by Abigail Haas
“Really?” I can’t help shooting another glance to where Tate is sitting at a table of the popular kids, his sweatshirt sleeves pushed up over tanned forearms, blond hair falling in his eyes. “I don’t know, he seems nice.”
“Trust me, he’s just another asshole jock, but with better hair.” Elise yawns, slamming her book shut. “Speaking of assholes, I’m so done with Hitler.”
“Stumptown?” I suggest, naming the coffeehouse that’s become our regular. “Or we could catch a movie.”
“Pie.” Elise’s eyes brighten. “I’ve been craving it all day. Dusty’s has the best, and all the college boys are going to be out studying for finals,” she adds mischievously.
I laugh. “You had me at pie.”
We grab our stuff and head for the exit, past Tate’s table. He doesn’t look up.
As we near the doors, Lindsay and her group saunter in, armed with razorblade smiles and perfectly glossy bangs. “Aww, look, it’s Hillcrest’s new favorite dykes,” Lindsay sneers as we pass.
Elise doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look around, just flips up her middle finger as we pass, linking her other arm through mine. As we push through the doors and outside, I glance over to check her expression, but there’s not even a flicker there, just a determined smile. “Peach or pecan?” Elise asks as we head down the steps onto the front lawn.
“You even have to ask?”
“You’re right,” she replies gravely. “I should have known. Both.”
* * *
It’s startling, how completely they cut her out of their clique, and how fast Elise sheds them, like some unwanted skin. She’s grown up with them, after all: sleepovers and birthday parties and after-school hangouts going back years. But in a day—in an instant—she was done. I feel guilty at first, wondering if she regrets her choice, giving up so much and getting only me in return. I didn’t yet know that Elise never looked back. Once she made a call, there was no other choice in her mind—she just kept moving forward, never regretting a thing. “Screw ’em,” she’d say whenever Lindsay would aim a new barb in her direction—her resentment for me nothing compared to the betrayal of a former friend. “We don’t need anyone but each other.”
And we don’t, not those first few months. The world of girl friendship and intimacy that has always seemed so foreign to me suddenly opens up, just the way I’d glimpsed that very first afternoon. It may sound wrong, but I’m the happiest I’ve even been that summer, even with my mom’s chemo treatments starting up again, and that sickly sweet medicated smell lingering over my parents upstairs bedroom again. Because I have a place to escape now, a place of my own in the world, full stop.
I’m not alone anymore.
* * *
Elise and I fall into friendship like it’s gravity. We eat lunch together in the shade of the far trees on the east lawn and toil over our homework at coffee shops downtown. We trade clothing and music, passing notebooks filled with lyrics and doodles in the back row of every class we share, and learn the exact texture of each other’s bedroom floors from long nights sprawled on our stomachs, watching trashy reality TV. But soon we want more, and weekends become an adventure: fibbing to our parents about sleeping at the other’s house, then sneaking out in our best tight denim and chunky boots. It almost doesn’t matter where we go, as long as it’s somewhere nobody knows us, where we can be anyone we want to be.
Elise buys us fake IDs from some MIT student hacker, and although the door guys look twice, they always let us through. Rock shows, and dive bars, and the college haunts that line Boylston and Beacon—most of the time it isn’t even about the alcohol, we just want to see the world waiting for us, after the battle of high school. One night we put on our best vintage dresses and red lipstick and take the elevator up to the restaurant on the top floor of a hotel, high above the city. We sip cocktails from sugar-rimmed glasses and watch the lights over the river, fierce with the knowledge that this will all be ours one day, for real.
The night I meet Tate is near the end of the semester, when summer vacation looms, full of promise and freedom. Elise and I luck into a college party invite from our favorite barista at Stumptown, off-duty with his friends at the table next to ours. Elise shrugs, casual, and says we’ll try to make it, but the minute the group leaves, we grip each other’s hands, bright-eyed with delight. “Tell your dad you’re crashing at my house,” Elise orders, and I call him to leave the message, knowing there will only be a hurried text in reply. Ever since I brought Elise home, and he made the connection between her father, Charles Warren, and the state senator of the same name, my father has let me go out with her anytime I want.
