by Kit Frick
“When I’m with you, I don’t have to think about Dave.”
“I don’t get it—you guys are friends,” I said.
Matthias let go of my hand and raised the flask to his lips again. With each question I asked, he took another deep swallow, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t handle one more secret.
“Did something happen? You can tell me.”
He wiped his sleeve roughly against his mouth and tossed the flask down in the truck bed. Then he reached out, cupping my cheekbones in both his hands, and pulled my face toward him. He pressed his lips hard against mine, like he was trying to seal them shut. It didn’t feel warm or thrilling. It felt harsh and raw, like anger. I pulled back, gasping.
“You can’t just kiss me like that.” My lips were stinging, my voice rising. “We’re supposed to be on the same side here. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Fuck, Ellory. Why do we have to tell each other every single thing?”
Everything that happened next was a rush of movement and sound. Matthias was standing up, jumping out of the truck bed, and then I was following him, three steps behind. A minute later he was in the cab of the truck, the keys in the ignition, and I was standing outside, banging on the door.
“What are you doing?” I screamed. “You can’t just leave.”
“Get in,” he shouted at me through the window glass.
“Don’t be an asshole! You just drank like five shots of whiskey.”
He slammed his fist into the steering wheel, and the horn squealed loud and sharp. I jumped back from the truck.
“Fine, don’t get in,” he yelled.
“What, are you just going to leave me here?” I shouted back. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, and I swiped at my nose with my glove. Matthias didn’t say anything, just slammed his fist into the horn again.
Who was this person? Ten minutes ago, we’d been eating trail mix and claiming stars. Now my boyfriend was screaming at me from the driver’s seat of his dad’s truck in some sort of whiskey-fueled rage. I’d seen him drink before, plenty of times. But he’d never been like this.
“Please don’t,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control. “Just let me drive.” I took a small step back toward the truck, then another. He turned to look at me through the glass. I must have looked pathetic, creeping toward the truck like a mouse, snot and tears streaming down my face.
It was like a string inside Matthias snapped. He slouched back into the seat, dropping his hands from the wheel. His head slumped forward. A minute later, the driver’s side door swung slowly open, and he climbed out.
“I’m so sorry.” He collapsed against me, wrapping his body around mine in a head-to-toe hug. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I didn’t say anything. I let him hug me for an eternity that was probably only a minute, then I slipped into the driver’s seat before he could change his mind. Matthias climbed in the other side.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I took the key out of the ignition and slipped it into my pocket. I wanted a tissue, but my bag was still in the back so I swiped at my face with my glove again.
“You know how there are things about yourself that you wish would just go away? And if you don’t talk about them, you can at least pretend they don’t exist?” he asked.
I didn’t know. I wanted to share everything with him.
When I didn’t answer, he continued. “There’s stuff I didn’t want to tell you because . . . you’re so good, Ellory. So perfect. We’re so good. I didn’t want to mess that up.”
“And whatever that was, that didn’t just mess things up?”
“Fuck, I know.” He slammed his head back into the headrest and tilted his eyes toward the ceiling.
There were so many secrets swirling between us. His secrets. He had them all, and I had none.
Finally, he spoke up again. “My dad doesn’t just drink. He does other stuff too, coke mostly.”
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Dave’s his dealer.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the words dissipating into the November dark. I’d always thought Dave and Matthias were kind of an odd match. They dressed the same, with a tousled kind of indie disregard, but Dave was wild parties and family money and a revolving fan club of freshmen girls. His life was everything Matthias’s wasn’t.
Matthias kept staring up at the truck ceiling, refusing to meet my eye. “Ricky installed some sound equipment in the Franklins’ house a couple years ago. He thinks it’s hilarious, like they’re really friends. He’ll tell me he’s going to meet up with ‘our friend Dave.’ He’s totally obvious about it. It’s sad, you know? To Dave, he’s just another fucked up old dude who used to be in a band once.”
