No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  “I’m going to State too,” I say now. “But I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “You have no ideas?” Cate asks.

  “No.”

  “You still have time,” Cate says.

  “It doesn’t feel like it,” I admit.

  “Trust me, you do,” Kennie says. “It took me, like, two years just to declare a major. Everybody acts like you have to know exactly what you want, but you don’t. You’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so,” I say, and her words are a relief, assurance that it’s okay to be lost, that it’s okay not to have my life plotted out, not to know what I love or want. It’s enough to simply be on the way to figuring it out.

  IT’S JUST BEFORE seven when we pile out of Juno’s, but the sky is strangely dark. The clouds are bloated, like a storm is coming.

  We all say goodbye in the parking lot and get into our separate cars. Mia would have a conniption regarding our individual carbon footprints if she was here.

  I feel this twinge, this awareness of her absence, which is strange because I’ve gotten used to her being at Stanford—but seeing her for those few weeks she was around, it makes me miss her.

  I wonder how she’s doing in DC.

  Thinking about Mia gets me thinking about my parents, and suddenly I’m dreading going home. I decide to kill time by talking to Will, debriefing about Juno’s and the day at work.

  “I feel like Kennie is the person you want to be stranded on a desert island with, but it’s Cate who won’t kill you for food.”

  “You’ve given this some thought,” Will says.

  “I don’t exactly have a lot going—”

  I jump at a tapping sound on my window.

  It’s Oliver, peering through the glass at me.

  I push the button to slide the driver’s window down. “Hey!”

  “Hey!” he says. “You’re still here.”

  “Yeah, I…” I’m about to make up a reason but then I think, What’s the point? “I’m avoiding going home.”

  “What’s at home?”

  After a moment’s pause, all I give him is a shrug. He looks around the parking lot, then back at me.

  “Want some company?” he asks.

  I think about this for a moment. I was talking to Will, but that can wait.

  “Sure,” I hear myself saying. I shut off my phone without saying goodbye, but I think Will understands.

  Oliver smiles and stands straight.

  “It’s boiling in here, though,” I say, opening the car door. Despite the darkening sky outside, it’s not raining yet. I climb out, taking my phone with me. “My air conditioner hates me.”

  Oliver circles to the front of my car, and without discussion, we both climb up and sit on top of my hood.

  “So,” he says after a moment. “What’s going on with you and Lacey?”

  I look down, not certain I want to get into this. “I’m pretty sure she hates me. I guess I was too clingy or something.”

  “She does not hate you,” Oliver says. “I’ve been worried about her, hanging out with Hail and those guys.”

  “Me too.”

  “Ever since what happened with Mason, I’ve been following her to parties, just trying to keep my eye on her.”

  Mason. I try not to react to Will’s name, to the reference to the accident.

  “You’re a good brother,” I say, and he glances up at me, surprised.

  “I don’t know,” Oliver mumbles, and I look up at him, watch his profile as he looks straight ahead in the growing darkness. “What am I supposed to do in the fall when she’s…?”

  His voice fades.

  “I know she’s not going to college,” I say, putting him out of his misery. “She told me that a few weeks ago.”

  He nods. “I’m sorry.”

  And for some reason, I feel the sting again, of betrayal, of being abandoned when I thought it was a sure thing. Lacey and me this summer, Lacey and me at State, Lacey and me ad infinitum. “It’s not your fault.”

  “You know, the whole reason I chose to go to State was because that was where she was going. And because it’s only four hours away, so I can still keep an eye on Mom.”

  “I thought it was because you got a full ride to State,” I say, surprised.

  “I got a couple different offers,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I knew I would feel guilty if I went anywhere else. I didn’t want to just…abandon them. And now she’s not even going to college.”

  “She’ll be fine,” I hear myself saying. “It’s not up to you to look after Lacey.” Oliver is looking intently at me now, like he’s hanging on my every word, and I wonder if maybe he needs permission to stop feeling guilty about living his own life, to stop feeling guilty for the times when he can’t be there for his mom and sister. I think about him cooking the other day, all the things he does to help out his mother. And then all the parties he goes to just to make sure Lacey gets home safely. Yes, he has his share of fun at them, but he always stays sober so she has a ride.

  That’s a lot of time, that’s a lot of burden to carry, feeling like it’s up to you to make sure your sister gets home alive.

  “I don’t even know if I’m helping,” he says. “I couldn’t get her to stop going to these things, so I go with her, but is that enabling her? Do I tell Mom that she’s drinking, going out this much, and give her something else to worry about?”

  There’s such a weight in his voice, I get this overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his arm, his face, anywhere, so I can absorb some pain from him. After Lacey and Oliver’s dad left years ago, both of them changed. Lacey became angrier, more impulsive and more irritable, like she had no patience for a world in which families fall apart. Oliver changed too. It was like he felt it had fallen to him to look after his mom and sister.

  I realize now that he’s believed that, made it his mission ever since.

  How do I tell him he’s wrong when he might not be?

