by Meg Leder
“But I saw you guys in the hall a couple of weeks ago . . . ,” I said.
“He was telling me about your fight, at the Flea.”
“Oh.”
“He felt bad.”
“Seriously? He could have fooled me.”
“Since when has Eph ever been good at showing his emotions? He’s total crap at it,” Audrey said.
“Did he tell you what the fight was about?” I asked slowly.
“He just said he was worried he messed things up at some thrift shop?”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say, so I chewed on my lip, thinking of the day Audrey and I became friends, the truck wheels tangled in her hair, how things get messed up so fast—past the point of fixing—and wondering if Eph felt that way with us. “Well, I’m glad you came. It’s good to see you.”
She shrugged. “Keats invited Cherisse, so I’m her wingman.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling the sting of it—Audrey wasn’t here for me anymore—then wondering why Keats invited Cherisse to an event I invited him to.
Her face flushed, flustered. “But it’s good to see you, though. I mean, I’m happy for you. And the journal is pretty cool.”
Grace beckoned to me from across the room. “Pen! It’s time to start!”
“I gotta go,” I said. “See you around?”
“Yeah, see you around,” she said with a small, rueful smile.
As Mr. Garfield welcomed everyone, I saw Eph duck in the back, tilting his head at me. I felt a rush of relief that he’d come, then remembered that he probably wasn’t here for me—he was here because his art was in the journal. Mia floated in after him, tall and celestial and glistening and ethereal, and I glanced down at my beat-up Docs, my legs in black tights, and felt stumpy.
Grace stepped to the lectern, introducing me, Miles, Oscar, and May, and welcoming the first reader.
As people shared their poems and short stories, the ones we’d fallen in love with, I tried to pay attention.
But my eyes kept shooting around the room.
Keats was sitting with Audrey and Cherisse, and I couldn’t help but notice the way he leaned in and whispered loudly to Cherisse throughout the whole reading, how she tipped her head coyly, how he rolled his eyes when someone shushed them, how they were distracting even from four rows away.
NoNoNo.
And then there was Eph. He and Mia were rapt at the readings, her head leaning against his shoulder. At one point she leaned up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and they were so tall and pretty together, my heart panged.
I looked back at Keats, narrowed my eyes, squeezed the edge of the chair, and focused any potential soul-mate energy into psychically channeling SHUT UP his way.
It didn’t work.
By the time the last contributor finished reading, I was way past furious. Everyone stood and clapped, but I couldn’t even start, my hands clenched tightly against me.
Eph and Mia walked over, Eph hanging back a few steps.
“Pen, the journal is amazing,” Mia said, genuinely happy to see me. Of course she was.
“Thanks,” I said, turning away from Cherisse’s loud fake laughing at something Keats told her. “Did you see Eph’s stuff? It’s amazing,” I said as I turned toward him. “Seriously. I loved them.”
Eph kicked the floor, hands shoved in pockets. Even though it was dark, he might have been blushing.
“It’s no big deal,” he said.
I was so relieved we were talking without fighting, that the physical matter of him was standing next to me, I grabbed his sleeve. “Sometimes, things are a big fucking deal. And these pictures are. They’re phenomenal.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not frakking?”
“Nope,” I said, smiling at him. “Definitely not.”
Keats came up from behind me, sliding his arm around my waist, pulling me close. “Hey, Mia, Eph.” Mia waved at Keats, and Eph gave a curt nod. “Listen, Scout, you need to stick around here much longer? I thought we could go back to my place.”
I couldn’t meet his glance; I was afraid of what I’d do. Instead I lifted his hand off my waist and stepped aside. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, all right?”
“You okay?” he asked, trying to pull me close again. I held up my hand.
“I said tomorrow.”
He held up both hands, giving Eph and Mia an indignant Can you believe this? look.
Eph ignored him. “Everything all right?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I gotta go help Grace and Miles.”
