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Oh, how she needed Ulla right now. Her mouthpiece. The one to cull the words Linnea needed to say and arrange them into the perfect order.

He stood, towered, over her from the other side of the counter. He was still gangly, but his pointy elbows and shoulders had thickened. He seemed to grow into his prominent Grecian nose and had ditched the glasses for contact lenses, making his light brown eyes seemingly glitter from his olive skin. “I was told I’d find you here.” He touched the paper hat pinned over her matted ponytail. “Good look on you.”

Her hand flew to the hat, wanting to rip it off, and find some way to feather her flat, greasy bangs. Since every teenager in Mora had already seen her working in her cringe-worthy uniform, she didn’t care. But Everett?

He smudged a finger over his cheek, encouraging her to mirror his action. Linnea wiped a palm over her entire face, checking for dots of ice cream that always spackled her skin and hair by the time her shift was over. Everett rested his lanky forearms on the counter, a more intimate posture, and said in a low, quiet voice, “I’ll take a Dilly bar, and the first hour you get off work.”

Linnea rubbed her hot neck, relieved at the distraction of a family that came bouncing through the door, the bell above it signaling their arrival.

Her hand shook trying to punch the correct numbers, to ding open the cash register. She went to the refrigerator to get the Dilly bar. He asked what time she’d be ready. Her pulse banged from her chest. “Eight?” she whispered.

She turned her attention to the family waiting but caught Everett backing out the door, biting a chunk off the Dilly bar with his perfectly aligned smile. Those braces sure had worked wonders.

Her last hours were spent mentally chastising her body’s quivers of delight, the way he could still do that to her after five years. She had to ask every customer to repeat their order.

She’d heard from Wiley Gardner that Everett’s dad had died, and his mother wanted to move back to Mora to be near her sister. Or maybe it was her sister who demanded Mrs. Barnes move back. It was no secret Everett’s mother had a drinking problem. At least not to Linnea. As children, at the lunch table, she recognized his lowered eyes, the subtle attempts to keep classmates from coming to his house. This was probably why she dismissed him being a jerk, especially to Ulla. He practically lived at Wiley Gardner’s, and once at a school carnival, Linnea overheard Wiley’s mother lamenting over the Barnes family. About Everett and his older sister, who was in the military, and the brother between them who had died from a “lung problem” when Everett was three. Wiley's mother sympathized that Everett spent so much time with them because Mrs. Barnes was an eccentric and grieving mother. Linnea resented that. Her own mother was simply called a drunk.

But still, Linnea felt terrible for Everett. She had imagined he would come to school on the first day of senior year, his face somber, and she’d hug him and offer condolences for losing his dad, ask how his mom was—really was. But Everett did not appear to be a grieving, fatherless child.

The first person she wanted to tell about Everett was Ulla. And the last person she wanted to tell about Everett was Ulla.

Linnea scrubbed the ice cream splotches from her hair and face, as well as the sheen of grease from the fryers. God, she smelled awful. What to do with her hair? Linnea rolled her eyes in defeat. Fuck it. He probably wasn’t even waiting for her.

But he was.

The sun had started its descent, a reminder the days were getting shorter and school was to begin. It cast Everett in a backdrop, obscuring his features as he rested against a new, two-toned Chevy Blazer, hands stuffed in his jeans, and sunglasses perched sexily.

She walked to him, grateful she hadn’t tripped and sprawled on the asphalt. Even without Ulla here physically, she was always channeling Ulla mentally. Linnea had memorized Ulla’s signature expressions. The way she’d subtly lower her chin and lift her eyes when she disagreed. The various types of laughter she could summon at just the right moment: a one-syllabic laugh if she were sarcastic; an under-the-breath snort if she were condescending; a high-pitched titter if she felt it necessary to fit in. Ulla saved her genuine laughs for Linnea. The guttural, eye-crinkling ones.

With Everett, Linnea chuckled like an insecure airhead, as if everything he said was funny. Did he think she’d gotten uglier? Did he notice the snugness of her jeans around her hips, how their roundness made the waistband pucker because she could never find a pair that fit her proportions? Did he notice the line of pimples that had bloomed across her jawline, and how she had not one clue how to effectively flirt? Had their brief junior high kiss been a figment of her imagination? Was she reading too much into his smile, the glint in his eyes, the way he kept trying to touch her arm?

“You still hang out with Ulla?” he asked.

A face slap would’ve been kinder. Linnea’s smile deflated, and she looked away with a dull, “Yes, we’re still best friends,” and swatted away the reminder that her beauty paled in comparison to Ulla’s. The winter of their freshman year, a junior football player, Robbie Monroe, visited Linnea’s locker between periods and invited her to his party after the hockey game, and she’d soared, buoyed miles high by a fantasy come true. Boys do think I’m beautiful! Then Robbie smiled—and asked if she’d bring Ulla with her.

That wasn’t the only instance:

Lin, do you think Ulla would go out with me?

Lin, can you give Ulla this for me?

Lin, you’ve got to know who Ulla likes. You’re best friends!

Linnea was mousy next to Ulla, with those lithe legs and cornsilk ponytail that swished back and forth.

Ulla, with a pencil tap-tapping on her lush, pouty lips before jotting an answer on a test.

Ulla, with her enormous blue eyes framed to the brim with naturally curled lashes.

Everett touched Linnea’s arm, drawing her back, but it didn’t send a zing of electricity the way it had moments ago. “She never liked me much,” he said, “I was wondering if she was going to be competition.”

At this, Linnea bristled. Competition? Their peers had long ago stopped teasing her and Ulla for being lesbos. She and Ulla made enough public appearances with double dates at school dances to keep the rumors to a low frequency.

Linnea channeled Ulla’s falsetto laugh in response to Everett’s question. He smirked and handed her a Dairy Queen napkin with his phone number written in blue ink. “Do I get yours?”

There was one move of Ulla’s that Linnea had mastered in copying: the cool shrug.

Linnea arrived late to Ulla’s house and sank into the tweed couch. She’d already missed half of a rerun of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. She wondered if this is what being buzzed felt like. Slightly off-kilter, electrified limbs, short attention span.