by Emery Lord
Alcott’s was Kayleigh’s idea, since she still had a house full of wedding prep and brothers, who weren’t due back to Bloomington till Monday.
“I’m done,” Kayleigh announced from behind her laptop.
I glanced up. “With the whole paper? Already?”
“Oh my God.” She gave me a look of genuine disgust. “No. With homework, as a concept. With high school.”
Tessa removed her headphones. “Did Morgan ever text?”
“She said she’s working on research. I assume with Gabby.” Morgan and her Empower cofounder had been doing a deep-dive into curricular change, into precedents set by other states and what their options were.
“Okay, I’m going to say it.” Kayleigh had fire in her eyes, or at least, the look of a girl about to set something aflame. “I think Morgan’s hiding a boyfriend. Or a crush, anyway.”
Tessa blinked at her, considering whether to indulge the accusation.
“Nope,” she decided, looking back down at her laptop.
Kayleigh pointed her stare at me, and I sighed. “Fine, I’ll bite.”
“Consider the facts: last weekend, we’re at that New Year’s concert with a smorgasbord of hot guys, right?”
Smorgasbord? “Gross. But I guess so.”
“And did Morgan bring her flirt A-game?”
I remembered Morgan looking … content. Relaxed. “No?”
“What’s with the question mark at the end of that statement? No! She did not. Not even close.”
“She was a little mellow, maybe.”
“That was Morgan’s prime hunting ground. I’m telling you, something is up. Secret. Boyfriend.”
“That’s quite a leap you took there,” I said. “The track team could use you.”
“I’m not kidding,” she insisted. “Something’s up. I can feel it.”
We all went back to work.
Ryan stopped by, still in his workout clothes, and slid into our booth. He’d barely said hello before I felt him looking at me. “Are you and Max still in a fight?”
I didn’t look up from my computer. “We were never in a fight.”
God, the irony of Ryan getting on my nerves at Alcott’s, the site of my first real interaction with him last year.
“You and Max got into a fight?” Kayleigh asked, and I acted as if I hadn’t heard her. “About what?”
“No idea,” Ryan said, hands splayed. “But I shared a room with the guy over Christmas break. A real treat, let me tell you. Very merry.”
I could feel Tessa looking at me, surprised that I hadn’t told her.
Kayleigh’s gaze drifted off, as if she was solving a riddle. “I didn’t see you guys together all week.”
“Yeah. We’re both busy.” It wasn’t a lie. Max had QuizBowl, robotics, tutoring, college visits with his mom, babysitting the Kelly kids. I had work, more work, and now the play. “We’re fine. Promise.”
And we were. He came by the cinema on Wednesday night to drive me home and was perfectly nice to Hunter, even. He was babysitting tonight, and I’d see him tomorrow.
Tessa left early, citing a photography assignment in the morning, so Kayleigh drove me home. I didn’t notice the diversion in route until we were already in Morgan’s neighborhood.
“What are you doing?” I asked. She’d slowed the car, the driving equivalent of a tiptoe. We were almost to Morgan’s house.
“Seeing if someone’s here. A boy.”
“You dragged me on a stakeout?” I demanded, piecing this together. “I’m an accomplice?”
I held a hand out at the empty driveway. Morgan’s bedroom light was on upstairs. “This is bananas, Kayleigh. What is going on with you?”
She leaned against the headrest, groaning. “I thought maybe Morgan was … It sounds stupid to say it.”
I turned as much as I could in the passenger seat, intrigued. In the yellow light of the streetlamp overhead, she winced, hesitating. “Last time you saw Morgan and Reid together, were they weird?”
I’d seen them at Kayleigh’s house in late summer. I did remember Reid making a crack about a CNN correspondent that I didn’t get, and sure—Morgan laughed in a sort of starstruck way. “Weird how?”
“Come on. Flirty.”
“With each other? No. They were … I don’t know, like they always are. You think …” I stared at my friend, flabbergasted. “Oh my God, you thought Morgan was secretly dating your brother?”
