“Because I—” Was he serious?“No,”she said, annoyed and embarrassed that she had to explain it. “Because you’re the jock fucking mayor of Colson High School and literally no one there would notice if I fell off the face of the earth.”
“I’d notice,” Ryan said immediately.
Well. Gabby opened her mouth and closed it again. She didn’t know what to say to that. She hugged herself and staring out at the highway. She felt like an exposed nerve.
“Gabby,” Ryan said. “Come on.” He looked at her for a second. “Do you honestly think I just can’t get enough of Monopoly? Do you think that’s why I keep showing up to your house every week?”
Gabby hadn’t thought about it, really. She hadn’t wanted to let herself. Even after all these months there was a part of her that felt like if she ever looked too hard at their friendship it would turn out to be a hologram, something she’d made up to distract herself from her own loneliness and fear. “I don’t know,” she finally said.
Ryan laughed at that. “Monopoly is boring as all hell, Gabby. I keep coming over because I like hanging out with you. And I think you keep answering the door because you like hanging out with me, too.” He shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time thinking if it makes sense for me to logically hang out with somebody or not. I usually just think about if I like them.”
Oh, for god’s sake. “You realize that not thinking about popularity is a luxury you only get if you’re already popular,” Gabby muttered. Still, she felt about two inches tall. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that the world might be a better place if more people looked at it like Ryan did.
“I got defensive, is all,” he said now, sitting down on the guardrail and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “That’s why I said it. It’s complicated with my dad, okay? I mean, clearly it’s complicated with my dad. But he’s still mydad.”
“I know,” Gabby said quietly. After a moment she perched on the guardrail beside him, the chill from the metal bleeding right through her jeans. “I’m sorry. I should have minded my business.”
“No,” Ryan said. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to mind your business.”
Gabby looked over at his profile in the darkness, surprised. “You don’t?”
“No,”he said. “Look, I don’t always understand why we’re friends either. I know you think I’m a clown. But I don’t want to go back to our regular programs, or whatever you called it. I don’t want to not be friends with you anymore just because we had a fight.”
Gabby thought about that for a second. “I don’t think you’re a clown,” she finally told him, gazing out at the highway.
“Sure you do,” Ryan said. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t, actually,” Gabby said. “I think you’re smart and fun and nice and a good friend, which is why it pissed me off to hear somebody shit-talking you, even if that person was your dad.” She dragged in a ragged, gasping breath. “And you’re right, I don’t know anything about your family or your relationship with him, so maybe you’re used to it, maybe none of it even registers. But that’s what I was trying to tell you back there on the bus, okay? That stuff he said wasn’t true.”
Ryan huffed a breath out, looked down at his busted-up knuckles. “Okay,” he finally said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Gabby ordered. “I’m just being your friend.”
The replacement bus rumbled up not long after that, its headlights like twin beacons in the dark. Looking at it, Gabby thought she might cry from relief. Instead she and Ryan shuffled aboard amid assorted groans and grumbles, the two of them finding a pair of seats near the back. This time when he offered her his jacket she took it, draping it over herself like a blanket and curling up into a ball underneath.
“Wake me up when we get home,” she said, and Ryan nodded. The sound of his steady breathing was the last thing Gabby heard before she fell asleep.
NUMBER 6
THE REUNION
JUNIOR YEAR, SPRING
GABBY
Gabby was camped out in the computer lab after school on Thursday putting the finishing touches on a photo series she was working on for the spring art show. It was of all the women in her family, and she was oddly pleased with the shots she’d gotten: a close-up of the nape of Celia’s neck, the fall of her long yellow braid over her shoulder; one of her mom and her aunt Liz from back at Christmas reading magazines side by side on the living room sofa, their faces tilted at the exact same angle; Kristina standing up on her bike in an oversized hoodie, laughing at something Gabby had said. Since everything that had happened with Ryan back in the winter, her life was extra girl-heavy lately, a blur of pore strips and fleece-lined leggings and Sandra Bullock movies on cable. Gabby told herself she didn’t miss him at all.
She chewed her bottom lip now, twirling the ends of herponytail around two fingers as she concentrated. She loved photography: the chance to frame a shot exactly how you wanted, to crop out what didn’t belong. To keep on clicking over and over until you got things right, subject and light and composition. She wished actual life was more like that.
“Oh!” said Mr. Chan, coming into the lab with his jacket slung over his arm, messenger bag hanging off one shoulder. “You’re still here.”
Gabby looked up. “Sorry,” she said. “I can leave if you need to lock up. I’m just finishing.”
“Take your time,” he said, coming into the lab and peering over her shoulder for a moment. “Looking good.”
“Thanks.” Gabby felt herself grin. She liked Mr. Chan, who taught web design and ran the yearbook: he was cool in that he was interesting and knew stuff, but not in thatI too am a young person!way she found so grating in some of her other teachers. He had a four-year-old son named Garth who he was always talking about.
“Oh, hey, Gabby, while I have you here.” Mr. Chan set his bag down on a chair and rummaged through it for a moment before coming up with a wrinkled computer printout and handing it over. “I wanted you to take a look at this. They emailed it to me and I thought of you.”
