The brunette rolls her eyes — fondly, I think, though I’m not sure yet — and says, “I really thought G was going to stick to her guns.”
Penelope shrugs one shoulder. “It worked out. I have Melly.”
I have Melly.Something in my chest goes soft and then immediately suspicious of itself.
“Melly.” The brunette is still watching me. “I’m Mara.”
“Nice to meet you.” I get a mug down from the cupboard — one of Penelope’s mugs, hand-thrown ceramic, the kind that costs forty dollars at a craft fair — and pour myself coffee from the French press they’ve already made. I should have asked if I could have some. I will ask next time. I look out the window above their heads because looking at them feels intrusive.
“It looks like a beautiful day.”
I can feel Mara still looking at me. I’ve gotten used to being looked at. It happens. My mother used to tell me it was a gift, and my grandmother used to tell me it was a curse, and depending on the day, I’m inclined to agree with one or the other. Today, it just makes my shoulders tight.
“God,” Mara says softly. “You’re really pretty.”
I almost drop the spoon in my hand. “Oh—” I make a small sound that’s supposed to be a laugh. “Thanks.”
She looks at Penelope. Then back at me. She tilts her head and considers me. “Your eyes are so blue. They’re like—” She makesa gesture with her fingers that doesn’t mean anything. “It’s a thing. It works. Pen, doesn’t it work?”
Penelope nods, calm, like this is a normal way for two people to discuss a third person who is new around here.
“She’s gorgeous. I told you.”
I open the refrigerator to have something to do with my body. They were talking about my looks. They were talking aboutme, specifically my face, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or embarrassed, but the way Mara is watching me makes me think I’m supposed to be flattered, so I rearrange my face into something I hope looks like flattered, and I close the fridge.
“Did Pen tell you what we’re doing tonight?” Mara asks.
“Oh.” I shake my head. “My boyfriend’s coming over.”
The pause that follows is the smallest possible pause. A heartbeat, maybe.
Mara nods slowly, processing this piece of information. “Bring him,” she says, and her voice picks up again, bright and easy. “The more the merrier.”
“I—”
“You have to come. You’re Penelope’s new roommate, so now you’re part of the group. Right, Pen?”
“You should come.” Penelope’s voice is gentler than Mara’s. “It’s going to be fun.”
I swallow.
This is what I moved here for. I keep reminding myself of that. I left a college where I had no friends to go to a university where I could make friends, and the difference is supposed to be that here, I tried. Here, I said yes. Here, I climbed the stairs of a pretty apartment building and put my four boxes in a room that wasn’t built for me. I promised myself I was going totry.
“What is it?” I ask. My voice sounds normal. I’m surprised by how normal it sounds.
“A party,” Mara says. “At the Hawthorne House.”
The Hawthorne House.
There’s a house on Hawthorne Street where, a week ago, I knocked on the door with a paper bag in my hand and asked for Blue Golding because his little brother Devin had begged me to deliver something from home. I’d been stupid enough — soft enough, hopeful enough,naïveenough — to say yes. Blue had opened the door, and his face had done a thing I have replayed in my head approximately a thousand times since. He had looked at me like I was the last person on earth he expected to see, and the second-to-last person he wanted to see, and somewhere underneath all of that, like he was furious that I existed in his line of sight. He’d taken the bag. He’d saidthanks. He’d started to say something else, and then his shoulders had gone up, and his jaw had gone tight, and another guy behind him invited me inside. Blue rushed away and came back with a red face. Then suddenly, another tall friend of his appeared and said something about the coach calling a last-minute meeting.
That was a week ago.
It’s still living rent-free in my head.
I grip the mug with both hands like it might steady me. It doesn’t. I’m not even sure if it’s the same house — there are a lot of houses on Hawthorne, it’s a long street — but I don’t want to take any chances. I have a boyfriend coming over in a few hours, and my boyfriend does not know who Blue Golding is. I learned in the first three months of dating Chase that he does not do well with other men in my vicinity.
“I don’t know,” I say.
