You Have a Match

by Emma Lord

  My dad’s lips are a thin line. “Pack your bags, Abby. We’re leaving in the morning, and you’re coming with us.”

  I am not a person who lets herself cry in public, but the idea of them taking this place away is gutting. This place where I can learn and still have enough room to breathe, so I actually enjoy it. This place where I have friends on all sides—old ones, new ones, ones who I happen to be related to and didn’t know about for sixteen years. This place where I can stumble into a new corner of the universe every day and take photos of things I’ve never seen, drink up the world and feel like a part of it, instead of like it’s passing me by.

  I’ve been waiting for this feeling ever since Poppy died. Now it’s gone, too.

  Savvy sees that she’s going to have to rein me in, and jumps in before I can spiral further. “Or the four of you can get over yourselves, and whatever happened, so we can all see each other. Like normal people.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why? What’s so unforgivable that—”

  “Savannah,” my mom starts, “it’s not—”

  “No. Tell her,” says Pietra.

  My mom takes a step back as if Pietra has slapped her. “Pet,” she says. A nickname. A white flag. It hovers between them for a second, but Pietra lets it go with the breeze.

  “Tell her what you did,” says Pietra. Her face is splotched with tears, but her voice is eerily firm. “Tell her how you gave her to us, and then you changed your mind. Handed her to us, then scooped her up from the nursery and left the goddamn hospital with her.”

  My mom isn’t crying this time. “I … Pietra, you know I—”

  “Tell her how you said it was a mistake. Just ‘postpartum brain.’ Tell her how you told me everything was fine, and let us take her home, and how a week later we were served papers from some lawyer, trying to take our baby back, because after everything we’d been through, you’d changed your fucking mind.”

  “If we could go back,” says my dad. “If we’d known—”

  Pietra shakes her head, unwilling to hear it. “I knew I couldn’t have kids. I waited my whole life for her. And she was mine—the moment you asked me to take her. Before she was born. She was mine.” Pietra is sobbing now. Dale is tearing up too, his hands on her shoulders, like they are used to absorbing this specific pain from each other. “The terror of losing her. That you would win, and get her back. You can’t imagine what it was like.”

  The words may be an excuse, but my mom says them like an apology. “You can’t imagine what it was like, giving her up.”

  Savvy and I stare at each other as if we’re on opposite sides of a hole we’ve blown into the earth. We’ve wanted the truth for so long, but this feels less like a truth and more like a grenade.

  “But you could have other kids,” says Pietra.

  “Oh my god.”

  All four adults’ heads swivel to me, which is how I realize I’ve said the words out loud.

  “I wasn’t an accident.” I’m just repeating what my mom said last night; it’s the final twist of a key that just got shoved into a lock. The last bit of information I need to confirm an ugly truth. I look over at them to ask, but the answer is already in their faces, was already tense in the air between us back in the hotel. “You had me so fast because you were sad about Savvy, and needed a replacement baby.”

  Everybody goes quiet, the battle temporarily forgotten. I wish I hadn’t said anything. It’s worse than their anger, than the lies, than everything else that’s built up to this: it’s pity.

  My parents stare at me, ashen, and then at each other. They’re trying to do that freaky thing where they come up with a solution without saying a word. Trouble is, they can’t think of one fast enough.

  I swipe at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Nice.” I mean for it to sound scathing. Instead it sounds pathetic.

  My mom shifts toward me, and so does Pietra, like they both want to soothe me but don’t know how. And suddenly the whole thing is excruciating. My dumb eyes all watery, them staring at me, even Rufus coming over to cuddle himself against me like my self-pity is so thick that he can smell it in the air.

  “Let’s…”

  I don’t let my mom finish. “Fuck off,” I bite out, stunning us all. The words make me feel solid again, rock-hard and unforgiving. I don’t even mean them. They’re just better than crying. “Fuck you.”

  I need to get out of here, now.

  “Abby, wait!”

