Emergency Contact
Page 23
“You’re not?” Jude said incredulously. “It was your idea to come to the beach.” She stepped out of her shorts. Penny handed her a towel.
“I wanted to see the water,” she said. “To be near it.” It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would go in.
Jude shrugged and ran to the water, whooping before diving in. Mallory watched her, looked back at Penny, and offered her a chip.
Penny took a handful. “Are you swimming?”
“Oh, hell no,” said Mallory. “I only dip my toes in chlorinated water.”
They could barely make Jude out in the waves.
Mallory hopped up onto Penny’s trunk, and Penny climbed up next to her. She felt Mallory shiver slightly in the dark.
“Cold?”
“A little.”
Penny grabbed her hoodie from the front seat, pulled her phone out of the pocket, and handed the sweatshirt to her. They huddled closer.
She thought about how with Mallory everything was even steven. Affection, loyalty, even laughing at jokes. Jude was different. Penny could see now why they were so close. Mallory was tougher and looked out for her. They were a good team.
They faced the water, feeling the breeze and listening to the roar of the tide.
“Isn’t it appalling that she’s friends with us?” Mallory asked.
Penny was strangely flattered to be a part of Mallory’s “us.”
“She’s so nice,” said Mallory. “Decent, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Penny. “If there were an apocalypse tomorrow, she’d be out in the first wave. It wouldn’t matter how fast or strong she was. Her heart wouldn’t be able to take it.”
Mallory bumped her shoulder with her own. “I love how this is where your brain goes,” she said. “I know what you mean though. God, can you imagine? She’d probably die trying to save a bus full of orphans.”
“Why would anybody save children during the apocalypse?” said Penny.
“For anything other than food? No idea.”
Penny smiled in the dark.
Mallory took her hair down from a bun and shook it out. The wind was balmy on Penny’s face. She was glad they’d come. After a moment she shook her hair out too. “I love the ocean.”
“We’re going to have the best beachy waves.” Mallory scrunched her hair and pulled out her phone. “Get in this with me.”
The first shot with the flash was awful. Straight up the nose with both of them resembling startled possums.
“Oh my God.” Mallory laughed, deleting it. “Tragic.”
Penny switched on the flashlight of her phone and illuminated them from an angle.
“No flash, only mood lighting,” said Penny.
“Ooooh, you are resourceful,” said Mallory. “I would eat you last in the apocalypse.”
They tried another. Better.
“Okay,” said Mallory, repositioning Penny’s hand and tugging at her arm. “Wait, seriously, is this as far as you go? What are you, some kind of midget T. rex?”
Penny laughed. When Mallory made fun of you in this way you felt like the only person in the world.
“Here, let’s switch.” Mallory became the flashlight as Penny shot.
“So much better,” said Mallory as Penny swiped through the options. In fact, they were the best selfies Penny had ever taken. They were two giggly girls with great big hair doing irrepressibly fun things. Even without the pictures, Penny would remember this night for a long time.
“See,” said Mallory. “Look how good you look when you tilt your chin down like that?”
“Oh my God, it’s sooooooo cold!” Jude breathlessly ran toward them. “I knew it was gonna be a bitch when I got out.”
Mallory flashed the phone light toward her. She was shivering in her underwear.
“What happened to the towel I gave you?” asked Penny.
Jude’s eyes widened. “Oh shit,” she said, turning back toward the beach.
“Don’t worry. Penny has an extra,” said Mallory, hopping off the trunk.
“You do?”
Penny reached into the trunk for the other one and handed it to her.
“I kneeeeeeew it!” Mallory clapped her hands triumphantly. “Oh my God, you’re so predictable!”
“That’s my last though!” Penny exclaimed. It required heroic restraint not to make Jude go back and hunt for its mate.
“Wait, I want a selfie too,” said Jude, reaching for her phone. “Give me. I want to check my face.”
Penny handed it over.
“Oh my God,” said Jude, pawing through her hair helplessly. “Drowned rat much?”
“First wave of the apocalypse,” muttered Mallory.
“Seriously,” Penny said, cheesing.
“Look at you two all buddy-buddy,” said Jude, eyeing them.
Just then Penny’s phone pinged in Jude’s hand.
“Penny, you have to change your ringtone,” said Mallory. “I have, like, PTSD from Apex. It’s been my alarm all year. What psychopath uses Apex as their ringtone? It’s such an alarm.”
“What?” said Penny, reaching for her phone. “No way. Apex is way too quiet for that.”
Apex kept going off in Jude’s hands.
Jude’s face was lit up. Then she held the phone out so the other girls could see.
Penny snatched the phone, but the damage had been done.
She’d seen.
Jude knew.
SAM HOUSE
Today 9:11 PM
Yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyyoyoyoyo
Come by
I baked a SHEETCAKE
Your favorite
Confetti emoji
He’d written out “confetti emoji” since he was trying to quit using emoji because he thought they were “emotionally lazy.”
“Uh,” said Mallory quietly. “What psycho sets their texts to preview mode?”
Penny grabbed her phone and shoved it into her pocket, plunging the girls into darkness.
Penny weighed her options.
