I stand next to the bed, feeling both too far from home and incredibly warm inside. A few seconds later, Alex’s mom hurries back in, carrying a bundle that turns out to be pajamas and an extra toothbrush. She brings them all the way to my side of the couch so she can press them into my hands and grab my fingers, squeezing a little.
From the hall, Alex gives me a little wave and disappears back to his room, and his mom kisses me on the cheek and follows. And just like that, I’m sleeping in a strange room again, trapped by a storm. But it doesn’t feel like that night at Gabe’s at all.
I crawl under the thin blanket and listen to the rain. It sounds like a million tiny feet, dancing.
20
I WAKE UP in the darkness.
Outside there’s a dog barking, and it sounds like a big dog, and then I hear a person shout and throw a bottle. It shatters. The dog is quiet for a minute. I don’t even have time to worry that someone maybe threw a glass bottle at a dog before the barking starts again, filling the night air and coming through the walls of Alex’s house like they’re made of paper.
That’s not what woke me up, though. I fell asleep happy, but it didn’t last.
The mean voice, at least, is quiet. But I can’t stop worrying about getting home tomorrow and what Mom’s going to do. I know what she’s not going to do—she’s not going to let me borrow the car again for approximately twelve thousand years.
And Cory. Why did he grab me like that? He used to be nice. I swear, he was . . . maybe not nice, actually. Maybe he was always grabby.
I should have told Ryan I was leaving. Except I can’t tell what kind of friends we even are anymore. He’s kind of the only person I’ve got, but then I see him hanging out with Maddie, laughing, and I don’t know how to feel. Why hasn’t he told me that he has some secret hookup on the football team? Does Maddie already know?
Maddie. I don’t understand how she just disappeared from my life, just walked right out. Because of Cory Callahan, of all people.
But it can’t be because of Cory. It’s because of me. It’s because I’ve always been a crappy friend, and she finally figured it out. I wasn’t there for her before she went to Spain, and then she came back and she was beautiful and I was jealous and I couldn’t let go of a guy, even though I thought I could.
That has to be it. If she doesn’t want to be friends anymore, it’s because I messed up.
I roll my head to the side and stare at the green light of the clock on the cable box. After midnight already. I can’t believe I came all the way here by myself. I can’t believe Alex wants to be with me. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t flirt or stare or try to impress me like guys usually do.
But then he laughed at my jokes. And talked to me. And now I think maybe I get it, what it’s like to want to be with someone because you know them. Because they know you.
And I’m here.
Silently, slowly, I move the blanket back and swing my feet out onto the carpet. The couch hinges squeal and I stop, listening—but the house is still quiet, the dog is still barking. I stand up and make my way slowly toward the short hallway. I’m just going to splash some more water on my face in the bathroom, but when I get closer I see that there’s a light on under one of the bedroom doors. I didn’t see Alex’s room earlier, but the door has a huge poster with a dragon on it. It looks old and loved and it makes me grin.
My hand hesitates midair for a second and then, knock.
I’m trying so hard to be quiet that I’m not sure if he heard me, so then I’m scratching my nails lightly on the dragon’s face, and when the door opens I gasp kind of loudly.
Alex doesn’t look very surprised to see me, but his whole face is pantomiming shhh.
“Sorry!” I mouth.
He steps back and I step through as fast as I can, waiting for him to gently close the door before I let myself breathe again.
“Sorry,” I say again, audibly this time. “I saw your light.”
“No problem.”
“But I mean, I don’t want to keep you up—”
He waves a hand at me, turning to sit down at his desk. “I don’t sleep.”
“Really?” I say, looking around his room. There’s art everywhere, all kinds of it—posters from museums and postcards of real places and paintings, plus a whole wall of what looks like original drawings. “Always, or just since—you know . . .”
“Always,” he says, unoffended as usual by my clumsy insistence on bringing up his traumatic past. “My parents got me tested when I was a kid. They thought I had, like, adenoid problems or something. But no one could figure it out. So I just learned how to keep busy.”
He swivels back and forth in his chair, watching as I slowly pick my way around the room. I’m staring at the walls, at the floor. There aren’t any bookshelves, but there must be two hundred books, piled along the baseboards in towering stacks.
“It’s a total fire hazard in here,” I say, picking up a paperback by someone named Connie Willis. “But I guess if you’re not asleep, you’ll probably be okay.”
“Yeah, that’s the theory.”
Finally I turn to look at him. He’s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and I’m just in an old shirt and pajama pants of his mom’s. We’re not at all naked—not even touching—and yet I feel more naked with him than I’ve ever felt with anyone else.
“Rosie?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you really come all the way here to say sorry?”
“Yeah?”
He nods, and right at that moment we hear a distant roll of thunder. More of the storm moving in. “I just thought—I’ve done my share of runinng away from stuff. So I thought maybe that’s what you were doing.”
The only other place to sit in the room is on his bed, so I try not to think about it too much as I perch on a pile of blankets, facing Alex.
“Maybe that was part of it,” I finally say.
He nods as if that makes sense, which is nice of him. “Did something happen?”
