Since You've Been Gone

14 STEAL SOMETHING

I stood against the wall of what had been Sloane’s living room, clutching a glass of sparkling water I’d gotten from a passing waiter. I was gulping it, hoping that the cold would wake me up, so I could try and understand what was happening. Because it felt a little like I’d just been dropped into a nightmare, or one of my parents’ experimental plays, where everything is designed to make you feel off-balance.

I was standing in Sloane’s living room, and it was still Sloane’s living room. Everything was still there. The furniture, the rugs, the oil paintings with their little lights, the books on the shelves bound in leather. None of it made any sense to me. Why had the Williamses left all their stuff behind? For just a moment, I wondered if it meant they were coming back. But even I couldn’t seem to get myself to believe it, and another explanation had started to circle around in my mind—maybe they had left it behind because it wasn’t theirs to take.

The house was packed, mostly people who seemed around my parents’ age, in tuxedos and gowns, with waiters passing around trays. Frank had waved across the room to me when I’d come in, but he was clearly being monopolized by his parents’ friends. I was okay with that, because I still wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him, or what it was going to be like between us. Frank’s parents, standing in the center of the room, seemed to be pulling off the illusion that things were still fine with them, unless you chose to notice how far apart they were standing, and how they never seemed to talk to each other.

I looked around at the familiar room, one I thought I’d never see again—and certainly not looking just like it always had. I crunched down on an ice cube and it made my back teeth ache. Now that I was in her house, I felt a sudden, surprise rush of missing Sloane intensely.

But I’d been missing her all along. Hadn’t I?

As I shook my glass, just to hear the ice cubes clink, I realized that I hadn’t, not recently. That her list had become less about Sloane, and more about me. And Frank and Dawn and Collins, too. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to mean. I sipped at my water, wondering how much longer I had to stay. I was feeling jittery and out of sorts, like even being in Sloane’s house was making me think about things I hadn’t had to face in a while. And all I really wanted was to go home and not leave until things made sense again.

I saw Collins across the room, and waved to him. He met my eye, but then looked away, and I could see him sigh before he turned and headed toward me, expertly navigating his way through the crowd, his hands stuffed in his tuxedo pockets. He had dressed to the nines for the occasion, wearing a maroon bow tie and matching cummerbund, along with a pocket square.

“You’re looking very dapper tonight,” I told him as soon as he was close to me.

“Thanks,” he said a little shortly. He looked at me, then flicked his eyes away.  “Nice dress.”  The way he said it, I could tell it wasn’t exactly a compliment. Even though it was overheated in the house, far too many people and not enough air, I suddenly felt chilled.  And I remembered the look Collins had given me as I’d left Frank’s tent.

As though sensing this thought, Frank looked over at me and Collins, grimacing and shooting us a Sorry about this expression.

“Look,” I said, turning to Collins. I took a breath and decided to jump right in and not bother with the segue.  “About the other morning, what you saw. Me in Frank’s tent? Nothing happened. I just didn’t bring a pillow.”

“I didn’t think that anything happened,” Collins said, his voice flat.

“Oh,” I said, a little thrown by this. I’d expected this, somehow, to be a much longer conversation. “I just didn’t want you to think I’d do something like that.”

“Emily, I don’t,” Collins said, now sounding annoyed. “Come on. We’re friends.” I just looked at him for a moment, and maybe something of what I was thinking was in my expression because he frowned. “What?”

“I just . . . ,” I started. I really hadn’t expected to have this conversation with him, but we were there, so I might as well tell him what had been bothering me, just a little bit, all summer. “It’s just sometimes . . . it seems like you don’t want me around. That’s all. Sometimes I think you do,” I added quickly. “But it’s just a little confusing.”

Collins just looked at me for a moment, then tipped his head in the direction of the side porch. I nodded, and he led the way outside, as though he was the one who knew this house well, like he’d been the one to sit on this porch with Sloane on the Adirondack chairs, feet propped on the railing, looking up at the stars, talking for hours.

The porch was empty, maybe because the air was humid and damp, and there was a charged, heavy feeling, like the sky could open and it could storm at any moment. “Are we actually talking about this?” he asked, when we were both outside. “We have our honesty hats on?”

