They went back out into the living room, plopped down around the coffee table. Kristina was banker, carefully doling out everybody’s colorful cash. “I know you’re all quaking in your boots now that the reigning champ is back,” said Ryan, who had literally never won a game in all the timehe’d been coming to Monopoly. “I’ll try to go easy on you, let you reacclimate and all.”
“You do that,” Gabby said, smiling in a way she hoped was convincing. She should have been happy. Shewashappy. These were all her most important people, weren’t they? Back in one place where they belonged.
Well, she guessed. All her most important people, plus Chelsea.
Gabby tore her paper napkin into shreds on the carpet, glancing around as the game went on. She could only imagine the kind of conversation the two of them would have had on the ride over here:Monopoly?Chelsea must have asked, face crinkling in confusion and contempt.Really? Why were you friends with this person again?
Still, Gabby couldn’t deny that Chelsea didn’t seem like the kind of person who would actually say anything like that. In fact, her niceness was almost aggressive. She was a good question-asker, a person with a lot of stories to tell: about her mom, who’d been her dad’s boss in a medical lab in Stanford, about the wilderness camp she was going to be a counselor at this summer once they got back from the Poconos.
“That sounds incredible,” Gabby’s mom gushed, rounding Go and holding her hand out for her $200, which Kristina delivered with officious solemnity. “What about you, Shay? Do you have summer plans?”
“Just teaching music lessons to try and save up some money for school,” Shay said. “And then also maybe a trip toLA, if we can convince Gabby to do the photo thing.”
Gabby felt a bear trap spring shut deep inside her chest, sinking its ferocious metal teeth in. “What?” her dad asked, at the same time as her mom said, “What photo thing?”
“Oh,” Shay said, whirling to look at Gabby. Then, “Shoot. I’m sorry. I figured you’d at least mentioned it to them.”
Gabby hadn’t, in fact, explicitly to avoid a conversation exactly like this one. “It’s a photo thing at UCLA Mr. Chan told me about,” she explained, giving them the highlights. “I’m not going to go.”
“Really?” Her mom’s brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“Are you sure?” Her dad was frowning. “That sounds perfect for you, Gabby.”
“Oh, you should go!” Chelsea put in from her perch next to Ryan on the sofa, eyes wide and excited. “LA is so beautiful. My dad grew up in Santa Monica; we used to go visit my grandparents every year for Passover.”
“Yeah,” Gabby said brightly, as if the climate of California might be what was deterring her. “I’ve heard it’s great.” She picked up the dice and rolled too forcefully, trying to ignore the roomful of curious glances. She could feel her cheeks burning under their scrutiny. After all, what was she supposed to say? Ofcourseshe wanted to do the UCLA thing. Obviously she wanted to go. She’d spent the last two weeks imagining it basically nonstop: the beaches and the palm trees and the endless pink neon. The things she might learn there. The pictures she might take. Even more than actuallygoing, though, Gabby wanted to be the kind of person whocould: who could fly across the country solo, confident that she’d be able to handle whatever she found on the other side of it. Who didn’t melt down at the thought of something new.
But she wasn’t.
“Reading Railroad,” she said, eyes on the board in front of her. “I’ll buy.”
They dropped it after that, the conversation looping back around to safer waters. Gabby tried to relax. Still, everything about this night—in particular, everything about Chelsea—was annoying to her now: her cool, casual white T-shirt. The charming, interested way she asked Gabby’s mom about her work. The proprietary way she touched Ryan’s sleeve to get his attention; the story she told about the yoga class she went to every Saturday morning at the Y. “Gabby, you should come with me sometime,” she said cheerily. “I know you’ve got anxiety stuff, right? Yoga is great for that.”
For a second Gabby only gaped at her, stunned into silence. She couldn’t believe Ryan had told her that. She couldn’t believe Chelsea had just come right out andsaidit. “Oh, really?” she snapped, immediately grimacing at how nasty she sounded but totally unable to stop herself. “Wow, thanks. Nobody ever told me that before.”
The living room was quiet for a moment. Chelsea looked totally taken aback. Finally: “Gabby,” Shay said softly.
Crap.Crap. “I’m going to go get more nuts,” Gabby announced, standing up and making a beeline for thekitchen. She wrenched open the oven door, realizing too late that Ryan had followed her. “What are you doing?” she asked, nearly hitting him in the face with a sheet pan. Ugh, she was so annoyed that he’d come in here. It made things look weird and suspect.
Ryan didn’t seem to care. “Look, she didn’t mean anything by that,” he began, not bothering to ask what Gabby’s problem was. “Her parents are doctors, she was just trying to—”
“Oh, great,” Gabby interrupted. “Maybe I can go see them both, then. Maybe all the Rosens can just get together and cure me—”
“Can you stop?” Ryan was frowning. “What’s your deal, huh? You’ve been acting weird all night. Did you not want us to come, or what?”
“Of course I wanted you to come,” Gabby said. “Stop, I missed you like crazy. You know I missed you like crazy.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “Then what—” He looked at her for a minute, like he was searching for a hole in her defense line. “Is it ’cause I brought Chelsea? Because I do actually think if you got to know her a little, you’d think—”
“Iknowshe’s nice,” Gabby insisted. “I said she’s nice the other day.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “So?”
Oh, Gabby did not want to be having this conversation. “Ryan,” she said, warning. “Leave it.”
“I don’t want to leave it,” he said. “I want you to talk to me.”
Gabby sighed noisily. She hated this, when she knew she was being a brat but couldn’t stop. They were too newly made up to get away with it; she didn’t have the credit, but she also couldn’t totally help herself. “Fine,” she said. “First of all, I don’t want you to think I don’t like Chelsea. I think Chelsea is great, truly.”
