Since You've Been Gone

2 APPLE PICKING AT NIGHT

Beckett was already sitting in the passenger seat of my car when I made it outside. I drove an old green Volvo that my dad had bought off a student who was transferring to a school in California. I had never met the student, but I felt like I knew a lot about him despite that, because the car was covered in bumper stickers. Save the Whales, Who Doesn’t Love Purple Martins?, This Car Climbed Mount Washington.  Along the back windshield was a deconstructed school sticker that read Unichusetts of Massaversity, but there wasn’t, among all of them, a Stanwich College sticker, which pretty much made it clear why the owner of the car had transferred. I had tried to get them off, but they had proved almost impossible to remove, and so now I was just used to them, and to the occasional honks of anger—or solidarity—I got when other drivers thought they were reading my opinion. The left rear door was jammed, it took a long time for the heat to get going in the winter, and the gas gauge was broken—it was permanently stuck in the center, showing half a tank even when I was running on fumes. I’d learned, over time, just to be aware of when I’d last filled up and how much I’d driven. It was an inexact science, but since I’d never actually run out of gas, it seemed to be working.

The biggest issue with the car, however, was that the roof was always open. The panel that closed the sunroof had been long gone when my dad bought the Volvo, and I just hoped it had been there when the car climbed Mount Washington. I had a tarp I could put over it for when it was raining in the summer, and my parents had gotten the set construction guys to cut a piece of wood that fit inside and made it nearly airtight in the winter. Sloane had loved this part of the car, and had never wanted the roof covered, even when we had to crank the heat and bundle up in blankets. She was always stretching her hand out to let the wind run through her fingers, and leaning forward into the sunlight that spilled down onto the seats.

“All set?” I asked as I slipped on my black Ray-Bans and slammed my door. I’d asked out of habit more than anything else, since Beckett was clearly ready to go. I started the car and pulled out of the driveway, after making sure that there were no strollers or runners heading our way.

“Who’s Tesla?” Beckett asked as I started to head toward downtown. I’d looked up IndoorXtreme’s address on my way downstairs, wanting to minimize any and all delays that I was sure would be caused by expecting Beckett to know where we were going. And despite the fact that when I was his age, I’d mastered the New York subway system—or at least the stops in Brooklyn—my brother and I had had very different childhoods. I’d been the child of two struggling playwrights, moving wherever my parents were workshopping a play, or where they’d managed to land adjunct professor or writer-in-residence gigs. We lived in Brooklyn, in San Francisco, in Portlands both Maine and Oregon. I was usually sleeping on the couch in the apartments we were subletting, and if I did happen to have my own bedroom, I never hung up my boy-band posters or keepsakes, since I knew I wouldn’t be there for long. But everything changed with Bug Juice. My miserable summer at camp had led to a Broadway play, a subsequent terrible movie, and then countless community theater and school productions, the play taking on a life of its own, my parents an overnight success after ten years of struggle. But most importantly, the play led to my parents securing two tenure-track positions at the same school, which even then I’d known was a big deal. And so we’d moved to Stanwich, and while my brother claimed to remember our early, horrible apartments, for the most part, he’d never known anything but security, his posters hung firmly on his walls.

“What?” I asked, glancing up from the directions on my phone, weighing whether Beckett could be trusted to read them to me, or if he’d lose interest and start playing SpaceHog.

“Tesla,” Beckett said carefully, like he was trying out the word. “The play they’re writing?”

“Oh,” I said. I had no idea who that was, but at the moment, didn’t really care. My parents’ play was not my priority—Sloane’s list was. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Want to look it up?” I handed over my phone, and Beckett took it, but a moment later, I heard the SpaceHog theme music.

I was about to tell him to try and pay some attention to the directions, when he said, his voice quiet, “You think this one’s going to last?”

“The play?” I asked, and Beckett nodded without looking up from the game, his curls bobbing. I took after my dad, with my straight hair and tallness, and Beckett was like a mini version of our mother—her curly hair, her blue eyes. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. It seemed like it would, but they had certainly had false starts before.

“Just ’cause Dad and I were supposed to go camping,” Beckett said, punching the screen of my phone hard, making me wince. “We had a whole plan and everything. We were going to eat fish we caught for dinner and sleep outside.”

“You don’t even like fish,” I pointed out, only to get a withering look in return.

“That’s the whole point of camping—to do stuff you wouldn’t normally do.”

“I’m sure it’ll still happen,” I said, crossing my fingers under the steering wheel, hoping it would be true. Beckett looked over at me, then smiled.

“Cool,” he said. “Because—” He stopped and sat up straight, pointing out the window. “There it is.”

I made the left into the half-filled parking lot of a huge building; I was pretty sure it had once been a warehouse. I put the car in park, but while the engine was still running, Beckett unbuckled his seat belt and got out, racing for the entrance without waiting for me. Under other circumstances, this might have bothered me, but today, I was thrilled to see it, since it seemed to prove that he wouldn’t care that I left him there while I headed off to Stanwich Avenue. As I got out of the car, I glanced at my gas gauge, even though this was pointless, and realized I probably needed to fill up soon—yet another reason to drop Beckett off and go. I followed my brother across the parking lot and inside, heaving open a heavy steel door, the handle shaped like a mountain peak.

IndoorXtreme was big—a huge, open space with ceilings that might have just been the tallest I had ever seen. There was a counter with a register, and shoe and equipment rentals, but the rest of the space seemed devoted to all the ways you could injure yourself in air-conditioned comfort. There was a half-pipe with skateboarders flying down one side and up the other, a bike course with jumps, and, along the back, a vertical climbing wall, with climbers making their way up or rappelling down. The wall had hand- and footholds along it, and it stretched up almost to the top of the ceiling. The whole place seemed to be made of steel and granite, and was painted mostly gray, with the occasional splash of red. It was cold, and the low hum of the industrial air conditioner mixed with the shouts from the skateboarders and the just-louder-than-background-music techno.

Beckett was waiting for me by the counter, having hoisted himself up to see the options, his feet dangling off the ground. He informed me that he wanted the all-inclusive kids’ pass, which included everything except paintball, and even though I winced at the price, I got it for him, figuring that the longer Beckett was occupied, the more items on Sloane’s list I might be able to accomplish. I’d just planned on the one, but maybe I could even do two. Maybe, if I somehow figured out how to do the really frightening ones, I could have this thing done inside of a week.

I paid the bored-looking guy behind the counter, whose name tag read Doug and who picked up a thick paperback the second we walked away, leaning his elbows on the counter to read. Then Beckett ran over to a bench carved to look like a boulder—or maybe it actually was a boulder—and started putting on the climbing shoes that Doug had swapped for his sneakers. “So are you all set?” I asked, not even sitting down. I was already planning out my route to Stanwich Avenue. If I didn’t stop for gas, I could be there in ten minutes. “I told you, I have those . . . errands to run.”

“I’m good,” Beckett said, Velcroing his shoes and jumping to his feet. “See you in a couple hours?”

“Great,” I said, and Beckett gave me a grin and ran off toward the climbing wall. As I looked around, I realized that this was actually the perfect place to leave him. I had no doubt my brother would be occupied all afternoon. I decided to wait just a minute more, so I wouldn’t feel like the worst sister in the world, and watched Beckett take his place in line for the climbing wall, hopping from foot to foot the way he did when he was really excited about something.

“Eight?” I turned and saw two things, neither of which made sense. Frank Porter was standing in front of me, and he was holding out a pair of shoes.

I knew who he was because everyone knew Frank Porter, one of the undisputed stars of Stanwich High School. He was never off the High Honor roll, he was a National Merit Scholar, he’d been sophomore and junior class president. He seemed to actively be trying to make the world—or at least our school—a better place, constantly circling petitions and founding clubs and organizations, always trying to save a program or monument or bird. He would be a lock for valedictorian if it weren’t for his girlfriend, Lissa Young, who was just as disciplined and dedicated as he was. They’d been together since something like ninth grade, but they weren’t one of the couples constantly making out against the lockers or having screaming fights in the parking lot. They just seemed like a unit, like even their relationship was focused and properly directed. I had heard that they went off every summer together to an academic enrichment program—so I didn’t understand why Frank Porter was currently standing in front of me. He was one of the few guys in our class who seemed totally comfortable when there were formal events and he had to wear a suit and tie, which was why it was a little jarring to see him now, wearing a gray T-shirt with Xtreme Attitude! written across it, in a font that looked like graffiti. Frank, his name tag read, just in case I had any doubt this was him.

The shoes that were extended to me drooped a little, and Frank tilted his head to the side. “Emily?”

