No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  “Okay,” Will says. Then, more softly, “If you’re sure.”

  I’m not sure.

  But it’s on the list and I’m doing everything on the list. With or without Lacey.

  I promised myself I would.

  I did the movie thing. I shoplifted.

  There’s no way I’m backing down now.

  Besides, I imagine the look on my mother’s face when she discovers that I’ve gotten a tattoo—the anger, the betrayal. It strengthens my resolve.

  “So how are we doing this?”

  “I’m going to the person Lace found.” At a place called Branded, which, if I allow myself to think about it too much, is somewhat alarming. “We weren’t eighteen yet when she first started looking into it. She found them because she’d heard they wouldn’t ask for ID.”

  “Hmmm,” Will says. “As long as they’re not sketchy.” He snorts at his own joke. “Get it?”

  “Yes, Will,” I say, rolling my eyes but grinning. “I get it.”

  This level of comfort is what made me ask Cate about In Good Company: Will and me teasing each other, me pretending to be annoyed with him. As long as we had known each other, I had never felt this level of comfort with Will. A tiny voice in my head tells me that I never allowed myself to. We would joke around, but I never relaxed, never let go enough to rib him back. I acted like he was something breakable, like saying the wrong thing would scare him away at any given moment.

  Now, even though I haven’t seen his face in more than a month, even though I can never see his face again, I feel like I know him better.

  More importantly, I feel like he knows me better, which is a big deal. It’s something precious and rare, like holding water in your palms, to be known by someone. Lacey and I had that. Now Will and I have it.

  I wish I’d allowed us to start sooner.

  I pull out of the More for Less employee parking lot and drive downtown. Branded is tucked in a nook between a laundromat and a jewelry store.

  “We’re here,” I tell Will, my voice weirdly breathy.

  It had scared me before, the idea of getting a tattoo. For the usual reasons, like my parents finding out or it hurting or getting some kind of freak infection. But I’d also felt a strange calm, the more Lacey and I talked about it. I knew, as with everything else, that we’d be doing it together. That she’d be there to hold my hand or tell me funny stories to distract me, and I’d do the same for her.

  Now.

  Now I wonder if I’m being too rash, doing this without her. She was determined to get her tattoo this summer, a drawing of a bird with wings made of musical notes. What if she’s waiting for me? What if she still means for us to do it together?

  But then I remember her words—we don’t have to do every single thing together—and the disgusted way she’d looked at me. Tired, suffocated.

  She’s not waiting for me.

  And because of that, I’m not waiting for her.

  I pick Will up from the seat beside me and climb out of the car.

  “I’ve heard it’s just like getting a shot. Like, a couple of shots.”

  “I’m terrified of shots,” I tell Will. “So thanks for that.”

  “No no no,” he says, and I can hear him trying not to laugh. “Then it’s not like getting a shot. It’s better. Like a bee sting.”

  “Um, you’re making this worse,” I say.

  “Crap,” he says. “Do you want me to shut up?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “It’s nice having you here. You’ll stay for the whole thing, right?”

  “Actually, I have this thing. This appointment.”

  “Will!”

  He laughs, a rumbling, full laugh. “I’m kidding. Of course I’ll stay,” he says. “I’ll talk to you the whole time.”

  “Nothing about bee stings, though,” I warn.

  “Noted.”

  I push open the door and walk toward the counter.

  The inside of the tattoo shop is dark, with lots of posters and pictures of eccentric tattoos covering the walls and the windows.

  “Hi,” I say, walking up to a woman with dark blue streaks in her jet-black hair. I put my phone down to talk to her. “I’m here to get a tattoo.”

  She gives me an odd look, like she can see the nervousness written all over my face.

  I straighten, try to stand tall, to look in control and ready for this.

  She eyes me for a few long seconds and I think she’s about to throw me out on my ass, when she says, “What are you thinking about getting?”

  “Um, I’m not so sure,” I say.

  The image of Lacey’s picture floats through my mind. She’d promised to help me design something, to pick something that would represent me just as much as her songbird represented her.

  Now I’m left to decide all on my own.

  The woman reaches for a couple of folders behind her and comes around the counter to hand them to me.

  “See if you like anything in here,” she says. I grab a seat in a plastic chair at the front of the store.

  “I’m Nan, by the way,” she says.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say. “I’m Eden.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “Thanks.”

  Should I get my name?

  It’s the first time it’s occurred to me, but something about it doesn’t feel right. What’s the point of inking your own name on your body like a label? In case of amnesia? So you never have to introduce yourself to strangers and can just point at it?

  I nix the idea.

  Nan hums under her breath as she types away on a computer. With her black tank top and ripped jeans, she is effortlessly cool. Though they could not look any more different, she reminds me of Kennie. There is a way people carry themselves when they know who they are. It makes their spines naturally straighter, their gaits easy.

  Will was like that too. I hope someday to find my way to that place, to be that self-possessed.

  As I flip through the first couple of pages, Nan retreats to the back room, leaving me to decide.

