“Nico,” Dad says in a warning tone. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” Nico says, not looking up from his phone. “All I said was—”
“Nope, don’t even try,” Dad interrupts, examining his stubbly chin in the pull-down mirror. He’s being the stern one this morning, since Pop is all guilt-ridden from his long work call. “You’re deliberately pushing her buttons. I know you don’t talk to Meredith that way.”
Nico’s ears turn red and he doesn’t say another word until we get to the soccer field. Meredith is his girlfriend—his first real one—and Pop’s right. Meredith would never let Nico talk to her the way he talks to me. I mean, Nico shouldn’t talk to me the same way he talks to his girlfriend. That would be weird. But I could learn a thing or two from her about silencing glares.
It’s hot outside in that threatening way late-spring mornings have, where you can tell that it’s going to be unbearable in the sun by noon. Gina Tarlucci waves at me from the bleachers. Her little brother is on the soccer team too, and she’s another senior, so it’s kind of strange that we’ve never hung out. We’ve always had classes together, although this year we only share study hall. I like her fine—but I’ve always had my friends, and she’s always had hers, most of whom are in the photography club and way too intense for me. She’s one of those girls who’s super serious about becoming a photographer. She carries around an old camera and rolls her eyes when people take selfies on their phones. She verges on being annoying about it, but she’s also really good. Or at least, she always takes a lot of pictures that get into the yearbook. She’s tall and broad and wears super-shiny lip gloss and bright, patterned dresses that I think she makes herself.
I should probably talk to her, but I can’t deal with the slightly awkward why-aren’t-we-better-friends conversation right now. I can’t make small talk after the night I had. I wave back at her, then head for the shade behind the bleachers, where hopefully I won’t have to talk to her.
I could stay out on the field and just pretend that I have to stick by my family, but if I did that, I’d have to talk to all of Nico’s friends’ parents. It’s not that I don’t like them—they’re nice people. But I can guarantee that they’ll all have the same five questions. How’s school? Where are you going to college? What do you want to major in? What’s your five-year plan? How was prom?
The answers are fine, State, I don’t know, (screaming internally), and fine, respectively. I can deal with answering the first two questions, which nobody actually cares about unless they went to State, in which case they’ll start giving me all kinds of advice about professors I might have and classes I might take. The last three questions hurt in ways it’s hard to articulate. Before last night, the last question was always Are you excited for prom?, which also hurt in ways it’s hard to articulate. It’s like every adult I talk to has some weird combination of expectations. They want me to be living in the now and enjoying “the best years of my life,” sure—but at the same time, I’m supposed to know what income I’ll need to afford the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage I’ll be signing up for in ten years.
It’s just a lot, is all. So yeah, sometimes I hide, or pretend to be totally absorbed in my phone, or whatever. Because sometimes I don’t want to have to know where I’ll be in ten years and how I’ll get there. Sometimes I don’t want to be experiencing the Fullness of Teendom.
Sometimes I just want to be able to exist as I am without having to worry about anything bigger than how I’ll dispose of Josh Harper’s head and heart.
I check the group text and, apparently, a million things have happened since the last time I looked at it. Roya is hungover, and Iris is in trouble with her parents as always, and one of Maryam’s prom makeup tutorials got picked up by some big clickbait website. Everyone is trying not to talk about what happened; they’re all acting like everything’s fine, like our normal problems matter. It’s an enormous relief. While I’m composing my response, three dots appear at the bottom of the screen, the indicator that someone is typing.
I wait. I want to see what someone else says before I hit send. I wouldn’t want my response to interrupt someone else’s thought. I wonder sometimes if everyone else thinks this way too—if they’re also always trying to make sure that they’re not taking up too much space.
I don’t have to wait long. It’s only a few seconds before Maryam’s message comes through.
We have to talk about last night
The air feels humid and close and suffocating.
Sure thing but not in text, comes Roya’s reply. She and Marcelina negotiate a time and place for all of us to meet: Marcelina’s house at dawn. Paulie protests, because of course she does, but agrees to the plan after a single message from Maryam:
Please. It’s an emergency.
I haven’t sent a reply yet. I can’t find a reply that fits, so after a minute, I send a thumbs-up emoji. It looks wrong, so I follow it with the word Thanks, then Sorry, then Thanks again. Nothing feels right, and I start to think that maybe nothing ever will.
I lean against the bleachers so that I can feel the vibrations of footsteps against my back. I can hear Pop yelling “Go Nico!” as loud as he can, even though he doesn’t understand the game.
Then I hear Dad’s voice, much closer than Pop’s.
“Yeah, sorry, I just had to get away from the field,” he’s saying. “It’s loud as heck out here. What were you asking?”
He walks around the corner of the bleachers, his shoulders sagging with relief as he steps into the shade. His face is already shining with sweat from standing in the sun—it’s beading in his five-o’clock shadow and making his hair foof up into curls. He must have pulled a late night last night to have skipped shaving this morning. He’ll have a sunburn later, and Pop will nag him for not wearing sunscreen—you can count on it. He squints around in the shadows while his eyes adjust, and then he spots me and does a combination oh-hi-you’re-here and sorry-I’m-on-the-phone pantomime. I smile and wave him off. It’s the same exchange we go through every time he tries to sneak away to take a work call during family time, only to run into me in one of my hiding places.
I’m not paying him any attention—I’ve spent my whole life learning how to tune out his meandering conversations with clients and colleagues—but some part of my brain must be listening, because I snap to attention when I hear the name “Josh.”
“… wasn’t at a friend’s house?” Dad is saying, and a sick kind of heat rises in my chest. “Well, I don’t know. He definitely wasn’t with us.” He pauses, and I’m not even trying to pretend that I’m not listening. I know that if I tried to act disinterested, I’d fail, so I let him see that he’s caught my attention, that I’m worried. I hope that he only sees “worried,” and not “pissing myself with fear.” He holds up a finger, frowning—the other person on the line is still talking.
“Hang on,” he says after a long time. “I have Alexis right here. I’ll ask her.” He covers the mouthpiece and looks up at me. “Hey, bug, did you see Josh Harper last night?”