“How long is this going to take?” Beckett whined, kicking one sneaker against the other.
“It might take a while,” I admitted, trying at least to be honest with him. Beckett and I were standing outside the office of My Pretty Pony, where I was scheduled for a four o’clock ride. Even though Frank had been trying to schedule my makeup ride, I kept putting him off. I figured as long as there were giant horses, and I was expected to ride them, I couldn’t imagine a different outcome than before. So like the Saddleback Ranch woman had suggested, I had looked into the pony ride option, and found there were quite a few. They admittedly were mostly geared toward small children, but there was nothing on this place’s website that said adults couldn’t have a pony ride too. I’d checked.
“Aggh,” Beckett groaned, slumping onto a nearby bench.
“Hey,” I said. “I just bought you ice cream, remember?”
Beckett just looked at me, unimpressed. “It was free, Em.” I had to concede this was true. We’d come from Paradise, where Kerry was working. She had just waved me off when I’d gone to pay, which was a nice surprise for me, but apparently wasn’t going very far to win over my brother. I had hoped it would work to basically bribe him into coming with me, since this way we could spend time together when he didn’t have camp, but also because I didn’t want to do this alone, and was way too embarrassed to admit to anyone else where I was.
“Hi, are you here for your four p.m. ride?” A woman wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt came out, bending down to smile at Beckett, who pointed at me, stone-faced.
“Um, that’s me,” I said, waving at her. “I’m Emily.”
“Oh,” she said, just staring at me for a moment. Then she seemed to regroup, and nodded a little too vigorously. “Well . . . okay. We should be able to accommodate you.” She glanced at my brother and then back at me, still obviously very confused as to what was happening here. “Are you two riding together? Or did you want to try it out first and show him it’s not scary?” She mouthed the last word to me, and Beckett rolled his eyes hugely at this.
“No,” I said, wishing that either one of these explanations was true. But when I’d offered Beckett his own pony ride, he’d looked at me like I was crazy, making me think that maybe I should have invited Dawn instead. “I just . . . wanted to take a pony ride.”
“Okay,” she said, after waiting a moment, clearly expecting something more rational to come after this. “Well, I’ll get you all set up then.” She headed back into the barn that was adjacent to the office, and I was about to try again to sell Beckett on the idea of joining me when my phone buzzed. I saw that it was Collins, which was unusual. Collins would sometimes text me, and he was always sending me links to what he assured me were hilarious videos, but he almost never called.
“Hey,” I said, answering the call.
“Emily!” he said, and I could hear that his voice was high and stressed. “Where are you?”
“Um,” I said. I looked around, and my eyes landed on the very pink My Pretty Pony sign, written in elaborate cursive. “Why would you need to know that?”
“Because I am freaking out,” he said, his voice getting even higher. “Do you even know it’s Frank’s birthday?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, walking a few steps away from my brother, who seemed far too interested in this conversation. “We went running this morning, stopped for donuts afterward, and everyone at the donut shop sang to him.” I didn’t get the sense that this was something they normally did, but by the time I’d pulled out the pack of birthday candles I’d brought from home, and then had to ask the staff if they had any matches, everyone had gotten into it (it probably didn’t hurt that we were the only customers) and had sung, and then clapped when Frank blew out the candle in his bear claw. When we’d traded iPods that morning, I’d also made sure to assemble a mix of all Happy Birthday songs for him—starting with the Beatles, of course. I had a present for him as well but I’d figured I’d just give it to him the next time we went running, since I knew Lissa was coming into town today to celebrate with him.
“Well,” Collins huffed, “everything is falling apart and I need your help.”
“Sure,” I said, glancing back quickly to my brother, to make sure he hadn’t decided to start scaling the barn, but he was still in the same spot on the bench. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” he said, “is that Lissa can’t get up here from Princeton, for some reason. And Frank’s at lunch with his mom and then going to dinner with his dad, and I’m stuck at work and can’t leave to get the party set up, because Frank has the day off, and if I left Doug in charge of more than just shoe rental, the whole place could burn down and he’d still just be reading about gnomes.”
