No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  We yell hi to each other and are jogging together toward the building. I’m using my messenger bag as a makeshift umbrella and we’re almost at the door when I hear a sudden plop as something hits a puddle of water.

  “Shiiit,” I exclaim as I see my phone on the ground, submerged.

  “I got it,” Oliver says, picking it up before I can, wiping it on his polo and handing it back.

  “Thanks,” I say as we stop at the overhang of the building. I use my work shirt to frantically wipe it down. It is not the first time I’ve ever dropped my phone. It’s not the first time I’ve ever damaged my phone, but of course this time it begins to malfunction and I don’t know what is happening on Will’s end or what he’s hearing, but his voice comes blaring out of my phone. The screen is completely unresponsive. I can’t turn off the speaker or reduce the volume fast enough, so Oliver can hear him saying, “Eden? What’s happening? Hey, Eden?”

  And I’m muttering to myself, trying to dry it and turn it off and turn it down at the same time, but by the time I finally, finally, get it to shut off, Oliver is asking questions.

  “Who was that?”

  “Huh?” I say, pretending to be clueless.

  “The guy on the phone. It wasn’t your dad or someone?”

  “Oh no, just my friend. Let’s go inside.”

  “You’re sure you don’t need to call him back? You could use my phone.” He’s already reaching into his pocket and holding it out to me.

  “It’s okay. It’s nothing important,” I say. “It’s fine.”

  But the jumpy way I’m acting is making it obvious that it is not fine.

  “What is it, really?” Oliver asks. I can tell this is one of those moments, like the time I went over to his house crying, when it matters if I tell him the truth. So I do.

  I just come out and say it.

  “It’s a Companion,” I say, like it’s no big deal. And it isn’t a big deal. Lots of people use In Good Company. Cate uses it, and who cares that she sometimes talks to a computer? It’s not just a computer.

  “It’s Will,” I say now, my voice lower, and I hadn’t known that I was going to say this, but it’s out now and Oliver blinks at me, blank-faced.

  “Will,” he repeats, not understanding.

  “Will Mason,” I say, and I don’t know why I’m whispering, but I am.

  Oliver’s expression fills with complete surprise.

  “Holy shit,” he says, eyes wide.

  “I know,” I say, but I can’t help the grin that takes over my face.

  “How long?” Oliver asks.

  “Have I been talking to him? A few weeks,” I say. “Since school ended.”

  “Oh.”

  And then to reassure him, I add, “It’s not a kinky sex thing.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, my face heats up. “I mean, like Chris said.”

  “Oh yeah, no, I didn’t think it was,” he says, and I’m not sure why he’s embarrassed. This whole thing is going nothing like I thought it would. That is, if I’d given it any thought at all.

  “I, um…,” Oliver says now, pushing his hand into his pocket. “I didn’t think you and Mason…You knew him pretty well?”

  My face gets even warmer now and I can’t meet Oliver’s eye. “Kind of.”

  “Oh” is all Oliver says. He nods at my phone in my hand as we continue through the automatic doors. “Is it still working? Maybe try the rice thing?”

  I end up being a few minutes late to my station—I get Kennie to sell me the smallest bag of rice More for Less carries and then I pour it all into someone’s empty lunch box and leave it to sit. Hoping hoping hoping that it works.

  I have to get to work, but I’m pretty sure no one is going to take it, so I leave it on top of the fridge in the staff room.

  As I’m working, I feel despair that my phone might be ruined. What happens if I need a new phone? Does everything I’ve ever said to Will, every conversation we’ve ever had, get wiped from his mind?

  I take my break in the staff room, spend all of lunchtime bent over my phone in some kind of vigil. I want to give the rice a chance to absorb as much water as possible, so I don’t try to take my phone out yet. Toward the end of our break, Thomas is packing his dreadlocks in an elastic and Kennie is stuffing her bag into her locker and a few other people I see all the time but don’t know very well are getting ready to start their shifts or lunch breaks too.

  The day continues like any other day, and then around three-fifty, a few minutes before my shift ends, my dad shows up.

  As if this day was not already bad enough.

  He waves at me from the entrance but doesn’t come my way at first. I see him disappear to the left of the store, where the floral section is. Maybe he’ll just go to someone else’s till when he’s ready?

  No such luck.

  He approaches me, a bouquet of multicolored roses cradled in the crook of his elbow. He’s beaming at me the whole time he’s in line—completely embarrassing—and I’m tempted to go slowly in the hope that I never get to him, but my better judgment wins out.

  “Hey!” he says, placing the flowers on the belt and grinning at me when it’s his turn to pay. “Look at my kid at her job. How cool is this?”

  “Dad,” I say, and roll my eyes. As luck would have it, Jenn is working at the till beside mine, and I hear a snort from her direction. My embarrassment is her gain.

