by Cameron Lund
Before I can think too hard about it, I swipe and delete both pictures.
I flip over to my feed and start mindlessly scrolling and feeling so stupidly alone. I hate that a whole month has gone by and I’m right back where I started. But this time it’s worse. At least Kai was pretending to help me back then. Now I have no one.
I swipe to a picture Romina posted with Myriah, holding a bag from In-N-Out, arms around each other, matching grins. Who do I love more? the caption reads. My girlfriend or this burger? It hits me that in the midst of everything, I’ve forgotten to check in with them, and I feel the sharp guilt of it in my stomach. But it looks like they sorted everything out.
I’m so happy for you, I comment, knowing that once they find out I lied to them, they’ll probably hate me just like everyone else.
The worst part is I know I brought this upon myself. Maybe Kai lied to me, but I was lying to everybody. I’m the one who betrayed her best friend, who faked a relationship to try to make things better, who pushed everyone away in the process.
I keep swiping and then my finger stops instinctively when I see a graphic of two cats flying through space. It looks like neon colors have thrown up all over it. The Disco Cats.
Sarah has a show tonight.
I remember the thoughtless comment I made to her the other day: I wouldn’t want anyone to see us together in public anyway. Sarah has been there for me all summer, has treated me far better than I deserve, and still I pushed her away because it felt like she was getting too close to the truth of me, the ugly part I’m afraid to uncover.
But I need to be there for her too. Maybe it’s too late to fix everything with Olivia, but I can still try to mend things with Sarah. The first step to setting all of this right is to start apologizing—for this summer but for everything that came before it too.
So I jump up from the bed and get dressed—a bright pink skirt and clear jelly shoes to match the vibe, purple swirls of glitter around my eyes—and run down the stairs, texting my mom to let her know where I’m going. And then I head into town to watch the Disco Cats.
* * *
• • • • • •
The show is at this crunchy granola hippie coffee shop I tend to avoid because it always smells like weed. So I’m actually kinda surprised at how cool it looks when I walk in. There are twinkling fairy lights strung up over the windows, big leafy plants in all the corners, the walls covered in colorful posters and old maps. A platform stage in the corner is set up with a fog machine and purple lights, and I spot Sarah right away, her curly blue ponytail a beacon. She’s with a few other people, bustling around, plugging in amps and testing microphones. I walk up to the counter and order a latte and then take a hesitant seat at a table on the sidelines, feeling uncomfortably out of place. I stopped at McDonald’s on the way over to pick up a please forgive me present, and I set it down beside me, taking out my phone and scrolling through it so I don’t look so alone.
“Holy shit,” Sarah’s voice calls loudly through the mic, startling me. “Is that Penelope Harris sitting over there at my show? Is that Penelope Harris being seen in public with me?”
I hunch over in my seat, embarrassed by the attention and the callout, even though I deserve it. Sarah jumps down off the stage and comes over to my table. “I thought you were busy every Friday for the rest of time.”
“Well, I guess my plans changed.”
“Good,” she says.
“I’m so sorry about what I said,” I say, my cheeks flaming. “I brought you something.” I hold out the tray. “You said McFlurries always fix everything, so I was hoping . . .” I trail off, and Sarah peers at the assortment of choices—I got Oreo, M&M’s, and Reese’s Pieces because I wasn’t sure—and then takes the Oreo.
“You’re not supposed to bring outside food in here, you rebel.” She picks at an Oreo with her spoon. “And you can’t just bribe your way out of problems.”
“I know,” I say. “The thing is, you’re the only person who has ever been totally honest with me. And I’ve been scared. I’m just . . . so scared all the time, and it’s exhausting.” I’ve always thought I wanted to be more like Olivia, but I realize now I wish I could be like Sarah too—someone who lets things roll off her, who doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. I’m so used to people who talk in circles, who whisper behind your back, whose language is sugared kindness laced with poison. It’s all so much work.
