Phil is quiet for a few moments as we coast through town on the way to Sara-Kate’s, and I wonder what Ashland Hills would look like to Donovan now—will look like, once he leaves his house. It’s changed some since he’s been gone. Not a ton but enough to notice if you haven’t been around for four years. Like the big-name coffee chains that have cropped up, trying to put Coffee & Jam out of business. Or the new barbecue place down the street from Casablanca’s where every day around noon it smells like someone’s shooting off a pulled-pork cannon. There’s Ashland Hills Elementary and the organic foods/hippie store that’s always empty, and we don’t think about what it would be like to suddenly stop seeing them every day.
“Do you remember that time we went to Great America?” Phil rolls to a stop at a yellow light instead of cruising right through like I would. He drives like a model in a student driving handbook—hands at ten and two, never more than two miles above the speed limit.
“Oh. With all our parents?” I haven’t thought about that day in years.
“Yeah.” When I look over, Phil grins. “We were eight, right?”
“Nine. And Glenn was with us and started crying because he was too short for that roller coaster we rode over and over again until you puked.”
“Weak stomach. It’s genetic.” His grin widens, showing his perfect white teeth. They should be, considering they were caged under braces for three and a half years. “I wasn’t the only one. Remember my dare?”
“God.” I groan, clutching my stomach at the memory. “How could I forget? I still can’t touch hot dogs.”
Great America food patio. Phil dared Donovan to eat three foot-long dogs in one sitting. Paid for them with his allowance and everything. Donovan did it, but ended up vomiting his accomplishment at the edge of the patio five minutes later. Phil sympathy-puked shortly after that and needless to say, the park employees and our parents were not amused.
“Ma wants to have Donovan’s family and you guys over for dinner,” Phil says. “We haven’t even talked to them and she’s already planning the menu. She’d probably feed me to death if we were separated as long as Donovan and his mom.”
“Your mom would try to feed the entire neighborhood to death.” I pull out my phone to text Sara-Kate, let her know we’re only a few blocks away.
She’s waiting outside, smoking on the front porch of her darkened house. She strides toward us in a body-hugging tunic, leggings, and knee-high suede boots and I can’t imagine what it would be like to have curves like that and not want to hide them.
She’d kill me if I ever said this out loud, but Sara-Kate is kind of a cartoon character. Her features are just so exaggeratedly perfect that if you stare at her too long it looks as if someone drew her. Bow-shaped lips and brown eyes so big and sincere you could drown in them. She knows her way around a makeup bag, but I’d never put anything on my face if I was her. She’s just as pretty without it.
“Hey, doll.” She kisses my cheek, wipes away the lipstick print with her thumb, then crawls behind me to sit in back.
“Where are your parents?” I ask, looking pointedly at the cigarette dangling between her index and middle fingers. I keep the window cracked.
“My mom has a show in the city tonight.”
“You’d better be careful with that thing,” Phil says in his dad voice as he turns to eye Sara-Kate and her cigarette.
“Have I ever burned or otherwise desecrated your precious car?” she says, holding it just outside the window so the smoke and ash will blow behind us in the wind.
“Just watch where you hold it, okay?” Phil heads toward Klein’s, which means the houses grow larger with each street we cross. The yards become more spacious, the cars in the driveways more luxurious.
Sara-Kate blows two perfectly circular smoke rings out the window, then pushes her round face between the seats. “Thanks for driving, Philip.”
“No problem, Sara-Katherine.” He turns his head slightly to give her the side-eye.
“But it’s not Katherine.” Her perpetually sunny face twists into a pout.
“And it’s not Philip.” He pauses as we drive by my favorite house in Ashland Hills: all white and three stories high with a flat roof, sturdy columns, and a long balcony off the second level. “Not unless you’re my mother.”
But he doesn’t hide his grin fast enough when I look over.
Klein’s parents are always on some type of vacation or business trip, and his parties have become an institution. He hires actual DJs from Chicago and these things generally last all night and the cops never break them up because his family has more money than anyone in Ashland Hills.
