by Amy McNamara
Just before he steps out, he turns back like he’s going to say something, but then he just looks at me a minute and gives me a small smile.
“Yeah?” I ask, trying to blink past the raging flames crackling off my cheeks.
“Nah, nothing,” he says, shaking his head.
“See you tomorrow,” I say, because I can’t shut up, can’t stand here in silence for the two seconds it takes for him to walk out the door.
“Yep.”
He straightens his posture slightly, looking a little flushed himself, and takes a small step backward, like he needs to look at me from a different angle or something. Then he goes.
I watch him lope down the hall. Sometimes the secret foxes find each other. He glances at me just before he steps in the elevator, and this time we both grin. Toothy, huge, and stupid.
Fern Code for Soul Location
MY PHONE’S HOT IN MY BAG, Jack’s sent me so many texts.
You there?
Call me.
Can I come up?
Hello?
Evelicious . . .
They devolve into call me, call me, call me times a thousand, like he copied and pasted it into infinity. Jack doesn’t have to worry about burning through his data plan. Alice is probably standing next to him seething while he sends endless texts.
Whatever. They can have each other.
I toss my phone onto my bag and head to the kitchen for a snack. I meant to make a new tray of granola last night but watched Simpsons on my laptop instead.
My phone buzzes again.
I’m on my way up.
Before I can text back, I hear Jack’s voice.
“Eves!” He bangs on the door with the flat of his hand.
“Jack?” I head back out to the door.
“Followed your neighbor in.” His voice is lower than normal, brusque, gruff.
I flip the lock and fling open the door.
“Sorry I’m late.” He pushes past me, talking super loud and walking with a weird un-Jack-like swagger.
“Late for what?” I look down the hall to see who he’s putting the show on for.
He stops near the kitchen and looks down the hall, then he turns to me again.
“Gray’s not here?” he whispers.
“What is your problem?”
“Is he here?”
“He’s gone,” I stage-whisper back, then turn to close the door, possibly a little harder and louder than I need to.
Jack’s shoulders drop and he looks kind of relieved.
“Why are you acting like such a weirdo?” I snap.
“Me? Hmm, that’s interesting . . . let’s examine which one of us was just in a screaming fight with someone else, shall we?”
Alice. I was trying to forget that.
He drops his bag, kicks off his shoes, then flops on our couch, just like he’s done a million other times. He hasn’t been here in so long, his sudden presence feels like a loss.
“Were you fighting over me?” he asks with a grin. “Alice and I had just been talking about you.”
I wonder who initiated that conversation. No. I don’t. I close my eyes a second.
“Where’d she go? Ditch you in Chinatown?”
He lifts his head to fluff the pillow beneath it and narrows his eyes at me. “We didn’t go. Since when do you and Alice hate each other?”
I shake my head. Embarrassment settles on me, heavy. Alice called me out. Thinking about it makes me feel sick.
“Snack?” I ask, popping in to the kitchen for Cheez Doodles.
Jack opens the bag with a dusty orange pop.
“Why are you here?” I grab a handful and sit at the far end of the couch. “I don’t want to talk about Alice or work on my Investigation.” I’m itching to draw.
“Can’t a guy drop by?”
“You haven’t dropped by in ages.”
I hate him for it, and after whatever that was with Alice, I want him to leave, but here he is, still cute, stretched out there at the end of my couch, licking orange crumbs from his fingers.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says, sounding sincere.
“Yep! Fine.” I’m defensive.
“Did Gray come up?”
I say nothing.
Jack deflates.
I stand and take two clementines from the bowl on the dinner table.
“So, you guys . . . ?” He sounds slightly choked.
“What’s it to you?”
“You hurt me, girl.” He makes it a joke, frowning like a clown, pressing his hand to his heart.
I drop back onto the couch.
Some days are no-man’s-land.
Alice screamed at me, but before I could think about that, Theo was in my house, and nearly kissed me, then didn’t. Now this, with Jack.