  It’s Savvy who calls me back when I take off, and unfortunately there’s no way to outrun the queen of cardio and HIIT. Sure enough, she’s reached me before I’m even halfway to my cabin, and I go skidding to a halt to avoid crashing into her.

  “Savvy—”

  “Abby, wait. Just listen. We’re making progress, I know it. Come back.”

  My mouth drops open. I was going for indignant, but I am sabotaged by the fact that I am openmouthed wheezing and Savvy basically glided over here on wings.

  “Progress?” I repeat. “I’m sorry, were we watching the same car crash?”

  Savvy shakes her head. “It’s gotta get worse before it gets better. Get all the poison out. And it’s finally getting out, and—”

  “And we should have just left them alone.”

  My voice sounds wretched. I don’t want to be mad. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding this feeling, and now it’s itching under my skin, swelling in my ribs, I know exactly why—but right now mad is all I have. If don’t stay mad it’s going to turn into something much worse.

  “And then what?” Savvy asks, lowering her voice and pulling me off the main path. Yet again we have piqued other campers’ interest—not as two sisters, but as a camper mouthing off to a junior counselor. “Never see each other again?”

  I’m supposed to lower my voice, but somehow that information doesn’t get past my brain.

  “At least we would have had two more weeks. And maybe a chance to do something without setting the whole thing on fire,” I say. And then, privately: Maybe a chance to keep existing in the world without knowing I was nothing more than a fix-it. Runner-up. Second place.

  That’s not fair, and I know it. Not to my parents, who never once made me feel like anything less than the center of their universe, even with all my brothers. And not to Savvy, who didn’t ask for any of this.

  But it doesn’t make the hurt go away, and right now, I need to go away with it. Give it a place to breathe. A place to scream.

  “That’s just like you, though, isn’t it, Abby? Avoiding the issue.” She doesn’t say it in an accusatory way. It’s worse—she’s encouraging me. There’s the same motivational gleam in her eye she gets in her Instagram stories, before she shares her mantra of the week, one of “Savvy’s Savvies.” I wish I could swipe out of it, but real life doesn’t come with force quit. “You’re miserable with all the tutoring, and you won’t tell your parents. You want to be a photographer, but you’re too scared to give your work a fighting chance. You have a thing for Leo, but—”

  “Would you shut up?” I blurt. The embarrassment is blind-ing, white-hot, stabbing into every single pore of my skin. “Do you realize what just happened? Everybody wanted you. Everybody did. And instead of getting the kid who followed the rules and got good grades and did all the shit my parents wanted out of a daughter, they got me. Thoughtless, stupid, untalented me.”

  This time I’m the one who notices the people pausing around us. Izzy, Cam, and Jemmy chief among them, hovering between us and the cafeteria with the same conflicted looks of people who want to help but don’t know how.

  I duck my head, my face so hot I can practically feel it burning the ground I’m staring at.

  “Abby,” says Savvy, her voice low and encouraging. “I don’t want to waste a bunch of time telling you how untrue all of that is.”

  “Then don’t. The last thing I need is one of your Instagram pep talks.”

  She frowns but doesn’t back down. Instead she squares her should
ers, her resolve hardening. “It isn’t about Instagram. If you would just be receptive to a little advice—”

  “Because that’s done wonders for me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  What it’s supposed to mean is that I did listen to her. I worked up the nerve to tell Leo my feelings, and before I could get a word out he crushed them into fine dust. I got over my self-consciousness and tried to show my parents my photos, and they didn’t care enough to look. Every piece of “advice” Savvy has given me has led me down a path where I’m worse off than before.

  “You act like you know everything, like you have the answers to fix everyone, but you’re just as messed up as the rest of us, Savvy.” Her eyes are wide from a blow I haven’t even landed yet, but it doesn’t stop me from throwing it. “I saw those old pictures. You used to be fun and hang out with your friends, but that stupid Instagram is your whole personality now. You’re just a control freak with nice hair.”