So we do: getting ready in a flurry of discarded outfits and lip gloss, then sneaking down the back stairs while her parents are in the den, breathless in the backseat of a cab as we cross the twilight city, heading for adventure.
“If anyone asks, we’re freshman at Berklee,” Elise orders me as we clamber out of the cab. It’s a warm, muggy night and the street is busy with college crowds; music is already spilling out of the upstairs windows of a narrow brownstone. “I’m studying psychology, and you’re a business major.”
“Boring!” I protest. “I’ll be a lit student. No, drama!”
Elise laughs. “Sure, with your stage fright?”
“They don’t have to know,” I say with a grin as we climb the front steps and push inside the narrow lobby area. “As far as they’re concerned, I could be a fabulous actress, auditioning for all kinds of Broadway shows.”
“And Hollywood,” Elise adds. “You got offered a role in the new Chris Carmel movie, but you turned it down because you wanted to stay in school and perfect your craft.”
“I’m very dedicated,” I agree, laughing. I can feel a sparkle in my veins, some sense of possibility, and when we walk into the party upstairs, it all makes sense, because there he is.
Tate.
My eyes meet his right away across the crowded room, and I know it’s the start of something. I can just feel it.
“Hellooo,” Elise murmurs. Tate is with a guy from the lacrosse team, Lamar, but right away he heads over toward us. “I guess you’ve been wishing on a star.”
“Shh!” I hiss to Elise. “Please, don’t say anything.” But she just widens her eyes in innocence as Tate arrives, casual in a faded gray T-shirt and jeans.
“Hey.” He looks at the two of us with a surprised expression, as if he can’t quite place us. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Oh, we know a guy,” Elise replies, her eyes already roving over the scene. It’s hot and crammed with people, music so loud I can feel the bass, and everywhere, there’s laughter and noisy chatter, full of the relief of finishing finals. “Well, really, Anna knows him,” she adds, her gaze sliding back to us with a meaningful smile. “I swear, the poor guy follows her around like a puppy dog. She’s not interested, but we figure, why waste a good party?”
Elise sends me a look that says, Don’t screw this up, then squeezes me in a sudden hug. “I’m going to go look around. See you two later!”
She disappears into the crowd, leaving me by the side of the room with Tate. I stare awkwardly at the ground, not sure whether to thank or throttle her, but when I force myself to glance up, he’s looking at me with something new in his expression, some kind of curiosity.
“You want a drink?” he offers quickly. “There’s a bar back in the kitchen, they have all kinds.”
“Sure,” I agree, just as a new group of guys hurtles through the door. One of the frat guys knocks into me, and I stumble, but Tate takes my arm, steadying me. His hand is hot against my skin, and our eyes meet, just a flash, but I feel it all the way to my stomach.
“Come on,” he says, smiling, and I follow him across the room.
I would follow him anywhere.
BEFORE
“Do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
* * *
“How much?”
“Mile
s and miles.”
“Deeper than the oceans?”
“Yup. More than the wind.”
“Higher than Everest?”
“I don’t know, that’s pretty high. . . . Ow!” (laughter)
“Admit it. You love me more than anyone.”
“Maybe.”
* * *
“What about you—how much do you love me?”
“Enough.”
“Hey!”
“You didn’t ask, ‘Enough for what?’ ”
“Fine, then. Enough for what?”
“For anything.”
“That’s better.”
* * *
“You think we’ll ever wind up like our parents?”
“God, I hope not. Just kill me if I do.”
“No, I mean . . . alone like they are . . . My mom shows me her old yearbooks, and there are tons of people in there she doesn’t talk to anymore. Old boyfriends, best friends . . . What do you think happened to them?”
“Maybe they drifted apart.”
“That’s stupid. You don’t drift, not if someone matters to you.”
“So maybe they didn’t matter, not really.”
* * *
“Anna?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d never do that. Leave you.”
“I know. Me either.”
