You Have a Match

by Emma Lord

  “Well—same goes for you,” I say. “With the rules thing, I mean.”

  Savvy slouches, her legs sinking into the mud even more. “That’s the problem. I don’t know if I can give them up.”

  I’m at a loss for what to say, but remember what Leo said to me last night, about setting your own pace. “I don’t think it happens overnight,” I tell her. “But you can start. And maybe I can help.”

  I pause, wondering if she’s going to laugh at me.

  “We can start with this,” I say, tracing two lines into the mud. “It’s called a pros and Connies list.”

  Savvy’s eyebrow lifts.

  “The next time you want to do something—instead of thinking about what would happen if you did it, think about what would happen if you didn’t do it. The stuff you’d miss out on. The people who’d miss you, too. Those are the Connies.”

  It is at that precise and inconvenient moment, sitting in the mud a whole island away from our usual stomping grounds, that I miss Connie with a near impossible force. There’s so much I want to tell her. So much I want to understand. I feel like I am straddling some line between who I was when I left and who I’ve become, and Connie is somewhere in the middle, just out of reach.

  “How about this,” says Savvy. “No matter what happens when they finally drag us out of here—even if we have to wait for you to turn eighteen so we can see each other—we find some way to be in touch. To hold each other accountable.”

  “Savvy’s Savvies meets Abby’s Days?”

  Savvy groans. “Leo’s puns are rubbing off on you.”

  The truth is there are very few parts of me that Leo hasn’t had a part in. If I am the way I am—the way Savvy thinks of me, at least—then Leo is the one to blame. If I’m brave, it’s partially because I always knew Leo was looking out for me. If I do what I want, it’s partially because of Leo supporting me. We’ve been catching each other’s slipups and rooting for each other’s dreams before they counted for anything. Long before now, when a lifetime of them are so tangled in each other that I have no idea what shape they’d take without him.

  I clear my throat, pushing it to the back of my mind. There’s nothing I can do now—not about what Connie said, or the months Leo and I wasted tiptoeing around each other, or even the fact that, somewhere within a mile radius of where we are currently trapped in a ditch, our parents are probably losing their collective shit.

  I lean farther into Savvy, who is, surprisingly, much calmer than I am. It’s as if she’s been waiting to get this off her chest for a while, and is slumped in relief, muddy and banged up and brand-new.

  “Well,” I say lightly, “when you’ve got names like ours, it’s kind of hard not to resist the lure of a pun.”

  Savvy blinks, the blue in her eyes sharpening.

  “Your mom’s name. It’s Maggie, right?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Savvy yanks my lanyard from where it’s hanging out of my front pocket and hands it to me. “Magpie,” she says softly.

  I stare at it resting in my palm, its gleam sharp against my skin. This thing that knows the history of me, maybe better than I know it myself. This gift that held my biggest secret in it, and just gave us a key.

  “Maggie and Pietra.”

  thirty-one

  We fill up the next few hours talking about nothing and everything. Savvy tells me about growing up in Medina with oddball rich parents in a typical rich town—about things like trick-or-treating at Bill Gates’s house, or going inner-tubing on Lake Washington on her friends’ parents’ boats, and stressing out all year about winning a Hula-Hoop contest at the Medina Days festival every summer. She tells me how she and Mickey met through an art class they took in second grade, inseparable ever since. She tells me she’s secretly really into Lord of the Rings, and that the same year Leo tortured me and Connie by trying to send coded messages in Elvish, she’d been learning it with him.

  I tell her about the mini-adventure trips Poppy would take me on—how we’d drive out to Snoqualmie Falls to photograph the waterfall, or to Mount Saint Helens to squint at it through the fog and watch the seismic activity tracker jut up and down in the museum. I tell her how badly I’d wanted a sibling, and how my parents told me about Brandon by taking me out for cupcakes, and that somewhere in the archive there’s a video of me bursting into happy tears and getting cookie dough frosting up my nose. I tell her about all of them—Brandon and Mason and Asher—and their little quirks, like how Brandon is obsessed with different kinds of knots and keeps experimenting on our sneakers, or how Mason recently discovered his passion for guzzling large amounts of milk and burping out pop songs, or how Asher has an almost eerie knack for remembering where everyone puts their stuff down, so things are never lost for more than a minute when he’s around.

