I laugh. “Really, though. Our birthday party is our favorite day of the year. It’s always right at the start of summer and sweltering, with water games and frozen drinks. Maisy’s mom used to plan it when we were younger, but Maisy took over four years back and does a great job with it. It’s also like, our annual friendship-commemoration day. I love it. I love our birthday.”
“What are you going to do this year?” he asks.
“If I had to guess, a pool party at her new apartment. It would just be her friends though, since you and Zara will both be gone.”
“If she puts one o’clock on the invitation, should you show up at five?”
I squeeze his knee. “Maisy has her flaws, but she’s always been a good friend to me, especially when other kids weren’t.”
He chews, takes a sip of his orange juice. “I believe you. Have you talked to her about…?”
My stomach twists up like a Slinky. “Not yet, but I’m seeing her tonight.” She’d said she had something to tellme, which is just as well, since I’ve been putting off our next meeting.
Liam nods and graciously changes the subject.
He kisses me breathless when he drops me off, promises to call on the bus ride. I make it as far as the sidewalk when he rolls down the window and groans, “Fuck, I already miss you,” beforestumbling out of the truck to kiss me again. And sometimes it feels like I’ve stolen all of someone else’s luck.
When he’s gone, I head upstairs to help Zara with the last of her packing. Her movers are coming tomorrow morning, and next week, after her graduation, I’ll drive her, Maren, my dad, and Candice (who are coming for the ceremony, along with Candice’s girlfriend) to the airport for their flights home.
Zara puzzles out my mood instantly the way sisters always can; I spill the beans about Maisy, explain that I’m anxious to see her later, and then am subjected to Zara’s pitying eyes as we pack her special editions into carboard boxes.
“I can’t believe you haven’t saidI told you soyet,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I don’twantto be right about Maisy being a shitty friend, Paige. I’m sure Liam feels the same.”
“She’s not a shitty friend. There has to be a misunderstanding. Remember your grade’s senior prank day? Those girls made me steal the principal’s cellphone, and when I got caught, Maisy took the blame. She had detention for two weeks.”
Zara pauses her stacking, looking over at me, conflicted. “Yeah, I remember, but didn’t she have a crush on some guy who was always in detention?”
“And when we were sophomores, and nobody asked me to homecoming, but she got asked by two different guys. Maisy promised to go to spring prom with one of them if he tookmeto homecoming that fall.”
Zara makes a face. “I’d argue Maisy had a personal stake in you being invited to homecoming.”
“Maybe, but part of her did it because she cares about including and protecting me. I really do believe that.”
“I don’t doubt that she cares about you, Paige. I only doubt that it’s healthy. For all the ways Maisy was a good friend to you, she was an equally bad one in others—like, oh, for instance, whenshe outed your very personal, anonymous poetry about our shit mother to the entire school—and it’s not supposed to be a wash like that.”
To this I have nothing to say. But eventually, Zara goes on, so quietly I know she’s nervous to air it out: “Don’t let her off the hook just because I’m leaving town.”
I nod, too vulnerable to answer aloud.
Zara and I have far more in common from our childhoods than we don’t. A father who was bone-tired. A mother we don’t remember. Sisters we idolized, then watched become fallible. But while Zara’s independent to the point of needing only stories, I sometimes feel like a sea barnacle that grows best from tenacious attachment.
I head to Maisy’s apartment around four. I haven’t seen her in three weeks, give or take, a natural byproduct of our new normal. I can’t help but wonder if she invited me over to talk about the same thing I need to hear from her.
When I knock, and the door swings open, Maisy greets me with a tentative smile, her skin freckled and her red hair shorter than I’ve ever seen it.
“Hey, stranger,” she says. “Please compliment my hair before I spiral over it.”
Every instinct I have screams at me to drop it, to let her off the hook, to wait and see if she’ll fess up on her own. But for once, I’m just as frustrated over something she’s done as I am understanding of it.
“Your haircut looks amazing. Really. But Maisy,” I say immediately, my voice broken, “we need to talk about Liam Bishop.”
I watch closely as her face morphs. From pleased to confused tocaught. The bareness of it filters into the air between us.
Eventually, Maisy steps aside to let me in. After a few awkward seconds, she laughs to herself. It’s unnerving.
“Something funny?” I ask.
