by Tara Kelly
If I felt out of place with the cakes, it would be even worse for her. She’d never even been to a party.
“Why would you want to go?” Alex asked her.
She shrugged. “Just to see…”
“See what?” he asked. “A bunch of rich pricks throwing back Daddy’s vodka?”
If Alex thought he was convincing her not to go, he was doing the opposite. Megan loved to buck him, even when she knew he was right.
“You don’t belong with those people,” Alex continued.
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Neither did Nova. They didn’t care.”
“Yes, they did,” he muttered.
“Let’s not go there.” I knew where this conversation was heading, and I didn’t want to talk about him.
“Look, I’m not even going to hang out with the cakes,” Megan said. “I’m going to hang out with Gabi.”
Getting invited to one of their parties felt a little like being invited to a secret society. You knew they were dicks, but it was hard to fight the curiosity.
Alex stirred his drink again. “How do you know Gabi isn’t setting you up for something?”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Because you know her so well?”
“You’re right.” Her palms slapped the table. “I’m too much of a loser. It must be a joke.”
Alex’s expression softened. “That’s not what I’m saying—”
“Hungry?” My mom stood in front of us, three plates on her arm. A large clip kept her dark hair piled on top of her head, which meant she hadn’t showered yet.
“Hey, thanks. I could’ve gotten that,” I said, taking my plate from her.
“You’re on break, babe. Enjoy it.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
She exhaled. “Toilet in the men’s bathroom broke. Waiting on the plumber.”
“Sorry.” It never failed. Something always broke when my mom finally decided to take a day off.
She pulled out a purple envelope from her apron pocket and dropped it in front of me. “This was in our mailbox—any idea what it is?”
“Not a clue.” “Nova” was typed out on a white label and stuck to the front. No last name. No address. My first instinct was to throw it away.
But even my haters used the internet to insult me most of the time.
“Maybe you have a secret admirer.” Mom winked and walked away. Leave it to her to ignore the creep factor and jump to romance.
“It looks like a birthday card,” Megan commented, before taking a giant bite of her burger.
“Four months late…” I pinched the envelope, checking for lumps. There definitely wasn’t a card inside. It felt empty.
“Want me to open it for you?” Alex asked, eyeing the envelope. It was my favorite shade of purple, dark and rich like a grape Popsicle.
“That’s okay.” I lifted it to my nose and inhaled, trying to catch a telltale scent. The smell of my mom’s citrusy hand lotion and cigarette-stained fingertips overpowered everything.
I dug my finger underneath the lip, tearing the seal slowly. Opening this in private was probably a smarter move. But I couldn’t wait. It would nag me all day otherwise. Besides, if anyone was watching, I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of thinking I was afraid.
A folded piece of printer paper sat inside, looking harmless. Too harmless. I pulled it out, my heart racing with my thoughts.
The paper unfolded itself, revealing a flash of blue. I froze. Don’t be a coward. Whatever it is, you can handle it.
I unraveled the paper again. A vibrant blue wildflower had been flattened against the page, part of its stem still attached. An odor wafted up from it, a little sweet, a little smoky. Almost like incense.
There is so much I want to say to you, the letter read. I’ll start with this… That was it—just one typed line. No further explanation.
“That’s not creepy at all,” I muttered. What the hell did it even mean?
“Let me see.” Megan snatched the paper from me, causing the flower to drop right on top of my potato. Her nose crinkled. “Oops.”
I pushed my plate toward the middle of the table and shook my head at Alex offering me his fries. “Lost my appetite.”
“Seems kind of sweet to me.” Megan passed the letter to Alex.
He scanned it, his mouth turning up a bit. “Bad call on the flower, huh?”
“Unless it’s the same person,” I said. That thought would keep me up at night.
“It’s not,” Alex said. “They’re obviously gunning for the De Lucas. Why would they send you something?”
“Please tell me you did this.” Since my birthday was on Valentine’s Day, and I hated all things Valentine’s Day, Alex liked to tease me by showing up with the cheesiest cards he could find.
“Why would I…” He paused, studying my face. “Okay, I did it.”
“Seriously?”
He exhaled, placing his hand on top of mine. “I know we see each other every day, but there’s so much I want to say to you.” His lips twitched. “And I know flowers are the way to your heart.”
Megan snorted.
I shoved his hand away, smiling despite myself. “Shut up. It’s not funny.”
If only he knew how I’d been feeling lately.
“It’s a little weird. I’ll give you that,” Alex said, his voice softening. “But it’s nothing to freak out over. Not yet, okay?”
“Sure…”
People did a lot of things when they thought you were a slut. They believed all the stories about you. How you slept with half the guys in town and smelled like fish. How your home-wrecker mom made you that way. Even the one where you gave some drunk a blowjob behind the Hemlock Tavern and charged him for it.
They wrote “ho’mobile” on your mom’s misty car windows and talked about you in whispers. They sent anonymous emails, telling you how vile you were—all the things they didn’t have the guts to say in person.
But nobody secretly admired me. That I knew for sure.
