“I can’t worry about him anymore.”
“How could you say that? He’s been trying so hard for us.” I knew that in fighting for Dad, I was fighting for myself, too.
“Keeley, I’m the one who’s been here, day after day, for the last two years, trying hard for us. Not him.”
“So what? He can’t make up for it now?”
I desperately, desperately wanted her to say yes. But she said, “I’m going to stay at Annie’s tonight. We’re having a little good-bye sleepover and they could use the help packing up.”
“They’re leaving too. Where?”
“Honey. You should talk to Morgan.”
I was trying to. But Morgan wouldn’t take my calls.
I took my box upstairs. Inside it was every last possession I’d left at Morgan’s house. A pair of Christmas pajamas I hadn’t seen in months. My copy of Mockingjay, which I’d loaned her but she’d avoided reading because I said it was a letdown. She was returning everything that made us friends.
I kicked the box into my closet.
If Morgan wouldn’t take my calls, I’d have to do something else to get her attention. Something big, before it was too late.
34
* * *
Sunday, May 29
EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM ALERT: As of 1:00 PM, Governor Ward has issued an evacuation order for Aberdeen County. All residents are being asked to relocate in advance of the coming storm system. Please stay tuned for additional information.
* * *
I knew there was only one person who could help me get back into Morgan’s good graces. Jesse Ford. So I borrowed Dad’s pickup truck and drove over.
There was a moving van outside his house. I tried to make sense of the timeline. We’d just gotten the evacuation order. So why was Jesse already packed?
And then it all made sense. His caginess about his mom signing our petition. The way he’d avoided me at Secret Prom.
Jesse was coming through the front door with a box in his hand. He looked embarrassed. Julia came running up to me, squeezing me at the legs.
“You were just going to leave.” My chest was closing in on itself.
“Ahh, Keeley. I was going to tell you last night. When the time was right.”
He might have believed that, but I knew better. The way he was pushing me off all night, the way he didn’t want to be close to me. It was because he didn’t want to tell me the truth. He was leaving.
He tried to hug me but I scooted out from under his arms. “I would not have left without telling you. I would not.”
I wiped my eyes. “Your mom was never considering supporting us, was she?”
He sighed and tipped his head back. “I mean, I told her about it. But my mom has a crap job at Walmart. We live in a trailer. And Julia’s dad is a piece of shit who’s always lurking around. This is going to be good for us.”
These things were true. I knew they were. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“About an hour away. Sharpsburgh. Not far.” He finally looked at me. “I hope we can still be friends.”
Maybe Jesse was easy for me to forgive because we were so alike. And I did know, deep down, that he was a good guy. But Morgan had been right. Jesse and I weren’t good for each other. I was as broken as he was. We were never fully honest with each other, not completely. And so the loss of him was strangely muted. Especially when stacked up against what was happening with me and Morgan.
“I hope so too. Because as of this moment, you’re basically the only one I have.”
“Wait. Why? Did something happen between you and Morgan?”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I need your help. I need to come up with something big to get Morgan to forgive me. I really, really screwed up bad with her last night.” I felt my lip tremble. “Actually, no. That’s not even true. I’ve had a lot of little screwups, little breaks. I tried to ignore them, hoping they’d go away. And now everything is in pieces.”
Jesse tried hugging me again and this time I let him. “Don’t worry, Keeley. We can fix this. Everything can be fixed.” I nodded, rubbing tears all over his shirt, because it had to be true. “Of course I’ll help you. What’s the plan? What are you thinking?”
“I need to prove to her how much she means to me. That what we have is worth saving.”
“Hmm. Try this. If you close your eyes and think of the best time in your friendship, when everything was as perfect as can be, what do you think of?”
And that’s when it hit me.
• • •
I drove us to Viola’s.
The whole time, he was looking at me.
“What?”
“You caught me off-guard before, Keeley. Showing up at my house like that. I . . . I just want to make sure you know that I’m honestly going to miss you.” He sounded genuine. And genuinely surprised.
I couldn’t believe I was almost going to have sex with him. “Never mind that now, okay?”
I parked and ran for the door. It was padlocked closed, an X already spray-painted on the door.
I cupped my hands to the glass and peered inside. There wasn’t much to see. Bare shelves, the empty cash register stands. I ran down the sidewalk, looked inside another window. But near the booth where Mr. Viola used to watch over things, just as it had always been, was the sticker machine.
I started to kick at the glass door.
Jesse came up behind me, scooped me around the waist, and pulled me away. “Whoa, whoa. Wait a second. What are you up to?”
I bit my lip. “I need that sticker machine.”
He laughed, until he realized I wasn’t joking. And then he said, “Okay.”
In that moment, I was grateful not to be with Levi. I would have had to explain things, I would have had to corrupt him to do it for me. I didn’t have to betray him on this.
Jesse ran around the building, casing the area. I was hoping some side door would be unlocked. But when he came back, he had a brick in his hands.
“Step back.”
