I cleared my mind that wanted to populate with images of Emery. Years of pouring my thoughts and feelings into letters she never bothered to answer had carved the wound in my heart even deeper. A canyon now, a canyon that echoed with emptiness because there was zero probability I’d ever let anyone in again.
“Come on, Dad,” I said, gently nudging him back to reality. “We’re home.”
***
Dad rushed into the living room like a little kid on Christmas morning. The house was too small for a proper office, so years ago he’d made a workstation out of an old rollaway desk in one corner of the living room, now almost entirely buried under books and papers.
“Yesss,” he sighed, sinking happily into the creaky chair. “I’llfinally be able to do some real work.”
I let the duffel bags—mine and his—drop to the shag carpet and glanced around. The house was 1,500 square feet of clutter, only now all that clutter was covered in seven years’ worth of dust and cobwebs and sprinkled with rat droppings. The front door faced a set of stairs that went up one floor, a ratty maroon couch and chipped wooden coffee table were positioned in front of a stone fireplace, and under the front window sat an old piano. Dad had been pretty good back in the day, and I’d taken lessons. We used to play duets—the one thing that Mom seemed to enjoy—but I couldn’t imagine either of us playing again.
Every inch of it—except for my loft—was cluttered with mess. Not filth, juststuff.Too much stuff, and now I could see it through my mother’s eyes. A claustrophobia-inducing wreck of a house presided over by a wreck of a man and his bitter son.
No wonder she left.
I dismissed the excuse. She had her reasons—maybe a hundred of them, big and small, but all of them had been more important than me.
When the first day of school arrived two weeks later, I rode my bike—it was less embarrassing than the Buick—into the student parking lot of Castle Hill Academy. True to its name, the school sat like an ultramodern castle on a hill—all white planes, sharp angles, and glass. The lot was filled with Mercedes, Teslas, and BMWs with a few junkers sprinkled in. Other Bend kids.
I didn’t see any of my people, but plenty of Richies, sitting on hoods or gathered in groups, talking and laughing. Everyone was dressed for the humidity: the girls in short skirts or cut-off shorts and tight, revealing tops. The boys wore jeans that didn’t have holes in them like mine did. Their shirts were designer label polos, while mine was a thinning T-shirt bearing a faded image of a Radiohead—my favorite band—logo.
I locked my bike and shouldered my backpack. I felt the stares asI walked past a clutch of students leaning against a Range Rover. Its back window was soaped with the wordsBow down to your SENIORS!!!
“What’s up, Bender?” someone called.
I rolled my eyes behind my glasses and kept walking. “Bender.” How original, not that “Richies” was the paragon of creativity. I wondered—not for the first time—why I was subjecting myself to this experiment.
Tell the truth,a voice whispered.You’re here for her.
I couldn’t help it. I had a masochistic urge to see Emery Wallace, to reopen every single scar on my heart by confirming that she was alive and well and hadchosento ignore me.
As I crossed the green expanse of grass that fronted the enormous school, every blond head of hair, every girlish laugh, drew my eye and made my heart jump. I’d nearly made it across the lawn, wondering with equal parts dismay and relief, if Emery had moved away.
And then there she was.
Statues of lions—the school mascot—sat regally on short pillars on either side of a white staircase that led up to the school’s front doors. Emery Wallace was perched on one of the pillars, next to a lion’s paw, surrounded by a group of Richies. She swung her legs like she had when she was a little girl, beside me on our rock. But she was no longer a little girl.
God help me…
Her legs were tanned and muscled like a dancer’s or gymnast’s. She wore fashionable, chunky white sneakers, ankle socks, and short shorts. So short, they revealed the flawless expanse of her thighs. A tight-fitting top strained to contain the…evidenceof her maturity.
I dragged my thoughts away from primal, objectifying observations and studied her face. Emery’s blue-green eyes were framed by long, dark lashes under a fringe of bangs. Thick, golden hair poured down her back in loose curls. My knees literally weakened. In seven years, she’d gone from beautiful to breathtaking.
Any second, she’d see me. I wanted the light of her recognitionand dreaded it. A rejection in the flesh instead of in the silence of unanswered letters.
I was still yards away when a tall, blond hulk of a guy hooked an arm around her waist. He effortlessly lifted her off the pillar and spun her around. When he set her on her feet, I calculated Emery’s height to be hardly over five feet. Her boyfriend, by comparison, was a giant.
Then recognition hit.
Tucker.
The bully who’d thrown water balloons at us with his friend while our backs were turned. What more did I need to know about Emery if this guy was now her boyfriend?
Tucker bent to kiss her, and his hand went straight to her ass, grabbing a handful of flesh through her shorts. She broke the kiss and shoved at his chest, laughing. But when he turned away, her smile collapsed like a wave function once it’s been observed.
Observed by me and no one else.
But maybe I was only imagining—hoping for—her annoyance, because in the next instant, she was smiling again. Haughty. Imperious. No trace of the warmth I’d known. None of her innate, luminous magic that had erased my loneliness for a few, fleeting moments.
