DRIVING HAS ALWAYS CALMED ME DOWN. I love the steady movement, the sound of the tires on the road, whatever music I want playing and filling my thoughts. When Charlie and I leave the bowling alley, I drive until her words stop echoing so loudly between my ears, until I’m not so angry. Still, I don’t care what Charlie says—?I have no idea who I’m angry with.
She sits next to me, quiet and perpetually fiddling with her phone, changing from one song to the next, something she always does when she’s nervous. Or pissed off. Or worried. Hard to tell with Charlie and music sometimes. It holds every emotion for her, cradling each one until she can sort them all out.
When my car finally comes to a stop, I’m in a familiar neighborhood near the lake, at a familiar park, a familiar house with softly glowing windows across the street. I tell my body to move, to get out and ring the doorbell and talk to Hannah. See with my own eyes that she’s okay.
“Mara?” Charlie asks, peering through the window into the dark. “What are we doing here?”
I blink at Hannah’s house. Blink again. Behind the seat, my phone buzzes in my bag.
“Mara?”
“What if you’re right?” I ask. “What if she’s not okay?”
Her fingertips press against my arm and I immediately tense. Then I relax and tense again. It’s amazing how many feelings you can go through in only a few seconds, all because of someone’s fingertips.
“We can call her,” Charlie says softly. “See if she’s up for some company.”
Across the park, Hannah’s house looks warm and inviting, and I’m weirdly surprised. Like it should’ve darkened to a cold blue, a shell of its former self. I stare at the windows, imagining Hannah inside and breathing, curled up in her big room with its own fireplace, that huge tapestry with the rainbow-colored peace sign set against a star-packed night sky she got at the folk art festival downtown last spring spanning the entire wall in front of her bed. Her mom hates that thing, but Hannah adores it. Says she bought it because it reminded her of us—?of me and Charlie and herself.
In my mind, I separate her from Owen again, tucking them into their own worlds. They don’t even know each other. Whatever Hannah’s feeling, Owen wasn’t the cause. They’re two strangers dealing with different issues, with different stories and different outcomes. I think about everything I want to say to Hannah, but I can’t make sense of any of it, can’t sift through what I’ve been told and what I believe and what I feel. My thoughts are all a mess.
Before I even register what I’m doing, I’m throwing the car back into drive and pulling out of the park’s gravel lot.
“Mara, wait.” Charlie turns in her seat, watching Hannah’s house fade from the back window. “I thought you wanted to—”
“I need to go home.” My fingers go bloodless on the steering wheel. “Isn’t that what you said? That I need to go home?”
The night flies past, a blur of swirled-amber streetlights and silhouettes. I feel Charlie’s eyes on me, her slow inhalation and even slower exhalation. Finally, she turns away, staring out the window while she lets a whole song play out, a velvety voice crooning sadly through my speakers.
The house is quiet when I get home. Too quiet, not even the hum of my mother’s favorite prime-time shows interrupting the silence. I rush upstairs, heading to my bedroom and not bothering to check if anyone is still awake, but Mom finds me in the hallway.
“There you are.” She has a cup of tea in her hands and she’s still in her jeans and sweater. Usually, my mother’s in her pajamas the second dinner is over.
“Here I am.”
“Don’t disappear like that, Mara. You can’t just leave and then not answer your phone. I was about to send your father after you.”
“Sorry,” I say, even though I’m not sure if I really am.
“You okay?”
I nod, but it’s so half assed, she lets out a sigh.
“Sweetie, this will blow over. It’s a misunderstanding. You know your brother.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Saying what?”
“That it’s a misunderstanding. That I know Owen. But . . . Mom, I know Hannah, too.”
She presses her eyes closed and inhales slowly. “I know.”
I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. Just stares into her teacup.
“He couldn’t have done this, could he?” I ask. I need her to tell me. She’s my mom, the parent, the grownup, the one who always reminds me, whenever I whine about curfew or summer jobs, that she has years of experience behind her.
“Of course not,” she says, and everything in me lets up, just a little. But not enough. My stomach is still coiled like a sleeping snake.
