“It’s okay,” Frank said with a shrug.
There was a small sign in front of the house that read, in stylized letters, A Porter & Porter Concept. I nodded to it. “Are those your parents?”
“Yeah,” he said, a little shortly. “My dad’s the architect, my mom decorates.” He said this with a note of finality, and I wondered somehow if I’d overstepped.
“I didn’t know you lived so close to me,” I said. “I’m over on Driftway.” The second I said this, I hoped it hadn’t sounded creepy—like I made it my business to know where Frank Porter lived. But it was a little surprising—I thought I knew most of the kids who lived around me, if only through from the pre-license bus rides we’d all endured together.
“We’ve only been there about a year,” he said with a shrug. “We move a lot.” I just nodded—there was something in Frank’s expression that told me he didn’t want to go into this.
I nodded and unwrapped my earphones from where I’d wound them around my iPod. Frank was home, so clearly our run, unexpected as it was, had come to an end.
“Do it again soon?” Frank asked with a smile, but he was still breathing hard, and I could tell he was kidding.
“Totally,” I said, smiling back at him, so he would know I got the joke. “Anytime.”
I started to put my earbuds back in and noticed Frank was standing still, looking at me, not heading back inside. “Are you going to run back to Driftway?”
“It might be more like a walk,” I admitted. “It’s not that far.”
“Want to come in?” he asked. “I’ll buy you a water.”
“That’s okay,” I said automatically. “Thank you, though.”
Frank shook his head. “Oh, come on,” he said, starting to walk toward the house. After a moment, I followed, falling into step next to him as we walked up the driveway. It was beautifully landscaped, with flowers planted at what seemed to be mathematically precise intervals. He walked around to a side door and reached under the mat for a key, then unlocked the door and held it open for me. I stepped inside a high-ceilinged, light-filled foyer, and had just turned to tell him how nice his house was when I heard the crash.
I froze, and Frank, standing just behind me, stopped as well, his expression wary. “Is—” I started, but that was as far as I got.
“Because this is my project!” I heard a woman screaming. “I was working on it night and day when you were spending all your time in Darien doing god knows what—”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” a man screamed back, matching the woman in volume and intensity. “You would be nowhere without me, just riding on my success—” A woman stalked past us, her face red, before she disappeared from view again, followed by a man, red-faced as well, before he too passed out of view. I recognized them, just vaguely, as Frank’s parents from pictures in the paper and school functions when they were usually standing behind their son, polite and composed and smiling proudly as he received yet another award.
I glanced over at Frank, whose face had turned white. He was looking down at his sneakers, and I felt like I was seeing something I absolutely shouldn’t. And I somehow knew that, however bad this was for him, it was worse because I was there to witness it. “I’m going to go,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Frank nodded without looking at me. I backed away, and as I reached the door, I could hear the voices being raised in the other room again.
I let myself out the door and started walking up the driveway, fast, wishing I had just gone home when I’d had the opportunity, and not had to see the expression on Frank’s face as he listened to his parents screaming at each other. I started walking faster once I hit the street, and then broke into a run, despite the fact that every muscle in my body objected to this.
I ran all the way home and it wasn’t until I’d almost reached my house that I noticed I’d been sticking to the outside, leaving enough room for someone to run next to me.
4
HUG A JAMIE
I stood behind the counter of Paradise Ice Cream and looked longingly at the door. In the four days that I’d been working at the ice cream parlor, I’d had exactly five customers. And one of them was just a guy who wanted change for the parking meter. If Sloane had been there, and we’d been working together, it would have been awesome, and the lack of customers would have been the job’s biggest perk. But since it was just me, alone, all day, I found myself looking up hopefully whenever anyone walked by, crossing my fingers that they wanted some ice cream. But although people sometimes glanced in the window, they walked on, usually to the pizza parlor.
My customer-free and silent workplace wouldn’t have been so bad, except when I left my job I had to go home, where my phone was still silent and I had nobody to hang out with.
I hadn’t yet been able to cross anything else off the list, and two nights earlier, in a low moment, I’d taken a picture of it and e-mailed it to Frank’s school address. I’d regretted it as soon as the e-mail had gone through, but since I hadn’t heard anything from him, I figured that he was either not checking his school account over the summer, or that he’d forgotten all about our unexpected running conversation. Either way, I’d made no progress, and it was making me anxious.
Now, I looked away from the door and down at the napkin in front of me, where I’d compiled a list of all the Jamies from school I could think of. I didn’t know any of them well, and I honestly didn’t think I’d be capable of calling one of them up and asking if I could come to his house and hug him. I’d just remembered one more—I was pretty sure the guy who’d been in the mascot costume last year had been named Jamie—when the over-the-door bell jangled and a girl rushed into the shop.
I pushed the napkin to the side and tried to look professional. “Welcome to Paradise,” I said, smiling at her.