“I don’t know! They’ve been all buddy-buddy since summertime.”
“They have common interests—advocacy and all that. Morgan looks up to him.”
“Mmm, I dunno,” Kayleigh said, tapping a finger to her temple. “I can sense something there. It is gross and it is wrong, but it is there.”
I would have laughed except that her tumult sounded so genuine. For some anxious people, worst-case-scenario thinking was a disaster. But it helped me to assume the worst and come up with a plan based on that. “Okay, say you’re a hundred percent right. They’re together and hiding it from you.”
“Jesus Lord,” Kayleigh muttered, puffing her cheeks out like barf was imminent.
“Would it really be so bad? I mean, they’re both old souls. Cheesy. Into politics …”
“Yes, Paige! It would be so bad. What would I do if they broke up? I can’t avoid my own brother. And I’d never cut ties with Morgan. So what would I do?”
“Keep your relationships with them separate? I don’t know. What would you do if Max and I broke up?”
She gasped. “Don’t joke about that!”
“I’m not.” But nice to know how us parting ways would go over. “It’s a thought exercise.”
“Well, then … easy—pick you. I love that guy, but if he wronged you, I’d feed his comic collection to a pack of wolves.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re right. I’d keep the Ms. Marvels.”
“You know what I’d want you to do?”
“What?” she grumbled.
“Be glad that two people you care about made each other happy for a while. A little of that is better than none. Trust me.”
I had played that dark game sometimes, when my grief for Aaron was still a wound, barely stitched closed: Would I walk away from him, that first day we met, if I knew the shattering that would follow? No. I really wouldn’t. I was glad to know him, to witness him for even that short amount of time.
“But you and Max are okay, right?” she asked. God, her hopeful voice, like Cameron’s years ago, after hearing our parents fight.
“Yeah,” I said, and I sounded sure.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. Morgan would tell me if there’s something to tell.”
True to her word, she steered us away from Morgan’s house. But she was gnawing into her lower lip, her gaze out the windshield more like a trance.
“Kayleigh. What?”
“It’s not them,” she said, waving one hand back down the street. “It’s not just them, anyway. It’s, um—it’s that I miwanago a you see.”
“What?”
She pulled up to a stop sign, braking, and said meekly, “I might want to go to UC. University of Chicago. I applied.”
“Oh.” That, I had not seen coming. “Not IU?”
“I mean, I love Bloomington. Obviously. But my mom went to UC. When I visited, I felt … connected, I guess.” She glanced over quick, afraid to see my reaction. “I haven’t told Morgan.”
The pieces interlocked in my mind. Maybe on some level, she’d hoped Morgan was keeping something from her. Because she was keeping something from Morgan.
“Kayleigh. C’mon. It’s Morgan.” I said. “She’ll understand.”
“I know,” Kayleigh said. “But we’ve planned on IU together for years. And I’m going to topple that whole plan?”
I reached a hand out, stilling her. “How long have you been holding on to this one?”
“Months.” She sighed. “Maybe years? In the back of
my mind. I talked about it with Laurel some this summer. About wanting to be in a bigger city. And there’s this historically Black sorority that I’m interested in, and I’d be close to Sawyer …”
“But then Morgan got her diagnosis …,” I guessed.
Kayleigh nodded. “And I know she’s putting all her energy into the school board stuff, and I love her for it. But I see her hurting, you know?”
“I do know. But you can be there for her from afar, too.” I reached over to touch Kayleigh’s arm. “She will want this for you. I swear. I swear on my bookshelves.”
Kayleigh faced me, pitiful. “On your shelf of favorites?”
“On my original copy of The Goose Girl,” I said, eyebrows raised at the severity of this offer. “But maybe tell her via text, yeah? Give her a moment to react alone.”
“Yeah,” Kayleigh said. “Okay. I can do that.”
I smiled at my friend, who was staring down at her lap. “Did you know that sometimes, when I’m unsure about a situation, I ask myself what you would do?”
