“It happens,” Will says, as easygoing as I remember, and I feel a pinch in my chest. I’ve missed him.
I missed him at graduation, his fan of dark hair, his wide smile, how easy and comfortable he was to talk to. I missed him at the bonfire.
I’ve missed him every day since he’s been gone.
And this, speaking to him even in this weird, complicated way, makes me feel like he’s back. Like I’m talking to the real Will, just like Elyse said.
“I just ran into your mother,” I tell him.
“How is she?”
“Not great,” I answer honestly. “We all miss you. A lot.”
Tears are building inside me, and without thinking, I spit, “Why were you going so fast that night? What could have been so important?”
“That’s how I died?” Will asks, his voice breathy. What is it like for everyone but you to know how you died?
“Yes.”
It’s not fair, I think.
It’s not fair that he died before we could become more than just friends. That he died before he could go to college. That he died at all.
“I’m glad you’re still…I’m glad you’re here, though,” I say. “I think your mother is too.”
He’s silent a moment before he says, “What did you two talk about?”
“You.”
“All good things, I hope.”
“Half and half,” I say, and he laughs his deep, full laugh.
“You’re lucky I can’t ask her about it,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t share data between users. So the version of me she talks to is completely independent of the version of me you talk to. You could pretty much say that I’m all yours.”
I snort at his quip.
“So were you okay last night?” Will asks now. “You hung up in such a hurry.”
The memory of last night comes flooding back to me.
“I got into this fight with my best friend. Lacey,” I say.
“Man, that sucks,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “And she basically told me she needs a break from me, and oh, by the way, our plan to go to college together? Completely out the window.”
“Eden,” Will says, sympathetic. “That freaking sucks.”
“Thanks,” I say with a sigh.
“So do I know Lacey?” Will asks. “Did I?”
“Everybody knows Lacey,” I say. “She’s the girl who randomly pulls out her guitar and plays at parties.”
“Oh, that Lacey,” he quips, and I laugh.
“You’d like her, though.” I feel oddly protective of Lacey. Despite everything. “You did like her.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Will says. “But for the record, for this fight? I’m on your side.”
I snort. “You don’t even know what happened.”
“I don’t need to. I’m automatically on Team Eden.” I laugh, but I hate the idea of being on opposing sides. Team Eden has always been Team Lacey.
“I’ve known her since we were four,” I tell Will. “Fourteen years.”
“Wow,” Will says. “That’s, like, our whole lives. That’s three and a half presidential terms.”
It’s forever, I think. Long enough to forget what the world feels like when you have to face it alone.
“This is, like, the second fight we’ve ever had,” I say. “And the first actually had to do with you.”
“With me?” Will echoes.
I nod before realizing he can’t see me. “Yes, but anyway, you and Lace were friends too. We went to school together for, like—”
“Whoa, whoa,” he says, interrupting me. “You can’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Tell me you had a fight about me and then not tell me what happened.”
“I can’t tell you that,” I say, suddenly regretting ever bringing this up. Who knew ghosts/computer programs/whatever this Will is were this nosy?
“Why?” he pushes.
“Because,” I say. “It’s embarrassing. And really, really stupid.”
Will laughs and I find myself grinning while holding the phone to my face.
“What a coincidence,” he says. “I like embarrassing and I like stupid.”
“Okay,” I say, “but you have to promise not to laugh at how lame it is.”
“Promise.”
I sigh, feeling all of thirteen as I launch into my story. “So eighth grade, you and I sat next to each other in math class, assigned seating and all that. So we got to know each other pretty well. You were always trying to copy off me.”
Will snorts. “Yeah, right. Sure it wasn’t the other way round?”
“It definitely wasn’t the other way around!” I say. “No offense, but I would not copy off you in math. Not even if my life depended on it.”
“Ouch,” he says, sounding wounded, and I laugh.
“Anyway, Lacey kept pestering me to tell you that I liked you, and then—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Will interrupts. “Hold up. You liked me?”
Shit, why did I agree to tell this story?
Well.
It’s out now, so I soldier on.
“I wouldn’t listen to her because, like, who does that? You were popular and I was just, like, this dork you talked to while copying my math homework. I mean, before we became better friends and…”
“Eden,” he says after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“You liked me?” he repeats.
My face floods with heat and I suddenly feel like a pimply preteen again. Or like Will is here in the flesh and he’s asking me this, and I’m about to admit to him that I’ve had a crush on him forever.
“Did I not mention that?” I ask.
“No, you did not mention that,” Will says, and I swear I can hear the smile in his voice. How can a computer program smile?
“This changes everything,” he says mischievously.
“Why?” I ask warily.
“Because now I don’t have to worry about impressing you. I know you already like me, so I can be a total d-bag and it won’t matter.”