She froze in the doorway and I realized why she looked familiar—she was the girl who worked two doors down at Captain Pizza. “Hi,” she said in a shaky voice. I looked closer and realized that her face was blotchy and her eyes looked puffy. Aside from that, though, she was pretty—petite and curvy, with bright blond hair and bangs, and pale blue eyes that seemed to be about twice the size of normal people’s eyes. She ran a hand through her hair and took a step closer to the counter. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I actually don’t want any ice cream.” I sighed and nodded; at this point, I felt like this shouldn’t even have surprised me. She took a big, shaky breath. “I just needed to get out of there for a moment. And if I went to my car, everyone would be able to see . . .” Her face crumpled and she held her hand up to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ll be gone in a second.”
“Um,” I said as I looked around, like one of the signs about handwashing and checking freezer temperatures would help me in this situation. I came out from behind the counter and twisted my hands together. “Are you okay?”
The girl nodded and gave me an incredibly bad version of a smile, one that turned wobbly and collapsed after a few seconds. “No,” she sobbed, starting to cry in earnest. I reached for one of the napkin holders on the counter and brought it over to her. She sank down onto one of the metal chairs and pressed a napkin to her face. “I just feel so stupid, you know. I should have seen it. It was right in front of my face. Like, literally. But my cousin Stephanie always said I was too trusting.”
“Should have seen what?” I asked, taking a step closer to her. I couldn’t decide if it would be rude or helpful to point out that, in the movies at least, people who were in emotional crises often got through it with some ice cream.
The girl wiped under her eyes, then blew her nose on the tissue and looked up at me. “That my boyfriend was cheating on me.”
“Oh god,” I said, pushing more napkins at her. “I’m so sorry—”
“With my best friend.”
“Oh,” I said, swallowing hard.
“And we all work together.” She pointed in the direction of the pizza parlor. “Next door.” Telling me all
this information seemed to bring the gravity of the situation back again, and she burst into fresh tears.
“Um,” I said, taking a step closer to the table, “is there a possibility that maybe you just misunderstood? Maybe your best friend didn’t mean it, or maybe you saw something that wasn’t . . .” My voice trailed off. A memory, one I didn’t like to think about if I could avoid it, was suddenly intruding with full force—that night in May, Sam’s house, the look on Sloane’s face, the glass shattering at her feet.
“No,” the girl said, her voice choked, as she shook her head. “I was out on delivery, and the last two were right near each other, so I got back super early.” Her voice got quiet, and shaky. “And that’s when I saw Bryan and Mandy, making out by the employee cubbies.” She looked up at me and I saw her eyes were spilling over with tears. “That was our place. It was where we used to make out.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, handing over another stack of napkins, realizing that I might have to get her another dispenser soon.
“And so I said, ‘What is this supposed to mean?’ I really was maybe willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I swear,” she said, pressing the napkin under her eyes again. “But then Bryan takes Mandy’s hand and tells me that we need to talk. Can you believe it?” She started crying again, and I reached over and tentatively patted her on the back.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I . . .” Something occurred to me, and I asked hopefully, “Your name isn’t Jamie, by any chance?” After all, I was halfway to hugging her already.
“No,” the girl said, straightening up. She pointed to her T-shirt, which was designed to look like a military uniform. On the shoulders, there were pizza toppings where medals would have gone—mushrooms and peppers and pepperoni slices. DAWN was printed on the shirt in military typeface, right over her heart. “Dawn Finley.”
“Emily,” I said. “Hughes.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, giving me something that was closer to a real smile this time. “I’m really sorry about this,” she said, pushing herself up to standing and scooping up her crumpled tissues. “Thanks for listening.”
“Sure,” I said, standing as well. “Are you sure you don’t want any ice cream? On the house.” Technically, I wasn’t sure I was allowed to do this, but considering nobody had even come in to get any samples, I figured that a scoop or two wouldn’t necessarily be missed.
“No, thank you, though,” Dawn said. “Sorry again.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really.” Dawn gave me a half smile, then squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before pulling open the door and heading back toward the pizza parlor.
The bell chimed, then faded, and I was left alone again. And as I walked back to stand behind the counter, I realized that the silence somehow felt louder than it had before.
The afternoon passed with glacial slowness. I cleaned and then re-cleaned the glass cases, then re-organized the ice cream in the walk-in freezer, first by flavor grouping, then alphabetically. I wasn’t in charge of locking up—that was Elise, the assistant manager, who came at closing every day. I had my eyes fixed on the back entrance, just waiting for Elise to show so that I could clock out and go home. I was trying not to think about the fact I had nothing to go home to, really, just parents who couldn’t be disturbed and a little brother probably lurking in a doorway and no life whatsoever. I just wanted to get out. I was looking so intently at the back door that I didn’t hear the bell jingle, and didn’t notice there was someone in front of me until they cleared their throat.
“Sorry,” I said, turning around quickly. Dawn was standing there, holding a pizza delivery carrier with a stack of tickets on top. “Oh, hi.” She looked slightly better than she had earlier in the day, but her eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy.
“Hey,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “I just wanted to thank you again, and apologize for earlier.”
“It’s really fine,” I assured her. To my surprise, I realized I wanted to know what had happened when she’d gone back to work, what Bryan and Mandy had done. But I didn’t actually know this girl, and now that she seemed embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable, I was starting to feel that way too.