Chapter Three
Alex and me lay cramped together in my twin bed, my blue flannel sheets tangled around our bare feet. We were listening to Catherine Wheel, one of our favorite ’90s bands. They were hope and sorrow. A wall of distortion. A jaded voice that felt like home. Alex’s Uncle Joel introduced us to the shoegaze subgenre the last time we visited him in Portland, and we were hooked. Somehow I knew, even when we moved on to a different genre obsession, shoegaze would always be a part of our soundtrack.
We’d made it back to my house without Alex getting jumped by Matt, but there would always be tomorrow. And the next day. Matt wasn’t someone to forget and move on.
For now we were safe in the world we’d been building since we were little. A world with only us. Our stories. Our music. Lavender candles. Silence was okay here, too. Sometimes we wouldn’t talk for hours.
I shifted closer to him to keep from sliding off the bed.
He curled his arm underneath me so my head was resting on his chest. “That better?”
He was so close. Too close. I could smell the grass on his shirt, the mix of soap and salt on his neck. “Sure, even though you reek.”
“Shut up—I do not.” He inhaled, like he was breathing me in. “But you do.”
I elbowed him. “Nuh-uh.”
His fingers traced circles against the bare skin of my arm. “You smell good. Like cherries or something.”
“Okay, weirdo.” Heat washed over me, even with the night breeze sneaking through a crack in my window frame.
I wondered if he’d ever thought about kissing me. What he’d do if I leaned in this very second and laid one on him, slid my hand underneath his shirt. God, I wanted to.
And I hated myself for it. It felt shameful. Completely wrong.
When you’ve been friends with someone for so long, they become like family. He’d seen me get a ring of chocolate ice cream around my mouth more times than I could count, a special talent o
f mine. When his favorite pajama bottoms got a hole in the ass, he still wore them around me…for an entire year. We used to have regular burping contests at two in the morning and write insults on each other’s foreheads when one of us fell asleep first. Romance never came into the picture.
He did ask me to marry him once, the summer after fourth grade. We couldn’t afford video games, and my mom never liked us in front of the TV too long, so we spent most of our time outside, inventing alternate worlds. We created our own tribe, the Tribe of Morgace—our last names, Morgan and Pace, put together.
Coming up with names wasn’t our strong suit.
That summer, we kept finding dead birds in the woods, as if they’d fallen from the sky. We decided the culprit was a trickster coyote named Jenika (my idea, of course), and we needed to catch her before she killed all the animals in the forest. Alex dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him. Our “tribe” would be stronger with a king and queen, he’d said. I insisted that tribes didn’t have kings and queens, but I gave in, anyway. He looked so sad when he thought I was going to say no.
A familiar melody bounced off my dark blue walls. The opening of “Crank” always gave me the chills. “I love this song.”
“Me, too,” he whispered.
Rain tapped against the roof, tiny plinks reminding us that spring wasn’t over yet. I wanted the sky to open up and pound us like never before. Wash everything away. But chances were it would drizzle all night.
“I can’t stop seeing that deer,” I said.
“Me neither.”
I’d been running possible “suspects” in my head all day, but I always came back to one person… “Do you think Jenika would go that far?” Matt might’ve helped, but it would’ve been her idea.
“Jenika isn’t behind every bad thing that happens around here, Nova.”
The accusation in his voice bugged me. “Who do you think it is, then?”
“It could be anyone,” he said softly. “People snap all the time.”
“That’s dark.”
“But true.”
I tilted my head up to catch a glimpse of him. His eyes were closed, his lids fluttering as if he was holding his breath. Waiting. Wishing. Hoping like hell I’d change the subject, maybe.
I used to be able to predict almost every thought of his. Every reaction. Now it was more like fifty-fifty.
“You sure you don’t want to steal the El Camino?” I asked. “We could disappear for the whole summer. Megan can come, too.”
“Why do you want to disappear so bad?”
Did he even have to ask? Waiting on snippy tourists in a hot diner all summer. Watching the stupid turf wars between the locals and the cakes. The name-calling and the fistfights. All the trash baking in the sun. And now some psychopath gutting animals.
Living here year-round was bad, but summer was pure hell.
“Where’re we going to run to, anyway?” Alex asked. “We don’t have a hundred bucks saved between us.”
I didn’t want to think about the semantics. I wanted to go and figure out the rest later. “You didn’t used to care…”
“My grandpa’s Social Security benefits got cut. I need to find a job.”
I closed my eyes, feeling like a jerk. “Gramps needs an extra server for the season. The job is yours, okay?”
“You know I suck with people.”
I wanted to tell him this wasn’t the time to be stubborn. “It’s better than nothing.”
He exhaled, his warm breath tickling my ear. “I need to tell you something.”
I didn’t like the hesitation in his voice. “Is it about those condoms in your drawer?”
“What?” His arm tensed around me. “No.”
“Then I don’t want to hear it.” My heart sped up. I just had this feeling…
“Nova…”
“Is it going to make me upset?”
He touched my hair so softly I wasn’t sure if it was actually happening. “Yeah.”
“Tell me about your secret girlfriend first.” I tickled his ribs.
