Since You've Been Gone

3 55 S. AVE. ASK FOR MONA

I stood in the parking lot in front of 55 Stanwich Avenue and stared at the sign in front of me. Paradise Ice Cream, it read in neon-colored letters. Where Every Cone Is a Dream!

I was in a small shopping plaza off one of the main roads that ran through town. I had been here many times before, but I had never paid attention to the numbers, so hadn’t know what 55 was until I’d pulled into the parking lot, following the directions on my phone. There were only a handful of stores in this shopping plaza—Captain Pizza, which was our go-to to-go pizza place; a beauty supply store; a running shop where I’d bought my last pair of sneakers; an accountant’s office; and at the end, Paradise Ice Cream.

It was the day after I’d gone to the Orchard. When I’d woken up that morning, out of habit, I’d reached for my phone to call Sloane, not remembering the current situation until a few seconds later. But unlike the previous two weeks, the realization didn’t send me into a tailspin. I’d gotten a letter from her, after all. I had instructions. I’d already crossed one of the items off the list, and I was sure I could do the rest just as quickly. I had a plan.

I took a deep breath and crossed the parking lot, passing Captain Pizza as I walked, my stomach growling at the scent of the fresh-baked pizza wafting out, despite the fact that it wasn’t even noon yet and I’d just eaten breakfast.  Through the window, I could see a blond girl behind the counter, leaning close to a guy standing by the register, smoothing his hair down and giggling.

I pulled open the door to the ice cream parlor and stepped inside, and a blast of cold air hit me. The place was very bright, with white walls and tables, and fluorescent lights overhead. It wasn’t huge—five tables with chairs, a long counter with the ice cream below in glass cases, and a freezer that displayed ice cream cakes and pints to go. There were large framed posters covering most of the available wall space. There was something about the photography, or maybe the way the models were styled, that made me think these hadn’t been changed in a few years. They all pictured people holding cups or cones of ice cream and looking blissfully happy about it. Take a Chance! read one that pictured a smiling woman with a cone stacked five scoops high. What’s Your Ice Cream Dream? read another, with a pensive-looking little boy contemplating a sundae.

There was a girl behind the counter wearing a shirt with a rainbow across the front. I guessed she was around my age, maybe a little younger. She hadn’t looked up when I’d entered the store, but instead was examining the split ends at the end of her braid.

“Hi,” I said, as I stepped up to the counter. She had a name tag pinned to her shirt that read Kerry, and I felt myself deflate a little as I looked at it. Because of course she couldn’t have been Mona—that would have made this too easy.

“What can I get you?” she asked, looking away from her hair and picking up the ice cream scoop from where it was resting in a cup of water.

“Oh,” I said quickly. “No. I mean—I don’t want any ice cream.” Kerry stopped shaking off the ice cream scoop and gave me a look that clearly said Then what are you doing here? I swallowed hard, and tried to make myself get through this. “I was . . . Is Mona here?”

“No,” Kerry said, looking at me strangely. I didn’t blame her.

I nodded, wondering if I maybe should have started with buying some ice cream; maybe that would have made this process go a little easier. I stood there for a moment, trying to think of how to ask this. It would have helped if I had any idea who Mona was, or if I knew why I was supposed to ask for her. “I just . . .” I started, not exactly sure how to describe what I needed when I knew so little about it myself. I took a breath and decided to just tell her, trying not to care how crazy it sounded. “A friend of mine left me a note, saying to come here and talk to Mona. So . . .” I stopped talking when I realized I didn’t know how to finish this sentence, without demanding that Kerry somehow procure her. This had already become much more humiliating than I had imagined it would be, which was, in a weird way, kind of liberating.

“Well, Mona’s not here,” Kerry said, speaking slowly and deliberately, like maybe the reason I was still standing in front of her, not ordering ice cream, was that I didn’t understand English well. “So if you’re not going to get something, you can’t—” The store phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello, Paradise,” she said, keeping her eyes on me the whole time, like maybe this was all part of an elaborate ruse to rob the place. “Hey, Mona. No. Not a customer. Just—”

“Is that Mona?” I asked quickly, leaning across the counter. Desperation was making me brave, and any sense of dignity I had when I entered the place was long gone. “Can I talk to her?”

“No,” Kerry said into the phone—but probably to me, too—taking a step back. “Just some girl who didn’t order anything. Wanted to talk to you.” She listened for a moment, then lowered the phone. “What do you want?”

“Okay, so my friend,” I babbled, speaking fast, lest Kerry change her mind, “she left me this list—her name’s Sloane Williams, I don’t know if that matters. Anyway, on the list, it said to come here and ask for Mona. So that’s . . . what I’m doing.”

Kerry just raised her eyebrows at me. “Did you get that?” she said into the phone. She tilted her head slightly to the right, listening to something that was being said on the other end. “Oh,” she said, looking at me. “I don’t know why she didn’t just start with that then. Okay. Yeah, I’ll ask her. Talk to you later.” She hung up and I looked in dismay at the phone on the counter, wondering if I should have tried to get on the phone with Mona myself. Kerry reached under the counter and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped through the papers inside, tilting them away from me so I couldn’t see what they were. She stopped, then looked up at me. “What’s your name?”

My heart was starting to beat harder now, but not from nerves—because it felt like I was getting close to something. “Emily,” I said, wondering if I should show some ID. “Emily Hughes.”

She nodded and pulled out a piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “You were supposed to be here last week,” she said. “Mona thought you didn’t want the job.”

I just stared at her. “Job?”

Kerry rolled her eyes, clearly losing any patience she’d once had with me. “Yeah, the job,” she said. “The one you applied for? Mona’s the manager?” She shook her head and reached back underneath the counter, and I pulled the piece of paper closer to me so I could read it.

