“You don’t have to,” she says. “I can see it on your face when you run.”
“Oh, god! My face gives me away!” I start to laugh, but it collapses in my mouth as Todd walks into the room. He’s not my family. He’s barely more than a stranger. And I’m definitely not home, no matter how this house smells.
“I should head out,” I say, and while I’m prepared for an argument, Mom just nods. Outside I gulp in the fresh air before speeding back, but when I walk inside and it’s only Dad and me, it hits me so hard I could literally fall over. This home is gone, too.
We do our best. Dad’s gone overboard with the fanciest tablet he could have bought—for college, he says—and a huge batch of his homemade cinnamon rolls that are reportedly so labor-intensive that we only have them for Christmas and my birthday. I’m pretty sure my gift pales in comparison—a selection of unusual or hard-to-find spices—but Dad promises he’ll use each of them to make me a special dinner in January.
“Doesn’t that actually make it a gift for me?” I ask. “Another gift?”
“You’ve had a rough year,” Dad says. “You deserve it.”
“You’ve had a rough year, too,” I say, and then we say nothing because what is there to say? We clean up discarded wrapping paper, put away our gifts, and are back in the living room with nothing else to do. I can’t fully blame the lull on Mom’s absence, though it’s not helping. The last couple of years, I’d send Logan a text as things were winding down for the three of us, and suddenly he’d show up in an ugly Christmas sweater, holding a foil-wrapped plate of food and a present his parents insisted he bring for mine. And eventually we’d figure out a way to sneak off and make out.
“We could go see a movie,” Dad suggests. “Isn’t there a new one with that Isaac guy you like so much?”
“Dad.” I have no idea how he latched on to the idea that I have a crush on Oscar Isaac, but it’s not something I feel we need to bond over. Can’t I just innocently find an actor attractive? Oscar Isaac is not going to be my rebound fling.
My phone buzzes, and I promise myself that if it’s Logan outside in an ugly sweater and holding a plateful of food that I won’t even glance out the window. But it’s Kat.
“Dad?”
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“Kat’s having a bad day and . . .” I shrug. “I told her she could come over. I’m sure she won’t be here for hours and hours. We can see the movie later, right?”
“Of course,” he says. “I’ll check the listings at all the AMCs.”
There are, inexplicably, three movie theaters within a few blocks of each other over by the mall. It’s like no one thought to ask anyone at their own company if they were building a movie theater in our town, much less where.
The doorbell rings only a few minutes later, and a jolt goes through me. Our house is so clearly lacking Mom. She might not have liked Kat much, but she was still always around. I don’t feel like having The Talk with Kat today, especially if it’s already a bad one for her. But maybe we could have this one horrible day together, and then it could all be past us? It might even feel like a relief.
“Hi.” Kat throws her arms around me before I even really see her. I try hugging back as hard as she is, but I have to force myself. It’s embarrassing enough when I cry when I’m alone; I can’t even imagine having so much emotion that it’s crashing against and then over my inner walls.
“Let’s go to my room.” I lead her down the hallway. “Do you want something? Water or cocoa or juice? God, sorry, why do I keep offering beverages?”
Kat snorts a big, snotty laugh. Her face is red and wet and streaked with mascara and her no-longer-perfect eyeliner. “I don’t need any beverages.”
“What happened?”
She flops down on my bed. “Maybe I will have cocoa, if you really don’t mind.”
I leave her in my room and find Dad in the kitchen. “Kat wants cocoa. I know you don’t approve of mixes, but do we have any?”
He gives me a look as if I suggested painting our house neon green. “I’ll make actual cocoa and bring it to your room. Don’t worry, I’ll knock on your door and leave it outside so you can keep talking privately with Kat.”
“Dad, you don’t have to go that far,” I say, but he waves me off, and I explain to Kat why I’m returning empty-handed.
“No, that’s good,” she says. “Now that I’ve had Quinn’s cocoa I probably can’t go back to a mix.”
I decide to let that go.
Kat shoves a little box in my direction. “My dad got me this.”
“Should I open it?” I ask.
“Duh, yes.”
I take off the lid to see a sparkling gold necklace, just like the one Kat wears every day. For a moment, I’m confused that her dad gifted her with something she already owns, but I realize that not only is Kat already wearing her necklace but that this one has different letters.
“Your initials,” I say.
“I think he wants me to stop wearing this one,” she says. “And it’s, like, all I have.”
I don’t know what to say because while it can’t actually be all that Kat has, it’s something big. Jennifer wore that necklace every time I saw her, including the last time, at her funeral. I missed almost the entire eulogy that Jennifer’s friend Stacey gave because I was concentrating so hard trying to remember the actual last time I saw Jennifer and what she was wearing. The truth was that I’d spent the night at Kat’s and left early to run, and Jennifer had waved good-bye while wearing pajama pants and a ragged promotional T-shirt from her company. It didn’t seem right that the last time you could say good-bye to someone they’d have on a shirt featuring a cartoon outline of a menopausal woman getting her groove back.
“Her stuff was all there,” Kat says. “And then it wasn’t. Like, at all. I don’t know where it went. Like, thank freaking god I already had the necklace or he would have gotten rid of that, too.”
“Maybe he just put it in storage,” I say, but I don’t know if that sounds any better.
“He’s erasing her.” Kat starts to cry more. “Because of freaking Diane. What kind of name even is Diane?”
I shrug because it’s so much better than Todd.
“It’s only been two years, and—Hang on.” Kat stops talking and glances down at her phone before tapping the green Accept button and holding it up to her ear.
“Hi,” she says into the phone. “Merry Christmas! Officially!”
The tears are instantly gone from her voice, and each word sounds dipped in sugar.
“Yeah, it was fine. Nothing exciting. I’m super glad you survived the OC.” She giggles. “Totally. So I’m at James’s right now but—oh my god, don’t even. I like hearing your cute voice, you dork. I’ll call you later.”
I try to look distracted by my own bedroom as Kat says good-bye to Quinn.
“Is everything OK?” I ask. “With Quinn and Orange County?”
“Oh, totally, I’m sure she’s fine or she would have said something,” Kat says.