No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  “Oh, sorry. God, you should have told me I was chewing like a monster.”

  There’s a grin in Will’s voice when he says, “You don’t chew like a monster. Maybe like a small marsupial.”

  “Ha,” I say.

  Soon the movie is starting, and as the first scene begins, a chase scene, I yawn. I guess I only thought about the sneaking-into-the-movie part and not the seeing-the-movie part. I kind of wish I was in theater 9 instead, about to watch a gripping low-budget story about star-crossed lovers and not the second film in the reboot of a superhero-versus-alien series.

  “You’re bored,” Will says, like he can read my thoughts. “Sneaking into a movie didn’t get your adrenaline going?”

  “Not exactly,” I admit.

  “I am shocked,” he says.

  “Oh, shush,” I whisper, and try to focus on the movie. A few minutes pass and I’m barely keeping track of the plot. I really wish I was somewhere else.

  “Three, two, one, aaaaaand spandex,” Will says out of nowhere.

  I nearly choke on my popcorn. “What?”

  “We’re playing a game. To keep you awake. And I’m trying to predict when the first dude in tights is going to show up on-screen. Was I right?”

  I snort. “Nope, try again.”

  It’s on Will’s fourth guess that the hero, an everyman who transforms into a caped renegade, appears on the screen.

  Will keeps a running commentary going throughout the film, predicting what’s going to happen and what is happening, and I laugh under my breath.

  “New rule,” he says. “You take a drink every time someone says something about saving the world. And not just baby sips either. Like, chug it.”

  “How many times do you…”

  “The world is in danger, Mitch. It’s up to us to do the right thing.”

  “Drink!” Will commands.

  “They didn’t exactly say…,” I start to argue.

  “You and me together. Saving the world.”

  “Drink!” Will yells.

  Laughing, I take a gulp of my drink.

  “That’s what you wear to save the world?”

  “Oh God,” I say, reaching for my drink again. Someone a few rows ahead turns back to look at me, and I school my expression, keep it impassive as I stare straight ahead.

  “DRINK!”

  Stifling laughter, I reach for my cup again even though I didn’t even hear what they said. I’ll take Will’s word for it.

  “Okay, that is definitely some slo-mo action,” Will says. “The love interest is walking toward him now, right? Wait, she’s strutting.”

  “She’s more than the love interest! She’s his partner,” I argue under my breath.

  “Right, but they’re still giving her the slo-mo, wind-in-the-hair treatment. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  He’s right.

  It’s a full-on Bond-girl-emerging-out-of-the-water moment.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  Will snorts, clearly proud of himself. “How many of these movies do you think I’ve seen?”

  “So, what, now it’s just ingrained in your mind?”

  He doesn’t remember me or his family or how he died, but he remembers the formula for bad superhero/alien crossover movies.

  “Absolutely,” he says, not the slightest bit embarrassed by this.

  The low timbre of his voice tickles the insides of my ears every time he speaks, and I imagine he is next to me, our arms touching on the armrest in between us. I shift when he shifts. Our eyes catch at select moments in the dim light reflecting off the movie screen, and we exchange shy smiles.

  Is this what it would have been like if Will had lived? If I had taken a chance, made the first move earlier?

  I know it’s impossible, to feel his presence so acutely. And I would feel crazy, would feel like I was imagining the intimacy of this moment, if he didn’t say, “So how am I doing so far?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well, I made you pay for your own ticket. You bought your own snacks, and I’ve been talking throughout the movie. Not exactly on track for a date two, huh?”

  “A date two,” I repeat quietly. “That would make this…”

  “A date,” he finishes for me. “What else do you call going to the movies on a Friday night with a pretty girl?”

  I roll my eyes. “You don’t even know what I look like.”

  “So tell me what you look like.”

  I hesitate. For some reason, this suddenly feels like we are sharing secrets in the dark. It feels like giving him something, the ability to identify me in a crowd, the ability to imagine me correctly.

  “Well, I have black hair,” I say. “Past my shoulders. I have dark brown skin. And big everything on my face—big lips, big eyes, big nose.”

  “So I was right,” Will says.

  “Right about what?”

  “That you’re gorgeous.”

  I feel my face heating up then, and I’m silent. Is Will flirting with me?

  He can’t be, right?

  Except he just said we were on a date.

  And he just called me gorgeous.

  Is that what the real Will had thought? Is that why he said it?

  I remind myself that he is just a computer program, that all he has inside him are traits that belonged to Will. He doesn’t have his memories, his experiences, his truths.

  The real Will was flirtatious, so this Will is being flirtatious.

  Or is it more than that?

  “I have to pee,” I blurt out. It’s true. All the drinking at save-the-world references has taken its toll. “I’ll call you back,” I say.

  “Okay,” Will says.

  I know I’ve done it again when I hang up. I’ve freaked out at the slightest possibility of a thing, a chance, with Will.

  Except it’s not a chance, is it?

  Will isn’t here.

