by Kit Frick
“A cheese monger?” Jenni asked, grinning.
“The cheesiest mongress,” Ret agreed.
Jenni’s face glowed in the blue TV light. Bex passed me the gummy worms, Channing and Jenna fell in love, and I wrapped myself in a giant knit blanket and nestled back into the couch beside Ret. I told myself everything was fine. With Matthias, with my friends. I told myself the universe was thrumming along in perfect equilibrium.
18
DECEMBER, SENIOR YEAR
(NOW)
This morning, school is a blur because my college applications are in. Thanksgiving is over, and only three weeks of Pine Brook stretch between me and winter recess. Submitting my apps gives me a new kind of hope. I’m moving forward. In a few months, I’ll be moving far, far away. I can picture the notifications popping up on the admissions systems at my five schools. New application from Ellory May Holland. Ping. I picture the campuses coming to life this morning, the admissions staff arriving to work, getting their coffees, turning on their computers. There’s only one that really matters, I want to tell them. Skip down to Holland. Read that one first.
My good mood lasts until math, when a note lands on my desk in the middle of quadratic equations. I look around, but no one catches my eye. I know I shouldn’t let my curiosity get the better of me, but I can’t help it. I unfold the paper. It’s a poor excuse for a pen sketch of an overgrown toddler, evidently supposed to be me, throwing a temper tantrum and screaming bloody murder. An adult, apparently Principal Keegan, stands over Toddler Ellory and wags his finger. The speech bubble extending from his mouth reads Ellory Holland, you can serve your suspension IN HELL!
My insides crunch and buckle. I crumple up the paper and shove it into my bag. Across the room, Tina Papadakis and Courtney Drummond erupt into a fit of barely disguised giggles. Ms. Elkins calmly asks them to stay after class, then resumes her overview of graphing for real roots, and everywhere around me, fingers fly across calculator buttons.
I try to shake it off, but the day is ruined. It’s been weeks since anyone has bodychecked me in the halls or shouted my name across the parking lot. I let my guard down, and now I’m paying for it.
* * *
At lunch, I skip the metal shop and head toward the empty green room behind the theater. I need to be alone; even the minimally intrusive company of Mr. Michaels seems like too much today. I sit on the worn couch, the only piece of actually green furniture in the small changing room, and bite into my sandwich. I want to go back to my college admission fantasies, but the green room presses on the edge of my memories, drags me back to sophomore year. Jenni and Bex were auditioning for the musical that winter, and that’s when we discovered the large and windowless storage room that held Pine Brook’s collection of costumes from decades of plays. We spent huge swaths of January afternoons trying on wigs and petticoats, sending snaps to each other, each picture wilder than the next.
I can clearly see Bex on the day she uncovered a jaw-dropping white mink coat. She’s right there in front of me, emerging like a movie star from the costume closet and spinning around for us in front of the brightly lit makeup mirrors, the white fur almost glowing against her deep brown skin. Her voice is crisp and bright in my ears: “Pine Brook is letting this go to waste. This little mink would find a much better home at Chez Bex.”
“You can’t just take that,” I said, waiting for Ret to back me up. “That coat belongs to the school. They’re going to notice a missing floor-length mink.”
We all looked to Ret to decide. It’s funny-not-funny in a bitter, acid burn kind of way. How we turned our heads like a sea of lemmings. How we trotted behind her, prepared to cliff-dive in her wake.
Ret was flipping through an old issue of Rolling Stone, her head on the armrest and boots kicked up across the back of the pea-green couch. She rested the magazine across her stomach and propped herself up to get a better view.
“I’m not condoning you wearing that dead animal,” she said, crinkling up her nose. “But I could give a shit if it hangs at the back of Pine Brook’s closet or yours.”