THE PARTY
Tate leads me to the crowded kitchen, every surface covered with bottles and abandoned red plastic cups. He finds us two unopened beers, and cracks the tops off against the edge of the table. “This okay?” he asks, passing me one. “Because I can find some soda—”
“No,” I answer quickly. “This is great.”
There’s another pause as we both take a sip of our drinks, but I don’t feel nervous or awkward. Instead, I’m unnervingly calm. I’ve never been one to get all romantic about fate and destiny, but there’s something so neat about this, I don’t have a chance to panic. After all these weeks stealing glances in the hallway, I suddenly have him to myself.
“Cool party, huh?” Tate offers.
“Who do you know here?” I ask, and Tate leans in to hear me. All around us, there’s music, and packed bodies—dancing and chatting, voices raised to be heard.
“Some of the guys from last year’s team,” Tate replies, his breath warm against my cheek. “And Lamar, well, you heard about him and Sophie?”
I nod. They were dating pretty tight all year, inseparable even, until some big blowup over spring break.
“He’s been kind of low, so I figured a party would be good.”
“Looks like it’s working,” I nod through to the living room, where Lamar is talking to a couple of college girls in short cutoff skirts and plunging sparkly tops. Tate follows my gaze and breaks into a grin.
“Good for him . . .” The end of his sentence is cut off as the music goes up another level, some dirty club hip-hop track.
“What?” I yell.
Tate looks around, then gestures away in the other direction of the living room, toward the back of the apartment. One of the hallway windows is wide open, leading out onto the flat gravel roof where I can see some people are already hanging out: thin wisps of cigarette smoke drifting up into the night, and the low, sweet scent of something more. Tate bends over to climb through, then holds out his hand to help me after him.
Outside, it’s warm, and although the sky is now dark, it’s surprisingly bright; the night cut through with the glow from the apartments and traffic on the streets below. We wander closer to the edge of the roof, and find a place to sit, perching on the edge of a brick-built air vent.
“It’s weird we haven’t really talked before.” Tate glances over at me. “I keep seeing you around in school.”
“Not so weird.” I take a sip of beer. “We don’t really run in the same circles.”
Tate gives a low laugh. “Yeah, you and Elise pretty much keep to yourselves.”
I turn. “That’s the way you see it?”
Tate looks puzzled. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head, amused. “Nothing.”
All this time, I figured everyone knew I was the outcast, that Elise and I were outsiders because we got blacklisted. But Tate figured we keep to ourselves out of choice, and I guess by now we do.
“What about you?” I ask. “Is it true you’re going to be president someday?”
Tate shrugs and looks bashful, and that’s when I know that it’s for real. He doesn’t try and make a joke of it, or deflect the comment away, like people do when they’re embarrassed.
He wants it.
“Sorry,” I add quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I think it’s great. That you want something so big. I can’t even see what I’ll be doing a year from now.”
Tate checks as if to see if I’m still teasing, then relaxes. “Maybe. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it, always having to plan ahead.”
“What do you mean—school and college and stuff ?”
“Everything,” Tate replies, and there’s a twist in his voice. “I want to go into politics someday for sure, but my parents keep reminding me that I have to be careful, and think how something will look twenty years from here.”
“You mean, like, partying underage at a college bash.”
“Exactly.” Tate gives me a rueful smile. “And they’re right, too. But now I have this voice in my head, warning me about everything. To do things right, all the time.” He falls silent, looking out at the city. His blue eyes are cloudy in the shadows, blond hair shaded to a dark gold. I can feel the heat of him beside me, just inches between us, and I feel a rush of simple gladness, that I get to see this part of him. The real part.
“So how about you don’t,” I suggest. “Just for tonight.”
He looks at me, a smile playing on the edge of his lips. “Do the right thing?”
“Why not?” I match his smile, playful. “Who’s going to know?”
* * *
If it had been a Hillcrest party, it never would have happened. He would be the boy who ruled the scene, and I would be the girl on the outside of everything. But here, away from it all, we’re just ourselves.
