by Beth Reekles
“Missing your mom, huh?” Dad’s knees creaked as he sat down on the floor beside me.
“A little.”
I didn’t want him to stay; I didn’t want him to talk to me about it, or talk about her, and tell me stories, because that was only going to make me cry, and I didn’t want to cry right now. Crying wasn’t going to bring her back, I told myself, just like I’d told myself a hundred times before.
I closed the photo album but didn’t put it back just yet.
“She’d be proud of you, you know.”
I just shrugged again. For what? For still not having written my college application essay? For almost losing my best friend a few months ago because I decided to date his brother behind his back? For not being able to get a part-time job despite the number of applications I’d sent out?
“Don’t wanna talk about her, I take it?”
I shook my head, and Dad took the photo album from me to slide it back into its home in the cabinet.
“How was Levi?”
Now this was a conversation I could handle.
“Good. His sister was cute. We made brownies.”
“I hope when you say ‘we,’ you mean ‘they,’ because we all know you can’t bake, bud.”
“I mean ‘they.’ ” I smiled. “But, yeah, anyway, it was all really good. Becca—that’s Levi’s sister—she was telling me all about his ex-girlfriend. And then Levi told me that his dad had prostate cancer.”
“Oh, Christ. Is he okay now?”
“Levi said he’s in remission, but his dad lost his job and stuff, too.”
“That’s gotta be tough on them.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m guessing this is why you’re thinking about your mom a lot, then.”
I nodded, and Dad said, “Sounds like you two are becoming good friends. I’m glad to hear it, too—Lee hasn’t been around much lately.”
There was a note of reproach in his voice I didn’t fail to notice.
“He’s got Rachel now. And football.”
“And Noah’s not around either.”
I was never really sure if my dad completely approved of Noah as my boyfriend. But he never said too much about it—he said he was just happy I was happy.
Although, I’m not sure “happy” was exactly how I felt right now. I’d still barely heard from Noah all day. I was trying not to think about the missed call and texts he’d not returned, telling myself he had to be asleep.
Dad sighed heavily, with a concerned frown behind his glasses. “Is everything okay, bud?”
Not really.
But I couldn’t handle thinking about that right now. Things with Lee were…well, they’d go back to normal, or this would start to feel normal at some point. Noah would be home for Thanksgiving soon, and maybe even for the Sadie Hawkins dance, if I could work up the courage to ask him. College would work itself out, and so would a job. It’d all be totally fine.
“Sure it is. I’m just tired. I’d better get to bed. Night, Dad.”
“Good night, Elle.”
Instead of hearing him leave the office, though, I heard the cabinet door opening and the rustle of pages as he took the old photo album back out. And I was pretty sure I heard him sniffle.
Chapter 7
I was willing it to be the Thanksgiving holidays already. The days seemed to be dragging by. It wasn’t just that I was desperate to see Noah, but I felt like I already needed a break from school and my homeroom teacher asking me every other day if I’d worked on my college application essay yet (did I have a first draft I wanted him to give me a second opinion on? Not exactly…) and the mountains of homework that never seemed to get any smaller.
Lee had been spending a lot of time at football practice or hanging out with the guys from the team. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was usually with Rachel. And if Rachel wasn’t with Lee, she was pouring herself into studying—she wanted to make sure she got into Brown—and rehearsing for the drama club. (She got the part of Fantine in the end.)
So I found myself hanging out with Levi a lot. After talking about his past and his dad, and my mom, I could tell there was a shift between us. We’d bonded over something the others wouldn’t really understand.
And honestly, he was maybe the only person who made me feel at least a bit less stressed about college. He worked hard at school, but he was pretty blasé when it came to college. He had no desire to go. It wasn’t for him, he said. It was as simple as that. But he did try to help with my application essay.
The less Lee was around, the more I found myself missing Noah. One study hall, Levi and Dixon jokingly threw Skittles at me each time I mentioned Noah’s name. They ran out of candy after ten minutes.
“So sue me,” I’d snapped at them. “I miss my boyfriend.”
Sometimes it just made me feel cold and empty, like he should’ve been there with me, arms wrapped around me. Sometimes it was an ache so strong it hurt. All the phone calls in the world didn’t make up for it. And the Uber Eats of my favorite takeout he had sent to me one evening he knew I was trying to work on my college application essay had totally made me cry.
We had some school council meetings about the Sadie Hawkins dance, too, which kind of helped distract me and kind of didn’t.
It didn’t help because I couldn’t work up the courage to ask Noah—not sure I could handle the rejection when I was already missing him so much—and it did help because, duh, it was a school dance, and planning was a welcome distraction. Even if it was being held in the gym. (That just made the challenge of decorating on a low budget all the more fun.)
Lee was getting just as antsy about everything as I was. Rachel had her college application for Brown all ready to go, and it seemed like most of our friends were on their way to completing applications or at least their essays, and Lee and I were trailing behind.
Not that we talked about it much.
Actually, we didn’t really talk about much of anything anymore.