“They’re not gnomes,” I heard Doug say in the background, his voice heavy with disdain. “Please.”
“So what can I do?”
“I need you to go get Lissa.” I drew in a breath, and Collins must have heard, because he started speaking fast. “I know it’s a long drive, and I’m sorry to ask. But there’s nothing else to be done.”
“Um,” I said. It wasn’t the two hours down—and back—that was giving me pause. I didn’t know what was. I thought as fast as I could, frantically casting about for another option. Maybe Dawn? She had never met Lissa, but I could always text her a picture or something. “The thing is . . .” I felt someone tugging at my sleeve, and looked down and saw Beckett.
“What’s going on?” he asked, my distressed expression clearly giving him hope. “Can we leave?”
“The thing is,” I said again, “I actually have a lot of stuff going on this afternoon. Important stuff. And—”
“Emily?” I looked over, and saw the woman in the pink shirt smiling at me. “Your pony is ready, whenever you want to take your ride.”
I clamped my hand over the microphone, but clearly not fast enough, because Collins said, his voice heavy with disbelief, “Em, seriously?”
“Fine,” I said, realizing I was caught. “Text me the address.”
Since I’d already prepaid, I got a coupon for another pony ride, and it didn’t escape my notice that I was starting to accumulate riding credits all over town. I dropped a thrilled Beckett off at home, then yelled to my parents that I was going out for a few hours and taking the car, and while my mother nodded distractedly, my dad barely looked at me. They both had the rumpled, exhausted look they got when they’d been working for hours. I headed for my car, getting in and then doubling back to the garage to put the wooden piece that fitted over the roof into the trunk. Because while I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to rain, the last thing I wanted was for Lissa Young to get rained on in my car. Then I let out a breath and headed out of the driveway, putting on some music, loud, aiming for the highway, telling myself that I was just doing Collins—and Frank—a favor, and there was no need to be this nervous. But despite this, even just the prospect of Lissa being in my car suddenly made me want to change everything about it.
As I pulled onto I-95 and skipped through on my playlist to what had become my favorite Eric Church song, I realized that there was something else that was bothering me about having to spend time with her. Lissa seemed to belong to a different world, the school world where Frank was Frank Porter, this impossibly perfect guy, the one who was nothing like the one I’d gotten to know this summer, the Frank who tripped over his own feet occasionally and was scared of heights and who sometimes had flecks of orange paintball paint in his hair. Someone who could speak in Beatles lyrics for two days, and who I’d watched have a nacho fight with Collins.
I’d been driving for about an hour when my phone started to ring from the passenger seat. My car was old enough that I couldn’t use any hands-free devices with it, so I jabbed at the screen, trying to hit the button that activated the speaker. Sloane had told me once that when she talked to me like this, it sounded like I was at the bottom of a cave with bad cell reception, but I figured it was better than getting a cell p
hone ticket, like Collins had gotten the week before.
“Hello?” I called in the phone’s general direction. It hadn’t looked like it had been a call from any of my saved contacts, but I didn’t want to look away from the road long enough to really investigate this.
“Hello?” I looked at the phone and saw, to my shock, that Lissa had appeared on my screen—I must have pressed the button to do a video call.
“Oh,” I said, trying to lean a little more into the frame. “I didn’t mean to—just hold on a second.” I signaled, glad to see that I was almost at a rest stop. I didn’t know what the cell phone laws were regarding video calls, but I also didn’t want to risk finding out. I pulled off the highway and into the rest stop. It was a small one, just bathrooms and some vending machines. But it was pretty crowded, several minivans filled with families, exhausted-looking parents and kids running around in the late afternoon sun. I pulled into a space away from the noise of the families and put the car in park, holding up the phone, wishing that I’d brushed my hair recently, or that I’d put on more makeup this morning than just a swipe of lip balm. “Hi,” I said. “Sorry—I was just trying to put it on speaker, I didn’t mean to select video.”