Keats waited for a second, then rolled his eyes and walked to the exit. Cherisse was already gone, I noticed with no small degree of satisfaction. Audrey must have left with her.
When I looked back at Mia and Eph, she seemed concerned, and Eph looked like he was fully prepared to mow someone down.
I could tell by the jut of his chin he was about ready to say something I probably didn’t want to hear, so I held up my hand.
“I’ll talk to you later, yeah?” I turned toward Mia. “Thanks so much for coming.”
All seven feet of her leaned down, a goddess bestowing me with her mortal presence, and she pulled me into a warm hug.
“Ephraim is so proud of you. Me too!”
Crap. I couldn’t completely hate her.
“Honey, I’m going to go grab my coat. Meet you out front?” She gave me a soft wave and walked toward the door.
“ ‘Ephraim’? ‘Honey’?” I said.
He grimaced and shrugged into his fleece pullover. His hair stood up from the static energy. Without thinking, I stood on my tiptoes and smoothed it.
He looked surprised I’d done it.
I was surprised I’d done it.
“So, you going to come out and celebrate with us, Penelope Marx? Coffee shop closes in a half hour,” Miles said from behind, his mouth full of cookie.
I grinned, shrugging into myself with glee. “Um, heck, yeah!”
“I love this girl—don’t you love this girl?” he asked Eph.
I blushed, immediately looking for Eph’s reaction. He smiled awkwardly.
“Yeah, I do,” he said quietly, so quietly Miles didn’t hear it, so quietly my heart leaned forward to hear it.
“Hey, Eph!” Grace said, joining us, May and Oscar following behind, as giddy and proud as I felt.
“Hey,” he said. “Good to see you, Grace. The journal is amazing.”
Oscar stepped forward, shaking his hand. “Wait, you’re the dinosaur guy? Those blew me away. Tell me you’ve got more for our next issue. Maybe you could show them getting on the ark with Noah?”
Eph froze.
“Dinosaurs weren’t on any ark . . . ,” Eph started, and Miles leaned over.
“He’s messing with you. It’s his thing. Don’t engage.”
Eph’s face relaxed into an appreciative grin. “Nice one.”
Oscar nodded at the compliment.
“Hey, wanna come celebrate with us?” Grace asked Eph. “Your girlfriend can come too.”
The word “girlfriend” immediately bothered me.
“I’ve got plans, but thanks. And yeah, we can talk,” he said to Oscar, and they shook hands again, all cool-guy nodding, before Eph waved to me and left.
“Hmmm,” Miles said loudly over my shoulder, watching him leave.
“No,” I said. “It’s not like that.”
“I’m just saying . . .”
“You’re not saying anything!”
He grinned.
“Celebratory churros at Coppelia?” May asked.
“Yes!” Grace said, pulling on her coat and scarf.
As we walked out the door, Grace yanked May’s and my arms, her face surprised, and pointed ahead of us.
Oscar was talking animatedly and Miles was listening, rapt, periodically and affectionately nudging Oscar on the arm.
“That’s amazing,” Miles said to him.
May’s mouth dropped open. I spun to Grace.
“What is
that?”
“When did that happen?” May asked.
“How did it happen?” I asked.
Grace threw her hands up. “I have no clue!”
Miles looked over his shoulder to see if we were coming, and I can only imagine how the three of us appeared right then, stunned, mouths hanging open.
He stuck his tongue out at us and leaned closer to Oscar, and we all followed them into the early evening.
Gold necklace
Monile aureum
New York, New York
Cat. No. 201X-19
Gift of Keats Francis
ON MONDAY, KEATS WAS WAITING for me in chemistry, giving me what was clearly meant to be an übercharming boyfriend smile.
I ignored him and sat down, pulling out my chemistry book and flipping to the day’s reading.
I was tired from last night. After saying good-bye to Grace, Miles, Oscar, and May, I went home, ready to happily fall asleep thinking about the journal. Instead, I couldn’t stop fixating on Keats’s crappy behavior: his attitude when he discovered his story hadn’t been picked, how I could hear his and Cherisse’s irritating whispered murmuring throughout most of the reading—how everyone probably could.