It felt like Lee was avoiding seeing me as much as Noah was avoiding talking to me about college—the more time that passed, the less he seemed to talk about classes and his friends. I kept telling myself it was no big deal and that, obviously, there was nothing to tell, but…I couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, if there was something he was hiding from me.
Luckily, there was a brief respite from everything with Jon Fletcher’s party, the first weekend of October. It was the first party of the year, aside from a few we knew the juniors had thrown, but none of us had bothered to go to those.
Maybe, I realized, when we’d thrown parties last year and all the seniors hadn’t come, it wasn’t necessarily because they thought they were too cool; it was because they didn’t have the time.
Levi offered to give me a ride.
“You don’t wanna drink?” I asked as we sat down on a patch of grass in the shade off the side of the football field at lunch on Friday. We’d got out of our last class a little early, so still had to wait for the others to turn up.
He shrugged, focusing on taking his lunch out of his backpack. “It’s not really my thing. When we all started going to parties and drinking beer last year, all this stuff started happening with my dad, and I wasn’t really in the mood to party. It wasn’t really Julie’s scene either.”
“So, what, you’ve never really been to a party?”
“I went to one at New Year’s, and one at the end of the summer, but I didn’t stick around too long. Showed up late and left early.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’re gonna love this one. You can let your hair down now, right?”
Levi tugged at the ends of his hair. He’d had it cut a couple days ago, and you could hardly see his curls anymore. “Yeah, you know, this pigtail I’ve had in for the past ten months has really been bugging me.”
I rolled my eyes and tore the crust off my sandwich. “How is your dad?”
“He’s good. Finally found a therapist he likes.”
“That’s good.”
Then Cam and Lisa showed up hand in hand, and Dixon wasn’t far behind, engrossed in his phone, so we dropped the conversation and all started talking about the party instead.
* * *
• • •
Now, standing in front of my closet with clothes on the floor all around me, I huffed for the millionth time. I had nothing to wear.
“For Christ’s sake, Shelly.” Lee sighed. “Just pick something. Levi’s going to be here soon.”
Rachel had declined going to the party because she was staying in to study for the SATs she was taking next week. She was praying for early admission to Brown, and we all knew she’d get in, even if it was just through regular admission. Her GPA was good, and she was going to kick ass in the SATs.
I sighed again, picked out a black skater skirt that went to my knees, and stepped into it. That was half an outfit, so I deemed it good progress.
My cell phone rang, and Lee answered it before I could ask him to. “Hey, Levi.” After saying “Mmm-hmm” a few times, Lee hung up. “Levi will be here in fifteen minutes.”
I picked out a pale blue silky cami and a cute yellow wraparound top I’d bought in an end-of-summer sale. “Which one?”
“Uh…the yellow one.”
“Are you sure?”
Lee sat up and gave me a flat look, silencing me. Not that he was very convincing—I was just surprised at how pissed he looked. I knew he wasn’t really happy that Rachel wasn’t going to be there tonight, but he hadn’t told her that—he understood that she wanted to stay home to study. But now he was taking his grouchiness out on me. And I felt grouchy enough on my own without his attitude.
“You know what? I’ll wear this white one.” I picked a plain white cropped T-shirt instead, turning away before I rolled my eyes at him. “I know it sucks Rachel’s not coming with us tonight, but this is going to be fun! Hanging out, us and the guys, like it used to be. And it’ll totally be worth it for her, when she gets into Brown.”
Lee was quiet—so quiet it startled me. When I glanced back, he had his hands knotted together in his lap, scowling at them.
“What? What’s up?”
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, not looking at me, “about applying to Brown. With Rachel.”
“You are? But what about Berkeley? We…we always talked about it.”
“Yeah, and now I’m talking about Brown, with Rachel. I could do it, maybe. My grades are good enough. Like you always said, school council looks good on college applications.”
I stared at him for a long while, not sure what to say.
Lee and I had always done everything together. Whenever we talked about college, it was always together, and it was always UC Berkeley.
“I might not even get in,” he said eventually. “But…you know. It might be nice. Hasn’t Noah talked to you about applying to somewhere in Boston, so you guys can be closer together?”
He hadn’t, and I’d never even thought about it before.
And I wasn’t thinking about it now: I could only think, Lee’s picking her over me. Again.
“Levi’s gonna be here soon,” he said. “I’m gonna go wait downstairs.”
I watched him go, not sure I’d ever felt like Lee was such a stranger to me.
By the time Lee and I were climbing into the back of Levi’s green Toyota, he was still quiet, withdrawn, nothing at all like his usual upbeat self. Cam was riding shotgun, and I was squashed between Dixon and Lee in the backseat.
“Who’s excited?” Dixon yelled as I wrestled with the seat belt.
“Sure,” Lee muttered.
“Wow, look who’s got a stick up their ass tonight. What’s your problem, dude?”
“Nothing, all right?”
I turned to Dixon, pulling a face, and he shrugged in response. Was this all about college? Rachel? Or was it something else entirely?
