CONTENTS
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Acknowledgments
Back Ad
About the Author
Books by Megan Frazer Blakemore
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
Once upon a time.
NOW
Charlie is in his pajamas on the couch watching one of those inane sitcoms where the wife thinks her husband is stupid and he thinks she is neurotic. The actual plot of this episode seems to be that the husband forgot their anniversary because, you know, men don’t really care about such things. Then when he tries to make it up to her and asks her what she wants, she’s all, “You pick it out, honey, I know it will be perfect.” Which of course is a trap because, you know, women are manipulative like that.
Do adults really think like that? And if they do, why do they get married?
Charlie laughs—loudly, guffawingly—at a joke, which, as if I need more of a clue that things are not okay, tells me so in bold letters. I look at him, at his messy hair, at the bit of spit or something dried at the corner of his mouth, and wonder as I have so many times in the past few weeks what the hell is wrong with my brother.
I sit down on the couch by Charlie’s feet. They’re hairy. My brother has hairy feet and a black bruise on his left big toe. My parents haven’t said anything to me about his still being here even though it’s the beginning of February. It’s like they think I’m too stupid to notice. Like maybe I’m assuming that Essex College offers study abroad programs to Paris, Kyoto, and our family’s living room.
I’m not that stupid.
I pick up the blanket and cover his hairy, bruised feet.
Charlie wound up on the couch because he fell madly in love with Penelope (definitely not Penny) when he was a junior and she was a sophomore and I was in eighth grade. They dated all of his junior and senior years. It was a salivating kind of love. If I didn’t live with him, I never would have seen him alone. I certainly never saw her without him, not even when I was in high school with them. There could be a whole classroom full of chairs, and they’d be squashed into the same one. There is nothing grosser than coming around the corner and seeing your older brother entwined with a lanky, greasy girl, lips mashed together.
Here are the things Charlie stopped doing:
1.Making awesome playlists for anyone but her
2.Running cross country
3.Playing D&D with his friends (okay, maybe this was an improvement)
4.Treating me like a human being
He disappeared into her. She told him to wear more black, and he did. She told him to cut his long hair, and he did. She told him to grow a goatee, and he tried, but his facial hair would not comply. It was total Penelopificiation.
It sucked.
My parents were concerned, but thought if they said anything it would only make it worse. “There’s no more powerful aphrodisiac than parental disapproval,” said my father, who taught in the sociology department of Essex College.
But then Charlie did something unforgivable. Charlie had always wanted to design video games. Always. So when it came to college, we all knew where he was going to go: Carnegie Mellon, home of the best video game design department in the country. He got in early. My parents sent the deposit. Then, without telling anyone, he called Carnegie Mellon, told them thanks but no thanks, and instead enrolled at Essex College, right here in good old God-awful Essex, New Hampshire. My parents were livid. Charlie said that it was awfully funny that they didn’t think it was a good-enough school for him considering both Mom and Dad worked there and all. Mom said of course it was a good school, it just wasn’t the right school.
So then Penelope decides to go to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. And then Charlie decides to morph with our living room couch into a single being. He’s like one of those eels that plants itself into the ocean floor and waits for food to float by.
It’s true, of course, that going to school in the same town where we lived, he could have decided to move out of the dorms and back home (why, why, oh God, why would anyone do that?), but he hasn’t been to class. He just sits on the couch and watches reruns of sitcoms.
He couldn’t have dropped out. He is too into school for that. Nor would he have been kicked out. Too smart. None of it makes sense, but it’s like since no one’s talking about it, and we talk about everything in our family, well, I know I shouldn’t ask.
“This show sucks,” I say.
“It’s not so bad. That one guy, he’s kind of funny.”
Before, my brother never would have admitted to watching a sitcom—to even knowing what a sitcom was—and now here he is defending it to me. And watching it intently. Purposefully.
He is avoiding me. Or wanting to avoid me.
“Fine.” I sigh.
But then the TV crackles and the special news broadcast tones come on and a voice announces, “We interrupt this broadcast with a special report.”
Cut to the news desk where the guy who normally does the sports is sitting at the desk. He is smiling, but then he seems to realize that he looks like a jackass, so he puts on his serious face. “Breaking news out of Pennsylvania this hour. Musician Adrian Wildes is missing. The star wandered away from his tour bus yesterday afternoon and has not been seen since.”
“Good riddance,” I say.
“Could you stop being a bitch for, like, three minutes? I want to hear this.” He is sitting up, which is a change for him. He swings his feet around and places them on the floor and leans toward the television.
“Fine. Screw you very much. I’m going for a walk.”
Outside I press my earbuds in so the music fills my ears. Alanis Morissette. “Hello, 1995,” Charlie said to me when he looked at my playlist. “What’s with all the angry dyke music?” He doesn’t believe I have anything to be angry about. Only Penelope-broken Charlie has any reason to be upset, that’s what he thinks. He doesn’t know everything that went down with me, though, so screw him all over again.
“Maybe I’m an angry dyke,” I replied. I should have known then that something was up. Charlie was not the kind of guy who referred to women as anything other than “women.”
