I didn’t know much about rodents (besides what I’d recently learned at the motel where I worked and also the one where I lived), but I did know that they were attracted to smells. And he used a deliciously aromatic shampoo. I had first noticed that when we’d driven to pick up Willow at that bar weeks ago, and I’d noticed again today when I’d bent close to make sure thathe was still breathing. I found it very compelling and I bet that mice would, too, if he stored any in that locker.
I sniffed but couldn’t catch the scent of it now, and we both looked out the window. Then my thoughts shifted, as they usually did, to worry. What if he took a turn for the worse when I wasn’t here? “Did you really ask someone to come over?” I asked.
“I really did.”
“Who?”
He smiled. “Do you need to talk to her and confirm?”
Her. No, I didn’t, and at that point, my ride finally showed up. “I hope you’re ok,” I said. “You seem to be, but head stuff is always scary.” I thought of the first time I’d seen my sister in her hospital bed. “It’s very scary.”
“Yeah, but I’m fine.” He walked me out into the driveway, but then stopped with his hand on the car’s door handle. “Are you still living in that motel or did you find a new place yet?”
“I’ll figure it out.” An issue now was that I might not have been able to return to that motel for the night. I’d written to Willow to apologize for leaving the game, but she wasn’t answering me and she had the only key to our room. That wasn’t even my biggest concern, though. Everett was departing for Arizona and wouldn’t be back until the Woodsmen training camp started, and that felt very far away.
His next words reinforced that. “Maybe I’ll see you this summer.”
“Yes,” I answered. “That would be good. Really good.”
“Sure.” He opened the door but I still stood next to the car, unwilling to get in.
“You guys ready?” the driver asked. She had turned around and was staring at Everett. “You look familiar.” She also glanced at the big house with the beautiful lake views. “Do you play football?”
“Not for the Woodsmen,” he answered, but then lowered his voice and spoke only to me. “Not yet. Bye, Zoey.”
“Bye.” I hesitated for another split second before I got in, and the car took off. When I turned around to watch him through the back window, he was already going into the house.
“He’s cute,” the driver said. “Is that your boyfriend?”
“No. He’s a friend,” I told her. I wondered if I’d see him again when he came back here, if he would still need that. Probably not—it seemed like once people went away, they found it easy to forget you. Or maybe it was just me.
I leaned back against the seat and tried to imagine my new life in my new apartment, the one in the nice building downtown with the heated garage. I would have a party with so many friends, so many fun people, and my boyfriend would come…
But I couldn’t get lost in the daydream like I usually did. When I closed my eyes, I only thought of Everett. My friend, Everett.
The Second Half
Chapter 7
Iread the message again, and then again for what had to have been the tenth time.
“South Florida, so beautiful.”
Really? Florida was beautiful? Yes, it seemed nice in pictures, but it had been weeks—no, it had been months since she’d written. And this was it? These four words? And was it really so beautiful there in the summer? We had taken our last family vacation to Alabama in July and it had been hot and muggy. Wasn’t most of Florida even closer to the Equator?
But the weather wasn’t my real issue. It had been so long since I’d heard anything from my mother, and now these four words about Florida?
“What are you staring at?” my sister asked. “You’re making a face like this.” She pulled her own pretty features into an expression that best resembled a ticked-off monkey. It was very unattractive, even on her.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Nothing’s wrong.” The best thing was for my sister to live in ignorance, rather than knowing that the woman who had raised us was now in Florida and apparently having a great time, while we had been kicked out of our house and had been worried that we were going to end up living in my car. At least, I had been worried about that, but I hadn’t told Willow that our situation was so dire. And I wasn’t going to tell her about the texts from Mom, either.
She looked in the mirror and then kissed a tissue to remove some of the lipstick she’d applied. “I’m ready,” she announced, and it was some kind of miracle. She had gotten up and dressed even before I had, so we now had time to spare before we had to leave. “Your turn.”
“What?” I asked, but she was already pulling me to sit in our chair. I had gotten us out of the motel, but after handing over my money to rent this studio apartment, there hadn’t been much left over for furniture. We had a chair, just one. But it was a cheerful yellow and anyway, there wasn’t any space for another.
“Ok, first your hair,” she said briskly, pulling out the elastic that had held it in a ponytail. “Why do you always wear it back?” Then, in the know-it-all tone that I hated, she started lecturing about the many ways I was failing to properly style myself. She got her dryer and a round brush and explained that she was smoothing out the ridge from my elastic. “That tight thing today, of all days…split ends, so many split ends,” she muttered, but I pretended not to hear her over the electric whine. We both ignored the knocking on the wall by our neighbor, who didn’t like the noise of the little machine.
She did finally pronounce that my hair looked much better, and next, she started on my makeup. “I don’t want to do too much,” she said, continuing to narrate her actions. “Since you never wear any, we don’t want to go crazy because the improvement would be too dramatic. You should still be recognizable.”
