“Gee, thanks,” Gabby muttered, hefting the urn onto her hip like she was carrying a baby and praying she didn’t trip on her way up the stairs. “But I’ll pass.”
Celia frowned at her, leaning against the counter and crossing her arms in a way that made her look spookily like their mom. “You’ve been in high school for two months, Gabby,” she pointed out. “Have you made a single friend so far?”
“Seriously?” Gabby felt her face flush. “Of course I have.”
“Really?” Celia looked skeptical. “Who?”
“Wha—people,” Gabby said inanely. “I don’t report everysocial interaction I have back to you.”
“Oh, okay,” Celia said. “People. Because every time I see you in the hallway you’re either by yourself or with Michelle, who honestly isn’t exactly helping the situation. If youlikedbeing alone all the time, that would be one thing. But I don’t actually think you do. I think you’re just letting yourself be scared.”
“Oh, I’mlettingmyself.” Gabby scowled. She was pissed at Celia for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, but mostly embarrassed that she’d noticed at all. God, had other people noticed? Did everyone at school already think she was a creepy loner? “I don’t know what makes you think you know anything about what I like,actually.”
The worst, most humiliating part was that Gabby knew her sister had a point: she wasn’t exactly thriving in high school so far. Last week Michelle had stayed home with cramps, and the only thing she’d said out loud all day was “here” when her homeroom teacher took attendance. She didn’t understand how other people did it, how they just strolled right up to strangers and started conversations—how they made themselves into people strangers would ever want tomeet. She wasn’t shy, not exactly. She wasafraid.
“Look,” Celia said. “Mom and Dad don’t give you a hard time about this kind of thing, and that’s their choice, I guess. But I don’t actually think they’re doing you any favors by babying you.”
“Babyingme?” Just like that, Gabby was done with thisconversation. Screw Celia. Screw anybody who thought they knew anything about her. “I’m not talking about this,” she announced, turning her back and stalking out of the kitchen. “Bye.”
She felt Celia’s scowl more than she saw it. “Don’t you ever want to havefun, Gabby?” Celia called, her voice downright saccharine. Gabby let go of Grandma with one hand and flipped her the bird.
Before people started showing up she squirreled provisions up in her room like an animal getting ready for the winter: two peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches, an apple, a bag of chips, plus a Nalgene bottle big enough to cross the Mojave with should the need arise. She set Grandma on her desk, flipped the lock on her bedroom door, and settled in with the long, sedate book about Henry VIII that she liked to read when her anxiety was particularly bad.
The thing about hiding out like this was that it did get boring, every once in a while. It occurred to Gabby to wonder if possibly she was missing something great. For all her bravado, it bothered her sometimes, that she couldn’t make herself do what seemed to come so naturally to everyone else.
Next time, maybe.
For now she made a nest for herself out of blankets. She clicked on the bedside lamp and began to read.
RYAN
Ryan’s parents told him they were getting divorced on a crisp, sunny Saturday in the middle of autumn, right after he got home from an early-morning hockey practice.
Or, more accurately, his mom told him, standing in the backyard in her pajamas with the first and only cigarette Ryan had ever seen her smoke clutched between her fingers. “It’s a long time coming, lovey,” she said, clearly trying to keep her voice even. “You had to kind of know that, right?”
Ryan both had and hadn’t, he guessed: on one hand, it wasn’t as if he’d thought his parentslikedeach other, exactly. On the other, he’d always figured it was a chronic, manageable condition. Like diabetes.
“It’ll be fine,” his mom continued, and sniffled, though Ryan wasn’t sure if she was crying or if it was just the cigarette smoke. “I’ve got you, don’t I? You’ve always been the best man in this house anyhow.”
“Sure,” Ryan said, patting her on the shoulder. “Yeah, of course.”
His dad was in the small, cramped bathroom, tossing various items from the medicine cabinet into a dopp kit perched on the edge of the sink. “Where are you gonna go?” Ryan asked him, hovering awkwardly in the doorway.
“Who knows,” his dad said, conscripting the anti-itch cream and a battered box of Band-Aids. “Your mother wouldhave me be fucking homeless, probably. But anyplace is better than here.” He looked at Ryan then. “No offense, kiddo.”
Ryan waved his hand to show there was none taken.
“You know I don’t mean—”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “No, I know.”
His dad paused for a moment of deliberation, took the toothpaste out of the cup on the bottom shelf, then gestured for Ryan to move out of the doorway. “I’ll be back to get the rest of my stuff sometime this week,” he said as he headed into the master bedroom, Ryan following at his heels. “You wanna do your old man a favor, you can haul those boxes of my Thunder gear out of the garage.”
Ryan watched as his dad yanked open the top drawer of the bureau, began tossing handfuls of socks and boxers in the general direction of a gym bag on the bed. “Um,” he said after a moment, feeling like a putz even as he opened his mouth. “We’ve got that game against Hudson High on Thursday, the one you said you were gonna try and make it to? If you wanted to maybe time it so you came by then.”
His dad sighed loudly. “I don’t know, kid. I’ll try.”
“I—sure,” Ryan said, nodding like a ventriloquist’s dummy, hating both his parents a little bit. Hating himself most of all. “Absolutely.”