To his credit, Jesse never asked me to record it. It would have made a crazy video for sure. Us smashing the glass, dragging that sticker machine out, loading it in the back of the truck. When I told Jesse I needed him, he simply came through. It made me feel better about everything. I loved him for a reason. And hopefully, I’d be able to come through for Morgan, and she’d remember the same thing about me.
• • •
We took the machine to Jesse’s house. He tried for nearly an hour to pop it open. “How is this stupid thing harder to get into than a vending machine?”
I used all the quarters from the console in my dad’s truck. And when that ran out, Jesse broke open a glass jar where he’d been saving change for years. We did it assembly line style. Jesse loaded the two quarters, I pushed in the metal latch, and Julia pulled out the white cardboard sleeve and checked to see if we’d hit double unicorn jackpot.
“I was right,” Jesse said. “Boys don’t have these kinds of friendships.” He sniffed his fingers. “Eww. Change is so gross. Everything in the world should cost at least a dollar.”
Sticker after sticker came out of the machine sandwiched between white cardboard. None of them were the one I wanted. And then, eventually, I pushed in two quarters and nothing came out. I tried again. Nothing.
“This is false advertising,” Jesse complained. “They have to have the damn double unicorn there!”
Jesse turned around and crawled over to Julia, searching through all the discarded stickers on the floor, in case we’d missed it somehow. I took a more drastic approach. I stood up and stomped on the display glass with my foot. It took three times before it shattered it into a spider web of broken glass. And then I started pulling at the shards, not even caring that my fingertips were getting sliced and diced.
“Keeley, whoa! Wait a second!”
He eased me aside. With gentle hands, he carefully removed the broken glass, and then the display page with the double unicorn s
ticker. With a scissor, he cut out the shape with a surgeon’s precision. “Put a little tape on that and she should stick to whatever you want just fine.”
“Thank you.” I was still shaking, I was so nervous. “I could have never done that as good as you did.”
“I hope it works,” he said. “Hell, if I didn’t want to make out with you right now, I’d be your best friend.”
“I got to go,” I said. I hugged him. “Good-bye, Jesse.”
He was slow to let me go, even though I was pulling away. “This isn’t good-bye,” he warned me. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow. You’ll know when it’s good-bye.”
35
* * *
Sunday, May 29
Afternoon thunderstorms, heavy at times, possible flood conditions in low-lying areas, low of 62°F
* * *
I drove over to Morgan’s house with my sleepover bag packed, as if this were a normal weekend night, as if she had invited me over.
My mom and Mrs. Dorsey were at the kitchen table. They didn’t hear me come in and both of them spun toward me guiltily. Both had big glasses of wine.
They had been packing up Mrs. Dorsey’s kitchen, wrapping her glasses in newspaper. Not the mismatched stuff, like random pint glasses with different beer names on them, or the cups Morgan and I had collected from McDonald’s when we were kids. She was only taking the good stuff. But the job was only half finished.
Mom had on one of Mrs. Dorsey’s black salon capes, and her hair was slick to her scalp with dye the color of melted chocolate. Underneath, she was wearing a pair of my pajama pants. Mrs. Dorsey was in her nightgown and slippers, and she held a little cup of dye in her hand and a paintbrush in the other.
“Mom?”
“Surprise!” she said, tipping a full wineglass to her lips. Then she burst out laughing so hard she almost blew the wine straight out of the glass.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting a makeover. And don’t make that face. You always tease me about dyeing my hair!”
I wasn’t the only one. The three of us used to harp on her every birthday—me, Morgan, and Mrs. Dorsey. Mom had long ago decided to let her hair go gray naturally. She argued that she wasn’t good at “lady stuff” and she’d never be able to keep up with the maintenance, even though her best friend was a hairdresser.
Mrs. Dorsey said, “Morgan’s out, Keeley. Should I text her, tell her you’re here?”
I started to cry. I was jealous that Mom and Mrs. Hewitt were having the sleepover night I wanted to have with Morgan. Their friendship would last no matter where they went. And ours was already falling apart, before Morgan even left Aberdeen.
Mrs. Dorsey rushed forward and gave me a big hug. “Sweetie, it’s okay. You’re here. That counts for a lot in my book.”
“Don’t text her. I’ll just wait. I can help you pack.”
• • •
I kept myself busy for the next two hours, and boxed up their living room and carried their stuff to the U-Haul parked out front.
And then I heard a car outside. I rushed to the window. Morgan pulled into the driveway. I could tell from how her hair was fixed, and her dress, that she’d been with Wes.
I went out the front door and met her in the driveway. She looked surprised to see me. And, unfortunately, not exactly happy.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
And she walked right past me, in through the back door. I followed her, I had no other choice.
We came into the kitchen to the sound of giggles. Mom’s hair was back to her original color, the color I had only ever seen in photographs. Ginger ale. She looked happy. And even though I knew Mrs. Dorsey’d had a hand in whatever had gone on between my mom and my dad, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her. If anything, I envied her. She’d been able to do with Dad what I never could with Wes. I wasn’t willing to tolerate Wes, but Mrs. Dorsey had supported my dad for as long as she could, solely to make my mom happy.
