by Anna Birch
Sarah’s never coped well when Iliana and I fight.
The fact that’s she’s crying is almost too much for me.
It’s like I’ve suddenly become aware of gravity for the first time—my bones are made of lead. I start to sink to the floor before I catch myself and throw more effort into staying vertical.
“Y’all are fucking crazy,” Kiersten says.
She releases Iliana, adjusts her jacket, and smooths her hair.
“You can’t call something crazy just because you don’t like it,” I say.
“Fine.” She wrenches the door open and glares back at us. “You’re assholes, both of you. I hope they kick you out.”
Sarah watches the two of us wordlessly. She looks down at the swaths of dark eye makeup smeared on the sleeves of her sweater dress; to Iliana, to me. I don’t understand the expression on Sarah’s face, but Iliana’s reading her like she’s been doing it her whole life.
“Sarah—” Iliana reaches for her, but she only takes a step farther away.
“Is that what you think of me?” Sarah’s attention shifts between Iliana and myself. “That I don’t matter?”
“That’s not what I meant—” Iliana says.
“I—” Sarah is careful to dab at her cheeks with the hem of her sleeve, in spite of the mess that’s already there, “I need to, I don’t know, be alone—”
I don’t know how long the three of us stand here, staring at each other. My head is throbbing to the beat of my heart, and I gag on literally nothing—I’d be throwing up right now if I’d had the stomach to eat at all today. Instead, I choke out a painful cough behind my hand that only makes my head pound.
Finally, without a word, Sarah turns back toward the stage door.
“My turn should be coming up soon,” she says. “Wish me luck.”
There’s literally no way to respond to it, nothing I can do to make the situation better. The door slams behind her, and the air falls still until Iliana spins on her heels to march straight out the glass doors and onto the sidewalk.
* * *
I-Kissed-Alice 6:18p: I don’t know if tonight is going to happen
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:18p: you’re joking
I-Kissed-Alice 6:18p: no. I have a splitting headache. Mom and I got into it pretty bad after the presentation today
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:19p: there is no way you had it worse than I did
I-Kissed-Alice 6:19p: So why do you want to meet, then, if everything is terrible
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:19p: because seeing you is the only thing holding this day together
I-Kissed-Alice 6:19p: ugh. Me too. I’m sorry.
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:20p: go take a nap. We still have time.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:20p: 8, still? Do you want real food instead?
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:20p: real food sounds good.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:20p: meet me in front of Frist at 8 and we’ll walk until we find something
* * *
CHAPTER 17
ILIANA
Username: Curious-in-Cheshire
Last online: 5m ago
“Stop apologizing.” Sarah is a smaller version of herself, hunched forward with her arms crossed in front of her middle as if she’s holding her guts in.
It’s the fourth time I’ve apologized tonight, and the third time she’s told me to cut it out, but … nothing’s happening.
She still looks the same—sad. Small. Hesitant.
“I just—” I want you to pretend it never happened, I want to say.
I need you to pretend it never happened—rather, I need my oldest friend, and I need you to not be angry with me anymore.
I need you to be excited with me and be brave when I feel so, so afraid.
But nothing changes. We’re walking in lockstep up the hill from our hotel, and even if the Frist Center for the Visual Arts is two city blocks away, I can still see the glow of its lights like a beacon calling us home. Under all that light stands Alice—she’s never late to anything—and for all I know, she’s scared to death, too.
“You’re quiet,” Sarah says.
We run out of sidewalk, and the light turns red across the street. I hit the button to cross with a gloved hand and turn back to face Sarah again.
“The traffic light is turning your hair red,” I say weakly.
People accumulate behind us, all finding their way wherever the heck it is they’re going. Probably somewhere fancy. The light glows red on their faces, reflects off the screens of their smartphones and catches in their hair, too.
“Do you have any idea who she is?” Sarah whispers.
