I hope you’re okay tonight.
Quiet but deadly.
I go ahead andmake the soup.
Chapter 5
Greer
I wake up at my usual time—6:27a.m.—and wait.
My second-floor bedroom is overly warm, a consequence not so much of the summer heat as of my sleeping with the door closed, a necessity when Ava has her boyfriend Doug sleep over, which these days is basically all the time. They were quiet last night, mostly, Doug keeping the volume abnormally low on his game of Mass Effect, and Ava murmuring lines to herself beside him on the couch, her script in her lap and a glass of rosé in her hand. Maybe they’d sensed something, all that hair shirt tension radiating off me when I’d come home last night after stopping off to have dinner with Zoe and Aidenat their place.
“So he’s going to be your private tutor?” Zoe had said, one of her dark blond eyebrows raised, emphasis onprivate, and Aiden had nudged her hand with his. “Leave her alone, Zo,” he’d said, giving me a sympathetic smile that somehow suggested he knew I was nervous about asking for Alex’s help.
Shy people, westick together.
Of course I hadn’t told Zoe and Aiden the whole thing—nothing about Alex’s panic attacks, nothing about how I’d basically coerced him into therapy in exchange for a task to complete while he’s stuck here, trying to white-knight rescue me from the ivory tower I’ve trapped myself in. All that I’d kept to myself to ruminate over, and the quiet in this townhouse last night only served to keep me thinking about the next month, about how much help Alex needs and how much helpIneed, about how both of us will get through this when I can barely stop thinking about whether his mouth feels as good as it looks.
I’m okay,he’d texted back, late last night, and I’d held my phone in my hand for a long time, absolutelynotthinking about anything battery operated inmy nightstand.
I kick off the covers, slide my eyes over to the clock. 6:28. Plenty of time to do the usual, what I’ve done for most mornings since I was a teenager, which is to take a quick inventory of my body, letting myself feel every single thing. When I was younger, when it all first started and when it was all still a mystery, the inventory was decidedly more terrifying: I might open my eyes and find my vision slightly blurred. I might try to speak and find my voice oddly hoarse, my throat feeling half-closed. I might even have a tingling sensation in my hands or feet, faint in the mornings but worsening through the day.
These days, the inventory is pretty benign: maybe some soreness or tension, maybe a slight headache I can almost always manage with a few Advil and some extra time on my isometrics. Today might be one of those days, my body still smarting at me from the weekend—the heels, the dancing. And the stress and sleeplessness probably hasn’t helped. Slowly, I crane my neck back and forth, then tip my chin up, feel an answering pinch before I tip it back down toward my chest. Definitely some extra exercises today, and maybe a long walk to loosen me up before I meet Alex—
My phone vibrates on my nightstand, which means it’s 6:30 exactly, and I reach for it. “Hi, Mom,” I say, not bothering to lookat the screen.
“Hi, Greens. Doing okaythis morning?”
“Doing great.” My voice is bright, cheerful. I’ve learned that waking up a few minutes before the call helps with this, keeps my mom from worrying over any garden-variety grogginess.
Our exchange—it’s a script I’d never need to study, for a performance we’ve been doing together from the first morning I woke up here in the suburban townhouse Ava and I share, not even two full miles away from my parents’ house. Before that, it’d been a routine Mom and I had done in person, her knocking softly on the door of my childhood bedroom each morning, her voice falsely cheerful but her eyes heavy with concern, tracking over my body as though she’d somehow be able toseesomething wrong this time.
“You’re sure?” The follow-up was an addition to our dialogue, a lean-in to the fact that she can’t see my face when she asks. Mom hadn’t wanted me to move out, even though I was twenty-one when I finally did, even though I’d been working consistently for a year by then, even though I’d still be under the watchful eye of Ava, who—always eager to please my mom—could be counted on to report to her about anything she thought might be going on with me. I often wonder what we’ll add when I move downtown like I’ve planned, closerto my new job—
If.IfI move downtown.IfI start my new job. I swallow, thinking of Alex. Suit of armor Alex, helping me get free.
“Completely sure. Feeling good today.”
“Okay,” she says, but if I don’t stop her now, there’ll be follow-ups.Have you been doing your exercises? Are you getting enough sleep? They’re not making you work too hard there at the hospital, are they?
“I can’t talk this morning, Mom. I’ve got an—appointment at ten. For school,” I clarify, in case she assumes something medical. “You have a busy day ahead?”
“Oh, you know me.” That means she absolutely has a busy day ahead, probably enough social commitments to put a normal person in a stress coma. In addition to the volunteer work she does for the community theater—the same one Ava’s the star player of most seasons—Mom’s also a member of four book clubs, three charity committees, two community arts boards, and one neighborhood watch. I smile, my heart full with something like pride. My mom can do all these things now, can have so much freedom with her time, in part because of me and that lucky ticket.
“I’ll check in tonight.” We both know that means I’ll call at exactly 8 p.m., same as I do every night, to let her know I’m okay. We both know, too, that she’ll text me before that, probably around midday, with some small, unimportant question that’s a smokescreen for checking in, and that I’ll still respond to within five minutes. “Love you, Mom.”
Downstairs in the kitchen, I move through my routine quietly, careful not to wake Ava or Doug. He does freelance lighting work, including at the theater where he and Ava met, so his workdays generally don’t start until late, and Ava—a hairstylist who moonlights with her stage roles in the spring and summer seasons—never goes to work before ten. My cat, Kenneth, slinks in from the living room, where he sleeps in the warmer summer months, and purrs gently as he circles twice through my feet, his version of a good morning greeting. I feed him first, then reach for my box of Cheerios in the pantry, which are—
Almost gone.
I suppress a sigh, knowing that Doug’s struck again, and hope there’s at least an egg or two in the fridge. Doug’s a nice enough guy, I guess, but he never asks to eat my cereal and he never replenishes it when he does. He also uses up all our wall plugs with his gaming console, and he sleeps in Game of Thrones boxer shorts, a fact I know because he walks around this place in them like I won’t mind at all seeing an image of the Iron Throne emblazoned across his crotch.
Maybe Dougisn’ta nice enoughguy, actually.
At my feet, Kenneth meows in solidarity. “New place for us, soon, Kenny boy,” I whisper. “Justthe two of us.”
“Greens?” comes Ava’s voice from the stairway, and a few seconds later she comes in the kitchen, her freshly dyed auburn hair piled on top of her head, her face shiny from the special mask she puts on before bed. Ava’s four years older than me, but she looks as fresh faced as a teenager, obsessed with beauty treatments and, I suspect in the last year or so, Botox.