His street is already lined with cars, so we have to park on the next one over. My parents would flip their shit if it ever got back to them that I’d thrown a party this size. Not that I ever would. Mom and Dad are pretty chill on a day-to-day basis, but when something big goes down, they take action fast. Attempting to pull off a party like Klein’s would land me at least a monthlong grounding. Probably more.
Ellie Harris is sitting on the front steps as we walk up. She leans her head close to Lark Pearson, looks at us, and throws her head back in laughter. I don’t know what Hosea likes about her, because I haven’t found much. She’s pretty enough, I guess, in a manufactured sort of way. Good highlights and perfectly glossed lips; the kind of girl who’s never in public without full makeup. I wonder if Hosea has seen her without makeup.
She takes a delicate sip from a bottle of hard cider. “Hi, Phil.”
“Yeah, hi, Phil,” echoes Lark. Her eyes are rimmed with so much liner, it looks like someone punched her.
Phil pauses for a couple of beats to see if they’ll acknowledge me or Sara-Kate. They don’t. Lark whispers something to Ellie and this time they both laugh. Ellie giggles as she tips the bottle back for another drink.
“Excuse us, ladies,” Phil says, and damn does he know how to make a polite word sound like something he found in a toilet.
He holds the heavy front door open for us and closes it firmly behind him.
We step into the room off the foyer where everyone dumps their coats. It’s the maid’s sitting room, small and plain but comfortable, with a cream-colored suede couch and matching love seat, a bookshelf of hardcover classics, and a sleek television mounted on the far wall. Phil stows our coats in the closet on wooden hangers instead of draping them over the couches like everyone else. “We don’t know where their shit has been,” he mumbles as he hangs his thrifted brown leather jacket.
“You know, Lark was in my study hall last year and she was really nice to me,” Sara-Kate says, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “She’d always tell me about the big makeup sales.”
“Blame Ellie Harris.” I shrug off my black peacoat and hand it to Phil, who’s waiting, hanger in hand. “Everything she touches turns to bitch.”
“And the first round goes to Theo,” Phil says, nodding with an eyebrow raised in appreciation.
Klein is one of the first people we see as we walk back out to the foyer. He’s standing near the bottom of the spiral staircase with a drink in one hand as he surveys the crowd, practically holding court. Just in case anyone forgets this is his house and all. Phil rolls his eyes.
“I still can’t believe you fucked him,” he says as he tugs at his denim vest with the frayed edges.
“I didn’t.” I give his vest the once-over. It’s actually an old denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, but whatever. “And you’re friends with him.”
“We’re tangential friends.” We step into the living room. Sara-Kate by my side, Phil facing us. “Like, one step beyond acquaintances.”
Leo Watson squeezes by us in his Wranglers and signature brown Stetson, pauses for a second to make a face at Phil’s black skinny jeans. I don’t think he has much room for judgment, considering he dresses like he works on somebody’s ranch.
“I think the number of times you’ve gotten high with someone directly correlates to your level of friendship,” I say to Phil. “You and Klein are one hit away from buying matching bongs.”
“Bullshit.” But he takes off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt and he only does that when he doesn’t know what to say.
I tilt my head to the side as I look at him. “Three words: winter formal afterparty.”
Sara-Kate bursts into giggles and I’m next. We’ll use any excuse to bring up what happened.
Winter formal is the dance at our school. Few people take homecoming seriously besides the athletes and student council, and prom is so overhyped that I wonder how it ever meets anyone’s expectations. But winter formal is smack in the middle of the school year, a couple of weeks after we return from break, when everyone is looking for something to beat the post-holiday slump that falls in the dead of winter. Plainly put, it’s the night when the entire school gets dressed up and shitfaced, all under one roof. I’ve been with a date only once, and that was with Klein, my freshman year. I went stag with Sara-Kate and Phil when we were sophomores, but it would be fun to switch it up this year, if there was actually someone I wanted to ask me. Someone available.
