The sky had been a deep black by the time his dad finally backed the van out of the driveway, with a slap on Ryan’s shoulder and a promise to call and figure out a time for him to come visit, which Ryan knew from experience might or might not actually happen. He tried not to think about the fact that his dad had never once suggested Ryan come with him to Schenectady. Not that he’d have wanted to go, necessarily, or that his mom would have let him in a million years. But it would have been nice to be asked.
Now the gym door slammed open behind him: Remy Dolan, who was a sophomore and Ryan’s Colson Cavaliers Big Brother, ambled out of it, along with a couple of other guys from the team. “My house tonight, McCullough!” Remy yelled, bumping into Ryan hard on purpose before heading for his own car. Ryan winced. He liked partying with those guys—he liked partying, period—but he hadn’t realized when he made varsity that it was going to mean drinking until he blacked out every Friday and Saturday night, plus one particularly ugly Thursday after which he’d woken up with a giant dick drawn on his face. It could have been worse, he reasoned—he was the only freshman on the team, so a certain amount of hazing was probably inevitable, and so far they hadn’t beat him up or made him do anything weird with farm animals—but still. He was tired.
Ryan lifted his hand in a wave as Dolan and the others drove off in Dolan’s brand-new Explorer, then dug his phone out to see if his mom was close, so that he could run down the block to meet her on the corner instead of having her drive all the way up to school. It made Ryan feel like shit every single time he did this, but the last thing he wanted was for one of his teammates to catch him getting into the passenger seat of her bright red minivan: old and dinged and dog-smelling, with the logo of her grooming business, Pampered Paws, emblazoned on the side.
His mom hadn’t texted yet, but Ryan was about to head down the block anyway when the side door of the building creaked open and somebody else came out: that girl Gabby, from the party last weekend. He hadn’t seen her at all since he’d bailed out of her house at top speed on Sunday morning, which seemed strange now that Ryan thought about it: their high school wasn’t huge, maybe six hundred people total. Still, he guessed he hadn’t exactly been looking.
He looked now, though: she was wearing jeans and a pair of gray Converse, hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket and blond hair tucked into a wispy ponytail at the crown of her head. She was sort of pretty, in a quiet kind of way, and Ryan wondered why he hadn’t noticed that at the party. Probably because he had been very, very drunk.
“Hey,” Ryan said, lifting his hand in a wave and smiling at her. “Long time no see.”
Gabby did not smile back. “Hey,” she said. Her cheeks were very pink. “What’s up.”
“Just waiting for a ride,” he explained. “How’s your week been?”
“Fine,” Gabby said, keeping space for the Holy Spirit between them. She looked suspicious, like she thought it was possible he was about to throw a soda in her face or carry her to the bathroom and give her a swirly—which was strange, because he thought he remembered them being friends at the party. But Ryan had noticed that people looked at him like that sometimes since he made varsity, like being popular or well-known around school automatically also made him an asshole. It made Ryan, who did not like to think of himself as an asshole, feel kind of bad, but he was never exactly sure how to address it.
“You have practice?” Ryan asked, trying his best to sound extra friendly. Gabby stared at him blankly in return. “Is that why you’re here late, I mean? You play a sport?”
Gabby snorted like that was hilarious. “Definitely not,” she said. Then, after a moment of apparent internal debate: “I was editing photos.”
Ryan squinted. “Do we have a darkroom I don’t know about?”
“No, not developing them,” she corrected. “Editing. On the computer. The software in the yearbook office is better than the kind I have at home.”
“You take pictures?”
Gabby made a face like he should have already known this, somehow. “Sometimes.” She shrugged.
“Are you good at it?”
“I’m okay,” Gabby told him, in a voice like he’d asked what color her underwear was.
“Cool,” Ryan said. It was, too: it was interesting to Ryan, all the different ecosystems in high school. All the different stuff people did. People were interesting to him. They always had been, ever since he was a little kid.