I nodded, a little surprised, even though we’d been in the same school for three years. Since Sloane had come to town, I’d happily existed by her side. People called out to her by name and waved at me, and I had a feeling that the majority of my class would, like the landscaping guy, identify me as “That girl who’s always with Sloane Williams” or something along those lines. And I never minded—even just being Sloane’s friend made me much more interesting than I ever would have been on my own.

“Hi,” Frank Porter said, giving me a quick smile. “How are you?” Despite the T-shirt, Frank looked the same as he did during the school year. He was tall, maybe six-two, and lanky. He had reddish-blond hair that was cut short and neatly combed, and curled just slightly at the nape of his neck. His eyes were a light brown, and his skin was freckled. Even in his T-shirt and holding a pair of rentable shoes, Frank somehow radiated authority. It was like you could see him moving beyond the world of Stanwich High, with no doubt he would succeed wildly—running for office, chairing a board, inventing something tiny and electronic and essential. He just had that air about him—competent and trustworthy and, especially, wholesome. If he hadn’t clearly had grander ambitions, I could have seen him in ads for peanut butter and heart-healthy breakfast cereals. When Sloane had first come to Stanwich High, she had looked him up and down and asked, not unappreciatively, “Who’s the Boy Scout?”

“Hey,” I stammered when I realized I had been staring at him silently for a moment too long. Frank was looking at me, like he was waiting for something, and I remembered, much too late, that he’d asked me a question, and I still hadn’t answered it. “I mean, good.”

“Did you need these?” Frank asked, lifting the shoes. I couldn’t think why I would, and shook my head. “Oh,” he said, retracting them. “I heard someone over here needed climbing shoes, and I thought it was you. I guessed on the size.” He glanced down at my flip-flops, and I did too, then immediately wished I had gotten a pedicure recently, as the vestiges of the last one I’d gotten with Sloane—bright red, with a cat done in black dots on the big toe—had mostly chipped off. “But was I at least right?” he asked, looking up from my feet. “Size eight?”

“Um,” I said. I realized that I was waiting for someone else to jump in and direct this interaction, but unfortunately, there was just me, doing a very poor job of it. If Sloane had been here, she would have known what to say. Something funny, something flirty, and then I would have known what to say too, whether to chime in, or make the kind of joke I only ever seemed to be able to make around her. I didn’t know how to do this by myself, and I didn’t want to have to learn. Also, I didn’t think I’d exchanged more than a few sentences with Frank Porter in three years, so I wasn’t sure how we were spending this much time talking about the size of my feet. Which was, incidentally, something I wasn’t super thrilled to be talking about, since they were bigger than I liked. “It’s just because you’re tall,” Sloane had always said to me, with the confidence of someone with tiny feet. “Otherwise, you’d look weird. Or tip over.”

“Nine,” I said finally, leaving off the and a half  because, really, why did Frank Porter need to know my shoe size?

He shrugged. “Well, I’m still learning the ropes.” If Sloane had been next to me, I would have said So to speak or That’s for sure or some other punny remark, since there were actual ropes here and Frank had pretty much opened up the door for a joke like that. But she wasn’t, so I just looked away, trying to find my brother somewhere on the line for the climbing wall, so that I could just verify that he was okay and I could leave.

“Porter!” We both turned and I saw Matt Collins, who I knew from school but wasn’t sure I’d ever spoken to, dangling in midair from one of the rappelling ropes. He was wearing a T-shirt like Frank’s, along with a bright-red helmet, and was turning slowly on his rope, kicking at the wall to spin himself around. “Tonight. We’re hitting the Orchard, right?”

The Orchard had, at one point, been a functioning orchard, but the land was now just sitting empty, and it had become the place for parties, especially in the summer. It had the benefit of existing in the hazy border between Stanwich and Hartfield, the next town over, which meant the cops tended to stay away, mostly because, rumor went, nobody was sure whose jurisdiction it was. I had gone a few times, mostly that spring, when it had been Sloane and Sam and me and Gideon. The Orchard conjured, for me, memories of sitting close to Gideon and rolling a bottle between my palms, trying to think of something to say.

Frank nodded, and Collins—even though his name was Matthew, everyone, even teachers at school, called him by his last name—grinned. “Aw yeah,” he said. “The C-dawg’s going to meet some sweet ladies to-night!”

The woman climbing next to him, who looked like she was in her thirties, with impressive and serious climbing gear on, frowned at him, but Collins just smiled wider at her. “And how are you today?”

Frank just sighed and shook his head.

“Well,” I said, starting to edge toward the exit. Even though I couldn’t see Beckett, I was sure he was fine. And I really didn’t want to keep having this incredibly awkward conversation with Frank Porter. I needed to get to Stanwich Avenue, and I’d already spent much more time here than I’d planned on. “I should . . .” I nodded toward the door, taking a step toward it, hoping Frank didn’t feel like he had to keep talking to me just because he thought I was a customer.

“Right,” Frank said, tucking the unnecessary, too-small shoes under his arm. “It was nice to—”

“Heya!” Collins ran up to us at full speed and crashed into Frank, nearly toppling him over and knocking himself off-balance, windmilling his arms to stay upright. He was still wearing his helmet, which didn’t really do a lot for him. Collins was a head shorter than Frank—it looked like he was even a little shorter than me—and on the heavier side, with a round face, a snub nose, and dark blond hair.

“Collins,” Frank said in a resigned tone of voice, as he helped to steady him.

“So what’s up? What are we talking about?” Collins asked, his eyes darting over to me. He frowned for a moment, then smiled wide. “Hey,” he said. “I know you. Where’s your friend? It’s Emma, right?”

“Emily,” Frank corrected him, “Emily Hughes.” I looked over at him, shocked that Frank knew my last name. “And I thought you were supposed to be spotting on the wall.”

“This guy,” Collins said, as he clapped a hand on Frank’s shoulder. He turned to me and shook his head. “I mean, I’ve been here a month and he’s here two weeks and is already ready to run thing s. So impressive!”

“Spotting?” Frank persisted, but Collins just waved this away.

“Everyone’s fine,” he said. “And I actually was spotting. I spotted you two talking over here and I wanted to join the convo. So what’s the word?” He looked over at the shoes under Frank’s arm. “You climbing?” he asked me. Without waiting for a reply, he took the shoes from Frank, looked down at my feet, then at the back of the shoes where the size was written. “Not with these you’re not. I’m guessing you’re more like, what, a nine and a half?”

I just looked down at my feet for a second, letting my hair swing forward and cover my face, which I had a feeling was bright red. Did I have to respond to that? People weren’t under any obligation to admit to their shoe size, were they? But I had a feeling that if I tried to deny it, Collins would challenge me to put the smaller shoes on, and would probably soon be taking wagers from onlookers. I took another step away and started to turn for the door, when the scream ripped through the air, overpowering the techno. It sounded markedly different from the happier yells that, I realized, had just become background noise. The three of us turned in its direction, and I saw that it had come from the serious climbing woman, who was leaning back in her harness and pointing up at the very top of the wall—where my brother, I realized with my heart sinking, was merrily walking.

“Holy crap,” Collins said, his mouth hanging open. “How’d that kid get up there? And where’s his harness? Or helmet?”

Before I could say anything, Frank and Collins had taken off in the direction of the wall, and I followed. A crowd had gathered, and most of the climbers were rappelling down, out of the way.

“Emily!” Beckett yelled, waving at me, his voice echoing in the huge space. “Look how high I am!”

Both Frank and Collins looked at me, and I twisted my hands behind my back. “So, that’s my brother,” I said. I tried to think of something to follow this, like some explanation as to why he was currently humiliating me and jeopardizing IndoorXtreme’s insurance policy, but nothing else came.

“What’s his name?” Collins asked.

“Beckett,” I said. “But I’m sure he’s fine. He just—”

“Bucket?” Collins asked, then nodded as though this made sense. “Hey, Bucket!” he yelled up at my brother. “I’m gonna need you to come down from there, okay? Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “First, put your helmet back on and come down. Actually,” he amended, taking a small step closer, “first put on your harness, then your helmet, then come on down from there. All right?”

Beckett looked down at the crowd that was now staring up at him, then at me, and I tried to silently convey to him that he should absolutely do this, and as quickly as possible.

“Okay,” he said with a shrug, picking up his harness and snapping himself back into it.

The people below seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief and the crowd began to break up, people starting to climb the wall again or heading back to the bike course.

“See? All good,” Collins said, waving up at my brother, who was buckling the chin strap underneath his helmet.

“This is why you were supposed to be spotting,” Frank said, shaking his head as he strode toward the climbing wall.