  Within seconds, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices.

  I stick in my earphones so I can talk to Will.

  I describe to him all the designs I’m seeing.

  Butterflies, and hearts, and poetry quotes, and I have no idea what to do.

  “You’ll know when you see it,” Will says, sounding irritatingly Zen. I completely doubt this is the case as I turn page after page of beautiful, profound, meaningful artwork.

  But it turns out Will is right. I do know when I see it.

  “This one,” I breathe.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  It’s a comma, black, simple, but what attracts me to it is the quote beside it explaining the meaning. It says, In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. By Robert Frost.

  I don’t know what it is about it, but it sends a shiver down my spine.

  This is it, my heart trills, and it’s scary and exciting because I didn’t know it did that. I didn’t know I could look at something and know it was exactly right for me. Most of the time, I have no idea about what’s right for me.

  But this time, I know.

  I know because almost four weeks ago, I graduated and it felt like everything was coming to an end, but this summer was just beginning.

  I know because my best friend wants nothing to do with me and everything’s broken between us and I don’t know how to make it better, but I am in a tattoo parlor because I promised her last fall, and I’m here alone, but I’m here.

  I know because of Will. Because he’s gone, but he’s still here.

  He’s breathing in my ear right now.

  Everything about him—his laugh, his smile, his lazy stance leaning agains
t a wall—all those things will always be here, and because of that, so will he.

  It goes on.

  So, a few minutes later, I’m sitting on a bed and Nan adjusts the height, then stencils the shape—an exaggerated dot, a long tail curling out of it—on the inside of my ankle, just above the bone.

  “Is it okay if I keep my phone on?” I ask, and Nan nods.

  I shut my eyes and listen as Will talks to me, as the needle pinches my skin for the first time, and all at once I want to cry.

  “Deep breaths,” Will says in my ear.

  I listen to him and breathe in and out.

  “If I was there,” he says, “I would hold your hand and let you squeeze the living daylights out of mine.”

  “I wish you were here,” I hear myself saying, eyes still shut.

  “Is that your boyfriend?” Nan whispers to me.

  I never get to answer her because all of a sudden, Will says, “Want me to hold your hand?”

  And I don’t know what he means, but I say, “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he repeats, and I swear there’s a little catch in his voice. Like he’s nervous or something. “Your hands are tiny,” he says after a moment.

  I laugh. “No, they’re not.”

  Historically, I have kind of large hands for a girl.

  “Ah, but in mine, they are. See, ’cause I have big, manly hands.”

  “Actually, your hands were—”

  Will coughs. “Let’s just go with it.”

  I’m smiling, even as the pain amplifies on my foot.

  “So your hands are in mine, and they’re soft,” he says. “I’m threading my fingers through them now. And they’re kind of sweaty because we’re both kind of nervous.”

  I open my eyes.

  What is happening?

  “Okay” is all I say, and I stare at my palms on the bed. Empty.

  “And now my thumb is making circles over your hand. Over your life line, which is long and dark. Much longer than mine,” he says, and I swallow.

  “You’re going to live forever,” he tells me. “You’re going to grow old and get hundreds of tattoos because they say once you start, you don’t stop. And now I’m following all the creases on your hand. They’re like a map, you know?”

  Before I can speak, he continues, “And your fingers are long. Piano-playing long.”

  I shut my eyes again.

  “I’m tickling the back of your hand with my thumb now. Are you ticklish?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Then, “Can you feel it?” he asks. “My hand in yours?”

  I keep my eyes closed, ignore my palms sitting flat on the bed.

  “Yes,” I say, and I swear, I almost can.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, Will and I continue the conversation.

  “Holding hands used to get me and Lacey in trouble at Camp Rowan.”

  Will snorts. “Why?”

  “Thirty-centimeter rule. Even girls and girls had to leave room for the Holy Spirit. But mostly it was other kids we had to worry about. Our first year there, Lacey and I walked around the camp glued to each other’s sides. It was the first time away from home for both of us and it was the summer Lacey’s parents were getting divorced and basically it felt like we only had each other. We told everyone we were sisters, but anyone with working eyes could tell we weren’t.”

  “Those differences don’t feel so big when you’re young,” Will says.

  “No differences ever felt big with us,” I tell him. We felt like halves of the same person. “This kid Grayson and his friends would follow us around whenever we were holding hands, taunting us and asking if we were lesbians.”

  “What did you tell him?” Will asks.

  “Probably nothing,” I say. “Though I think Lace might have used the f-word for the first time that summer.”

  I think about it for a moment, then add, “I do love Lacey, but it’s a different kind of love. Having a best friend is like finding part of yourself walking around unattached.”

  “I wish I knew what that felt like,” Will says.

  THE GUILT OF what I’ve done, the swell on the inside of my ankle, tender and raw, follows me everywhere. Like at any moment, someone will lift up my jeans and point to my ankle. For the next couple of days, I do my best to avoid my parents, going early to work and coming back late.

  It’s funny how at the start, More for Less seemed foreign and strange.