Last year, Phil got wasted on airplane bottles of gin and we found him in the Andersons’ game room with Klein: arms around each other, straight-up kumbaya bro-love in front of the Indiana Jones pinball machine, and we couldn’t tell how long they’d been in there. Seeing the two of them get along so well would have been disturbing if it hadn’t been so funny. I swear I heard the words best buddy slurred back and forth a few times. Of course Phil denies it and I honestly don’t think Klein remembers any part of that night, let alone the end.
“Whatever, Theo. It’s still not the same as hooking up with him.”
“It was a couple of times. There was no sex. And it was, like, a million years ago, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop bringing it up.”
I glare at him, but it’s not my full-on death stare. Murderous looks don’t go with my new sweater. I’m so flat that most sweaters look ridiculous on me, but my mother brought this one home last week and it’s perfect. Fitted with a deep scoop neck and made from soft cashmere the color of eggplant.
“Not a million.” Phil won’t let it go. “Freshman year. Two.”
“Maybe you need to get laid and stop fixating on who I didn’t sleep with two years ago.” I look to Sara-Kate for support. “Right?”
She holds up her hands, shakes her pale purple head at us. “I am so not getting into this. Now let’s go find some booze. Mama’s thirsty.”
Next stop: the kitchen. Nearly every brand and type of liquor imaginable is spread out on the granite counters—some uncapped, some half empty, and others completely untouched, like the monstrous bottle of butterscotch schnapps. The door at the back of the room opens out to a terrace, where people are gathered around three kegs. Music pulsates through the house at such a deafening volume that even the bottles clink to the beat.
Phil and Sara-Kate go outside to check on the keg situation while I peruse my options on the counter. I’m inspecting the label on a bottle of vodka when Klein walks in. He hasn’t changed much since we used to hang out. He shaved off his curls so that his hair is nothing more than black prickles, but it only accentuates his remarkable bone structure.
He stands so close to me, I can smell the soap from his shower. And the liquor on his breath. Better than cologne, I guess.
“Legs. You made it.”
I smile and say hello. I guess I’ll always be grateful to Klein in some way. He’s not my type, but he’s exactly what I needed two years ago. He made me forget what had happened to Donovan and also those months at Juniper Hill. But most importantly, he made me forget about Trent.
Trent, who was five years older, eighteen to my thirteen. Trent Miller, who told me he loved me and wanted to be with me and made me believe every word he said about us. Trent Ryan Miller, who just up and left one day, who was never to be heard from again, who the shrinks decided was a big part of the reason I ended up at Juniper Hill in the first place. That is, when they weren’t busy blaming ballet.
Klein was sloppy, but he was sweet and always treated me like I was the best-looking girl in the room. He still does, so long as his girlfriend’s not around. As if she knows I’m thinking about her, Trisha wanders in a few moments later, all glassy eyes and fashionably unbrushed hair. Trisha is tall and thin, but not the type of thin that makes people want to send you away.
“Hi, Theo,” she says in this faraway voice. “It’s really amazing about Donovan. I sat behind him in fourth grade. Remember? We did that science fair project with the rain gauge.”
I don’t, but I nod and start backing up, slowly so she won’t notice I’m trying to get away.
But Klein sees everything.
“Wait.” He pulls a red cup from one of the upside-down stacks, all lined up like those hats the Shriners wear. “Let me make you a drink.”
“No, thanks.” I point toward the patio. “Beer.”
“Okay.” He wraps an arm around Trisha’s teeny waist. “Well, we’re gonna roll later. You in?”
I choke down a “no fucking way” and say that I have to be up early for ballet tomorrow. Which is true. But also? Doing E with Klein Anderson and his girlfriend is about the last thing to check off of my list tonight. They hooked up with Mallory Frank at a pool party last summer. I wasn’t there but I’d believe it even if there hadn’t been witnesses. Mallory is on the fringe, one of those girls who will do anything to make her way into the circle.
