It was Theo. Whoops. “Oh, hey. Sorry. I—”
“What?”
“Hang on a sec.” I walked over to the do-it-yourself photo booth and slipped inside. It wasn’t silent, but still an improvement. “Okay. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah. Much better,” he replied. “Where are you?”
I looked at the display of pictures on the wall opposite where I was sitting, all staged snapshots meant to look casual and spontaneous. A girl holding two fingers behind another girl’s head; a family crammed in together, all of them making faces. Meanwhile, in the reflective lens, I just saw myself, looking tired. “I’m hanging out with my … with Benji.”
He was my half brother. I knew that. But calling him that, or anything really, felt more than half-weird.
“Oh, right,” Theo said. “So … I was just calling to tell you Ivy went crazy over that milk crate. She couldn’t believe it.”
“Really.”
“Oh, yeah. I got some major brownie points. I owe you big.”
I looked at the pictures again, each in strips of four. At the top of one, a boy closed his eyes as a girl kissed his cheek. Next shot, she kissed his lips. Then they both faced the camera for the last two, one smiling, one laughing. “No problem.”
We were both quiet for a moment. Outside I could hear Benji’s computerized car squealing its tires, then crashing into something. Theo said, “So I wondered if you might be up for playing tour guide again sometime. I mean, at your convenience.”
I eased the curtain aside, looking over at Benji. GAME OVER, said his screen. He kept turning the wheel anyway. I sat back again.
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the look on Luke’s face the night before when he’d pulled up beside us. “I’m really busy with work right now, and …”
Theo waited a second, as if I might finish this thought. When I didn’t, he said, “Oh, right, sure. I understand. I figured you had a lot going on.”
I nodded at my own reflection. “Yeah. I do.”
“Emaline?”
I glanced over to see two skinny ankles clad in socks and Nikes at the bottom of the curtain. I opened it and looked up at Benji. “Hey. I’ll be off in a sec.”
“Cool,” he said. “Can I come in?”
Before I could answer, he was sliding in beside me onto the short bench, leaning forward to look at the camera lens. His arm was warm next to mine, one foot already tapping the floor. “I better go,” I told Theo, as Benji pulled out the Safari-Land card I’d given him and swiped it through the slot. A row of lights appeared on the screen behind the camera, blinking.
“Oh, right,” he replied hurriedly. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, or something.”
“Small town,” I agreed.
“Yeah.” A pause. Everything seemed awkward, for some reason. “Bye, Emaline.”
“Bye.” I hung up, then put my phone in my lap. Over the camera, the screen now directed us to SMILE! and began to count down from five with a series of beeps. Benji stuck his tongue out as the first flash went off. Pop.
“Do something silly,” he told me, demonstrating by pushing his nose up to make it into a pig snout. But even as I watched him, I couldn’t think of anything in time. Pop. Two more to go.
“One serious,” I said, sliding my arm over his skinny shoulder. “For me.” He crossed his eyes anyway. Pop. I poked him with my free hand.
“Okay, okay,” he said, giggling. The machine was counting down again. As it did, I looked up at all those other pictures, happy and laughing, loving and sweet, all tiny manufactured moments in imagined lives. I felt suddenly, and inexplicably, sad. But then I looked at Benji, who was smiling, just as I’d told him to. So I fixed my own face, just in time. Pop.
* * *
An hour or so later, I dropped Benji off in front of Miss Ruth’s. Then I sat in the car, watching him as he walked up to the house, the paddle ball game he’d cashed in points for in one hand, three of our four pictures in the other. Once he was safe inside, I tucked the final one, which I’d kept, over my gas gauge before pulling away from the curb.
It was a warm night, steamy almost, but I kept my windows down, needing fresh air after breathing in arcade smells for so long. I’d still not heard from Luke, which was now not just annoying but unsettling, so I went to look for him.
My first stop was the parking lot at the end of the boardwalk, in case he was at Abe’s Bikes or Last Chance. When I had no luck there, I headed out to the Tip, which was pretty dead save for a group of freshman girls hanging out in the back of an SUV. Doubling back, I cut through his neighborhood, on the off chance he was home. He wasn’t. I was driving towards my own house, trying to figure out where to look next, when I saw his truck parked outside of Finz, right next to his buddy Will’s Land Cruiser.
I pulled in on the other side, then cut my engine and sat there to think. I knew I needed to just go in and work this out. But Will was one of those gossipy types (a trait I disliked even more in guys than girls), which meant any visible tension between me and Luke would go public almost immediately. So instead, I got out and walked over to the truck and tested the driver’s-side door. When I found it unlocked, I got in, found a pencil in the console, and started looking for something to write on.
There was a Double Burger wrapper on the floor, but it was greasy, so I opened the glove box and dug around. After a moment, I unearthed a slip of white paper with something scribbled on one side. The other was blank, so I smoothed it out on the dash. I was sitting there, trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say, when it occurred to me to double-check that whatever was on the reverse wasn’t important. I turned it back over.