“Really?” This seemed to perk her up.
“Really. Usually when I’m trying to be brave.”
“I’m not always brave,” she said.
“I know. But you usually try to go through with it anyway.”
One side of her mouth lifted, a half smile. “Yeah. I do.”
The next week, Ryan made his own addition to the Senior Year List with reservations at a little teppanyaki place he’d always wanted us to try.
“So,” he said, raising his glass of water. “To our graduation year. And to never, ever applying to colleges again.”
Kayleigh lifted her glass but said, “I mean, I’m probably going to get my MBA eventually.”
“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “As a philosophy major, I kind of have to get a PhD if I want to teach. And Max might go to med school, so …”
“Stop ruining it!” Ryan demanded, and he laughed as we clinked our glasses. “So, top-choice schools: let’s hear ’em.”
Max groaned, a sound that matched the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Tate,” Tessa said, though she didn’t look my way.
Morgan named IU, and then smiled encouragingly at Kayleigh, next in line. After Kayleigh told her the truth, Morgan came over to my house, cried on my bed, and made me swear never, ever to tell her.
“UC.” Kayleigh nodded, confident.
“Penn State?” Malcolm said. “I guess?”
Josiah said Corry Tech, where he’d study supply chain management while working at his family’s dry-cleaning business. Then it was down to only Max and me.
“NYU.” I said it to get it over with. It seemed obvious, didn’t invite any questions.
“Max?” Ryan prompted.
I could feel him tense up beside me. “Columbia, I guess.”
“Ah, you guys are cute,” Malcolm said. “Moving to New York, living the dream. Send us a postcard.”
I took a sip of water, both to hydrate and to cover my expression. Max had probably named Columbia for the same reason I’d said NYU: to be done with the interrogation. But as the conversation moved on—speculation about dorms and roommates—I could feel myself sweating. And not because of the sizzling griddle in front of us.
I placed my napkin on my chair, excusing myself to the bathroom. There was no one in the stalls, so I paced by the sink, huffy breaths loud against a roomful of tile. Reeling in the panic that wanted to zap out of me like electricity. I looked wild-eyed, a spooked creature in the woods. Cold water—the ache in my hands tethering me to my body. There. Okay. I managed to breathe through my nose, slowing down. I’d just about handled it—quickly, I thought—when Tessa stepped in, brows furrowed.
“You okay? Is it your tummy?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry.”
She looked flummoxed. “Why would you apologize?”
“I don’t know.” I patted my cheeks, trying to cool them down, and then admitted, “I don’t feel well.”
“Physically?” she asked. “Or emotionally?”
That’s what you get for cultivating a near decade of best friendship: the inability to hide, even when you want to.
“Both.” I wiped my hands. “I should get back out there.”
I could feel Tessa watching me in the mirror, searching for her move. “You have to tell him, Paige. Whatever it is you’re thinking.”
My eyes shot up and returned to my own reflection, which looked more miserable than I imagined myself. “I would, Tess, if I had any idea.”
I let the door swing closed behind me. It felt like that godforsaken nightmare, my feet welded to the bottom of a pool. In this version, my friends were reaching out their hands, and I was too panicked to clasp them, my grip just missing.
On the way home, I could feel the discord swelling. As soon as Tessa shut the car door, calling thanks to Max for the ride, he looked over at me. “So, we probably need to talk, huh?”
“About?” Good Lord, but I was a bad actress.
“Okay,” Max said, eyes on the road. “I said Columbia so no one would ask any follow-up questions. It was the path of least resistance. Like we talked about, even if I get in, I don’t have to go.”
“I know,” I said, throat tight.
He sighed. “Do you? Because it feels like the idea of me in New York is a full-on dystopia for you.”
