It had become a thing—our lives were better at Other Acadia.
Or at least they were different. It might not solve our problems, but it could give us new ones, Flora would say. No one loved the Other Acadia fantasy more than she did.
“What’s it like there?” August asked.
“Just like here,” Flora replied. “Except everyone has exactly what they want.”
“For real, what’s your deal, though?” Brit reached across me to poke August in the arm.
He didn’t respond, just got to his feet and nodded toward Terrance. “You want to introduce me to some people?”
“I don’t know any other people,” Terrance replied, deadpan. “That’s the only reason I’m here.” But he stood too and followed August inside.
Brit leaned in to me when they left. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna wingman the shit out of this for you. This right here—still laying the foundation.”
“Thanks, but I’m good.”
“You are,” she replied. “Too good.”
fifteen
Flora and I ended up standing on my front lawn with August at the end of the evening, having left Terrance and Dash behind to deal with Brit.
“Sleepover?” Flora said, when August had retreated to the Conlins’ house. I nodded.
I stopped at home and said hi to my folks, changed into my pajamas, then headed next door. The front door was open—Mrs. Feliciano was on the couch, watching TV, her phone pressed to her ear. She waved when she saw me, then gestured in the direction of Flora’s room.
The bathroom door was shut, light seeping out from underneath when I stepped into the hallway, so I headed into Flora’s room.
She was an only child—never had to share a room. Even Brit and Luke shared when they were little, before Luke got the basement. And I had shared with Ciara almost my whole life, until she went off to college.
I remember watching Ciara taking her clothes out of the closet, piling them into a suitcase. Isn’t it nice you’ll have more space? You can spread out.
I didn’t want to spread out, if it meant filling the places she had existed before.
I sat on Flora’s bed while she was in the bathroom and fussed with my phone for a moment. I hadn’t messaged Megan yet today, so I did that quickly—Hi, this is Sophie from the Marching Pride of Acadia and we would love to host you for our annual fall festival …
Then I set my phone aside.
Flora’s room was a little like a time capsule. It had the same wallpaper runner around the top of the room as it did when we were little kids: cartoon sheep jumping over fences, rolling green hills behind them. Newer interests were layered over older ones—hand-painted pictures and drawings were partially obscured by magazine tear-outs of pop stars, which were partially obscured by movie posters.
On the shelves by her window were stacks of books, piled high and color-coordinated. One shelf was dedicated to Flora’s miniatures—a tiny café, a little bookstore, a bakery with shelves filled with tiny cakes and macarons and teacups.
It’s not exactly right to say I worried about Flora. But she was just so … soft sometimes, so unguarded. We begged our moms for these knockoff American Girl dolls when we were younger and Flora still had hers, all of its clothes and accessories. Sometimes—rarely, but still, every now and then—I would come over and it would have a new hairstyle, or be wearing a different jacket.
There’s no expiration date on that kind of stuff, not a spoken one, anyway, but whatever it was that crushed it out of the rest of us—made Terrance and Dash put down their Power Rangers action figures and never pick them back up again—I don’t think it had happened to Flora yet.
And part of me hoped it never would. But part of me just … worried, sometimes. I worried about what she would do next year if Brit and I weren’t around anymore, if we both went away to school.
I worried about what Brit would do, if she and I went away to different schools.
I worried a lot, basically. And it was easiest to worry in times like this, when it was quiet, when I was alone, when there was nothing to distract me.
I picked up my phone again and checked my notifications, just in case Megan had somehow miraculously replied in the last two minutes. She hadn’t.
I tried to think of happier things. The last time Brit and I were over here, Flora was trying to do a makeup tutorial from YouTube with Brit as her subject. Flora loved makeup tutorials. Makeup in general. We had pooled our money and gotten her this palette she really wanted for her birthday.
Brit and Flora sat on Flora’s bed, Brit with her eyes closed as Flora brushed and swiped and blended. She had been trying to fill in Brit’s eyebrows when I finally looked up and couldn’t help but sputter a laugh.
