“Thanks, Mom.”
Mom leans over to hug me, and when she sits back, her eyes are glistening. “I can’t believe my baby is already nineteen. Where did the time go?”
She does this every year, too. “Aw, Mom. Suck it up.” I smile over at her, and I can’t help but think maybe, just maybe, when I finally get around to telling her I don’t want to go to college, maybe she’ll be on my side, maybe she’ll understand.
I go back to my gifts, opening a set of KISS bobbleheads from Marshal and a Death Cab for Cutie poster from Brooke.
“Your mom said to get you something for your dorm room,” Brooke says, motioning at the poster.
Beside her, Mom grimaces. “I was thinking more along the lines of a lamp or a sheet set.”
A skinny envelope sits on the tabletop, and I reach for it, my stomach hopping up into my throat when I see there’s a stack of bills sitting inside. Mom grins at me. “That’s for when you’re ready to do your dorm shopping. I figure we could go soon and get everything you need.”
I stare down into the envelope, feeling an urgent and sudden need to just spill everything, to tell her I’m not going to college and I’m not going to live in a dorm and I’m certainly not going to take this money. But when I look up and see everyone’s eyes on me, I know this isn’t the place to spit everything out. My eyes find Amy’s, and she sends me a sympathetic smile. She, at least, knows, and that’s enough to comfort me as I shove the envelope in my back pocket.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Mom stretches to reach across the table and pick up the last gift left. She scans the wrapping, which is just pieces of tissue paper layered over one another. When she doesn’t see a card or a tag, Mom scowls. “Who is this from?” she asks, as if there are at least a hundred other people it could have come from.
“Oh, I brought that,” Amy spits out. “It’s really nothing special.” Amy looks embarrassed, but I reach out and take it. I know the weight of a CD case in my hand, and my mind is already on that mix she made me of “Hallelujah” covers while I rip the tissue paper off.
All that’s written on the mix is the Front Bottoms.
When I look back at Amy, her face is buried in her hands, and I can see the blush that’s spread all the way to her ears and down her neck. “It’s so stupid,” she says, her words muffled by her hands.
“It’s not stupid,” I tell her, even though I don’t know exactly what it is. It doesn’t really matter. If it came from Amy, it’s not stupid.
She bites her lip. “It’s just a mix of my favorites. Nothing special.”
Maybe it’s not the best party etiquette, but I take the CD into the living room, where Mom still holds on to her huge stereo from the nineties on an antique side table. I pop open the top and put the CD in, and when the music starts, I wave everyone into the living room with me.
Amy hesitates, hovering between the dining room and the living room, watching us as the notes I know so well, the reverberating notes of “Molly” blare from the stereo. On another day, Mom would tell me the music is too loud, that I’m going to shake the paint off the walls, but today, she just leans against the wall and smiles at me.
I reach out for Amy and pull her into the living room with me as “Molly” dissolves into “Flashlight,” a song that’s fast and pumping, and Brooke is already dancing through the living room with her eyes closed. As the chorus picks up, the drums and the guitar screaming loud, we bounce around the living room, clapping our hands and making room when Marshal joins us, the four of us dancing until we’re out of breath and our downstairs neighbors probably hate us.
When the CD ends, the apartment falling quiet again, we all collapse on the couch, and I’m pressed between the arm of the couch and Amy, her leg against mine from hip to knee.
“Thank you,” I say to her as Brooke and Mom start to discuss whether or not we’re done with the snow for the rest of the year.
“It’s nothing,” she says, her eyes sparking in the light of the living room lamp. “I probably should have given you some new music instead so that you could finally bow before me, The Queen of Music.”
She grins at me, and I pinch her lightly on her knee. She shrieks and punches me in the arm, and I’m happier than I’ve been since, well, ever.
OLIVER
IT’S CLOSE TO eleven when everyone starts to grumble like they’re ready to leave.
Mom is the first one to go.
“No one has to leave,” she says, putting her hands up to stop us when Brooke and Marshal move toward the direction of the door. Mom has changed into her scrubs and is fastening her watch to her wrist. “I didn’t mean to break up the fun. I just really have to get to work.”
“No, that’s okay,” Brooke says, tucking her hands into her back pockets. “I have to get to the shop and help Lauren get closed up. Sorry, Oli.”
“Yeah, sorry, Oli,” Marshal says, “but if I don’t get home before my roommate brings whatever girl he’s met back to the apartment, he’ll lock me out all night, and I’ve been sleeping in my car too much.”
I just nod, trying hard not to dwell on the fact that everyone is going to leave, and I’m going to be left in this unbearably silent apartment. I’m getting ready to shut the door behind all of them when Brooke scowls at me. “Where’s Amy? I was going to give her a ride home.”
I look over my shoulder, but Amy is nowhere to be found. I turn back to Brooke. “She was going to the bathroom earlier. Maybe something’s wrong.”
Brooke sends me a weird look, but she doesn’t move. She crosses her arms and then her mouth curls into a smile. “You know what? Marshal and I are going to head out. Why don’t you go ahead and give Amy a ride home yourself when she gets out of the bathroom?”
My stomach flutters at her suggestion. I know she’s just screwing with me. That she’s loving it, in fact. But if I’m being honest, the idea of being alone with Amy, of getting to be the one to drive her home, makes my skin heat with excitement.
“Yeah, I’ll just, uh, take her home. I’ll give her a ride. That’s not a problem. I can do that.”
Brooke grins at me, cocks one eyebrow, and then she and Marshal are gone. I shut the door and stare at it for a long time, waiting for Amy’s footsteps behind me. But she never comes, and after a few minutes, I make my way down the hall to the bathroom. I’m not entirely sure of the best way to approach the situation. Will it embarrass her if I knock on the door and ask her if she’s okay? Probably.
But when I get to the end of the hallway, the bathroom door is open, and the light is off. I stop, thoroughly confused, and then I hear something in my bedroom, the telling clatter of CD cases smacking together. I’m already smiling by the time I get there. And there she is, looking like the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, in the dim light of my bedside lamp, standing in front of my floor-to-ceiling shelves, rifling through my CDs and vinyl.
AMY
WHEN I TURN slightly away from Oliver’s music collection and see the shape of someone in the doorway, I screech and drop the CD in my hand. Oliver steps into the room, already laughing.