Sure enough, it was an application to work at Paradise Ice Cream. It had been filled out for me in Sloane’s handwriting. There was Sloane’s email and phone number, but my name and work experience. Sloane had put herself down as my emergency contact, and under Additional Info she had added, I am a really hard worker, a wonderful friend, really punctual, funny, loyal, thoughtful, all-around awesome. Oh, and humble too.

I smiled as I read this while simultaneously feeling like I might burst into tears. The only thing that prevented this was imagining what Mona, or Kerry, or whoever, must have thought of this bizarrely confident application.

“Can I have this?” I asked, holding on to the application as Kerry stood up again, holding two white T-shirts.

“No,” she said, sounding exasperated with me, as she pulled it back and placed it in the folder. “We need to hold on to it. So we have your information in case you burn the place down or something.” She looked at me closely after she said it, clearly thinking I might be capable of this. “Anyway, I’m sure Mona mentioned the salary when you applied. So we need someone five shifts a week, two of those have to be weekends, and Mona does the scheduling tonight, so she can e-mail you.”

I blinked at her. “You mean I got the job?” Kerry didn’t even bother responding to this, just flipped through the folder again.

“Mona wanted to know if your friend was still interested.” She pulled out another paper, and I could see it was Sloane’s handwriting again, this time filling out her own application. I saw, in the section that dealt with scheduling, Sloane had written in all caps, NEED SAME SHIFTS AS EMILY HUGHES!!!

I got it then, finally. She’d had a plan for us to work together after all.  And judging by how empty Paradise was, she had picked the ideal place. Unlike last summer, when our marathon chat sessions were always being interrupted by people who wanted their food brought to them or their orders taken, this would have been the perfect job for us. We would have gotten paid to hang out all day, with minimal customer interference.

Kerry gave a loud sigh, and I realized I hadn’t answered her. “No,” I said quickly. I noticed that Sloane had left the Additional Info section on her own application blank. “She’s . . . not available for it any longer.”

“Okay,” Kerry said, putting Sloane’s application back in the folder. “Do you want the job or not? Because if not, we need to call the other applicants.”

I thought about it as I looked at the two neatly folded white T-shirts on the counter. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I needed a job, after all. And Sloane had gotten me one. She had put this on the list, after all, so that I’d know about this job even after she’d left.  And I had a feeling that it most likely wouldn’t be super demanding. I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

“Great,” Kerry said, sounding decidedly unenthusiastic about this as she pushed the shirts in my direction. “Welcome to Paradise.”

By the time I made it home again, it had turned into the hottest part of the day.  The Volvo’s air conditioner was barely functional, so normally I didn’t even try it. But when I’d attempted it today, only hot air had come out at me, and I’d quickly turned it off. Normally, the open roof let a breeze in, but instead, it just felt like I was sitting directly in a sunbeam I couldn’t get out of. I made a mental note, as I pulled into the driveway, to get the wooden piece for the roof from the garage, if only to cool the car down by providing some shade. As I walked up to the front door, new employee T-shirts in hand—they had rainbows on them like Kerry’s had, I’d been dismayed to see—I was regretting the fact I hadn’t gotten any ice cream after all.

I let myself in, careful not to make too much noise in case my parents were working. But when I passed the dining room, it was only my dad sitting at the table. His laptop was open, but he was leaning back in his ergonomic wheelie chair, reading a thick book, highlighting occasionally, so focused on his task, I was pretty sure he didn’t even sense me in the doorway.

I found my mom in the kitchen, washing off a peach. She turned when she heard me, giving me a tired smile, and I had the feeling they’d been working all morning. “Hey, Em,” she said. She looked down at the shirts under my arm. “Did you go shopping?”

“I got a job,” I said, shaking out one of the shirts and holding it up so she could see it. “Paradise Ice Cream.”

“Oh,” my mother said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, that’s . . . good. And I’m sure it’ll be nice and cool in there, right?” Without waiting for a response, she went on. “Did you eat?” She looked around, then held out the fruit in her hand to me. “Peach?”

“No, thanks,” I said, crossing to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water from the door and taking a long drink.

“I meant to ask you,” my mother said as she patted her peach dry, “is everything okay with you and Sloane? It feels like we haven’t seen her around in a while.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked down at the scuffed wood of the kitchen floor, debating what to tell her. Only yesterday, I’d wanted nothing more than to tell my parents, to get their help to find her. But that was before the list. And the list made me feel like Sloane had a plan, and me running to my parents for help wasn’t part of it. “She’s out of town for the summer,” I said, looking back at my mom, rationalizing that, technically, this wasn’t even really a lie.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” my mom said, her brow furrowing. My mother felt everything quickly, and deeply, and cried at the drop of a hat. It was the reason none of us ever wanted to sit next to her when we saw sad movies. “That’s going to be hard for you, Em.”

My mother took a bite of her peach, but I could tell that there were more things she was about to ask; I could practically feel them, questions like where and why and for how long, questions I couldn’t begin to answer. So before she could ask, I said quickly, “So Beckett seems pretty excited about this camping trip.” I was almost positive that he was away at day camp, but I looked up to check the doorway, just in case.

“Yeah,” my mother said with a smile. “Your dad, too.” I nodded, figuring that this meant the trip was still on, and I hadn’t done the wrong thing by basically telling my brother as much. “Though I don’t know why,” my mother said as she shook her head, rotating the peach, looking for a perfect bite. “Sleeping outdoors when you’ve got a perfectly good bed has never—”

“Andrea, listen to this,” my dad said, bursting into the kitchen. He was holding a thick book in his hands, and talking fast and excited. “Tesla and Edison were friends when he first came from Paris. Edison called him a genius.”