“I like you, Penelope,” she says. “There’s a good person somewhere in there. But you gotta give her a chance, okay? You can’t keep her covered up by all these layers of bullshit.”
“Why are you so nice to me?” I ask. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Pshhhh.” Sarah blows some air out of her lips. “You think I’m nice? I am far from nice, Harris. I’m a raging bitch.”
“I don’t think that’s true. If you were a raging bitch, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.” I feel a pain in my chest then. “If anything, I’m the raging bitch.”
She lets out a barking laugh. “Well, yeah. But we knew that already.”
“I’m not . . . like . . . trying to be mean to anybody,” I say. “I’m a good person.” I fiddle with the lid of my drink. “Aren’t I?”
“Dude, I don’t know,” she says. “Are any of us good people, really? I mean, you’re not fundamentally one or the other. You just have to try to make the right choices, you know? And if you make a bad choice, you have to try to fix it. You have to put in the work to make things better. Like . . . you made a good choice in coming here tonight to listen to my astonishing, face-melting band. You made a bad choice in, well . . . pretty much every other choice you’ve ever made, actually.”
“That’s reassuring,” I say flatly.
“Well, yeah, but now you’re trying to fix it, so I’d say you’re headed in a good direction.”
“Why aren’t you like this at school?” I ask. “I mean, why don’t you stand up for yourself? Why do you just take it?”
“My life is outside of school,” she says. “My life is this band and my camp friends and all that. These guys get me. I don’t wanna waste my time fighting with Olivia when I’m at RHS. I just want to get through my day. I want to read my goddamn books in peace.”
“But it would be so much easier for you if you just said something.”
“Yeah, it would be so much easier for me if you said something too. Why does it have to be on me to get it to stop?”
I can’t help my sinking feeling of guilt. “You’re right. God, I really am the worst.” The thought strikes me suddenly. “I’ve been so mad at Kai for calling me that stupid name, but we were doing the same thing to you the whole time, weren’t we?”
“Pukey and the Nose Picker,” she says. “We should form a band.”
I grin, feeling a bit lighter. “Thank you.”
“Just don’t make me regret this. Got it?” She turns around and calls to this big guy on the stage. “Yo, Brian! Come meet my friend.”
And something inside me breaks at her words. Come meet my friend.
“I’m your friend?” I ask, my voice small.
“Oh,” Sarah says. She smooths her hands down the legs of her black ripped jeans. Her nails are painted a holographic pink. “Well. Yeah, I mean, I thought so.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” I say, and I realize I’m smiling.
She bites her lip. “Don’t let it get to your head, Harris.”
Brian comes over to us and throws an arm around Sarah, leaning against her with the kind of comfortable ease that I can tell means they’ve been dating forever. He’s huge—like two heads taller than she is—with spiky black hair and a nose ring—and it feels like I should be terrified of him, but I’m not. It’s his smile—something about it is so friendly and warm that when he flashes it at me, I feel like we’re already buddies. He’s got a guitar pick clenched b
etween his teeth, and he keeps it there when he speaks. “Hey, dude.”
“This is that bitch I was telling you about,” Sarah says, grinning. I should probably be offended, but from what I know of Sarah, bitch is a term of endearment. “I love your outfit, by the way,” she says. “You usually look a lot less cool than this. What the fuck is that glitter on your face? It’s insane.”
“Insane . . . good?” I ask, reaching a hand up to touch it but then pulling away at the last second. I don’t want to smudge anything. I blended purple and blue shadow on my lids, using eyeliner to draw a wing shape and covering it with glitter so it looks like there are butterflies on my temples.
“Yeah,” she says. “You should do more interesting makeup looks at school. You’re always so basic in those photos Olivia takes.”
“Well, she likes simple black-and-white stuff,” I say. “Her aesthetic is minimalist.” I love planning outfits for Olivia’s Instagram series, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I could get a bit more extra.
