“Where are you?” I ask.
“Staying at a hotel for now. I just need…I just need some time,” he says.
I nod, even though he can’t see me and I’m fighting tears.
“Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” he says. “I’m fine.”
“Are you eating okay? Taking your medications?”
“Yes,” he says. “Don’t worry about me.”
Then, “Take care of everyone for me, okay?”
He’s already saying goodbye.
“Okay,” I promise.
He hangs up, and I still don’t know where he is, where he’s staying, when he’s coming home. If he is.
I’m eighteen now. Practically in college.
It’s not supposed to matter anymore whether my parents are together, whether they’re happy, but the truth is that it does. It feels like standing on unsteady ground, imagining coming home over the holidays to a broken family, imagining Sam shuffling between two homes. Imagining all our pictures along the walls taken down—or left up, a glaring reminder of everything we used to be.
“Tell me something,” I tell Will when I call him back.
“Hmm,” he says, thinking about it. “You want to hear a joke?”
“Okay,” I lie. He starts telling the joke, but before he reaches the punch line, I’ve drifted away.
The sadness is so thick inside this house, it’s suffocating, and for once, even Will is not enough to distract me. Nothing he says or does can make it better.
When I can’t stand it anymore, I change out of my ratty pajamas and into a pair of jeans. I go downstairs, not bothering to be quiet, because who’s going to stop me from going out? Who cares where I am? Certainly not my mother.
I get in my car and drive, looking for a distraction, looking for wherever is guaranteed to be full of people tonight.
Which is how I find myself at the Erinville river bottom on a Friday night for the first time since graduation. It feels like a year has passed since the last time I was here. Since then, I’ve lost my best friend and my family has crumbled. This time, though, Will is with me.
I walk with him in my palm, and it’s like walking into the party holding his hand. I feel tall and untouchable, protected.
For once, I am not afraid.
I spot Lacey almost immediately.
Or rather, she spots me. When I feel her gaze on me, like a finger tapping on my shoulder, I turn around and meet her eye.
She’s in a group with Hail and Co. She’s sitting next to Vance, her guitar on the other side of her, like a person, filling the space where I used to be.
I grab a drink; then, feeling courageous, I walk toward them.
“Hi,” I say. “Can I join you guys?”
The whole time I’m talking, my gaze stays on hers.
“Yeah, of course!” she says, jumping up, a little too eager. She’s clearly feeling guilty about how things have gone down between us. Whatever the reason, she carefully moves her guitar in front of her and lets me slide in between her and Hail.
“How have you been?” she asks, voice soft, as Vance and Libby continue discussing whatever they were discussing before I got here.
“Fabulous,” I say, and my sarcasm catches even me off guard. I take a huge sip of my beer and text Will.
Meet Lacey.
He writes back immediately. She’s everything you said she would be. And by she, I mean the guitar.
I’m grinning down at my phone when I notice Lacey is still watching me. I cover the screen with my palm so she can’t read it.
Take another gulp of my beer.
“Listen, about what happened—”
I shake my head to stop her. “Let’s not, okay?” I say. “It’s fine. It’s…whatever.”
She looks bewildered, uncomfortable, but she nods.
She takes a delicate sip from the can in front of her.
I match her with two gulps of my own.
Around us, Vance and Libby’s conversation continues and there’s music playing in the background, but there’s still nothing loud enough to drown out everything I don’t want to feel.
I’ve gotten up for a refill when someone calls out, “Sheridan!”
I turn around to find Chris, Thomas, Michael, Jenn and Shelby.
“What is this? A work party? Fancy seeing you here,” Chris says, beaming at me.
I smile back. “You too.”
“I wonder how many of the same parties we went to before we all knew each other,” Michael muses.
“Did we do something to offend you? You haven’t been to Juno’s in forever,” Chris says. “And you weren’t at work today. Are you okay?”
“I’ve just…had some other stuff going on,” I say.
We stand together in a little group for most of the night, laughing and talking about work. I don’t go back to Lacey’s group. I hope she sees me with them, hope she knows that she’s not the only one with other friends.
“Eden?”
Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I turn around to find New Age Lauren.
“Hey!” I say, too loudly. I don’t sound like myself. It’s like the two beers I’ve had have put an amplifier over my mouth.
“How are you?” she asks, then gives me a hug. We chat for a few seconds and then someone calls out to her, so she waves goodbye and leaves.
I turn back and Chris is watching me. “Who’s Eden?” he asks.
There’s nothing accusatory in his tone, just curiosity, but I find myself speaking too fast. “It’s my real name. I mean, Sheridan is my real name, but everyone calls me Eden. I hate Sheridan.”
“You hate Sheridan?” he repeats, looking at me as if I’m crazy.
“It’s as bad as Sherri. I don’t know why I let you guys call me that,” I say with a laugh, but Chris isn’t laughing. “I mean, you guys can call me that. I’m just kidding.”
