by Meg Leder
Eph’s eyes were big when he looked at me. “What does she mean, the last time you saw them?”
“Nothing,” I stuttered. “I saw them once, it was just . . .” My arms fell helplessly to my side.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, shoving hair off his face, pressing his hand hard against his forehead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I stepped toward him, but he only winced and put his hands up between us, taking a step back, a step away from me.
Annabeth seemed to wilt without George’s support, so after ten seconds or four hours of no one saying anything, she left, propping herself against the stair railing as she sidestepped her way out of the attic, the click of her heels fading.
“Eph,” George said, walking toward Eph, trying to embrace him.
But Eph pushed him away—hard—and George crumpled to the floor, beginning to sob, his elbows ajar. He held his head in his arms, bony shoulders cutting through the air, and his cries were sloppy, devastated.
I knew then that Willo had seen the meteor coming, had seen the fiery ball plummeting against the blue, and Willo froze, it was so beautiful, and then there was only the pain of change, a heart throbbing hard against the heat, how you could only save yourself.
Eph looked down once more at his dad, shook his head, and began walking to the steps, his back to me.
I couldn’t move. I thought of losing Audrey, of Ellen’s beautiful red hair, of holding Eph’s hand, how things leave us and never really come back.
And then I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I let Eph go.
Tonka truck
Tonka carrus
New York, New York
Cat. No. 201X-21
On loan from Audrey Harris
I PUSHED OUT OF THE crowd in the lobby and stumbled down the outside steps, looking for Eph on Central Park West and again on Eighty-First. Trees loomed darkly across the street, and my breath puffed out in front of me; my whole body started shivering, my heart clambering, my arms jittering.
Too late.
He was gone.
It felt terrible, the way my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.
I dialed Eph’s phone, but it went straight to voice mail.
I texted him. Where r u?
I waited.
I thought about his face as he said the words, the way it changed when I didn’t say anything back.
And then that soft, broken noise he made when he saw Annabeth.
I had messed up, big time.
His words echoed through me: Here’s the thing: I fucking love you.
I said the words to myself, felt their clumsiness, the way they tripped over my lips.
I didn’t even want to think about that, about what it’d mean for him and me and us. At that moment all I wanted was to find him, to wrap a fleece blanket around us both, to put on Twin Peaks Season One, to grab Sno-Caps, to let him rest his head on my shoulder, to tell him his parents would be okay.
I texted him again. We need 2 talk.
This time the response was immediate: No.
My hands shaking, I dialed his number again. No answer.
With a cry of frustration I hung up, shoving the phone back in my purse, and walked back to Central Park West.
I watched couples walk together, bundled against the cold, the earliest of small Christmas lights twinkling above them, parents swinging a toddler back and forth, a crowd of smokers on the museum steps, the sound of the gala streaming out every time the door opened.
My feet were anchored to the sidewalk, but my breath started to hitch, faster and faster, snagging on itself, fingers tingling from the cold outside, sweat beading on my insides.
I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t want to see my parents. Eph didn’t want to see me.
My fingers tapped on the phone, shaky and imprecise. I had to keep deleting and rewriting, trying to get it right.
hi grace, u around?
I waited, teeth chattering.
Kieran surprised me w another visit! Out w Miles and O!!!! I think it’s a date! :) Come meet us?
Gravity failed me, no solid ground under my feet. I didn’t want to be around my friends just now, but I knew I didn’t want to be alone.
Ten minutes later I was on a ridiculously crowded C train, some dude’s backpack pushing into my shoulder, a woman leaning against my hand as I held the pole.
I counted the stops until Keats’s and excused my way to the exit, the street not the fresh breath I wanted but instead something petty and wet, the snow turning into sleety rain.
The four blocks to his brownstone felt extra long, and the tip of my nose was ice cold, eyes watering from the wind. I wanted warmth; I wanted assurance; I wanted to not remember how much I’d hurt Eph.
I rang the doorbell and stood under the yellow glow of his porch light.
Nothing.
I rang it again, keeping my finger on the button seconds longer, the shrillness echoing, until I heard feet pounding down steps, saw a shadowy figure pause in the window, heard the chain unlatch, the dead bolt click open.
Keats stood in the doorway. His face was flushed and his hair was a mess, his shirt untucked.
“Penelope?”
Not Scout.
“Can I come in?” I said, hugging myself in the cold.
He glanced behind him up the steps. “You know, now isn’t the best time . . .”
My teeth started chattering again, and I tightened my shoulders against the cold. “Something really bad happened with Eph’s parents, and I don’t want to be alone. . . .”
I felt my eyes starting to tear up, and I stepped forward, but he blocked the door.
“Penelope . . .”
Again, not Scout.
“What’s going on?” I asked, right as a female voice sang from somewhere in the house: “Keatsy, I’m getting lonely . . .”
Behind Keats, at the top of the steps, was none other than the worst person in the world: Cherisse.
She was wearing some silky piece of navy blue lingerie, a strap hanging over her shoulder, her hair tangled around her face, smile drowsy and content, until she saw me.