Really. You look better without it (your shirt). Melissa 919-555-2323
I had a flash of the dark-haired girl from the office, sliding this under the wiper. He hadn’t discarded it, but folded it neatly and tucked it away, like something precious. Then I noticed the bit of faint scribbling in pencil below her message. It was hard to read, as always, total chicken scratch. But, unlike most people, I had experience deciphering Luke’s penmanship. So it only took a moment for the message, and the situation, to become clear.
Fancy Free, he’d written. Till Sunday
Probably, he’d used the same pencil I was now holding to jot down this information after he called her. But when had he done that? That day? Or since he’d seen me and Theo?
I put the pencil back in the console, then folded the paper up again. It was like I was watching someone else as I got back out of the truck. I had left the paper on the seat, where he’d see it first thing. Another message from me he could ignore, if he chose. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t.
When I got home and pulled into my driveway, I could see lights on upstairs in the house. As I came in and walked down the hallway to my room, though, there was for once no sound or signs of occupation. Just my bed as I’d left it, made, the towel I’d used for my shower that morning hanging from the hook on the bathroom door. I should have been happy that my mother and sister had finally given me the solitude and respect for my space that I’d been demanding for ages. Instead, I found myself listening for any sound of life from upstairs. A footstep, a voice, a door being shut. Just something to let me know I wasn’t really as alone as I suspected.
* * *
“Coffee?”
I nodded, then flipped my mug over and moved it closer to the edge of the table. The waitress—a girl with a lip ring and a tattoo of what looked like a circle of protractors on her bicep—filled it up. “Thanks.”
“Sure. Still waiting for one more?”
“Yeah.”
Still waiting, I thought, as she moved on to the next table. I glanced at my watch. It was just before eight a.m., almost twelve hours since this whole nightmare had started. Although calling it that made it sound like sleeping had been involved at some point, which was not the case. Even after Luke and I had arranged to meet for breakfast, I’d tossed and turned until daybreak, tracking the hours one b
y one in the red numbers of the clock beside my bed.
“Hey,” he’d said when he finally called the night before, around eleven. “It’s me.”
“Hi.”
The awkwardness was like thin air, making it hard to breathe or think.
“I guess,” he said after a long pause, “that we need to talk.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” I swallowed, wondering if he could tell I’d been crying. I honestly, still, could not believe that any of this was happening. A lot of people lied and cheated, I knew that. But Luke was one of the good ones. Then again, I’d also been sure he was mine. “Did you … you called her?”
“Emaline,” he said, sounding sad.
“Just tell me.”
Another pause. Too long, I knew, to be followed by anything I wanted to hear. “Yes. I called her.”
“Why?” I asked.
In the quiet that followed I thought, for some reason, of the first days we’d been dating, way back in ninth grade. How just seeing him coming towards me in the crowded hallway before first period made me nervous and insanely happy all at once. My throat got tight, and I cleared it. I was all too aware that he still hadn’t answered me.
“I think we need to talk face to face,” he said. “Not like this.”
I bit my lip. “All right. When?”
“Before work tomorrow? Last Chance? Like, at eight?”
“Okay.”
Too much silence, I thought, as we endured another pause. Luke and I were a lot of things, but quiet had never been one of them. Now, I’d had nothing but quiet in the hours since, most of which I spent shuffling the events of the last two days as I knew them, trying to make them add up to something else. But all I could see, again and again, was that girl—dropping his wiper back down over her note. Thwack.
Now, I pulled my coffee towards me and took a sip. I was just putting it back on the table when the bells over the front door jangled and Luke came in.
He glanced around, his expression businesslike. Then he saw me, and something softened in his features, triggering the same reaction in my own. Oh my God, I thought. Please, no. No. But then he was sliding in across from me, and it was already happening.
“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. The words came out rushed, like he’d been holding them in with his breath. “I’m so sorry, Emaline.”
I swallowed, hard, as the waitress returned with the coffeepot. Luke turned over his cup, she filled it, and then, thankfully, moved on. “I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for yet.”
He ran a hand over his hair, then looked outside at the boardwalk, the ocean beyond it. It was a cloudy day, the sky gray and flat bordering the horizon. I waited for him to speak again. He didn’t.
“Okay,” I said finally. “You were pissed about me not returning your text because I was with Theo. So you called her. I get it. I’m not happy, and clearly it’s a sign of a bigger issue. But—”
“It was before that.”
I took me a minute to actually hear this. Like the letters or sounds were scrambled and had to rearrange themselves. “What?”
He shifted his gaze slowly away from the window, then found my face. “I called her before I saw you with him.”
“You—” I stopped, realizing I was sputtering. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“That’s not an acceptable answer,” I told him, like this was a game show and he’d phrased it incorrectly. “Try again.”