“Scott,” my mother said. “I was in the middle of talking to Em.” But I could tell that she was only partially in the kitchen with me now. It was like I could practically feel her wanting to get back to the play, and I was pretty sure she’d already forgotten about Beckett and camping.

“It’s really fine,” I said quickly, backing out of the kitchen. “You guys go write.”

My mother bit her lip and looked at me, and I gave her a bright, Everything’s okay here smile and headed upstairs, but not before I heard them start to talk, their voices excited and overlapping, saying words like laboratory and patent and alternating current.

I took the stairs up to my room slowly, feeling the temperature seem to rise with every step. I flopped down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling, where I could still see the tape marks left over from the rotating pantheon of teen heartthrob posters I’d put up during my middle school years. I reached for my phone, which was, of course, free from any texts or missed calls. And even though I knew it would probably just go to her voice mail, I found myself pressing the button to call Sloane. Sure enough, her voice mail recording started, the one I knew by heart. I waited until the beep, then took a breath and started.

“Hey, it’s me. I got the job, the one at Paradise. So thanks for setting that up for us.” I said the word automatically, but a second later, reality hit me like a punch to the gut. There would be no us at Paradise. Just me, working in a T-shirt with a rainbow on it. “I’ll have to tell you what happened. It was really funny, this girl thought I was crazy.” I listened to the silence, the empty space where Sloane’s voice should have been, already laughing, asking me questions, reacting in just the right ways. “Anyway. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hung up and, after a moment, pushed myself off the bed. I dropped my new T-shirts into my drawer and pulled out Sloane’s list. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get anything else done today—I knew I’d have to do some brainstorming before tackling the others. I carefully crossed off number seven, then returned the list to its envelope and the envelope to the drawer. Then I looked around, at a bit of a loss.

I didn’t want to stay in my room—I actually didn’t think it would be healthy to, if I wanted to avoid heatstroke—but I didn’t want to tiptoe around my parents downstairs. And I didn’t want to go over to campus, or go downtown by myself. I was starting to get a jumpy, claustrophobic feeling. I needed to get out, but I’d technically just come back. And where was I supposed to go? I kicked off my flip-flops and tossed them into my closet, where they landed on my sneakers and gave me my answer.

Without thinking twice, I pulled the sneakers out of the closet, then reached for the drawer that held my workout clothes. I wasn’t sure it was going to make anything better, but it was the only thing I wanted to do at that moment. I was going for a run.

JUNE

Two years earlier

I shook out my arms and tried to pick up my pace, trying to ignore how my breath was coming shallowly. I hadn’t run since school had ended two weeks before, and I was feeling it with every step. I’d made the cross-country team as a freshman, but had lagged behind the rest of the team and wanted to get my times up over the summer so that I would have a chance of making it again in the fall, when I knew the competition would be more intense.

Since there were too many people and too many excuses to slow down in my neighborhood, I’d gone out of my way to run in this one. It was a good ten miles from my house, and I had a feeling my return might end up being a walk—and a long one, at that. I’d spent almost no time in this part of town, Stanwich’s backcountry. There weren’t any sidewalks, but running on the road didn’t seem to be that big a deal, since there were also almost no cars.

I was just debating if I could keep going, or if maybe the time had come to give up and start walking, when I saw the girl.

She was pacing back and forth in the driveway of a house, but she stopped as I approached, and shielded her eyes from the glare. Then, to my astonishment, she started waving at me—but not the normal kind of saying hello waving—the kind of waving castaways on islands did to flag down passing ships.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she called, as soon as I got within earshot. “I’ve been waiting for you!” I slowed to a walk, then stopped in front of the girl. She looked around my age, except that she was dressed much better than anyone I knew—wearing a silky flowing top with her jean shorts, bright-red lipstick, and mascara. But contrasting all of this was the fact that her hair was underneath a towel, which she’d twisted into a turban.

“Me?” I asked, trying to catch my breath, glancing behind me to see the road was still empty. But she couldn’t have meant me—we’d never met before. I would have remembered that, I was sure of it.

“Well,” the girl acknowledged with a smile, “someone like you. Someone who didn’t look like a total scary weirdo. Although at this point, honestly, I probably would have taken that, too. But you’re like the first person to show up here in like an hour, I swear. I was worried that I was suddenly in a zombie movie where all of humanity had disappeared.” She stopped and took a breath, and I just blinked, trying to keep up with what was happening here. She spoke fast, and seemed to be a combination of stressed out and on the verge of cracking up, which was a mixture I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before.

“What—” I started, then stopped, when I realized I wasn’t sure what to say here. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said, then seemed to rethink this. “Well, I mean, I’m, like, physically fine. I’m just . . .” She took a breath. “Can you help me break into my house?” She pointed behind her, and I felt my jaw fall open.

It was an absolutely enormous mansion. It looked old, stately, and very grand. It was the kind of place I could imagine steel barons owning, a house where black-tie parties were thrown, where duchesses and senators were invited to dinner, where grave, white-gloved butlers would open the front door.

“I live here!” the girl continued. “I swear, I’m not trying to steal anything. I just locked myself out.” She shook her head, then reached up to steady the towel. “And normally, I’d be all whatever, just take a walk or work on my tan or something. Because my parents are coming back at some point. You know, most likely. But I’m a little worried my hair’s about to turn permanently green.” After she said this, she started to laugh, closing her eyes and bending forward slightly, her shoulders shaking.

Even though I didn’t know what was funny, and was still trying to figure out what was going on here, I felt myself smile as well, like I was about to start laughing too, just to be in on the joke.

“Sorry,” she said, straightening up and letting out a breath, pulling herself together. “The situation is just so ridiculous.”

“Why is your hair about to turn green?” I asked.