Both of us froze in place, Cherisse muttering, “Oh shit.”
Even though I should have been surprised, the moment felt inevitable and perfect in a way, everything clicking into place.
Keats grimaced. “I can explain.” He gestured to Cherisse to wait a minute and stepped outside with me, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Damn, it’s cold out here,” he said, smiling weakly.
I imagined my arms breaking off, legs snapping, all of me turning into pieces in front of him.
“See, I’ve known Cherisse forever, and something changed this year, and it’s kind of really fucking intense. I wasn’t sure if it was going anywhere, so I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure . . .”
“Wait a minute. She’s Jena?” I said, realizing I already knew the answer, that as much as I’d hated that Wonder Wheel story, it had come from someplace real.
“What?” He shifted from leg to leg.
Something cracked in me, and I mentally surveyed my limbs, not convinced they were all still attached.
“Why did you invite me to the party if there was already someone else? Why did you even like me?” I hated the way my voice sounded pathetic, all of Audrey’s suspicions coming to fruition.
“What party?”
“Your party, the costume party.”
He looked confused. “I didn’t invite you.”
An arm broke right off, more fractures spreading through my fault lines by the second.
“But the invitation, the one in my locker . . .” My voice trailed off, thinking back to the day I got it: Autumn/Summer/Spring yelling at Eph that she wanted to go, asking if I was “her.”
Smudged ink on the corner: the blue of the pens he carried in his pocket, the blue of Eph’s dinosaurs.
My heart split in two.
“I should go,” I whispered.
“Can w
e at least hug it out?” he asked.
“Hug it out?” I asked.
I took in his eyes, his curly hair. I thought of the way he held my hand at the party, the way we talked in the moonlight, how he wouldn’t shut up about Kerouac, how he brought my mom flowers and thought my dad was weird, the way his lips were chapped and dry, how he smelled like fire on your tongue, eyes watering, the way it felt to finally, finally have someone like me.
But how maybe that someone wasn’t Keats.
Wile E. Coyote always hung in the air for one second before he knew the world had been ripped out from under him, before he plummeted to the ground.
This was that one second.
“You should use lip balm” was all I could think to say, and I turned and walked away, leaving an arm, an ear, half a heart on the sidewalk behind me.
• • •
I woke up the next morning to a soft knock on my door. It was 8:43 a.m. My sheets were tangled, and they smelled like night terrors, hands clammy, the sweaty residue of fear. I turned over to the wall, hoping my mom or dad would go away.
Another knock.
“Pen?”
My body tensed with the familiarity of the voice.
I shoved off the sheets, trudged to the door, opened it.
Audrey smiled weakly at me, holding my jean jacket, moving forward like she wanted to hug me but then stepping back, unsure, and hanging the jacket on the edge of my desk chair.
Shame coursed through me, at how she’d been right about Keats, at how she’d been right about me.
My eyes filled beyond my control.
“Pen,” she said, her voice so kind and sad and full of love for me, her eyes tearing up, and I couldn’t stand to look at her for another second.
I folded my arms across my chest and studied my feet, the faint leftover sandal tan lines from the summer. “Why are you here?”
“Cherisse told me about last night. I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“You can’t have been surprised,” I said flatly. “You warned me this would happen.”
She flinched. “I didn’t know Keats and Cherisse were hooking up. I swear, Pen, you have to believe me. I would have told you.”
I shrugged hollowly, everything in me numb. I turned my back on her and dug Eph’s old gray sweatshirt out of my dirty laundry pile, pulled it over my head, and slumped on my bed, not caring if I looked weird and gross.
Audrey picked up a framed picture on my desk. It was from Fourth of July last summer, when she and Eph and I spent the afternoon camped out on her roof, cooling off with ice pops until the fireworks started. Audrey and I were sticking our tongues out—bright red—and Eph was making loser signs with his hands, his lips as red as ours.
I pulled my knees against my chest and tugged my old green-and-white plaid blanket up to my chin, trying to make myself as small as possible. Ford padded silently into the room, gave Audrey a one-off glance, then jumped onto my lap and awkwardly kneaded my leg, purring loudly.
Audrey put the picture down and clutched her hands together, like she was trying to still herself. She cleared her throat. “I miss you, and I’m sorry.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry for the whole stupid mess of us over the past two months.” She swallowed, hard. “Sometimes it’s not easy to be your friend. You have such high standards. Not that they’re bad,” she added hurriedly. “You believe in things so wholly, in absolute friendship and epic true love, and your heart is so amazingly big. I love that about you, Pen. But I’m not Vivien anymore. I don’t know if I ever was.”
Ford settled happily, purring so hard a drop of spittle fell on my blanket. I wiped it off carefully, so I wouldn’t jostle him.
“And I guess, I was hoping, maybe someday, we could begin again? We could learn to be friends again?”
I didn’t know how to respond—everything from the past twenty-four hours, the past two months, whirled around me like some stupid Wizard of Oz tornado, uprooting all I ever believed in. “I messed things up with Eph,” I said, my voice crumbling, the sad words coming out of me, something held back now released.
