“No one hurt me,” Scarlett said. “Notice how I’m fine?”
“You think I’m okay with people hurting you guys?” Spencer asked, ignoring this.
“No. I just don’t think you think about consequences.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Lo,” he said.
“I want something to be simple,” Lola said. “I want there not to be a problem. Your face is everywhere now. People know you live here.”
“Want me to move?” he said with a wry smile.
“I just want you to take some responsibility! We can’t change everything just because you want to be an actor.”
Marlene shifted forward, pulling her half-formed braids from Lola’s hands, her eyes round with anticipation. When Spencer and Lola fought, it happened fast.
“Guys,” Scarlett said quickly. “Don’t do this.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Lola said, her voice shaking. “Trust me. I’m sick of doing this.”
“So don’t,” Spencer replied with a shrug. “Lola, what’s your problem?”
“My problem is that your problems follow us everywhere! You get crazy people coming after you on the street, and Scarlett got caught in that. Now they come home, to work…”
“Those people who bothered you at work had nothing to do with Spencer,” Scarlett said. “They were Chip’s friends.”
Spencer had been fairly restrained up until that point, processing all the accusations that were flying in his direction. At the sound of the name Chip, however, a look of furious understanding passed over his face, and his calmness was gone.
“Oh,” he said. “Chip’s friends. Chip’s friends bother you and it’s my fault. It’s not your fault for dating someone like Chip. Who could blame you for dating a great guy like that?”
Scarlett had seen them fight before—plenty of times—but there was something about the way this particular fight was going that scared her. The barometric pressure in the room dropped suddenly. Marlene sensed it, too. She didn’t seem so eager to watch anymore.
“Lola,” Scarlett said, “it’s not that bad. That first day with the doughnuts wasn’t even…”
But Lola didn’t want to know what it wasn’t.
“Don’t!” she yelled. “You always side with him!”
“She’s not siding with me,” Spencer shot back. “What gets you mad is that I’m actually doing something I like, and you have no idea what you want to do. You always act a martyr because you gave up going to college. No one asked you to. You didn’t even try. But for some reason it’s my fault that you have no plan—I mean, aside from dating rich people.”
Spencer must have hit a nerve. Lola clutched at her phone and, for a second, Scarlett thought she was going to throw it at the wall, or even at Spencer. Instead, she just left the room.
“She’s going to run out of rooms to storm out of,” Spencer said. “We only have about fifteen more.”
The next morning, Scarlett was vaguely aware that Lola was moving around at a slightly earlier hour than normal, but these were not things she cared about much at five A.M. She rolled toward the wall and continued sleeping. When she woke, she found a note sitting on her alarm clock. She picked it up and squinted at it in the half light. It read:
I just need to take a few days away to think things over. I’m taking the early bus to Boston. (I’ll call Mom and Dad from the bus—don’t worry, you don’t have to tell them.) Not sure when I’ll be back. Keep an eye on Marlene for me, okay?
Love, Lo
Scarlett jumped out of bed and pushed open Lola’s closet door. Her little wheeled suitcase was gone. She immediately ran to Spencer’s room, because this sort of thing—a brazen, dumb move—was his department. It took a few knocks to rouse him, tousled, unshaven, and confused.
“Lola’s gone,” she said. “She went to Boston.”
Spencer left the door hanging open as an invitation to let her come in, then walked back to his bed and dropped himself on it face-first, bouncing as he hit.
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled from the pillow.
“She ran off in the middle of the night,” Scarlett said, standing over him shaking his shoulder. “She…ran away.”
Seeing that he wasn’t going to be able to escape this conversation, Spencer reluctantly pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “She’s eighteen. She can handle a little road trip.”
“But this is Lola,” Scarlett said. “Lola doesn’t run away. And what about her job?”
“Let her go blow off some steam for a few days, lose another retail job. It’s not the end of the world. It’ll be fine.”
But Scarlett didn’t feel fine. She felt queasy. Lola wasn’t a creature of clockwork predictability, but there was a soothing rhythm to her actions, like a loose, flowing embroidery made of even, careful stitches.