Everything feels off, even our apartment, with its cracked plaster and tired furniture, like things are sucking up all the light, not giving any back. I’d have to map someplace really small and weird, like the inside of the toothpaste cap or the toe of a shoe at the bottom of my closet, in order to get at how precisely tiny, wrong, and lost I feel.
“Wow,” Jack says, staring at me. “I’d hate to be inside your head right now.”
My cheeks flush. Hell is spending time with people who know you too well. I try to make my face expressionless and toss him a clementine, which he snatches from the air with a grace that never fails to impress. Tell me to catch something and it’ll hit me in the head. Every time.
Jack peels the fruit and keeps staring. Mom’s out-of-control hanging fern spins on a draft through the window behind him. My mom is good with plants. They’re quiet observers, like her. The fern droops one frond finger down in an arc over his head, bobbing on the slight breeze, as if it’s pointing to his center. A living map. Here. Right here. Plant signal, fern code for soul location.
I forget to keep my face blank.
“What?” Jack follows my eyes and reaches up but misses the fern. He’s vain now that he’s cute. “Something in my hair?”
“No.” I close my eyes.
Theo was flirting with me. I’m sure of it. I’ve watched enough guys work their way toward Emma over the last year or two to know it when I see it. So what went wrong?
“Eves.”
Jack’s coiled peel lands in my lap like a springy snake. I toss it back. His face is opaque.
“Please. Really. Don’t hang out with that dude.”
Of course he knows I’m thinking about Theo. Jack walks in to the most private parts of my heart because the door’s wide open. It’s been open to him for years.
“Not this again.” I slide my thumbnail into the bright-orange flesh of my own clementine. An oily burst of citrus sprays my cheeks.
“He’s bad news.” Jack bounces his knee. The parquet squeaks staccato under his foot like a panicked mouse. E-e-e, e-e-e.
“You know, this day has been weird, and I have stuff to do.” I stand up.
“Wait. I didn’t tell you the whole story.” He looks serious.
I sit again. My heart clops heavy. Jack’s eyes are dark. Here’s where he tells me Theo’s a pervy weirdo with a closet full of wedding dolls or a fingernail clipping collection.
“I know why Theo left camp. It was screwed up.”
“You said you didn’t.” I pull my knees into my chest.
“Well, I do.”
“So you lied.”
He lets out an exasperated blast. “Why can’t you trust me? No one liked him. He was an arrogant asshole. Jeb and Chase couldn’t stand him. Kareem tried to get to know the dude, but even he gave up. And Kareem’s a saint.”
Once Jack grew out of his baby fat, the kinds of people who ignored him before were suddenly his friends. Popular guys like Jeb and Chase and Kareem.
“I need water.” He grabs the half-eaten bag of Cheez Doodles and his peel and heads to the kitchen.
The sticky knob on the sink squeaks on. Jack’s washing his hands. He acts like a regular slob, bu
t he’s a closet clean freak, picky neat.
I finish my fruit and write “LIAR” on my leg in strips of bitter pith. I’m not sure who I’m accusing, but it resembles an intelligent coral formation.
Jack comes out, so I wipe the word away, roll the pith into a tight ball.
“I don’t see how Kareem, Jeb, and Chase deciding Theo wasn’t cool makes Theo a freak. Seems more like an indictment of those guys.” I hesitate for a second, Alice’s face flashing before me, a fierce mirror. Then I go on. “You just want to make me feel bad about Theo.”
Jack’s chin pulls back. “Evie, the guy almost killed Jeb.”
“What!?” I laugh. “That’s insane.”
“That’s why he left.”
I’m torn between wanting to know everything and telling Jack to leave and never come back.
“Shut up,” I say. “You’re jealous of Theo.”
Jack’s face freezes a second.
“Wasps,” he says, leaning back like that explains it. “Guy’s a sinister mastermind. We wake up one morning and he’s gone, right? Cleared out. So we all go out to the lab, but when Jeb opens his lockbox, it’s full of wasps. They did not just set up in there overnight. He planted them.”