I watched him exhale, his chest falling. “You know we haven’t been hanging out so much lately. Things have been … weird. Kind of off, you know. And then she left that note …”
“And you decided to cheat on me,” I finished for him.
“It wasn’t like that.” He reached up, pinching at the skin between his closed eyes. “Look, I’m not sure why I called. I just did. And she said she was going out that night with her friends, and I should meet them. I wasn’t going to do it. At least, I don’t think I was.”
I held my breath, scared that even the smallest sound might cause him to say what I so did not want to hear.
“But then,” he went on, dropping his hand, “I did see you, after you’d blown off my text. I was pissed off. So I went.”
“You met her,” I said, clarifying. He nodded, not looking at me. “Did you sleep with her?”
“No!” he said, sounding surprised. “God, Emaline. Do you really think I’d do that?”
“I don’t know what to think about you anymore!” A woman at another booth turned, slightly, to glance at us. I lowered my voice. “Seriously. How could you do this?”
“I’m not the only one who’s been acting questionably here. You were hanging out with another guy, remember?”
“That was work related.”
“Oh, right,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Because you’re always driving around after dark with some dude on official company business.”
“I didn’t do anything with Theo but drive him around,” I shot back. “We weren’t at some club together. Where did you go, anyway? Tallyho?”
I’d been joking, not that any of this was funny. When he stared back at me, though, flushing slightly, all I wanted to do was cry.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Luke. Really?”
And it was then, of course, that the waitress appeared at the end of the table, her pad in hand. “Okay. Ready to order?”
Food was the last thing I wanted. But somehow, I asked for my usual scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Luke got a bacon and egg biscuit, like always. Even when nothing was normal, breakfast apparently did not change.
Once the waitress was gone, neither of us said anything for a while, instead just sitting there as the sounds of the restaurant—forks clinking against plates, other conversations from the tables and counter customers, the door chime sounding again—filled the air around us. Finally, I said, “So what now? We break up?”
“I don’t know.” He picked at his napkin, fraying the edge. “Maybe we just spend a little time apart, to think.”
“God, that is such a cliché.” I shook my head, looking out at the water again. “Next you’ll be saying that it’s not me, it’s you.”
He sighed, letting this pass without comment. “Look. We’ve been together since ninth grade, Emaline. We go to college in a few weeks. I just wonder if, you know, this is happening for a reason. Like maybe we both were missing out on something.”
“Like a date with some tourist at Tallyho?” I asked. “Oh, no, wait. You did that already.”
He shot me a look. “Fine. You don’t have to agree with me. But I bet, if you think about it, you might actually get what I’m talking about.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, glancing outside again. Just another Friday, or so it would seem from the outside. But down deeper, something I’d seen as solid—not perfect, but solid—was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it. “I don’t need to get anything, Luke. You did this.”
He didn’t say anything. But I could feel him watching me, that heaviness of someone’s scrutiny, as I focused solely on a sea tern outside, floating above the boardwalk. Its wings were outstretched as it rode the breeze, up and down, up and down.
“I’m sorry,” I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn’t eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.
9
I SHOWED UP at work a half hour later with a small plastic take-out box, Luke’s uneaten biscuit wrapped up inside. I’d tried to just leave it, but the waitress, for whate
ver reason, was determined that I bring it with me.
“They actually keep pretty well, if you stick them in the fridge,” she explained as she folded a piece of wax paper carefully around it. “When you’re ready to eat it, microwave it on low for, like, thirty seconds only.”
I nodded. This must be what shock feels like, I thought, as I paid, tipped her, then carried the box to my car. I passed three garbage cans on the way, and told myself at each one I should toss it in. But I didn’t. Like that box held the last little piece of what was normal, and I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.
Once at the office, I put on my busy face and headed inside, intending to go straight to the back storage room to get the towels and whatever else needed delivering to clients who had requested them. Then I saw everyone gathered in the conference room. It was Friday at nine a.m., which meant another one of Margo’s mandatory meetings. Crap.
“So nice of you to join us, Emaline,” she said as I came in. “Did you bring food for everyone, or just you?”
I ignored this, taking a seat next to my mom, who was busy typing something on her phone, her morning Mountain Dew from the Gas/Gro on the table beside her.
“Well, I guess we can start now,” Margo said, shuffling some papers in front of her.
“What about Mrs. Merritt?” Rebecca asked. Despite having been with us only six months, even she knew any meeting was useless without my grandmother, who, despite Margo’s posturing, was the real boss here.
“I have a printed agenda that will catch her up,” Margo replied, passing the stack of papers over to my mom, who was still busy with her phone. They sat there on the table, untouched, until my sister finally picked them up again, handing them out to us one by one with a bit too much gusto. “All right. Let’s start with item one. Staff food storage and rules.”
My mom finally put down her phone, then nodded hello to me. I nodded back, very aware of her looking at the take-out box, my face, then the box again. I concentrated on the stupid agenda, not wanting to risk full eye contact.