I storm down the street, my boots clomping through what’s left of the snow. The music pushes me forward. I have the bass turned up too much, boom boom boom right in my ear.
In the summer, the trees are so full of leaves and the branches so long they create a canopy over the road. We moved to this street when I was nine, and I thought it was like something out of a fairy tale. I don’t exactly believe in fairy tales anymore.
Still, it’s kind of a pretty street. The older houses are small and the newer houses are too big, like anywhere else I guess. There are a ton of kids who tear around like some sort of a biker gang, wobbly on their two-wheelers, but Charlie and I are the only teenagers. Well, and Germy Zack Donovan. We used to ride the bus together. While we waited we played twenty questions and druthers and fuck, marry, kill, only he called it bone, marry, kill, because he said I was too young for the F-word. We had completely opposite taste in guys in terms of who was a keeper and who was a throwaway. Like he’d want to marry one and I’d want to bone him. Generally we’d agree on who to kill. But then he got his car. The awful two-door subcompact that I become all too familiar with over the course of this story. He got that car and he didn’t even once offer me a ride. I thought at first it was because he had gotten himself a boyfriend, and driving to school was special time together, and I thought that was cool b
ecause even though our school is pretty accepting, there are assholes everywhere, and it still might be hard to be the only boy-boy couple. But then I’d see him cruising into the parking lot all alone while I stood in the side courtyard with Hannah and Gwen.
We’re having an early thaw and everything is melting, but I know we’re going to get hit with some sort of storm before spring finally gets to Essex. I’m wearing a sweatshirt, one I haven’t worn since the fall, and it still kind of smells like October, which feels both ages ago and all at the same time on top of me.
But I’m thinking that maybe things are okay. Maybe this thaw is like a metaphor. Or a simile. I can never quite keep them straight. Anyway, I can almost believe that things are going to be okay. The snow will melt, the leaves will come back, Charlie will go back to school, and me, well, maybe I’ll start putting myself back together, too. Maybe I can try to undo what happened.
And then the song switches and it’s Adrian Wildes singing into my ear and I know that nothing is going to be okay.
“Nothing, nothing, and nothing again,” croons Adrian Wildes.
Crap.
I thought I had erased every little piece of Seth Winthrop from my life, but here it is: our song. Not the song that defined our relationship, but the one that made us look at each other and say, “Oh hey.”
Another bit of the past to dredge up: It happened over the summer at Gwen’s house. She has a pool and there was always the most random assortment of people there. Seth was one of them. Earlier in the day I’d watched him scoop a mouse out of the pool with his hand. He’d placed it gently on the pool deck, and there it sat still and soaked. Seth just stared at it and I swear it was like he willed that thing back to life. It was dead and lifeless and then it stirred and then it stood up and shook the water off itself before scurrying out into the woods. He looked up and saw me watching and gave me a little smile. I just blushed and turned away. But later. Later, we were sitting next to each other, only in different conversations—him with his friends, and me with Gwen and Hannah—when the Adrian Wildes song came on. He leaned back and I leaned forward and at the same time we both said, “Man, this song sucks.” It was like we had practiced it, but it was totally spontaneous. We all laughed, even his stupid friends Alex and Torrance, the latter of whom is deep into some sort of goth-emo phase, and maybe that should have been the end of it, but we both stayed at Gwen’s house past sundown, and one thing led to another. “I can drive you home,” he said. Casually. Because to him driving was nothing new, not something you had to beg your parents to let you do once a weekend. And so he drove me home, and in my driveway, he kissed me sweet and long, right on my lips. He didn’t even try to slip me the tongue or anything, and I remember being disappointed, because it was my first real kiss, but it wasn’t a really real kiss. That would come later. All of it. I went to the pool free and single, and came out hooked up with Seth Winthrop, a coupling that wasn’t completely radical, but strange enough to send ripples of excitement through the school. That’s what happens when you live in a town where nothing happens.
I push the button to skip the song, but it comes right back around and repeats.
Nothing, nothing, and nothing again.
Really, who thinks starting a relationship with words like that is a good idea?
I push the Stop button but it won’t stop.
You slip beneath the surface and I pull you up again.
“It’s cheating,” Seth said. “You can’t make the rhyme with the same word.” Ah, bitter irony. Our first conversation and he talked about cheating.
I clomp all the way around the block trying to get Seth Winthrop and Adrian Wildes out of my head. Even three go-rounds of Ani DiFranco’s “Untouchable Face” can’t seem to do the trick.
When I get back home, Zack Donovan’s rolling two-door wreck is in the driveway and he and Charlie are deep in conversation. I hear the name “Adrian Wildes” and I think maybe they are playing bone, marry, kill without me. I know what I would say for Adrian Wildes: kill, kill, kill. Or maybe bone. It would depend on who else was in the game.
All of this races through my head in about three seconds. Long enough for them to notice my arrival and then exchange one quick look. Charlie looks back at me. “Adrian Wildes is gone,” he says.
“Yeah, hello, I was there with you when the news came on. And anyway, who cares?” I ask.