  “Sorry. I’m just a regular customer. I’m just trying to pay for my groceries,” he tells an elderly woman behind him, pointing at the flowers on the belt, which is even more embarrassing. I take the flowers, carefully locate the barcode and scan them.

  “These are for your mom,” he explains now, causing my arms to suddenly feel like lead.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Why?” he repeats, surprised. “Just because.”

  The lump in my throat is hard to swallow over and I realize for the first time how loud a supermarket is. There’s Kennie calling for someone to give an elderly man a hand and then there’s Mark calling for a price check and people in the line behind my dad are talking and off near the staff room I can hear people laughing. It’s all too much.

  I feel like something is about to explode out of me and all I know is that it can’t be words, because my dad does not deserve to hear about Mom and Sergiy like this, and it can’t be tears, because I can never live that down, and so in the end it’s this repressed kind of squeal in the back of my throat.

  Dad frowns at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Sneeze,” I lie when I can speak.

  “Oh,” he says, handing me his credit card. And then, “You’re done soon, aren’t you? Four o’clock?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to Juno’s—”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “I’ll just wait around outside while you finish up. I just want a quick word.”

  Great.

  “Okay,” I say as I hand him his receipt and let him go. I help the last two customers at my till and then cash out. When I’m back in the staff room, I grab my stuff and then carefully extract my phone from the rice, get some paper towels to mop up any extra moisture and then power it on, praying praying praying to some higher force.

  And it works!

  “Oh my God,” I exclaim, so relieved I could cry. There’s another woman in the staff room, but she doesn’t say anything to me.

  “Thank you thank you thank you,” I’m whispering to my phone as I hold it close to my chest.

  I text Will. Will! I’m sorry! We’ll talk when I get home!!

  I zip my phone up in my pocket—it’s not falling into any more puddles today—and hurry outside to meet my dad. The rain has stopped by now, though it’s still overcast and there are puddles nearby that are only half-dry.

  Dad is pacing outside the store, still holding the flowers
.

  “All done?” he asks when he sees me.

  All the relief I felt about my phone is replaced by apprehension now, and the sick feeling of the choice I have to make. I nod, fiddling with the sling of my messenger bag.

  “Let’s walk to your car. Where do you park?” he asks.

  We walk in the direction of my car, which is parked under a tree on the far side of the lot. It figures that this is the day I’d choose to park the farthest away from the building. In the moments before Dad starts speaking, dread and anxiety are coiled like a spring around my stomach.

  “So listen,” he says finally. “I know something’s been going on with you. I’m not sure what, but…” He shoots me a sideways glance. “I don’t suppose you want to talk about it.”

  I bite on my lip, don’t answer, fold my arms across my chest. He probably thinks it’s a stance of defiance, but I’m pushing back inside me everything I don’t want to have to say. Everything I probably should say.

  I can’t look at the flowers, cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby. I wish I’d crushed them when I scanned them. I want to throw them on the ground and crumple them under my feet now.

  He’s still speaking. “But I don’t like the way you’re taking things out on your mom.”

  No no no. I don’t want to talk about her.

  “You two have always been hard on each other,” he says. Which. Right. I bet it was hard on my mom when I learned to crawl at ten months, a whole three months later than Mia did. I’ve just made life so difficult for her. “And I know she’s strong and I know she can handle this, but I want you to lay off her, okay?”

  “Dad—”

  “She’s been so busy with the new book—”

  “You don’t even know, Dad,” I hear myself interrupting. “You don’t know.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know. I mean, you’ve clearly been upset at all of us over something, but I notice you’re harder on her. And she notices too, and I just think…I know you’re eighteen now, almost in college, and I can’t make you do anything. But I would really appreciate it if you were just aware that you can’t take something back once it’s done, you know?”

  I clamp my mouth shut after that.

  You can’t take something back once it’s done.

  “Could you do that for me? Just be a little more mindful?”

  One of Mom’s words. She loves the word mindful.

  “Okay,” I hear myself promising.

  “Yeah?” Dad asks, optimistic.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  He’s giving me a hug now, telling me to have fun at Juno’s, that he’s proud of me for doing so well at this job but there’s still filing at his office with my name on it, ha-ha.

  He finally turns to head back to his car and I enter my car and sink into the driver’s seat.

  The salad I had for lunch today is threatening to come up. I shut my eyes and try to memorize the look on Dad’s face when I agreed to do better, because I finally understand that I can never tell him what I know.

  I END UP not going to Juno’s.

  Instead, I go home and crawl into bed, skipping dinner. I call Will at around eight o’clock, the longest I’ve gone without speaking to him since I started at More for Less. No wonder everything about this day has sucked.

  Downstairs, I can hear my parents talking and laughing, can picture them sitting on the couch, Mom’s feet in Dad’s lap as usual, and the image infuriates me.

  It makes me feel sick.

  It makes me reckless.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” I tell Will.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see,” I promise.

  Will laughs at that. Of course he won’t, can’t, see, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Eden, where are you going?” Mom asks when I come down the stairs. They are in exactly the position I pictured them in.