I must have fallen asleep at some point; my alarm jerked me up. But if I didn’t already recall being awake at four, the bags under my eyes when I got to chemistry would have confirmed it.
“How are you, babe?” he asked.
I grunted, feeling distinctly unpleasant.
“Scout.” He reached across the desk and grabbed my hand. “I was up all night feeling like crap about how we ended things yesterday. Let me make it up to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Mrs. Carroll came in as the first bell rang.
“I know, I know. Last night wasn’t my thing. But you are. You’re my girl. Please?”
I had never been someone’s girl before.
Maybe this was just what relationships were like—you fought, you made up, you made out.
I felt myself thawing. “My birthday is on Saturday. Want to come over and have dinner with me and my parents?” I asked.
“Celebrating the day you were born? The best day in the history of the world? Scout, I wouldn’t miss it.” He leaned across the aisle and kissed me in front of everyone as the second bell rang.
It wasn’t until halfway through Mrs. Carroll’s endless lecture on the Bohr model of the atom that I realized Keats hadn’t apologized for last night.
• • •
On Saturday, when Keats got to my house for my birthday dinner, he was forty-two minutes late. I opened the door, anger making my breath fast, but he was clearly flustered, his cheeks red, his nose running.
“I texted you—where were you?” I asked.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry, Scout. Subway problems. You’re totally mad at me, aren’t you?” He stood hesitantly at the doorway, his chest heaving, and I wanted to point out that he should have left earlier, that in New York you always give yourself a subway-delay buffer when you’re going somewhere important, but he was here, celebrating my birthday, a big bouquet of pink peonies in one hand, a small wrapped gift in another.
Let it go, let it go, Penelope.
“Come on in,” I said.
He handed me the flowers and started to unpeel all his layers of clothing—hat, scarf, gloves, two coats.
“Is your young man here, darling daughter?” my dad called from the kitchen.
I rolled my eyes. “Get ready,” I whispered to Keats.
He smiled, taking the flowers back.
“Hey!” I said.
“They’re for your mom,” he said, and I took his hand and led him to the welcome warmth of the kitchen.
The sweet smell of my mom’s tomato sauce as it bubbled on the stovetop filled the room. The windows were fogged up, the whole place on the edge of being slightly too hot but somehow managing to be just right.
“Hey, Mom and Dad, this is Keats.”
My dad put down a glass of wine and jumped up from his seat at the table, extending his hand to Keats’s. “Theodore Marx. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, sir.”
“Please, call me Theo.”
Keats nodded. “Sure, Mr. . . .” He stumbled, turning red. “I mean Theodore, Theo.”
I felt myself thaw even more—there was something endearing about a nervous Keats. “Here, Mrs. Marx, these are for you,” Keats said, handing her the peonies.
“Keats, these are lovely. Thank you so much. Let me find something to put them in. Have a seat, guys.” She started digging under the sink for a vase.
My dad began pulling out the dinner plates.
“I can help,” I said, but my dad motioned me back to the table. “It’s your birthday. The one day of the year you don’t have to help out.”
My mom started spooning fettuccini on the plates. “So, Keats, is your family from New York?”
“Um, yeah, my mom grew up on the Upper East Side, but my dad grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut,” Keats said, twisting at a paper napkin. “They met between junior and senior year at Yale, when they were summering at Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Ooh, la-di-da,” my dad said.
“Theo!” Mom said.
“Dad!” I said.
“Nah, it’s okay,” Keats said, settling in the chair. “We’re pretty much as Waspy as you get. My parents’ wedding party included both a Vanderbilt and a DuPont. But if it gets me early acceptance into Yale, I’ll take it.”
“Hmmm,” my dad said.
I cringed. There were few things my dad liked to complain about more than Ivy League privilege and the benefits that came with it.
“Dad, Keats is super into college football,” I said, cutting off my dad’s counterpoint at the pass.