“Oh,” he says, but he looks confused. The conversation continues around us.
I keep drinking. I’m on my third can of beer when the first wave of nausea hits.
I scramble quickly away from the group. I’m trying to slide my way between clusters of people, toward the edge of the forest, and I’m afraid that I won’t make it far enough before getting sick.
I push my heavy limbs to move even faster and then I’m almost where the cars are parked and I’m on my knees, throwing up into the grass.
It’s now that the full force of the beer hits me, when I wipe my mouth on the backs of my hands and try to stand. The whole world sways beneath me. The stars dance in the night sky, and half the time it feels like they are above me, like objects in a baby’s mobile, and the rest of the time they fall down in clumps around me and I make a half-hearted attempt to catch one, to catch a little bit of magic in my palms.
I lean against a tree, trying to stay upright, and it’s now, all of a sudden, that I remember Will on my phone.
“Will,” I slur into it. “Are you there?”
I’m shouting into my phone but I hear no response. I start tapping things on my screen, trying to make him come back, when someone touches my shoulder.
I jump so high that I drop my phone.
“Eden, hey,” Lacey says, her voice soft like she’s afraid of me. Her face is blurry but I’m pretty sure it’s Lacey.
“She’s over here,” she says over her shoulder to someone else. Then she starts trying to pull me up by my shoulder. I do my best to resist her, because she’s making the spinning worse, but then someone is on my other side and I’m outnumbered and everything is spinning too much for me to recognize who Lacey is talking to.
We’re moving now and I am draped across both of them and we’re in front of a gray car before I recognize his voice. I put one hand all over his face and accidentally g
et a finger in his mouth.
“Oliver!”
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is gentle like a whisper. Gentle like Lacey’s was before. I guess that’s why they are twins. They both have soft voices. Sometimes.
“You’re here,” I say. I can tell my words aren’t coming out right, that I’m slurring, sloshing the syllables all together.
“I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t see you,” I say, trying to sound as not-drunk as possible. Just when I feel like I’m pulling it off, I lose my train of thought. “Where are we going?”
“We’re taking you home,” he says.
“Where are your keys?” Lacey asks, and then digs her hand into my pocket before I can get them.
“This isn’t my car,” I say as we reach a gray car, and they both help me slide into the back seat.
I expect Lacey to climb in after me so I can rest my head in her lap while we drive home and everything can be a rotated kind of normal, but I hear her saying, “I’ll drop her car off at her house when we’re done and then Hail can take me home.”
I don’t hear what Oliver says in response, but he sounds annoyed.
This does nothing to change Lacey’s mind, because she leans down to look at me in the car and she looks like she’s about to say something, but finally she straightens and turns around and leaves.
A door opens and shuts and then the car is starting.
The car ride is bumpy, and when I say as much to Oliver, he says, “Sorry,” turning around for a second. I think he slows down because it gets less bumpy then, less like I’m swimming in a hammock, and then everything is dark.
I wake up when the car stops, try to sit up as Oliver comes around the back of the car, to the door that my feet are pushed against.
“Hey, Eden?” he says. “Can I have your phone? I just need to make a phone call real quick.”
When I pat around myself, I find my phone in my back pocket. I try to pull it out but it falls to the floor of the car. Oliver must find it, because soon he’s pressing buttons.
Then he’s speaking to someone, his voice leaden, strange somehow. “Um, hey,” Oliver says. “She’s going to have to call you back, okay?”
I don’t know who he’s speaking to at first, but then I remember.
“Will!” I mumble, stretching out my arm like I’m reaching for his face. Like I can touch it if I just try hard enough, can pull him into existence.
He was on during the party; he’s still on.
Before I can ask Oliver if I can speak to Will, my stomach turns.
And then I’m trying to climb out of the car because it’s coming, the things inside me that have been stuffed in there for so long, the words, the blood, the guts, vomit.
Wait, just vomit.
Just in time, he realizes what I’m about to do, and he helps me out of the car and then I am throwing up all over our front lawn and then someone is touching my back, asking if I’m okay. I glance up.
Oh. Oliver.
Oliver, who touched my leg in the dark outside Juno’s.
I wonder if kissing Oliver feels different from kissing Will.
I bet his lips taste sweet. Like clouds and water and air.
Oliver stands up taller now and starts to pace.
“Shit,” I hear him mutter under his breath. Then, a second later, “Hey, Eden? You don’t happen to know if Mia’s home, do you? I want to see if she can come out and get you.”
I try really hard to concentrate on what he’s asked me to do or remember but it’s not coming and I’ve actually forgotten his question.
“That would be a no, huh?” He paces for another second.
Then he’s doing something with my phone again. “Hey, Sam, this is Oliver. Lacey’s brother?” A pause on his side. “Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Are your parents home? What about Mia?”
Another pause.