“He’s coming down,” Collins pointed out, and my brother had indeed started to find the first foot- and handholds to take him back down to earth. “You don’t need to go up there.” But either Frank didn’t hear this or chose to ignore it, because he started climbing up the wall with a sense of purpose, heading toward Beckett. “Ruh-roh,” Collins said quietly, looking up at the climbing wall, his brow furrowed.

“It’s really okay,” I said. “My brother climbs stuff that high all the time.”

“I’m not worried about Bucket,” Collins said. “I’m worried about Porter.”

I looked up at the wall. Frank was almost halfway up now, moving his hands easily from one handhold to the next. He seemed fine to me. “Um, why?”

Collins took off his helmet, and wiped his hand across his forehead. His hair was dark from sweat and plastered down against his head, making him look like he had a bowl cut. It wasn’t the best look on him. “Porter’s got a fear of heights.”

I looked around, at all the many things in this establishment that would involve climbing or skating or jumping over high things. “Oh,” I said. I tried to think of some way to ask why he worked here without being insulting. “But . . .”

“I know,” Collins said, talking fast, sounding defensive. “My uncle said the same thing when I got Porter the job. But he’s great with all things paintball,” he said, and I nodded, wishing I’d never said anything. “And there’s nobody better at the bike course,” he went on. “Dude can straighten jumps like nobody’s business. Also, he’s the most competent one here, so that’s why he’s the one in charge of the bank deposits. I was terrible at that.” I nodded; I could easily believe this. “But heights?” Collins leaned a little closer to me and shook his head. “Not his strong suit.”

I looked up at Frank, who was now pretty high, almost at the level of Beckett. “Then why is he climbing?” I asked, feeling myself get a little panicky on Frank’s behalf.

“Because he’s Frank Porter,” Collins said, and I heard a note of  bitterness in his voice for the first time.  “Captain Responsible.”

I looked back at the wall, thinking that despite this, maybe things would be okay—when I saw Frank reach for the next handhold, glance down, and freeze, his arm still extended.

“Told you,” Collins said softly, not taking any pleasure in the statement.

Frank was now holding on to the wall with both hands, but he still wasn’t moving. “What happens now?” I asked, feeling like I was seeing something that I really shouldn’t be.

“Well, sometimes he pulls it together,” Collins said, his voice still quiet. “Otherwise, there’s a big ladder in the back.”

“Oh no,” I said, trying to look away but finding that it was impossible. It was clear to me that this was all because of Beckett—which meant, as far as Frank Porter was concerned, it was all because of me.

“I know,” Collins said, wincing.

Beckett had now reached the same level as Frank, and he said something to him that I couldn’t hear. Beckett kept on climbing down and I realized that he was now below Frank, who still hadn’t moved.

Doug from the front desk had come out to stare at the spectacle, his book abandoned on the counter. “Ladder?” he asked Collins, who nodded.

“I think so,” he said.

A second later, though, Beckett changed direction and climbed back up until he was level with Frank again. He said something to him, and Frank shook his head. But my brother stayed where he was, still talking to Frank. And after a long pause, Frank reached down for the handhold just below him. Beckett nodded, climbed down two handholds, and motioned for Frank to come down to where he was, pointing out the footholds. After another pause, Frank moved down to the next level again. It was painfully clear to me that my ten-year-old brother was talking the IndoorXtreme employee down the climbing wall, and I just hoped that it wasn’t as obvious to everyone else in the facility.

“Nice,” Collins said, as he watched the progress—slow, but incremental—on the wall. “Does your brother need a job?”

“Ha ha,” I said a little hollowly. I was watching with a tight feeling in my chest, and I didn’t really let out a full breath until Beckett jumped the last few feet to the ground and then looked up at Frank Porter, pointing out the remaining handholds for him and giving him an encouraging thumbs-up. Frank half stumbled down to the ground, and when he turned around, I could see that his face was almost as red as his helmet. Doug shrugged, then turned and trudged back to the register.

“Porter!” Collins yelled. “You complete moron. I thought I was going to have to get the ladder and pull you out like a damn cat!” The worried friend who had been there just moments before was gone, and I realized Collins had changed back into the guy I was used to from school, the one who was constantly pulling pranks and asking out the most popular girls in highly public ways that invariably backfired.

“Beckett,” I called, gesturing for him to come to me. My bother nodded, unclipped himself from his harness, and held up his hand for a high-five, which Frank listlessly returned. Now that he was safely on the ground, I could practically feel the embarrassment coming off Frank in waves.

Beckett reached me, and I grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt, not wanting to let him out of my sight, in case he decided to scale the half-pipe or something. “See you around,” I said to Collins, just out of habit, but without any expectation that this would be true.

“Yeah,” Collins said, and I could tell he was saying this the same way—just something you say, not something you mean. “Sure.” He headed toward Frank, who was still standing by the wall, and I watched him go for a moment before I looked down at my brother, who had the sense to at least pretend to look ashamed of himself.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to see the view from the top, and—”

“Let’s go,” I said, steering him toward the front counter, Beckett dragging his feet and talking fast, trying to stall.

“We don’t have to leave,” he said. “I just won’t go on the wall. I can still do the bike course, right? Em?”

I didn’t even respond to this as we reached the counter and Beckett pulled off his climbing shoes. I wasn’t happy about leaving, because it meant I probably wouldn’t get to Sloane’s list today. But I had a feeling that even if I didn’t take Beckett away, he might be asked to leave, making this even more embarrassing than it already was. I pushed Beckett’s climbing shoes across to Doug, who was back to reading his paperback. A Murder of Crows, the cover read, featuring a fierce-looking bird about to alight on a flaming sword. He stood and got Beckett’s sneakers without looking up from his book.

“But, Emily,” Beckett whined.

I just shook my head. And we walked out to my car in silence as I tried to steel myself for what I was going to have to do. I usually didn’t play the Big Sister card—Beckett and I got along fine, mostly because there were seven years between us, we’d never been competing for the same things, and I usually felt more like his babysitter than his sibling. But this was one of the instances where I knew I had to do it, since my parents certainly weren’t going to step up, not right when they’d begun a play. I put the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it yet as I faced my brother, who was sitting cross-legged on the seat, glaring down at his hands. “Beck, you can’t do stuff like that,” I said. I suddenly wondered if it would have been better if Beckett had gotten hurt at some point during the years he’d been climbing, so he’d have a healthy degree of fear, or at least some understanding of the consequences. “You shouldn’t be taking risks like that. I don’t care what you climb at home. There were other people around. You could have been hurt, or you could have hurt them. It’s called being reckless.”

I started the car and headed home, Beckett not speaking, still looking down. I knew he was mad at me and figured he would probably sulk the rest of the drive, so I was surprised when he spoke up as I turned onto our street.

“But I wasn’t,” Beckett said. I wasn’t sure what he meant, and it must have been clear, because he went on, “I wasn’t hurt. Nobody else was, either. And I got to see a really great view. So what’s that called?”

I just shook my head, knowing somehow that there was a flaw in his logic, but not exactly sure how to articulate what it was. “Just . . .”

“I know, I know, be more careful,” he said as I pulled in to the driveway. He contradicted this immediately, though, unbuckling his seat belt and jumping out before I’d even put the car in park. “I’m going to Annabel’s. See you later,” he yelled as he slammed the door and took off running behind our house. Annabel lived at the other end of the block, and she and Beckett had spent most of last summer finding shortcuts between the two houses that they guarded closely and refused to disclose.

I watched him go, then picked up my phone. I had pressed the button to call Sloane automatically, when I realized what I was doing. I hung up—but not before I’d heard the phone was still going directly to her voice mail, the one that I’d heard a thousand times, the one that she’d recorded with me next to her as we walked down the street. Toward the end, you could hear me laughing. I set the phone down on the passenger seat, out of easy reach. But it always felt like nothing had really happened until I’d talked to Sloane about it. I was used to recapping my experiences to her, and then going through them, moment by moment. And if she’d been here, or on the other end of the phone, I could have told her how bizarre it was that Frank Porter was working at IndoorXtreme, about Collins, and what I’d heard about their evening plans—

I suddenly understood something and glanced up at my bedroom window, picturing the list in my drawer. I got now what Sloane meant by number twelve. It wasn’t just a bizarre fruit-gathering mission. She wanted me to go to the Orchard.

I waited until ten before I left. By this point, Beckett was in bed and my parents had retreated to their study at the top of the house. All their patterns from a few years ago were coming back, and this was how they had worked then: they would write all day in the dining room, usually forgetting about dinner, and then head upstairs, where they would go over that day’s pages and plan out the next day.