“So if there’s anything I can do, let me know,” she said, shifting the carrier to her other hand, closer to the counter. “And I can get you a lunch special with my discount! Just come in any weekday, and . . .”
Dawn kept going, telling me about the pizza deals she could probably get for me, including a can of soda, my choice, but I was no longer hearing her. Instead, my eyes were fixed on the top delivery ticket. It was going to an address in Stanwich, to a Jamie Roarke.
I gasped. It felt like a sign. And if not a sign, at least an opportunity that I wasn’t about to pass up. “Actually,” I said, interrupting Dawn, “there is something you can do.” She raised her eyebrows, and I took a breath, my eyes still fixed on the name on the delivery slip. “Can I deliver pizzas with you?”
“And then Mandy started talking about how she felt like she never saw me anymore, and asked if I could get her a job at Captain Pizza too,” Dawn said as she barreled down the road. I nodded and gripped on to the side of the car, feeling my foot press down on a phantom brake. I wasn’t sure if Dawn was driving like this—fast, and a little distractedly—because she was reliving the Bryan and Mandy saga as she told me about it, or because she always drove like this, but either way, it was clear that we were definitely going to make Captain Pizza’s promised delivery window. “And so I put in a good word for her and she got a job as a hostess, and it was so great for a while, and she and Bryan really got along, and I just thought everything was perfect, you know? I didn’t even suspect anything else was going on.”
“But you had no way of knowing,” I said as Dawn screeched to a stop at a red, causing the figurines on her dashboard—including a shirtless male hula dancer who, I had learned, was named Stan—to bobble and shake. When I first asked to come along, I’d been surprised that she’d agreed so easily, but after I asked her where she went to school (Hartfield, going into senior year, like me) and she’d used the opportunity to fill me in on the drama, it was becoming clear to me that she’d just been glad to have someone to talk to, which I could more than understand.
“I know,” Dawn said, as she glanced down at the directions on her phone, then jolted the car forward as soon as the light turned green. “But I feel like I should have, you know? Everything was going just perfect, and I was sure it was going to be just the best summer ever. It’s like I jinxed it by believing that would happen.” She made a hard left, flicking on her blinker for a second almost as an afterthought, sending Stan’s hips swaying. “I just can’t believe I’ve lost both of them,” she said, shaking her head, still sounding a little dazed by this. “Like, in the same day. And all I want to do is talk to Mandy about this, but of course, I can’t. . . .” Her voice trailed off and she glanced over at me. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said immediately, not even thinking about it first, just so glad to have someone verbalize what I’d been thinking for the last three weeks. “My best friend . . .” I hesitated. “She’s away for the summer,” I said, rationalizing, like I had with my mother, that this wasn’t even really a lie. “And we used to hang out or talk every day, so it’s just . . . hard to adjust to.”
“Yes,” Dawn said as she made a sharp right. She slowed slightly as she leaned forward, squinting at the numbers. “Why don’t you just call her, though?”
“Because,” I said, trying to think fast. “She’s . . . you know . . . camping.” Dawn glanced over at me, and I added, “In Europe.”
“Oh,” she said, looking impressed. “Really?”
“Yes,” I said, already regretting this and wishing I’d chosen almost anything else, since I knew nothing about camping. Or Europe.
“Where?” she asked, and I tried to think fast.
“In . . . Paris,” I said, wondering why I was continuing to do t
his, but realizing that it was probably too late to admit I’d made the whole thing up.
“I didn’t know there was camping in Paris,” Dawn said.
“Me neither,” I said honestly. “But that’s where she is,” I added, just hoping that Dawn wouldn’t ask any more questions, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer.
Dawn took a breath, like she was about to ask something else, but then slammed on the brakes and leaned over to my side of the car. “Does that say thirty-one?” I nodded and Dawn pulled into the driveway, narrowly avoiding hitting the house’s decorative mailbox. She put the car in park and then got out, tipping her seat forward so she could grab the carrier in the backseat. I got out as well, feeling my pulse start to pound in my throat. I’d been distracted on the ride over, both by Dawn’s story and her driving, but now the reason that I was here—to hug one of Captain Pizza’s customers—was unavoidable.
“So which house is this?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and pleasantly curious. I knew she had four deliveries to make this round, but I had no idea where Jamie Roarke fell in that order.
Dawn picked up the ticket on top of the carrier and peered down at it. “Greg Milton,” she read, then groaned. “He always orders like four kinds of meat toppings. I can barely lift his pizzas, they’re so heavy. Did you want to come to the door?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. I knew I was going to have to psych myself up to hug Jamie Roarke, whoever that was, and could use a moment of quiet. “I’ll just wait here.”
“Cool,” Dawn said, heading toward the house. “Be right back.”
As I watched Dawn walk up to the front door and ring the bell, I leaned back against her car, a green Volkswagen convertible with a triangular Captain Pizza car topper. But rather than being on the roof, where I’d always seen them on pizza delivery cars, this was on the trunk of the car, like a shark fin.
Since You've Been Gone Page 11