  I look away. “I’m catching a late movie with Lacey.”

  “How late is late? When will you be home?”

  “A couple of hours,” I lie, call out goodbye and leave before they can ask any more questions.

  I fill up my tank at Gas ’N Go but don’t go inside. For all I know, they’ve put my picture up on one of those Wall of Shame things for shoplifters. I could just go to another gas station to be safe, but I don’t really care about safe tonight. I’m in that kind of mood.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Will asks when I get back into the car and start driving.

  “I want to show you something,” I say, taking the ramp to I-83.

  Once I’m on the highway, a small wave of fear rolls over me. I’ve never really driven this far alone, and definitely not at night.

  I turn on the radio to quiet the doubt, and it’s only a matter of minutes till I am channeling Lacey, singing along to every song. It makes me miss her, hearing my voice without hers, and I’ve never made this trip without her and that also stings.

  But almost like he can feel my sadness, Will is piping up, singing along, though he doesn’t know a single song. Also, he can’t really hold a tune, and I can’t believe I never knew that about him.

  I burst out laughing because it’s so bad, but then I change the channel to a country station and now we’re on equal ground. Neither of us knows any of the songs and we’re both shouting at the tops of our lungs and Lacey would actually die if she could hear us now. Off-pitch singing is like nails on a chalkboard to her.

  I push the thought out of my head and try to stay in this moment, with Will.

  “ ‘Sittin’ on the porch and you’re somethin’ like a torch,’ ” he shouts from my passenger seat, and just like at the movies that night, he feels so close I can almost touch him.

  I wonder if this is what it would have been like. Dating Will. Driving in the dark on our way to somewhere we shouldn’t be going, trying to one-up each other with our goofiness.

  * * *

  —

  Two hours and forty-five minutes later, I see the first sign for Camp Rowan. I follow a winding road that then turns into gravel, and in the distance I can see it: the best six summers of my life.

  The rec building, the dining hall, dozens and dozens of cabins that are completely dark because lights-out is at nine-thirty p.m. and it’s after eleven. I drive away from the cabins, in what I hope is the direction of the lake. If I’m remembering it correctly.

  The road comes to an abrupt end, a canopy of trees standing guard, blocking the lake from view. I pull over and climb out of my car, taking Will with me.

  There’s a slight breeze and I keep walking, following a trail through the trees, until I see it.

  The water is black, but glistening like it’s swallowed hundreds of stars. Camp Rowan is named for this lake, a small natural body of water where we used to do all sorts of summer activities, like kayaking and swimming.

  On the “beach,” the small patch of land before the water, there’s a random wooden paddle, probably forgotten there during the day’s activities. Even farther down, closer to the water, something crunches under my feet. I jump back, but it’s just a pair of glasses. I’ve dislocated one arm of the frames, but, surprisingly, the lenses are still intact. I imagine the owner, a nine-year-old girl, round-faced and panicked.

  I carry the glasses and place them on top of the oar, so they can both be found tomorrow morning.

  Then I take a deep breath and stick my wireless earphones in my ears, push my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. I slip out of my Converse so I’m barefoot.

  “Where are we?” Will asks.

  “My favorite place in the world,” I tell him. “Camp Rowan.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  His voice is soft, reverent, and it means everything to me that he cares about what I care about.

 
I describe it to him, everything about the night, the way the stars twinkle in the sky, the way the sand underneath my feet is still warm from the day’s heat. I describe the way the cabins look in the distance, older and smaller than I remember, backlit by the moon.

  As I talk, I picture Will with his eyes closed, drinking it all in.

  And maybe it’s the image of him closing his eyes, not looking, that makes me courageous enough to do it. I lift my shirt over my head and let it drop to the ground. I’m standing there in only my bra and jeans, with Will Mason, the boy I’ve loved since before the start of high school.

  “So what’s happening now?” he asks.

  I take a deep breath and tug at the zipper of my jeans, then I step out of them, letting them form a heap on the ground.

  In my mind, there is no bonfire on the last day of school. Lacey doesn’t jump in the river alone, and I don’t stand back, watching, too afraid to join in.

  In my mind, we are counselors at Camp Rowan, our fourth week here, everything happening just the way we planned it. We run out under the stars and into the lake when all our campers have gone to bed, when there are no grown-ups roaming. We do it to be daring, to be funny, to make memories.

  We were going to make a million memories.

  Tonight, I stand alone, shivering not from cold but from anticipation. And Will is with me.

  Before I can change my mind, I climb out of my underwear and then I take off my bra and fling it.

  “I’m naked,” I tell him, and I swear I hear him gulp.

  “Oh,” he says, like he has no other words.

  I walk slowly toward the edge of the lake, then stick my foot in, make a circle with my heel. I push back the thoughts of sharks and flesh-eating bacteria, of Loch Ness Monsters and things that live in dark lakes.