When I was thirteen, the last time this had happened, it wasn’t like I’d had much of a social life, or anywhere at all to go at night, so I’d never explored the possibilities their writing afforded. But now, things were different. During the school year, I had a pretty strict midnight curfew that Sloane—who had no curfew whatsoever—had figured all kinds of techniques for getting around. Now that my parents were otherwise occupied, I had a feeling my curfew had become more theoretical than something that would be enforced. But just in case, I scrawled a note and left it up against the TV in the kitchen, so if they found me gone, they wouldn’t call the police.

As I’d gotten ready in my room—this basically just meant putting on jeans instead of shorts, grabbing a sweatshirt, and adding a swipe of lip gloss—I’d stared down at the list. While I still didn’t understand a few of the others, I really didn’t get this one. It didn’t seem like it was going to be a challenge, since it wasn’t like I’d never been to the Orchard before. We’d gone there one afternoon a week before I went upstate and Sloane disappeared. We’d had milkshakes—vanilla for me, coffee for her—and lain out on the picnic tables for hours in the sun, just talking. We’d been a number of times this past spring, usually at night, but occasionally during the day, when Sloane wanted a place where we could hang out in peace, working on our tans or just walking up and down the rows of trees, talking about anything that came to our minds.

I kept the Volvo’s lights off until I reached the street, even though the curtains in my parents’ study were drawn. And once I’d made it down the street without my cell lighting up with calls and texts asking me where I thought I was going, I figured that I was in the clear.

I turned my lights on and my music up, a Luke Bryan album I’d downloaded last month but not listened to until now, and headed in the direction of the Orchard. I was halfway through the album when I turned off the main road and on to the side street that would lead me there. Out here, the houses got farther and farther apart until there was nothing but empty land and, tucked away on an almost-hidden drive, the Orchard. I slowed as I got closer. The entrance was always, by design I was sure, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. I was contemplating turning around and backtracking when I saw the fading sign and the narrow gravel driveway. I put on my blinker, even though I hadn’t seen any other cars on the road, and turned in, pausing for a moment to look at the sign.

It was almost lost in the overgrown bushes on the side of the road, and so faded with weather and time that whole parts of it could barely be seen. Without meaning to, I glanced down at the underside of my wrist before looking away and driving on.

MARCH

Three months earlier

“It’s just up here,” Sloane said as she turned around in the car to face me, pointing. “See the driveway?”

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the Orchard,” Sam said from the driver’s seat, and I heard the capital letter in his tone.

“No, remember?” Sloane asked, and I could hear a laugh tucked somewhere in the edges of her words. “Because I’d never been before we came here last month.”

“That doesn’t mean Emily couldn’t have gone on her own,” Sam said, shaking his head. Sloane turned her head back to look at me again and we exchanged the tiniest of smiles—probably not even perceptible to anyone but us. I didn’t want to contradict Sam, or argue with him, but of course I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been here with Sloane, and we both knew it.

She raised her eyebrows at me with a bigger smile, and I understood her meaning perfectly—she was asking something like You’re having fun, right? Isn’t this great? Are you okay?

I smiled back at her, a real smile and not an I need a rescue smile. The last thing I wanted was to upset the evening that she’d worked so hard to arrange. Her smile widened, and she turned back to Sam, moving as close to him as her seatbelt would let her, reaching over and running her hand through his curly hair.

Gideon and I were sitting on opposite ends of the backseat, in contrast to the snuggling that was going on in the front. I was half on the seat and half pressed against the door handle, which probably wasn’t really necessary, as we were riding in an enormous SUV and it looked like there was probably room for several people in the space between us. I looked across the expanse of the dark backseat at Gideon, who I had met just a few hours before.

Sloane had been talking up Gideon Baker for weeks, ever since she and Sam had become whatever they were now. “We don’t need a label,” Sloane had said, when I’d tentatively asked what, exactly, they were doing. She’d smiled at me and straightened her vintage cardigan. “You know I hate those.” But when whatever they were doing had become more serious, suddenly I had started hearing a lot about Gideon, Sam’s best friend, who was also single. And wouldn’t it be so great if . . . ?

That sentence had always trailed off, never really stating what exactly she was asking, but always with a hopeful question mark at the end. Somewhere along the line, I’d agreed that it would be so great, which was how I now found myself wearing more makeup than usual, sharing a backseat with Gideon, going to someplace called the Orchard.

Gideon took up a lot of space in the car—he was tall, with broad shoulders and big hands and feet, and when we’d been sitting across from each other in the diner booth an hour before, and Sloane had been stealing fries off Sam’s plate, I’d asked him if he played any sports. He looked like an athlete—I could practically see him featured on the Stanwich Academy website, a lacrosse stick slung over one shoulder. But he’d just taken a bite of his burger as I asked this. He’d chewed, swallowed, taken a sip of Coke, wiped his mouth, then said, “No.” And that had pretty much been the extent of our conversation so far.

“What is this?” Sam asked, letting out a sigh as he slammed on the brakes. I leaned forward and saw that we were now behind a long line of cars, and that there was a bottleneck around the entrance to a gravel driveway.

“It just means that this is clearly the place to be,” Sloane said, and I could hear in her voice how happy she was. Happy we were going there, happy to be with Sam, happy that I was there in the back, with a boy of my own, not a third wheel.

We edged closer to the turnoff, Sam sighing loudly and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. I glanced across the car at Gideon again, trying to think of something to say, when I saw the sign. It was out his window, and I edged a little away from my door handle, trying to get a better look. It was dark out, but the SUV’s headlights—which were sci-fi bright, and also clearly made out of something expensive and fancy, unlike my Volvo’s regular old lights—were right on it, illuminating it.

“Do you guys see that?” I asked, pointing at the sign, aware as I did so that my voice felt a little scratchy—it was the first thing I’d said during the car ride. Everyone turned to look, but Sam just shrugged.

“It’s the sign from when this used to be an actual orchard,” he said. “It’s always been there.”

I moved over a little farther into the middle, trying to get a closer look. It was mostly faded, but you could tell that it had been brightly painted at some point. Kilmer’s Orchards! it read in stylized script. Apples/Peaches/Cherries. Berries in Season! Pies! Underneath this, there was a cartoon-style drawing of two cherries, attached at the stem. They had faces and were smiling big, looking up like they were reading the message at the top. I looked at all the exclamation points, now faded and unnecessary, selling a product that no longer existed. You could also tell the sign had been hand-painted, and not by a professional—the cherries were admittedly a bit lopsided—which somehow made things worse.

“What?” Sloane asked. I glanced over at her, and saw she was looking at me, and that she could tell something was wrong.

“Just . . . that sign,” I said, hearing how silly it sounded. It was something I would have said easily if it were just Sloane and myself, but the presence of the guys in the car changed this. “I don’t know,” I said, forcing a laugh and moving back to my side of the seat. “It just . . . seemed really sad, I guess.”

Sloane had started to reply when Sam laughed and drove on, talking over her. “It’s just a sign, Emily.”

“I know,” I said, trying to keep my voice light as I looked out my own window. “Never mind.”

Sam leaned over and said something I couldn’t hear to Sloane, and I watched the trees passing slowly in the darkness. I was wishing I’d never said anything at all when I felt something touch my arm.

I jumped, and looked over to see Gideon, his seat belt unbuckled, suddenly sitting close to me, right in the center seat. He gave me a half smile, then picked up my arm and brought it a little nearer to him.

He had literally kept his distance from me all night—so why was he holding my arm? I took a breath to say something when he pulled a thin Sharpie from his pocket. He nodded down at my arm, and then held up the marker, like he was asking if it was okay.

I nodded, mostly just because I was so thrown. He uncapped the marker, then started drawing on the inside of my wrist. The marker strokes felt feathery and light against my skin, almost tickling me but not quite. I tried to lean over to see what Gideon was drawing, but he pulled my arm a little closer to him and turned it slightly, carefully toward him and away from me. I was still trying to get my head around the fact that this was happening, and I was suddenly glad that Sloane and Sam were oblivious in the front seat, because I knew how strange this must look.

Gideon’s head was bent over my arm as he worked, and I couldn’t help but notice the texture of his dark hair, so short it was almost a buzz cut, and how big his hands were, how it seemed like, if he’d wanted to, he could totally encircle my wrist with two fingers. The car lurched over a bump, and my arm flew up, almost smacking him in the face. He looked over at me and I gave him a tiny, apologetic smile. He waited a moment, steadying my arm, holding it with both hands—maybe to make sure there were no more bumps—and then started working again, drawing faster than before. He straightened up and capped his Sharpie just as Sam parked the car.

I pulled my hand back to see what he’d done and saw, to my surprise, that he’d drawn the cherries from the sign. He was clearly a much more talented artist than the sign painter, but he’d managed to capture them perfectly in their slightly irregular glory. One of the cherries was saying something, and I lifted my wrist closer to my face to see what it was.

Don’t worry, Emily! We’re not sad!