I wiped my face preemptively. You have to tell him, Paige. “Well, it’s a no-win situation, isn’t it? If I get into a school in California or New York, and you’re in Indiana or Chicago or wherever, we don’t stand much of a chance, right? But if you choose a college where I am …”
“See, this is the problem, Paige.” He rubbed his forehead. “You’re being so fatalistic about this.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” I said. “But when you grow up in a household where a relationship is painfully falling apart, you’re sort of programmed to avoid idealism.”
He looked around the car as if he’d been dropped into an alternate reality. “And what great love story do you think I grew up around? Why can’t we just see what happens?”
“Because if I rely on you too much, I’ll get blindsided!” Once I started, I couldn’t stop. “It’ll be great until I’m swamped with classwork and all of a sudden some pretty girl from your dorm sits by you in bio lecture, and she’s glancing over when she thinks you aren’t looking. And you’ll notice her, and I’m not around enough, and it will crush me, Max. Or maybe! Maybe we’ll end in a whimper, two people who can’t reach out far enough, fast enough. And I’d rather keep our friendship forever than try to grip onto love for now. I don’t know, Max! I don’t know.”
My heart hammered so loud that my hearing went fuzzy; that telltale pulsing spread down my arms, threatening to whoosh me into a full-blown panic attack. I wanted to keep going, to qualify the things I’d blurted out, but my brain could only chant the word: Stop, stop, stop, a command that my adrenaline ignored.
“Okay,” Max said, worried. “Paige?”
“Sorry,” I managed. Tell him it’s bad. Tell him your brain has places like the intersection outside Cin 12, where you can’t go without dissolving. Tell him that panic rears up when you think about getting rejected from every college, about the car wreck and it-could-happen-anytime death, about your parents breaking up again when it’s only Cameron living at home and you’re not there to support her, that falling in love with him has apparently made other people think we’re settled for life, and should you be with someone who won’t dance, who won’t balance you, are we too similar, are we too different? “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “That’s a lot to have going on. But there’s no girl in my dorm, okay? There’s not going to be.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, genuinely surprised by his naïveté. “And I hate the idea of her. But I also hate the idea of holding you back.”
We were in my driveway now, and Max put the car in park, then crossed his arms. “Or do you hate the id
ea of me holding you back?”
For all my imaginings—new friends in my film program, hopefully ones I’d like enough to introduce to Tessa, to Kayleigh and Morgan—I’d truly never thought of anyone but Max. “That has honestly not been a consideration.”
“Really? Because it feels like you’re searching for something. And I don’t know what it is, but it’s not me.”
“I’m searching for something?”
“Going to parties, panicking about me applying to colleges near you, all the Hunter stuff.”
“There is no Hunter stuff,” I said, frustrated that he’d reduce it to that. “He’s on your side of this, if anything.”
The gap in conversation stretched too long, and his face darkened. “My side of what? My side of being into you? Because yes, I agree.”
“If that were true, why would he tell me to stay in the game with you?” I gestured between us. “And I’m trying here.”
Max’s jaw locked and for an instant, I thought it was a moment of stunned revelation. Like, Oh yes, my girlfriend is correct. But now, now he was gritting his teeth, barely able to speak. “You talked to him about us? And, I’m sorry … you were considering exiting the—what was it?—the game? With me?”
“No. Just … after everything around Christmas.” Okay, I could see how that sounded a little bad. “I couldn’t exactly talk to Tessa about something like that. So, what were my options?”
“Why wouldn’t you talk to me about it, Paige?”
“I’m talking about it with you now!” I flung my hands out wide. “And it’s going great.”
That’s right, I could be sarcastic, too. I stuck the landing with an indignant look, expecting Max to lob another comment in return.
He shook his head at me, huffing out an exasperated sigh. “If you’re going to break up with me, could you just get it over with?”
My chest deflated, empty of air. I sat stunned, both at his words and at the resignation in his delivery. “Is that … what you want?”
“No. God, no, Paige. But I can’t keep doing this.”
And I really, truly couldn’t keep doing this either. Not after half a childhood full of tense silence, living in the wreckage of two people who held on for too long. The way they both resented themselves, each other.