The red hand on the crosswalk sign flips over to a brilliant white stick figure, and we step out into the road. Sarah’s hair flips from red to green, too.
“None,” I say. “I sort of wonder if she hid herself from me on purpose—know what I mean?”
“That’s paranoid.” Sarah is careful not to look at me.
Her eyes are on the shop windows, lit from the inside against the dark night. We pass a nail salon and an empty Chinese restaurant with a counter covered in take-out orders. A bookstore next, then a law office that’s closed for the day.
“Is it paranoid, though? Really? What if she’s as afraid of who I am as I am of her?”
“If you’re afraid of each other, why are you meeting?”
She has a point. The edge in Sarah’s voice doesn’t make it easy to swallow, though.
“Look, you didn’t have to come with me—”
“Like hell I’m going to miss this.” Sarah’s smile is hesitant. She reapplied her makeup hours ago—the project presentation is long over and we’ve had time to crash at the hotel before dinner, but her eyes still carry a little bit of cry in them. She turns to face me and takes my gloved hands in hers. “I have to know how this ends, all right?”
I nod. “I know.”
“Just—quit worrying about it.”
“Yeah.” Like hell, as Sarah says. Until I find my way to Alice, and I know everything is okay, I won’t quit worrying about it.
We walk the rest of the way to Frist in silence.
I purposely don’t look at the person standing alone on Frist’s massive front staircase—instead, I drag Sarah to hide behind a car parked on the curb.
“I think she’s over there,” I say. I can’t breathe.
Traffic flies past us, and we press closer to the parked car.
Sarah strains to look up at the stairs through the parked car’s windshield. “What did she say she’s supposed to be wearing?”
“Um.” I pull my phone from my pocket and open the Slash/Spot app. It shows she’s online now, of course. Probably staring at her phone, waiting for me—a sign—something. I’d be doing the same if it were me waiting for her. I flick over to our direct messages. “A baby blue coat, uh, and a black ribbon in her hair.”
Like Alice, she’d said. I didn’t tell her what I would be wearing.
The time at the top of my phone screen reads 7:50.
A shiver runs over me, then settles in my hands.
Ten more minutes until Alice is in my arms and the entire universe is turned on its ear.
“Iliana, look! Rhodes!” Sarah thrusts a pointed finger toward the other side of the intersection.
Sure enough, there she is, all gussied up and headed God-knows-where.
Probably to meet her parents for dinner.
Or to meet someone none of us are supposed to know about.
I’ve never seen her date, and it didn’t occur to me until now that maybe she’s spoken for. It would not be unlike her to have someone tucked away in her back pocket because she doesn’t like her fancy Nashville and lowbrow Birmingham foods to touch.
“Sarah—no!” I grab for Sarah just as she starts to dart across the road through waves of traffic. Before I can clamp my hand over her mouth, she’s yelling Rhodes’s name and waving with enough enthusiasm to accidentally flag down a cab.
Rhodes Ingram, shrill as
she ever was, doesn’t wait until we’re standing on the same street corner to shriek at us. “What the hell are you doing here?”
We’re going to make Rhodes wait until we cross the street before we dignify her with a response. Or at least I am—Sarah is practically a dog jerking at the end of her chain trying to get to Rhodes on the other side of the street.
Rhodes is usually the one making me feel small because I haven’t learned all those tiny social nuances she thinks are so important—those myriad things that make classy people classy and the rest of us seem just a little frayed around the edges. But this time, she’s the one that’s unraveling too fast to care what anyone around her sees her doing.
“Come on—another break in cars is coming up—” Sarah starts to launch across the intersection again, but I hold her back.
“Wait,” I say.
Sarah hangs back, again, but every muscle in her body is coiled tight and ready to launch into the street the moment the light changes. Rhodes watches us between the cars that zip by, expectant.
All three of us know exactly what this is: Earlier today, Rhodes and I drew a line in the sand. There is no more coexistence, and Sarah is facing a choice: She’s either Rhodes’s friend, or mine.