“Um,” I said. “Okay. Hats on.”

Collins looked away for a minute, out to the rolling hills that had been Sloane’s backyard, then turned to me. “Frank’s my best friend. Has been since we were kids. But most of the time, I only get to hang out with him when he’s not with Lissa, or student government, or the newest species of frog that needs saving.”

“Collins,” I started, but he waved this away.

“It’s okay,” he said, “it is what it is and I’ve accepted that. But this summer, when she was away, when he wasn’t trying to save the world or get the most polished transcript in history, I thought it was going to be the summer of Frank and Collins. Working together, hanging out . . .”

“And that’s happened,” I said, hearing how defensive my voice was, since I thought I knew where this was going.

“For about a week. And then you showed up.”

I swallowed hard. Even though I’d agreed to the honesty, that didn’t mean I necessarily liked this conversation. “But . . . ,” I started.

“And I’d been planning this camping trip forever, and when it gets rained out, Frank tell me he has this great idea for how to make up for it. And he invites you and Dawn.” He let out a breath and stared down at the scuffed wooden floor, his shoulders hunched.

“I didn’t mean to get in between you guys,” I finally said, hoping he knew it hadn’t been anything deliberate. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Collins said, shaking his head, sounding frustrated. “And I’m sure Frank doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It just gets hard, always being someone’s second choice.”

I took in Collins’s expression and realized why it was so familiar. It was the same one I’d had when Sloane had started choosing Sam over me. It was the reason I’d started skipping meets and cross-country practices, since I wanted to hang out with her whenever I could. “I know,” I said quietly.

“I think you do,” Collins said. He shrugged. “Or at any rate, you will soon enough.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Collins just looked at me for a long moment, and I got the impression that he was weighing how much to tell me. “Hat,” I reminded him.

“Okay,” he said, folding his arms. “What do you think is going to happen when Lissa gets back?”

This question, on top of what I’d realized in the tent, hit me with what felt like physical force. “I . . . What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think he’s still going to keep hanging out? And are you going to keep hanging out with Dawn when she’s back to school at Hartfield?” He gave me a measured look, and I realized Collins had been paying much more attention this summer than I had given him credit for. “September’s coming soon, Emily.  And I know you lost your friend, but you didn’t do a great job picking replacements.”

I took a step back; it felt like Collins had slapped me. “That wasn’t . . . ,” I started. “I didn’t do that.” But the words had hit a nerve; they wouldn’t be affecting me this way if they hadn’t. It was pretty much what I’d just thought, after all.

“Okay,” Collins said with a shrug, clearly willing to let it go.

“And are we not going to be friends?” I asked, a little combatively. I was still trying to get my head around the fact that apparently everything I thought had been building this summer was going to disappear in a few weeks’ time.

“We’ll be friends,” he said to me. “But,” he said, and in that word, it was like the old Collins persona came back; his very posture seemed to change. “When I start dating the very lucky lady who’ll be my steady hang, maybe not so much.” He winked at me. “You understand.”

“Do you want to hear the truth?” I asked. I didn’t even think about it, just suddenly wanted to be as direct with him as he’d been with me. “Are our hats still on?” Collins nodded, looking wary, and I said, “You ask out the prom queens because you know they’ll say no.” It had just been a theory, but when he flushed a dull red, I realized that it had been correct. “Why don’t you try asking someone who might actually say yes?”

Collins just shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand this, Emily,” he said after a pause.  “But who’s going to want to go out with me?” His voice was shaky, and after a summer of bravado and theatrical winks and neon polos, I felt like I was finally seeing him, hat on and guard down. Not the guy who tried the week before to get everyone to call him LL Cool C—Ladies Love Cool Collins—even though it only seemed to stick with Doug from work. This was the real Collins. And the real Collins just looked sad and disappointed. He gave a short laugh and gestured to himself. “I’m not exactly a catch.”

“Of course you are,” I said, surprised and a little mad that he couldn’t see this. “And you should ask Dawn.” As I said this, I just hoped that I’d understood her offhand comments about him, not to mention how long it had taken her to look away when he was skinny-dipping.

