by Meg Leder
My mom’s face knit in disapproval, whether from the wine or George’s departure I couldn’t tell. I knew she wasn’t crazy about these dinners: I had overheard her telling my dad more than once that she worried that Ellen drank too much, that she didn’t like the way George got all handsy at the end of the evening, that she thought George and Ellen shouldn’t leave Eph alone for so long when they traveled for George’s exotic museum-curating trips.
I loved her, but I wished she wouldn’t worry so much.
“Who’s Willo?” Ellen asked.
My dad gulped down a mouthful and leaned forward, chewing as he talked. “Willo was a dinosaur. And what’s remarkable about him, you may ask?”
“Funny, I was going to ask that,” I said.
“Actually, he’s not remarkable!” My dad laughed at his joke, officially reaching Peak Dad Humor. “But here’s where it gets interesting.” My dad leaned forward, his voice lowering to a moderately loud whisper. “Back in 2000, scientists in North Carolina began to examine Willo’s remains more carefully. They peeled away all this dirt and fossilized bone in his chest, and they made what at the time they thought was a huge discovery. Can you guess what it was?”
“A baby dinosaur?” my mom said.
“A second brain?” Ellen said.
“Amelia Earhart’s remains?” I said.
“A heart?” Eph said.
“Ephraim for the win!” my dad yelled, high-fiving Eph while holding a fork full of pasta, splashing red sauce on his own shirt in the process.
Eph mouthed I win at me. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“It was the first dinosaur heart anyone had ever found! I mean, they had all but given up on finding one. Can you imagine actually seeing the organ that pumped blood through those creatures? God, it’s amazing. And I haven’t even gotten to the big part yet. Are you ready? Their findings suggested it was four-chambered ! Can you believe it?”
We all stared at him.
“That would mean that dinosaurs were closer to us than we ever thought, that they were like mammals! A four-chambered dinosaur heart!” He grinned at us.
“Wow, that’s really something, Theo,” Ellen said graciously.
Eph turned to my dad. “So is Willo’s heart going to be here?”
“Well, you see, Ephraim, that’s the funny thing. After all that press and hubbub, another group of scientists took a look at Willo. And much to everyone’s chagrin, they’ve suggested it’s not a heart—it’s a deposit of sand instead,” my dad said, sitting back, his eyes bright.
Mom straightened up, familiar with that posture and tone of voice. He was settling in for a lengthy story—one that would probably run longer than the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods combined. She held up her hand. “Honey, we haven’t even had a chance to ask the O’Connors about their last trip. Why don’t we save this for another time?”
My dad, visibly and instantly deflated, muttered, “Sure, sure.”
“Mr. Marx, maybe next time I’m by the museum you can show me Willo,” Eph said, and just like that, my dad’s demeanor swung to cheery again.
“The exhibit is opening later this fall, Ephraim!”
I was still feeling grudgy about our earlier conversation, but I had to admit: Eph was infinitely more patient with my dad than anyone else I knew.
George strolled in, smoothing his hair back, his face flushed, and I wondered how much he’d drunk already.
“So, guys, tell us about Kenya,” my mom said, passing the bowl of salad around for seconds.
“Jane, it was glorious,” George said. “You should see the sunsets there, the way the whole sky is on fire. And you should see this one standing in front of them.” He put his arm around Ellen and stroked her hair. “More beauty than a man deserves.”
Eph let out an irritated sigh, so quick I might have missed it if I didn’t know him better. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He dropped his napkin on the chair and stalked out of the room.
Ellen ducked out from under George’s arm and reached over for more wine.
“The fossils we found—prime, undamaged specimens. One of the best trips we’ve had in years. Oh, and the people were so welcoming.”
Ellen chimed in. “You should have seen all the arts and crafts! I found some bead workers—simply stunning. In fact, I keep forgetting . . .” She leaned down to get her purse and took out two small bags. After peeking in one, she handed it to my mom, the other to me.
