“Hey!” she says, breathless and staggering with the effort of keeping herself from tipping over. “I was just in the mail room. This came for you!”
A dark, mean part of me wants to keep watching her struggle, but I shove it away. I’m not that person. I’ve tried so hard not tobethat person. So I move forward to take one end of the box, and when it slumps lower in Hannah’s arms, it exposes her flushed, damp face grinning over the edge of the cardboard.
“You didn’t have to bring it here,” I tell her. “They would have called.”
And now I’m wondering why Hannah was looking at the names on packages in the first place.
“I know, but it’s been forever since I’ve seen you, so…”
Hannah nudges the box against my chest, and I step back, letting her guide us up the stairs. We have to pause on the landing for Hannah to catch her breath; I position myself in front of the corridor, in case Ellis makes the mistake of emerging from her room while Hannah is still present.
Eventually we manage to lug the box to the third floor and shove it onto my bed. Hannah’s shoulders heave. I’m perspiring a little myself.
“What’s in it?” Hannah asks.
I eye the box, which is plastered withfragilestickers and has my own home address scrawled in one corner. “It’s everything I didn’t bring with me when I came back to school.” My mother had said she’d send it at the start of the semester. I’d almost forgotten.
“Oh! Cool! You should open it.”
I look at her, long enough that anyone else would have gotten the message. But Hannah Stratford stays precisely where she is, beaming at me patiently with her hands clasped in front of her.
I wonder if I ever looked like that. I wonder if I ever smiled so easily.
I dig out a knife from my desk drawer and slice open the tape, unfolding the cardboard flaps to expose the box’s contents. Hannah watches on, fascinated, as I sift through all the artifacts of a life lived so long ago it feels like it happened to someone else. There’s a handheld video-game system—that can go in the trash, obviously—some art prints I bought two years ago in Granada, hiking books filled with glossy photos of trails in Albania and Greece and Turkey from trips me and Alex will never take. It’s a box of useless things.
Hannah dives in the moment I withdraw, pulling out my tennis racquet. “I didn’t know you played,” she says, delighted. “We should go down to the courts sometime.”
I used to do intramurals at Dalloway. I didn’t even bother signing up this year.
“This is a really nice racquet,” Hannah says, rubbing her thumb over the brand name engraved into the handle.
“You can keep it.”
“What? No, I couldn’t….” Of course, she’s already smiling.
I dump the hiking books back into the box and close the flaps. “I’m not going to play, so it might as well get put to good use. Take it.”
Hannah’s grip tightens around the racquet, and even though she opens her mouth to protest more, I can tell she’s already made her decision.
“What are you two troublemakers up to?”
Hannah spins around so quickly she drops the racquet, then swears and snatches it back off the floor. Ellis leans against my open doorway, arms crossed over her chest and a crooked smile curving its way up her mouth. She’d climbed the stairs so quietly I never heard her coming.
“Ellis! Hi!” Hannah lurches forward, saving me from having to respond.
Ellis draws her gaze away from where it’s fixed on my face, but belatedly, just in time to let Hannah grasp her hand. “Hello. Have we met?”
“Sort of. I mean, I’m friends with Felicity.”
Ellis makes eye contact with me over Hannah’s head, and I shake mine, very slightly.
Hannah barrels on: “And we were both at the Lemont House party last month! Do you remember? You left so quickly…”
“What do you want, Ellis?” I say.
Hannah’s mouth snaps shut, and Ellis takes the opportunity to extract her hand from Hannah’s grip, pushing off the doorframe and taking a step into my room. “It’s personal.”
At last, Hannah seems to catch the hint. She clutches the tennis racquet to her chest and backs out into the hall, her gaze flitting back to Ellis even as she says, “Okay. I’ll see you later, Felicity. Thanks for the racquet.”