Collins just looked at me for a long moment, then down at the ground. “You think she’d say yes?” he finally asked, sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard him.

I wanted to be able to tell him yes, definitively, but I didn’t really feel sure about anything anymore. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked, doing my best to give him a smile. He gave me a tentative one back just as the porch door opened.

“Matthew!” an older woman, half of a couple who had been talking to Frank for most of the night, motioned for him to join them inside. Collins glanced at me, but the woman seemed pretty insistent, making large Come here movements with jewel-encrusted hands that caught the light and reflected it onto the walls.

“Sorry,” Collins said to me. “Uh . . .”

“Go,” I said, giving him a smile. “I’ll be fine.” He nodded and made his way back into the house, and I followed a minute later. As I passed the living room, I sensed Frank trying to catch my eye, but I looked away, into my glass. I could hear fragments of conversations as I walked, architectural terms I didn’t understand, but also snatches of discussions that baffled me.

Yes, the house is stunning isn’t it? All the original Harrison furnishings . . . in trust . . . some fight over a will . . . I don’t know, some tenants, I think? Well, not any longer . . .

Every room I stepped into, I saw Sloane. There was the couch where we’d mainlined whole seasons of TV shows; there was the table we’d sat on top of, sharing a pint of ice cream while she told me all about her first kiss with Sam, there was the counter where she’d laid out every eye shadow she owned, trying to get my eyes to turn the same color.

I had just given my empty glass to a bored-looking cater-waiter when I spotted the back stairs at the end of the hallway. There was a ribbon tied across them, clearly indicating that the upstairs rooms were off-limits.

I headed toward the stairs, already coming up with my alibi if I needed one. I was just looking for the bathroom. I didn’t see the ribbon. I got lost. I looked quickly over each shoulder, then lifted the ribbon, ducked under it, and hurried upstairs.

Like the downstairs, everything upstairs was still the same. The hall table, the oil paintings, the framed maps. I looked for a long moment at the window at the end of the hall, the one with the beige curtains, the one that I had helped Sloane tumble into on the day we met, the day she told me that she’d been waiting for me—or someone like me.

I looked away from the window and walked on, down the hall to the room that had been Sloane’s. I paused for a moment outside of it, praying that it wouldn’t be locked. But the old glass doorknob turned easily in my hand, and I looked around again once more before slipping inside.

All the furniture was the same—but everything about it was different. When the room had been Sloane’s, there had been stuff everywhere, makeup and clothing and the British fashion magazines she special-ordered taking up the surface of every dresser and most of the floor. She’d twined twinkle lights around her four-poster bed and had covered the mirror with pictures—me and her, her and Sam, ripped-out pages from magazines. But now, every trace of her was gone. It was just an anonymous room, one that could have belonged to anyone.

It was worse, somehow, being up here than being in any other room of the house. I started to go when I suddenly turned back, remembering something.

The throw rug was still there, and I lifted it up, folding it back and trying to remember where the loose board was. When I found it, it just creaked open a little, and I pressed on it harder, easing it up. When Sloane had been using it, there had usually been a collection of things, rotating as their importance changed. But now, there was only one of her disposable cameras and a thin layer of dust. I pulled up the camera, wiping it off. There was nothing written on it, and it looked like all the pictures had been taken.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. I put the board back where it was supposed to be, folded down the rug, and left Sloane’s room, not letting myself look back, closing the door behind me and hurrying downstairs, even though the last thing I wanted to do was go back to the party.

I made it back to the living room without being stopped, and saw that Frank’s parents were now standing even farther apart from each other, fixed smiles on both their faces, and Frank was nowhere to be seen. I tried to fit the camera into my clutch, but it was one of the tiny, useless ones, and was barely big enough to fit my keys and ID, so there was no getting a disposable camera into it. I headed toward the front door, glad for an excuse to get away from the party for a bit, figuring I’d just leave it in my car.

“Hey.” I turned, my hand on the doorknob, and saw Frank. His hair was slightly askew, like he’d been running his hands through it. He was wearing a tux, and the sight of him in it made me feel off-balance. He looked so handsome, I had to look away from him, or I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop staring.

