That makes me smile, and I bump my shoulder against Imogen’s. “I mean, the feeling is pretty mutual,” I tell him.She nudges me with her hip in return.
Eventually I sneak through the crowd and run to the bathroom; it’s pretty disgusting in there, two dingy stalls and grimy tile, a sink not much bigger than a souvenir postcard. I’m just washing my hands when I hear a wet, familiar-sounding sniffle from the stall next to mine. “Sadie?” I ask, tilting my head to the side.
“Um,” comes Sadie’s voice, then another snotty inhale. “Yeah. Hey, Molly.”
I frown. “You okay in there?”
“Yeah!” she replies, voice fake as a wax model in Madame Tussauds and just about that convincing. “I’m great.”
“You sure?” I tap my fingernails lightly against the scarred-up stall door, listening a moment. I wait. Finally the lock snicks open.
“Hi,” Sadie says thickly. In the greenish glow of the fluorescent light above the sink I can see she’s been crying, her clear skin blotchy and red.
“Hi,” I say, offering her a hesitant smile. On one hand, I was literally just complaining about how annoying I find this person. On the other, I am certainly no stranger to the secret public cry. “You wanna talk about it?”
“I just said I’mfine, Molly.”
Her voice is harsh and irritated, and I blink in surprise. This isn’t a side of her I’ve seen before, sunny, crunchy Sadie with her unflappable wilderness-guide cheer, and it must register on my face because she sighs loudly. “I’m sorry,” sheamends, finger-combing the tangles out of her long yellow hair, twisting it into a rope over one shoulder. “You’re trying to be nice to me, I shouldn’t snap at you like that. I just had another stupid fight with Gabe, is all. It’s not a big deal.”
My heart does something complicated inside my chest, painful. “Another?” I ask cautiously. “You guys fight a lot?”
“Constantly,” Sadie says. She hops up on the edge of the minuscule sink, apparently unconcerned by the general filth all around us. She’s wearing a pair of loose jeans cuffed to her ankles; her feet are tan and unpainted inside her Birkenstocks. “I mean, we didn’t use to. But the last few months, all the time.”
I’m quiet for a beat, trying to picture it. Gabe and I annoyed each other sometimes when we were together, sure, but we never really argued; he was always way too affable for that. Of course, Patrick liked to point out that it was easy to be everyone’s best friend as long as you were getting your way all the time, if life presqueezed your lemonade for you. I wonder if that’s the difference now.
“It’s like I was telling you guys this morning,” Sadie explains, resting the back of her head against the smudgy mirror. “He’s just sounhappy. He doesn’t know what he wants to do and he won’t admit it and it’s making him so frustrated. And, to be honest, kind of a dick.”
God, I do not want to be the trustee of this information. Ishouldn’tbe. But I don’t know how to stop her without revealing more than what’s actually mine to give away. “Thatreally sucks,” I finally say. I shift my weight on the gritty tile, trying to figure out how to best make my escape without totally blowing her off.
Sadie sighs. “You know that story we told you guys, about meeting in an English class?” she asks me. “I mean, it’s technically true. But I’d had a crush on him literally all of sophomore year and never got up the courage to say anything to him. I transferred into that class after somebody told me he was in it.” Her lips twist. “I know, it’s stalkery.”
I shake my head. “Only in a benign way.” It makes me like her a little bit more, weirdly, to know she’s got it in her. “I’ve totally done stuff like that.”
Sadie looks surprised. “Really?” she asks. “You don’t seem like the type at all.”
“I’m a good faker, I guess.”
Sadie smiles. “Anyway, it’s like the Gabe I noticed around campus was this awesome, confident, self-possessed guy, you know? He was so sure of himself, and it made him so friendly and easygoing. And now he’s just... not. I don’t even know if we’re going to last, honestly.”
I flinch without knowing I’m going to do it, crossing my arms to cover. “No?”
She shrugs. “I’m about to apply to med school, you know? I love the guy, I want to help him, but I also don’t want to get bogged down in somebody else’s problems if they can’t even admit how miserable they are. I thought this trip was going to be the answer to everything, but instead it’s like—” Shestops short. “Anyway. I’m sorry. You’re a good listener, you know that?”
It’s all I can do not to laugh. Roisin used to say the same thing, how easy it was to tell me stuff. What she didn’t realize is that the art of asking well-timed questions keeps people from noticing you haven’t told them much of anything in return.
“Gabe doesn’t even havethat,” Sadie tells me, getting a second wind. “Somebody to talk to who isn’t me, I mean. He’s pulling away from all his school friends. He has some weird thing with his brother where they don’t get along. And he won’t listen to me at all at this point.” She sits up a little straighter on the sink. “Actually,” she says, “would you try talking to him, maybe?”
I gape at her. “Me?”
“Not about, like, our relationship or anything,” she clarifies quickly, looking the faintest bit embarrassed. “But about school stuff? I just feel like he needs somebody besides me to tell him to get his shit together.” Sadie shrugs again. “He’s gotta trust you, doesn’t he? I mean, the way he tells it, you basically grew up at his house.”
I wonder what else Gabe has told her about our history; if she thinks I’m even remotely the kind of person he’ll trust or listen to, I know it can’t have been the whole truth. I’m about to explain in the vaguest terms possible that I don’t think it’s such a good idea when the bathroom door swings open.
“Here you are!” Imogen crows. “I was looking all over the place.” Her gaze darts back and forth between us, curious and quick. “God, you guys, it is disgusting in here. Everything okay?”
I glance over at Sadie, let her take the lead. “Everything’s good,” she promises, and to her credit she does look better, her eyes less puffy and her cheeks less red.
The curiosity is radiating off Imogen like scent lines in an old cartoon, but all she does is smile. “Good.” She loops an arm around my shoulders, steers me toward the doorway. “Can we get out of here now, please?”