I laugh again. It’s so stupid, I can’t help myself.
“Wait.” Jack shakes his head. “Theo did it! He poured soda on Jeb’s stuff, and like a million wasps or bees or something came and were crawling all over everything. When Jeb opened his box he got stung like sixty times. It was insane. His face was all lumpy and disgusting. He went into anaphylactic shock.”
“Wait. So he was allergic? And Theo knew?”
“It doesn’t matter. When you get stung that many times—he’s allergic now,” Jack says, exasperated. “The EMTs barely got there in time. Jeb’s tongue was so swollen he couldn’t breathe. His whole face was puffed up.” Jack shudders. “Anyhow, he has to carry this EpiPen thing around with him everywhere now. If he gets stung again, he could die.”
“Seriously, Jack, you think Theo is some kind of bee whisperer? You were there with him? You saw him pour the soda? Or did he do some kind of trick to lure the bees in?” I shake my head. “You’re insane. He probably left to get away from your asshole friends.”
“Ooh. You never swear,” Jack says. “You must really be into him. Look. I don’t know how he did it, but the dude is a ball of rage. Look at his face! He probably beat the crap out of someone. I’m telling you, Eves, this is the quiet before—Theo Gray’s an angry, friendless loser, and he’s going to fuck with your head or worse. Besides, where has he been since then? I’ve been asking around and no one knows anything about him. He’s probably been in juvie or something.”
“Juvie.” I laugh, but it comes out bitter. “Like you’d know anything about juvie.”
“This isn’t like you, hanging out with some random guy.”
Jack looks at me, serious at first, then kind of pleading and cute.
“Time to go,” I say, tilting my head toward the door and relishing this new feeling of power.
“Don’t go out with this guy.”
Jack holds my gaze another second, then stands to leave.
I stare back at him, but for a second my heart’s in two places.
What if he’s right? Theo’s too easy, unreal. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me. I’m no Emma. I don’t meet random cute guys and get swept off my feet. But then again . . . Theo.
I try for a deep breath, but it catches.
“Eves?” He senses my wavering.
“I heard you,” I say, shaking my head.
Jack doesn’t want me to see Theo.
Any other day, this would be the best news ever. But I’m already counting the minutes until I see Theo again.
Black Hole
I CAN’T SLEEP. TOO MANY SCENES on the insides of my eyelids.
InSANE day, I text Em. How’d it go w/Fr. G?
Nothing comes back. I send her a GIF of a puppy jumping.
Hope you’re okay.
Still nothing.
I roll onto my stomach and tuck my head under my pillow. Why is it so hard to shut your mind off?
I flop onto my back again, grab my glasses and my phone. Em’s probably already asleep. I’ll send the highlights. I number them like a list.
1. Alice attacked me.
2. !?!
3. Theo came over & asked me out . . .
4. Then Jack showed up.
5. Claims Theo’s some kind of maniac.
What is the DEAL with this day? Hope, hope, hope
you’re okay.
I add a thousand kisses and hugs, then put my phone away.
I’m just starting to relax into the pillow when my phone vibrates on the ledge.
She’s sick of you hating her.
All the air leaves me. I’m compressing like a black hole, swallowing light at my center.
Maybe that’s what I am, made of darkness. It would explain a lot.
In defensive reflex, I text, she bugs you too! but delete it.
Emma used to be annoyed by Alice’s presence, she was the first one to mock her lack of flair. She called her Lump for a while—not to her face, but still.
Only now I’m the one keeping it going. I feel deeply, darkly stupid, lemmingly mindless.
Alice nailed it. Nailed me, her accusation landing in my softest spot. She totally threatens me. Has done since the very first second Emma laid eyes on her. And now they’re friends, bonding, banding together against me, and really it’s all my fault.
I start to cry. I don’t want to lose Em. Can’t.