  It’s the kind of stuff that fills in the edges, like we were whole people to each other but now the colors of us are a little brighter. It’s the kind of stuff we would have told each other over the next two weeks, except crammed into two muddy hours occasionally interrupted by one of us groaning about how hungry we are or how badly we need to pee.

  “I wonder if I’ll ever get to meet them,” Savvy says at one point, when I finish telling her how Asher got so enthusiastic blowing out Brandon’s birthday candles that he almost set the house on fire.

  It’s nearing noon, the heat settling in low in our little ditch. From our shadows, our hair has identically poofed up to full frizz potential. I touch mine absentmindedly, mulling over Savvy’s words and wondering the same.

  “I hope so.”

  Three weeks ago the idea made me queasy and possessive. But we’ve pushed so far into each other’s lives, it seems strange that she might not be there, or that there will be parts she can’t see—at least not until our parents either make a big decision, or the boys get old enough to find out about Savvy on their own. I know it’s not my place to tell them. But that doesn’t make the disappointment sting any less.

  “Do you think they’d like me?”

  “Another big sister to torture? They’d have a damn field day.” I smile at the thought, and it’s the first time getting sent home hasn’t felt like the end of the world. I really do miss those twerps. “That is, if they aren’t too busy trying to kidnap Rufus. They’ve been begging for a dog since—”

  And, then, as if his name summoned him, we hear a distinct woof! that can only belong to Rufus.

  Savvy snaps to attention so fast she looks like a human jack-in-the-box. “Rufus!” she calls up. “You beautiful, stupid, ridiculous—”

  “Girls?”

  It’s my mom. I’m on my feet in an instant, and Savvy and I open our mouths to yell some variation of the same thing—be careful—but we’re both so flustered that Savvy only manages to squeak and I say something in gibberish and all of it gets drowned out by Rufus’s barking anyway.

  “Maggie, watch out!”

  “Oh my,” I hear my mom gasp. Savvy and I wince, half expecting my mom to slide down here with us, but instead she says, “Thank you.”

  Pietra doesn’t respond, because by then other voices are joining the fray. She and my mom are calling down to us, and our dads are calling from somewhere not too far off, and we’re calling back, and the whole thing is a clusterfuck of yelling before Savvy manages to trump everyone by shouting, “Does anyone have any food?”

  “Are you okay?” Pietra asks instead.

  “We’re fine,” Savvy answers.

  “Abby?”

  “Just hangry.”

  Which is really all I can think of until someone tosses a Luna Bar down, and I, like the colossal, dehydrated idiot I am, try to catch it with the arm on my busted-up side and end up yelping like a Chihuahua. Savvy catches it out from under me and has it unwrapped and in her mouth so fast that I have no idea what she says next, but it sounds an awful lot like she just promised to give the name Luna to her firstborn.

  “How far down are you?” Pietra calls.

  �
�Not that far—maybe ten feet?” I guess. “But don’t come too close, you’ll slip right down.”

  There’s more talking above us, the muffled noise of a decision getting made, and made fast. Savvy and I glance at each other in surprise—our parents are actually talking to one another.

  “Dale is going to get help, girls,” my mom tells us. “Sit tight.”

  “How did this happen?” Pietra asks.

  “I thought it might be fun to spend the night in a ditch,” Savvy calls up, with the most impressive eye roll I’ve ever seen.

  “What’s the verdict?” my dad asks. He tries for a joking tone, but we can hear the strain in his voice. We may not have been having a ball down here, but I can’t imagine what’s been going through their heads.

  “Zero out of five stars,” I say. “The checkout procedures are … really fucked up.”

  “Language,” my mom chides me.

  There’s a snort from above that sounds uncannily like Savvy’s. Pietra adds, “I think they get a pass.”