“You should do some looks for our next show,” Sarah says. “That’s how you can make it up to me. I want something with lots of disco shit, lots of sparkles, and lots of cats. Think you could handle that?”
Her words stir an excited flutter in my chest—the first positive feeling I’ve had in days. Immediately, I start designing something in my head. I could paint the solar system on Sarah’s face, silver stars at her temples, and her blue hair would look incredible.
“Are you by yourself?” she continues. “Where are your two boyfriends?”
She must see the hurt on my face because she stops smiling and sits down across from me at the table. “Oh, shit. Which boyfriend do I have to kill?” She turns back to Brian. “Babe, we need some estrogen time over here. I’ll meet you in five, okay? This is a no-bone zone.”
He grins at her, chewing on the guitar pick. “But you love my bone.”
“I will love your bone after the show.” She narrows her eyes flirtatiously. “Right now, Penelope needs my help.”
He shrugs and leans down to kiss her and then lumbers away back to the stage. It’s still so weird to connect this version of Sarah to who I’ve always thought she was: the girl who sits alone at lunch, who hides in the band room during study hall, who always has her nose buried in a book. Back when I used to read on the playground, it was because I had no one to talk to. Maybe Sarah reads all day because she doesn’t want anyone to talk to her. It’s never occurred to me that other people could be happy in the place where I was so miserable.
“All right.” She leans toward me. “We go on in five, so I don’t have much time.”
“I thought you said my problems were emotional labor.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s fun to hear the details of your drama.” She picks up my latte and takes a quick sip, like I offered to share. “We’re friends now, right? Just hit me with it.”
So I tell Sarah everything. About the fight with my mom, spending the night in the Jeep with Kai, how I thought I might have been in love with him, but then I found out about his lies, his fake relationship with Olivia. It comes pouring out of me, and it’s freeing to be so honest. It feels good to tell the truth when I’ve spent so long covering it up.
“Damn,” Sarah says when I’m done. “Your life is like some Shakespeare shit.”
I laugh and it feels good. It’s the best I’ve felt since I stopped talking to Kai. I feel almost sort of a tiny bit human again.
There’s a loud squeak from the microphone, the strum of an electric guitar, and Brian’s voice is amplified across the café. “Babe, we gotta start.”
“One sec!” Sarah shouts at him, then turns back to me. “You going on the Disney trip next week?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I say, fiddling with my now-empty cup.
“No fucking way,” she says. “You’re coming.”
“I’m turning into an old man up here!” Brian shouts. “My hair is graying as I wait.”
“Calm down, dude!” Sarah shouts, then to me: “My mom is forcing me. She has this idea that if I spend more time with people from school, we’ll all magically fall in love and skip together through meadows holding hands and braiding each other’s hair.”
“My bones are decomposing!” Brian calls into the mic.
“I mean, okay, it’s not like she’s forcing me to stick needles into my eyeballs or something,” Sarah continues. “But it’s almost as bad. Disney is anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic bullshit. Fuck that noise. If I have to go, you’re coming with me.”
I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if I can. It’s a five-hour bus ride full of people I don’t want to talk to, and then an overnight in a hotel room. At this point, I think it might be too late to switch rooms, and I do not want to share with Olivia after everything that’s happened.
And of course Kai will be there too.
“I don’t know,” I tell Sarah.
“Just think about it, okay?” She reaches her hand into the air to give me a high five, and I smack it. Then she turns and runs onto the stage, grabbing the mic from Brian. “We’re the Disco Cats. Prepare to jump into a new dimension.”
NOW
CAN WE TALK? Kai texts me a few nights later. How are things with your mom?
When I don’t respond right away, he sends a picture wearing a sheet mask. To be honest, he does look a bit like he’s from a horror movie. Sheet mask privileges are for friends, he says. And then a few minutes later: Wow my skin is luminous.