Choosing one means losing the other, even if it isn’t fair. After everything that happened between Sarah, Rhodes, and me today, there’s such a thin chance that Sarah would pick me at all—not after what I said about her, and not with the way I went after Rhodes.
And yet, we have history.
She’s standing here with me now, not Rhodes. That means something.
Across the way, the walk signal beckons us to the other side of the road. I don’t expect Sarah to walk close enough for our hips to brush, but she does. A fraction of a second later, traffic is flying behind us again.
Rhodes is headed somewhere, by the looks of her. Her hair is curled at the ends, and mascara makes her eyes seem even bigger than they really are. I’ve never seen her in makeup before. I’ve never seen her in the little powder blue dress coat she’s wearing, with wide lapels and a tied belt at the waist.
She’s in tights and pointy-toed black ballet flats.
“When’d you learn how to curse, Ingram?” My fingerless gloves aren’t enough for the cold anymore; I shove my hands into my pockets.
“Your mom,” Rhodes says, crossing her arms.
The most asinine response any sixth-grade boy ever thought of.
Sarah has drifted away from my side to stand between us. She’s hovering back and forth like a bleached-out, worried ghost, wringing her gloved hands and staring into the street.
“Can we not do this again?” Her voice cracks.
Neither Rhodes nor I acknowledge it.
“I asked when you learned how to curse,” I say, “not who taught you.”
Seriously, Rhodes is terrible at this. I’m not sure if it’s the traffic lights casting red across her face or if she’s blushing.
“I guess that’s what I get for stooping to your level.” Rhodes’s eyes dart around behind me—literally just a flash of a second—and then her attention turns to my face again. “I really should have known better. I’m sorry.”
“Aaaaaaand there she is, the uppity bitch we’re all used to,” I say.
I give her a generous smile and pet her arm. She’s warm. I don’t want to think about it. Rhodes jerks away from me and crosses her arms this time.
“That’s how you do it, by the way—you want to pepper it in just enough to give your insults a little flavor.” My smile could be the Cheshire Cat’s, broad and toothy.
One of those billboard trucks speed by, flashing from an ad for an injury lawyer in a cheap suit to a local information screen. It’s forty-two degrees, apparently, with fifteen percent humidity.
7:58 p.m.
Two minutes left.
With Rhodes in my face, at least I’m not thinking about how nervous I am.
She rolls her eyes, then checks her watch. “Listen, this has been fun, but I have to go—”
“Wait, do you have a date?” I know she doesn’t have a date. There’s no way this awkward, uptight little princess meets people to hook up in another state.
Sarah’s expression sours.
“You have a date,” Sarah whispers in my hair. “Do you really want Alice walking up on this—?”
“That’s none of your business.” Strangely, Rhodes’s shoulders relax.
Mine do the same.
She isn’t here to meet someone. As in a mysterious, anonymous sort-of-girlfriend.
Sarah’s eyes flash back and forth between Rhodes and me.
“You don’t have to leave our zip code to find people who’ll put up with you, Rhodes.” The game’s back on. Getting under her skin is like shooting fish in a barrel. “I’m sure there’s somebody in Birmingham that hasn’t sworn you off yet.”
“I’m not here to—”
“Plus, I’ve heard big-city girls move a lot faster, gotta decide if you’re ready for that—”
“Iliana! I’m not here to meet … girls.” She glares out into traffic. “Can you just, like, go away?”
“Sure you’re not.” I know she’s not. But what if she is? I thrust my hands into the pockets of my coat. “Just don’t forget protection. Planned Parenthood has dental dams for free.”
I might have wanted the last word, and maybe I wanted to mortify her, but there’s also a part of me that 100 percent knows she’s the type to be too innocent to think about something like that.
She can thank me later.
After a moment of hesitation, Rhodes doesn’t move to cross the street, and she doesn’t make her way farther up the sidewalk. She slowly, quietly, makes her way to Frist’s front steps.