“Oh, Pen,” Audrey said, rushing to sit next to me, bumping Ford, who yowled, and pulling me into a big hug. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head, trying to hold back all the sadness in me and failing.
I rested my head on her shoulder and cried and cried, thinking about everything I’d lost: Vivien and Delphine, my unwavering faith in fairy tales and happy endings, the dream that was Keats, the reality that was Eph.
When I wore myself out, the sobs softening and easing into an occasional tear-filled hitch of breath, Audrey leaned across the bed, pulled something out of her bag, and held it out to me.
“Oh my God, is that the . . . ?”
She nodded, and I took the Tonka truck from her hand—the one that got tangled in her hair all those years ago, the one that started our friendship.
“You still have it?”
She nodded again, and I dropped my head against her shoulder without thinking, turning the truck in my hand.
“As soon as the nurse cut my hair, she handed it to me and I kept it. I wasn’t going to lose all that hair without something in return.” She poked a finger out and spun one of the wheels, and we listened to it whir. “Of course, I didn’t know I’d get you from that deal too.”
“I wish we could go back to then,” I said.
“We’re not the same people anymore, Pen.”
I thought about that truck whirring in Audrey’s hair, how terrified she was, how it tangled and pulled, how she was trying so hard not to cry.
Be brave, I thought. Be brave for the people you love. “I’m sorry I got so mad at you for what you said—you were right, about me and Keats and everything. I’m sorry I made you watch David Lynch movies and that I have too many rules and that I make it hard to be my friend.”
“I didn’t mean all that, not really,” she said. “Okay, maybe the David Lynch stuff, but, Pen, I was just hurt. And you know I don’t think you’re pathetic, right? Please tell me you know that. That was the worst part of all of it, that you believed I’d think that about you. I would never . . .” She shook her head.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, realizing as she said it that I did know, that everything she had said that day had come out of love, out of multiple viewings of Titanic, of gleefully smelling giant bags of M&M’S, of August nights spent spotting fireflies at her grandparents’ house, of slumber parties and whispered dreams, that all that history didn’t just disappear, even if the people we’d been then no longer existed.
“But, Pen,” she said, her voice quiet. “I can’t not be friends with Cherisse. I’m not going to choose between you guys. I want you both, okay?”
I tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say next. “I get that. But I can’t be friends with her, Aud. Not with the Keats stuff.”
She sighed. “I know. I just wanted my best friends to be best friends . . . I wanted everything to be perfect.”
“I don’t know what that’s like at all,” I said, nudging against her lightly.
“I’m sure you don’t,” she replied, smiling.
“But I get it now, what you were saying about bigger social circles and all that stuff. I met these guys, Grace and Miles, and it’s like . . . well, it’s like they know me already.”
Her smile faltered, and I wondered then if we’d stay friends forever, or if we’d drift off into our new groups, and if maybe that was okay.
I didn’t know what would happen.
I held the truck out to her, but Audrey shook her head. “Hold on to it for a bit. You need it more than me right now.”
And I leaned over, gripping the truck hard, and gave her a hug, my arms moving on instinct, from history, letting go of all we’d lost, holding on to this small, fragile new thing we’d found.
Pottery shard
Pars testae
Dead Horse Bay
Brooklyn, New York
Cat. No. 201X-22
AFTER AUDREY LEFT, I BRUSHED my hair—kind of—and changed into jeans, grabbing my dinosaur necklace and the Bearded Lady’s good-luck token, smashing on a hat and grabbing my coat.
“I’ll be back,” I called to my parents.
I ran as fast as I could the entire two and a half blocks from my house to Eph’s—it was so cold outside, I saw my breath in front of me. I hated running. I felt like there were knives in my rib cage, but I ran anyway, breathing hard, nearly knocking over an old woman with a cart full of aluminum cans in the process.
“Sorry,” I yelled over my shoulder, my legs pumping, until I slowed to a stop in front of Eph’s.
I rang the doorbell, heard footsteps, saw a tall figure peering through the security glass. My heart skipped as the door opened, hoping it was Eph.
It was his dad. George looked as if he had died sometime in the past twenty-four hours, dark gray circles under his puffy eyes, still wearing the same clothes he was wearing last night, the stench of sadness and alcohol coming off him like a cloud.
He wasn’t dashing. He was broken.
“Eph’s not here,” he said, his breath stale.
“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say next. George stared around me, not at me. “Will he be back later today?”
George smiled sadly. “No. He and Ellen left for her parents’ house in Poughkeepsie at the crack of dawn this morning. They’re not back until early tomorrow.”
“Oh,” I said, my shoulders falling. I shifted uncomfortably on the steps. “If you talk to him, will you tell him I stopped by?”
George nodded. “If you talk to him, will you tell him I’m sorry?” he asked.
I nodded solemnly.
George stepped back in, and the door clicked shut. I walked a block, glad I had Eph’s sweatshirt on under my coat, that I was holding myself in what I still had of him.
My hands were shaky. I felt weird and jangly, all the energy from running over to his house not spent but building inside, making me feel twitchy and restless.
