“I’m fine.”
“I’ll call you right back,” my dad gets out before stabbing the red circle on his phone screen and flinging it like a frisbee on top of the set of blueprints scattered on the kitchen counter. “Honey, where did Miles take you?”
I narrow my focus at them and put some distance between us.
“He didn’ttake me anywhereI didn’t ask him to, if that’s what you’re implying. But how exactly doyouknow Miles? Because I don’t have a clue how I do… did. Whatever. And he’s pretending not to know me.”
My dad bunches the set of plans before him into a stack and tucks away the distraction in an oversized folder while my mom clings to his side.
My dad clears his throat. “Was that the first time you’ve seen him?”
I growl, pulling at the strands of my hair. “Why does it even matter to you? You guys obviously haven’t cared enough to tell me anything aboutMiles—or Reed for that matter—in the last nine months considering I’m just now learning they exist. Showing me some random sketch of the two of them with no explanation doesn’t count!”
“Teddy, we?—”
“You know what—?” I wave my hand back and forth in front of my face like a moving stop sign. “Save it! I’ll figure it out myself. I need my phone back,” I demand with an outstretched hand.
“But Dr. Spalding?—”
“Dr. Spalding said just last week that the introduction of old activities?—”
“Is something to be introduced slowly,” she finishes.
If I was a dragon, the room would be black with smoke and charred from fire.
“I was there at that last appointment, remember? Or did you forget, since you spoke to each other like I wasn’t on the call.”
My dad steps in front of my mom, shielding her from view. “Okay. We’ll agree to the phone.”
He walks over to the refrigerator and fishes around on the top until his hand finds what he’s looking for.
They hid it? On top of the refrigerator? Like I’m a child?It’s humiliating.
I rush over and snatch it from him. Stomping off toward the stairs, he stops me.
“Teddy, your mom and I are just trying to protect you. Part of that is offering our advice when we think you need it. And right now, we think you shouldn’t be spending time with Miles.”
I flip around, my hair swooshing in front of my eyes, and I spit through the strands. “Oh, good. You want a say in who I spend my time with now? It’s not enough that you get to control every other aspect of my life. When I’m deemed fit to have my phone back. What time I need to go bed at night. How far I can venture from the cabin alone. Well, good news for you, Miles doesn’t even want to be around me. So you can save yourselves the gray hair.”
I refuse to bend at the first sign of their disapproval. When it’s obvious they don’t have anything more to say, I trudge my way up the stairs, shouting, “And don’t follow me!”
It’s three days before I leave the confines of my bedroom. I don’t have any shifts at the restaurant, I’m avoiding my parents, and I use the wee hours of the morning when I can’t sleep to scour my phone for answers about my past. It took a while to charge, but when it finally lit up, I bolted upright to take in the 51 text messages, 26 voicemails, and tiny red bubble hovering at the corner of a multi-colored square with the number 283 on it.
Surprise, surprise. I misseda lot.
I tap on the Instagram icon, and a video starts to play. It’s of a girl with wild wavy hair and a contagious smile. She’s spinning, with one arm holding the phone out in front of her and the other reaching toward the sky. An enormous tower of lights flickers in the background while she lip-syncs to “Sky Full of Stars.” The caption beneath the video readsThe Iron Lady is a whole vibe. Wish you were here.@teddyfletcher
My eyes flare at the sight of my name, and I click on it. The page refreshes to a profile with one lone post. I watch infascination as the same girl from the video and I jump off the end my dock on a hyperloop.
I can’t help but compare it to everything before this summer. Just the same experiences, over and over again.
BFF <3, reads the caption.
This girl was my best friend.It should come as no surprise to me by now, buthow can I not remember I had a best friend?
I tap all the buttons on the screen, desperate to figure out which one takes me back to her video. When I find the right one, I click on her profile name—@callmecozy. A grid of hundreds of pictures and videos load on her page, each one in a place of the world I’ve never seen before.A traveling influencer, I read in her bio. I’m mesmerized, scrolling post after post, when it dawns on me—there’s more.
I close out of the app faster than I opened it to get to my text messages. The latest string is from Cozy, but I open Reed’s first.