  She blinks hard, hurt flashing in her eyes, and I’ve done it—cracked the impenetrable force that is Savannah Tully. All these years of holding it in, of not letting myself get angry, and now I’ve gone so far over the edge I don’t know how to get back.

  “That’s not fair,” Savvy says, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.

  Of course it isn’t. None of this is fair. But I can’t hold my tears back long enough to answer. I point myself in the direction of the nearest trail, wait until I am out of her line of sight, and start to bawl.

  twenty-six

  By the time I slink into the kitchen after dinner I am less of a girl and more of an emotionally derailed swamp creature, my face puffy, my hair in so many directions no tie could hope to tame it. I can’t decide how to be when I walk in—sheepish, defensive, or apologetic—but Leo’s there, with a plate of food next to him that has way too many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on the side to be meant for anyone but me, and all pretense goes out the window.

  “You heard our little sideshow?”

  Leo nudges the plate across the counter. “Clear as Day.”

  I’m too upset by everything else in my life that it eclipses any reason I have to be upset with him. Even when I am at my worst he knows exactly what to say to soften my edges, still looks at me like I am something precious to him.

  I let out my usual groan, and our bit has played out, some tentative order between us restored. I’m bracing myself for Leo to try to make peace between me and Savvy, but he lowers his voice and says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I do, but I don’t. I do, but not right now, when there’s really nothing to say that doesn’t lead me right back where I started: mad at everyone, but mostly at myself.

  “I’m too hungry.”

  He lets out a laugh and grabs the plate and walks over to me, but instead of handing it over, he sets it down on the shiny metal counter by the door. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders, this quiet beat of asking permission. I don’t even let myself look him in the eye. I lean in the rest of the way, because I’m tired. I’m so tired. My brain feels hollowed out and my heart hurts, and if I really do have to quit Leo, maybe I can put it off until tomorrow, when I leave camp for good.

  I burrow my face into his shirt, into sweat and cinnamon, a little bitter, a little sweet.

  “I’m sorry I ditched you for dinner,” I mumble into him.

  There’s no way any regular human could decipher what I said, but Leo still manages. “When you didn’t come back I was worried something happened to you.”

  I stiffen, only because it’s hard to tack the guilt of that onto the guilt of everything else.

  “I know,” he says, misinterpreting the stiffness. “Yet again—what did you call it?—Benvolio-ing you.”

  I pull away, nudging his shoulder with the heel of my hand.

  “It’s probably my last night here,” I tell him.

  Leo nods, pulling back to look at me. He tilts his head toward the door. We wander outside, wordlessly settling back on the bench where we watched the lightning streak—except this time the sun is only just starting to set, the sky clear enough that we can see the light gleaming across the water and the beginnings of yellows and oranges where mountains meet the sky.

  Leo and I sit with a full foot of distance between us, an invisible barrier. I can’t decide whether it’s a disappointment or a relief, so I decide not to decide at all. Instead I tuck into the dinner Leo saved for me, only realizing just how hungry I am once I take the first bite and start coming at it like a lion.

  “What is this?”

  Leo glances toward the water. “Pork menudo. Another Filipino dish. Mickey taught me how to make it,” he says, embarrassed but pleased. “Except traditionally there aren’t Flamin’ Hot Cheetos crushed into it.”

  I crack a smile. He knows me too well. “I’m glad you and Mickey laid down your spatulas and decided to make peace.”

  “Turns out making menudo is a hell of a lot easier than making war,” he says. “Also, Mickey was kicking my ass.”

  “Eh, you held your own.”

  I shift some of the dinner on my plate, easing into the bench, recognizing this moment for what it is—not a chance to confront Leo, but a chance to have the kind of conversation we had before I let my stupid feelings get in the way. Maybe the last one we’ll get in a long while.

  Except Leo leans in with one of those stupidly compelling grins of his, one where he’s so excited about something that he’s a little bit out of his own body, and the thought of keeping my distance is shot to hell.

