“Why would Logan know about that?” I shriek.
“Because he’s pre-med,” she says. “Not because he’s never been touched. Don’t worry. Logan is fine.”
“Turning to stone isn’t a medical thing,” I tell her in between nibbling on a guava and cream cheese pastry. “It’s a curse. Doctors can’t help with curses.”
“You’re not cursed, Kat,” James says, in such a warm calm tone that I burst into tears. She doesn’t look embarrassed that this is happening while we’re out in public; she just takes my hand and holds it. And it always feels safer to cry when James is holding my hand.
James offers up several more invites, but I manage to escape the UCLA party. It would have been fun to tag along with Matty in tow; he’s so in his element at parties. Crowds always end up forming around him, even if he barely knows anyone when the evening starts. And I liked being the girl at his side, the one laughing first at his jokes and anticipating his moves. I’ve been one of a pair with James since we were little, but I liked being one of a pair with Matty, too.
Anyway, maybe someday I could imagine being at a party not as a pair of any sort and having a good time, but tonight’s not it. I do hope at some point it sounds good to kiss someone else, but right now I might as well have a little cage around myself, or one of those cones our neighbor’s dog wore so he wouldn’t chew on stitches after leg surgery.
Dad is working at the kitchen table on his laptop when I get back from hanging out with James, and he grins as I set the pastry box on the table.
“Do I tell you enough that you’re my favorite daughter?” he asks.
“Ha ha,” I say. “So, is your boss making you work again this weekend?”
We both know that it’s very rare that Dad’s forced to work on weekends, or even late evenings. Since Mom’s been gone, we’re both happy to pretend that he’s not just trying to fill his time.
“Uh, sure, Kat,” he says, and I notice the words on the window he’s minimized. Online Dating.
“Dad!”
He turns to look at me. “What?” And then his eyes see where mine are looking. “Oh. It’s . . . it’s nothing. I didn’t even sign up yet. You’re right, it’s dumb.”
“No,” I say, correcting my tone. “It’s not dumb. I didn’t say that. I just didn’t know you—”
“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to,” he says.
“It shouldn’t be up to me,” I say, because my deep down honest answer would be that I don’t want him to. But I’m not about to make Dad’s life even worse with brutal honesty. I hate myself for even thinking brutal honesty, and I feel my heart speed up.
The symptoms of cardiac arrhythmia are so vague—a freaking “fluttery heart”? Lots of things can give you a fluttery heart, like kissing someone or seeing otters at the aquarium. It’s hard to be constantly vigilant. Dad let me get a second and then a third opinion after Mom died, but if Mom didn’t know something was wrong until it was way too late, how can I trust them?
“You should totally do it,” I say with all the enthusiasm I have. “Go meet someone!”
“What should I say are my hobbies?” Dad asks, instead of ducking out of the topic, like I expect him to. “I’ve never had to worry about having hobbies.”
“Cooking,” I say. “Cooking sounds good on a dating site, right?”
“I don’t think heating up your weird lasagnas counts as cooking,” he says.
“But you used to, sometimes. The salmon with veggies, and spaghetti. Your spaghetti was always better than Mom’s.”
Dad sighs, and I feel that I’ve done the wrong thing by bringing her up.
“You could also—”
“Maybe I’ll wait to do this until I don’t have to lie about having hobbies,” he says.
I feel something in me settle, even if that isn’t at all fair.
The next time I emerge from my room, thinking about maybe watching TV, I find Dad in the living room doing exactly that. It’s my first Saturday night as a senior, and I’m having literally the same evening as my forty-six-year-old father. Maybe worse? He was at least thinking about dating. He’s not cursed.
“I’m going to walk to Von’s,” I tell Dad. “We’re out of . . .”
I can’t think of what we’re actually out of, but luckily he just gives me cash and waves me off. It feels good to be out of the house again, and I hope that it’s not a bad omen of my future that it also feels good to be alone.
Up ahead of me, I hear a dog barking—but not any sort of threatening barking. It’s the sound of tiny yapping, and when I turn the corner onto Pass Avenue, a little black-and-white dog makes a beeline for me.
“Catch him!” someone shouts, and I don’t question it. I’ve never been athletic like James, but I can be fast in short bursts. And within moments, the dog is in my arms, continuing to yap in protest.
“Oh my god, thank you.” The dog chaser catches up with me, and I realize it’s someone from school. Magnolia Park is big, so there are a lot of people like this girl who I recognize on sight but couldn’t name if I was being held at gunpoint.
Not even under much less stressful circumstances.
I hold on tightly to the loud squirming dog, who’s clearly already plotting another escape. “Is this your dog?”
“He’s my aunt’s dog.” She reaches out to clip a leash to the dog’s collar. “She’s letting me watch him this weekend and . . .”
“It’s going super great?”
She laughs and pushes her hair back from her face. Her hair’s tall in front, short like a boy’s everywhere else, swooped up and over, and it stays put where she shoves it. “Oh yeah, super great for sure.”
I tentatively set the dog on the ground and breathe a sigh of relief when the leash keeps him from escaping. “He seems angry.”
“My aunt works from home, so he’s not used to being without her. It’s pretty codependent,” she says. “It’s lucky you were here, though. Especially because you have super strength, ripping doors off of lockers and all.”
Oh, no.
“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” she says, and everything must be apparent on my face. “I just thought that it was funny—I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole,” I say, which I can feel, even if I don’t really know her. It’s easy to forget sometimes that while others might get lost in the crowded halls of Magnolia Park High, Matty and I were visible. We were one of those couples, and it doesn’t hurt that Logan and James had been, too, up until graduation last school year.
“I accidentally am.” The girl holds firm to the leash as the little dog strains against it. “All of the time.”
“Me too.” I think of Dad and how his face looked thinking about Mom’s spaghetti. “It’s hard not to be. Maybe for some people it’s not? For me it is.”
She watches me for a moment or two. “So where are you heading? None of your business, Quinn, is an acceptable answer, obviously.”