I sort of huff and laugh at the same time, but I’m not smiling. “It’s been kind of a bad couple of weeks,” I admit. “Except for you. So I guess I just wanted, I don’t know. I wanted the thing that wasn’t bad?”
He raises one eyebrow as if he’s trying not to grin. “I’m flattered.”
I can’t help smiling, rolling my eyes at him.
“I’m going to be so embarrassed about this tomorrow,” I tell him. “Your mom was so nice, and I can’t believe you guys let me stay. . . .” I feel my smile fading. “You have so many other things going on. I have these stupid problems that are just . . .” Pathetic. Pointless. Small and insignificant, the voice chants helpfully. “I should just get over it.”
He lifts up his chin in a half nod and stares out the window, off to my left, like he’s remembering something. Outside the rain starts, hitting the roof like fingers tapping impatiently on a table. I can’t hear the barking dog anymore, and I hope someone brought him inside.
“You know . . .” Alex trails off, still watching the window. It’s too dark to see outside, and for a second I wonder if I’m reflected in the glass. I shift uncomfortably, wishing I could see what he’s seeing.
“You know,” he says again. “No one tells me anything. Like you said, I have all this—all these other things. My mom doesn’t talk about work, my friends never post funny shit on my Facebook wall. Not that I ever go on Facebook anymore.”
He goes quiet again, and I sit very still, watching him. Finally I clear my throat.
“That sucks.”
He smiles and his eyes meet mine. “I like that you come right out and talk about stuff, you know? You just ask.”
The back of my neck burns with a confusing mixture of pride and humiliation. All those stupid things I’ve said to him come rushing back.
He shakes his head. “But seriously, we can’t be friends or . . . whatever, if we only talk about me and the terrible shit that happened to me last year.”
>
It’s not funny at all, but I find myself sort of smiling at him. Then he leans forward, his forearms on his knees, and looks me right in the eye.
“Tell me something about you, Rosie. Tell me whatever you want—it doesn’t have to be whatever made you drive to the middle of nowhere, Iowa. Just tell me something that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
A burst of thunder cracks right over our heads, making me jump. Alex sort of shivers, but he keeps looking at me, and I wonder how this happened. How the guy who was always so quiet became the only person I want to talk to.
“You know Maddie Costello, right?”
He nods.
“And you know Cory, obviously.”
Alex’s mouth twitches very slightly, like he’s not sure he wants to know Cory. But maybe I’m imagining it. Either way, he nods again.
“I was hanging out with Cory a lot over the summer. And Maddie was at this soccer camp in Spain—I mean, she was learning Spanish, too, so it was a whole thing.”
I don’t say anything for a second, and Alex goes, “That sounds cool.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was. I don’t know—I’ve been friends with Maddie for so long, but all of a sudden she has a million things I don’t get. Like she’s basically perfect, but then last year she had all this . . . her parents are getting divorced and this guy broke up with her and . . .” I sigh, shifting on the bed so my feet are tucked under one of the blankets. I fix my eyes on my hands as I twist the soft fabric around my fingers. “I wasn’t a very good friend, and I thought, when she got back, you know, this year, I could be better. And then it turned out she really liked Cory.”
“Okay,” Alex says when I pause again.
“And I didn’t really want to be with Cory anymore.” I let the words hang between us. “I mean, in a way, I did. I don’t know. How do you actually know?” Without meaning to, I glance up at Alex. His face is unreadable. “Anyway. Maddie liked him, and she totally needed something good in her life.”
I stop talking and smooth the blanket between my hands.
“And then you figured out you still like Cory?” Alex’s voice is tight.
“What?” My head snaps up, and he’s got that same super-intense look from the first day he was here, the first time I saw him. “No, not at all. Really. At that party—no one even let me explain. Cory kissed me. I know that sounds shitty, like I’m so irresistible or something, that’s not what I mean—but I don’t like him anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.”
We’re staring at each other. There’s an expanding feeling in my chest, a balloon of something like hope that’s filling up in there, pressing on me with an aching realization.
All the boys I’ve been with, hung out with, made out with . . . Alex really is the first boy I’ve talked to.
He’s watching me, waiting for me to say something else. And this is my chance. I have to say it out loud, the thing I don’t want to say.
He’s going to think you’re a slut. He’s not going to believe you. He’s already heard about that party, you know he has, being pathetic isn’t going to help.
Shut up.
“I tried to make Cory stop kissing me that night. Stop—everything. And he wouldn’t. He didn’t stop until Maddie caught us. I was so scared and then it was over and I didn’t even know what happened.”
Alex’s face shifts. I think he’s about to say something, but I have more; words spill out of me now, like when you can’t stop crying even though you know it’s no use.
“I wanted to think he was confused, like maybe I was Maddie, because it was totally dark—the power had gone out. But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Because he’d already kissed me before, right, so wouldn’t he know the difference? And we were both really drunk, and I’d been, like, hanging out with him at the party, we drank and stuff. But I was drinking with everybody, and Maddie was there, she was at the party, too, and when the lights came back on she was standing there, just seeing us, and I honestly thought—you know, I honestly thought she would know what was happening. I thought she’d see my face, and I wouldn’t have to explain. But maybe my face didn’t look like anything.”