“Hi,” Lissa said, giving me a small smile. “It’s fine.” She looked the same as she did in school, maybe a little more tan. But I couldn’t help notice that her eyes looked red and a little puffy. “How are you, Emily?”
There was something about Lissa that made me want to sit up straighter, and made me wish I’d read a newspaper recently. “Fine,” I said, straightening my posture. “I think I’m about an hour away right now. I have the address, so—”
“That’s what I’m . . . well . . . ,” Lissa said, looking away, and pressing her lips together. After a pause, she turned back to me. “I just wanted to talk to you before you got too far. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling. Collins gave me your number.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Like I said, I should be there in an hour. I drive slow.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back, just looked a little bit stricken and I suddenly realized why. “Slowly,” I added quickly. “I drive slowly. But if I get back on the road, I should—”
“I’m not coming,” she said, interrupting me. “I . . .” She looked down and let out a breath before she looked at me again. “I know I should have been planning on it, but there’s just too much going on here.”
I just looked at her for a second. I didn’t know this girl at all, but I could tell that something wasn’t right. I just sat there in silence, hoping that it wasn’t obvious I didn’t believe her.
“I thought I’d be able to get away,” she continued, still not looking at me. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to drive all this way for nothing.”
“Oh,” I said. “Um . . .” I suddenly thought about Frank, about how disappointed he’d would be, and what this would do to the party that Collins had been organizing.
“I’ll call Collins and tell him about the change in plans,” she said, sounding more businesslike now, like this was one more thing to be checked off her to-do list. “And Frank,” she added after a moment, “of course.”
“Okay,” I said. “Um . . . all right.” Lissa nodded. I realized I wasn’t sure how to wrap up this conversation.
“So you’ve gotten pretty close with Collins, I guess?” she asked, looking right at me. “I was a little surprised when he told me that you were coming to get me, but I guess if you two are—”
“No!” I said, more vehemently than I meant to. Not that I couldn’t understand the appeal, in theory—Dawn had been going on and on the other day about how he looked just like the astronaut’s cute sidekick in Space Ninja, and I could kind of see it—but I just wasn’t interested in him like that. “Um, no,” I said, a little more quietly. “We’re just friends. Frank, too,” I added. If Frank hadn’t told her, I wasn’t sure I should be the one to let her know that I’d been hanging out with her boyfriend. But I also didn’t want to let her think that I was just Collins’s friend. It seemed too much like lying, somehow, or like Frank and I had been sneaking around.
“Good,” she said after a moment. “That’s . . . good. I’m glad.” We just looked at each other for another moment, then she glanced away. When she looked back at me, the vulnerability that I’d seen a moment before was gone, and she looked somehow distant, her voice all business. “I shouldn’t keep you,” she said. “I’m sorry, again, about not reaching you sooner.”
“No problem,” I said, and then a moment later immediately regretted not saying something more impressive. “I’ll . . . um . . . see you around?”
She gave me a quick smile. “Absolutely,” she said. “Thank you, Emily.” And with that, my screen went dark, and I was staring back at my own confused expression.
My phone rang again an hour later—but an hour in which I’d only moved a few miles. There was something going on—I figured it had to be some sort of accident, and I’d been trying to scan through the radio stations, looking for some answers, but somehow only getting ads and weather. Because I wasn’t moving very fast, I could see that it was Collins calling me, and I was able to answer without accidentally starting a video call with him. “Hey,” I said, as I answered. “Did Lissa call you?”
“She did,” he said, and let out a long breath. “Sorry to send you all that way.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Um . . . how’s Frank?”