“Ellen, this is beautiful,” my mom said, holding a delicate blue beaded bracelet up to the light.
“I thought you’d like it,” she said.
Mine was a chunky red-orange beaded bracelet, matching the necklace Ellen was wearing.
“It’s awesome,” I said, trying to fasten the clasp.
“I’ve got it, Penelope,” George said, leaning over, and my heart fumbled around. A wave of his cologne made me feel swoony.
“So, Penelope, are you starting to think about college? Going to follow in the footsteps of your dad, another museum genius in the family?” George asked.
I shoveled some spaghetti around on my plate. “I’m thinking more English or journalism. Words, I like them?” I ended uncertainly.
Dad looked proud but vaguely confused, but I saw Mom smiling gently at me.
“Ephraim told us the other day he’s thinking of art school. Art school.” George scoffed. “He’s going to have to get a lot more serious about his work if that’s what he wants to do. And being an artist is hardly a way to make a living. Ellen knows that.”
She smiled uncomfortably, knuckles white on her wine glass.
“More salad, anyone?” Mom said abruptly, holding out the bowl.
“About Willo . . . ,” my dad started.
I frowned at my plate and fiddled with my new bracelet, feeling protective of Eph’s drawings.
“What’d I miss?” Eph asked, rounding the corner.
“Theo and I have to get going,” George said, holding up his watch. “We’re going to be late for the staff meeting.”
Dad groaned and dramatically pushed his chair out, grumbling under his breath about budgets and morons, stalking out of the room even more disheveled than when he came in, bread crumbs up and down his sweater, the red sauce stain on his collar.
Mom sighed, a weary but affectionate sigh full of years of displaced crumbs and dinosaur lectures.
“See you later, Mr. Marx,” Eph called out.
Meanwhile George slid on his blazer, bent down, and whispered something to Ellen in French, followed by “See you at home, El?” She nodded stiffly, and he gave my mom a kiss on both cheeks, and the smile on my mom’s face was all weird and awkward.
“Thank you for the amazing dinner, Jane.”
“You’re welcome,” she said in a too-loud voice.
Eph grunted toward his dad, and I waved.
• • •
After another half hour of Kenya talk (safari stories) and reports on my mom’s class of fourth graders (sixteen boys and only five girls this year) and brownies (my specialty, with extra chocolate chips baked in), Ellen seemed more at ease and definitely tipsier.
“We should head out soon too,” Ellen said, reaching over to ruffle Eph’s hair.
“Mom,” he groaned, ducking under her hand.
Ten minutes later I was handing Ellen her vintage green pleather coat (also totally badass and amazing), and my mom was giving Eph two packed Tupperware containers.
She hugged him and moved to Ellen. Eph, meanwhile, looked at me and scoffed again. “Like I’d dump you. Absurd.”
“I’m not being absurd.”
“By the way, you’ve got something back here,” he said, balancing both pasta tubs in the crook of one arm and leaning closer.
“If you belch in my face, I will murder you,” I muttered.
But instead I felt the touch of his hand in the soft spot behind my ear, like he was going to pull out a magic quarter, the calluses rough against the unknown parts of me—and all
the hair on my arms stood up, an involuntary shiver, blood singing.
He placed a folded-up paper square in my palm.
“Later, killer,” he said.
As my mom walked them out, I unfolded the paper, its edges torn.
My breath fled, a startled swoop of birds taking flight.
Eph had drawn a tiny T. rex holding a heart, and in small capital letters underneath he had written, apostrophe missing and all: DONT BE ABSURD.
Nevermore flyer
Nevermore libellus
Saint Bartholomew’s Academy
New York, New York
Cat. No. 201X-5
Gift of Grace Drosman
“SO, ON SATURDAY . . . ,” I STARTED to say.
I tried to sneak a glance at Eph’s notebook, wondering if he was drawing his dinosaurs. I hadn’t brought them up since family dinner at our house last week, but I was dying to know if he was working on more. That afternoon, however, he was hunched over on his Chipotle chair in a way that prevented any peeking.