The girl grimaced and pulled off her towel. I felt my eyes widen as I took a tiny step back. Her hair was coated in a bright green mask that looked like it was hardening into a helmet shape. “You’re only supposed to leave it on for twenty minutes,” she said, reaching up to tentatively touch her hair. “And it’s been, like, an hour. Or more. Probably more. Oh, god.”

“Sure,” I said, “I mean, how can I help?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was surprised I’d said them. But I had meant it, 100 percent.

“Oh, thank you so much,” the girl said, her shoulders sagging with relief. “We just moved in a few weeks ago, so it’s not like I even know where the best places to get in are. But I’m pretty sure there’s an open window I can get to, if you just give me a boost.”

“Okay,” I said, and the girl grinned at me and headed up the driveway. I followed, and noticed she was barefoot, and that the chipped bright-red polish on her toes seemed to match her lipstick. The house was even more impressive the closer I got to it, and I suddenly realized I’d seen it before. When we’d first come to Stanwich, when my parents were house-hunting, the realtor had driven us past it, talking about how it was one of the town’s architectural landmarks, using words I’d never heard before, like portico and vestibule. “Your house is amazing,” I said as I followed her around the side, gazing up at it.

“Thanks,” she said with a shrug, clearly not as impressed as I was. “Okay, see that window?” She pointed up to a window that looked worryingly high, but that I could see was open, the beige curtains inside blowing in the faint breeze.

“Yes,” I said slowly, trying to figure out how—even with my help—this girl was going to get up to it.

“So I think if you just give me a hand, I should be able to get in,” she said. “And then I can wash this stuff off. And hopefully it won’t have done permanent damage, or made my hair fall out, or anything like that.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” I said, even though I had no knowledge whatsoever about this. I regretted it immediately—the leader of the pack of girls I was friends with would have rolled her eyes and asked, how, exactly, I knew that. But this girl just smiled at me.

“Thanks so much,” she said. Before I could reply, the girl was striding forward, examining the window, hands on her hips. “I think this should be doable,” she said, though she sounded less confident than she had a moment before. She looked at me, and I suddenly wished that I looked more pulled together—which was ridiculous, because I’d been running. But this girl looked so cool, I couldn’t help but be aware that I was wearing my old, too-short running shorts, and an ancient sheer T-shirt of my mom’s that read Williamstown Theater Festival Crew. “Thank god you’re tall,” she said. “I’m so jealous. I wish I was.”

“You’re not that short,” I said, since I only had about four inches on her.

“I am, though,” she said, shaking her head, and I noticed, getting a little worried, that her hair didn’t move at all when she did this. “Oh my god, when I was in Copenhagen, it was the worst. Everyone there is tall. I was practically the shortest person around. You would totally have fit in. I love your T-shirt, by the way. Is it vintage?”

“Um,” I said, looking down at it, thinking that vintage was probably not the right word for it, but nodding anyway. “Kind of. It was my mom’s.”

“Awesome,” she said. “You can tell. Cotton only thins out like that with years of washing. I know a consignment shop in San Francisco that would pay you at least a hundred bucks for that.” She seemed to realize that we’d gotten away from the mission at hand, because she turned back to the window.

As I looked up at it, I couldn’t help but wish that Beckett had been with us, since he would have been able to get up there, no problem.

“Okay,” the girl said, looking from the window and back to me. “Maybe if you give me a boost?”

“Okay,” I echoed, trying to sound more sure of this than I felt. I met her eye, and we both started laughing, even though I couldn’t have said why.

“Oh my god,” the girl said, clearly trying to regroup. “Okay. Okay okay.”

I made a cradle with my hands, and she stepped into them. And while I tried my best to push her up, this quickly turned into the girl basically standing on my back while she grabbed for the windowsill.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe this. Am I hurting you?”

“It’s fine,” I managed as I tried to stand up and give her another boost.

“Got it!” she said triumphantly, but when I straightened up, I saw this was maybe a little optimistic, as she was hanging on to the sill, but seemed much closer to falling to the ground than getting herself into the window. “Um, sort of.”

“Here,” I said, grabbing one of her feet that was kicking in space as she tried to hoist herself over. “Maybe if I give you another push?”

“Yes!” she said. “Great idea. You’re a genius at this.” I held on to her foot, and she pushed off my hands and was able to swing one leg, then another, over the sill. She fell over the window with a thump that I could hear even from the ground. “Ow,” I heard her mutter from inside.

“You okay?” I called up.

A second later, her green head appeared in the window. “Fine!” she said. “Thank you so much! You saved my life. Or at least my hair.” She smiled at me, and then disappeared from view. I figured she’d gone to wash off the green mask, but found myself waiting by the window for just a few moments more, wondering if this was over. When she didn’t come back, I turned and walked down the driveway. As I got to the end and turned right on the road, in the direction that would take me back home, I realized that I didn’t even know the girl’s name.

When I started running in the same direction the next day, my muscles protested—loudly. But I didn’t even think about not going, though I hoped it wouldn’t make me seem like a stalker. It just felt like I’d seen the first five minutes of a movie, and I had to know what happened next. And if the girl wasn’t there, I wasn’t going to knock on the door or anything. I was just hoping that maybe she’d be outside again. When I got closer to her house, I felt my hopes deflate as I realized that the driveway and sidewalk were empty. It seemed totally obvious now that they would be. Did I just expect that she would be hanging outside, waiting around? I turned to head home, and as I did I noticed that there was writing on the ground, in chalk, the letters a mix of capitals and cursive.

Hey, running girl!! Thanks so much.