“Hey,” I said, mostly to my shoes. “How’s it going?”

He looked toward the center of the room, where his parents were now standing on opposite sides. “It’s going,” he said grimly. “Were you leaving?”

“Well,” I said, looking down at the camera in my hand. “I was just going to my car—”

“Because if you are,” Frank said, overlapping with me, “I’d love a ride home. I have to get out of here.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um, sure.” I was more than happy to leave, I just didn’t know if Frank was supposed to. But he just nodded and held open the door for me. I stepped through it and heard him draw in a breath.

“That’s really quite a dress,” he said, and I realized he must have just seen the back—or lack thereof.

We walked down the steps together, the steps that I had sat on next to Sloane while we read stacks of magazines and worked on our tans, the steps I’d sat on when I was desperate to find her. “In a good way?” I asked. Frank opened his mouth to answer as thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. “We’d better go,” I said, picking up my pace. “The roof’s open.”

We walked together across Sloane’s driveway. I’d avoided the valet guys and just parked at the end of the long line of cars on the side of the road, so we had a bit of a hike to the car. “Thanks,” Frank said as we walked.

“Sure,” I said, glancing over at him. His hands were deep in his pockets, and I knew him well enough to see that he was upset about something. “Is it okay for you to leave?”

“It’s fine,” he said shortly. “I really shouldn’t have come in the first place. Sorry to drag you out here.”

“It’s okay—” I started, as thunder rumbled again and we both picked up our pace, hurrying for my car as the wind started to blow, and I realized we were in our usual running spots, just wearing evening clothes, and not T-shirts and shorts. There was something strange between us tonight, some weird tension that hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t think it was just coming from me. I unlocked my car, and we both got in. I didn’t bother with music, just turned around and passed Sloane’s house again on the way up the road. As I did, I saw the house all lit up, and through the windows, the crowd, in their tuxes and gowns. It was how I’d always imagined the house, and tonight, I’d been a part of it. But it wasn’t how I’d thought it would feel. It just felt sad.

I turned down the road that would take me to Frank’s, and started to drive a little faster than I normally would have, worried about the rain I had a feeling was coming. I couldn’t help thinking about both the tarp and the wooden piece resting, warm and dry, in the garage. When we’d driven nearly halfway to Frank’s without a word, I glanced over at him. His jaw was set as he looked out the window, and I knew something was wrong. “Are you okay?” I finally asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking over at me. I suddenly saw this wasn’t just about his parents—he was mad at me. “What happened to you? You disappear from camping without saying good-bye, you won’t answer any of my texts, then you show up tonight in that dress . . .”

“What’s wrong with the dress?” I asked, adjusting the neckline, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“Nothing,” Frank said, letting out a breath and shaking his head. “I was just worried, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just . . . thinking about some things.”

He looked over at me for a moment. “Me too.” I nodded, but was suddenly afraid to ask him what they were. What if Collins was right, and what he’d been thinking about was that we couldn’t be friends anymore? “Emily,” he said, but just then, rain started to hit my windshield—and come in through my sunroof.

“Oh my god,” I said, speeding up. “I’m so sorry.  Just . . . um . . .” The rain was coming down harder, and I turned up my wipers. I was starting to get wet as the rain poured in through the roof. Even though I wasn’t directly under it, it was hitting the console and splashing me, and coming in sideways when the wind blew. I reached into the side of the door where I’d put Sloane’s disposable and held it out to Frank. “Would you put that in the glove compartment?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the wind that had started to pick up.

He took it from me, glancing over with a question in his eyes. But I looked straight ahead, just concentrating on getting him home before he got too wet or either one of us said something we shouldn’t.

I pulled into his driveway and put the car in park, expecting him to get out and run for it while he was at least partly dry. But he just looked at me across the car, through the rain that was pouring down into my cupholders.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked, his expression serious and searching. “You haven’t been talking to me this whole week. What was it?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking away from him. “I told you, I’m sorry.  You should go inside, you’re getting soaked—”

“I don’t care,” he said, leaning forward. “Tell me what it was.”