Next, she gathers her coat around her and takes a seat.
All I can do is keep walking. I’ll watch for Alice from a distance, I guess.
She said I’d know her when I saw her.
“Iliana— Listen, you really need to think about—” Sarah’s eyes are brimming over for probably the five-hundredth time today. She isn’t following me anymore, but she is watching Rhodes from a distance.
“Not now, Sarah.” I loop my arm through Sarah’s and pull her along with me.
We round the corner to march up toward the green. The tall, thorned roses standing in the center of the green seem like the perfect place to wait for Alice, anyway. Where else would she look for me?
I glance at my phone’s screen again.
No messages from Alice.
The time is now 8:05.
“No, no, no.” Sarah pulls herself loose. She moves to stand in front of me, the only person I know short enough to meet me eye-to-eye. “This isn’t like that. Okay? For once in your life, just listen to me—”
The way she’s holding my hands, and looking into my eyes, and her voice is quavering—I can’t take it. I know what this is.
This is the let-down talk.
She’s going to tell me that Alice isn’t coming, and the person I’ve put every ounce of love and hope and energy into hasn’t deserved any of it.
“She’s coming, Sarah.” I’m crying, now. “I mean something to her. She’d never do this to me—”
“Of course you mean something to her,” Sarah says. She’s crying too. Again.
Traffic flies past us around the curve; we press close.
“Iliana, babe, you haven’t figured it out…?” She’s watching me as if I’m some kind of fanged beast. She paws at her face in frustration. “Like, come on.”
“There’s nothing to figure out.” I shake my head. My hands shake. My hair shakes. Everything shakes. “She’s just running late, or something.”
Sarah frowns.
Her voice cracks. “It’s Rhodes, Iliana.”
Sarah’s words don’t register at first. It’s like she’s speaking another language.
“Alice is Rhodes Ingram.”
* * *
I-Kissed-Alice 8:44p: are you still coming?
/>
I-Kissed-Alice 8:51p: this sucks, Cheshire.
I-Kissed-Alice 9:15p: out of anybody in the world, I would have never expected this of you.
I-Kissed-Alice 9:20p: like, really?
I-Kissed-Alice 9:20p: this is how it’s going to be?
I-Kissed-Alice 9:20p: just … nothing?
I-Kissed-Alice 11:30p: can you please let me know you’re okay?
I-Kissed-Alice 11:30p: we never have to talk again.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
RHODES
Username: I-Kissed-Alice
Last Online: 6h ago
Cheshire never showed, and everything I know is a lie.
There are sets of eyes in every bush, every darkened window, every alley.
They peer out and watch.
They wait.
They’re poised for attack.
The oversize can of wasp spray I keep in my bag always seemed like overkill, even if it was the one thing I promised Mom when I moved onto campus, but tonight it feels like perfect logic to walk with it clasped to my chest as if it’s some kind of life preserver.
By the time mace has been wrestled from its little faux-leather holster, uncapped, and twisted into the spray position, it’s already too late. But a can of wasp spray? There’s no mistaking what kind of poison sloshes inside the can. No doubt that aerosol will propel it with accuracy wherever the wielder directs it to go.
The condo my family and I are renting is quiet when I tiptoe inside. The entire open-concept living space is dark except for the three pendant lights hanging over the island in the small kitchen; glitter shimmers in the mosaic tile facade that flanks the fireplace. It’s at least after midnight now and no one’s here, which means Mom, Dad, and Griff went to hear one of the indie upstart country-boy-with-a-guitar types that Nashville is bursting at the seams with.
It’s so much easier to fall apart with no one home to witness it.
I kick one shoe across the room, then the other.
Shed the jacket, shed the sweater, shed the jeans.
The first thing I do is close the blinds on either side of the fireplace. Cheshire could be anywhere. She could be anyone, looking in my windows, watching me wander around the great room in my T-shirt and socks without me ever knowing.