  Sometimes, as unfair as it might be, the weight of keeping a person—people, your family—together falls on you, and you might be collapsing underneath it, but you can’t just shrug it off. You find a way to fix it, to carry it, or you let it crush you.

  You don’t tell your father that your mother is having an affair.

  My mind is whirring with so many thoughts, and we are both silent for a long time.

  “Do you plan on telling them anything about yourself?” Oliver asks now, and I look at him, confused.

  “What do you mean?”

  He points in the direction of the entrance to Juno’s. “Everyone. Work people.”

  Oh, shit. It’s right then I remember that I told people my mom was a teacher and that I didn’t know how to skate.

  But what Oliver says is, “I thought you used to want to study psychology? Like your mom?”

  “How do you know that?” I ask. I remember Cate asking me tonight if I had any idea what I might want to do.

  No, I’d said.

  Oliver scratches the back of his head, looks past me for a second. “I’ve known you for how many years? Plus, you know, Lacey talks.”

  I’m trying to think in what context I might have talked to Lacey about college in Oliver’s presence or what reason Lacey might have had to bring up my plans to him. Maybe when she was telling him hers—and since our plans were so intricately linked, it just slipped out.

  Still, it was years ago the last time following in Mom’s footsteps even crossed my mind. And the phase hadn’t even lasted that long. How could Oliver know that?

  “And I seem to remember that you were pretty damn good at skating.”

  My face is heating up even more now, which I had not thought possible. Oliver had totally not looked like he was hearing a word I was saying that first day at Juno’s.


  I do not like the turn this conversation has taken.

  “You’re only saying that I was good because you…”

  “Were terrible,” he finishes for me, laughing. “You can say it.”

  “Relatively speaking. It’s not that I’m great either—I’m like someone just plunked a cow on ice, you know? Compared to Sam.”

  He just watches me, and I can’t tell whether that’s judgment behind his gaze. I glance away.

  “I didn’t know you…” Knew so much about me. I must have had fewer than ten real conversations with Oliver since middle school, and they always either revolved around Lacey or were about something innocuous like homework or pizza. “I didn’t know you remembered us skating together when we were little. The three of us.”

  “Well, considering that it was one of the more traumatic experiences of my life,” he says, “I do. I could barely stand up. I still can’t stand up, I don’t think. I haven’t been on ice in years.”

  “Lucky,” I say. “Though you’ve got that whole running thing, so it’s not like you’re starved for athletic prowess.”

  Oliver laughs. “Starved for athletic prowess…Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

  “Don’t do the whole humble aw shucks thing,” I say, kicking his sneaker with the tip of my shoe. “If I was the best at something, literally anything, I wouldn’t be able to stop bragging about it.”

  “I’m maybe the fifth-best distance runner in my age group in the county, but thanks for the vote of confidence,” he says with a smile.

  “Lies,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “You’re at least fourth best.” Or first best, but no need to give him an even bigger head.

  He laughs. “Well, maybe I should start bragging. I thought doing it because I liked it was enough, but apparently I’m missing the point?”

  “Definitely missing the point,” I say, catching his eye in the dimming light, and we smile at each other.

  “How’s Beckah?” I hear myself asking, and Oliver looks as whiplashed as I am by the question.

  “I…Good, I think? I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “You’re not…together?”

  He shakes his head. “I feel like…” Oliver hesitates, like he’s debating how much to say. Finally he continues, “I feel like I spend so much time worrying about shit. Worrying about Mom and Lacey and running and college. If I got into something, I just don’t know if I’d have anything left to give. I don’t know if I have room to really care about someone else.” He pauses for a second. “Does that make me a giant dick?”

  “No,” I say. “Maybe a medium-size one.”

  He laughs out loud, and I feel weirdly proud to have earned it.

  We are silent for a while and then he says pointedly, “So back to the name thing.” He’s grinning at me, and it’s kind of hard to maintain eye contact, so I look away. “Is it that you’re building a new persona? Doing the whole undercover thing?”

  I shrug, run my thumb against a scratch on my car’s hood. “It sounds stupid now, but it feels good to be around people who don’t care what I do, where I end up. They don’t know anything about me, so I can be anyone.”

  Oliver has a half smile on his face now. “If you were going to reinvent yourself, you could have gone a little further. Just a little. Sheridan.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You,” I say with a warning tone, “do not get to call me that.”

  He laughs. “What should I call you?”

  “Eden,” I say in a duh tone of voice.

  Oliver raises an eyebrow. “Even at work? That might be a little confusing for people.”

  My face is heating up with embarrassment again, but I roll my eyes to avoid showing anything but impatience.

  God, this is humiliating. Note to self: when you’re creating little white lies about yourself, you might want to make sure not to do it when your best friend’s twin brother is around.

  “I don’t…I guess I wanted to try it on for a while. Maybe I’m a Sheridan, you know? I guess I just wanted an identity other than one of the Paulsen girls, the unextraordinary Paulsen girl, or Lacey’s best friend.”

  When I say that, it hits me with force how true it is.