He looks at me now and shrugs. “Your choice. Hey, if you see Hosea out there, tell him I’m looking for him. Dude has no fucking concept of time.”
He and Trisha start fumbling with a bottle of rum and a two-liter of Coke and that’s my cue to leave. My friends are no longer on the patio, but the kegs are getting plenty of action from the fringe people—like Mallory. People who are cool enough to be invited, but awkward enough to feel like they have to kiss everyone’s ass for their next invitation. I don’t know if anyone would call me, Sara-Kate, and Phil popular, but we’re cool with the people who do hold most of the power in our class—particularly the two messy people I just left in the kitchen.
“You look like you could use a beer,” says a friendly voice to my left.
Eddie Corteen. We’ve gone to school together our whole lives but I don’t know anything about him. He shows up to class every day, he comes to all the parties, and he’s so nice, it seems like an act until you realize no one could keep that up for so long. But I can’t remember having an actual conversation with him, nothing more than hello in passing or asking him for his notes if I missed English class.
“I could use a beer,” I say since he’s already pumping the keg. “Thanks, Eddie.”
“No problem,” he says, sort of ducking his head as he reaches into a plastic bag near the base of the keg and fills a red cup. “So how’s it going? I’ve been thinking about you.” Eddie flushes so quickly, I wonder how his mind had time to communicate with his body. His white-blond eyebrows get lost in his pinkened skin. “I mean, not like that. I just—Donovan. You know?”
Right. He knew him, too.
He hands me the cup and I sip. Ice-cold, hasn’t gone flat, and hardly any head. Normally I’d forgo the beer on a Friday night since I have ballet early the next morning, but after the past couple of days I deserve this. Except . . . thinking about Donovan mars the perfection of this beer.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be out right now,” I say, spilling my fears to the person I probably know the least at this party, as if that makes any kind of sense. The words are out before I can stop them. “Like it’s wrong because he’s at home with his mom . . . recovering.”
Recovering. Such a crap word, but I don’t know what else to say. He was hurt and suffering and now he’
s home and trying to heal. Maybe he can’t close his eyes without launching a thousand nightmares.
So what am I doing? It never occurred to me to skip Klein’s party until now, but guilt coats my insides as I think of Donovan while I stand on the terrace, holding a beer and talking to people who used to be his classmates.
“You can’t think about it that way,” Eddie says in a careful voice. “I used to sit behind you guys on the bus sometimes and you . . . well, you two seemed real tight. You were a good friend to him when he was here, Theo.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” I say, staring down at the toes of my black riding boots. Surprised that he remembers how we used to be.
But four years apart have turned Donovan’s life upside down, and now even the familiar pieces of his former existence—his mother, his house, his bedroom—must seem so far removed from who he is today.
“Try not to think about it,” Eddie says, his hair winking silvery blond in the bright lights shining over the patio. “We’re gonna get a game of flip cup going later, if you’re up for it. You could be on my team.”
He gives me a smile so wide and genuine, I smile, too. And for a moment, it makes me feel a little less stupid for confiding in him.
“Maybe,” I say, glancing behind him, where the two guys I always see him with are hanging back, watching us. I don’t know their names. They turn their heads as soon as I make eye contact. I look at Eddie again. “But thank you.”
“Anytime, Theo.” He tips an imaginary hat to me in such a nerdily endearing way, I can practically hear his friends teasing him already.
I turn toward the lawn and start across the perfectly manicured grass toward the Andersons’ gazebo. I navigate my way up the steps and sit cross-legged on the floor. I sip my beer and close my eyes but I can’t shake this. Him. Donovan.
• • •
Footsteps are crossing the yard, crackling through the layers of fallen leaves. I open my eyes to Hosea Roth’s dark figure silhouetted against the autumn night sky. I stand, hold carefully to my beer.
He stops.
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