“So why do you hang out with him at all? You have the Smurf. You have me. Screw Dave Franklin.”
“It’s complicated, Ellory. Dave and I go way back, before the whole Ricky thing. Before he was dealing. There are other reasons too.”
I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t say anything, and finally he had to tilt his head away from the ceiling. To look at me.
“Other reasons?”
“For one, Dave knows exactly how messed up my dad is, and someday he’s going to let it slip. Someday, he’s going to tell the wrong person, and the whole school will be talking about how my dad and Dave bump coke together on the weekends. It’s in my best interest to stay good with Dave. Keep an eye on him. In a few years, Cordelia’s going to be at Pine Brook. And I’m not going to be there to protect her. The less dirt people have on the Coles, the better.”
“Okay, I get that. And two?”
Matthias stared at me blankly. He was totally calm now, but I could still see the whiskey ruddy in his cheeks, hear it thick in his voice. I pressed anyway.
“You said there were reasons. Multiple.”
“Maybe another time.”
So this was all I was going to get tonight. I felt a little afraid of the boy sitting next to me in the truck, but mostly I felt afraid for him. I wanted to unzip my skin and let him curl up inside. I wanted to punch Dave Franklin, never mind that I’d never punched anyone in my entire life. Most of all, I wanted to lock up Ricky Cole until he dried out and apologized for being such a colossal screwup. Instead, I took off my glove and placed my hand on top of Matthias’s hand, lacing my fingers through his.
He leaned his head against my shoulder. “How are your hands so warm?” he asked.
“Gloves. All the kids are wearing them.”
I could feel him smile against my collarbone. “I’ll have to get a pair of those.” He was silent for a minute. “When I’m with you, I want to forget about Dave and my dad and everything else. You’re my escape.”
“I want more than that,” I said. “I want you to make it up to me.”
He lifted his head from my shoulder to look me in the eye. “Anything.”
“You have to trust me,” I said. “You can escape into a cave, right? You can hide. But you can also shout your secrets there. I can hold them.” I could feel my heart pulsing in my throat. I needed something good to come out of this disaster of a night. I needed things to be different from now on.
“Okay, cave girl,” he said finally, whispering into my neck. “I’ll try to be better. I’ll try to shout a few more secrets your way.”
I tilted my head down and found his lips, and we were kissing again, softly this time, carefully, as if we didn’t want to break each other, as if there was only so much this night could hold, and we had reached its limit. He’d promised to try. I had asked him to trust me, so that meant I had to do the same. I let myself sink into the softness of his skin.
20
DECEMBER, SENIOR YEAR
(NOW)
It takes me most of December to get up the nerve, but on Friday afternoon—the last day before winter break—I make sure everything’s clean and in it
s place in the metal shop, and then I zip my coat up tight and head down to the river. This time, I drive all the way there and park across the street from the gap in the guardrail. There will be no spiked vanilla lattes today, no swilling amaretto from the bottle. Besides, it’s too cold to be out here long, too cold to walk home after.
As I cross the street, I wonder if the bite in the air will have pushed Ret inside, to a new spot where I’ll never find her. But when I get to the bottom of the bank and shove through the grass, she’s there, wrapped in a big flannel blanket, looking toasty warm with her earbuds tucked beneath a red wool hat and her flask nestled in her lap. She looks surprised to see me. Considering it’s been well over a month, I can’t blame her.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” She doesn’t move, just peers up at me from beneath her snow hat. Her voice is thick with whiskey or sweet liqueur or whatever she has in there today, but there’s a sharp edge to her words. This is going to be barrels of fun.
But it’s also what I need. I can’t take devoted, cajoling Ret today, her honey-toned flattery. I need her to be mean.
“We need to talk,” I say.
She pats the grass next to her, but I don’t take the bait. If she wants to be even close to eye level for this, she’s going to have to stand.
She doesn’t move. “Go on.”
“I’m not coming down here anymore,” I say. “I can’t.”