I stop to breathe, my fingers twisting around and around.
“I feel horrible. I didn’t want to hurt her. If I were a different kind of girl, Cory wouldn’t have done that, right? They always say you can’t blame yourself, but what if you really are to blame? If my best friend thought I wanted to hook up with her boyfriend, obviously he wasn’t going to know . . . like, why would he think I didn’t want . . .”
I’m breathing too hard now, and the words fade under the fall of real tears, crashing down onto my palms. I stare at my hands without seeing them and I don’t know if Alex has even understood what I’ve said. It feels like the rain is falling straight through the roof onto me. Not loud anymore, just insistent. Just pushing me down.
The bed shifts as Alex moves next to me, and then his arm is around my shoulders. “Don’t cry,” he says softly.
I nod. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want any of this.
“I was really scared,” I whimper, and then I’m sobbing. I’m turning my face into his shoulder and shaking. The bed shakes and we shake. But under all the bad feelings I can feel the softness of his T-shirt, the strength of his shoulder underneath it.
I manage to catch my breath, finally, but I keep my face down so he can’t see me rubbing my nose on his mom’s shirt. We both take a big breath, and I think I’m done, hope I’m done, being such a freak. But then I’m talking again.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened if the lights hadn’t come back on. If Maddie hadn’t found us. It was—I don’t think it had anything to do with her, you know? Like, obviously I didn’t want to kiss Cory if he was supposed to be together with my best friend. Like, that was a reason to stop. But it wasn’t just that. He was actually hurting me.”
Alex and I sit very still, almost like we’re afraid Cory can hear us. That’s what I’m afraid of, at least.
But I’m all the way in Iowa, so.
I sit back up, running my hands under my eyes, across my cheeks. “I’m sorry. This is so stupid.”
“It’s not.” Alex’s hand is still on my back. Just the right amount of pressure.
“I swear I’m not trying to be one of those girls. I’m fine. I’m not saying Cory was, you know . . .”
“Okay.”
We’re quiet again. Outside, it sounds like the storm has turned to regular rain.
“If you were, though. Saying that.” Alex shrugs. “I’d believe you.”
I let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Oh.”
Even though you’re such a slut? The voice sounds like it’s laughing at me. You should stop talking forever. You’re just ruining Maddie’s life, and Cory’s, and being a big drama queen.
I look over at Alex, and then suddenly he’s pulling me into a hug, holding me.
The voice doesn’t have anything to say about that.
I don’t know which one of us pulls away first, but we both get off the bed and walk toward his door like we know it’s time for me to go.
I put my hand on the doorknob and then turn, not quite able to meet his eyes. “Maybe we could drive back together?” I ask in a half whisper. “Tomorrow?”
“Oh,” he says, a little startled by my question. “That would be amazing. But, I mean. I can’t go back yet. I need more time.”
I nod, but I don’t try to open the door.
His hand hovers near my shoulder, but he lets it drop again.
“Thank you for talking to me, Rosie.”
I almost laugh, despite everything. As if I’ve done him any favors tonight.
Finally I lift my gaze to his. I point at the opposite wall, the one with all the original drawings. “I don’t think you should be in Intro anymore. Those are really good.”
“You’re standing all the way over here,” he says. “If you don’t get any closer, you can keep thinking that.”
&nbs
p; My face will only smile halfway, but it does that much. “I should actually go. Maybe I can take a closer look another time.”
“I’d like that,” he says quietly.
I can feel the heat from his body. I can feel the weight of everything I said, and as I ease the door open and step into the cold hallway, the weight shifts. Some of it stays in his room, with him.
I carry the rest of it back to the lumpy sofa bed and sleep.
The rain stops, and the silence wakes me up.
It’s still dark, but there’s a thinness to it. That feeling of light that comes just before dawn.
Very carefully and quietly, I take the sheets off the bed and fold them. I manage to get the couch put back together without waking up the whole neighborhood, too, and I change into yesterday’s clothes in the bathroom, leaving Jill’s pajamas on top of the sheets.
I leave a note in the kitchen saying thank you. I apologize, too, for sneaking out, and my pen hovers over the notepad for a minute while I try to come up with some reason. I guess I have to get back to school is basically true. But instead I just say sorry again.
Outside the world is wet and heavy. The sky is turning a soft blue, but otherwise I’m reminded so much of the morning after Gabe’s party that I almost go back inside Alex’s house, just to make this daybreak different from that one.
But this time I have a car. This time, I find a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way back to the highway, and I get a big, sugary coffee drink.
This time I have a plan. Not a stupid plan, though it’s maybe a little reckless, as Alex’s mom would say. And the plan only works if I get on the road right now, when the sun is barely skimming the horizon, and race away from the sunrise as fast as I can.
I set the address into my phone and head back west. Back home.
21
“ROSEMARY. HI, THERE. It’s so early! Are you—uh, are you picking up Madelyn, sweetie?” Mrs. Costello stands in the doorway to their big, boxy mini-mansion, not inviting me in. She’s dressed for work already, all crisp suit and blown-out hair and huge coffee mug. Mrs. Costello always makes me feel kind of wrong, and this morning is no exception.
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