“Adrian Wildes?” Zack suggests. “I mean, probably.” When he smiles, his chipmunk cheeks have one dimple, not two. I usually hate one-dimplers. It’s like they are trying to be adorable, but half-assing it as if they really don’t care if you think they are cute or not. But with Zack it’s more like the one dimple just jumped on his face and surprised him. Like he’s not quite sure how it got there so he’s going to make the best of it.
“We need to find him,” Charlie says.
“Find him?” I ask.
“He’s out there somewhere hurting, and we need to find him.”
I do not need any more proof that my brother has had a complete personality upheaval, but here it is. It’s like the un-Penelopization has left him completely devoid of any of the characteristics of pre– or post–Hell Girl Charlie. In his place is this changeling.
“I’m sure there are people looking for him,” Zack suggests.
“Like a hundred thousand fangirls,” I say.
“That seems like an exaggeration,” Zack replies.
“Okay, ninety-seven thousand sixty-three fangirls.”
“Closer to ninety-seven thousand and sixty-four.”
“I wish you still rode the bus.”
“They won’t find him,” Charlie interrupts. “So I’m going. I’m going to find Adrian Wildes. You can go with me or not.”
I realize that he is serious. His eyes have this strange mix of sadness and desperation. I also realize that this is the first time he has expressed any interest in getting off the couch in weeks. “Okay. I’ll go,” I say.
“I guess I’ll drive then,” Zack says.
Charlie says, “Sure, okay, I guess.”
“Of course he’s going with us,” I tell him. “We are completely carless whereas Zack has that car-like object.” I turn to Zack. “You should’ve held out for payment.”
“I’m a white knight, Lexi, I thought you knew that.”
“Wait, don’t tell me you have a big gay crush on him, because, ew.”
“Him, Adrian Wildes, or him, your brother?” Zack asks.
“Ew and double ew.”
“No crushes. I mean, no offense, man. No, it’s just that my parents are getting a divorce only they don’t know it yet. The farther away I can get from them, the better. A little road trip seems perfect right about now.”
“That’s a decent reason, I guess.”
Charlie reaches for the passenger-side door. “Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “We can’t just hop in the car and go. Where are we even going?”
“He was last seen in Pennsylvania,” Charlie says.
“Which is, what? How far?”
Charlie shrugs and so Zack says, “A good eight to ten hours.”
“So we’d better get going.”
“No, we’d better get stuff,” I say. “We should call Mom and Dad and ask first.”
Charlie raises his eyebrows at me.
“Okay, fine. Leave them a note. I am going to get some supplies.” I kick off my sneakers when we get inside, but Charlie leaves his on and makes little wet footprints across the floor. Mom and Dad would cut my feet off at the ankles if I did that, but they’d probably be so damn happy that Charlie was on his feet that they’d just crawl behind him with a towel if they were here.
Zack stands right inside the doorway looking a little useless and confused, which is, frankly, the way he frequently looks, so maybe he has useless resting face. I bet I could come up with about a million types of stupid resting faces that guys have, and all anyone would say is that I put the bitch in resting bitch face. Anyway, I say, “Make yourself useful
and get some snacks from the kitchen.”
I run up the stairs at the exact moment the cat comes tearing down between my legs. I swear it is her plan to get me to tumble to my death on these stairs. She’s never been happier since Charlie took up residence on the couch. The two of them snuggle together like best bosom buddies. All the while she’s getting meaner and meaner to me. The other morning she hid beneath the couch and lunged out at my ankles as I walked by, drawing blood.
In my room, I grab a change of underwear, a purple long-sleeved T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. Clean socks, too. Life is always better if you have clean socks. And that’s not a metaphor or anything. Clean socks is good living.
Then I take my old piggy bank down from the shelf. The pig has blue eyes and long lashes and a little tail that curls like a corkscrew. I pop open the bottom and pull out the bills: seven twenty dollar bills, four tens, a five, and three ones. I keep most of my money in the bank account I’ve had since I was seven, but I like to have a little emergency cash on hand. I roll it up and jam it into the pocket of my jeans.
When I put my piggy bank back up on the shelf, my hand knocks against a small box. The box originally held a pair of aquamarine earrings I received for my birthday. I lost one and the other is in the drawer of my bedside table. Now the box holds a folded-up note given to me by Seth Winthrop. My stomach turns just to think of it, like I swallowed a whole gallon of sour milk.
Downstairs, I find Zack in front of our pantry. “It’s like snack mecca in here.”
“Just grab a bunch of things,” I tell him, reaching past him for the store-brand cheddar crackers my mom likes to tell us will give us cancer, but she buys them all the same, so what kind of message is that? Zack takes three granola bars out of the box and drops them into the reusable shopping bag I grabbed from a hook in the pantry. “Take them all,” I say.
“Won’t your parents mind?” he asks.
“Maybe. But they mind if we eat the food and they mind if we don’t eat the food, so what does it even matter?”
“Okay,” he says slowly, and takes down a tin of raspberry candies.
“Except those,” I say.
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