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She hated the greasy, messy excuse for a sandwich. “I love them!”

They parked on a university campus street outside a tiny pizza joint shoved in the basement of an apartment complex. “I’ll get the door for you.” He loped around, opened it, and took her hand. She stepped onto the sidewalk. The air had a pleasant, summer coolness.

Inside was dank and smelled of Italian spices. Everett ordered a hot hoagie minus the banana peppers, and Doritos. Even after all these years, she associated the smell of Doritos with Everett’s tongue lapping against hers. She conjured Ulla’s kisses, how they always sent shivers between her legs. What is Ulla doing now?

“Lin? What’s your order?”

She massaged the cringe in her stomach. “I’ll take what you’re having.”

Once they were seated with the hoagies, Linnea chewed around the more disgusting ingredients, removing the ham, the tomato, and the salami, too. She nibbled the non-soggy parts of the bread. Everett didn’t seem to notice her picking at it. Maybe he’d chalk it up to nervousness. Which wouldn’t be untrue.

He described his high school life in New York. Student council, junior Homecoming court, playing hockey until he hurt his knee. He said he was going to apply to the University of Minnesota and major in business and economics. That he could easily get an internship at Cargill where his dad had worked. “That’s why he traveled so much, you know. He even lived in London for three years.”

“Without you?”

“Well, yeah.”

Everett still didn’t appear to be a grieving young man. He appeared to be—completely unaffected. She dismissed it as a defense. She fantasized of a private, vulnerable moment between the two of them, of him breaking down in tears, clinging to her. Underneath his confident bravado and endless chatter was the sad boy who needed her comfort.

He wiped his lips. Linnea reached across the booth and fingered away a dot of mayo that he’d missed.

Their next stop was a nightclub, brand new, in the warehouse district. It was one thing to dance in her bra and underwear to Culture Club and Madonna with Ulla in the confines of her bedroom. Quite another in a room full of strangers with her seventh-grade crush. “Did you bring your driver’s license?” he asked.

She nodded.

“It’s age sixteen-plus until midnight in this section,” he said as they waited in line, at what appeared to be the back door. At least that meant no alcohol. Dozens of teens stood huddled, jabbering, and many were smoking. The bouncer checked their IDs, Everett paid their entrance fee, and they were engulfed by dim lights and flashing neon strobes. Oddly, instead of claustrophobic, Linnea felt cocooned. And there was no need to hold a conversation. Everett took her into the thick of it, wrapped her arms around him, and guided her hips to Rick James’ “17.” The music was so loud. It penetrated her skin and overtook her pulse.

It wasn’t exactly like being Cinderella at the ball, but when Everett’s lips skimmed her thrown-back neck, Linnea couldn’t think of anything better.

They kissed. And kissed until the harsh lights kicked them out and the music stopped. They kissed in his truck in the parking lot across the street until the cops rapped the window, telling them to leave or they’d call their parents. Linnea wanted to say go right ahead.

During the hour-long drive to Mora, she leaned her head back and drank in Everett’s features: the cleft in his chin and deep-set eyes. She would live in this moment. Not tomorrow. Not where she’d have to see Ulla’s stony face and feel the rock of guilt in her stomach when she asked what they did. Linnea wouldn’t ask if there would be more Thursday dance club nights. She’d make this one last forever.

Everett took her to his house. They crept past unopened moving boxes. She hit her knee on the railing and rammed her hand into her mouth to stifle the painful gasp of laughter.

His room was in the basement. They were both peeling away their outerwear before he even closed the bedroom door. He straddled her on the bed and took off his shirt. He was skinny, but his muscles were sharp and distinct. When he kissed her ear and told her he’d always thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, she didn’t believe him, but the rest of her body did, opening itself up to his.

When they lay naked next to each other, he asked if that had been her first time.

“Could you tell?” she replied, feeling the sore throb between her legs. Her mind went to Ulla.

Everett took her home when dawn was breaking. She awoke hours later in her bedroom to the punitive sunlight and the small hand of her alarm clock on eleven. Linnea’s first thought was Ulla. Where is she? Had there been a day in recent years where she didn’t see Ulla before eight in the morning? Her own bed felt foreign, and for a brief second, she was confused upon waking, not rolling into the luxury of Ulla’s hair.

The house was quiet. Most likely her father had left hours ago, leaving her mother to sleep off withdrawals. Linnea showered, dressed, and cleaned her parents’ mess from the night before. Based upon the rim of lipstick on beer cans and full ashtrays, they’d had friends over.

She looked inside the fridge but only found a near-empty jug of pulpy orange juice, some leftover pizza slices, and a package of bologna.

Hungry and bleary-eyed, the memory of her date with Everett—We had sex?—seemed unreal. They’d had little to say to one another after it was over. Everett assured her that he’d pulled out in time. She hadn’t dared to ask if he was a virgin. Doubtful, but still, there was an irritation in her gut that he didn’t use a condom. These were things you talked about with friends, your best friend. It was Abby who had sat her down when she was twelve and asked if she knew what a period was, and how girls got pregnant.

Yes, she did, actually. Ulla’s mother was not a neglectful, abashed parent when it came to explaining these things.

She had no appetite anyway and slammed the fridge. She walked to Ulla’s house across the unkempt yard and weeds, mostly covered in crabgrass. The sun was blazing and felt unnatural.

Linnea needed to talk to Ulla. Needed her to hold her and kiss her and help her figure this all out. Help her not feel as if the world had run off course and was chugging along a different track now, to a place unknown. But the car was gone. It was a good two miles out to Curlers’ wrecking yard.

Bereft and unmoored, Linnea sank onto the front steps. She was scheduled to work at Dairy Queen in a couple of hours. Her stomach and heart wrestled against one another. Linnea wanted to cry, as if that would rid what was consuming her.

He called me beautiful.