“. . . what time are we leaving for Saint Bart’s Fall Festival? Four?”
Without taking his eyes off his notebook, Eph made a fart noise, his de facto response anytime anyone mentioned a word that rhymed with fart—a habit honed to perfection since we’d attended Saint Bartholomew’s Academy since kindergarten.
“You’re disgusting. Audrey?”
Audrey started slurping her Diet Coke hard, avoiding my eyes.
“Wait a minute, we’re going, right?”
Audrey raised her eyebrows at Eph.
He shrugged, mouth still full of chips. “I thought you were going to tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
The three of us had gone to the Saint Bart’s Fall Festival since we met Audrey back in third grade, not because it raised money for our school, though there was that. When we were little, we went because everyone in our class went. We’d get our faces painted like Spider-Man and eat so much cotton candy and caramel apples that our teeth felt tingly and rotten in the first half hour. We won goldfish in water-filled bags and instant grade-school cred by riding the Scrambler. I loved it so much, I actually looked forward to it during summer vacation.
Sure, it had gotten less cool as we got older, but we had still gone every single year. It was tradition, history.
I glanced between my two best friends, waiting for someone to crack.
“I’m going to Saint Ignatius’s homecoming dance,” Audrey blurted out.
“With Gregory?”
Her face scrunched in confusion. I pointed at my neck—you know, now that I was completely familiar with the world of hickeys.
“Oh God, no. It’s with this guy named Ethan. Cherisse is going with his friend Hunter. Wait a minute . . .” She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “You know, maybe I could see if one of their friends needs a date. . . .”
“No, that’s okay,” I said quickly, the thought of going on a blind date in front of Cherisse less appealing than eating those bug-egg beads in tapioca pudding.
“Are you mad? Please don’t be mad.”
Last week’s conversation about French Club and social circles came ricocheting back. “No, not at all,” I said, my voice going artificially cheery.
“I’m sorry, Pen. I meant to tell you earlier this week. I figured we had outgrown the festival and weren’t going to go anyway. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
She didn’t mean it as an insult, but I immediately felt like a giant baby-faced baby for still wanting to go to the festival.
I remembered last year, how Eph and I finally talked Audrey into riding the Ferris wheel, how even though she was sandwiched between us, she was terrified the whole excruciatingly slow way up—white-knuckled, slightly green-faced—but when we got to the top, she let out this sweet little exhalation of wonder, surveying all the flashing festival lights below. “Why didn’t you ever tell me it was this lovely?” she asked indignantly.
I shook my head, making myself return to the present moment, trying to seem breezy and okay, like their bailing on tradition was not a big deal. For some reason deep inside me, that was important—that no one know how my insides were sinking faster by the second, how I felt completely alone.
“So you’re out too, I’m guessing?” I asked Eph, my mouth twisting into this phony super-gracious smile.
He gave me a weird look. “What’s wrong with your face? And why are you getting all splotchy again?”
“Are. You. Going.”
“Sorry. Autumn got us tickets to this interactive Macbeth thing in a warehouse.”
“That sounds awesome,” I lied.
“Trust me, I’d much rather hang out with you. Autumn’s in a constant hand-holding phase. It makes my hands sweat.”
He held up his palms, as if to prove his point.
“Okay, okay.” I chewed on my lip, brainstorming. I could fix this. “Maybe we can hang out next Saturday instead. I know, let’s go to Coney Island! It’ll be like the Fall Festival but a little tackier. And with the ocean.”
There. Totally natural, breezy. Nice recovery, self.
Audrey’s face fell. “Next Saturday? I promised Cherisse I’d go to that new guy Keats’s First of October party with her.”
Oh.
Keats was having a party.
“First of October party?” Eph snorted.
“I would bring you guys, but it’s invitation only . . .”
(Of course it was.)
“. . . and Cherisse has been crushing on Keats forever . . .”
(Of course she has.)
“. . . and it’s this fancy costume party . . .”