“Yeah, my dad and I went to the Rose Bowl last year,” Keats said.
Mom put our plates down on the table, steam rising from each, and I reached for the bread basket and passed it to Keats.
My dad leaned forward, excited. “So you got to see OSU take Michigan to the bank?”
Keats grimaced. “Um, yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a Michigan fan,” my dad said.
At this point Keats might as well have declared himself a creationist and a Republican, considering that after Ivy League snobbery and Michigan fandom those were the only two Theodore Marx deal breakers left on the list.
Keats cringed and nodded, and my dad grunted.
Time to change the subject.
“Mom,” I said, wiping tomato sauce off the corner of my mouth. “Keats and his brother are planning to take a road trip for a few weeks this summer that replicates Jack Kerouac’s trip from On the Road.”
“Oh goodness,” she replied. “Isn’t your mom worried about you two boys doing that? What if your car breaks down or one of you gets sick?”
I cringed.
“Uh, we’re still figuring that stuff out. But I think it’ll be okay?” Keats said.
My dad, sensing an opportunity, jumped back in. “Keats, has Penelope told you about Willo?”
I shook my head imperceptibly at Dad, but he ignored me.
“You’ll have to come to the museum event next weekend! It’s going to be amazing. You see—”
“What’s the museum event?” Keats asked me, cutting him off.
“Oh, a thing for my dad’s work, no big deal.”
“No big deal?” My dad slapped the table good-naturedly. “It’s only going to be the most amazing dinosaur exhibit we’ve had to date.”
Mom smiled, rolling her eyes. “He’s so modest,” she said to Keats.
Dad got that telltale crazy-professor expression on his face.
“Willo, the dinosaur everyone thought had a heart!” my dad proclaimed. “Of course, it was probably just sand at the end of the day, but Willo’s very celebrity allowed us to mount the exhibit in the first place. The dinosaur circulatory system is fascinating. . . .”
It was just the begin
ning. Keats nodded politely as my dad steadfastly plowed over any of my mom’s and my efforts to politely change the conversation.
Finally, when a ten-minute discussion of the wonders of the dinosaur circulatory system started to veer into the marvels of the reproductive drive, my mom abruptly stood up.
“How about cake?” she asked. “Theodore, come over here and help me with the candles.”
“Sorry,” I said under my breath to Keats. “When he gets going, it’s hard to stop him.”
“I thought we’d be in there forever,” he said.
And it was weird then, because even though mere seconds ago I wanted to clobber my dad to get him to stop talking about Willo, I didn’t want Keats to agree with me. I wanted him to tell me my dad was cool.
Because he was.
He was my dad. Sure, he wasn’t old-time movie-star suave, and he was crap at picking up conversational cues, but when he talked about what he loved, his eyes glowed with pure magic. And I loved that about him.
I thought about saying something, but my parents dimmed the lights and began singing the opening bars of “Happy Birthday.” There were seventeen candles glowing above my favorite type of cake, the one I’d had for every birthday that I could remember: boxed Funfetti mix with strawberry icing.
My parents sang, and Keats smiled, resting a hand on my knee.
His palm felt like five hundred tons.
When it came time to blow out the candles, I felt strangely empty, like I didn’t have any breath left in me to make a wish, or any wish left in me to breathe. I thought about Eph’s dinosaur drawing, the one in the thrift store, about things changing, and about how a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to imagine celebrating my birthday with a handsome boyfriend.
And without Eph.
I didn’t make a wish.
Keats declined a piece of cake. “Artificial coloring,” he said, shrugging apologetically.
“Your loss,” my dad said, cutting himself an extra-big piece.
Soon after, my parents retired to the living room, and Keats and I sat quietly in the kitchen as I finished my cake.
From his pocket he pulled out the small wrapped box. “Here,” he said, pushing it my way.
“Keats, you didn’t have to—”
“I wanted to,” he said. “Happy birthday, Scout.”