I smiled at that, running my fingers over the words, their neat block print. I looked up at Gideon, who was still sitting close to me. “Thank you,” I said.

Sam cut the engine, and the car’s interior lights flared on. I could see Gideon much more clearly now as he ducked his head like he was embarrassed and slid over to his side of the car. But before the lights started to dim again, I saw him smile back at me.

The Orchard looked, from my parking spot, about the same as it had the last time I’d been there. It was a huge open space, covered with grass that was always flattened by cars driving and people walking over it. People tended to park haphazardly and then congregate by the picnic tables that ringed the space, left over from the Orchard’s previous incarnation. There were still some ladders to be found leaning up against the trees, but most of them had at least a rung or two broken, and only the bravest—or drunkest—people ventured up them. More than once, I’d seen someone go crashing to the ground when a rung had collapsed under their feet. Sometimes people were organized enough to get a keg, but mostly they brought their own beverages with them, and there was usually some enterprising person selling not-quite-cold cans of beer, for a heavy markup, from a cooler in the back of their car.

It looked like I was still on the early side—you knew a night was really getting going when there wasn’t any room to park on the grass and people ended up parking on the road that led to the turnoff. Orchard etiquette dictated you parked, at minimum, half a mile up the road so as not to attract cops’ attention.

An open convertible, stuffed with people, screeched into the spot next to me and parked at an angle. I didn’t recognize anyone, but before I could look away, a few of them glanced at me as they got out of the car. I turned away quickly, and in that moment, I suddenly realized what I had done. I had been so focused on following Sloane’s list that it was just now hitting me that I had shown up to the town party spot, all by myself. The only people I’d ever seen alone at the Orchard were creepy guys from Stanwich College, trying to pick up high school girls.

The Volvo’s engine started to whine and I reached forward to turn it off, then sat back against my seat. Reading the list and making the plan for tonight, it had seemed like Sloane was here with me. But this was the reality. I was alone at the Orchard, and had no idea what I was supposed to do next. I could hear, across the clearing, the low bass of music thumping and occasional shouts or laughter. I couldn’t make out anyone clearly, but I could see that there were a lot of people there, groups of friends in clusters. Was I supposed to just walk in there by myself?

A car swung in to park on the other side of me, and I picked up my phone, pretending to be absorbed in it, until I realized that nobody had left the car—and, in fact, the couple inside had started furiously making out in the front seat.

It was enough to get me out of the car, slamming my door and locking it shut. I looked ahead of me, to the Orchard. For just a second, I tried to rationalize that maybe I could just go home now—after all, I’d shown up here, and Sloane hadn’t provided any other instructions. But even as I was thinking it, I knew that wasn’t what she meant. And if I was going to do this, I needed to do it right. I took a big breath and made myself put one foot in front of the other as I walked to the clearing, wondering what it was that I normally did with my hands.

I was just not used to having to do things like this on my own. It had been me and Sloane, joined at the hip for the last two years, and she was so good at this kind of stuff—utterly fearless about walking into places she hadn’t been before, or talking to people she didn’t know—that any skill I might once have had in that department had withered away, since I knew Sloane would lead the way. And before she had moved to town, I had been part of a group of other freshman girls, and we had basically navigated the first year of high school by going everywhere in a pack.

I realized, with my heart sinking as I got closer to the clearing, that I had to deal with the fact that I had nowhere to go. There were about forty people here, and I recognized about a third of them—mostly people from Stanwich High, but a couple of Stanwich Academy people who were familiar from parties I’d been to with Gideon, when we’d gone with Sloane and Sam. Different groups had staked out the picnic tables, with people sitting on the tables and the benches, everyone talking and laughing and clearly here with their friends. Nobody else was wandering around alone.

I could see, a little farther into the rows of trees, various couples either making out or arguing, and beyond them, a small group smoking. There was a guy at the edge of the picnic tables with a keg and a stack of red Solo cups, an open cooler at his feet, and a steady drift of people walking in his direction. I thought about going over there, just to have something to do, but then what would I do afterward? I was sure everyone was looking at me; I could practically feel it. Everyone noticing that I was standing alone, out of place and friendless. Half the people there probably thought I was a narc.

I could tell that I was only a few minutes away from crying—or panicking—and to stave off this reaction, I stuffed my hands into my back pockets and tried to look around with a purpose, like maybe I was just trying to locate the friend that I was meeting, the people who were waiting for me. As I looked around, I saw Collins, leaning on a ladder in what I’m sure he thought was a suave pose, talking to Callie Dwyer, who was one of the most gorgeous and popular girls in school—someone who couldn’t be further out of his league. Callie looked bored and a little discomfited, and it didn’t seem like Collins had noticed yet that she was slowly edging away from him.

At the picnic table closest to him was Frank Porter, sitting with a group that I recognized he spent time with at school, but none of whom I knew particularly well—they were the super-focused high achievers. I looked away quickly, before either of them saw me staring, suddenly worried that they’d think I’d come here to tag along with them because I’d overheard their plans at IndoorXtreme.

I looked down at my feet, at my chipped polish, like it was somehow fascinating, wondering how long I had to stay here before I could consider this one done and go back home again.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped, startled, then turned around to see Gideon standing in front of me.

“Oh,” I said, surprised to see him—especially since I’d been thinking about him earlier. I suddenly hoped that this wasn’t clear in my expression. I realized after a second that this had not been the most polite reaction, and quickly added, “I mean, hi. How are you?”

“Okay,” Gideon said, giving me a half smile. He looked at me for a long moment before he spoke again. “It’s good to see you, Emily.”

“You too,” I said automatically, then wondered a second later if it really was. While I was happy to have someone to talk to and I was no longer the most pathetic person at the Orchard, I didn’t particularly want to talk to Gideon, especially after the way we’d left things.

Gideon looked the same as he had the last time I’d seen him, the night in May when everything had crashed and burned. I’d gotten used to his tallness when we were hanging out—or whatever it was we’d been doing—every weekend, but it had been long enough since I’d seen him that it struck me again. His blue eyes were still inscrutable, and his dark hair looked freshly cut. I was surprised and a little impressed he’d come over to me. I knew that if I’d seen him here, I wouldn’t have done the same thing. But maybe that’s how pitiful I’d looked standing here on my own—he’d felt he needed to come and rescue me. “So,” I said, after a long pause when it became clear Gideon wasn’t going to say anything. “How have you been?”

“Well,” he said, then took another pause. Gideon had always skipped the small talk with me, always thought about his answers and always wanted real answers in return. He had never given the flip, easy responses like everyone else. I thought now that we were no longer the something we’d once been, he’d stop this and go back to the superficial. But apparently not. “I’m all right,” he finally said. He turned his head slightly to the right, and nodded behind him. “Sam wanted to come out tonight, so . . .”

I lost whatever else Gideon was saying as I followed his nod and saw Sam. Just the sight of him was enough to make my stomach drop. He was leaning against a picnic table, and there was a girl sitting on top of it, talking to him, smiling wide and gesturing big, telling him some story while Sam nodded occasionally, one eyebrow raised. Why hadn’t I put this together as soon as I’d seen Gideon? He and Sam went places together, especially places like the Orchard. Before I could look away, Sam’s gaze drifted from the girl and landed on me. We just stared at each other for a moment, my heart thudding, before I looked away, down at the ground.

I could still sense his eyes on me, and I felt myself get closer to panic, wondering if he was going to come over, if I was going to have to talk to him. But when I glanced back, I saw that he was looking away, clearly barely listening to the girl at his side. And I could feel myself relax a little. Of course he wasn’t going to come over here. He had always been a coward.

“Emily?” I made myself focus back up at Gideon, who was looking at me with his eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard him ask.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Gideon said, with a smile that disappeared immediately. He took a breath, and I realized he looked nervous, that he was swallowing hard. “Emily. I—”

“Sorry,” I said, quickly, needing to cut off whatever he was about to say. I wasn’t even sure what it was, only that he would probably want some explanation for what had happened, and I much preferred to keep that can of worms closed. “I just . . . I have to go,” I said, starting to edge away from him. “I actually—there’s someone I need to talk to.”

Gideon just looked at me in silence, and I could feel a long-dormant frustration bubbling up to the surface. Half my conversations with Gideon seemed to consist of these long, charged pauses, and after a while I’d just found it exhausting—like being a character inside a Pinter play. Like there were all these meanings that I was supposed to understand in his silences, but never quite did. “Okay,” he said slowly.