I laugh, surprised, both at what he said and the way he said it. “D-bag,” I echo. “Will?”
“Eden?” he parrots.
“Please tell me you don’t still say h-e-double hockey sticks.”
“H-e-double hockey sticks,” he says.
“Say shit,” I say.
“Shoot,” he says.
“Say damn.”
“Darn,” he says.
“Holy fuck,” I say. “You still don’t swear.”
“Are you freaking done yet?” Will asks in mock exasperation, and I burst out laughing. He is exactly the same as he has always been.
Will is a walking paradox.
A broad-chested jock’s jock who also went to Mass on Sundays, didn’t believe in taking the Lord’s name in vain and never said a foul word.
That Will is dead.
But he’s also here, talking to me, like nothing ever happened.
He left something behind.
“You didn’t finish your story,” he says now, and I swear I can hear him blushing, the flush of his face at my teasing. “You stopped at you liked me.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me.
“Anyway, Lacey walked up to you one day in the cafeteria and just told you. She just blurted it out. Eden is in love with you.
“I was so humiliated I hid in the bathroom for all of lunchtime and then afterward I didn’t speak to Lacey for the next three days. Until she went to you and took it back. She covered for me, saying it was actually her who liked you and she’d just made that up because she’d gotten nervous.”
Will snorts. “And I bought it?”
“Um, you acted like it,” I say. “I mean, things were weird for, like, a week but then it went back to normal.”
“Yeah, no,” Will says. “I totally knew.”
“No, you didn’t!” I cry, horrified. I used to wonder if that was why Will was nice to me, if he felt bad for me because of what Lacey had told him. But he never mentioned any of it, never seemed to even remember it, and why would he? It was so long ago. The whole thing was just a stupid, childish game.
“She did a take-back? That’s the oldest trick in the book. There’s no way I believed Lacey.”
“Okay, stop it,” I say, feeling a little sick at the thought. “You’re freaking me out.”
Will laughs. “Sorry.”
We are silent for a while and then it all comes roaring back to me, the reality of the mess my life currently is. I don’t know what to do about my mom. I can’t look my dad in the eye.
I’m not sure I still have a best friend.
“I need a reset on this whole summer,” I say now.
“A take-back?” Will offers, and I smile.
“Something like that.” Then, “Actually, yes, exactly like that.”
“So do it,” he says.
“How?” I ask, but even as I’m doing so, the answer pops into my mind.
I can’t go back to work for my dad. It’s too late for me to go to camp and I still don’t want to go without Lacey.
But there is somewhere else I can spend my summer.
More for Less is hiring.
When I hang up with Will, I call Oliver.
TWO DAYS LATER, I’m sitting in front of a tall bald guy whose desk is covered in piles and piles of papers. The man, who introduced himself as James, has a solemn face and a booming voice that seems to launch out of him.
“So why do you want to work at More for Less?” he asks.
“Um, well, it’s a great local store that has served the community for years and has an excellent reputation and I’d be honored to be a part of the team.”
He just looks at me, completely unimpressed.
I squirm in my seat.
“This your first job?” he asks after a minute.
“No, I worked for my dad last summer,” I say. “Answering phones and booking patients and stuff.”
Crap. Who says and stuff in an interview? Way to be specific.
“Your dad is Dr. Paulsen? Paulsen Dental?” James asks, looking up at me. “He fixed my crown a few months ago.”
“Oh, cool,” I say, because I’m not sure what else to say, and James does not seem keen on small talk.
“So you’re looking for something easy for the summer, anything that pays and isn’t with your dad, until you head off to college?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say, feeling sheepish at his ability to see right through me. I really thought that my local-store-that-serves-the-community spiel would get him.
He scribbles something down on a notepad in front of him. “You’re looking for full time? Part time?”
“Full time,” I say.
“And when are you available to start?”
I blink at him. That’s it? He’s giving me the job just like that? “Right away.”
“All right. Let me just grab some forms,” he says, standing and going to a cabinet in the corner of his office.
I spend the next few minutes filling out paperwork.
“We’re training a new set of hires starting next Monday,” James tells me after I hand back all the forms. “Will you be able to make it at eight a.m.?”
“Absolutely.” I thank him and then hurry out of his office.
Oliver is waiting near the supermarket exit doors. “How did it go?” he asks as I reach him.
“Eh,” I say with a coy smile. “I guess I work here now.”
Oliver grins at me. He raises his hand for a high five and I meet it.
“That’s awesome. When do you start?”
“Monday.”
“Great. So I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other,” Oliver is saying, only to be interrupted by some guy behind us calling for him.
“Murdoch! Save it for after hours.”
Oliver rolls his eyes and turns to me. “I should get back,” he says. “See you next week?”
