Since You've Been Gone

by Morgan Matson

  I froze. Heart hammering, I looked down and saw that it was only the cat. “Move,” I whispered to him as he sat down on the threshold and started washing his paws, like he didn’t know that he was sitting right in the path of the door. We’d been in Stanwich a year before he showed up, mewling at our door one night. I was thrilled to be finally getting a pet, which had never been possible before. But even though we put a collar on him and filled his food and water dishes, it quickly became clear that he was not going to be a typical housecat. He came and went as he pleased, mostly living outside in the garage, only spending large amounts of time in the house once it got cold out. But just when you had given up on him ever turning up again, there he would be in the kitchen in the morning, waiting impatiently by his dish, like he’d never been gone. My dad had named him Godot, and over the years, we’d all gotten used to his I’ll be there if I feel like it presence.

  “Come on,” I said, nudging him with my foot, but gently, since I just had flip-flops on, and Godot was not shy about using his claws when he felt offended. But it was late, I was exhausted, and it been a long enough day, without having to deal with our cat. I wanted to go upstairs, cross Apple picking at night off the list, and then fall into bed. But just as I’d taken a breath to tell the cat to move again, something occurred to me. Had I earned the right to cross it off? I had gone to the Orchard at night, but I hadn’t picked an apple, and I wasn’t sure how literal Sloane wanted me to be with some of these. So before I could really think it through or talk myself out of it, I was pulling the door closed, startling the cat, who hissed at me halfheartedly and then stalked away into the night.

  By the time I got back to the Orchard, I could see that the last few remaining cars were gone. The place was deserted, empty except for the occasional red cup left crushed on the ground. Now that I was here by myself, the place no longer seemed like the scary battlefield it had been earlier, and I found myself walking easily though the same space I had been tiptoeing around the edges of only hours before. I walked across the grass, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, my path lit by the moon that had come out of its cloud cover. As I walked through the rows of trees, I looked for one with a mostly intact ladder, one that wasn’t as visible. I figured this was my best bet, since the really prominent ladders were the ones that got jumped on by drunk people, and those were the ones with most of the rungs broken. But the ladder I finally picked seemed to be in one piece, except for the first rung, which I skipped. I climbed it carefully, and when I reached the top and hadn’t gone plunging to the ground, I felt myself relax. I was up in the branches of the tree, and I could also see the view from up here—the parking lot with only my car now in it, the endless dark roads that led back to town.

  It was months away from being apple season, but I was hoping that there would be a few. The apples I did see looked like the tiny, sour ones, and I had resigned myself to one of these when I spotted one, just a little out of reach. It wasn’t as big or as perfectly formed as a supermarket apple, but it was the best one that I could see. I grabbed it, and made sure to hold on to the ladder with my other hand as I gave it a hard yank. It came free of the tree, and I polished it on my tank top before I turned around and leaned back against the top step. Then, making sure I was balanced, I took a bite.

  It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t quite ripe yet, but it wasn’t bad. And it really was pretty up here—maybe Beckett was onto something after all. I leaned more fully against the ladder and looked out at the view as I ate my apple, slowly, in the moonlight.

  3

  55 S. AVE. ASK FOR MONA

  I stood in the parking lot in front of 55 Stanwich Avenue and stared at the sign in front of me. Paradise Ice Cream, it read in neon-colored letters. Where Every Cone Is a Dream!

  I was in a small shopping plaza off one of the main roads that ran through town. I had been here many times before, but I had never paid attention to the numbers, so hadn’t know what 55 was until I’d pulled into the parking lot, following the directions on my phone. There were only a handful of stores in this shopping plaza—Captain Pizza, which was our go-to to-go pizza place; a beauty supply store; a running shop where I’d bought my last pair of sneakers; an accountant’s office; and at the end, Paradise Ice Cream.

  It was the day after I’d gone to the Orchard. When I’d woken up that morning, out of habit, I’d reached for my phone to call Sloane, not remembering the current situation until a few seconds later. But unlike the previous two weeks, the realization didn’t send me into a tailspin. I’d gotten a letter from her, after all. I had instructions. I’d already crossed one of the items off the list, and I was sure I could do the rest just as quickly. I had a plan.