  “But she’s gone way beyond dishes now,” he tells me. “Like—she tells me all the stories behind how she learned them from her aunts, the ones here, and the ones in Manila, too. And tons of stuff about her family. Like how her grandma’s convinced that if you leave rice on a plate it means you won’t ever get married. Or how her aunts think when someone drops something in the kitchen it means someone’s coming to visit.”

  He’s at an infectious level of “information dump,” the kind that pulls me in with its own force.

  “The way Finn and I took care of kitchen duty, we should be expecting a lot of visitors.”

  He laughs, pulling out his phone and opening it up to an infinitely long thread.

  “Her younger cousins have been putting her in random WhatsApp groups to prank her all summer. They ambushed me last week and put me in one, too. Now they’re all spamming us with K-pop links and Disney lip dubs they’re making on some app.”

  “Well that’s ridiculously precious.”

  “Eh, it’s all fun and games until they swore up and down they were teaching me how to say ‘good morning’ in Tagalog and I ended up telling Mickey to ‘go eat shit.’”

  Even in the depths of my possibly bottomless self-pity, that gets a laugh out of me.

  Leo knocks his shoulder into mine, another reminder of how fast we’ve filled up the air between us. “Yeah, yeah, kumain ng tae.”

  “I would, but my mouth’s already full,” I say, tilting my head at the plate I’m eating from so sloppily that several curious birds have flitted their way over. Carefully, I ask, “Do you think it’s helped at all? I mean … with the not knowing?”

  Leo considers the question, staring down at my half-eaten plate.

  “In some ways, kind of? I mean, who even knows if my parents came from anywhere near where her family is, but … it’s nice to learn about anyway.”

  There’s a beat, then, that I know isn’t the end of the thought, but the thought taking a new shape. I watch it in his face the same way I always have, wishing I could take it for granted. Wishing I knew if there would be a chance to watch it again.

  “It’s weird to think … in some other life … Carla and I would be living there. Like there’s some alternate version of us who do. You know?”

  I almost laugh. My alternate version is a few hundred yards away, no doubt busting gum chewers in the rec room and fuming over what I said earlier. Leo catches the ghost of it on my fa
ce, and his head dips as if he’s thinking the same thing.

  “The test, though—I’m kind of relieved I didn’t find anybody,” he admits. “I don’t know if I was really thinking about what might happen if I did. What it might dig up.”

  I nudge some dirt on the ground with the heel of my shoe. “I hope what happened with me and Savvy wasn’t what scared you off.”

  That hope is dashed when Leo answers without hesitation.

  “That’s just it, though. It’s different. This thing with your parents—they must have known you’d find out eventually. This whole mess is more on them than on you.” He shakes his head. “But with me—if these people are even still out there—they set the terms. Nobody ever lied to anybody about it. Which means there’s a chance if I did find them, I’d be digging up something they’re not prepared to handle. Something I’m not prepared to handle.”

  I’m not really sure what to say, or if there’s anything to say. We both know he’s right. But it makes me ache for him anyway, knowing Leo well enough to understand that the decision is less about protecting himself and more about protecting other people.

  And if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last week, it’s that we all have a lot more to protect than we think.

  “I’m letting it go for now.” Leo says the words more to the ground than to me. It’s clear he’s been thinking about this a lot more than he let on, and the decision isn’t easy for him. But he looks up at me with fresh resolve and says, “I want to focus more on the future. On this school in New York. It’s kind of opened this door where I can learn more about cooking, but also about my background. It’s not what I was trying to do, but maybe—maybe I was meant to feel like this so it could lead me here. Maybe…”

  I nod, compelled by the possibility at the end of that maybe, by the weight of it. He’s always been so driven, always thrown his whole self into his ideas. And I’ve always been the first one to jump with him. It’s weird to think I won’t get to anymore. No matter what happens between us, something is definitively ending—his future is thousands of miles away, and mine’s still mired in high school and big decisions and the mess I left in the parking lot earlier today.