“Bye,” I said, then I turned and walked away, toward the guy with the keg, simply because I couldn’t think of any other options. I realized only after it was going to be too late to change direction—without it being super obvious—that I was going to pass Sam. I tried to keep my eyes fixed in front of me, but couldn’t help glancing in his direction just as I passed. The girl next to him was still talking, her gestures bigger than ever, while he just looked on, impassive. It was something that had always really bothered me about him: he rarely laughed at anything, making you feel like you were somehow obligated to entertain him. And even though I didn’t want it to, when you did get him to laugh, it somehow felt like an achievement. I pointedly looked away before our eyes could meet again, keeping my head down until I got to the keg.

The guy selling the beer was perched on one of the more rickety-looking picnic tables with a girl next to him, sitting close. I didn’t recognize either of them—I was pretty sure they went to Hartfield.

I waited for a moment, until it became clear that he was not paying attention, then cleared my throat and said, “Um, beer? Please?”

“Five bucks,” the guy said, not looking away from the girl, even when I pulled a crumpled bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. He pointed to the remaining red cups, and then toward the keg.

“Thanks,” I said, taking a cup and walking toward the keg while the girl burst out laughing. Even though I knew it wasn’t about me, I still felt my heart pound as I pressed the spigot. The keg was nearly tapped, and I’d never been great at working them to begin with, so I mostly got a cup of foam. It didn’t really matter to me, though, since I was basically just using it as a prop. I took a tiny sip, wincing at the warm, metallic taste, wondering how much longer I had to stay.

An hour later, I had solved the problem of looking like a total loser hanging out alone by removing myself from public view. I had found a spot in the rows of trees, the ones away from the picnic tables that nobody would be climbing as a dare, and had sat down, my back against one of them, trying not to cry. I had known, of course, that Sloane wasn’t here anymore. But I hadn’t quite understood what that meant until tonight. As I’d walked across the Orchard with my beer, I’d seen people I knew from school, and occasionally they would give me half a nod, but some people’s eyes slid right over me, as though without Sloane by my side, I’d become invisible. I’d pretended like I had somewhere to go, biting my lip hard as I walked into the trees and then sat down.

The reality of life without Sloane was, it turned out, much worse than I’d imagined. The reality was me, sitting by a tree with a prop cup of beer, totally alone, while other people laughed with their friends. I poured the beer out onto the tree’s roots and pushed myself to my feet. I was going home. I had surely spent enough time at the Orchard to satisfy Sloane’s list, though I had no idea what it might have accomplished beyond making me feel the loss of her even more sharply.

I stepped out of the trees and back onto the grass, and noticed a moment too late that I had basically fallen into step with two people also heading the same direction.  After a second, I saw that they were Frank and Collins, and I felt my heart sink.

“Hey!” Collins said, smiling big at me. He was wearing a rose-colored polo shirt that fit him a little too tightly and long khaki cargo shorts. “Where’d you come from, Emma?”

“Lee,” Frank corrected.

“Lee?” Collins asked, squinting at me, tilting his head to the side. “No, I don’t think that’s right.”

“Emily,” Frank explained, his voice patient. “We went through this like four hours ago at work.” He looked over at me and gave me a half smile. “Hi, by the way.”

“Hey,” I murmured. I figured they were probably heading to the keg, and I looked longingly toward the cars—I was so close to just being alone, and not having to have any of these strained conversations any longer. “See you guys,” I said, turning off toward the parking lot, counting down the seconds until this would be over.

“We’re, um, actually,” Frank said, nodding ahead, and I realized they were heading to their cars as well, in the same direction as me—and I had just made this more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

“Oh, right,” I said quickly.  “Right. Cool.” There really didn’t seem to be much to say to that, and we walked along silently, all in a row, like we were a gang in a movie musical. “See you guys,” I said, as soon as my car came into view, and then realized a second later that I’d just repeated myself. But I didn’t really care, at this point. I just wanted to go home.

“Laters, Emma-lee,” Collins said, emphasizing the last syllable of my name. He stopped in front of a maroon minivan and pointed his clicker at it. A moment later, the side door slid open with a jerking movement, finally jolting to a stop. He glanced proudly at the open door and gave me a faux-modest smile. “Not bad, huh?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that—or even why he’d opened that door, not the driver’s door—but before I had to think of something, Collins held out his hand to Frank for a fist-bump, gave me a wink, climbed in through the side door, and maneuvered his way into the front seat. Then he peeled out of the Orchard, fast, his door sliding shut as he pulled away.

I walked to the Volvo and unlocked it as I realized Frank was getting into a blue pickup truck a few cars down from me. He gave me a nod, and I gave him a half smile before I ducked into my car and started the engine. I turned on my lights, starting to breathe a little easier now that this whole strange, stressful evening was coming to a close. I didn’t even wait for Frank to leave first, but stepped on the gas, just wanting to get home. I had almost made it to the top of the road, by the sign, when my car started to slow down. I pressed harder on the gas, but the car didn’t speed up, instead just rolling a few more feet and then sputtering to a stop. I shifted the car into park and cut the engine, then waited a few seconds and tried to start the car again. But the car didn’t start—the engine revved once, then died. Was it the battery? I looked in a panic at the dashboard, like this might tell me something, and my eyes landed on the gas gauge, still right at a half tank, and I realized what had happened. I was out of gas.

I closed my eyes for a long moment, as though maybe I would wake up to find this had all been a terrible dream. But no. I opened them, saw headlights approaching behind me, and realized that things were only going to get worse.

It was Frank’s truck. I tried to start the car once again, like maybe there was a special secret reserve tank that would be activated, but of course, nothing happened. I could hear Frank’s engine rumbling behind me, and I cranked down my window and stuck my hand out, motioning for him to go around. It was narrow here at the top of the road, but there was enough room to get out if you drove on the grass. And he was in a truck, so it wasn’t like it would be a problem for him or anything. When Frank didn’t move, I motioned him around again, wishing he would just leave so I could figure out what to do here. But a second later, his hazards switched on, flashing red every few seconds, and Frank got out of the driver’s side and headed toward my car.

I looked away and bit my lip hard, feeling like I was about five seconds from bursting into tears. All I wanted to do was to go home. Why was that so impossible? And why was Frank Porter insisting on witnessing my humiliation? Suddenly, I was mad—furious—at Sloane. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be dealing with any of this. I was only here because she’d told me to go here. And if she’d hadn’t left, if she’d been where she was supposed to be, none of this would be happening.

“Hey.” I looked over and saw that Frank was leaning down to speak to me through my open window, his face closer to mine than I’d been expecting. I drew back slightly, clutching my keys in a hand that I realized was shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said, trying to make myself smile at him, wishing more than anything that he would just leave me alone. Frank looked at me for a moment, and I wondered if I had insulted him by trying to pretend that things were fine when they so clearly were not. I couldn’t help but wish that it had been anyone else behind me. Of course Frank Porter was going to come over and make sure I was okay, while I knew most people would have just gone around me without a second thought. “I mean,” I added after a moment in which Frank hadn’t moved, “I’m out of gas. But it’s okay. I can handle it.”

“Really?” A car behind Frank’s honked its horn, loud, and Frank made the same go around motion that I’d given to him. The car screeched around us, followed by two others, and I felt myself start to get panicky, as I realized that I was completely blocking people’s way out. Frank turned back to me. “Why don’t I drive you to get some gas?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said automatically. “I’ll be fine.” A second later, though, I realized I hadn’t thought through what I was going to do here. Call my parents, wake them up, and tell them to come get me because I was stranded at a party they didn’t know I had gone to? It was not a good option. I had a feeling they’d be more upset about being woken up—and having a subpar workday tomorrow—than about the party itself. Could I call a tow truck? But I didn’t know how much that would be, or if there was enough money in the conch to cover it.

Two more cars zoomed around us, one driver yelling something as he went that was lost in the roar of his engine. One of them veered close to the car, and Frank took a step closer to the window. “Come on,” he said, and our heads were almost level now as he rested his hand on the open window frame. “There’s a place not too far up the road. It’ll take no time.”

I looked ahead to the dashboard, to the useless gauge, and considered my options. Going with Frank Porter to get gas was, unbelievably, the best of the lot. Another car zoomed around us, the driver leaning on his horn as he went. “Emily?” Frank prompted.

“Yes,” I said quickly, realizing that Frank was being incredibly nice in offering this, and probably didn’t have all night to stand around while I dithered. I took a long breath and then let it out. “Let’s go.”