Ret turns her head away from me and unscrews the cap on her flask. Typical.
“You came here to tell me that you’re not coming here anymore.” Her voice is flat. “That’s classic. You know over the past six weeks, I kind of figured that out.”
“Then why are you still here?” I ask. “It’s thirty-six degrees. We’re officially on winter break. Why are you getting buzzed down by the river, waiting for me?”
Her head jerks toward me. “You think I’m waiting for you?”
I know she is. Once Ret sets her mind to something, she doesn’t give up. There are plenty other places she could go to hang out. But she told me the river.
I remind myself I came here for a reason, that I’m not a quitter either. I need us to talk about the things we swore we wouldn’t. No wallowing in the past. But this isn’t wallowing. I need her to take some of this blame away from me, so I can find some way—any way—forward without her. Because there’s no Ret & Ellory anymore. We’ve both been fooling ourselves for months.
“I want you to admit you screwed up,” I say, ignoring her question. “I need to hear you say it.”
Ret sucks in a sharp breath. “Jesus, Ellory. Which time?”
“Last spring. All of it.” I hear the coldness in my voice. Ret never apologized because I never gave her a chance. But now I need to hear the words that could wash away some of this regret. Just a little bit. For the party I skipped, the flames that turned to spluttering smoke, the fight I couldn’t walk away from. The parts of the story that only we remember.
She stands up slowly, the flannel blanket falling down around her ankles. She’s not even wearing a coat, just jeans and a long, striped sweater.
“Aren’t you freezing?” I ask.
She slides up her sleeves, as if to make a point. “Not exactly one of my worries.”
For a moment, we stare at each other, eyes flashing. I’m towering over her—even her chunky black boots are no match for my genes—but we both know she holds all the power. Even now.
“Everything was for you,” she says finally. “I told you, I only wanted what was best. So if that means it was all my fault, fine.”
It’s not a real apology. Or maybe it is, it’s just not anything better than what I got last spring. The same words, recycled eight months later like they’ll mean something different now. But what did I expect? A different Ret? I should have known this is all she has to give. I glance down at her bare arms where the sweater is shoved up around her elbows.
“Where’s your bracelet?” I ask. I’ve been wanting to say it for months. Now’s my chance, because after today, I’m not coming back.
She looks puzzled, like for a moment she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then her eyes soften, and I put the pieces together before the words are out of her mouth. “Veronica,” she says. “You know my mom, always borrowing my things.”
“Oh.” My mom still thinks she’s twenty-five. I picture Ms. Johnston in Ret’s bedroom, lifting the bracelet off the dresser, sliding it onto her wrist. I’ve seen her wearing it on her way out of United Methodist. The band had looked so different on her wrist, I hadn’t made the connection until now.
Suddenly, I’m not mad at Ret anymore. For her half apology. For all the things she should be apologizing for. And for the first time in a long time, I’m not mad at myself either. The sadness is still there, for all the things we used to be to each other, for all the things we’ll never be again. The sadness will probably never leave. And I’ll never get the apology I’m looking for, the one that would set me free.
But I’m ready to move on.
“You should probably find a new spot,” I say. “It’s only going to get colder. Or stay here, but don’t do it on my account.”
Ret sniffs, then snatches the blanket from the ground and wraps it around her shoulders. “It’s always for you, Ellory May,” she says, refusing to make this easy.
Deep down, I know Abigail was right: Ret needs me to trust her, follow her, to believe her implicitly. But that’s only half of the story. The other half is this—Ret loved me. She still loves me. Both halves are right here in front of me, complicated and messy and neither less true than the other.
I never asked for easy. I walk away.
When I scramble up the side of the bank toward the road, I know Ret won’t follow. I remind myself that I need to come back here with a trash bag some day over break. Something tells me Ret won’t be doing any cleanup. Something tells me she won’t be coming back here either. But she’ll still be around.