“Nothing,” I said again, trying to brush this off, trying to go back to something that felt more like solid ground. I reached for the game we’d been playing all summer, the phrase I knew by heart. “You know, in an well-ordered universe . . .” But I looked at him, at the rain running down his face, his white tuxedo shirt getting soaked, and realized I couldn’t finish it this time.

Or maybe I could, because I leaned forward, into the rain, and kissed him.

He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away, without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.

But then he pulled away and looked at me. We were both leaning forward, which was ridiculous, since that meant we were directly underneath where the water was coming into the car.

I looked back at him through the rain that was pouring down between us and took a breath to try and say something, when he leaned forward, cupping my cheek with his hand, and kissed me again.

And it was a kiss that felt like it could stop time. The rain was falling on us, but I didn’t even feel or notice or care about it. We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and were finding again, kissing like it was the only thing either of us had wanted to do for a long, long time, kissing with the urgency of the rain that was pounding down all around us and onto the hood of the car. His hands were tangled in my hair, then touching my bare back, and I was shivering in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the cold. His face was wet as I ran my hands under his jaw and over his cheeks, as I pulled him closer to me, feeling my heart beating against his, feeling that despite the rain, despite everything, I could have happily stayed like that forever.

Until, abruptly, Frank stopped.

He broke away and dropped his hands from my hair. He sat back heavily against the side of the car. “Oh my god,” he said quietly.

I sat back as well, trying to catch my breath, which was coming shallowly. “Frank . . . ,” I started, even though I didn’t have anything to follow this.

“Don’t,” he said quickly. He looked over at me, and I could see how unhappy he suddenly looked—because of me. I had done this. Reality came crashing down on me in a horrible wave. He had a girlfriend. He had a very serious girlfriend and I knew it and I had gone ahead and kissed him anyway. I suddenly felt sick, and looked down at my hands, which were shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hearing how scratchy my voice sounded. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I have to go,” he said. “I—” He looked over at me, but nothing followed this. After a moment, he opened the door and got out, closing it hard behind him and walking up the steps to his house, not running, his shoulders hunched, just letting the rain beat down over him. I waited until I saw that he had gone inside. And then I waited a moment more, to make sure he wasn’t going to come back out and somehow make things okay again.

When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I put the car in gear and headed home.

And when I started to cry as I pulled into my driveway, it was coming down hard enough that I could pretend that it was only the rain hitting my face, and not the fact that I’d just lost another friend.

“Em?” my mother knocked on the doorframe and stuck her head into my room, her expression worried. “You okay, hon?”

I looked up from the floor, where, in an effort to try and deny the fact that everything in my life was falling apart, I’d been cleaning out my closet.

The morning after the kiss, I’d texted Frank, but had gotten no response. I’d spent the day staring at my phone, waiting to hear from him, glad for once that Paradise was totally deserted, since I would have been useless to anyone who wanted ice cream. I’d finally run out of willpower that night and had called him, but it had gone right to his voice mail. I still hadn’t heard from him the next day, and I finally told Beckett to hide my phone somewhere high so I’d stop staring at it. On the third day, trying to pretend I wasn’t stalking him, just getting some exercise, I’d walked past his house, and saw that his truck was gone. I figured maybe he was at work, but it was still gone at night when I drove past. It was that night, when I’d begun to think I really was never going to hear from him again, that I got a text.

Hey, can’t talk right now.

Sorting through things. More soon.

As someone who had been raised by two playwrights, I understood subtext.  And this text, coupled with the fact I hadn’t heard from him in three days, meant Frank was brushing me off, acting like I was a stranger. He clearly wanted to forget what had happened, and act like the kiss had never taken place—as though that would make it go away.

I’d been dodging Dawn’s calls, not wanting to tell her what happened until I spoke to Frank. But since I no longer felt like I owed him anything, the next day, when Dawn called, I picked up.

“Oh my god,” she said, before I even said hello, her voice high and excited. “I’m so glad you’re finally around! Have you been sick or something?”

“Well—” I started, but she was already continuing on.