  My mom laughs. The sound is breathless and manic and tinged with exhaustion that goes well beyond the last few days’ worth of drama, but they’re laughing that same laugh together. Even Savvy stops chewing to listen, the two of us staring at each other in disbelief.

  “Just this once,” my mom concedes.

  thirty-two

  Once the fire department hauls us out, my parents take me to the small hospital on the island, equipped with an X-ray and a very nervous resident who informs us that my wrist is broken and seems a little too pleased with himself when he successfully puts a cast on it. After that, one shower in the hotel room and the equivalent of four ibuprofen running through my veins later, I almost look like a human being.

  When I come out of the bathroom, there’s a telling hush in the room. My parents glance over, not even bothering to pretend they weren’t talking about me. I wish they would—it’s the first time we’ve had quiet all day, and suddenly I have no idea how to fill it. No idea of what I want to say, or where I’d even begin if I did.

  My dad rescues us all from ourselves by saying, “Should we get some dinner?”

  I thought for sure we’d be catching the next ferry out. “Is Colin not begging for mercy yet?” I ask, trying to imagine my uncle surviving another full night with my brothers.

  My mom grabs her phone and says, “There’s a Thai place down the street that’s still open.”

  “Sounds good to me. Abby?”

  They’re so calm. So weirdly patient. Usually when there’s a problem, or something that needs to be said, they’ll do it right then. Rip the Band-Aid off and move on. Between all six of our schedules we don’t exactly have the luxury of time to stew.

  But I guess as far as things go, we’ve never had to deal with one as big as this.

  “Yeah. Sounds good to me.”

  The place is small and cozy, with dim, yellow lighting and warm colors on the walls, a far cry from the camp and its high ceilings and pine smell and somewhat orderly chaos. Even the seats are big and plush, and only once I put my butt in one do I realize I’m so tired I could fall asleep as fast as it would take to close my eyes.

  But the way my parents position themselves, the two of them on one side and me on the other, makes me realize this dinner wasn’t a whim. It was a tactical move. They were deciding what to say while I was in the shower, and they’ve chosen a public place so nobody can raise their voice or walk away. After yesterday I can’t really blame them. The usual bets are off.

  I try not to squirm, wishing I’d at least used some of my time in the shower to rehearse what I was going to say instead of holding my wrapped-up arm out of the water spray. But before my parents can open their mouths, the front door to the restaurant opens and their eyes snap away from me so fast that there’s no doubt in my mind who walked in.

  Sure enough, I turn and meet Savvy’s eyes so fast it feels like we planned this.

  “Three?” the hostess asks, before Savvy or her parents can get their wits about them. “It’s probably going to be a half-hour wait.”

  “Oh,” says Pietra, doing a very bad job of pretending not to see us, “that’s—you know what? We’ll come back another time—”

  “There’s plenty of room at our table,” I say, before I can lose my nerve.

  Dale clears his throat. “We wouldn’t want to … interrupt, if you—”

  “Please,” says my mom, unexpectedly pulling out the empty chair next to her. “We really wouldn’t mind.”

  We’re the ones doing the inviting, but it feels like it’s the other way around. Everyone holds their breath, the poor hostess trying to make eye contact with literally anyone to gauge the temperature of what’s going on, until Pietra says quietly, “If you’re sure.”

  Before we can awkwardly put too much thought into who’s sitting where, I get up and sit on my parents’ side of the table, so when Savvy sits down she’s facing me and we’re both sandwiched by our parents. I try not to smile so we don’t look like we’re scheming, but Savvy’s eyes glint at me, and I nudge her sneakered foot under the table.

  The waitress comes to take our order, looking at my parents first. My dad orders a beer, and my mom surprises me by ordering a glass of white wine, something I’ve only ever seen her drink when all my brothers are in bed. She turns to Pietra and says shyly, “And I assume a glass of red for you?”

  Pietra goes stiff, bristling slightly at the familiarity, but slowly she eases into her seat and nods at my mom. “That would be lovely.”