Ret’s attention returned to Rolling Stone, and the conversation was over. It seemed like a victory for Bex, but really, Ret had won. No matter what Bex decided, it had Ret’s blessing. Where’s the fun in that? In the end, Bex tucked the mink in the back of the closet and said maybe she’d come back for it later, when it wasn’t spitting sheets of snow and ice from the sky. She never cared about that coat, not really. But later? When there were real choices to be made, real loyalties tested? Bex was no different from Jenni. Insert GIF here of cute little lemmings plummeting down to the ocean floor.
I crumple up the bag and the rest of my sandwich and toss it in the garbage. I thought the green room was empty when I came here, but I was wrong. It’s chock full of memories, just like every other room in this place. I push through the doors that lead out onto the stage and walk across the dark floor.
All afternoon, I try to pull my shit back together. In AP English, we’re studying Faulkner yet again. I take out my book, but I can’t focus. Not with Ret sitting across from me, staring down at the desk like there’s something really interesting carved into the wood. It’s been four weeks since I left her down at the river, and nothing’s resolved. She’s kept her promise, kept her distance. But I can’t just leave this space between us like a gaping wound.
Her hair brushes down past her shoulders and ends in deep, violet tips. She’s wearing her Nirvana T-shirt, the one I finally returned last spring. She’s wearing it for me; she knows that I’ll notice. Out of nowhere, she looks up and blows me a kiss.
She is being cruel or sincere.
With Ret, it’s always been impossible to tell.
I need to face her. Soon. I chew the tip of my pen and look away.
* * *
After school, Abigail’s waiting at my locker. Thanksgiving was nice and all, but does she think we’re friends now? I walk up to her, still feeling pissy after the day’s downward spiral, not really in the mood for a pick-me-up.
“I was wondering,” she says, stepping away from my locker to let me open it. No “hi,” no pleasantries. She just dives right in like this was a conversation we started a while ago and need to finish up. “Do you ever think about why Ret picked each of us?”
I stop dialing my locker combination midspin. “What do you mean?”
“You know. Why she picked us as friends. You and me, Jenni and Bex.”
I shrug and start dialing again. Why does anyone become friends? “Common interests, I guess. She and Jenni were friends since grade school.”
“Sure, but think about it,” Abigail presses. “What did any of us really have in common with her? Or with each other for that matter?”
She’s right. We’re all pretty different when you break it down. Abigail fits in much better with her Rockettes and Leadership Council friends. Bex with the dance team girls. I don’t know who Jenni’s been hanging out with this year, but I think she might be dating this kid Elliot, who looks kind of like the oldest Hanson brother, back when they were a thing. Hair scraping his shoulders, long brown leather jacket a permanent fixture on his skinny frame.
“I don’t know, we were all a little on the fringe of things. She thought we were interesting.”
Abigail’s lips turn down at the corners and she reaches up to pull her curls into a bouncy ponytail. “Nuh-huh. Guess again.”
I empty out my backpack and exchange the contents for the books I’ll need tonight, then zip my bag shut. This is annoying. Our heart-to-heart on Thanksgiving was great, but I’m in no mood to play games.
“Why don’t you just tell me if you have it all figured out?” I snap.
Abigail flinches.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just have to get going.” I close my locker door and sling my bag across my shoulder.
“She chose us because we listened to her, Ellory. We hung on her every word. Ret didn’t pick us because we were special snowflakes. Sh
e wanted followers, not friends.”
I shake my head. No way. What does Abigail know? She stopped being Ret’s friend four years ago. Maybe that’s why Ret picked her—unflagging niceness; big, trusting eyes—but that’s Abigail. That’s not me.
“You’re wrong,” I say. Sure, Ret thrived on playing follow-the-leader, everyone knows that. And sure, we all let ourselves be led. But that’s not why we were friends. That’s just how things shook out. I make a move down the hall toward the stairs, and Abigail falls in step beside me.
“I know people think I’m naive,” she says. “I’m small, I’m a Rockette, I get it. But I’m not, okay? I know I can’t fix anything for you.”
“Then why are you here?” I ask, still walking. All this proves is that I was right on Thanksgiving—Abigail doesn’t hold the answers. “I mean, we had our talk, so thanks. But why do you care so much?”
