She almost laughs. She does, in fact, laugh — just one short, surprised,of course you dokind of laugh — and she stops walking and turns to face me on the sidewalk.
“You’re going to cancel,” she says. “And you’re going to come with us.”
“Mila.”
“You are.”
“I don’t —”
“You’re going to.”
Penelope is quiet. She has tucked her hands into the sleeves of that camel coat.
“Melly.” Mila steps closer. Her breath fogs between us. “You get two Halloweens at Camden. Two in your entire life. Are you going to spend one of them in some random house in your hometown with Chase’s friends from high school? Are you going to look back on this year and tell me that’s what you did?”
I open my mouth. I close it. I think of Blue’s house. I think of standing in his kitchen in a white dress with wings. I thinkof being looked at, and of being not looked at, and I don’t know which one I am more afraid of.
“But,” I manage, and then I stop, because I cannot say the rest of the sentence in front of Penelope. I cannot say,but Blue lives there. I cannot say,but Blue will be there, and I have spent years and years pretending I am over Blue, and I don’t know what I will do if I walk into that house in a costume designed to be looked at and Blue does not look.I cannot tell Penelope about Blue. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I’m still trying to hold him in the smallest, most secret part of my chest, away from light, away from air, the way you hold a butterfly because you don’t want to crush it.
Mila grabs me by both arms and gives me a small, fierce shake. “You are going to break up with him this week, Melly.This week.”
The words land in me like a hand pressed against a bruise. I should’ve been ready to hear them. I have been hearing them, in one form or another, from her for over a year. I have been hearing them, in one form or another, from inside my own head for longer than that. But I’m not ready. I don’t know if I will ever be ready.
The idea of breaking up with Chase does not feel like freedom. The idea of breaking up with Chase feels like standing at the edge of a cliff in the dark and being told to step. He is the safety I have been holding onto for two years. He’s the wall I’ve been leaning against. He has been, more than I have been able to admit to myself, the thing that has kept me from having to feel what I feel about Blue, because as long as I have Chase, I don’t have to face the fact that the boy I have loved since I was twelve years old does not love me back.
Keeping Chase keeps me safe from Blue.
Keeping Chase keeps me safe from the rejection that has been sitting at the back of my throat since the day Blue chose Camden over me.
Mila hugs me.
She can probably see it on my face.
She hugs me hard, in the middle of the sidewalk, in the cold, with the streetlamp humming above us and Penelope a step away pretending to look at her phone. Then she pulls back. She takes my face in her cold hands and looks me in the eye.
“This week, Melly. I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“This week.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
She has to walk in the opposite direction. She hugs Penelope quickly, and then she turns and goes. Her dark hair swings against her back as she walks, and Penelope and I are left standing under the streetlamp.
We start walking.
Penelope is wonderful for not saying a single word about it. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t probe. She just walks beside me, hands in her sleeves, our breath coming in small white clouds, and the silence between us is the kind I am learning is rare — the kind that doesn’t demand anything from you.
I cross my arms over my chest against the cold, and I think,what is wrong with me?
I have strung a good man along for two years to keep myself safe from the bad weather of a boy who has never once promised me shelter.
It isn’t even the feeling I am running from. I see that, suddenly, sharply, like a light coming on in a dark room.