(Ugh, so cool. Of course, of course, of course the beautiful new boy would have a fancy costume party.)
At that moment I was seconds away from having a crumbly meltdown about hickeys and festivals and French Club and social circles and the fact that my life was an open book but Audrey’s and Eph’s lives had chapters I wasn’t cool enough to read.
My melodramatic subconscious started playing “One Is the Loneliest Number” in my head.
My subconscious is the worst.
“I’ll go to Coney Island with you, Pen,” Eph offered. “I heard last week that people got stuck on the Cyclone and had to walk down the hill. How rad would that be?”
“So rad,” I said hollowly.
Without all three of us there, it wouldn’t be the same thing. It already wasn’t the same thing.
Plus Keats was having a party.
Forget Coney Island.
I was pretty sure that everything I ever wanted, that everything I was currently missing out on, would be at that party.
A small and terribly traitorous sigh escaped my lips.
At the sound of it, the three of us halted all interaction. Eph frowned and turned back to his notebook, and Audrey tugged so hard on her hair I thought she might pull it all out. Meanwhile, my face was frozen in some uncomfortable, phony lunatic smile.
This was not how our afternoon at Chipotle was supposed to be going.
Be the better person, Pen. You love these people.
“Do you know what you’re wearing?” I asked Audrey, forcing my voice to be positive, willing us all to change the conversation.
“To Keats’s party?” she asked, face confused.
“No, to homecoming!”
Her face broke out in a relieved smile, and she whipped out her phone and flipped through pictures before pointing one out. “Here. Cherisse and I found it at this new vintage shop downtown called Hong Kong Eight.”
The dress was beautiful—a pale, silvery-pink beaded sheath. “Very Audrey Hepburn. Living up to your namesake, yeah? That’ll be gorgeous on you.”
“Sweet,” Eph muttered after giving the phone a perfunctory glance.
Audrey relaxed, explaining how she was going to do her hair (a professional blow-out so it was straight and shiny) and what shoes she was going to wear (silver Mary Jane wedges) and the boutonniere she was buying her date (a de
ep pink peony).
For the rest of the afternoon I tried to pretend everything was normal.
But after I waved good-bye, I rounded the corner where they couldn’t see me and slumped against a building, relief rushing through me, my toes uncurling, my fists unfurling.
The feeling was terrifying.
I had never felt so out of sync with Eph and Audrey.
• • •
For the new few days, I worked on convincing myself that missing out on the festival wasn’t a big deal, that our disastrous Chipotle interaction had been a hiccup.
I wasn’t very persuasive.
Instead I became 100 percent absolutely positively convinced that the Fall Festival was a harbinger of doom, my friends were ditching me, and I would be alone for the rest of my life.
It didn’t help that eleven chemistry classes after our initial meeting on the first day of school, there had been no discernible progress regarding my crush on Keats. There had been no lab partner assignments, no random encounters in the hallways, no meet-cutes outside a coffee shop.
In fact, one could argue (if one were feeling really contrary and down on oneself) that I had actually made negative progress with Keats. On Wednesday of the second week, there had been a potential half wave sent my way, and my heart started to burst out in song, but when I waved back (too fast, too eagerly, too everything), I saw that the dude in front of me was returning a subtle cool-guy wave to Keats and realized that the initial greeting had not been for me after all, so I tried to make it seem like my wave was only a stop on the path to running my hand through my hair, that that had been my intention all along. But then my oversize amber flower ring snagged in my hair, so I had to run to the bathroom with my hand on top of my head to untangle it.
Insert definition of “hopeless.”
By the time Saturday, the day of the Fall Festival, rolled around, I felt lower than the rats that live in the subway tracks and eat garbage. I trudged into the kitchen wearing sweats, yesterday’s mascara smeared under my eyes, my hair flat in the back but aggressively bushy in the front.
Dad lowered the New York Times, scanning my attire.
“Rough morning, darling daughter? Or maybe I should say afternoon?”
I looked at the clock—it was almost noon.