“Crap. Okay, so I’m going to need your help, then. Eden is kind of sick here and I’m outside your house. I’m wondering if you’d be able to open the door and we’ll come meet you?”
Oh no.
It’s coming up again. I’m retching and retching and…there’s nothing. But I still can’t stop dry heaving.
“No no no,” Oliver says hurriedly into the phone. “I mean, yes, she was throwing up but we need to get her inside.”
He’s looking at me now, scrutinizing. “Um…well, she doesn’t look like she’s going to again but I can’t say for sure. I think we should be safe for now, though, Sam.”
Another pause.
“Awesome. Thank you!” He hangs up and turns to me. “We’re in.”
I push myself up to stand, the whole world spinning around me still, and I bump against Oliver when I sway. He catches me by the waist.
“Hey,” I say, still leaning against him. I try to bat my eyelashes at him, to look pretty.
He laughs for the first time tonight. “Hi. We’re going inside, okay? Sam’s meeting us and your mom’s asleep but Mia’s out and—”
I interrupt him to say something that suddenly seems vital. “Oliver?”
“Yeah?” he says as we walk slowly toward my driveway.
“I heard a secret about you.” I drop my voice down so nobody hears. “I heard you liked me in fifth grade.”
There’s a pause—I think he’s surprised—and then he laughs.
“You heard that, huh?”
“I can’t tell you who from,” I say. “I promised.”
“Yeah, I wonder who that could be. It’s a real mystery,” he says in a funny way, and finally we’re at the front door. Sam is standing there already, hands on her hips.
She throws up both arms. “You said she was sick! She’s drunk!”
“Well,” Oliver says.
“How do I know you’re not lying when you say she won’t throw up again?”
“I’m better,” I tell her, trying to go past her toward the door and swaying majorly.
Sam is saying some other exasperated things, but she and Oliver have each put one arm around me.
“Don’t tell anyone what I told you,” I tell Oliver as we’re going up the stairs.
“I promise,” he says, and then we turn off the hallway to get into my room. Sam opens the door, and when they let me go, I flop onto my bed, on top of the covers. Sam and Oliver are talking for a while but their voices turn into a blur. I know I get a glass of water at some point, but is it before I sleep or after?
I don’t know.
I don’t remember when Oliver leaves.
THERE ARE NO words to describe the sensations in my head when I wake up the next morning. It is all noise, a drumbeat that won’t stop, too much commotion, crowded, too many thoughts. Too much of everything. I just want to cradle my head and shut off all the light and noise in the world.
But someone won’t stop tapping me.
Sam’s face comes into view when I force my eyes open.
“Here,” she says, holding out two aspirins and a tall glass of water. She surveys me as I slowly raise my body, sit up and lean against the wall. “He said you’d be a hot mess today.”
“Who?” I groan, before gulping down both tablets and the water.
“Lacey’s brother.”
When I look at her, she adds, “Maybe he didn’t use those exact words.”
Right then, flashes of last night start coming back.
The party. The first drink, the second.
The third.
I’m in the back of Oliver’s car and then bumbling out of it, into the house.
“Oh.” The memory of being so out of control, so not myself, makes me want to vanish.
Shit.
“Sam, did I throw up?” I ask.
“Not on me, thank God. Maybe on Oliver.”
No.
No?
“Oh God.” I pull my legs up and bury my head in my knees.
“Maybe don’t get super drunk next time.” With those words of advice, Sam, having expended her daily allotment of sympathy, leaves my room.
I reach for my phone on my bedside table and call Will.
“Hey, party animal.”
I groan. “Will,” I say. “I can never show my face in public again.”
He has the audacity to laugh.
“Seriously. I acted like a total idiot.”
“I bet nobody noticed.”
“People noticed,” I say, remembering the way Lacey found me, hurling into the grass. And Oliver.
God.
Oliver saw my puke.
“Hey, I’m sure lots of other people made idiots of themselves too. Anyway, it’s a rite of passage. You had to get wasted and totally embarrass yourself at least once before college.”
“I didn’t have to,” I argue.
“You totally did. It should have been on your list.”
I speak to Will for over an hour, then hop in the shower, grab some cereal and start in the direction of my bed again, when I run into Mom on the stairs.
Her hair is stringy, her eyes sunken.
A wave of emotion rises inside me at the sight of her. I’ve never seen her so lost.
“Where were you last night?” she asks.
I blink at her question.
“Eden?” Her voice is small, exhausted, but she keeps waiting for my response. Of all the things I thought she’d say, all the things we might talk about. Where my father is, for one, what she did to break up our family. But this is what she wants to know. Where I was last night.
“At a party.”
Did Sam rat me out?
Did she hear Oliver bring me in?
I stand at full height, wait for her to come at me with criticism, with judgment over staying out too late, coming home drunk, but instead, she holds up a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“What’s what?”
“This,” she says, waving what looks like some kind of bill. A statement of some kind.
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