“I have a date tonight! With Matthew! He asked me yesterday. We’re going to the movies, isn’t that great?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling myself smile for the first time in days, beyond glad that Collins had taken my advice. “That’s fantastic.”

“So you have to help me figure out what to wear,” she said. “But maybe later tonight? I’m at work now anyway, and it’ll help to be in front of my closet.” She took what sounded like a much-needed breath. “What’s up with you? Are you okay?”

“Frank and I kissed,” I blurted out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make small talk about anything else with that on my mind, since it was pretty much the only thing I had thought about for the last three days. “I kissed him,” I admitted. There was just silence on Dawn’s end, and I went on, in a rush, “And now I don’t know what’s going on. He texted me back, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants to talk to me. And I just want things to go back to how they were. . . .” Even as I said this, I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t really want that at all. But I would have preferred that over whatever we were doing now.

“Emily,” Dawn said, and her voice was colder than I had ever heard it. “He has a girlfriend.”

I blinked, a little startled by Dawn’s change of tone. “I know,” I said slowly. “And I feel terrible about this. I—”

“Do you?” she asked. “Because you knew he had a girlfriend when you went ahead and kissed him, didn’t you?”

“Dawn,” I said, trying to regroup. I had actually hoped to talk to her about this, to get her take on things, and instead, it felt like I was being attacked. “I—”

“Did you honestly think I would be on board with this?” she asked, her voice rising. “After what Mandy did to me? After what Bryan did?”

I closed my eyes for just a second and rested the phone against my head. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do, and—”

“Look, I can’t really talk right now,” she said, her voice clipped and cold. “I’m at work.”

“Okay,” I said, a little confused, since Dawn had never exactly been committed to her job. “Should I call you later?”

“I have to go,” she said, not really sounding angry any longer, just sounding sad. “I have to work, and then I have this date to get ready for, so . . .”

A moment too late, the penny dropped. Dawn didn’t want to talk to me anymore. She didn’t want to be friends with me, not after what I’d done. We said stilted good-byes and I hung up the phone, feeling like everything in my life was suddenly breaking apart and floating away just when I needed it most.

After I hung up with Dawn, I called Collins. When he answered the phone, he sounded wary, and I hadn’t gotten far in my halting explanation when he cut me off.

“I know what happened,” he said, letting out a long breath. “This isn’t good, Emily.”

“I know that,” I said.  Any last hopes I was holding on to that Frank might want to still be friends again, or that we might be able to move past this, ended when I heard the resigned tone in Collins’s voice. “But I just wanted to—”

“You know I can’t do this, right?” he asked, not sounding angry, mostly just tired. “I can’t take your side. He’s my best friend.”

“I know he is,” I said, “But if you could just talk to him—”

“I can’t,” Collins said. “Even if I wanted to, which I really don’t. He’s in New—” Collins stopped abruptly, but I’d heard enough to put it together. I hadn’t realized that I could feel worse, but I did. I now understood why Frank’s truck hadn’t been at his house. He was gone. He had gone to Princeton. He had chosen his girlfriend. Of course he had; it wasn’t even a question.  And he’d slept there, with her.

I knew I had no right to feel mad about this, but even so, I had to fight back the tears that were threatening to escape—for what Frank and I had had, and for what we would never have, and for what I’d broken.

“I’m sorry, Em,” Collins said, and I could hear that he meant it.

“Yeah,” I whispered, not trusting myself to say much more, trying to keep my voice steady so that he wouldn’t hear that I was about to burst into tears. It was suddenly becoming clear to me that I had nobody on my side. “Have a good time tonight.”

“Thanks,” he said, and his voice was gentle when he added, “Take care, okay?”

And I’d nodded, even though Collins couldn’t see me do it, and hung up, realizing that he had just told me good-bye. So I’d lost Dawn, and Collins, and of course, Frank. With one stupid action, I’d just wrecked everything that I’d built over the course of the summer.

And now my mother was standing in my doorway, because even she had noticed that something was wrong. “Hi,” I said, setting down the pair of shoes Sloane had bought for me the last time we’d been at a flea market together. I squinted at my mother, and noticed that she was wearing actual clothing, and that her hair was washed. “Did you guys finish your play?”