Lee started to liven up once we were actually at the party, and once he’d gotten a few cups of beer down him. Warily, I watched him refill from the keg for the third time but decided not to nag him about it. He was a responsible drinker. He always got tipsy, but rarely ever got completely wasted. I tended to be the irresponsible one.
When Rachel told us she wasn’t coming tonight, I’d been way more thrilled than I’d ever let on.
But now we were here, I was starting to wish Rachel had turned up after all. I couldn’t help but think Lee’s bad mood had to do with me and that she would have helped.
Lee seemed more interested in hanging out with the guys from the football team than any of us. A few of them walked past, yelling, “Hey, hey, Little Flynn! How’s it going, man?”
“It’s not just me, right?” I said, clutching Cam’s sleeve, looking between him and the guys. “He’s being weird.”
“He’s being a dick,” Warren agreed, and walked off.
By the time Lee was on beer refill number thirteen, he was acting as if I wasn’t even there. He pulled the tap on the keg, swaying a little as he stood, laughing at something Jon Fletcher had just said.
“Lee,” I said, “don’t you think you’ve had enough for now? It’s not even eleven o’clock….” I hiccupped. I’d only had a couple cups of beer, but it was enough to make me feel less than sober.
“Shut up, Shelly.”
When Lee told me to shut up, he was usually smiling. Now, though, he was rolling his eyes at me, grinning at Jon like it was some big joke. Jon didn’t look like he found it so funny, though, and looked at me awkwardly.
“Lee…”
“Stop trailing around after me like a lost puppy. It’s just sad. Just because Noah’s not around anymore doesn’t mean you have to moon over him around me.”
Then he barged past me, leaving me with my jaw somewhere on the kitchen floor.
“He’s just drunk,” Jon said apologetically. “He’s—”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna…” He patted my shoulder before making his way out of the kitchen and calling out to someone.
I was still standing there when some of the guys from the basketball team barged through, holding a bottle of tequila aloft, shouting, “Shots! Shots! Shots!” and, for some reason, I followed them.
Out in the hallway of Jon Fletcher’s house, the party intensified. The music was louder, different songs pouring from different open doors, and people leaning against the walls or draped around plant pots and the banister.
It was a lot hotter out here, too, and harder to move.
I walked right into someone and stumbled back into someone else, staggering unsteadily as I tried to find my footing again. The first person I’d bumped into caught my elbow.
“Hey,” I cried, seeing it was Levi. “They’re doing shots. You up for it?”
“I’m driving.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Well, you can come watch the rest of us do shots.”
“Lee told me to keep an eye on you if you got drunk—”
“I’m not drunk!” I protested. “Kind of offended, a little tipsy, but not drunk.”
“—and he told me to stop you from doing shots. The guys said you don’t handle your drink well, and, much as I don’t mind keeping an eye on you, I am not going to stand there holding your hair back while you puke into a toilet bowl.”
I argued that I wouldn’t puke, but I was too angry about Lee’s attitude tonight to take much notice of what Levi was saying. I’d lost sight of the arm holding a tequila bottle up in the air above the crowd like a neon orange flag held by a tour guide. If Lee was that concerned for me, then why did he push me away? Why wasn’t he looking out for me himself if he thought I was so much of a problem?
&
nbsp; Why hadn’t he told me he didn’t want to go to college with me anymore?
And I started to cry.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Levi said.
I sniffled, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I saw a few people glaring at Levi, like he’d done something to upset me, and I half expected him to walk away and leave me for someone else to look after.
But he took my sweaty hand and said gently that maybe some fresh air would help, and pushed through the crowds to the front door, tugging me along behind him. Outside, we went to sit on the curb in front of the house, and after a couple of minutes, I calmed down. It was mild, but after how hot it was inside the house with so many people in there, I shivered, rubbing my arms.
“Feel better now?” Levi asked me.
I wiped my fingertips under my eyes to try and get rid of any rogue mascara, and then wiped my nose with the back of my hand. My purse was inside somewhere. It had Kleenex in it, but that was no good to me right now.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Lee’s just being so mean to me,” I whined, sounding pathetic even to my own ears. “We hardly get to spend any time together now, just the two of us, and tonight was supposed to be a chance for us to hang out without Rachel or anything, and instead he’s just ignored me and I don’t know what I did to make him hate me!”
“Lee doesn’t hate you.”
“Then why’s he being so mean?”
“He’s probably just stressing out about college, like everyone else.”
“Then why isn’t he talking to me about it? You know he told me tonight he’s gonna apply to Brown, with Rachel. Like, out of nowhere. We used to spend all our time together. And now, if we make plans, he almost always cancels to spend time with Rachel, or he’s too busy with football. He’s even canceling our college plans for her.”
“Maybe it’s because of Rachel that he’s not spending much time with you, when he has free time outside of football practice. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s gotta be weird for her when her boyfriend’s best friend is a girl. And a very pretty girl, at that. Objectively speaking, of course. And, like, don’t lots of people want to go to college with their other half?”
