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Chapter Fifty-Two
Linnea
Everett delivered Linnea to her bedroom. “Get better, gorgeous.”
Weak and dehydrated, yet levitating from his flattery, Linnea lay in bed. She listened to her parents carry on downstairs with a card game. They glanced at her when she and Everett walked through the door hunched over, but otherwise said nothing. Her hands worked the Rubik’s cube, a mindless fidget instead of a challenge. Her brain seemed to work that way. Could make things click with numbers and puzzles. Just not words. Or people. Her Algebra II book sat open on the floor. She was already ahead by a chapter, so no matter if she missed a day or two. The senior advisor had asked Linnea what colleges she was applying to, and she’d shrugged noncommittally. Because she and Ulla were planning on driving to California in Ulla’s still-incomplete Ford Galaxie.
That dream was fading to black and white.
How could she salvage it? Break it off with Everett. But she couldn’t. I can’t . . . Linnea’s mind wrestled and grew hot. So, so hot. The black and white picture of her and Ulla, the one fading, burst back into color. They were already there. In California. The sun toasting them. Linnea had never seen the ocean but imagined it was breezy. The way she’d seen in the movies, women basking, tendrils of hair floating lazily up, how they craned their necks toward the rays. Ulla was next to her. Perhaps she felt the heat, too? She was saying her name now, “Linney . . . Linney, wake up!” Is Ulla crying? “Linney, are you okay? Linney?”
Linnea opened her eyes to see Ulla. A cold hand was on her cheek. It was dark. Why did she feel so warm? The beach, with its blazing sun and briny ocean, was gone. “Lin, you’re burning up. Do you have any Tylenol?”
Linnea was so tired. She said, Yes, in the medicine cabinet, but never heard her voice. Soon, Ulla was there, lifting Linnea’s head, placing two pills into her mouth along with a glass of water. Ugh. She didn’t want anything going down that would come back up. Even water. But she did as Ulla insisted and curled back into herself, retreated into her dream where Ulla was next to her on the beach, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead. “Lin,” she was saying again, telling Linnea a story about the time Ulla was at “the drag” and had too much to drink. Everett Barnes took her into the cornfields and kissed her. “But I wasn’t that drunk, Lin!” Ulla had shoved his face away, leaving fingernail marks on his cheek.
Linnea thought this was a horrible story to tell her on the beach.
Ulla begged, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m going crazy. I want it to be us. Please. I hate him. I really hate him.”
Linnea just wanted this dream, now resembling a nightmare, to end. She groaned and hugged her cramping stomach. “Okay,” she promised to make it all stop. “Okay.”
Over the weekend, Ulla checked on Linnea repeatedly, brought over chicken broth and ginger ale for her to sip on, lay in bed with her, brushed her hair, and soothed her with talk about how she’d found a bucket seat for Lexie along with spark plugs from a brand new GM towed from Moose Lake. They could map their route to California. Linnea wondered why Everett hadn’t called or checked on her.
She returned to school on Tuesday with Ulla, the real Ulla, in her casual jeans and natural face and hair.
Everett was absent. Linnea thought of calling him but never had before. He’d always been the one to arrange their dates. The sex. She’d find out from someone, probably Wiley, where he was.
“Sick,” Wiley said with a shrug, slurping Ulla’s neck. “Barfing.”
Ulla wiped her skin and told Wiley to cut it out.
Linnea felt guilty.
Ulla looked satisfied.
Without Everett, Wiley resorted to fart jokes at lunch. Patsy and Sunny talked in hushed tones and ear whispers, and it seemed to Linnea they kept stealing furtive glances at Ulla.
On their Wednesday night Dynasty ritual, in between commercial breaks of waiting to see if Alexis, Dex, and King Galen would make it out of Moldavia, Ronja fettered in with air-popped popcorn drenched in melted butter. She paused as if to linger on the sight of Linnea combing fingers through Ulla’s obstinate hair, something they genially argued over—Ulla’s lack of proper hair maintenance.
Ulla rested her chin on Linnea’s breasts. “I missed us.”
“Me too,” said Linnea, feeling as if the past weeks had been only a blip. She stayed over that night, entangled and happy, with only the faint memory of a lucid dream where Ulla had asked her to dump Everett. He’d made it clear with his absence that he was doing it for her.
It was Friday when he returned. There he was, leaning against Linnea’s locker, ankles crossed, dressed in a white blazer, polo, and Levi’s. He clocked a smug look at Ulla and pulled out a rose, handed it to Linnea, and said he missed her. Pressed his lips on hers for all to see. That he was an idiot for never making their relationship official. “Which would make you my date for Homecoming. Please?”
Linnea stammered,” Ye-yes.”
When she turned to the spectators, she met Ulla’s eyes. They were the same eyes that had begged in fear—save me—when falling through the ice all those years ago, believing she was going to drown.
But this time, Linnea held Ulla’s head underwater.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Linnea
When the Homecoming court was announced, it was a foregone conclusion that Ulla would be nominated. Linnea had been nominated for queen, too, along with Everett for king. In these past weeks, Ulla solidified her rising status as the most popular girl. Everything she once eschewed with an eye roll was now front and center on her priority list: Sake bombs at every party, drunken powder puff games, hocking spit wads on the chalkboard in English when the teacher had her back turned. It was Wiley who happily took the fall for those because, rumor had it, Ulla would repay him with a hand-job in the bathroom.
Ronja, who rarely went to football games, had tracked Linnea to the concession stand and dragged her aside, eyes fraught as she begged Linnea in pressured words, “I’m losing her. She comes home drunk. She’s spending ridiculous amounts of her savings on clothes and makeup, stopped working on the cars, and asked to be put on birth control.” Linnea frowned, summing Ronja’s litany of worries into one: Is it really over between you two?
