by Rachel Vail
Emmett is one of my best friends, and yet he has this whole other life where he’s friends with opera stars and has inside jokes with grown-ups.
I guess you really never know a person completely.
After a while the waiter brought our profiteroles—they were little puffs of cake with ice cream nestled inside, the most beautiful little lumps of ice cream sandwich spheres you can imagine. And then the waiter poured chocolate syrup on top of them from a silver lantern-thing held high above the table. It was seriously like being in a fantasy. The chocolate syrup smelled like night in winter. When we dug in with our spoons, the heat from the chocolate melted the vanilla ice cream just a bit.
I’ve never tasted anything so perfect.
The part I would leave out when I told Bret, if she were alive and staying over for a sleepover in my room so she could hear all about it when I got home, is the part where I fell asleep in the taxi heading home and maybe drooled a tiny bit on Emmett’s father’s suit jacket. But I would tell her all the rest of it, including that Emmett’s parents got off on the fourth floor and told him he could ride up to the eighth with me but then to come right back down. We were quiet in the elevator the rest of the way up, and on the short walk from it to my door. He gave me a hug between Never Gonna Happen Guy’s door and my door, before I unlocked it, and I didn’t even mind how stinky he smelled.
That’s how good the night was.
And also the hug.
53
WAIT, WHAT?
EMMETT: You still up?
me: kind of
EMMETT: Can you do me a favor?
me: sure!
EMMETT: Open your front door.
me: why?
EMMETT: You’ll see.
54
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN, OR
I stepped into the cool hallway, not letting my door close behind me. Nobody was in the hall. I was in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, no bra—hello, I was in bed, teeth brushed and trying to fall asleep already. Why would Emmett text me to open my door? I looked down at the welcome mat, thinking maybe he left me a note? Nope.
Realistically, why would he slip upstairs after we’d said good night, to leave me a note on my welcome mat? That would be amazing and, okay, romantic, but—so, right: obviously not. I was just tired. It had been a crazy long week. Being fourteen is so far way more intense than thirteen ever was.
Maybe he tucked something under the mat? I bent down to lift it, keeping the door open with my foot. Just what I needed was to lock myself out and have to ring the doorbell to wake my parents up—or have to sleep in the hall.
Nothing under the mat but dust. As I started standing up, the door beside mine opened. Never Gonna Happen Man’s door. Oh great, just who I needed to see at three in the morning.
But no. It was Emmett, in his pajama pants, a white T-shirt, and his red hoodie. Opening Never Gonna Happen Man’s door.
From the inside.
He smiled.
“What are you doing in there?” I asked.
“Shhh,” he said. “Can you go get Lightning?”
“Why?”
“For a race,” Emmett said, and swung the door open behind him.
I looked in. There were candles lining Never Gonna Happen Man’s hallway, from the entry all the way down the hall, turning it golden and flickery.
Taped onto the floor beside Emmett’s sock-covered feet was a piece of construction paper, faded green with the edges almost gray, and the word START in Emmett’s uneven handwriting in the middle. Masking tape stretched across the floor’s polished wooden planks just on the other side of the sign. Way down the hall was a matching strip of masking tape and piece of construction paper, this one faded red, with FINISH! in Emmett’s bubble letters, surrounded by illustrations of smiling hairy potatoes.
“I like the hairy potatoes,” I said.
“Those are candles.”
“On the finish sign.”
He looked down the hall. “Where?”
“All around FINISH!”
“The balloons?”
“Oh,” I said.
“Why would I draw hairy potatoes?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Though, sure, what could be more exciting than hairy potatoes?”
“Exactly,” I said. “At my next birthday I’m totally decorating with—”
That was when I noticed his rabbit, Fluff, curled patiently behind Emmett.
“Fluff!” I said. And then, “Wait, Emmett—did you steal the key to this apartment? Or pick the lock? We could get arrested! We’re totally breaking and entering!”
“Well, not breaking,” he said, flipping the secret switch on the door up and down. “Remember? So, just entering. But, Gracie?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just. I like that you said we could get arrested.”
“Well, sure, obviously I’d be going straight to jail with you, but wait, how did you— When did you flip the switch?”
“Shhh. Remember the other day when we were talking here and Never Gonna Happen Man came out?” he reminded me. “I flipped it while he was grabbing his stuff.”
“You were planning this whole thing then?”
“I’ve been planning it since we were six,” he said.
“Emmett!”
“Some version of it anyway. Grab Tempus. Ticktock.”
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.” I tried to pull down my smile as I dashed back into my apartment to grab Lightning from the corner of my room. I slipped my red hoodie on, on my way, to compensate for the lack-of-bra. And in solidarity with Emmett.
At the last second I grabbed my awesome hat, too, to wear for the big race.
When I got back into the other apartment, Emmett was kneeling at the start line, holding Fluff gently between his hands.
“Should I let the door close?” I asked.
“Sure.”
I did, and then knelt beside him.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. Not lying. “Ready.”
“Set, go,” he said, and we both let go of our pets.
Lightning started marching purposefully down the hall. Fluff stayed tight and huge in his soft ball of furriness.
“Ha!” I couldn’t believe it. “Go, Lightning!”
“Fluff!” Emmett whispered fiercely, nudging his butt. “Go! Go! Fugit!”
Fluff gave him a one-eye-open look like, Back off, buster.
Lightning kept marching steadily away from us, clomping against the wall with her left legs most of the time, even when she had to shove candles out of her way to move forward.
“This is amazing!” I yelled. “Yes! Lightning! Did they read the fable?”
“Fluff!” Emmett urged. “We practiced! You know what to do!”
“You practiced, you cheat?”
“Fat lot of good it did me. Fluff! You’re humiliating me!”
