“Fine,” Van says, which is simultaneously vague,unhelpful, and probably untrue. “Nolan’s remembering more. He’s gotten another year or two back.”
“Great,” Alice lies faintly. Nolan’s memories are like a doomsday clock, counting down the seconds until her lie is laid bare. Until Van hates her even more than she does now.
Van clears her throat. “Sorry about Frank.”
“Oh no,” Alice says, petting his head again. “Always happy to see Frank.”
“No,” Van says, something strangled in her tone now. “I mean…” She gestures to her chest, and it takes Alice quite a long time to drag her eyes away from Van’s body, but when she finally does and looks down at her own chest, it looks like she was mauled by a mud monster.
“Oh boy,” Alice says, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Van’s mouth twitch.
“Sorry,” Van says again, but Alice shakes her head.
“It’s only dirt; it’ll come out,” she says. “Besides…” She scratches behind Frank’s ears, knowing this is maybe the last time. The silky feeling of his big, floppy ears trailing through her fingers makes a sob catch in her throat. She doesn’t want to think about a life that he’s not in, about going through every fucking day and night without him. About never getting to hold his big, dumb face in her hands, rub his soft coat, get slapped by his happy tail and licked by his enormous tongue ever again. “I missed him.”
It’s quiet for a moment, so Alice can hear Sebastian say to Isabella, “But I wanna slide again!” and Isabella’s very unsubtle shushing.
“Looks like he missed you too,” Van says, but she’s still not meeting Alice’s gaze.
Van has bags under her eyes, and she’s opening and closing her hands like they’re bothering her. She hasn’t been sleepingwell.
Standing here, talking to Alice—maybe it’s hurting Van just as much as it’s hurting Alice. And Alice can’t do that to her. Not anymore. She lets go of Frank, and he prances over to Van, who clips the leash onto his collar without a word. She finally looks up at Alice, and she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but then she closes it again.
She turns, and something in Alice’s chest is screaming and crying and shouting for her to move, to throw herself at Van, to beg for mercy and forgiveness and for that blinky thingy fromMen in Blackto erase the last month of their lives and start over. Maybe Babs has a working model in her costume closet they could use? Two queers meeting in a park because of a dog—what a cute rom-com that would be! If only that could be their story, instead of this fucking mess Alice made.
“I’m sorry,” Alice chokes out. Van is already a few steps away, but she pauses and then, very slowly, turns back.
“For what?” She sounds hoarse, and Alice wonders if she’s as close to crying as Alice is.
Alice almost shrugs, almost smiles. “For everything,” she says, quiet as the rain starts to fall in earnest again. It’s not the apology Van deserves, not even close, but it’s honest and Van clearly wants to go, and Alice can give her that. Alice will let her go.
Van nods. Not like she forgives Alice, but like she heard her. Like she accepts that Alice apologized, not like she accepts her apology.
Van doesn’t say anything else as she turns and walks across the muddy grass. Frank is the only one who looks back, his eyes a little sad, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
Twenty-One
A week later, on Thursday morning, Alice dresses more carefully than usual for work. All of her clothes are relatively crappy; almost all bought from Goodwill, and her size has fluctuated over the years, so everything is either a little too loose or too tight. Well, mostly too tight. She’s happiest in her oversize black turtleneck sweater and thick leggings, but she can’t exactly wear that to work. Her coworker Delilah is one of those people who goes vintage shopping not because she has to but because she thinks it’s fun, and Alice is pretty sure she ends up paying more for her “great finds” than she would if she went to Target, but it means she always looks trendy and put together.
Tonight Alice is going to happy hour with Delilah and her friends, who Alice assumes are all equally as fashionable and pretty as Delilah, and Alice knows she won’t be able to measure up. She knows it, but she stares into her closet with dismay anyway, wishing that somehow everything inside would have gotten a fairy godmother makeover while she slept.
“Knew I should have been nicer to that mouse family last year,” she mutters as she pushes aside lumpy sweater after frumpy shirt. Maybe if she hadn’t put out traps, and instead had coaxed the family out and taught them how to sew, she wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
She eventually settles on a black button-down shirt, black dress pants, and her least appalling shoes. Maybe she can pretend she’s edgy. She puts on some eyeliner—three times because she messes it up twice—and makes sure to pack her deodorant in her purse because a long bus commute has never made anyone smell their best.
She wishes she weren’t so nervous. It’s just happy hour, drinks with people who, worst case, she’ll never see again. Delilah has personally experienced Alice being a hot mess, and she invited her out anyway. Alice knows she’s an uncool, dowdy disaster, so there’s nothing they could think about her that she doesn’t already think about herself. Alice has nine regular hours to go before one becomes happy, but her heart is racing anyway, her palms sweaty. Damn, she hasn’t left the apartment yet but she already needs another hit of that deodorant.
Trying to make friends shouldn’t be this scary—but Alice hasn’t tried to make friends in…ever? No, that’s not true. She’s tried to make friends a lot, but it hasn’t quite worked. When she was a kid she had Bella, and then after Bella moved away when they were eleven, Alice’s dad was already getting worse and worse. Alice was never willing to have anyone over to her house for a playdate or sleepover, not wanting them to see the oxygen tanks or hear his wet, rattling coughs in the night. He didn’t have the energy to drive her around much, so she wasn’t on any teams, and she never had the money to hang out at the mall or go to the movies like other kids did.
By high school she was lumped in with the burnouts, the kids who had already fried their brains on drugs, who didn’t give a shit, and she didn’t fit in with them at all. She gave a shit! She gave so many shits, in fact, but it wasn’t like she had a quiet, stable place to do her homework, or like the biggest stress in her life was her chem final. She was busy after school, working to supplement their paltry disability payments, taking her dad to medical appointments—guiding him on and off the bus, sometimes skipping school to make it to appointments with specialists—and by the end he was in and out of the hospital so much that sometimes she didn’t bother to go to school at all. She didn’t get great grades and she wasn’t in any clubs, so she found herself alone at lunch and after school, isolated in her small apartment with her dad who, despite all of her best efforts, kept getting sicker and sicker.
Some weeks, the only people she spoke to were her customers at work, her dad, his doctors, and Lupe.
And then she graduated, and a few months later, he died.
She should have tried to make friends after that. After she cleared out their small two-bedroom apartment and moved into her cramped studio on Division, she had so much time on her hands—no more Dad meant no more caretaking, no more waking up five times a night to check on him, which meant no more midday exhaustion naps. She should have spent her twenties partying, meeting people, having a delayed adolescence, doing all the irresponsible shit she didn’t get to do in high school.
But instead she grieved. For him, for herself, for her mom. For her life. She spent her twenties grinding, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. All she did was work, put her head down and try not to think about anything but making rent, paying down her dad’s medical bills, surviving.