Hair is fine. J xo, SW

On the third day, I didn’t even try to run. My legs were killing me after trying to do two long runs when I was still out of shape. I’d gotten my mother to drop me off about a mile away, telling her that I wanted to scout a new run. I think normally she would have asked more questions, but Beckett had been throwing a temper tantrum in the backseat and her attention was divided. She told me to give her a call if I needed a ride home, reminding me not to be gone too long, since we had a family dinner planned.

If it had been one of the girls from school that I’d been trying to impress, I would have worn something different. One of my nicer dresses, the skirt my mother had just bought for me, the kind of clothes that always made me feel like I was pretending to be someone else altogether. But I found myself reaching for another one of my mom’s old T-shirts, the ones I only normally used for running or hanging around the house. I also put on some lipstick, even though I didn’t have anything close to bright red. As I looked in the mirror, I realized I still felt like myself, but a new version of myself, one I’d never tried out until today.

I walked slowly toward the girl’s house, trying to get my courage up. I had decided, back when I was getting ready, that I was going to go up and ring the bell. She’d left me a note, after all, and wasn’t that kind of like an invitation? But the closer I got, the more I began to question if I would actually be able to do this. Ring the bell of a mansion, and then when someone came to the door, ask for—who, exactly? The plan was seeming stupider and stupider the closer I got, but I made myself walk all the way up to the base of the driveway. The chalk message was gone, no doubt washed away in the thunderstorm that had woken me up at two a.m. I looked up the driveway for a moment longer, then lost whatever bit of courage had gotten me this far and turned to go.

“Hey!” I looked up and saw the girl leaning out of a second-story window. She smiled at me. “Hang on, okay?” I nodded, and her head disappeared inside.

I shifted from foot to foot, smoothing my shirt down, wondering why I felt so nervous. I was nervous around my friends at school, but that was more nervousness that I would say something stupid or find myself kicked out of the group. This was something else entirely.

“You came back!” I looked up and saw the girl was heading down the driveway, walking fast, then running for a few steps, then walking again. As she got closer, I saw she was holding a pair of sandals in one hand, swinging them by their long leather straps. She reached me and dropped them next to her on the ground. “I’m so glad you’re here! I wanted to thank you, but then realized I had no idea how to do that. Look!” She bent forward and shook her hair at me, and I realized that it was intact, and not the slightest bit green.

“No damage?” I asked, as she flipped her head back up.

“None!” she said happily, pulling one end into her eyeline to examine it, then tucking it behind her ear. “I mean, as far as I know. Watch, it’ll all fall out next Tuesday.”

“Delayed reaction,” I said, nodding. “Or what if you’ve discovered some magical chemical compound that only is activated when you’ve left it on too long? And that’s why they tell you not to do it.”

“Love it,” she said. “The hair mask is my radioactive spider.” I laughed, and didn’t even really have time to worry that I was boring her or sounding stupid before she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Emily,” I said, and she smiled, like that was just the name she’d been hoping to hear.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Sloane.”

Run, Emily, Run!

Galveston

Glen Campbell

Any Way You Want It

Journey

Crash My Party

Luke Bryan

Heat of the Moment

Asia

True North

Jillette Johnson

Take On Me

A-Ha!

The Moment I Knew

Taylor Swift

Just Like Heaven

The Cure

It Goes Like This

Thomas Rhett

Mr. Blue Sky

ELO

All Kinds of Kinds

Miranda Lambert

Nightswimming

R.E.M.

What About Love

Heart

The Downeaster “Alexa”

Billy Joel

Short People

Randy Newman

Dancin’ Away with My Heart

Lady Antebellum

Take Me Home Tonight

Eddie Money

You Make My Dreams

Hall & Oates

Even If It Breaks Your Heart

Eli Young Band

Aw Naw

Chris Young

The Power of Love

Huey Lewis & The News

This

Darius Rucker

Fancy

Reba McEntire

Run

Matt Nathanson feat. Sugarland

A Lot to Learn About Livin’

Easton Corbin

Centerfold

J. Geils Band

Quittin’ You

The Band Perry

I was seriously out of running shape. I could feel it in how my calves started to ache right away, how my breath was labored after the first mile. My participation on the cross-country team had gotten very sporadic as school was ending, and I hadn’t run at all since I’d come back to find Sloane gone. But it was still sad that, after doing this for most of my life, I could become so bad at it so quickly.

Running was the one activity I’d done regularly from childhood on. Looking back, it was clear why my parents had nudged me to join kids’ races and running clubs and, if one of them was teaching, encourage me to go down to the college or university track and practice. It was cheap and didn’t require a team or being in the same place all the time—money and consistency being in short supply when I was growing up.

Sloane, on the other hand, had had more lessons than I’d even really known were options. She could ride horses and ballroom dance, in addition to ballet and tap. She could sail, play tennis, speak conversational French, and, for some reason I’d never been clear on, could play doubles bridge. I had learned to swim at camp, but mostly I just ran. For most of my life, it had been the one athletic thing that I could do well, which was why it was so embarrassing to find myself now limping through the first mile.

I turned up the volume on my iPod, as if this would give me a corresponding surge of energy. It didn’t, but I pushed myself to go faster, even as I was gasping for breath. I was listening to a new mix, complete with embarrassingly motivational name. The mix was filled with the kind of music I listened to but never admitted to—country and eighties pop. It had the same playlist repeating again after the end; my iPod’s loop function was broken, and when it got to the end of a playlist, it just froze. It had been acting wonky ever since I’d left it in the car and an unexpected rainstorm had come through the open roof and drenched it.

I was running a loop near my neighborhood that I’d discovered last year. It took me right along the water, which meant that it was cooler and I would sometimes get a breeze, which I was seriously in need of at the moment. Usually, this was an easy five-mile run, but usually, I wasn’t this out of shape.