Ryan himself was not interesting to Gabby, apparently; she nodded but didn’t say anything back to him, crossing her arms and staring hotly at the parking lot like she could conjure her ride through sheer force of will. The silence stretched out in front of them, huge and vaguely menacing. Ryan hated silence. It gave him the weirds.
He meant to just say bye and get out of there, to chalk it up to not everybody liking him all the time, but when he opened his mouth what came out was, “So am I still invited to Monopoly later?”
Gabby looked—this was a word his mom used, and it always made Ryan laugh—flabbergasted. “You remember us talking about Monopoly?” she asked. “The other night?”
“Yeah,” he said, though he hadn’t thought about it at all until this moment. The whole party was kind of a blur. He’d had a really good time, he remembered that much. The details were a little bit harder to place. “You play every Friday with your family, right?”
Gabby nodded slowly, like she wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to admit to this. “What else do you remember?” she asked.
Ryan shook his head. “Not much, honestly,” he admitted. “Talking about BuzzFeed lists. Puking all over your solar system bathroom.”
“It’s constellations, not the solar system,” Gabby snapped. “I’m not a third-grade boy.”
It was all the same to Ryan, but that didn’t seem like the kind of thing he should say out loud. “Constellations, then,” he agreed. He looked at her, something tickling at the very back of his brain. “Why?” he asked, voice cautious. “Is there something else I should remember?”
For just a second Gabby’s face flickered like a burned-out lightbulb. Then she shook her head. “Nope,” she said finally. “Although the truth is I kind of only invited you to Monopoly because I figured you were too drunk to ever take me up on it.”
“Ouch,” Ryan said, huffing out a laugh to cover the fact that he was strangely stung by the rejection. His friend Anil said his need to be everyone’s favorite person was pathological, although for some reason this felt like more than just that. It occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t really want to spend tonight getting drunk out of his brain at Remy Dolan’s party, or home at his mom’s, where everything was empty and quiet and strange. It occurred to him suddenly that he really, honestly just wanted to go play Monopoly at this girl’s house.
“I’m kidding,” Gabby said after a moment, shaking her head like he was a ridiculous person. “Sort of.” She shifted her weight. “We play at like eight, usually. Clearly you know where I live.”
Ryan grinned his most winning smile. He felt like he’d won something, himself. “I do,” he agreed. “I’ll see you then.”
“Sure,” Gabby said. There was another pause then, and he thought she was going to walk away, but instead she gestured at his face in a way that sort of looked like she was going to punch him. “What’s that from?” she asked.
“Oh.” Ryan had almost forgotten about it; sheepishly, he touched the yellowing bruise on his cheekbone. “Practice. I got hit in the face on Wednesday.”
Girls were generally impressed by this, Ryan had learned over the last couple of days, asking about the details or running their delicate fingers along his cheekbone, cooing. Gabby, clearly, was not. “Does everybody get hurt so much, playing hockey?” she asked. “Or just you?”
Ryan bristled. “I don’t get hurt a lot,” he said, trying not to sound defensive. “I mean, I guess I got a concussion a couple months ago, but mostly it’s just, like, a normal amount.”
Gabb
y looked like she might be about to ask what a normal amount was, exactly, but instead she nodded at the red Pampered Paws van pulling into the cul-de-sac in front of the building. “Is that your ride?” she asked as his mom beeped a little tattoo with the horn, cheerful. Ryan winced.
GABBY
Michelle came over once Gabby got home that afternoon, the two of them sitting in Gabby’s room listening to music on her laptop, Gabby skimming Teen Vogue while Michelle scrolled through Instagram. Michelle was Gabby’s easiest friend in that she didn’t need to talk all the time, the two of them content to be alone together, each of them doing their own thing while occupying the same physical space. They’d known each other since elementary school carpool; Gabby, as a general rule, much preferred old friends to new ones.
Michelle was also Gabby’s only friend, really, but Gabby didn’t like to dwell on that too much. It wasn’t like she was lonely or anything like that. She was choosy. It was different.