  I sneak out of the theater and find the nearest bathroom. I’m washing my hands after when someone calls my name.

  “Oh my God, Eden! I haven’t seen you since the last day of school.” It’s New Age Lauren. We hug and then spend the next couple of minutes catching up. She’s working at a tea shop this summer and going to fashion school in the fall. She’s seeing In a World Like Ours with some friends she works with.

  As our conversation lulls, she looks behind me. “Are you here all alone?” she asks.

  I hesitate, feel my face flush, and then quickly say, “No, I’m not,” before I even realize that it’s true.

  I’m not here alone.

  “Oh, okay,” she says. “I’d have said you should come join us. I bet no one would notice.”

  She’s asking me to theater hop. I suppress a laugh at the irony.

  “Well, say hi to Lace for me.” Lauren gives a wave before flouncing out of the bathroom.

  Of course she assumed I was here with Lacey.

  The fact is that if we hadn’t fought, I would have been here with Lacey.

  She was my person, the one I did everything with.

  And I was hers.

  Or at least I thought I was.

  Will could have been my person. Will could have been who I was here with tonight.

  I hit redial after I leave the bathroom.

  He picks up on the first ring, waiting, as always, for me to call.

  “I don’t want to go back inside,” I tell him. “Let’s do something that’s actually daring. Something you would do.”

  I can hear the grin in his voice. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  IT’S THE SECOND weekend of summer and Lacey’s leaving for her dad’s in a week.

  Consequently, she won’t take no for an answer; we’re going to Jenna Lloyd’s party.

>   “To christen my trip,” Lace insists, reaching around her guitar for her purse in the back seat.

  “We could have christened it with a movie and Nutella chocolate chip cookies,” I shoot back as we climb out of the car. Lace moans, salivating at just the thought of the recipe we tried out at her house two nights ago, but remains undeterred.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun!”

  “That’s the thing,” I say. “It never really is.”

  She hip checks me, turns and starts toward the brightly lit house, which is already thumping like the start of a tension headache.

  A few minutes later, we are stationed in the kitchen, making small talk with a bunch of kids from our art class, when there are rumblings around us, of people jumping off the roof.

  “Like, to die?” Hallie Finn asks, alarmed.

  “Into the pool,” someone answers.

  Lacey and I exchange a look and, by wordless agreement, follow the group of people heading into Jenna’s backyard.

  The pool is glistening and huge, and it makes the figure standing on the edge of the roof look minuscule in comparison. The distance to the pool looks dangerously long. Actually, everything about the fall looks dangerous, but the person standing up there calls down to his friends on the ground.

  “Ready?”

  I recognize his voice before his face, and my heart skips a beat. It’s Will.

  “Holy crap,” Lacey says out loud, catching on at the same time.

  Someone starts to count him down. “On five, four…”

  On three, his eyes flicker to the ground and they catch on mine. His gaze lingers on me for a second and I wonder if he can tell my heart is in my throat, and I’m about to yell to him not to do it, don’t do it, when his face breaks into the widest smile. And then it’s time and he’s still looking at me as he launches off the roof. He lands with a monstrous splash in the pool and then he’s shaking his hair out, like a wet puppy dog, laughing with his head thrown back, talking to his friends, and it’s only then I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

  Jumping from a roof into a pool is something Will would do.

  Thankfully, there are no pools in sight after I leave the theater, but that doesn’t appear to present a problem.

  He asks me to drive to the nearest gas station, so I pull out of the parking lot and drive toward the Gas ’N Go a couple of minutes away.

  “Do you have a sweater or a bag or anything?”

  “I have a hoodie in my back seat.”

  “Perfect,” he says. “Put it on.”

  I do as he says, making a mental note to stick my hoodie in the wash when I get home. It smells like must and sweat and car.

  “Let’s go inside,” Will says, and we walk through the glass doors into the small, fluorescently lit building.

  “Hi.” A sleepy-looking woman in her forties greets me as I enter.

  “Hi,” I say back. I still have my wireless earphones in, so she doesn’t know I’m on my phone.

  “What do you feel like getting?” Will says in my ear. “Pick out something. My treat.”

  “What do you mean, your treat?” I say with a laugh. And how exactly is this supposed to be daring?

  “Exactly what I said. Take whatever you want.”

  “Um, okay. I’ll take a Snickers bar,” I say.

  “Great. So reach for it with one hand, and then push it up the sleeve of your hoodie.”

  I’m frozen with shock. “What?”

  “Stick it up your sleeve and…”

  “No, I heard you. Why would I do that?”

  “You said you wanted to do something daring.”

  “I didn’t think that meant—” I lower my voice. “I didn’t mean stealing.”

  “It’s just a chocolate bar.”

  “Exactly. I could pay for it. It barely costs anything.”

  “But that would defeat the purpose.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” I hiss. “To wind up in jail?”

  Will laughs, a hearty, full laugh. “We’re not going to jail.”

  “We will if I get caught.”