I rounded a bend in the road and saw that there was someone running ahead of me. It was a guy, and maybe around my age. . . . He turned his head to adjust the iPod strapped to his arm, giving me a glance at his profile, and I felt my feet stumble and then slow when I recognized it was Frank Porter.

It didn’t look like he’d noticed me. He was back to looking straight ahead, white earbuds in his ears. I slowed even more—I was pretty much just walking with bounce now—and tried to figure out what to do. If I pushed myself, I could run past him, but then I’d have to keep going fast until I could make it home. Also, then Frank would be looking at the back of me unless I really kept up my pace and disappeared from his view. And I had grabbed the first pair of shorts I’d seen in my drawer, and they had GO SH! printed across the back. This was supposed to mean Go Stanwich High, but apparently nobody had realized until we’d all prepaid for them that it looked like GOSH! was written across our butts. But running fast seemed to be my best option if I wanted to keep on this path, unless I dropped to a really slow pace, lagging behind him and hoping he wouldn’t see me, which felt weird and stalkerish.

It seemed like the best solution was just to turn around and run back the way I’d come from. I could do a mile or two nearer to my house, and it wasn’t like this run had been going spectacularly anyway. Because while it had been really nice of Frank to help me with my car, it wasn’t like I wanted to keep struggling to make conversation with him, or for him to feel like he had to run with me when he didn’t want to. One interaction with Frank Porter per summer seemed like the right amount to me.

I turned around just as Frank stopped and knelt to tie his sneaker. He looked over and saw me, lifting his hand to cut the glare, then pulled his earphones out of his ears. “Emily?” he called.

I bit my lip. There was really no way to avoid this now without looking incredibly rude. I pulled my own earphones out and pressed Pause on my playlist. “Hey,” I said, giving him a wave. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, hoping that maybe this had been enough and I could just start running again.

“I thought that was you,” Frank said as he straightened up and headed toward me, dashing the last of these hopes. As he got closer, I could hear that he was a little winded, his breath sounding labored. His hair was dark red with sweat, and he was wearing a faded blue T-shirt that read Tri-State Latin Decathlon . . . Decline if you dare! He was wincing as he walked closer to me. “This is all your fault, you know.”

I just blinked at him for a moment. I had no idea what I’d done, or what he was referring to. “Me?”

He ran his hand over his face and through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “I seem to remember you said you’d help me learn to run.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, not sure what to say to this. It wasn’t like he’d found me and asked me to do this. Was I supposed to have tracked him down and offered my running services, or something? “Sorry,” I stammered, as I looked back to the lovely empty stretch of road behind me, wishing I’d turned away a second earlier, or that Frank had just tied his laces more tightly.

He smiled and shook his head, and it sounded like he was getting his breath back. “I’m kidding,” he said. “I’m just so terrible at this.”

I nodded and looked down at the road, at my sneakers on the asphalt, and took a breath. “Well, I should keep—”

“Are you going this way?” Frank asked, pointing in the direction I’d been heading. I didn’t know if I could say no. If I did, I would pretty much be admitting that I was choosing not to run with him.

“Yeah,” I finally said, aware that the answer didn’t require nearly as much time to think about it as I’d given it.

“Me too,” he said. He bent down to tighten his other shoelace and looked up at me. “Want to run together for a bit? Unless I’d slow you down,” he added quickly.

“That’s okay,” I said, then wondered if this response had been rude. “I mean, I’m sure you won’t. I’m not in the best shape myself.”

“Excellent,” Frank said. He nodded ahead, and I started running again, Frank falling into step next to me, groaning a little as he started to match my pace. We were running side by side, with me closer to the side of the road and Frank closer to the center line. We’d only been running for a few seconds before I noticed that he had started to drift nearer to me, so I moved over to the left to compensate. I thought this was just a one-time thing until Frank started to drift toward me again, and when I tried to move over this time, I was now running on the dirt.

“Um,” I said, trying not to cough at the clouds that I was kicking up. “Frank?”

Frank glanced over at me and seemed to realize what was happening. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe we should switch places?”

“Sounds good,” I said, as I jogged around to run on the outside of him. After we’d been running in silence for a few minutes, I looked over at him, then straight ahead again. I had no idea what the etiquette here was. Should we start listening to our own music again? Or maybe we should just keep running silently next to each other. But wasn’t that kind of weird?

“Bug Juice?” Frank asked. I glanced over at him, surprised, and then I looked down and realized I was wearing the original Broadway cast T-shirt, the one that had been nightshirt-size on me when I’d first gotten it, but now fit me like a regular T-shirt.

“Oh,” I said. “Um, yeah.” I kept on running, Frank keeping pace next to me, and I heard, in the silence that stretched out, that I really needed to give him some kind of explanation; otherwise, it would just seem like I was a really big fan of a play that had closed years ago. “My, um, parents wrote it.” I figured that was all he needed to know; I didn’t have to tell him that the play had been inspired by my experiences, that Cecily, the lead, was based on me. At least, she was in the beginning of the play. She starts out shy, but over the course of it, she becomes confident and daring and brave, finally engineering the coup and takedown of Camp Greenleaf.

Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he asked. “That’s so cool. I’m pretty sure I saw a production of it. I would have been like twelve or something. . . .” I nodded. This wasn’t that surprising. Between the Broadway run and the endless regional and community theater productions, most people had at least some familiarity with the play. I braced myself for the inevitable follow-up question. “Have they written anything else?”

I looked to the road ahead for a moment before answering. This was the problem, I’d learned, with sudden and unexpected success. My parents had been writing plays for ten years before Bug Juice made it to Broadway, and they’d written plays since. But nothing had been as big a hit. It might have been partially my parents’ fault for following up their crowd-pleaser about kids at summer camp with an incredibly depressing play about a suicidal country-and-western singer. “They’re actually working on something now,” I said, happy that I could answer like this, without having to go into details about their less-successful plays that very few people had heard of.