Lightning stopped just short of the finish line and turned around like, Really? You gonna sprint up here, make it a race, dude?
Fluff sank slowly onto his side and started snoring.
“Seriously?” Emmett asked him.
Lightning turned her head back to the project at hand and continued her trek, crossing the finish line and stepping onto the finish sign, where she finally stopped to rest on the biggest hairy potato of all.
I threw my hat into the air. “Yes!”
Emmett sat down beside his rabbit, who he scooped up into his lap. “Wow, Fluff,” he whispered. “That was a pretty thorough butt-kicking we just got there, pal.”
Lightning started walking again, so I ran after her. Emmett followed, Fluff cradled in his arms.
“I owe you a 16 Handles,” he whispered while I picked up Lightning.
&
nbsp; “Yes, you do,” I said. “Yikes, this place is scary.” There were no lights on, beyond where the candles were all lit in the hallway, and all the boxes and sheet-draped furniture or whatever was under there made the rest of the apartment look like the set of a horror movie. I stood close enough to Emmett to feel the warmth coming off him and Fluff.
“You smell like milk again,” I whispered in the dark.
“I took a shower,” he whispered back.
My knees got that rubber thing again. Maybe because of the darkness and unfamiliarity of the apartment we were in, it suddenly felt unclear which direction was up and, therefore, how to keep from falling.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes my knees . . . I think it’s, like, growing pains. Or something.”
“Oh, I get that,” he said. “Sometimes. Too. A lot, lately.”
We nodded at each other in the almost-complete darkness.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
“We should, probably . . .”
“Yeah.”
“Do you wanna . . .”
“Wanna what?”
“Help me blow out the candles?”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure.”
He grabbed his red wagon from around the corner near the hallway and placed Fluff down on his favorite blanket that was waiting there in it. I put Lightning down in the hallway, facing toward the door, and went along one wall, blowing out the candles and placing them in the wagon while Emmett did the same on the other side.
“Does your mom know you took her candles and—”
“No!” He looked just behind him. “They’re asleep, I hope, and I was super quiet. Is your tortoise just taking a victory lap now? That’s kind of braggy, Sight Gag!”
Lightning walked over Emmett’s foot, in answer.
When we each had only one candle to go, I said, “Wait—the signs.” I skidded down the hall and pulled up the finish line and the sign, while Emmett did the same at the start.
“Which sign do you want to keep?” he asked. “I’ll keep the other one.”
“And nobody will know what they’re from.”
“Except Lightning and Fluff, who will never tell—right, guys?”
Fluff was snoring again, but Lightning cocked her head slightly to the side as she passed us.
“Who would even believe this craziness?” I said, imitating the Lightning voice Emmett had used when he first met her. I hoped he’d remember.
“Story of my life,” he said in the same voice. So, yeah.
“You take Start,” I said.
“You just want to keep the best darn hairy potatoes ever to grace a finish sign.”
“I do,” I said.
He opened the door and pulled the full wagon out into the public hallway.
“Should we keep it unlocked?” I asked, grabbing my awesome hat from behind the door.
“Finally have our clubhouse?” he asked.
We smiled in the bright lights. He clicked the secret switch closed.
“Once in a lifetime,” I whispered.
“Yeah. Plus, you know, jail.”
“Yeah. And they’d probably split us up, so . . .”
“Yeah. Let’s never let that happen,” he said, heading to the elevator, pulling the wagon behind him.
“Never gonna happen,” I whispered, but I don’t know if he heard that over the dinging of the elevator opening.
55
FIRST CHOICE
Lightning wandered around my room before finding a cozy spot by my radiator. She wedged herself in and settled down to sleep. My role model. I flopped onto my bed and wished, by habit, my sister were alive and in the room with me. But then again, maybe not. This was all mine. I hung the finish/hairy potato sign up on the wall beside my pillow and lay there, smiling like an idiot at it until my phone buzzed.
EMMETT: Quick question.
me: okay
EMMETT: What is your LEAST favorite type of date?
a. that kind that’s basically a freakishly big raisin
b. a political candi-
c. one where you basically spend the whole time with the boy’s parents, but, on the upside, you do get to eat half a serving of the most delicious profiteroles in Manhattan and then trounce him and his rabbit in a fable-race
d. a news up-
Before I could do more than smile, another text came through.
EMMETT: If you are considering saying c is your least favorite type of date, please remember that those big ugly raisin things are disgusting—why do they even have those?
me: oh come on it’s definitely a. those things are terrifying. not just the worst type of date but the worst things ever besides maybe war and a few of the major diseases
EMMETT: Okay, cool, thanks, bye.
me: also not hugely into political candi- or news up-
EMMETT: Like, they’re fine, right, but if you had to rank them . . .
me: yeah neither of those would get ranked BEST either
EMMETT: Cool, cool, same here. I mean, I actually like political candi- and news up- types of dates, but still, yeah, same. Not BEST. So . . .
me: Emmett?
EMMETT: Yeah?
me: was it always, I mean . . . were you the one who, when AJ and Sienna were texting . . .
EMMETT: Favorite types of text:
3. Con-
2. Sub-
1. Those
me: wait so
EMMETT: Hey, let’s go to 16 Handles tomorrow after we sleep late. I don’t want to end middle school with debts.
me: yeah sure sounds good
EMMETT: May take me a while to fall asleep.
me: same here
EMMETT: GN
me: gn
EMMETT: Stay whelmed.
me:
56
THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPOSSIBILITY
Completely overwhelmed.
Like cannot even blink, is how much beyond whelmed I am.
Would not make travel blinking team.
Emmett.
No way.
But at the same time:
Of course.
Of course.
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