  “You’re not…” Oliver shakes his head, like he’s not sure where to start. “You’re not any of those things. You’re not just Lacey’s best friend.”

  I snort, and poke my shoe against the tip of his sneaker again.

  “You’re not,” he insists, and he catches my ankle. He lets go, but then traces his thumb just above my anklebone. My body immediately warms.

  “Is this real?” he asks, and I realize he’s touching my tattoo, the comma on my ankle.

  His hand on my leg makes it hard to swallow, so I nod.

  “Whoa,” he says. “When did you get it?”

  “A couple of days,” I mumble, the best I’m able to come up with while his hand is still touching my ankle. Did I shave my legs this morning? If I don’t move an inch, how long is he going to keep doing that?

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It’s just kind of tender,” I say, and he stops touching me. I immediately miss his hand when it’s gone.

  “It’s pretty badass. What’s it mean?”

  “Life goes on,” I say, giving him the short version.

  He watches me carefully. “It suits you.”

  I snort. “Because when you think Eden Paulsen, you think badass.”

  “I do,” Oliver says. “That, and the cutest damn Tot Who Skates I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’re such a flirt, Oliver,” I say, laughing, and he’s looking at me, his eyes twinkling in the dark. The intensity of his eyes, brown, deep enough to fall into, is insane. And I’m ashamed to admit that I get the bedroom eyes girls now. I’m even more ashamed to be dangerously close to joining the list of girls he makes fall in love with him in the dark.

  Lacey would kill me.

  An evil voice in my head parrots back: Lacey’s not here.

  “Not always on purpose,” Oliver is saying in response, a cheeky grin on his face.

  Fourteen years and it’s the first time Lacey’s brother has undeniably flirted with me. Which isn’t to say he hasn’t; just that this is the first time I’m sure.

  “Whatever” is the best comeback I can manage.

  “Seriously, though,” he says. “You’re not just Lacey’s sidekick.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh yeah? What am I?”

  “Funny. Kind. Smart,” he says. “Off-limits.”

  My head snaps up at that, but before I can say anything, he continues, “You’re Eden Paulsen. How do you not know that?”

  It’s supposed to be a joke, and it mostly is, but I feel a pinch in my chest and I’m close to crying, because it’s true. Why is so much of what I know about myself relative to Lacey?

  She’s the reason I’m at More for Less this summer, the reason I’m not at Camp Rowan. She’s the only person I wanted to tell—the only person I felt I could tell—when I found out about my mom.

  I don’t know what it is that makes me say it, whether it’s the fact that it’s getting even darker, a blanket of bluegrayblack that makes me feel safe enough to tell the truth. Or maybe I feel like I owe him a truth after all the work lies he’s caught me in. Or maybe I’m just tired of attaching everything about my life to Lacey and I want to change that, starting now.

  Whatever is behind it, it comes tumbling out.

  “My mom is cheating on my dad.”

  Oliver turns to me, wide-eyed, then after a moment he says, “Shit.”

  “With Sam’s coach. He’s this guy from Ukraine. He has a bronze medal. So I guess that’s the attraction.”

  He doesn’t laugh at my attempt at humor.

  “Does your dad know?”

  I
shake my head, bite my lip at the thought of him finding out. “He can’t find out. It would destroy him. And he had that ministroke and they say it’s a precursor to a bigger one and…”

  My father would fall apart. Even if he was healthy.

  “Does…anybody know?” Oliver asks.

  Will.

  “Just me,” I say, because I can’t bring myself to say his name. I tell Oliver about going to her office and seeing her in Serg’s arms, and I’m hoping he’ll suggest that maybe I was seeing things or maybe they’re not actually cheating since it wasn’t, like, some passionate lovemaking session, but he doesn’t.

  “That sucks.” I feel him looking at me from the corner of my eye, but I can’t look up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. Just trying to figure out what to do, I guess,” I say.

  “You know, your dad might surprise you. He’s probably a lot stronger than you think. People are mostly different than you expect.”

  “Maybe,” I say, but the words don’t make any difference. I still know that there is no way I can tell him. It feels like Oliver and I can keep talking forever, but right then, a giant raindrop lands on my forehead. Before I can even reach up to wipe it off, two more drops fall in quick succession.

  “Well, shit,” Oliver says, looking up at the sky.

  I glance at my phone screen and it’s nearly eight.

  “We should probably…,” he says.

  “Yeah, I need to get home,” I say, hopping onto the ground as the rain starts to fall faster around us.

  Oliver jumps off my hood. He seems to hesitate before turning to walk to his car. “See you later, Eden.”

  “Bye,” I say, and wave once at him, before entering my car.

  THE LAST REAL conversation I had with Oliver had happened on a summer night, three years ago, when we were fifteen. It was mid-August, heat searing even into the night, and I’d been staying over at Lacey’s for the weekend when she and her mother had gotten into one of their epic fights. My mom and I had our share of disagreements, but mostly they were short-lived, passive-aggressive affairs, with lots of guilt-tripping and disappointment, and they always ended with me apologizing.