  “So let’s not get caught,” he says, as if it’s just that simple. As if all I have to do is decide not to get caught and I won’t.

  “Will,” I say, turmoil stewing inside me. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to,” he says. “But if you want better than sneaking into a movie, this is it.”

  I say nothing, trying to decide what to do.

  “Okay, here’s a compromise,” Will says. “Put down a couple of dollars on the shelf, so you’re technically giving them something, and then take the bar.”

  That does seem a little better. Less terrible. But only slightly less.

  “My mother would kill me.”

  It’s out before I register it, but it’s true.

  If she knew where I was right now, what I was debating doing, she would legitimately murder me. “Other people can do whatever they want to,” she always says, but in her mind, the rules are different for us. Because we are black, because we are the Paulsens. Excellence courses through our veins.

  Excellence is not shoplifting a candy bar from Gas ’N Go.

  And yet I find myself doing exactly what Will said. Pulling two dollar bills out of the pocket of my jeans and placing them on the shelf. Then reaching for the chocolate, slipping it up the sleeve of my hoodie.

  Because my mother isn’t here.

  Because Will is.

  Because my mother is a fucking hypocrite.

  “Now what?” I whisper to him.

  “What else do you want?” he asks.

  “Some gum?” I say, a question.

  Will laughs. “Are you sure?”

  I’m not, but before I can change my mind or think anything through, I reach for a rectangle of strawberry bubble gum and stick it up my sleeve.

  Then add another pack.

  And a grape one for effect.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Will says when I’ve been quiet for a beat too long. “Don’t take the whole store!”

  I laugh and the woman behind the counter glances up from her magazine, her eyes landing on me. I immediately want to confess everything, to apologize and tell her what I did and never, ever do anything like this again. But that would be the exact opposite of daring.

  That would be doing what I always do: never taking a chance, never putting myself at risk for good or bad things.

  I’m walking toward the door of the store and the woman, still watching me, says, “Have a good night!”

  “Thanks,” I say. I reach for the door and it happens so fast and all of a sudden one of the packs of gum is on the floor. I freeze, hoping to God that she didn’t see it drop, that if I just ignore it, she won’t notice.

  “Is everything okay?” she asks.

  “Yes, thanks,” I answer. I kick the traitorous pack of gum to the side with one swipe of my foot and in the same motion I’m pushing the door open and starting toward my car. I start off walking briskly, but by the time I reach it, I’m running. I jump into the driver’s seat, laughing and shaking and knowing that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but the woman manning the store is not out here chasing after me.

  “For all I know, she’s calling the police,” I tell Will.

  “Over a pack of gum?” he asks, when I explain to him what happened. “Not going to happen.”

  “But she might know I took something else.”

  “Nah, I doubt she’ll notice a couple of packs of gum and a candy bar,” Will says as I’m starting my car. “Plus, you did pay in—what did you call it at the movies?—a roundabout kind of way.”

  “You seem to have a lot of expertise on this,” I point out.

  “Let’s just say it doesn’t feel unfamiliar,” he says wi
th a grin in his voice, and it’s weird because I’d never have put Will as the kind to steal. He always seemed so good and earnest.

  “Now you can cross off the first thing on your list. Theater hopping was just not going to cut it.”

  I laugh as I drive home, and it’s strange how I feel.

  Elated and reckless and silly and a little bit sad. Part of me wants to call Lacey to tell her what I just did and why, to tell her Will was with me and that she was wrong about me needing her to make me do things. The other part of me just wants to hear her voice.

  I push the thought out of my mind and remember Will’s smile just before he jumped into Jenna’s pool. I imagine he is with me, right now, giving me the same smile.

  * * *

  —

  “If you weren’t with me, do you know what every day would feel like?” I ask Will later that night. “Like freshman year.”

  “What happened freshman year?”

  “Lacey and Oliver moved away for the first half of it. They lived with their grandparents out in Blaire, an hour away, because their mom was going through a bad time.

  “The first day of school, I walked in, and even though I’d gone to school with half these people my whole life, it was like one of those dreams where nobody recognizes you.

  “There was this group of girls: Jade, Emily and Paige. Girls who Lacey and I had always been friendly with. So I walked up to them at lunchtime and sat down, and it was like the conversation stopped. It kept happening. Every time I sat with them. Until I realized what it was.

  “They weren’t our friends; they were friends with Lacey.”

  Lacey had always been the charismatic one, the one who stood out in a crowd. I realized then for the first time that I was nothing without Lacey, a nonentity.

  “It was like being a shadow without a body,” I tell Will.

  IT’S SATURDAY AND I’m still reeling from last night—spending it with Will (he called it a date), shoplifting from Gas ’N Go—when Mom comes into my room to ask if I want to go with her and Sam to the skating rink. I would rather die. I would rather peel my skin off and then die.

  “That’s okay,” I say in the most normal voice I can muster, which still sounds gruff and like it doesn’t belong to me. I keep my eyes closed as I speak. Hopefully she interprets this as being due to the disruption of my sleep.