“Because I get what it’s like to feel totally alone,” she says. “And I get what Ret did to people. What she’s still doing to you.”
I stop at the door to the stairs and turn to look right at her. What could Abigail possibly know about Ret and me?
“Thanks, but I don’t need any more of your help,” I say. Then I push through the doors into the stairwell and leave Abigail standing there. I’m not trying to be mean, but I’m not anyone’s charity case either.
* * *
I speed through my work in the metal shop and hurry outside to the student lot. Then I throw the Subaru into drive and head downtown. I don’t have a plan, don’t have anywhere to be, I just need to go, to move, to be anywhere but here, stewing.
Driving across the bridge, the radio blasting and the water flashing with the last of the already fading sun, I feel antsy, on edge. Crossing the river used to feel more transformative. Now I need something more to transform me. As I drive, I can’t get Abigail’s words out of my head. Ret didn’t pick us because we were special snowflakes. She wanted followers, not friends. I don’t want it to be true, but I can’t shake the nagging suspicion that Abigail’s right, that she might have some answers after all.
I drive past the restaurants and bars, further into the East Shore. The streets darken, the sidewalks are bare. I keep driving, aimless. When I turn down a narrow side street, I realize I’m back on the block with Capital Harvest—a reminder of the promise I made to myself on Thanksgiving. That I’d give Ret up, for real this time.
I pull over and shift the car into park. I may have left Abigail behind in the hallway, but the echo of her voice is right here, all around me. She chose us because we listened to her, Ellory. We hung on her every word. No. Ret chose me because she could see inside me, right down to the core. I was her favorite, her secret-keeper, Sleeping Beauty to her Snow White, Serena to her Blair.
Even as I think the words, they don’t quite ring true. Damn Abigail and her unsolicited soul searching. I try again. Why did Ret pick me? What did she see that day in ninth-grade English when she looked inside my eyes all the way to my heart?
A blank canvas, begging to be filled up.
I swallow. Deep down in my stomach, crackle, pop. I was her favorite. The most eager, the most naive, a girl thirsty for every drop of truth about who I was, what made me tick. I thought Bex and Jenni were the lemmings, but the biggest lemming was me. And Ret could see it. She saw me. And then I let her tell me who to be.
19
NOVEMBER, JUNIOR YEAR
(THEN)
The bed of Ricky Cole’s truck was cushioned with heavy wool blankets and the old linens that live in the back of the closet for guests. Thanksgiving and its collection of aunties and their families had come and gone, so I had taken advantage of all the second-string bedding at my disposal.
Then I had commandeered Ricky’s truck—which Matthias was legitimately borrowing for the evening—and turned its bed into a kind of homage to camping, complete with sleeping bags, an abundance of pillows, Jenni’s homemade trail mix, and a big cooler stuffed with soda and three kinds of dip.
Matthias rolled over onto his back. “Toss me a pillow?”
I reached behind me and grabbed one. “Incoming.”
He tucked it behind his head and propped his feet up onto my legs, which were crisscrossed on top of the Hello Kitty sheet from my third-grade bedroom. An unsupervised camping trip was out of the question, but City Island wasn’t a bad substitute. Right in the middle of the Susquehanna, between the East and West Shores, City Island was home to minor league baseball (go Senators!), water golf, horse-drawn carriage rides, and paddleboat tours in the summer, and a whole lot of nothing during the off-season. Especially by late November. You could pull up right to the shore of the river in the empty stadium lot and pretend you were in the wilderness. Almost. The air smelled like damp leaves and river water with a dash of hay and horse. I leaned back on my elbows and breathed in deep.
The sky was perfectly clear in that prefrost, last gasp of fall kind of way. Head tilted up, I drank in the infinite spray of little lights. “You can really see all the stars tonight.”
“I wish we could just stay here. All night.” Matthias ran his fingers through my hair. His touch was slow and easy, like we really did have the whole night, and then all the nights after this one.