“Oh yeah?” he asked. He looked over at me, and I could hear that his breath was starting to get labored again.

I nodded. “It’s about Tesla.” Frank nodded, like this meant something to him. “You know who that is?” I asked, so surprised by this I didn’t stop myself.

“Sure,” Frank said, “He was a genius. Responsible for stuff like X-rays and radar. Way before his time.” I nodded, realizing that for a moment I’d forgotten who I was talking to. He might have been red-faced and struggling to talk, but this was still Frank Porter, who was going to be in the running for valedictorian next year. “Can we,” he gasped, and I could hear how ragged his breathing was. “Can we just maybe walk for a bit?”

“Sure,” I said quickly. I had been feeling pretty winded myself, and while I was in better running shape than Frank, I was still struggling. We slowed to a walk, Frank taking in big gulps of air.

“Sorry about that,” he said when he’d gotten his breath back, wiping his sleeve across his face. “I’m probably holding you up. Feel free, if you need to go faster.”

“It’s okay,” I said, then realized a moment later that I could have taken the out he was giving me and gone ahead on my own, with no hard feelings. But I could actually have used some walking time myself, even though I knew from experience how hard it was to start running again if you’ve been walking for too long. But right now, my legs felt like they were made of lead, and I knew it didn’t seem likely I could start running again, not without a break.

Frank lifted up the bottom of his T-shirt and dried his face with it, and I felt my feet tangle. Frank Porter, for some reason, was in incredibly good shape—he was thin, but with really defined stomach muscles, his mesh shorts sitting low on his hips. I swallowed hard and looked away quickly, trying to concentrate on walking in a straight line. The second I got home, I had to tell Sloane—

Except, of course, that I couldn’t. At least, not yet.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Frank said after we’d been walking for a few minutes. I glanced over at him, trying to see the person he’d been not that long ago, Frank Porter, the nice class president, not the secretly ripped guy walking next to me. I nodded, even though it had been my experience that when someone asks you if they can ask something—instead of just asking—it means it’s going to be a hard question to answer. “The other night, at the Orchard,” he said. He looked away from me and shook his head. “I’m really sorry if this is intruding,” he said. “I just keep thinking about it, for some reason. But when I drove you to get gas . . .” He looked back at me, and I could tell he was trying to figure out how to put this. “Were you by yourself?”

I felt my cheeks flood with heat, and I knew it had nothing to do with the running. So Frank had noticed that I was there, all alone, like a huge loser. “Not that I wasn’t happy to drive you,” he added quickly. “Seriously, I didn’t mind at all. I guess I was just wondering.”

I gave him a tight smile, then looked ahead to the road, trying to figure out what to do, wishing with everything that I had that I’d just forced myself to keep running when he’d given me the opportunity to go. Could I just leave? Did I have to answer this question? What would happen if I just started running home? It wasn’t like we were friends, after all. And then, suddenly, I realized that there was another option—I could tell him the truth.

Maybe it was because we weren’t friends, or because I knew I would probably not see Frank Porter again this summer, but I found myself nodding. “Yeah,” I said. “It was . . .” I let out a breath, trying to figure out how to put this. “Do you know Sloane Williams?”

“Of course I know Sloane,” Frank said, which I’d been expecting. “You two are kind of a package deal, right?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. I realized I hadn’t told anyone about this yet, and didn’t have a practiced explanation. But for whatever reason, I had a feeling that Frank would be willing to wait until I figured it out—maybe because of all the open forums I’d seen him moderate, standing patiently in the auditorium with his microphone while some stoner stumbled through a grievance about the vending machines. “Well . . . she left at the beginning of the summer. I don’t know where she went, or why. But she left me this list. It’s . . .” I stopped again, trying to figure out how to describe it. “It’s this list of thirteen things she wants me to do. And going to the Orchard was one of them.” I glanced back at Frank, expecting him to look confused, or just nod politely before changing the subject. I didn’t not expect him to look thrilled.

“That’s fantastic,” he enthused. “I mean, not that Sloane is gone,” he added quickly. “I’m sorry about that. I just mean that she left you something like this. Do you have it with you?”

“No,” I said, looking over at him, thinking that this should have been obvious, since I was running. “Why is it fantastic?”

“Because there has to be more to it than that, right?” he asked. “It can’t just be the list. There has to be a code, or a secret message . . .”

“I don’t think so,” I said, thinking back to the thirteen items. They had seemed mysterious enough already to me without needing to go looking for extra meanings.

“Will you take a picture and send it to me?” he asked, and I saw he was serious. “If there’s something else in there, I can tell you.”

My first response was to say no—it was incredibly personal, and plus, there were things like Kiss a stranger and Go skinny-dipping on the list, and those seemed much too embarrassing to share with Frank Porter. But what if there was something else? I hadn’t seen anything myself, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t. Rather than telling him yes or no, I just said, “So I guess you really like puzzles.”

Frank smiled, not seeming embarrassed about this. “Kind of obvious, huh?”

I nodded. “And at the gas station, you practically took over that guy’s word search.”

Frank laughed. “James!” he said. “Good man. I know, it’s a little strange. I’ve been into them for years now—codes, puzzles, patterns. It’s how my brain works, I guess.” I nodded, thinking this was the end of it. I’d shared something, he’d shared something, and now we could go back to running. But a moment later, Frank went on, his voice a little hesitant, “I think it started with the Beatles. My cousin was listening to them a lot, and told me that they had secret codes in their lyrics. And I became obsessed.”

“With codes?” I asked, looking over at him. We weren’t even walking fast any longer. Strolling would probably be the word for what we were doing, just taking our time, walking side by side. “Or the Beatles?”