As I walk across the street toward the car, my stomach floods with an intense mix of relief and panic. I have to find a way to live through the rest of senior year without Ret. I hop onto the hood of the Subaru and bend over at the waist, waiting for the fluttering, sticky swamp to settle into its usual crackle, my blackened insides crunching together. But there’s nothing. No crackle. No crumbling ash.
Just regular old queasiness, which rumbles through my gut, then subsides.
The air is sharp and cold against my skin. My very soft, warm skin, wrapped around my squishy, pink insides. I take a deep breath, gulping in the icy air, letting it sting my lungs all the way down to my stomach. No cracking. No ash. It’s gone.
Oh my god.
21
DECEMBER, JUNIOR YEAR
(THEN)
I was sitting in the Pine Brook auditorium, Ret to my left and Bex and Jenni to my right. We were to be talked at for the next hour on How to Jump-Start Our College Application Process. Every member of the junior class was either already slumped down in their chairs or still shuffling in through the doors at the back.
“You know they scheduled this now so we’d feel like apathetic slackers over winter break.” Ret blew a big Margarita Burst bubble and smacked her gum back between her lips. She was asking to get caught, but the authority figures were too busy poking at a laptop on stage while some frazzled-looking A/V Club kid tried to make them stop helping.
“No way.” Jenni leaned across Bex and me to look Ret in the eye. “There’s a Hell’s Kitchen marathon on Sunday, and no school-sponsored guilt trip is interrupting my one-on-one time with Gordon.”
“I can’t believe you watch that show,” Ret said. That was all it took to send Jenni slouching back in her chair. Ret holding the controls, pushing the buttons. Every. Single. Time. My shoulders tensed, and I tried to make myself relax.
“Get over it.” I thought Bex was talking to Jenni at first, but then she squeezed Jenni’s hand. She turned toward Ret, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, a challenge. “You k
now you wouldn’t kick Gordon Ramsay out of bed.”
“Gordon Ramsay is old,” Ret pushed back. Gordon Ramsay was old. Super old, and married. But this wasn’t about him, it was about taking sides, like always. And I just couldn’t. Ever since the fight in the truck, I’d been on edge. For the past three weeks, even the regular back-and-forth between my friends that was more banter than bicker made my jaw clench. Their voices volleyed in my ears, transforming into the sound of his shouts, his fist against the truck horn, my own choking sobs.
“Just stop,” I burst out. Everyone shut up and stared at me. “Who cares, right? Why does everything have to be a thing?”
“Jesus, Ellory. Sensitive much?” Ret asked.
Everyone was quiet for a minute. “Sorry,” I said. “Can we just talk about something else?” I let my hair fall forward over my eyes and hoped no one noticed the hot patches spreading across my cheeks. What was wrong with me? It was just talk, just some ridiculous TV show. I felt like a freak. Like a baby.
A minute later, something whirred through the sound system, and a giant image of Principal Keegan’s chow-boxer mix chewing a squeaky duck floated across the projection screen. Sorry, I mouthed again toward Ret, and she made a swishing motion with her hand, releasing my outburst into the air, gone.
“I guess we’re in business,” Principal Keegan quipped into the microphone. I tried to focus, but it was hard to take seriously a man whose hair was flying up in yellow wisps like he’d just stuck his thumb in a socket. I drew in a deep breath and tried to get it together. Be normal, Ellory. Grow up.
The A/V kid scurried over to the laptop to bring up the PowerPoint. Soon, Principal Keegan’s voice filled the auditorium with an itinerary for mapping out the next twelve months until college applications would be due. I let myself zone out.
I would be going to Portland State; I had my plan. The more important itinerary wasn’t about college; it was much more personal. And immediate. In the days since Matthias’s birthday, everything between us had been careful, timid. We were suspended on the blade of a knife, afraid to make any sudden movements. The fight was with me all the time, casting a shadow across everything, even things that had nothing to do with him. We needed to get past it, and fast.