I glanced over at the sleeping bags, which I had brought along mostly for the ambience. Maybe Ricky and Rebecca wouldn’t notice if Matthias didn’t come home, but there was no way my parents would have gone for a night spent under the stars, even if it was my boyfriend’s birthday. Probably especially because it was my boyfriend’s birthday. I tucked my chin into my scarf and waved a gloved hand up at the sky. “There’s Orion. I can always find his belt.”
Matthias followed the line of my glove. It was only six, but the night was closing in earlier and earlier each day. “Doesn’t looking at the stars make you feel like a little kid?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know how you used to think that wherever you were in the world, you’d see the same stars? Like I could be here and you could be in China, and we’d see the same exact sky at night?”
I tilted my head back toward Orion and chewed on my lower lip. I’d never been to China, but we had taken a couple family vacations when I was a kid—the Grand Canyon, Disney. Had I ever looked up at the night sky from Arizona or Florida? Had I paid any attention?
I guess I was quiet too long, because Matthias shifted, sitting up, peering down into my face. “You do know that we see different stars in different hemispheres, right?”
I shook my head. With anyone else, I’d be embarrassed, but with Matthias, I felt safe. When we were together, all the insecurities that piled up when we were apart just crumbled into dust. Sometimes I wondered if I’d really felt them at all.
“It’s pretty cool, actually. It’s how sailing ships used the stars to navigate the seas. So for example, in Australia they can see a constellation called the Southern Cross, but we can’t see it here. And we can only see the Big Dipper in the northern hemisphere.” Matthias may have been a terrible student, but when something sparked his interest, he soaked up facts like a sponge. Music. Cordelia. And I guess stars.
“What about Orion?”
“I think you can see him everywhere. He’s close to the celestial equator.”
“Then he can be ours. Clearly we should lay claim to some stars on your birthday, and I want to be able to see them everywhere.”
He pulled me toward him. His hair tickled my skin as he pressed his lips against my lips. “I love you, Ellory Holland.”
I pulled back just far enough to open my eyes and look directly into his. His lashes were so long, it was hardly fair.
“I love you too.” The words felt easy. By now, we’d said them a hundred times. A thousand. I was locked in his gaze, the little flecks of green glinting in his eyes. Matthias was shining down on me, but I was the one who glowed.
I looked out across the river to a cluster of East Shore lights. I was used to seeing downtown from the
West Shore, driving toward the Market Street Bridge. Tonight, from our vantage point on City Island, everything was even closer, like we were looking at the lights on zoom. The city was small, but the river made it special at night. In the dark, you could almost believe there was something thrumming beneath the surface.
“I almost didn’t let Ret drag me to that party,” I said.
“What party?”
“I was just thinking back to last June. We owe our happily ever after to Dave Franklin, for hosting that classic celebration of adolescent debauchery, and to Ret Johnston, for making me drive her there.”
“To Ret.” He lifted his can of root beer up toward the sky, as if he were clinking glasses with Orion.
“And Dave,” I said, snuggling into his neck.
I could feel his body tense up against mine. He tipped his head back and downed the remaining root beer in one gulp, then tossed the can toward the front of the truck bed. Little drops of soda sprayed across Hello Kitty.
“Sorry, I’ll wash that,” he mumbled. He ran his fingers through his hair, loosening the effect of whatever product had been holding the strands in place. A few pieces flopped down across his forehead.
“What did I say?”
“Nothing, it’s not you. Dave’s been kind of a dick lately, that’s all. Let’s talk about something else.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver flask he always carried to shows, then took a long swallow. By this time, he’d stopped offering to pass it my way. Someone had to be the designated driver. I tried not to think about the nights I wasn’t with him, how he got home.
“What’s going on with Dave?” I reached over and put my hand on his. Even through my glove, I could feel how cold his fingers were, how tightly they gripped the steel. He flinched, just slightly, but didn’t pull away.
“Meeting you there—really meeting you—that was the best thing about my whole summer.”
“Okay.”