“What are you doing?”
Brit’s eyes sprang open. “What? What did you do?”
“It might be a little much, but they said you have to go in with a strong hand,” Flora said. “I’ll fix it.”
“Lemme see.”
“No, I want to finish,” Flora said, and then grinned at me when Brit shut her eyes.
Instead of taking stuff off, Flora doubled down with the eyebrow filler, and drew Brit’s eyebrows approximately three times their normal thickness.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
When she finally handed Brit the mirror, Brit let out an unholy yelp, and Flora burst into hysterical laughter.
“What the hell? WHAT THE HELL, FLORA?”
“I knew I couldn’t fix them,” she said. “So I made it funny instead.”
“This is not—You are so—” Brit blustered, but Flora just laughed harder, throwing herself back against the pillows, tears in her eyes.
“You—look—so—ridiculous—” she wheezed, and I doubled over.
“I HATE BOTH OF YOU.”
The Brit Rule stood as follows: when she said she hated something, it usually meant that she loved it. It was the rule of opposites. But in this moment, she may have actually meant hate.
Until she dropped the mirror on the comforter and began tickling Flora.
“No.” Flora beat her fists out helplessly, laughing harder. “No, I can’t, I’m gonna pee—”
“Pee, then,” Brit said, still tickling. “Me and my eyebrows will judge you.”
“You’re nothing but eyebrows,” Flora gasped. “You and your eyebrows—are the same thing—You are—your eyebrows—”
I smiled to myself now, alone in Flora’s room, with the memory of them both laughing.
* * *
“What did you talk about with August tonight?” Flora said, when we were both in bed.
“Not much,” I said. “Band stuff mostly.”
“Hmm,” she replied, a little too knowingly.
sixteen
Kyle showed up in my checkout lane at Safeway a few days later with a gallon of milk, a big package of diapers, some odds and ends.
“Funny how she just keeps going through ’em,” he said as I swiped the diapers. I glanced up at him with a smile and was surprised to see the same tilt to his grin that August had. I had never noticed it before. Or I guess I had never known to look.
I looked away as I reached for a box of Cheerios.
“So, uh, how’s August doing?”
“Good. I think? I hope.” He scratched his chin absently. “I don’t know, I’ve been working a lot. I think you’ve probably gotten to spend more time with him than I have.” He smiled again. Brit always commented how hot he was, which made me uncomfortable because I thought of him as like a cool older brother/young uncle type. But objectively speaking, Kyle was hot in a way like he could play a too-old high schooler on a supernatural-themed TV show, or the action hero’s best friend who gets blown up in a war movie. “He’s talked about you, you know. Sophie this and Sophie that.”
“Good things?”
“Doesn’t get better than this and that, does it? That’s top-shelf stuff right there.”
I finished ringing up and started bagging while Kyle ran his card.
“So … he’s going to be staying, then? Like for school and everything?”
Kyle glanced up, nodded. “Yeah, looks like it. With the girls and everything, you know, we wanted to be careful—bringing a stranger into the house and all that, but—Not that he’s—” He looked flustered. “Just … you know. But he’s great, he’s a great kid. We love having him around. These last few weeks have been really cool, getting to know him.”
“So you didn’t …?”
“Sorry?”
“Know him.”
He looked away. “We didn’t grow up together, no. Different, uh, different dads. I lived with my dad and stepmom here; he lived with our mom in Missouri. I wasn’t … close with her at all. I didn’t really know her either.”
What happened to her? I didn’t feel it was fair to ask, but I was desperate to know. Instead, I handed Kyle his receipt.
“Say hi to everyone for me.”
“You got it. Have a good one, Soph.” He collected his bags, and then he was gone.
* * *
Dash worked at Safeway too. We had both started there in junior year—he was saving for the Cutlass, and I was just saving.