I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the social media apps that were now mine to do with as I pleased, until I got to my calendar. “I’m in D.C. next weekend,” I said, dropping my phone back in my bag. “My dad’s giving a speech and he asked me to be there.”
I shrugged as I said it, and Toby made a face, but the truth was, I didn’t mind at all. Seeing my dad return to work, safe in his lame-duck status, had been beyond fun to watch. He’d returned to the House, kicking butt and taking names, determined to use his last few months in office to the best of his ability, no longer pulling any punches or having to say things he didn’t mean. As a result, he’d told me last weekend over pizza, he was getting more done than he ever had before. When his term ended in January, he was already set up with a job at the Stanwich Public Defender’s Office. Until then, though, he tried to be home whenever he could, and was shooting down the rumors that he was going to run for governor.
It wasn’t like it had come out of nowhere—my dad’s speech at Erikson’s event, coupled with the media narrative about being cleared of wrongdoing and leaving at a political high point to spend time with his family, had made him the star of a few news cycles. It was around then that the sitting governor of Connecticut had called him in for a meeting. He wasn’t planning to run for another term, which—coupled with news of their meeting—had sent the rumor mill into overdrive. But my dad was denying them all for the moment. He’d promised me he wouldn’t consider doing anything until I was at college, and I was very relieved he wouldn’t be uprooting my life to Hartford anytime soon.
“So,” Toby said, when the conversation had started to wind down and we’d both finished our lattes. Toby had been folding and refolding her empty sugar packet for the last few minutes, and I knew she was getting up the nerve to ask the question. “How is she?”
Our coffees and lunches usually ended like this, with the reminder that things were not as they had been. When Toby and I met once a week, for the hours we were hanging out, I could almost let myself forget that things had changed, pretend that maybe Bri and Palmer were just running late or something. But we always came back to reality at the end.
“She’s good,” I said carefully, searching Toby’s expression, wondering if maybe this was the moment that she’d say she wanted things to go back to how they were, or ask me to reach out to Bri for her, anything.
But Toby just gave me a half smile and pushed the sugar packet away. “I’m glad.”
Toby and Bri didn’t speak for several weeks after Toby walked off the bus in New Jersey. And even Bri and Wyatt breaking up when he went back to school didn’t change this, even though Palmer and I had hoped it might. Bri, Palmer, and I had tried our best to adjust to our three-person group—four, if you included Tom, who always got offended when he was left out. Things between Bri and Toby had gotten better since school started—they’d chat in the hallways occasionally—but they weren’t Bri-and-Toby any longer. “Do you think,” I started, then reconsidered my words. “I mean, maybe you two . . .”
Toby raised an eyebrow at me. “You were there on the bus, right? You saw the meltdown?” She shook her head. “I know I went a little crazy.”
“Well, I had kidnapped you and forced you onto a campaign bus.”
A smile flitted across her face and then disappeared. “I know I shouldn’t have said the things I did. But . . .” She shrugged. “I think maybe this hasn’t been the worst thing for me and Bri.”
I was about to try and argue with this, but Toby continued. “We needed some space,” she said, her voice quiet and sure. “I needed to figure out who I was without her.” She looked away from me and folded her sugar packet again. “Without all of you guys.”
“And?” I asked. Toby and I had talked around this over the last few months, but never this directly. And now that we were addressing it head-on, I couldn’t help but notice that she seemed . . . calmer, somehow. More centered, like her energy wasn’t flying off in a hundred directions any longer.
“And I’m good,” Toby said firmly, looking me right in the eye. “I promise.”
“So maybe someday,” I said, hearing the hope in my voice, “you guys might be friends again.” I knew we’d probably never go back to what we’d had before. But maybe that would be okay.
“Maybe,” Toby said, giving me a smile. “I hope so,” she added a second later, in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her.
We said our good-byes and headed out shortly after that. I got into the Mustang, running my hand over the steering wheel for just a moment before checking the time and realizing I had to get going. There was someone I needed to meet.