His body jerked, and he breathed out a small laugh. “Teasing isn’t going to get you out of this.”
I turned to face him and used both my hands, tickling his stomach, his sides, and under his arms. He arched his back, grinning wide and letting out the kind of laughter I hadn’t heard from him in ages.
“Stop!” His eyes squeezed shut.
I sat up, folding my arms in my lap. “You’ve got five seconds to start talking.”
He stared at me, the hardness back in his eyes again. “Why do you care so much?”
“No secrets. That’s the rule.”
“We’re not little kids anymore, Nova.”
“I told you when I…” My breath got caught in my throat. “Come on. You’ve never even kissed a girl. Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back—joking or not.
Alex’s lips parted, and I knew he was hurt. No matter how hard he tried to hide it. “Who says I haven’t?”
“You would’ve told me…I hope.”
He folded his hands behind his head, his gaze flickering up to the ceiling. “Zach’s in town.”
There it was. The name I never wanted to hear again. “Are you sure?”
“I talked to him.”
He said he wasn’t coming back. No, he didn’t just say it. He promised. “What’d you say?”
Alex sat up, moving closer to me. “He asked how you were. I told him to go fuck himself. And then…” He hesitated, his eyes lifting to mine. “I punched him.”
“What?”
His lips twitched up. “I’m kidding. But I wanted to.”
I’d gotten over Zach West months ago, but not the humiliation of thinking I was in love. And telling him that. He was my first kiss, my first boyfriend, my first…everything. It wasn’t like I had anything to compare my feelings to.
What was he even doing here? He’d graduated this year, like his best friend, Christian. And he’d always said the first thing he wanted to do was go to Europe and check out every big music festival he could.
“Hey…” Alex whispered, wrapping his arms around me. I rested my cheek against his shoulder, my hands clenching in fists.
The day before Zach broke up with me, we’d spent the night together on the beach. My first time wasn’t anything special. And despite what everyone in town thought, it was my only time—if two awkward and extremely painful minutes of him trying to get inside me counted.
It wasn’t like I’d been holding out for love or the perfect moment. I wanted the experience to matter. And for it to matter, I needed it to be with someone I trusted.
I trusted Zach, completely.
I remember the way his lips lingered on mine when he said good-bye in the morning. He had to get home before his mom woke up. We were going to see Blue October in Portland that night.
He called me ten minutes before he was supposed to pick me up. It was raining, and I’d been fighting the waves in my hair.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
And I kept asking what “this” meant. He said things were getting too serious for him. It was too much. I was too much.
So I did the dumbest thing I could that night. I made out with Matt Delgado at Rainbow Creek Park. Because I was a mess. And Matt had a flask filled with three types of booze and all the right things to say.
By the next day, everyone was talking about how me and Matt had “done it,” right on top of that mossy, bird shit–covered picnic table. How I’d slept around on Zach and smelled like trout.
I figured Matt was behind it, probably with a lot of help from Jenika.
He wasn’t.
At the end of the summer, Zach wrote me an email—yes, an email—saying he was sorry for how things went down between us. He was sorry that Christian spread those rumors about me. But someone had seen me and Matt kissing in the park that night.
As if that justif
ied everything.
“You okay?” Alex asked.
“Yeah.”
The purple envelope on my nightstand caught my eye. I’d stuffed the note back inside, planning to throw it away…or burn it. Why hadn’t I? For a brief second, I wondered if Zach wrote it—he always did like to hide behind the written word.
But mystery wasn’t his style. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to go hunting for wildflowers, either. The closest to nature he got or wanted to get was riding waves.
Movement in my peripheral vision turned my attention outside. A shadow darted across my white curtains, toward the bottom of my window. I held my breath, waiting. Only the hush of rain followed.
My curtains were parted just enough for someone to see inside. I imagined someone standing out there…looking right at us.
“Did you see that?” I whispered.
“Thought I imagined it…” Alex ripped the curtains open and cracked the window, peering into the darkness. I thought about Matt telling Alex to watch his back. If Matt wanted to coax him outside, this was a great way to do it.
There was a rustling noise, but it was soft enough to be an animal or the wind blowing through the trees. A tingling sensation inched down the back of my neck. They say you could feel it when someone was watching you.
Alex glanced at me over his shoulder. “I don’t see anything,” he whispered. The glow of our neighbor’s backyard lights was the only sign of life out there.
“Close the window.” The damp breeze made me shiver. “Close it!”
“Okay, relax.” He slammed it shut, flipping the lock. “It could’ve been anything.”
I jerked the curtains together, leaving no tiny gaps to see through. “Yeah, right.” My mind went back to that crushed blue flower. Those cryptic words.
We stared at each other in silence. My arms folded. His fingers tapping against his jeans.
“We should go to sleep,” he said, finally. “It’s almost three.”
My heart was still pounding, but I nodded. We crawled into my bed and faced away from each other, back to back…like always. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it over me, onto the floor.
Usually his warmth comforted me as my eyes fluttered shut. But not tonight. I kept seeing that deer’s head. The life gone from its face. Its last breath frozen in time.