“Well . . . both,” Frank acknowledged with a smile. “And I got Collins into them too. It was our music when we were kids.” He nodded to the road ahead. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should we try running again?”

I nodded, a little surprised that he wanted to do this, since he’d really seemed to be struggling. But this was Frank Porter. He’d probably be training for a marathon by the end of the summer. We started to run, the pace only slightly slower than what it had been before.

“God,” Frank gasped after we’d been running for another mile or so, “why do people do this? It’s awful and it never gets any easier.”

“Well,” I managed, glancing over at him. I was glad to see that he was red-faced and sweaty, since I was sure I looked much the same. “How much have you been running?”

“Too much,” he gasped.

“No,” I said, taking in a breath while laughing, which made me sound, for an embarrassing moment, like I was choking on air. I tried to turn it into a cough, then asked, “I mean, how long?”

“Never this long,” he said. “This—is too long.”

“No, that’s your problem,” I said, wishing that this could have been a shorter explanation, as I was getting a stitch in my side that felt like someone was stabbing me. “Running actually gets easier the longer distances you cover.”

Frank shook his head. “In a well-ordered universe, that would not be the case.” I looked over at him sharply. He’d said the first part of this with a funny accent, and I wondered if maybe we should stop, that maybe he’d pushed himself too hard for one day. Frank glanced back at me. “It’s Curtis Anderson,” he said.

This name meant nothing to me, and I shook my head. But then I remembered the CD that had slid out from under the passenger seat of his car. “Was that the CD you had the other night?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “The comedian. That’s his catchphrase. . . .” Frank drew in a big, gasping breath. He pointed ahead of us, three houses down. “There’s my house. Race you?”

“Ha ha,” I said, sure that Frank was kidding, but to my surprise, a second later, he picked up his pace, clearly finding reserves of energy somewhere. Not wanting to be outdone—especially since I was supposed to be the expert here—I started to run faster as well. Even though every muscle in my body was protesting it, I started to sprint, catching up with Frank and then passing him, but just barely, stumbling to a stop in front of the house Frank had pointed at.

“Good . . . job,” Frank gasped, bent double, his hands on his knees. Not having the breath to speak at the moment, I gave him a thumbs-up, and then realized what I was doing and lowered my hand immediately.

I straightened up, stretching my arms overhead, and got my first look at the house we’d stopped in front of. “This house is amazing,” I said. It looked like something out of a design magazine—pale gray, and done in a modern style that was pretty unique for the area, which tended to favor traditional, especially colonial-style, houses.

“It’s okay,” Frank said with a shrug.

There was a small sign in front of the house that read, in stylized letters, A Porter & Porter Concept. I nodded to it. “Are those your parents?”

“Yeah,” he said, a little shortly. “My dad’s the architect, my mom decorates.” He said this with a note of finality, and I wondered somehow if I’d overstepped.

“I didn’t know you lived so close to me,” I said. “I’m over on Driftway.” The second I said this, I hoped it hadn’t sounded creepy—like I made it my business to know where Frank Porter lived. But it was a little surprising—I thought I knew most of the kids who lived around me, if only through from the pre-license bus rides we’d all endured together.

“We’ve only been there about a year,” he said with a shrug. “We move a lot.” I just nodded—there was something in Frank’s expression that told me he didn’t want to go into this.

I nodded and unwrapped my earphones from where I’d wound them around my iPod. Frank was home, so clearly our run, unexpected as it was, had come to an end.

“Do it again soon?” Frank asked with a smile, but he was still breathing hard, and I could tell he was kidding.

“Totally,” I said, smiling back at him, so he would know I got the joke. “Anytime.”

I started to put my earbuds back in and noticed Frank was standing still, looking at me, not heading back inside. “Are you going to run back to Driftway?”

“It might be more like a walk,” I admitted. “It’s not that far.”

“Want to come in?” he asked. “I’ll buy you a water.”

“That’s okay,” I said automatically. “Thank you, though.”

Frank shook his head. “Oh, come on,” he said, starting to walk toward the house. After a moment, I followed, falling into step next to him as we walked up the driveway. It was beautifully landscaped, with flowers planted at what seemed to be mathematically precise intervals. He walked around to a side door and reached under the mat for a key, then unlocked the door and held it open for me. I stepped inside a high-ceilinged, light-filled foyer, and had just turned to tell him how nice his house was when I heard the crash.

I froze, and Frank, standing just behind me, stopped as well, his expression wary. “Is—” I started, but that was as far as I got.

“Because this is my project!” I heard a woman screaming. “I was working on it night and day when you were spending all your time in Darien doing god knows what—”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” a man screamed back, matching the woman in volume and intensity. “You would be nowhere without me, just riding on my success—” A woman stalked past us, her face red, before she disappeared from view again, followed by a man, red-faced as well, before he too passed out of view. I recognized them, just vaguely, as Frank’s parents from pictures in the paper and school functions when they were usually standing behind their son, polite and composed and smiling proudly as he received yet another award.

I glanced over at Frank, whose face had turned white. He was looking down at his sneakers, and I felt like I was seeing something I absolutely shouldn’t. And I somehow knew that, however bad this was for him, it was worse because I was there to witness it. “I’m going to go,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Frank nodded without looking at me. I backed away, and as I reached the door, I could hear the voices being raised in the other room again.

I let myself out the door and started walking up the driveway, fast, wishing I had just gone home when I’d had the opportunity, and not had to see the expression on Frank’s face as he listened to his parents screaming at each other. I started walking faster once I hit the street, and then broke into a run, despite the fact that every muscle in my body objected to this.

I ran all the way home and it wasn’t until I’d almost reached my house that I noticed I’d been sticking to the outside, leaving enough room for someone to run next to me.