  Everyone buries their heads in their menus after that, my parents scrutinizing the appetizer list like it’s a legal document from one of their cases, Savvy’s parents finishing nearly half their first glass of wine before the waitress makes it back to take our food order. Savvy and I are both dead silent, communicating only through the occasional glance, like we’re too afraid to remind them we’re here and distract from this rare moment of them not being at one another’s throats.

  “The spring rolls, maybe?” my mom asks.

  My dad shakes his head. “Dale’s allergic to cilantro.”

  Pietra reaches over Savvy to nudge Dale. “He says he’s allergic.”

  “It tastes like soap.”

  “That’s not an allergy,” my mom and Pietra protest at the same time, with the exact same inflection.

  Dale holds his hands up in surrender. “Wow, it’s been eighteen years since the two of them have ganged up on me, and somehow it’s still just as terrifying.”

  “Well, they’re not the only girls ganging up on you anymore,” says my dad mildly, acknowledging me and Savvy.

  I freeze like a bunny in an open field, but Savvy leans forward, addressing us all in turn with a meaningful look. “Okay. We’re all here. We’ve survived a public spat and a mud pit and cilantro. Can you tell us the rest of the story, maybe?”

  Crickets from the parents, until Dale takes it upon himself to say, “There’s not much to tell.”

  Savvy falters, and I pick up the slack. “Sure there is. You told us the end of it. What happened at the beginning? How did you all meet?”

  I feel my parents’ eyes on me, but before I meet them I know it’s less from annoyance and more out of surprise. I’m not usually the one taking charge of conversations. And while I’m still getting used to this new Abby, they haven’t seen much of her at all.

  I can see the adults starting to relent. My mom drops her shoulders. My dad stops staring at his empty plate. Dale stops cracking his knuckles, and Pietra stops intermittently taking large sips of her wine. It’s like they’re all finally willing to go the distance, but have no idea where the journey begins.

  I pull the keychain out of my pocket and set my magpie charm on the table. Savvy pulls hers off and does the same.

  “It’s your names, isn’t it?” Savvy asks. “Maggie and Pietra.”

  The look on my mom’s face when we first pulled these out is so fresh in my mind that I almost keep my head down, but her post
ure softens, her lips giving way to a quiet smile. She and Pietra stare at the little charms, disappearing to some other time together, far from the rest of us.

  My mom looks up, but it’s Pietra’s eyes she meets, not mine. Like she’s waiting for Pietra’s permission before she says anything. Or maybe the beginning is Pietra’s story to tell.

  Pietra leans forward, grazing the charm with her fingertips. “We bought these at Pike Place Market. Some little artisan seller. They were the last two.”

  “We were both near broke.”

  “Worth the money, though,” Pietra murmurs. “They’ve held up through the years, haven’t they?”

  “That they have.”

  Pietra lets go of the charm, looking from me to Savvy. “I was twenty-two when I started at Bean Well. I’d moved out of my parents’ place—less than politely. Told them I wanted to make it on my own. Ended up crying in the first coffee shop where I could find parking, certain I was going to turn right back around and undo the whole thing.” She turns to look at my mom, her eyes misty, but her voice wry. “But some nosy teenager butted in with a free scone and wrangled out my whole life story instead.”

  My mom ducks her head, and when she looks up I can imagine her as that nosy teen, smirking this exact same smirk. “Well. Dad helped.”

  “He did.” Pietra’s smile widens. “And for some reason I could never begin to fathom, he offered the girl scaring all his customers away a job.”

  “I had to train her.” There’s a pause where my mom bites her lip, and her eyes meet Pietra’s, and she says, “She was so bad.”

  Pietra puts her hand up in surrender. “I’m a tea drinker, I’d never made coffee in my life—”

  “Forget coffee—you couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the vacuum,” my mom says, trying to muffle her laughter.

  Pietra’s mouth drops open in mock offense. “You mean that piece of junk your mom dragged out of the eighties? Honestly, I was half expecting it to turn into a Transformer.”