As if she senses my despair, Em sends another text. Cheerier, chatty. Excited about my date. Makes fun of Father George and her parents.
I can barely read her words. Today was hard for both of us, but apparently we’re not going to talk about it.
I answer in emoji.
Laughing face, one tear.
Endless hearts.
A few dogs, then finally some z’s.
Docent at the Cloud Cemetery
“MAYBE I WON’T GO,” I say to Em at lunch.
We’re at Wharton Playground, lying side by side on the picnic table, trying to stay warm in the weak sun. Neither of us has said another word about my run-in with Alice. I’m pretending it didn’t happen.
“What? Of course you’ll go,” she scoffs. “Don’t be a freak.”
“I miss my dad,” I say without thinking. I don’t even know where that came from. It’s not at all what I planned to say.
She lifts her head to look at me, the red tassels on her hat dropping down behind her ears. Her new eyeliner is all smudgy and dark blue and against her pale skin makes her eyes look like ice ponds in the middle of a snowstorm.
I shove my hands in my pockets. I need to say this to her, but I’m not sure why. “It’s not like Patrick, I know that, ’cause I mean, what exactly am I missing? It’s not like I know. Pretty much all my memories of my dad are from pictures. At this point he’s kind of nobody, someone who makes my mom cry, but I keep thinking if he were still around, like if I’d grown up with him, I wouldn’t be wigging out about tonight or worry about love so much—I’d be less of a freak. And who would my mom be? I can’t even picture that.”
I don’t tell her that I woke up in the middle of the night last night to find my mom asleep on the floor outside my bedroom door for the second time. I can’t say that part out loud. Compared to a mom like Mrs. Sullivan—it’s too weird. Embarrassing. Scary. I climbed over my mom’s curled form, went to get water from the bathroom, then went back to bed. I didn’t want to wake her up in case she couldn’t get back to sleep again. When my alarm went off for school, it was like something I dreamed. She was in the shower and acting like everything was normal.
Emma sniffs. Scoffs.
“You think you’d talk to your dad about love?”
I shrug, my shoulder moving against hers.
She laughs without sounding happy. “Trust me, if he were here you prob
ably wouldn’t be talking to him about anything. For sure not stuff like that. He’d be like every other dad, controlling you and telling you all his stupid rules and requirements are in your best interest.”
I sigh.
Emma puts her head back down next to mine and looks at the sky a minute, quiet.
Then she points up at the clouds.
“Okay. So, that’s the cemetery,” she says with a sweep of her arm, like she’s some kind of graveyard docent.
“What?”
“See all those big headstones?” she insists.
I go along with it.
“Those”—and here she adopts a British accent, her voice suddenly old, proper, and warbly—“mark some of our most prestigious patrons.”
“Patrons?” I laugh.
“Sleepers, call them what you will.” She laughs, sounding like herself, then clears her throat to return to proper. “That one over there was commissioned to resemble angels’ wings.”
I follow her arm, squinting into the low sky and its gathering of cement-colored lumps.
No angels. Not even with the best imagination. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Emma won’t even visit the cemetery where they buried Patrick.
She rolls her head toward mine to see if I’m looking.
“Do you see?” she points again, sounding like herself.
I nod and play along.
“Yeah.”
“One of them’s his.”
“Which one?” I ask, and for a second I actually scan the sky, in case I’m missing something, in case he’s up there, waiting for me to notice.
“Your choice,” she says expansively.
I blink up at the blank overhead. The sun’s entirely hidden and the clouds are turning the color of milky tea.
“Evie,” Em says, in a suddenly and comically much lower voice. It’s the one she uses when she imitates her dad or any other man.
She’s joking again, but I roll with it.
“Evie,” she says again, sounding somber.
“Yeah?”
“This is your dad.”
“Shut up,” I say, but I’m listening.
“I’m sorry I died and made you grow up to be a freak about love and so you feel like you have to overthink everything all the time.” Her voice gets so low it breaks on the last word and she coughs.