  Now I feel efficient and useful and even confident as I go through the motions of giving people change, making small talk, wiping down my conveyor belt, sometimes bagging for someone else if I have no customers. It feels nice to know how things go somewhere, at least.

  The most eventful thing that happens the rest of the week is that Elyse comes into the store again on Friday and stops at my till.

  “We’re trying a new recipe,” she says, pointing to her phone. She’s talking to Will again. “You have to come over sometime. Maybe I can make it for you.”

  A seed of guilt rolls over my skin.

  She would never treat me like this if she didn’t think I was Will’s girlfriend.

  “That would be great,” I tell her.

  The second-most eventful thing that happens today is that James is walking past when Kennie’s phone rings. She has forgotten to put it on silent. He goes right to her station, as if there’s no question whose phone it is.

  “Give it to me,” he says, holding out his hand.

  “Give you what?” Kennie asks innocently, even as the phone keeps ringing in the pocket of her jeans.

  “Kennie,” James sighs.

  “Sorry!” she says, finally pulling it out and stopping it. “I’ll put it away myself, I swear. But the newbies aren’t going to respect me if they see you confiscating my phone like a thirteen-year-old.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t as attached to your phone as a thirteen-year-old is, I wouldn’t have to confiscate it,” James says, but he’s already walking away from her. “Do not make me tell you again.”

  “Got it,” Kennie says, and gives an exaggerated wink. “Thanks, James!”

  I can hear James sigh from here as he goes into his office and shuts the door. All us cashiers are laughing when Kennie traipses into the staff room to put away her phone. It seems impossible that she actually does this; she couldn’t be more addicted to that thing if it was surgically attached to her. But I don’t see or hear the phone for the rest of the day, so I have to give her the benefit of the doubt. And, fine, I might be a little bit of a hypocrite, because I’ve had Will on all day in my pocket. Every now and then, I’ll pull out my phone to say something to him, but I actually am discreet about it. Plus, with Will on the line, other calls won’t ring through, so I’m not in any danger of having Kennie’s bad luck.

  After work, I head to Juno’s and squeeze into a booth next to Cate. Thomas and Kennie are across from us. It’s a smaller crowd than usual, so we don’t need a second booth. Oliver shows up at about five-thirty, after we’ve all already ordered. A waiter comes to take his order and then brings out a plate of onion rings for him almost immediately.

  Kennie is in the middle of describing her System to us.

  “Dinner is if I’m already interested,” she’s saying. “Life is short. Dinner is long. Especially with someone who is a dud.

  “Coffee is for a complete wild card. Like a blind date or someone I haven’t talked to very long online. I can drink coffee fast if it sucks, you know?”

  “What if you’re doing coffee and you like him, though?” Thomas asks.

  “Then coffee can turn into dessert or dinner or whatever else,” she says with a smirk.

  “What’s drinks for?” I ask. “Didn’t you do that last week?”

  Oliver chews on some onion rings.
“I was gonna ask that too. What’s that one?”

  “Oh! Yes!” Kennie says. “Drinks is in between. Like, I don’t know if I’m interested but you’re hot and I don’t get a psychopath vibe from you so we’ll see where this goes. Also, it’s if I feel comfortable enough to get tipsy with you, but not enough to commit to dinner. You can’t drink with just anybody, you know,” she says sagely as she reaches for her cup of green tea.

  “And what’s the point of all this again?”

  “To find her soul mate, of course,” Cate says, and of course she is a romantic.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Kennie says. “I mean, if there’s not one single person for me, then I’m fine with that. Who says it’s not better to share all this”—she waves her hands over herself—“with as many people as possible?”

  There’s a long, thoughtful pause while we all consider this, before Thomas cracks up laughing.

  “What? What did I say?” Kennie asks, indignant. “I mean I’m sharing my time, not…Oh, shut up.”

  This sets off Oliver and Cate, and then it’s got me too, a domino effect of laughter. And I’m thinking I like the sound of my laugh mixed in with theirs and I like that Oliver passes his plate of onion rings around and that Cate is predicting what Michael is going to order next, when most of us met only two weeks ago.

  After everyone sobers up, the conversation shifts to school and Thomas’s last year before college.

  “I already have senioritis,” he says. “I’m over it and the year hasn’t even started yet.”

  “Do you know where you’re going yet?” Oliver asks him.

  “Hell yeah,” Thomas says. “Toledo. Everyone in my family went there.”

  “You two are going to college this fall, right?” Cate says, looking between me and Oliver. “Do you already know what you want to do?”

  Oliver tells them that he’s going to State, that he’s looking into architecture but he doesn’t know what kind yet, and it’s the first time I realize that no matter what, I actually will know someone there.

  Of course I knew Oliver was going to State too, but it never felt significant.

  For so long, college for me has been this: twin beds pushed along opposite walls, driving away from Erinville with most of our worldly possessions stuffed into my car, listening to the radio while Lacey sits with her ankles crossed on my dashboard, her enormous sunglasses taking up more than half of her face.