I resist the urge to text him back by throwing my phone to the other side of the room so it’s lying on the rug in a place I can’t reach. I hate that he’s acting concerned for me after everything he did. The worst part is that I still care too, that every time he texts me some stupid joke I get a little flutter in my chest that won’t go away.
I busy myself by packing for the Disney trip. The bus leaves tomorrow morning, and I still don’t know if I want to go. It feels wrong to go on this trip I’ve been dreaming of for months if I’m not talking to any of the people I planned it with.
Still, I blast a Disney playlist from my phone and pull my little red suitcase out of the closet, setting items inside—shorts and tops and sneakers, all neatly folded and perfectly placed, because if there’s one thing that can distract me it’s finding the right outfit to make a statement. I open my Mrs. Potts backpack and throw in some things to keep me busy on the long bus ride: my headphones, a notebook and colored pens, a book of crossword puzzles. I pause for a second on the Mickey and Minnie ears I made months ago for Jordan and me, but decide to bring them. Then I make a quick pair for Sarah—purple and glittery and so disco, a cat in the middle of each ear.
At the last second, I pick up The Giver—the copy Kai just gave back to me—and toss it into my bag too before I can change my mind.
There’s a knock on my door.
“Go away!” I say, because whether it’s Seb or my mom doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk to either of them. But the person on the other side doesn’t listen and the door creaks open anyway.
“I know you’re mad,” Sebastian says. He takes a step into the room, his Pokémon socks just barely over the edge of my doorway, like he knows he’s not invited inside. Like he’s a vampire. “You should try to cut Mom some slack, though.”
“I thought you liked Steve,” I say. “Shouldn’t you be defending him?”
“I did like Steve. I do like Steve! But we can’t control Mom’s emotions. She didn’t do anything to us.”
I know Mom’s absence doesn’t feel quite the same for Seb as it does for me, because they were never as close to begin with. “Yeah, that’s the whole problem. She doesn’t ever do anything.” I throw a pair of sunglasses into the suitcase using a little too much force.
He takes another step forward, running a hand through his hair.
“Do you ever think . . . maybe . . . you look for reasons to be mad at people? Like maybe it’s easier for you to be mad than to deal with your other emotions?”
I want to disagree with him—of course I do. It’s instinct to want to tell him to leave, to shut him out again. But that would be what he expects me to do. Which means he has a point.
“You’re too young to psychoanalyze me.”
Seb comes fully into the room, sitting down in a pile of long limbs on the floor. “I took an intro psych class last quarter for my elective.” He grins. “I psychoanalyze everyone.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me you want to be a scientist too.”
“Yeah, maybe I do. I poked around the UCLA website, you know, because you’re always talking about going there, and they actually have a really legit psych program. Could be cool. We could be there together.”
I try to picture myself at UCLA next year, the image I’ve always been able to conjure so easily, but it doesn’t come. California just doesn’t feel like the right place anymore. What do you love? Kai asked me at the beach last week. What makes you happy?
“I think I might go to design school, actually.” The thought comes to me like it was always in there somewhere, just waiting for me to uncover it. “Like, maybe I’ll apply to Parsons or FIT or something?” I like the idea of New York, where I can walk purposefully down the sidewalk wrapped in a fashionable coat, taking in the vibrant hubbub of the city. I don’t want to go somewhere just because it’s what Olivia wants. I don’t want to go somewhere as Olivia’s muse. I want to go somewhere just for me.
“Yeah,” he says. “That sounds cool.” He points at my suitcase, the items carefully folded inside. “You’re going on that trip tomorrow, right?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I run a hand over the cover of Kai’s book, sitting faceup in the center of everything. “It might be weird to room with Olivia.”
“Because you stole her boyfriend.”
“That’s not what happened,” I say, although of course, it is. The truth just feels so much more complicated than that. I’m waiting for him to make his typical comment, some joke about how hot Olivia is, how much he loves her, but he takes me by surprise.