I always thought about my mother a little bit more when I was driving her car, and its presence in the senior parking lot had already attracted a lot of attention—mostly from the science teachers, for some reason. But between the car and the portrait of Stabby Bob hanging in the foyer, it was like my mom was around more now. Or maybe it was just that my dad and I were talking about her more. It still wasn’t easy, but it no longer felt impossible. We were finding our way through it, together.
I drove away from the coffee shop, glancing at the time, hoping that for once I would be there first—whenever we arranged to meet at our spot, he had an annoying habit of beating me there.
And sure enough, when I pulled up in front of Winthrop, there Clark was, sitting on one of the picnic tables, reading a book, a big white dog waiting at his feet—the dog we walked every Sunday.
I got out of my car and walked toward him, glancing away from Clark and looking at Winthrop for just a moment. I saw the statue differently now. I’d decided that he wasn’t pointing to anything or anyone. Now all I could see was that he was reaching out his hand to someone. For me that explained the expression on his face that I’d never quite been able to understand before.
He was hopeful and nervous and scared and a little bit proud of himself for doing it—extending his hand to someone, not knowing if they’d take it. This was, I had realized, one of the scariest things of all, requiring much more courage than sailing across an ocean and landing on an unknown shore.
At least that’s what I saw. Clark and Tom’s new theory was that he was a time traveler who’d somehow been transported to the past and was just trying to hail a cab.
We all still hung out by Winthrop a little—but we hadn’t done another scavenger hunt since Toby left the group. This was much to the dismay of a very cute college freshman who really wanted another chance to prove his quest skills.
Having a boyfriend in college, I’d learned, wasn’t that different from having a boyfriend at school with you—you didn’t have any teachers in common, but you could still do homework and complain about classes together. Clark was living in the dorms, finishing revisions on the book while he took classes. He was going to be taking a lighter course load in the spring, when his publisher planned a huge book tour.
Fan interest was already reaching a fever pitch, people clamoring to join a lottery to read the early copies. I’d already read most of it, and so had my dad and Tom, though we’d all been sworn to secrecy.
For the first few weeks after we’d gotten back together, I’d been worried that things might fall apart again, not sure that I was up to being in a real relationship, one with actual stakes and feelings and something to lose. But things were going really great, and I was trying to take it one day at a time, trying not to think about schedules or book tours or what would happen when I went to college. We would figure all that out later. But for now there was just Clark. Just the boy I loved.
“Hey,” he said, setting down his book and standing up when he saw me, as Bertie lunged toward me, tail wagging wildly.
“Hey,” I said, walking over to Clark, but Bertie got in the way, and I leaned down and scratched his ears, and under his chin, sending his back leg thumping. “Hi to you, too,” I said, stepping around Bertie and giving Clark a kiss. We lingered that way for a moment, and then he kissed my forehead and squeezed my
hand.
“How was Toby?”
“She was good,” I said, smiling at him. “Ready?”
He slung his arm around my shoulders and I wrapped mine around his waist, tucking my fingers through his belt loops, and we started to walk, the dog leading the way, sniffing every available rock. “I was born ready.”
“Please don’t say that,” I said, shaking my head, and Clark laughed. “That sounds like something Tom would say.”
“Well, in that case, I’m going to say it all the time,” Clark said. He smiled down at me. “Where were we?”
“They were trying to cross the frozen lake,” I said immediately. “And Marjorie was telling everyone about frostbite prevention.”
“Oh, was she?” Clark asked, but I could hear the laughter in his voice. “Okay. So they’re about to cross the lake . . .” He paused, and I waited, knowing that any minute now he’d suggest a possibility, and we’d go from there.
And as it slowly started to get darker, we walked together, the leaves crunching under our feet, both of us tossing out ideas, trading off, adding a detail here and a moment there, as the world we were building unfolded and the story, without any end that I could see, continued on.
© Meredith Zinner
Morgan Matson is the author of Since You’ve Been Gone, Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour, and Second Chance Summer, which was the winner of the California State Book Award. She received her MFA in writing for children from the New School. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her at morganmatson.com.
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Also by Morgan Matson
Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour
Second Chance Summer
Since You’ve Been Gone
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Morgan Matson, The Unexpected Everything
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