May, Four Years Ago
Over Zara’s graduation weekend, my loneliness launches off me, banished to the stratosphere when Dad, Maren, Candice, and her longtime girlfriend, Hailey, come to town.
Zara would never admit it, but I know it means a lot to her that Dad flew all the way from Southern France for this. He may be doing his own thing now, but unlike Mom, he’s never not been there when it’s important. Dad calls each of us every month, fires off texts whenever he’s thinking of us. For Zara, that was most recently when he was at a used bookshop in Paris. For me, it was when he passed a street busker in Vichy that made him think of my orchestra concerts.
When everybody arrives in Knoxville, we catch up at Zara’s favorite bar, the last stop of her farewell tour.
“I always knew you’d grow up to be a professional book nerd,” Hailey jokes.
“She means that as a compliment,” Candice says, twirling a lock of Hailey’s hair.
“In my universe, that couldonlybe a compliment,” Zara says.
“I remember getting a call once from the Bristol Public Library, informing me you were reshelving their young adult hardbacks against their system,” Dad says.
“Subgenre matters.” Zara shrugs at him insouciantly.
Dad laughs, tosses me a wink. He has long hair now, which he accompanies with a perpetual farmer’s hat and lengthy opinions on pesticides.
“I wish I had all my girls here,” he murmurs, eyes going sad. He looks at Zara and asks, as if it was something they’d previously discussed, “Did you end up inviting Folly?”
Her face says it all, that she didn’t even bother, but I know Dad invited Folly to come for Christmas in France. She told him she’d think about it.
“If Folly wanted to be here, she would be here,” Maren says diplomatically. “Now, back to Zara.” She sets her chin in her hand, eyes twinkling. “What else do you want to do while we’re here? Besides sit in this lovely little dive bar with beer buckets and wings?” Maren squints at the wall of graffiti to our left.
Zara grins. “I figured we’d stay here for at least another six hours, and then we could come back first thing in the morning.”
“What about a walking tour?” Maren counters.
“What about a food tour?” Candice asks.
“What about…” my father suggests, leaning over our picnic table conspiratorially. He winks at Maren, who whips a pack of honest-to-goodness strawberry stickers out of her purse. “We play a round of—”
“—find the strawberry!” everybody—including Hailey, and except for me—shrieks at once.
Immediately, I try to run, but my dad is a big guy and pins me easily back on the bench while the others rip open the packet and cover my arms in strawberry stickers. I’m laughing by the end of it, accepting my fate. Zara snaps a photo of me while Maren rips scraps of paper from a notebook and scribbles out each of our names to pick teammates.
“I’monlyagreeing to this,” I say, standing up again, “if you each give me five dollars in drinking money while I wait to be found.”
Dad tsks, narrows his eyes at me. “Hang on a second, Strawberry.I may mix up my kids’ names sometimes, but I’dneverforget a twenty-first birthday. And yours isn’t until next week.”
I set my hands on his shoulders, narrowing my eyes right back at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be European now?”
He’s been living over there for nearly two years at this point, and we all secretly think it’s because he’s fallen in love, though Dad won’t own up to it.
He smirks. “Paige Ryan Lancaster. Which one of your sisters gave you a copy of their ID?”
“All of them,” I say, grinning.
They each drop a five-dollar bill on the table and bolt.
Liam:Why did Zara send me a photo of you covered in strawberries?
Paige:When I was little, I had this strawberry costume I never took off, and my family would play this game called find the strawberry. We did it at the lake, the park, around the house. But when we got older, the playing field widened to downtown Bristol, and now it’s basically a drinking game. They pair up and search for me at a bar, and if I’m not there, they have to finish a drink before they can keep searching.
Liam:You as a little girl playing hide and seek in a strawberry costume is the cutest thing I’ve ever pictured in my life.
When everyone leaves, even Zara, it’s so lonely. Six days of the specific kind of lonely that sneaks up on you after too long without a conversation, or even a friendly smile at the convenience store checkout. The kind of lonely that hides under your bed at night, follows you down the street when you’re walking alone in the dark.