Available means to ejector seat from crippling social trauma:
1. Jump into the car, lock the doors, race home, transfer schools before they return.
2. Lie her lying face off.
3. Just tell them everything. It was a simple (very long) misunderstanding.
Penny wondered if this canceled everything out, if them seeing the texts meant they weren’t friends anymore. Penny felt like her throat was closing. There was no escape. She felt nauseous. The waves thundered in her ears.
“Jude,” she said quietly. It was barely audible above the din. Penny wished she could sit down. Her heart was racing. “I’m sorry.”
“Wait,” said Jude. “Sam House, that’s Uncle Sam, right?”
Penny nodded.
There were rapid-fire questions of increasing volume.
“Uncle Sam is your secret Internet boyfriend?”
“No! Not exactly.”
“Are you guys dating?”
“We’re just friends.”
“Well, then, why wouldn’t you say something?”
Penny couldn’t tell her that Sam didn’t want her to. It would only make things worse.
“Were you hanging out this whole time while he was avoiding me?”
“No. We just text. We don’t hang out. . . . Okay, we’ve hung out once. Twice, technically . . .”
“Jesus, Penny,” Jude said. “He’s the guy, right? The guy you’re into?”
Silence.
And from Mallory:
“Why sheet cake though?”
“I told him it was my favorite. . . .”
For some reason the cake part seemed to piss Jude off the most. Mallory stood beside her with her arms crossed. Strangely, Mallory seemed more perplexed than mad, though there was no question whose side she was on.
“I’m sorry,” said Penny. She meant it.
They rode home in silence. This time Penny didn’t feel sleepy at all.
SAM.
11:02 PM
Where’d you go?
You ok?
Cake was bomb
Saved you some
11:49 PM
Hey
Can’t talk
11:51 PM
Sure thing
What happened?
Momstuff?
12:41 AM
LMK if you need anything
PENNY.
The downside to Jude being chipper and easygoing was that when she had it out for you, you felt it. By day two of Jude giving her the silent treatment, Penny was distraught. As soon as Penny entered their room, Jude glared at her, cranked up her speakers, and turned away. Often she blasted god-awful dubstep mash-ups neither of them liked, which is how Penny knew Jude really had it out for her.
When Penny left a banana on her desk as an offering, Jude rejected it. She refused it by putting it on Penny’s work chair, so when Penny went to write, she sat on it. As tiny passive-aggressive revenges went, it was adorable, and it killed Penny that they couldn’t laugh about it.
Penny hit up her mom that afternoon. She’d been dreading texting Celeste, but she had to bite the bullet.
I’m so sorry
I won’t make it tonight
I’m slammed with my creative writing final
Need to write 3K words by Monday
Will make it up to you
Happy birthday!!!
Celeste would barely notice Penny wasn’t there. Last she checked on Facebook, the sit-down dinner had transformed to a cocktail fiesta with forty-five guests and a norteño ensemble, Los Chingones, that took requests for live-band karaoke. Live. Band. Karaoke. There was no way.
Sam texted:
She blew me off for lunch
Jude wasn’t talking to him either.
I called her.
And?
Nothing.
She’s so mad
Living in the same room
Is the worst
Celeste called.
Penny guiltily sent it to voicemail.
I screwed up big, huh?
Ugh I knew we should tell her
The super-shameful part was that Jude’s rancor and Penny’s guilt had the unforeseen advantage of helping her write. Penny spent the next few hours consumed by her story and by 11:30 p.m. had completed whole new passages to send J.A. for her office hours the next day. When Jude walked in, Penny was startled out of her trance.
“Oh,” said Penny weakly. “Hey.”
Jude rolled her eyes. “Why aren’t you going home?” said Jude. She grabbed clean clothes and angrily packed them into a bag. “I accepted your mother’s friend request.”
Jude’s stabs at vengeance continued to be the best.
“Jude,” Penny begged. “Please talk to me. I know I should have told you. It wasn’t on purpose and nothing crazy happened. We’re friends. It wasn’t planned and then we didn’t know when to . . .”
“Oh, so you’re a ‘we’ now.”
“Jude, I’m sorry,” Penny said. “It’s a misunderstanding. . . .” Penny pleaded. “It’s not a big deal if you would let me explain.”
“I know it’s not a big deal to you,” said Jude, slamming a drawer. “I know intellectually that you’re allowed to be friends with whoever you want. Same goes for Sam. Which is why I don’t get it. If you’re just friends, if it’s no big deal, why go through all this trouble of hiding it from me? It’s like you’re just shady to be shady, and I hate that.”
She zipped her bag up. “You know, I made such an effort to be nice to both of you,” she said. “I invited you guys to lunch, dinner, movies. Would it have killed you to include me in your plans? You’re both from here. Other than Mallory, I don’t know anyone. Do you know what that feels like? God, you must’ve thought I was so annoying. That I couldn’t take a hint.”
Penny’s heart sank as Jude shouldered her bag.
Jude was right. Of course she was right.
“You know, you do this to everyone,” Jude said, swinging open the door. “You do this to your mom. You do it to me. Mallory, too, even if you don’t care about her. . . . You shut people out with no explanation. It’s so rude and mean. And for what? For a guy who you know doesn’t even like you like that?”
