“We’ll find it,” Teddy promised as we began retracing our steps, but I wasn’t so sure, and my chest ached at the thought of losing it. By the time it started to pour we’d only made it halfway back through the day’s route, and it was quickly becoming clear that the sweatshirt was a lost cause. There was nothing to do but give up on it.
But later that night my phone lit up with a text from Teddy:I’m outside.I crept downstairs in my pajamas, and when I opened the front door, he was standing there in the rain, his hair dripping and his jacket soaked, holding the wet sweatshirt under his arm like a football. I couldn’t believe he’d found it. I couldn’t believe he’dgone backfor it.
Before he could say anything, I threw my arms around him, hugging him tight, and as I did I felt something crackle to life inside me, like my heart was a radio that had been full of static for years, and now, all at once, it had gone suddenly clear.
Maybe I’d loved him long before then. Maybe I just hadn’t realized it until I opened the door that night. Or maybe it was always meant to happen this way, with a shivering boy holding a damp sweatshirt on my front stoop, the whole thing as inevitable as day turning to night and back to day again.
It hasn’t been easy, loving him; it’s like a dull throb, constant and persistent as a toothache, and there’s no real cure for it. For three years I’ve acted like his buddy. I’ve watched him fall for a string of other girls. And all this time, I’ve been too afraid to tell him the truth.
I blink at the card in front of me, then jiggle the pen in my hand. Out the window the night is cloaked in white, and the bus carried us farther from the heart of the city. Something about the darkness, all those flecks of snow hurrying to meet the windshield, dizzying and surreal, makes me feel momentarily brave.
I take a deep breath and write:Dear Teddy.
Then, before I can second-guess myself, I keep going, my pen moving fast across the page, a quick, heedless emptying of my heart, an act so reckless, so bold, so monumentally stupid that it makes my blood pound in my ears.
When I’m finished I reach for the envelope.
“Don’t forget the ticket,” Leo says, and I slip it out of my pocket. It’s now bent, and one of the corners has a small tear, but I lay it flat against my leg and do my best to straighten it out. As Leo leans in to get a better look, I feel my face flush all over again.
“Teddy’s birthday?” he says, peering at the numbers, his glasses fogged from the warmth of the bus. “Kind of an obvious one…”
“It seemed appropriate for the occasion.”
“Your birthday. Teddy’s basketball jersey.” He pauses. “What’s eleven?”
“A prime number.”
“Very funny,” he says, then his eyes flash with recognition. “Oh, right. His apartment. And nine?”
“The number of years—”
“That you guys have been friends, right,” he says, then turns to the final number. I watch his face as it registers—that awful, conspicuous thirteen—and he snaps his chin up, his dark eyes alert and full of concern.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say quickly, flipping the ticket over and pressing it flat with my hand. “I had to think fast. I just…”
“You don’t have to explain.”
I shrug. “I know.”
“I get it,” he says, and I know that he does.
That’s the best thing about Leo.
He watches me for a second longer, as if to make sure I’m really okay; then he sits back in his seat so that we’re both facing forward, our eyes straight ahead as the bus hurtles through the snow, which is thick as static against the windshield. After a moment, he reaches over and places a hand on top of mine, and I lean against him, resting my head on his shoulder, and we ride like that the rest of the way.
The inside of Teddy’s apartment is warm and almost humid, the small space filled with too many bodies and too much noise. Beside the door, the old-fashioned radiator is hissing and clanging, and from the bedroom the music thumps through the walls, making Teddy’s school photos tremble in their frames. The single window by the galley kitchen is already fogged over, and someone has writtenTEDDY MCAVOY IS Aacross it, the last word rubbed out so that it’s impossible to tell just what exactly he is.
I stand on my tiptoes, scanning the room.
“I don’t see him,” I say, shrugging off my coat and throwing it on top of the haphazard pile that’s sprung up on the floor. Leo picks it up, knotting one of his sleeves to one of mine so that our jackets look like they’re holdinghands.
“I can’t believe he’s doing this,” he says. “His mom is gonna kill him.”
But there’s more to it than that. There’s a reason Teddy doesn’t usually have people over, even though his mom works nights as a nurse. Their whole apartment is only two rooms—three if you count the bathroom. The kitchen is basically just a small tiled area tucked off in the corner, and Teddy has the only bedroom. His mom sleeps on the pullout couch while he’s at school, a detail that makes it glaringly obvious they don’t have the same kind of money as most of our classmates.
But I’ve always loved it here. After Teddy’s dad walked out on them, they had to give up their spacious two-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Park, and this was all they could afford. Katherine McAvoy did what she could to make it feel like home, painting the main room a blue so bright it feels like being in a swimming pool, and the bathroom a cheerful pink. In Teddy’s room each wall is a different color: red, yellow, green, and blue, like the inside of a parachute.
Tonight, though, it feels less cozy than crowded, and as a cluster of junior girls walk past us I hear one of them say, her voice incredulous, “It’s only a one-bedroom?”
