my head thinking I can actually do this, but come fall, I’ll be in California.”
“That’s amazing. Maybe we could—” They’d pulled into the school parking lot, and on the other side of it, he spotted a familiar curly-headed figure. “There’s Ali.”
Conor reached over to honk the car’s horn, but Megan grabbed his hand. “There’s other stuff I should fill you in on.” Her face was serious. She parked and then turned off the car, Conor watching her uneasily. “Ali and I aren’t friends anymore,” Megan said, turning to face him. “I’m pretty sure she’s not exactly friends with you, either.”
“Because I didn’t call? I’ll apologize—”
Megan shook her head. “It’s more than that.” She sighed. “You should know Ali’s been saying stuff about you. Rumors.”
“Like what?” Conor asked unsettled.
“That whole thing with the song, you know, where said it was for someone back home? There was a lot of speculation about who that was. Gossip is high school’s renewable resource.”
“Okay…”
“Ali put it round that it was… Dylan.”
Conor sputtered a laugh. “Dylan Johnston? The quarterback?”
“It’s not crazy. I mean, when I think about all the times we talked about him.”
“You talked about him.”
“You listened! I was totally obsessed with him, so I wouldn’t have noticed if you were too. I mean, he’s obsess-able.”
“He is, sure—for you, I mean. But I wasn’t talking, or singing, about Dylan.”
She waited, clearly expecting Conor to say more, but he didn’t feel ready to tell her about Derek, not yet. Megan sighed. “Okay, but there’s also a rumor that Dylan may beat you up or something now that you’re back. That one’s not from Ali, so it might be true.”
“Great,” Conor said. They got out of the car and started towards the school doors. “Do you still like him? Pleading for my life could be a great excuse for you to talk to him.”
“No, I’ve had too many other things to worry about than the mysteries of Dylan’s heart. Also, it would be weird since I’m friends with Stef Anderson now. Even though she says she and Dylan were only friends, they did hang out a lot. And with Stef, hanging out with boys usually leads to, well, more.”
Conor stopped and stared at Megan. Stef Anderson, who went around the school very vocally trying to get people to sign purity pledges and then snuck around sleeping with just about every guy in town, was the last person he’d expect Megan to be friend
s with. Conor was also still secretly held a grudge against her since one of the guys she’d apparently had sex with had been Derek.
“She’s actually really nice, Conor!” Megan insisted. “Yes, she’s got problems with religion and her family that she expresses through questionable sexual decisions, but I figure it’s good to know at least one person who’s had experience with boys.”
Conor found something interesting to look at in the middle distance. When he glanced back, Megan’s eyes were huge. “Oh my god.”
“Stuff has happened.”
“Oh my god!”
“I do want to tell you everything. Well, not everything, because I think we’d both die of embarrassment—but they aren’t all my secrets to tell.”
Megan blinked and then refocused. “Okay, we are going to have a long and vague conversation about all of this really soon, but right now we’re still talking about me. And Ali. And I guess Stef.”
“Good, I want to hear it. So how did you end up becoming friends with Stef, of all people?”
“She’s actually really into photography. She ended up helping me with my portfolio for the film school applications when I was really scrambling. On weekends, we drive out into the countryside and take pictures of abandoned buildings—I sent you our Instagram link, didn’t I? We’ve got nearly five thousand followers.”
Conor remembered Megan sending him a link to something like that, but he’d never checked. He felt guilty about it now, but Megan kept talking.
“So with me being friends with Stef and working on school and my applications, I think Ali felt more and more left out. She said I was being fake and pretentious. We had a big fight where she told me I was kidding myself about college. Then she started hanging out with some surly, rocker-type girls from eleventh grade. That’s when she started with the gossip. Mostly about you. People wanted to hear stories about you and Ali, well, became the supplier.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“I don’t know if it’ll do any good. She’s been so mad all winter. Maybe she’s always been like that, but we acted like it was normal. It was weird when you first left, Conor. Ali and I would get together like we always did, but it wasn’t the same. She would be so mean. Then we’d watch you on TV and find out more about you than from years of being with you. It felt like maybe the three of us really hadn’t been friends at all.”
“We were friends. I know we were.”
Her face grew drawn and sad. “But not the kind of friends who share important things with each other.”
“I want us to be. Really. If you still want to be mine?”
“I’d like to try.”
They’d gone through the big double doors of the high school and the familiar sight—and smell—of the place briefly distracted Conor from everything Megan had told him. He paused, waiting for the usual dread he felt at school to take hold of him, but it was only a flutter in his stomach and then gone. He had too much to do. He needed to talk to Ali and fix things. He also needed to find—
Megan put a nervous hand to his arm. “Everyone’s staring at you,” she whispered.
Conor looked. Everyone was staring. And whispering. There was even some pointing. Once, this would have been his worst nightmare of school, but now he simply scanned the faces in the hall, looking and failing to find a particular one. “They’ll stop once they realize I’m not going to do anything remotely interesting.”
Brent and Harris ambled down the hall, lumpish as ever. Conor almost smiled to see them, except then they shoved a freshman kid into a locker and Conor winced instead. Still, scarring bullying aside, they did offer the perfect segue.
“So what about Derek… you know, Folsom? Has he been doing the usual stuff? Petty theft and general mayhem?”
Megan turned to him, eyes dancing. “Oh my god! Didn’t you hear? Right, of course, how would you?”
“What?” he asked uneasily.
She clutched at his arm, clearly delighted to be able to deliver big news. “Derek Folsom is in jail!”