“I’m trying to make the best of things over here,” Collins said, which, it occurred to me, wasn’t exactly an answer to the question. “Plans are in flux, so just text me when you get back to town, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “There’s some weird traffic thing going on, though, so I might be a while.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “I’ll—” I lost what Collins was saying, though, because the car in front of me slammed on their brakes. And even though we were crawling, I still had to slam on my own, and then hold my breath, hoping the car behind me saw this and wouldn’t rear-end me. After a few seconds, I relaxed—I was fine, but all the stuff that had been congregating under the passenger seat had been jostled loose, and there was now a pile of junk on the floor.
“Collins?” I called into the speaker. But whether the phone had gotten turned off when I’d stopped, or he’d given up, either way, he was no longer there. I put the phone aside and glanced down at the mess. There was a tube of Sloane’s mascara, a cracked pair of sunglasses, a half-filled water bottle, and the book I swore up and down to the Stanwich High librarian that I’d returned. There was something else, too. I glanced away from the road for a moment and bent down for it. It was a disposable camera.
HOW EMILY SEES THE WORLD was written across the back of it in Sharpie, in Sloane’s handwriting. She had given it to me sometime last year, and it was almost full, just a few pictures remaining. Even though it was getting dark fast, I held up the disposable and took a picture of the highway and the hood of my car and the seemingly endless red ribbon of brake lights—capturing, at that particular moment, how I saw the world.
I parked my car in the Orchard’s lot, then killed the engine and just sat for a moment, looking out into the night. It had taken me much longer than should have been rationally possible to get back to Stanwich. I’d been getting text updates from Collins along the way. People were meeting up at the Orchard, and I should come by when I made it back into town.
I had hesitated before responding to this, once I’d made it back home and into the sanctuary of my room. Presumably, a lot of the people who were hanging out were Frank’s other friends—like the ones that I’d encountered the first night with him, when he’d taken me to get gas. I hadn’t been back to the Orchard since, and I really wasn’t sure how I would fit in with those people. I was preparing to write Collins another text about how bad the traffic was, begging off, when I got another text.
Hey are you coming? At the Orchard. See you soon?
It was from Frank, and I texted back without a sec
ond thought that I’d be there soon. Then I reached for a Sloane-chosen outfit—a vintage dress from Twice that I’d worn a lot last summer. But after I put it on, I found myself pulling at the straps, tugging at the hem, not liking what I saw in the mirror. For some reason, it didn’t feel like me any longer. I took it off and changed into the denim skirt I’d bought with Dawn last week and a white eyelet tank top. Feeling more like myself somehow, I dabbed some makeup on, and made sure to get Frank’s present before grabbing my flip-flops and heading back to the car.
Now that I was there, though, the present suddenly seemed stupid, and I didn’t want Frank to feel like he had to open it in front of people—which was actually the last thing that I wanted. I carefully placed it behind my seat and got out, straightening my skirt as I went.
As I walked, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I’d been to the Orchard. When I’d been all alone, miserable, looking down at my phone and trying to pretend that I was meeting someone, that there were people there waiting for me. And now, I realized with a shock, both of those things were true. And unless things went really wrong, there was no way I could picture myself spending tonight hiding behind a tree. It hit me just how much could happen in two months, how, since the last time I’d been at the Orchard, everything had changed.
Maybe not everything. I slowed as I realized Gideon was sitting on top of one of the picnic tables, at the very edge of the clearing, his head turned away from me. I immediately looked around for Sam, but didn’t see him, which I was glad about. I knew I could have just taken the long way to the center of the clearing, where I was pretty sure I could see Collins—I couldn’t imagine who else would be wearing a plum-colored polo shirt, at any rate. But I somehow found I didn’t want to skulk around and hide from Gideon, or have things be awkward all evening. And so, before I could talk myself out of it, I was walking up to Gideon and touching him on the shoulder.
He turned around to look at me, almost losing his beer bottle in the process. “Hey,” I said, giving him a smile. “How’s it going?”
Since You've Been Gone Page 23