We drove in silence up the road together. Frank and I had pushed the Volvo to the side of the drive, almost right up against the sign with the cherries. Then he’d opened the passenger side door for me, and I’d gotten in, not remembering to say thank you until he’d closed it and was walking around to the driver’s side. As I sat in the truck, buckling my seat belt as the lights dimmed, I realized I was in a boy’s car. Not that I’d ever spent much time picturing the inside of Frank Porter’s vehicle, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. It wasn’t spotlessly clean, maybe with some SAT prep books neatly stacked in the backseat. There was stuff everywhere. On the floor in front of me there was a digital camera, a thick biography on John Lennon, and a baseball cap with a robot where the team name normally was. In the backseat, I could see a pair of sneakers and an iPod and a bag from the art supply store on Stanwich Avenue. In the front cupholder, there was a fountain soda cup, the straw bent, and in the back one, a tiny origami frog. I was trying to process all of this, but it pretty much came down to a revelation that hit me like a punch to the stomach—Frank Porter was an actual person and, despite his ubiquitous presence on campus, one I knew nothing about. And that made the fact that we were going to do this all that much stranger.

Frank pulled open the driver’s door and got in, turned off the hazards, and started the engine. The stereo came to life, but not playing music, just the sound of people laughing and clapping before Frank reached over, fast, and hit the button to turn it off. He didn’t comment on this, and so I didn’t either as we pulled out onto the dark, quiet road. Frank turned right, the opposite direction of going back to town. I actually had no idea where we were heading now, and was very grateful that he seemed to know where the nearest gas station was.

Being so far out from the lights of town—and with no houses around—it was pitch-black, the truck’s headlights bright against the darkness and the stars above taking over the sky, seemingly twice as many of them as I saw at home. I glanced at his profile, lit up by the dashboard lights, then out the window again, trying to get my head around what was happening. I was alone with Frank Porter, in the dark, in a confined space.

The truth was, I really just wasn’t used to being by myself with guys. Even with Gideon, when we were alone together, it was usually at a larger party, or with Sam and Sloane. I couldn’t remember when—if ever—it had just been me and a guy, alone in a car, on a dark road.

“So did you have fun tonight?” Frank asked, looking over at me after we’d been driving in silence for several minutes, me pulling my feet up to avoid stepping on John Lennon. I didn’t respond right away, and he added, “Until the car troubles, I mean?”

“Oh,” I said. I looked down and saw that the truck was a stick shift, and that Frank was driving it with ease, moving between the gears without even looking down. “Um, it was okay,” I said, feeling like the last thing Frank Porter needed was a recap of how terrible my night had been. He nodded and looked out at the road, and I realized after a moment too long that it was now my turn to ask him a question. If it had been Sloane in the car and not me, she and Frank would have been talking and laughing like old friends, and would have established their own inside jokes by the time they’d reached the gas station. And if it had been the three of us, I would have been able to sit quietly, happily, joining in with the laughter, feeling part of it, comfortable enough to jump in with a comment or an aside, but knowing the weight of the interaction wasn’t on me. “Did you?” I finally asked. “Have fun, I mean? Tonight?” Managing to mangle this simple question, I looked out the window, rolling my eyes at myself.

There was a small pause, and Frank cleared his throat before responding. “Yeah, sure. I mean, it was fine.” I nodded, and looked back out the window, thinking this was the end of our attempt at a conversation. But a second later, he added, “I don’t usually go there. It’s not really our scene. Mine and Lissa’s,” he clarified after a tiny pause, as though I didn’t know what we he was a part of. I nodded again, and realized that, in fact, I’d never seen him at the Orchard before. “But Collins asked me to come along as his wingman, so . . .” He shrugged.

“How, um,” I said after another too-long pause, “how did that go?” I had a feeling I knew, since the girl Collins had been hitting on hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it.

“The same way it always does,” Frank said, shaking his head.

I turned to look out the window again, feeling relieved, like we had made enough small talk, and now Frank Porter wouldn’t feel obligated to try and carry on a conversation with me. He switched on his brights, and the outside world was much clearer, showing us things that had been hidden in the shadows before—including a possum that was dashing across the road, right into the path of the truck.

Frank slammed on the brakes. I was jolted forward into my seat belt, and felt something slide out from under my seat and hit me on the ankle. Thankfully, the possum didn’t freak out and play dead in the middle of the road, but just kept running, disappearing a second later into the trees on the other side. “Sorry about that,” he said, glancing over at me as he downshifted and started to drive again, more slowly this time. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I said. I reached down and picked up what had slid out from under the seat. It was a CD case, the cover showing a mournful-looking guy on a curb in the rain, holding a microphone. Something about the picture made me think it was a few years old. Curtis at the Commodore, it read in stylized cursive. Frank looked over at me, and I quickly set the CD down on the seat next to me, hoping he didn’t think I was pawing through his stuff.  “Sorry,” I said quickly.  “This was just under the seat, and when you stopped—”

“Right,” Frank said, reaching over for it and dropping it behind his own seat. “Thanks.” He looked straight out at the road, and I wondered if I’d looked at something I shouldn’t have. But since I had no idea how to apologize for that, I didn’t even try. Before the silence could get uncomfortable, I saw the bright neon lights of the gas station up ahead. Route 1 Fuel, the sign read. It probably would have stood out in the daylight as well, since there was nothing around it, like it had popped up from the ground. Especially after the darkness of a road without streetlights, it seemed to appear almost like a mirage. But it was a mirage I was very happy to see at the moment. It was small, just four pumps and a mini-mart that looked very mini indeed. I could see a yawning employee behind the counter, and a flickering neon sign in the window that read Snacks Drinks Candy.

“I’m really—,” I started, then stopped and tried again. “I mean, I’m just glad that you knew about this place. All the way out here.”

Frank nodded as he swung up to one of the fuel pumps, pointing at the trees behind the very mini mini-mart. “See those?” he asked. “That’s the habitat of the gray tree frog. There were plans last year to expand the convenience store, add a car wash. Lissa and I spearheaded the petition that shut it down.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. This was impressive, and while I was happy for the gray tree frog, I also couldn’t help but wish that we had gone to a gas station where someone wouldn’t have a grudge against Frank—and by association, me. “Well, I’ll just be a second,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and opening the door.

“I’ll come in,” Frank said, unbuckling his own seat belt, apparently not worried that management would kick us out before we could get gas. I didn’t feel like I could say no, though, so I just headed up to the mini-mart, Frank pulling open the door and holding it for me before I could even reach for it. “Thanks,” I muttered. I walked up to the counter, hoping that in a place this small, they would sell something I could put gas in. “Um, hi,” I said, and the guy behind the counter straightened up from where he’d been leaning over a folded section of the paper, a pencil in his hand. It looked like he’d been doing the word search, a few words already circled.

“Hey,” he said, as Frank came to stand next to me. Frank leaned forward, turning his head to the side, and I realized he was trying to look at the word search. “What do you need?”

“Do you have something I can put gas in?” I asked, looking around the store, but only seeing the normal mini-mart stuff—bags of chips, sodas in refrigerated glass cases, candy and magazines.

He nodded and pointed toward the back of the store. “Against the wall.”

“Thanks,” I said, hurrying back there, not wanting to take up any more of Frank Porter’s time than I already had. But I wasn’t really sure Frank minded all that much, because I saw him lean forward, looking at the newspaper.

“You doing the word search?” I heard Frank ask as I reached the back of the store. I found the very small section that seemed to deal with car maintenance stuff—motor oil and funnels and tire pressure readers. I found a giant plastic container with a nozzle attached, but I really didn’t think I’d need that much, plus I wasn’t sure I could afford it, especially considering I’d also have to buy the gas to put inside it. After I’d overpaid for beer I hadn’t drunk, I only had twenty dollars on me. I had an emergency credit card, but it was linked to my parents’ card, and I really didn’t think I wanted them to see that I’d been buying gas in the middle of nowhere at one a.m.

I returned to the counter with a container about a third of the size of the giant one to find Frank and the guy both leaning over the counter, the newspaper between them.

“Renaissance,” Frank said, tapping his finger on the newspaper, and I somehow wasn’t surprised at all that Frank Porter was now doing the word search with the mini-mart employee. The guy leaned closer, then nodded and circled the word.

“Backward,” the guy said, shaking his head. “They always try and get you that way.”

“Is that it?” Frank asked, looking down at the paper. “Any left?”

The guy must have noticed me then, as he straightened up and reached for the container, scanning it and giving it back to me. “And the rest on pump four?” I asked, handing him my twenty.

“Nicely done,” Frank said. He nodded down at the search, which was now just a collection of pencil circles, the list of words crossed out, and the few lone letters that didn’t fit in anywhere. “Emily, check it out.”

“Oh,” I said, not really sure what to say about this, since I’d never before been in the position to need to compliment someone’s word search. What was I supposed to say? That it looked really thorough?

But before I needed to decide this, Frank was already moving on, plucking my receipt from the counter and starting to fold it absentmindedly. “You ever do Sudoku?” he asked.

“Nah,” the guy said, tucking the pencil behind his ear. “Not my scene.”