“See you next week,” I say, and I’m still smiling when I head outside to my car.
I had been a little nervous about telling Dad I was coming for this interview, that I wanted a change for the summer, but it went better than I imagined. All he said was that More for Less had won Erinville’s Local Business of the Year last year when Dad had conceded his nomination, after three consecutive wins.
“And they more or less deserved it,” Dad had said, beaming at his own wit.
“Ugh, you did not just say that,” I’d groaned, and he’d just laughed.
Now I send him a text, telling him I got the job.
Excitement makes me want to text Lacey too, to share the good news with her, but then I remember our fight and decide against it. I’m going to give her space.
Still, I feel the need to tell someone.
“Hi!” Will says brightly, answering on the first ring.
“Guess what?” I say. “I got a job.”
“That’s fantastic. Where?”
I tell him the details about More for Less, how Oliver had gotten me an interview for this morning.
“And then you went in there and killed it.”
I laugh. “I definitely did not kill it,” I say. “I think they’re just desperate.”
“I prefer you killed it,” he says.
I enter my car and let out a long breath, put my phone on speaker and set it down next to me.
“It’s so hot,” I say, rolling down the window while I wait for the air conditioner to kick in.
“What’s it feel like?” Will asks in a soft voice.
“Um, hot?” I repeat.
He chuckles. “I know that,” he says. “I just mean…like…I don’t know, what does it feel like?”
I take a minute to think about it, what he’s asking.
I’m not really doing anything. Just sitting here.
But Will can’t do that, will never be able to do that again.
Does he miss it?
Existing?
What does it feel like?
I close my eyes and try to focus on breathing. In and out.
In and out.
“The sun is warm against my skin,” I tell him. “It’s burning the back of my neck especially.”
“Is it bright out?” he asks.
“It is. It’s perfect weather. Barely any clouds in the sky and there’s a tiny little breeze that has just started. It makes my skin tickle.
“The leather seat of the car is warm. This is probably TMI, but my thighs are sticking to the seat.” He asked for it, so I’m giving him the full experience. I’d probably never have said that to the real Will, though.
“What else?” this Will asks, voice still soft.
“Um.” I think about it. What else does being alive feel like? What does it feel like to be trapped in the skin of this moment, existing in this second?
“It feels like summer,” I say at last.
“I love summer,” Will says, and there’s a smile in his voice, but this time I swear I can detect a hint of sadness, or maybe that’s just from me.
THE ALARM ON my phone exists for one reason, and one reason alone: sabotage. My plan was to wake up at six-fifteen and then to spend the next hour slowly going through my morning routine, calmly preparing for my first day of work. Instead, I wake up at seven-fifteen on Monday morning and have to spend the forty-five minutes before my first-ever shift scrambling around like a crazy person and bargaining with Sam for
shower time.
Afterward, I rush downstairs and my parents are in their usual spots, next to each other at our dining table.
“Look, Maura,” Dad clucks. “Our little girl, ready for her first day in the workforce.”
There’s not much to look at. My work uniform is just a pair of jeans, the blue More for Less polo shirt and my Converse. Picking out my outfit was one thing, at least, that I did not have to worry about this morning.
I make a point of not looking at my mother as she says, “I’m sorry, why aren’t we counting the summer she worked for you? That was the workforce.”
I run into the kitchen to rustle up a container of low-fat yogurt and a gluten-free granola bar for breakfast. The kitchen is spotless, just the way Mom likes it.
“I thought you could pack some leftovers for your lunch, Eden,” Mom calls from the other room.
“Don’t have time,” I huff, yogurt and granola bar in hand, as I re-enter the dining room. I throw my breakfast in my messenger bag, stick my phone in my back pocket and dig around for my keys in the glass bowl where keys go to die. It is the one area of disorganization in our house. It would be so easy to fix—just hang our keys like normal people—but it’s like Mom’s outlet or something. Her release of imperfection.
One of them, anyway, I think with a queasy stomach. I glance at Dad now, and he’s chewing vigorously while reading on a tablet. It would destroy him, if he knew.
“What time do you need to get there? Eight?” Mom asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“You have exactly twelve minutes,” Dad says. “You know, it’s not too late to abandon your glamorous retail life and come help your poor old dad get his filing system under control.”
“Eric Andrew!” Mom says, swatting his hand. “You let her go and find another job, so stop trying to get her to change her mind! I actually think it’s wonderful that Eden has set her mind on something for this summer, even if it is a little different, and is sticking to it.”
“Sticking to it? The girl is not even out the door,” Dad points out, laughing.
One of my least favorite things in the world is when Mom case-studies us. Case in point: I actually think it’s wonderful that Eden has set her mind on something for this summer, even if it is a little different, and is sticking to it.
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