“I look young!” my mom said. “Don’t I look young?”
Morgan and I made faces at each other like, Oh God, like a friendship reflex. That was the only time that night we still felt like friends. And it was fleeting. She passed me on her way through the door and headed upstairs. I followed.
Her room was all packed up.
“So, you’re leaving.”
I heard her swallow from across the room. “Yeah. Did they tell you where?”
“No. They wanted to, but I thought I should hear it from you.” I sat down on her bed. “Will it be close?”
“Near my mom’s sister. Mom is opening up her own beauty shop. I’m really happy for her, too. I wasn’t when she first told me. But I am now.”
Mayfield. That was the name of the town. I went there one summer with Morgan’s family. It was a six-hour drive away.
“That’s so far.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry about how I acted last night. I will apologize to Wes. I want to make it up to you. I want us to still be friends.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do!”
“Because I feel like ever since high school started, things have been different between us. You’ve held me at arm’s length for a while now. And maybe I should have said something earlier to you. But after the way you were acting at Secret Prom, and that stuff you did to Bundy, I feel like I don’t know who you are.” She dropped her chin to her chest and stared at her floor. “Maybe this is just the way it goes sometimes. Friends grow apart, and it can be long and painful to disentangle from each other. But with Aberdeen going under, it doesn’t have to be that way for us. It can just end. A clean break. No hard feelings.”
“Please don’t say that, okay? That’s crazy. You sound completely crazy right now.”
“You’ve always been there for me. Always. You were there when my dad left, you were there when I was sad about Wes. But I don’t feel close to you anymore. A friendship is a give-and-take. I feel like I only get this jokey version of you. I’m looking at our friendship and thinking, Can we even survive a move? I want to believe we have a future, Keeley. But right now, I just don’t see it.”
It was the perfect opening. I pulled out the double unicorn sticker and presented it to her in my cupped hands like the special, magical thing it was.
“Oh my God,” Morgan gasped. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup,” I said, coyly. I smiled, but Morgan didn’t see it. She’d already turned her back on me.
“I can’t believe you actually thought a stupid sticker was going to fix this.”
• • •
I didn’t leave, and Morgan didn’t tell me to go. I don’t think either of us could bear the thought of having to explain to our moms that our friendship was over. I never fell asleep that night. I’m not sure if Morgan did either, which almost makes what I did worse.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I got up and quietly went through her moving boxes, looking for that sticker book. I didn’t want her to have it, not when she was so willing to let me go. But I couldn’t find it.
And then I realized why. Because she’d already thrown it away.
I crept back into the bed we were sharing and shut my eyes until morning.
36
* * *
Monday, May 30
EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM ALERT: A Flood Warning is now in effect for Aberdeen County. A Severe Storm Warning is also in effect. Heavy rains will continue intermittently throughout the day, with the heaviest band reaching Aberdeen County after 7:00 PM. All residents are asked to seek shelter immediately. Stay tuned for further updates and instructions.
* * *
Mom drove us both home as Morgan and her mom loaded the last of their things into the U-Haul. She knew things had gone badly—that must have been why she didn’t ask me what happened.
I helped her get her things into the car.
“I’m going to stay and help Dad. He’s going to need it. I don’t think he�
�s packed anything.”
“I know this is hard for you, Keeley. It’s hard for me, too. But we have to let Dad be in charge of Dad. We can’t save him, just like he can’t save us. Do you understand?” I nodded. “I want you with me by this afternoon, Keeley. Before the worst of the rain gets here.”
I hugged her and kissed her good-bye. Then I went inside our house, and instead of helping Dad like I’d promised, I lay in bed just like him.
• • •
My phone rang an hour later. I checked it, thinking it might be Jesse, but it was Bundy. This time I picked up.
“Keeley! Thank goodness you answered! They won’t let me in to get him!” She was frantic.
“Freckles looked fine. He was under the front bushes. I tried to grab him—”
“He ran away. Of course. He’s a very skittish cat. Can you please try again? He loves to chase string. Or a shoelace. Bring something like that with you. I bet you can grab him.”
“I’ll try.” I might as well try to make things right with someone.
“Thank you for being decent enough to answer. I wasn’t sure if you would be.”
And then, click.
• • •
I spent the rest of the afternoon at Bundy’s house trying to get Freckles out from underneath her porch. The cat was a monster, it didn’t trust me at all, I guess for good reason. After an hour cooing at it and waving a damn shoelace around like a white surrender flag, I basically backed it into a corner. The thing hissed and bit my hand, but I managed to wrestle it into a cardboard box I’d brought with me.
Got him. We’re leaving sometime this afternoon. I’ll let you know when and we can figure out a place to meet.
Thank you, Keeley. Thank you so very much.
I wanted saving Freckles to make me feel better, but it barely lifted me up at all.
I was walking home with him under my arm when Levi came along. He wasn’t on his bike, he was in a car.
The Last Boy and Girl in the World Page 31