I sigh and roll my eyes—at myself or at the situation, at the gut-wrenching absurdity of the mess I made. “It’s—whatever,” I tell him, trying to sound cool or above it or something. “I’m fine. It is what it is.”
“It feels unfair, though, right?” Gabe says. “I mean, if you’re a dirty slut, then I’m a dirty slut.”
I laugh. I can’t help it, even though it feels colossally weird to hear him say it out loud. We never talked about it once after it happened, not even when the book—and the article—came out and the world came crashing down around my ears. Could be enough time has passed that it doesn’t feel like a big deal to him anymore, although apparently he’s the only one. God knows it still feels like a big deal to me. “You definitely are,” I agree, then watch as he balls up the menu and tosses it over his shoulder, missing the trash can next to the pump by a distance of roughly seven feet. “That’s littering,” I tell him, smirking a little.
“Add it to the list,” Gabe says, apparently unconcerned about this or any other lapses in good citizenship. He was student council president when he was a senior. Patrick and Julia and I hung all his campaign posters at school. “Look, people are assholes. My sister is an asshole. And my brother—” He breaks off, shrugging. His shaggy brown hair curls down over his ears, a lighter honey-molasses color than his brother’s and sister’s. Patrick’s hair is almost black. “Well, my brother is my brother, but anyway, he’s not here. What areyoudoing, are you working, what?”
“I—nothing yet,” I confess, feeling suddenly embarrassed at how reclusive I’ve been, humiliated that there’s virtually nobody here who wants to see me. Gabe’s had a million friends as long as I’ve known him. “Hiding, mostly.”
Gabe nods at that. But then: “Think you’ll be hiding tomorrow, too?”
I remember once, when I was ten or eleven, that I stepped on a piece of glass down by the lake, and Gabe carried me all the way home piggyback. I remember that we lied to Patrick for an entire year. My whole face has that clogged, bloated post-cry feeling, like there’s something made of cotton shoved up into my brain. “I don’t know,” I say eventually, cautious, intrigued in spite of myself—maybe it’s just the constant ache of loneliness, but running into Gabe makes me feel like something’s about to happen, a bend in a dusty road. “Probably. Why?”
Gabe grins down at me like a master of ceremonies, like someone who suspects I need a little anticipation in my life and wants to deliver. “Pick you up at eight,” is all he says.
Day 5
Gabe’s right on time, two quick taps on the horn of his beat-up station wagon to let me know he’s outside. I hurry down the stairs faster than I’ve done much of anything since I’ve been here, the noisy clunk of my boots on the hardwood. My hair’s long and loose down my back.
“You going out?” my mom calls from her office. She sounds surprised—fair enough, I guess, since my social circle up until now has pretty much consisted of Vita, Oscar, and the little Netflix robot that recommends stuff based on what you’ve already watched. “Who with?”
I almost don’t even tell her—the urge to lie like a reflex, to keep myself from winding up fodder for Oprah’s Book Club one more time. Then I decide I don’t care. “With Gabe,” I announce, my voice like a challenge. I don’t wait for her response before I walk out the door.
He’s idling in the driveway with Bob Dylan in the CD player, low and clanging and familiar. His parents were both giant hippies—Chuck wore his hair to his shoulders until Patrick and Julia were five—and we both grew up listening to that kind of stuff on the stereo in his house. “Hey, stranger,” he says as I climb into the passenger seat, in a voice like I’m not one at all. “Wreck any homes today?”
I snort. “Not yet,” I assure him, rolling my eyes as I buckle my seat belt. It’s not until I let out a breath I hadn’t quite known I was holding that I realize I’ve been nervous about this moment all day long. I didn’t need to be, though, of course I didn’t need to be—it’s just Gabe, who I’ve known since I was in preschool; Gabe, my literal partner in crime. “But, you know. It’s early.”
We drive fifteen minutes outside of town to Frank’s Franks, a hot dog truck in a parking lot off the side of the road where his mom and dad used to take us all when we were really small. The perimeter’s strung up with Christmas lights, picnic tables gone tacky with the humidity and too many layers of glossy paint. Families eat ice cream in noisy clusters. A baby fusses in a stroller; a boy and a girl play on a jungle gym in the last of the deep blue twilight. Gabe’s arm brushes mine as we wait in line to pay.He’s gotten handsomer, I think, broader in his back since the last time I saw him—two full years ago, before he left for Notre Dame. He’s almost startlingly tall now.
We sit on top of a free table instead of at one, my boots and Gabe’s preppy leather flip-flops lined up side by side on the bench. He gets a giant paper boat full of onion rings, the smell of fried batter and grill smoke hanging in the air. His body’s warm next to mine, the closest I’ve been to a boy since Patrick told me he never wanted to see me again. In Tempe, I didn’t exactly date. “So, what are you doing back here anyway, huh?” Gabe asks.
I take a sip of my soda, swat idly at a mosquito hovering near my bare knee. “School’s out,” I tell him, shrugging a bit. “Nowhere to go after graduation. Could run, I guess, but . . .”
“Can’t hide,” Gabe finishes, an echo of our conversation at the gas station yesterday. I smile. We sit in comfortable silence for a minute—it’s strange to be with him like this. I was least close to Gabe out of all the Donnellys before everything happened. He wasn’t the person I told my secrets to—at least, not until things fell apart so hard with Patrick. He was never the one who knew my every tell and shudder. Maybe it’s fitting he’s the only one who’ll have anything to do with me now.
We eat our hot dogs, and Gabe tells me about school in Indiana, where he’s a bio major, how he’s hanging out this summer and working at their pizza shop to help his mom.
“How’s she doing?” I ask, thinking of Connie’s thick gray ponytail and easy smile, how instead of folding in on herself like an origami swan after Chuck died, her spine only ever got straighter. Chuck had a heart attack at their kitchen table one night when I was fourteen and over for dinner, right in the middle of an argument between Gabe and Patrick over whose turn it was to hose down their motorboat, theSally Forth.Connie sold the boat the following summer. She manages the shop by herself.
“She’s good,” Gabe tells me now, and I smile. We talk about dumb stuff: a costume party he went to a couple of weeks ago where all the dudes dressed up as their mothers, and what we’ve been watching on TV. “Wow.” Gabe laughs when I let loose with some truly scintillating facts I’ve gleaned about Prohibition and the Transcontinental Railroad from all the documentaries I’ve been mainlining. “You really are starved for human contact, huh?”
“Shut up,” I tell him, and he offers me the last of his onion rings with a guilty grin. I make a face but take them anyway—after all, it’s not like he’s wrong.
“Well,” Gabe says, still smiling. His eyes are a deep, lake-water blue. Across the lot a car hums to life and pulls out onto the parkway, headlights cutting a bright swath through the summer dark. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow, I’m really glad you’re back.”
Day 6
“I’m sorry, are yousmiling?” my mom asks the following morning, looking at me incredulously across the kitchen island.
I grin into my coffee cup and don’t reply.
Day 7
I wake up early in the morning with a long-lost, instantly identifiable itch in my body; I lie there under the duvet for a while, waiting to see if it will pass. The sun spills yellow through the window. The air smells cool and Star Lake–wet. I snooze for ten minutes. I reassess.
Nope. Still there.
Finally, I get out of bed and pull an old, ratty pair of leggings out of the bottom dresser drawer, wincing when I realize how tight the waistband is now, cutting into the soft, mushy skin of my midsection. I grimace and set about untying the knots in the laces of my sneakers that are literally a full year old.