“Do you know that you have like, three thousand followers on this thing?” Michelle asked now, holding her phone up so that Gabby could see her own Instagram profile.
“Yeah.” Gabby shrugged, rolling over on the mattress and flicking past an ad for lip balm. “They’re not people I actually know or anything.”
“No, that’s my point,” Michelle said. “They’re strangers. And considering you’re not taking pictures of your boobs, that’s a huge number.”
Gabby smiled. “I guess.” She’d started posting her own photos the previous summer and was secretly proud of the modest collection she’d put together: Celia’s feet poking out of the deep end at the town pool while she did a handstand, a shot of the sparklers at her cousin Madison’s wedding, a bin of fat orange pumpkins she’d seen outside the hardware store one Saturday morning with her mom. Most of them were just iPhone pictures, but she’d gotten a cranky secondhand DSLR with her eighth-grade graduation money and was slowly teaching herself how to use it, experimenting with f-stops and exposures. She’d been surprised and kind of embarrassed when people started following her, but by now it had become a game she played with herself, amassing a little audience like she’d collected stickers in her Sandylion book when she was a kid.
“Okay,” Gabby said, closing the magazine and peering over the edge of the mattress. She’d thought about her ridiculous conversation with Ryan all through dinner, working it over like a particularly gristly bite of steak. She knew she’d probably sounded cold, bitchy even, but she hadn’t been able to help it. She was just so irritated. He’d ignored her all week. “So can I tell you something kind of weird that happened?”
Michelle raised her pale eyebrows. “Always,” she said.
“Okay,” she began again, then promptly broke off when she heard the telltale squeak of Kristina’s footsteps in the hallway. “Come in here and stop lurking,” she called.
Silence; then, a moment later, Kristina appeared in the doorway. “I wasn’t lurking,” she protested, looking injured. “I was passing by.”
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.” Kristina was ten and small for her age, with big round glasses and a slightly crooked haircut that made her look like a Williamsburg hipster. Gabby loved her like all hell. “I need you to tell Mom something for me anyway,” she instructed. “Go downstairs and tell her there is an extremely slim possibility that Ryan McCullough is going to come for Monopoly.”
“Who’s Ryan McCullough?” Kristina asked.
“The hockey player?” Michelle said, sitting upright on the fluffy white area rug. Then, to Kristina: “He’s a super-hot hockey player; he’s the only freshman on varsity.”
“And he’s coming here?” Kristina asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabby said, feeling her stomach flip over again at the possibility. “Probably not, in reality. I just saw him after school today and we were talking—”
“And you randomly invited him to Monopoly and he said yes?” Michelle asked. “How did you not tell me this?”
“I mean, not randomly,” Gabby admitted, already wishing she hadn’t said anything. Now when he inevitably didn’t show up she was going to look pathetic on top of being let down. “He was here for Celia’s party last week.”
“Really?” Michelle’s eyes were wide. “He was here? You didn’t say that.”
Gabby shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal,” she lied. The last thing she wanted was to admit what a full-on idiot she’d made of herself that night. She should never have left her room to begin with. “We talked a little, it was just—” She shook her head, pushing the conversation—and Ryan’s dumb smile—out of her mind. “Whatever. I don’t actually think he’s even coming.”
“Uh-huh.” Michelle was looking at her with great skepticism. “Is this going to be like the time you told everyone that Hillary Clinton RSVP’d yes to your birthday party?”
“That was in second grade!” Gabby said, frowning. “I told one lie in second grade. I’d like to be let off the hook now.”
“Girls?” That was Gabby’s mom on the landing, her ash-blond hair in a short, stubby ponytail and her tortoiseshell glasses perched on top of her head. “Daddy’s got snacks ready, if you want to come down and play.”
“Gabby invited a boy to Monopoly,” Kristina reported immediately.
“Really?” her mom asked.