CHAPTER TEN
The words, “Derek Folsom is in jail,” seemed to hang in the air, but Megan chattered on, oblivious to the glowing, neon flash of her sentence.
“It’s been two or three weeks now, I guess? No one’s exactly sure what for, but opinions pretty even between drugs, stealing stuff, or getting into a fight.” She quirked her mouth. “I heard he killed a man in Reno.”
“What?”
Megan seemed awestruck by Conor’s shocked expression. “Did I actually just make a music reference that you didn’t get? This is a historic day.”
“No, Johnny Cash, I get it. Of course.” He felt like he was in a daze. “I’m gonna… go to homeroom.”
“Didn’t you want to go to your locker first?”
Conor shook his head, already walking away. “I can’t remember the combination anyway.”
Conor sat through his classes, not bothered by the stares or the whispers, or even the semi-sarcastic tone some of his teachers took when they said, “Welcome back, Mr. Gillis.”
He did agree and smile politely when two girls in Biology—one of them had outright refused to be his lab partner at the start of the school year—asked him for pictures with them. And when someone else asked him about what Kai was really like, Conor’s reply was, “Very professional.”
He was on autopilot for most of the morning, which was fine because all the other seniors were, too. It was almost the end of the year; no one cared about school anymore, just what came next. Conor was so lost in his thoughts that at lunch his feet took him automatically not to the once-dreaded cafeteria, but to the old, abandoned music room, where he had usually hidden himself away. He put a hand on the doorknob, but it was unyielding in his hand. Locked. He was surprised enough by this that he just stood there, rattling the door, expecting it to open the way it always had.
“That door’s never open,” a small, squeaky voice said.
Conor turned. Two girls, ninth graders, by how small and unformed they looked, were staring at him.
“It used to be,” Conor said, finally releasing the doorknob. He wondered what had happened to all the instruments. Were they still in there, moldering away with the carpet? The girls offered no further comment and huddled together, seemingly on the verge of nervous giggles as they looked at him.
He changed his expression to something more blankly polite. “Thanks,” he said, about to go, but then he stopped. “Hey, do either of you know Maggie Folsom?” he asked.
They looked at him, somewhat shocked. “She’s in our grade?” one said uncertainly.
“Do you know where I could find her right now? Maybe in the cafeteria?”
They both shook their heads, teen scorn overcoming any nervousness. “Unlikely,” one said.
“Unless it’s to steal food,” added the other.
Conor smiled patiently. “So then where would she be?”
“The ditch?”
“Yeah, she’s a total ditch pig.”
Conor’s smile grew thin. “Thanks,” he said, and turned away.
“We love you Conor!” they called after him as he walked down the hall.
There was no smoking allowed on the grounds of the school and students who weren’t seniors weren’t allowed to leave school property during the day. So the ditch between the road and the school lawn became a neutral zone where the most badass and nicotine-addicted students would go and smoke. The teachers turned a blind eye since it mostly kept kids from smoking in the washrooms and behind the shop class. The teachers themselves were said to go up to the roof with their cigarettes.
The kids who hung out there were called “ditch pigs” by everyone who didn’t, but never to their faces because they were generally scary. As Conor made his way out to the ditch, he could see a few different groups of twos and threes, mostly separated by age and gender. He headed for the shortest-looking girls, three of them sitting on the ground, smoking and throwing yellow dandelion heads into the brackish ditch
water below them.
It was easy to pick out Maggie once he got closer. Her sharp face, under long dark hair, was a delicate version of Derek’s—the same ice-chip blue eyes and the same beautiful mouth held in a vicious twist. That mouth tightened even further as she watched him approach.
“Go be somewhere else,” she said, not to Conor but to the two girls with her.
Any doubts he had about her being Derek’s sister were gone watching the way the others scrambled to their feet and hurried away at her orders. Maggie took a long drag on her cigarette and kept twisting at the dandelions as Conor sat down beside her, staring down into the ditch.
“So, I’m—” Conor began.
“I know who you are.”
“I know your brother.”
She snorted. “Yeah.” It both conveyed nothing and suggested at everything. Conor didn’t want to assume about either. She was also like Derek in that she was completely terrifying.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened? To Derek?”
“Don’t suppose I do.”
He looked at her profile. “I’m a friend of his.”
“Oh, a friend,” she scoffed.
“Yes,” Conor said, “I am.”
She turned to look at him mockingly but he held her gaze steadily until she dropped her eyes. She ripped up a tuft of grass instead and threw it into the water. “It’s none of your fucking business.”
Conor looked past her to where the road in front of the school hazed softly in the heat. “You made my mom a card once. When she got sick. She read it; she read all of them. We still have all those cards in a box somewhere.”
Maggie’s hand twisted even harder into the grass, but her face when she looked at Conor had changed. “She was nice.”
“Yes, she was.”
“She used to—it’s stupid, but remember back when everyone was into those hair scrunchies?”
Conor did not, but he only said, “Sure.”
“I said it was stupid, but all the little girls in fourth grade had ’em. I kept asking my mom to get me one. But she’d forget or she’d get me hair elastics that weren’t right. They had to be exactly like all the other girls had, y’know? Otherwise everyone would make fun of you. Mrs. Gillis—your mom—one day when no one was around, she gave this scrunchie. Said your little sister had an extra one.” Maggie shrugged. “It was purple and sparkly and fucking perfect. Just like it was supposed to look. Like no one could say anything about it. She even brushed my hair for me, so I could put it in. I probably hadn’t brushed it in days. My mom—my mom was going through a rough time and I guess she hadn’t noticed. But your mom did. She did that for me.”