Penny blanched. Spoken out loud, Penny’s actions sounded pathetic even to her own ears.
“I make a good friend, Penny,” Jude said. “You didn’t even give me a chance.”
Penny’s phone rang. She glanced down at it as a reflex.
“Christ,” fumed Jude. She slammed the door behind her.
The number was a 210 area code. Knowing Celeste, she was drunk-dialing her, thinking she was slick by using a friend’s phone. Either that or she lost her purse. Again.
Penny answered.
“Hello?” A man’s voice.
“Hello?” Penny bolted upright.
“Hi. Is this Penelope?” Penny’s heart leapt into her throat.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is everything okay?”
She imagined Celeste dead in a ditch.
“Penny, this is your mom’s friend Michael.”
She tasted acid. “Is it my mom? Is she okay?”
She pictured twisted metal, deranged gunmen, torch-wielding neo-Nazis. . . .
“I’m with your mom,” the voice said. “She’s fine. We’re at Metropolitan Methodist. . . .”
Penny’s head cracked wide open and all she heard were the lambs screaming.
The hospital.
“I’m coming right now,” she said.
“Good, good,” he stammered. “She’s fine but . . . um, okay. I’ll be here.”
Penny did not know a Michael among Celeste’s fiends. Her mother had a rotating cast of besties, though Penny didn’t have their numbers. Truth was, she was her mom’s emergency contact, and despite that fact, Penny hadn’t been there for her. Penny stared at her phone. She couldn’t feel her face, and a wave of nausea engulfed her. Okay, she couldn’t call Jude. Mallory was Jude’s friend, so that was out. She called Sam.
SAM.
Sam ran to Kincaid with his backpack. He didn’t know why he’d brought it, only that they were going somewhere and that Penny appreciated supplies. He’d packed water, a Tupperware container of leftover sheet cake, spoons, an extra sweatshirt, and a hard-case first-aid kit that Al kept in the kitchen. Penny had said nothing of where they were going, though she’d been unnervingly subdued on the phone. Robotic in a way that was worrisome.
All he knew was that it had to do with her mom. Sam wondered how Penny would cope if Celeste died. As much as Penny complained about her, she would probably fall to pieces if something bad happened.
Sam remembered one of their earliest conversations about Penny’s mom.
EMERGENCY PENNY
Oct 5, 2:14 PM
I bet I’m bad at death
As in you suck at it therefore you’re invincible?
No bad at processing it
Nobody I’ve been close to died
Lucky
I’m great at death
In tenth grade the uncle Sam was closest to died of cancer, the same summer two of his friends were killed in a drunk-driving accident.
Sometimes I watch my mother sleep
and pretend she’s dead
I cry and cry and cry
because I love her so much
but also don’t want her to know
He’d thought about Brandi Rose and what he’d do if she died.
I’d be all alone if she was gone
Penny was waiting for him downstairs when he arrived. Her hair was extra big. Penny threw a crumpled twenty-dollar bill at him and it bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. She was wild-eyed.
“For gas,” she said. He picked it up and stuffed it in his back pocket as he followed her to the lot across the street.
“Thank you,” Penny said, handing over the keys. “I’m shaking too much to drive. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, and let her in.
&
nbsp; “My mom gave me this car. It’s her car,” she said, strapping into shotgun. “Did I wake you up?”
“Nope.” He adjusted his seat and mirrors and headed toward the highway.
“You know it’s her birthday?” Penny’s voice bordered on hysterical. Sam kept his attention on the road, but he wanted to keep her talking.
“Yeah, I do. Her fortieth.”
“I mean, technically her birthday isn’t until tomorrow.” Penny glanced down at the time and burst into ragged sobs. “It’s midnight.”
It was 12:02.
“Do you have Kleenex?” she asked after a moment. “I forgot my sundries.”
“Sundries” made Sam smile. He handed her the backpack.
“There’s a black bandana in there,” he said.
Penny pulled out a spoon.
“For cake,” he said. Penny nodded as if that made perfect sense. Sam reached over and rummaged until his fingers found cloth. He handed it to her.
“You should have dedicated cases for things,” she said.
Sam nodded.
“I’m going to wash this and give it back,” she added, blowing her nose.
“Penny,” he said, keeping his eyes ahead. “Is your mom okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so. I didn’t ask any of the right questions to Michael.”
“Who’s Michael?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Some guy.”
“Penny, why didn’t you go to your mom’s birthday?” As far as he knew she’d been planning on it.
“I can’t be around her.”
She turned toward him. “Oh God, that’s horrible. How could I say that right now? What if something really bad happened? What do you think happened?”
Sam shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know.”
“You know what’s so dumb?” said Penny quietly, sniffling. “And I know it wouldn’t fix everything, but I wish I had a dad. Bet a dad would know what happened.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Sam, thinking about his own.
“God, remember when you were almost a dad?” she asked.
Sam smiled. “I might remember something about losing my mind on a daily basis for a few weeks, yeah.”
“I think you would have been a good dad,” she said.
Sam’s left eye misted over. “Yeah?” He swallowed.