  I took a deep breath and crossed the parking lot, passing Captain Pizza as I walked, my stomach growling at the scent of the fresh-baked pizza wafting out, despite the fact that it wasn’t even noon yet and I’d just eaten breakfast.  Through the window, I could see a blond girl behind the counter, leaning close to a guy standing by the register, smoothing his hair down and giggling.

  I pulled open the door to the ice cream parlor and stepped inside, and a blast of cold air hit me. The place was very bright, with white walls and tables, and fluorescent lights overhead. It wasn’t huge—five tables with chairs, a long counter with the ice cream below in glass cases, and a freezer that displayed ice cream cakes and pints to go. There were large framed posters covering most of the available wall space. There was something about the photography, or maybe the way the models were styled, that made me think these hadn’t been changed in a few years. They all pictured people holding cups or cones of ice cream and looking blissfully happy about it. Take a Chance! read one that pictured a smiling woman with a cone stacked five scoops high. What’s Your Ice Cream Dream? read another, with a pensive-looking little boy contemplating a sundae.

  There was a girl behind the counter wearing a shirt with a rainbow across the front. I guessed she was around my age, maybe a little younger. She hadn’t looked up when I’d entered the store, but instead was examining the split ends at the end of her braid.

  “Hi,” I said, as I stepped up to the counter. She had a name tag pinned to her shirt that read Kerry, and I felt myself deflate a little as I looked at it. Because of course she couldn’t have been Mona—that would have made this too easy.

  “What can I get you?” she asked, looking away from her hair and picking up the ice cream scoop from where it was resting in a cup of water.

  “Oh,” I said quickly. “No. I mean—I don’t want any ice cream.” Kerry stopped shaking off the ice cream scoop and gave me a look that clearly said Then what are you doing here? I swallowed hard, and tried to make myself get through this. “I was . . . Is Mona here?”

  “No,” Kerry said, looking at me strangely. I didn’t blame her.

  I nodded, wondering if I maybe should have started with buying some ice cream; maybe that would have made this process go a little easier. I stood there for a moment, trying to think of how to ask this. It would have helped if I had any idea who Mona was, or if I knew why I was supposed to ask for her. “I just . . .” I started, not exactly sure how to describe what I needed when I knew so little about it myself. I took a breath and decided to just tell her, trying not to care how crazy it sounded. “A friend of mine left me a note, saying to come here and talk to Mona. So . . .” I stopped talking when I realized I didn’t know how to finish this sentence, without demanding that Kerry somehow procure her. This had already become much more humiliating than I had imagined it would be, which was, in a weird way, kind of liberating.

  “Well, Mona’s not here,” Kerry said, speaking slowly and deliberately, like maybe the reason I was still standing in front of her, not ordering ice cream, was that I didn’t understand English well. “So if you’re not going to get something, you can’t—” The store phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello, Paradise,” she said, keeping her eyes on me the whole time, like maybe this was all part of an elaborate ruse to rob the plac
e. “Hey, Mona. No. Not a customer. Just—”

  “Is that Mona?” I asked quickly, leaning across the counter. Desperation was making me brave, and any sense of dignity I had when I entered the place was long gone. “Can I talk to her?”

  “No,” Kerry said into the phone—but probably to me, too—taking a step back. “Just some girl who didn’t order anything. Wanted to talk to you.” She listened for a moment, then lowered the phone. “What do you want?”

  “Okay, so my friend,” I babbled, speaking fast, lest Kerry change her mind, “she left me this list—her name’s Sloane Williams, I don’t know if that matters. Anyway, on the list, it said to come here and ask for Mona. So that’s . . . what I’m doing.”