“You have to try it,” Frank enthused as I turned to leave, suddenly feeling like I was in the way. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s addictive. Oh, man. You have no idea.”

I heard the guy laugh before the door closed, and I walked over to the pump. I tried to concentrate on fitting the nozzle into the container, and then not spilling the gas everywhere as it started to fill up, but really I was trying not to think about how acutely aware I was that there were two types of people—the type who could talk to anyone and make friends with them, and the type who spent parties hiding and sitting against trees.

“Hey.” I looked up and saw Frank coming to stand next to me. “You okay? I was going to help.”

“I think I have it,” I said. The numbers had started to slow down, and when they stopped, I put the nozzle away, firmly closed the container, and then bent down to lift it—but it didn’t budge.

“Let me get that,” Frank said, bending down as well to grab one side of it. We hoisted it up together, and only then did it occur to me that I could have filled up the container in the truck bed, and made things easier for us. It was just one more thing that had gone wrong tonight, and I added it to the list. “James said we should keep it in the back,” he said as we placed the container into the truck bed. “And even after it’s empty, you should keep the container in your trunk unless you want your car to smell like a filling station.”

“James?” I asked as I walked around the back to the passenger side. I hadn’t noticed a name tag, but maybe Frank had, or maybe they’d just bonded while doing the word search.

“Yeah,” Frank said, nodding toward the guy inside the store, who waved at us. “Nice guy. I think he’s going to give Sudoku a try.”

We got into the truck, and Frank started the engine and dropped a piece of paper into the cupholder with the origami frog—which was when I noticed that what had been my receipt was now folded into a crane. I wanted to ask him about it, but instead, I just put on my seat belt and looked out the window. If Sloane had been there, sitting next to me, I could have gotten her to ask with one look. She would have done it, too. She had never, in the two years I’d known her, backed down from any kind of challenge.

We were halfway back to the Orchard before I broke the silence and spoke up. Our interaction was coming to an end; I could almost see it shimmering in the distance like the finish line at the end of one of my long cross-country races. “Thank you again,” I finally said after silently trying out a few different versions of this. “I really appreciate it. I swear, I’ve never run out of gas before.”

“And I bet you won’t again,” Frank said. He nodded toward his dashboard, which was lit up like a spaceship, bathing his whole side of the car in a cool blue light. “Mine starts flashing and beeping at me if I get below a quarter of a tank, so I’ll usually fill up immediately just to get it to stop.”

“The gauge on my car is broken,” I explained. Normally I wouldn’t have shared this, but I didn’t want Frank Porter to think I was some kind of airhead, in addition to being the sister of a preadolescent adrenaline junkie. “So I just try and be aware of how much I’ve driven.”

Frank glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m surprised you haven’t run out before now.”

“No, I’m usually really careful,” I said. “But this week . . .” My voice trailed off when I realized I wasn’t about to tell Frank these kinds of details about my life: Sloane vanishing, me driving all over town looking for her, the list. “It’s just been a little crazy,” I finally supplied.

He nodded as he made the turn back into the Orchard. It looked like, while we’d been gone, the evening had started to wind down—there were only a handful of cars still parked there. Frank pulled up next to my car, and even though I’d just been expecting he would drop me off, he helped me lift the container down and then held it steady while I filled up. I dropped the empty container off in the trunk, and when I walked back to the driver’s side, I saw that Frank was reading the bumper stickers that covered the left side. He looked at me, and I could see the question in his eyes, but I looked away as I got behind the wheel and crossed my fingers. I turned the key, and after a moment of sputtering, the car came to life again.

“Working?” Frank asked, leaning in my window a little.

“Working,” I said. I tapped on the gauge. “But don’t look at this. It’s always stuck on half empty.”

Frank leaned closer, contemplating it. “I would say it’s half full.” He smiled at me, and a moment later, I got the joke. But rather than laughing, or saying something in return, I just gave him a tight smile and stared ahead at the steering wheel. Frank turned to head back to his truck, and I suddenly wondered if this had been incredibly rude.

“But seriously,” I said, leaning out the window a little, “thank you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to pay you back.”

He nodded and held up a hand in a wave as he turned his truck around to leave. But then he stopped and leaned across his truck to look down at me. “Actually,” he said through the open window. “There is something. Can you teach me to run?”

This was so not even close to anything I’d expected him to say that I wasn’t sure how to react at first. This might have been apparent in my expression, because Frank went on quickly. “I mean, I know how to run. I just want to get better at it, maybe train for a 10K or something. You’re on the cross-country team, right?”

I nodded at that, trying to disguise my shock that Frank had any idea what I’d been involved in at school—or, honestly, that he knew anything about me at all. And after I’d started missing practices and meets regularly this past spring, I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the team come fall. But I didn’t think that he needed to know any of that. “Sure,” I said, easily. I was pretty certain that this wouldn’t come to anything, that he would forget he’d asked me, and the next time I saw Frank Porter, it would be at the first day of school in September, when he would be welcoming us all as the senior class president. He had probably only asked so that I wouldn’t feel like I owed him anything. “Anytime.”

“Great,” Frank said. He gave me a smile, then pulled forward, signaling as he turned to leave, even though there was no reason for it. I watched his brake lights until they faded from view, then I turned on my iPod, connected to the ancient stereo via a line in, put my car in gear, and headed for home, ready to put this entire night behind me.

I opened the door slowly, so the hinges wouldn’t squeak, and stepped over the threshold. It was almost one thirty, and I held my breath as I waited for lights to turn on and my parents to thunder down the stairs, furious and demanding explanations. But there was only silence, punctuated by the loud ticking of the grandfather clock that had been in the house when we moved in and had proven too heavy to lift. I let out a breath just as I felt something brush against my legs.

I froze. Heart hammering, I looked down and saw that it was only the cat. “Move,” I whispered to him as he sat down on the threshold and started washing his paws, like he didn’t know that he was sitting right in the path of the door. We’d been in Stanwich a year before he showed up, mewling at our door one night. I was thrilled to be finally getting a pet, which had never been possible before. But even though we put a collar on him and filled his food and water dishes, it quickly became clear that he was not going to be a typical housecat. He came and went as he pleased, mostly living outside in the garage, only spending large amounts of time in the house once it got cold out. But just when you had given up on him ever turning up again, there he would be in the kitchen in the morning, waiting impatiently by his dish, like he’d never been gone. My dad had named him Godot, and over the years, we’d all gotten used to his I’ll be there if I feel like it presence.

“Come on,” I said, nudging him with my foot, but gently, since I just had flip-flops on, and Godot was not shy about using his claws when he felt offended. But it was late, I was exhausted, and it been a long enough day, without having to deal with our cat. I wanted to go upstairs, cross Apple picking at night off the list, and then fall into bed. But just as I’d taken a breath to tell the cat to move again, something occurred to me. Had I earned the right to cross it off? I had gone to the Orchard at night, but I hadn’t picked an apple, and I wasn’t sure how literal Sloane wanted me to be with some of these. So before I could really think it through or talk myself out of it, I was pulling the door closed, startling the cat, who hissed at me halfheartedly and then stalked away into the night.

By the time I got back to the Orchard, I could see that the last few remaining cars were gone. The place was deserted, empty except for the occasional red cup left crushed on the ground. Now that I was here by myself, the place no longer seemed like the scary battlefield it had been earlier, and I found myself walking easily though the same space I had been tiptoeing around the edges of only hours before. I walked across the grass, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, my path lit by the moon that had come out of its cloud cover. As I walked through the rows of trees, I looked for one with a mostly intact ladder, one that wasn’t as visible. I figured this was my best bet, since the really prominent ladders were the ones that got jumped on by drunk people, and those were the ones with most of the rungs broken. But the ladder I finally picked seemed to be in one piece, except for the first rung, which I skipped. I climbed it carefully, and when I reached the top and hadn’t gone plunging to the ground, I felt myself relax. I was up in the branches of the tree, and I could also see the view from up here—the parking lot with only my car now in it, the endless dark roads that led back to town.

It was months away from being apple season, but I was hoping that there would be a few. The apples I did see looked like the tiny, sour ones, and I had resigned myself to one of these when I spotted one, just a little out of reach. It wasn’t as big or as perfectly formed as a supermarket apple, but it was the best one that I could see. I grabbed it, and made sure to hold on to the ladder with my other hand as I gave it a hard yank. It came free of the tree, and I polished it on my tank top before I turned around and leaned back against the top step. Then, making sure I was balanced, I took a bite.

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t quite ripe yet, but it wasn’t bad. And it really was pretty up here—maybe Beckett was onto something after all. I leaned more fully against the ladder and looked out at the view as I ate my apple, slowly, in the moonlight.