Gabby sighed noisily. She didn’t entirely appreciate the gobsmacked tone they were all using, like she was a dog walking on its hind legs or a chimpanzee using sign language, some kind of circus act. Granted, it wasn’t like she’d ever invited a boy—or a girl who wasn’t just a friend—or a girl who was just a friend who wasn’t Michelle, for that matter, over before. But still. “I mean, technically yes, but again, I don’t think he’s actually going to come, so there’s no reason for everybody to be—”
“What’s going on?” That was her dad at the bottom of the stairs in an apron with the De Cecco pasta logo on it, which he’d gotten by sending in a dozen carefully detached boxtops: her dad was a sucker for both any promotional giveaway and any complex carbohydrate.
“Gabby invited a boy to Monopoly,” her mom informed him.
Celia appeared from the living room in a drapey black sweater, her perfect fashion-blogger hair falling over her shoulders in bouncy yellow waves. “She did?”
“Oh my god, stop!” Gabby almost laughed, but only to avoid some other, less desirable reaction. “Please do not be weird about this. I don’t know how many times I can say there’s no way he’s even going to show.”
Then the doorbell rang.
RYAN
Gabby swung the door open wearing a plaid shirt and a disbelieving expression, her hair a flyaway blond cloud around her face. “You came,” she said, not sounding entirely pleased about it.
“Uh, yeah,” Ryan said. “I hope that’s okay.” He held up the bag of sour-cream-and-onion Ruffles he’d dug out of his mom’s pantry before coming over. “I brought chips.”
“You brought chips,” Gabby repeated, stepping back to let him inside. As she did, a tiny bespectacled girl in a SUNY Binghamton hoodie scrambled down the hallway behind her, peering around Gabby’s shoulder before darting away again.
“He brought chips,” Ryan heard the girl report.
“Jesus Christ, Kristina!” Gabby called over her shoulder. Then, turning back to Ryan, “Come inside, I guess. We’re just about to start.”
The first thing Ryan registered about Gabby’s house was how many girls there were in it. There was Gabby herself, obviously, plus her sister Celia, the junior with the movie-star hair. The littlest sister from the hallway, Kristina, sat on the carpet with her legs pretzeled, next to a girl from school whose name Ryan thought was Michelle and whom he had noticed only because she frowned literally all of the time.
“This is Ryan,” Gabby announced. “He brought chips.”
“Well, that’s very nice,” said a tall woman coming in from the kitchen. She looked like an older version of Gabby, in a crisp Oxford shirt and glasses t
hat took up the whole top half of her face. “Hi, Ryan,” she said. “Welcome.”
“Hi, ma’am,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand.
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said, gesturing for him to sit down on the carpet. “The only piece left is the iron.”
The second thing Ryan registered about Gabby’s house, now that he had the chance to look around in a non-party context, was how nice it was in here. Not fancy, exactly—not like his friend Anil’s house, which was one of the new fake colonials in the golf course development on the other side of town—but definitely decorated in a way that his own house wasn’t. There were built-in bookcases housing an expensive-looking stereo system, brightly colored paintings studding the light gray walls. A giant stag’s head made of papier-mâché hung over the fireplace, a stack of newspapers in a mesh basket off to one side. It seemed immediately clear to Ryan that this was a house where people ate their sandwiches on whole wheat bread.
“Is this your friend, Gabby?” asked a tall, heavyset man coming into the living room carrying a big plate heaped with some kind of fancy-looking hors d’oeuvre. To Ryan: “I have to say, it’s rare there’s another man in this house. I’m glad for the reinforcements.”
“Oh my god,” Gabby said, dealing out the money from the bank. “Please stop. What are we eating?”
“Devils on horseback!” Mr. Hart said. “Dates stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in bacon.”
“He makes something different every week,” Gabby explained, reaching up to pick one off the plate as her dad set it down on the coffee table. “He has a book.”
“1,001 Crowd-Pleasing Party Appetizers,” Mr. Hart crowed. “The girls got it for me for Christmas last year.”
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