  Kerry just raised her eyebrows at me. “Did you get that?” she said into the phone. She tilted her head slightly to the right, listening to something that was being said on the other end. “Oh,” she said, looking at me. “I don’t know why she didn’t just start with that then. Okay. Yeah, I’ll ask her. Talk to you later.” She hung up and I looked in dismay at the phone on the counter, wondering if I should have tried to get on the phone with Mona myself. Kerry reached under the counter and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped through the papers inside, tilting them away from me so I couldn’t see what they were. She stopped, then looked up at me. “What’s your name?”

  My heart was starting to beat harder now, but not from nerves—because it felt like I was getting close to something. “Emily,” I said, wondering if I should show some ID. “Emily Hughes.”

  She nodded and pulled out a piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “You were supposed to be here last week,” she said. “Mona thought you didn’t want the job.”

  I just stared at her. “Job?”

  Kerry rolled her eyes, clearly losing any patience she’d once had with me. “Yeah, the job,” she said. “The one you applied for? Mona’s the manager?” She shook her head and reached back underneath the counter, and I pulled the piece of paper closer to me so I could read it.

  Sure enough, it was an application to work at Paradise Ice Cream. It had been filled out for me in Sloane’s handwriting. There was Sloane’s email and phone number, but my name and work experience. Sloane had put herself down as my emergency contact, and under Additional Info she had added, I am a really hard worker, a wonderful friend, really punctual, funny, loyal, thoughtful, all-around awesome. Oh, and humble too.

  I smiled as I read this while simultaneously feeling like I might burst into tears. The only thing that prevented this was imagining what Mona, or Kerry, or whoever, must have thought of this bizarrely confident application.

  “Can I have this?” I asked, holding on to the application as Kerry stood up again, holding two white T-shirts.

  “No,” she said, sounding exasperated with me, as she pulled it back and placed it in the folder. “We need to hold on to it. So we have your information in case you burn the place down or something.” She looked at me closely after she said it, clearly thinking I might be capable of this. “Anyway, I’m sure Mona mentioned the salary when you applied. So we need someone five shifts a week, two of those have to be weekends, and Mona does the scheduling tonight, so she can e-mail you.”

  I blinked at her. “You mean I got the job?” Kerry didn’t even bother responding to this, just flipped through the folder again.

  “Mona wanted to know if your friend was still interested.” She pulled out another paper, and I could see it was Sloane’s handwriting again, this time filling out her own application. I saw, in the section that dealt with scheduling, Sloane had written in all caps, NEED SAME SHIFTS AS EMILY HUGHES!!!

  I got it then, finally. She’d had a plan for us to work together after all.  And judging by how empty Paradise was, she had picked the ideal place. Unlike last summer, when our marathon chat sessions were always being interrupted by people who wanted their food brought to them or their orders taken, this would have been the perfect job for us. We would have gotten paid to hang out all day, with minimal customer interference.

  Kerry gave a loud sigh, and I realized I hadn’t answered her. “No,” I said quickly. I noticed that Sloane had left the Additional Info section on her own application blank. “She’s . . . not available for it any longer.”

  “Okay,” Kerry said, putting Sloane’s application back in the folder. “Do you want the job or not? Because if not, we need to call the other applicants.”

  I thought about it as I looked at the two neatly folded white T-shirts on the counter. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I needed a job, after all. And Sloane had gotten me one. She had put this on the list, after all, so that I’d know about this job even after she’d left.  And I had a feeling that it most likely wouldn’t be super demanding. I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Great,” Kerry said, sounding decidedly unenthusiastic about this as she pushed the shirts in my direction. “Welcome to Paradise.”

  By the time I made it home again, it had turned into the hottest part of the day.  The Volvo’s air conditioner was barely functional, so normally I didn’t even try it. But when I’d attempted it today, only hot air had come out at me, and I’d quickly turned it off. Normally, the open roof let a breeze in, but instead, it just felt like I was sitting directly in a sunbeam I couldn’t get out of. I made a mental note, as I pulled into the driveway, to get the wooden piece for the roof from the garage, if only to cool the car down by providing some shade. As I walked up to the front door, new employee T-shirts in hand—they had rainbows on them like Kerry’s had, I’d been dismayed to see—I was regretting the fact I hadn’t gotten any ice cream after all.