Back inside, we do lime Jell-O shots together, quivering and half-solid in tiny paper cups. The music plays on, loud, and soon we’re dancing, lost in the sea of bodies, hot and sweating. He’s solid against me, his eyes bright, and then Elise is nearby with some college guy, and Lamar too, wrapped around a pretty coed. We drink and dance until our feet hurt and our throats scratch dry, until it’s three a.m. and the cops come and shut the party down, and we flee, laughing, down the stairs and out into the empty streets. We wind up in a red vinyl booth at some twenty-four-hour diner down the street, sharing cheese-covered fries and thick, icy shakes, Elise and I squeezed in the middle of the group like it belongs to us.
Nothing happens with Tate that night, but looking across the crowded diner booth, I see the spark of something in his blue eyes, and I know it’s the start. The last few weeks before summer, he stays friendly in school—chatting in the hallways sometimes, or discussing an assignment after class. Elise keeps dragging me out to party and meet guys, worried I’m pining away over him, but I’m not. I’ve got a certainty about it, like we’re fact, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
Even if I want to pine, Elise doesn’t give me the time. Our summer is a whirl of beach days and road trips, driving through the western Massachusetts country out to explore quaint college towns and hidden-away bookstores and cafés. It’s not always just the two of us. Elise’s parents insist on introducing her to the kids of an old college friend of theirs, just moved to town from California. Max and his twin sister, Chelsea, turn out to be our age, set to attend Hillcrest in the fall. Max is equal parts surfer and comic-book nerd, Chelsea a laid-back artist-type with a baggie of weed hidden under her paintbrushes. We run into Lamar at a couple more college parties, and soon he and Chelsea are inseparable. Elise’s old friend, Melanie, starts hopefully showing up at the coff
ee shop—regretting her decision to take Lindsay’s side now that the queen bitch is off in Europe for the summer—and just like that, Elise and I have our own group, to hang out together in that back booth at the diner after a late night, to drive upstate to her vacation home in New Hampshire, or to just sprawl in one of our big, empty houses, sneaking liquor and smoking weed and watching school loom closer like a jail sentence at the end of summer.
And then Tate is there at a party one night, and just as simple, he’s mine, slipping into the place I had waiting for him. Elise on one side, Tate on the other: my hand linked through hers, his arm slung over my shoulder. After so many years drifting, not connected to anything, I’m finally tethered. Safe and loved, in the middle.
We start senior year like kings, like nothing can ever tear us apart.
We’re wrong.
AFTER
Our parents arrive on the island by lunchtime the next day, and with them comes every American news team and TV crew within a thousand-mile radius.
They lay siege on the street outside, lining up news vans and portable satellites, snaking electrical wires across the parking lot. The hotel posts security on every entrance, and sets us up in a suite on the fourth floor with full-length windows overlooking the sparkling sands and perversely blue waters of the beach below. I begin to understand the shock of the staff in the police station last night, their dazed tears and murmured apologies. Ugly things shouldn’t happen in a place this beautiful.
“Anna.”
I turn. Our parents are being shown in by the hotel manager. Elise’s mother crosses the room straight to me, her arms outstretched. “Anna, sweetheart.” Her face is pale and bleak, and I register somehow that this is the first time I’ve ever seen her without makeup.
“Judy.” My voice breaks, and she collapses against me, sobbing. I hold her tight, feeling the anguished cries wrack through her slim body.
“How could this . . . ” Her words hiccup against my shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” I hang on, arms wrapped around her. “I know.”
Of all the parents, I like Elise’s mom the best. She and Elise were always locked in constant battle, but right from the start of us hanging out, Judy welcomed me into their lives. She works long hours as a cardiac surgeon at Mass General, and Mr. Warren is always out too, off at political functions and fund-raisers—planning his next move: to mayor, or congressman, even—but whenever she is around, Judy is always sure to ask me about school and college plans. Not in that fake, polite way, like Tate’s parents, who always speak to me with a faint icy edge, as if they’re just waiting for him to get me out of his system and move on. No, Elise’s mom cares—sitting up with us sometimes to watch TV, or eating a late-night snack in the kitchen with us when we get home from parties and she’s back from a shift at work. Elise always recoiled from her affection, accusing her of being overbearing and smothering, but Elise doesn’t realize how lucky she is to have a mother who even notices.