My mother gave me a smile that was equal parts thrilled and tired. “Late last night,” she said.

“Wow,” I said, making myself smile at her. “That’s great. Congrats.”

“Thanks,” she said, her smile fading as she took a step closer into my room. “I’m just a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, automatically. And if my mother had still been deep in writing mode, she would have left it at that. But she just looked at me a moment longer, the kind of look that let me know that she was back, and the slack I’d been able to have all summer was pretty much over.

“We’ll talk later,” she said, her tone leaving open no real discussion of this. “But right now, Frank’s downstairs.”

I stared at her. “He is?”

She nodded as she headed out of my room. “And you might want to rescue him,” she added. “I think Beckett’s down there with him.”

That was all I needed to hear. I pushed myself off the bed, and glanced at the mirror briefly before taking the steps downstairs two at a time. I didn’t look my best, but Frank had seen me, for so many mornings, right after I’d rolled out of bed.  And since I had a feeling that he was only there to tell me what I already knew—that we weren’t friends anymore—I wasn’t sure I necessarily needed to look great for that.

I found him and Beckett on the front porch, Beckett showing off his ninja kicks, all of which were getting distressingly close to Frank’s face. Just seeing Frank again was enough to make it feel like one of Beckett’s kicks had landed right in my stomach, and I hated how much I’d missed him. “Beck,” I said, looking away from Frank, not sure I was really up to talking directly to him just yet. “Be careful.”

My little brother looked at me scornfully. “I’m always careful,” he said, before attempting a roundhouse kick that landed him flat on his back on the porch. “Ow,” he muttered.

“Can we talk?” Frank asked me.

Since Beckett was showing no signs of moving from the porch, I nodded toward the driveway. “Want to take a walk?”

“Sure,” he said easily. I looked at him and realized that for some reason he looked happy. Clearly, he had not had the same few days that I had. He had just rolled with it, and probably everything in his life was still going wonderfully.

I could feel my anger start to build as he followed me up the driveway, toward the mailbox.  As we walked, I noticed there were only our cars parked there. “Did you walk here?”

He nodded, and smiled at me, like life was just so great. “I kind of felt like it.”

I nodded, swallowing hard, wishing he would just get this over with. When I hadn’t heard from him after his text, I’d assumed that this would be our new status quo—we’d just never speak again, and forget about everything we’d shared over the course of the summer. But I’d forgotten I was dealing with Frank Porter, who probably wanted to make sure that I was fine with pretending that we’d never been friends, so he could cross this issue off, one more thing neatly and successfully resolved.

We had only gone a few steps down the road when he stopped and looked at me. “Listen,” he said. He was smiling again, like he was just so happy he couldn’t hide it, even as he was preparing to break my heart. “Emily. I just wanted to—”

“You know, we don’t have to do this,” I said, cutting him off. I couldn’t do much about this situation, but I could limit the number of times this week that people told me they were done with me forever. “I get it, okay?”

He just looked at me for a moment, his brow furrowed. “You do?”

“I do,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I got the message.”

Now he looked very confused, his head tilting to the side. “What message?”

“That we’re not friends anymore,” I said, and even though I was trying to keep my voice steady, it broke on the last word. “And you know what, maybe we never were. And it’s not like we’re going to be friends when school starts, so it’s probably just better this way.”

Frank shook his head. “What are you talking about? I wanted to—”

“I just don’t need to hear it, okay?” I could hear how high and shaky my voice sounded. “We don’t have to do this.”

Frank looked at me, and I could see some of his sureness—his confidence—begin to ebb. “We don’t?”

I shook my head. I just didn’t want to go along with it. Maybe for once, Frank Porter didn’t get to have everything neatly resolved. “I get that you were trying to be the good guy and come here so we could put it behind us. But I don’t need it.” And then, because I didn’t think I could stay there and look at him anymore, I turned and walked away, back toward my house.

I heard Frank call my name, but I didn’t turn around, and when he called it again, I broke into a run, aware as I did so that it was the first time all summer that I was running alone.