  I let myself in, careful not to make too much noise in case my parents were working. But when I passed the dining room, it was only my dad sitting at the table. His laptop was open, but he was leaning back in his ergonomic wheelie chair, reading a thick book, highlighting occasionally, so focused on his task, I was pretty sure he didn’t even sense me in the doorway.

  I found my mom in the kitchen, washing off a peach. She turned when she heard me, giving me a tired smile, and I had the feeling they’d been working all morning. “Hey, Em,” she said. She looked down at the shirts under my arm. “Did you go shopping?”

  “I got a job,” I said, shaking out one of the shirts and holding it up so she could see it. “Paradise Ice Cream.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, that’s . . . good. And I’m sure it’ll be nice and cool in there, right?” Without waiting for a response, she went on. “Did you eat?” She looked around, then held out the fruit in her hand to me. “Peach?”

  “No, thanks,” I said, crossing to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water from the door and taking a long drink.

  “I meant to ask you,” my mother said as she patted her peach dry, “is everything okay with you and Sloane? It feels like we haven’t seen her around in a while.”

  “Oh,” I said. I looked down at the scuffed wood of the kitchen floor, debating what to tell her. Only yesterday, I’d wanted nothing more than to tell my parents, to get their help to find her. But that was before the list. And the list made me feel like Sloane had a plan, and me running to my parents for help wasn’t part of it. “She’s out of town for the summer,” I said, looking back at my mom, rationalizing that, technically, this wasn’t even really a lie.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” my mom said, her brow furrowing. My mother felt everything quickly, and deeply, and cried at the drop of a hat. It was the reason none of us ever wanted to sit next to her when we saw sad movies. “That’s going to be hard for you, Em.”

  My mother took a bite of her peach, but I could tell that there were more things she was about to ask; I could practically feel them, questions like where and why and for how long, questions I couldn’t begin to answer. So before she could ask, I said quickly, “So Beckett seems pretty excited about this camping trip.” I was almost positive that he was away at day camp, but I looked u
p to check the doorway, just in case.

  “Yeah,” my mother said with a smile. “Your dad, too.” I nodded, figuring that this meant the trip was still on, and I hadn’t done the wrong thing by basically telling my brother as much. “Though I don’t know why,” my mother said as she shook her head, rotating the peach, looking for a perfect bite. “Sleeping outdoors when you’ve got a perfectly good bed has never—”

  “Andrea, listen to this,” my dad said, bursting into the kitchen. He was holding a thick book in his hands, and talking fast and excited. “Tesla and Edison were friends when he first came from Paris. Edison called him a genius.”

  “Scott,” my mother said. “I was in the middle of talking to Em.” But I could tell that she was only partially in the kitchen with me now. It was like I could practically feel her wanting to get back to the play, and I was pretty sure she’d already forgotten about Beckett and camping.

  “It’s really fine,” I said quickly, backing out of the kitchen. “You guys go write.”

  My mother bit her lip and looked at me, and I gave her a bright, Everything’s okay here smile and headed upstairs, but not before I heard them start to talk, their voices excited and overlapping, saying words like laboratory and patent and alternating current.

  I took the stairs up to my room slowly, feeling the temperature seem to rise with every step. I flopped down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling, where I could still see the tape marks left over from the rotating pantheon of teen heartthrob posters I’d put up during my middle school years. I reached for my phone, which was, of course, free from any texts or missed calls. And even though I knew it would probably just go to her voice mail, I found myself pressing the button to call Sloane. Sure enough, her voice mail recording started, the one I knew by heart. I waited until the beep, then took a breath and started.

  “Hey, it’s me. I got the job, the one at Paradise. So thanks for setting that up for us.” I said the word automatically, but a second later, reality hit me like a punch to the gut. There would be no us at Paradise. Just me, working in a T-shirt with a rainbow on it. “I’ll have to tell you what happened. It was really funny, this girl thought I was crazy.” I listened to the silence, the empty space where Sloane’s voice should have been, already laughing, asking me questions, reacting in just the right ways. “Anyway. I’ll talk to you soon.”