I smash my thumb against the end call button and try again. It rings for the final few blocks of Ellie’s neighborhood and keeps ringing as I turn back onto the main drag. Outside my window, the elementary school smears into the park smears into the houses of my neighborhood, and Ellie’s voicemail message starts up again just as the car bumps back into my driveway, launching me a solid three inches off my seat. God, I better slow down. It’s a miracle I wasn’t pulled over for going 40 in a 25. On any other day, I might call that good luck, but I don’t feel particularly lucky at the moment. I’m hurt, but more than that, I feel stupid. If it hurts this bad, I care more than I should.
I throw my car in park, hanging up on Ellie’s voicemail greeting for a third and final time. I don’t even know what I would say if she picked up, but she doesn’t, so it doesn’t really matter. She could be away from her phone, but more realistically, she’s giving me the silent treatment. We’re too old for this shit.
I snatch the tepid chaicoffski out of the cupholder and pop the lid before dumping it on the lawn. The awful sloshing noise it makes as it hits the icy grass is about on par with how I’m feeling. Inside the house, I kick off my shoes and ditch the cup before taking the stairs two at a time up to my room. I resent whatever leftover teenage instinct cues me to slam my door. Mom and Dad are still in Florida; I have no one to keep out.
I don’t even bother taking my coat off before crawling into bed, where I pout my way through drafting a text to Ellie. Everything I type reads as too angry or aloof or apologetic. After starting and deleting one too many drafts, I frisbee my phone to the end of the bed. In less than forty-eight hours, Ellie Meyers has gone from distant memory to fake girlfriend and back again. Maybe that was the truest version of her all along. A friend of convenience better left in the past.
I blink up at my ceiling and make a wish on a glow-in-the-dark star: I wish I were much younger or older than I currently am. Young enough for someone else to tell me what’s next or old enough to have figured it out already. Not just with Ellie; with all of it. Work and school and what comes next. I’m twenty-one years old and still stuck in the same pattern as sixteen-year-old Murphy, dumb and directionless in the face of shattered plans. Maybe I’m still the same clueless girl with the torn rotator cuff and no next steps. I still have the same decor, that’s for sure.Tie-off blankets, middle school softball trophies, a hedgehog ornament that became a year-round fixture—little testaments to bygone hobbies and interests and a time when you surrounded yourself with the things you liked as evidence that you liked them. I don’t even know how I’d replicate that now. I like the Cubs. Coffee. When my direct deposit hits. I like FaceTiming Kat and watching stupid videos that my mom doesn’t laugh at when I try to show her.
My breath skids and tumbles down my throat, like the air tripped over its shoelaces. I like Ellie. I’m ready to admit that. By some miracle, she’s into me too. If that’s all that mattered, we’d be golden. But that doesn’t mean our lives line up or that she’s ready to think about us instead of just her—and the truth is, I’m not either. We barely know each other. But we don’t even have the time to change that, to figure outus, especially now that she’s icing me out. I draw a breath and hold it there as I picture us back in the garage, throwing pitch after pitch, inching closer and closer to something warm and magnetic and real. Being with Ellie felt like being back on the softball team: I had a place and a role and a future that made sense. Without it, what do I have? A job, I guess. A best friend I see sometimes. And…weed. At least I’ll always have weed.
I roll out of bed and straight to my dresser to dig my stash bag out of my sock drawer. It’s a shitty black fanny pack with a bank logo on the front, a freebie I snagged at Pride a few years back. It’s ugly as hell and the frayed strap could fall off at any second, but it does what it needs to. I dump it out on my desk-turned-rolling-station and assess the usual lineup: a bright-blue grinder, papers, a Zippo lighter, cut-up pieces of note card forfolding into filters, and a Mickey Mouse pencil that’s never been used for anything but stuffing weed into joints. I twist the grinder open and inspect what’s left. It’s a pretty pitiful amount, but it’s enough to get by until I can stop at the dispensary for pre-rolls tomorrow. No more rolling joints inside once Mom and Dad are back, unless I’m interested in an evening of stern looks set to the tune of “we’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.” They know I smoke, but at some point, we all silently agreed that “don’t ask, don’t tell” still flies as a good policy when it comes to drugs, even legalized ones.
I fold my crutch tight and pinch it against the paper, dismissing the thought that this might actually be the thing I’m best at. Kat’s refusal to learn how to roll a joint has given me years of practice. I wonder if Daniel can roll them or if she’s back to smoking bowls or, worse yet, not smoking at all.
By the time the Mickey Mouse pencil has been put to use, I’ve half forgotten the day behind me. It feels like any other ordinary day, and I don’t care to decide if that’s settling or sad. I should be celebrating Sip’s successful reopening, not moping over the one person who didn’t show up for it, but I don’t think there’s an ounce of celebration within me right now. There is, however, a deep loneliness, and only one person I want to call who might actually pick up. With Daniel still in town and dinner plans on their agenda…it’s a long shot, but it’s not zero. I dig my phone out of the comforter and hit dial on Kat’s number.Come on. Pick up pick up pick up.
“Heyyyyyyyyy!” Just the sound of her voice is stronger and more fast acting than a Xanax. “Heads up, you’re on speaker! Daniel’s here. We got ice cream.”
“Hi Murphy!” Daniel’s voice is faint, but enthusiastic.
“Hi Daniel.” I mindlessly flip open the lighter, then close it again. Open. Close. Open. Close. “Did you end up grabbing dinner downtown?”
“If ice cream from 7-Eleven counts as dinner, then yes. We were going to see if there were any tables at…Wait, turn left here! No, not the parking lot, the next one.” The squeal of tires on pavement is just as rattling through the phone as in real life. “Sorry.” Kat clicks her tongue. “Daniel’s driving.”
“I figured.”
“Did you end up swinging by Ellie’s?”
“Yeah.” I sink another inch lower into my comforter. “I’m home now.”
“And? How’d it go?”
“Um.” I swallow hard. Not apush back the tearskind of a swallow, but ado I really want to have this conversation in front of Danielkind of swallow. The words are cramping up in the back of my throat. “Bad. It went bad.”
“Fuck, really?” Her tone shifts into sport mode. “What can I do? Do you need me?”
“Um. Kind of? I don’t know. Can you just call me back when you’re home?”
“No, I’m just gonna have Daniel drop me off. Whip around in the parking lot of this vein clinic, honey.”
I set down the Zippo and pick up the joint, something fresh to fidget with. “You really don’t have to do that.”
“Do you want me to?”
Of course I want her to. That’s why I’m calling. But it’s also selfish.
“You there, Murph?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
“Do you want me to come over?” Kat asks again, speaking a little slower this time, giving the question room to breathe.
“I, uh. I don’t want to take you from Daniel.”
“I’ll be fine,” Daniel says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s lying either. “Whatever you need to do.” It’s the best possible thing he could say.
“Um, yeah then, I do. I do want you to come over.”
