I slammed the cabinet door shut. No one even flinched. They all blinked at me—Brian, Dev, Cal, and Mom—as if I hadn’t done anything at all.
It didn’t matter what I did. I would always be the youngest, the baby, the fuckup. They didn’t see me when they looked at me; they saw a Markos-shaped animatronic. I could slam doors and scream and tear the place apart and they’d barely look up from their corn flakes.
“I’m going out,” I said, and left before anyone could stop me.
I called Diana North. We hadn’t hooked up, so I didn’t have to wait a few days. I hadn’t been an ass to her, which meant she’d actually answered the phone. She met me at the bagel place with a patio out back, and we bought bagels and sat at a table in the sun. The light was too bright and hot—it was past noon already and my head ached—but I did not suggest moving to the shade. The hurt was what I deserved for forgetting Win the night before.
She looked prim in a dress with a collar, though her long, thick hair was still a color red not found in nature and the bruise on the side of her face looked both tender and angry. She ate her bagel in tiny bites, wincing when she had to move the right cheek, and stared at me with her bloodshot eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“How’s your face?”
She shrugged, which made her wince again. “Nothing broken.”
“You could tell people you got into a fight.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Very believable. Did you have a good time the rest of the night?”
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t mention my brothers, and I didn’t say the thing about forgetting Win was dead, but I must’ve been thinking about Win because of what came out of my mouth next. “Usually Win would come by with coffee and donuts. On July fourth, I mean.”
Diana scraped cream cheese off her bagel carefully. “Usually Ari would sleep over. I guess we sort of did because we slept in my car. My mom’s car.”
“What?”
“I didn’t feel like going home.”
“Why not?”
Diana spoke to the bagel. “My mom kind of freaked out over my face. Knew she would.”
“It’s not like it was your fault.”
“She’s super protective. I didn’t want to have to hear the whole routine: should’ve been more careful, should’ve watched where I was going, shouldn’t have been running—or at a party—to begin with.”
“That’s crazy. Tell her to shut her face.”
Diana looked up from the bagel, her good eye wide. “I could never do that.”
“Why not?”
“You tell your mother to shut her face?”
I thought of my mother, who’s been distracted most of my life. By the store, by one of my brothers, by a series of disasters—illnesses, injuries, money troubles. But when it was your turn to have a crisis, she would claw anyone’s eyes out for you. If I came home with a bashed-in face, she’d toss me a bag of peas and demand to know who it was she should be suing for damages. “My mother doesn’t think anything’s our fault.”
“You guys are saints, then?”
“Yup.”
“My mom’s okay. She’s always looked after me—too much, probably. Trying to keep me safe and happy always. Between her and Ari—sometimes it felt like they were living my life for me.” She stopped talking and flushed.
I thought of my brothers with their endless reams of advice, and the expectation that I would be exactly like them. “But you don’t feel that way anymore?”
“No,” Diana said, seemingly surprising herself. “No, I don’t. Actually—it’s because of Win. Ari started spending so much time with him . . . I was on my own.”
I swallowed half a bagel in three bites. “What’s up with Ari anyway?”
Diana looked at me out of the corner of her eye, like I was setting a trap. “I don’t know. She doesn’t talk to me much anymore.”
“Well she hasn’t talked to me much either.”
“Really? But you were such good friends.”
I shifted on my metal seat. It burned the backs of my knees. “She was Win’s girlfriend.”
“Come on. You were friends, too.”
“Yeah, but what’s the point now? We’re going to sit around and share our feelings?”
Diana picked at her bagel. “It might be good for both of you to talk about all this stuff.”
“Doesn’t seem fucking likely. Ari having a heart-to-heart? Come on. That’s one good thing about her—she’s not a sappy romantic. Thank god. If she’d been needy with Win he’d have been needy right back and it would have been unbearable. He was so—” I threw the rest of my bagel down onto my place. “He was so damn nice all the time.”
Diana didn’t look startled, but I felt strange—like on the beach: heart racing, breathing coming in weird gasps. I made myself inhale and hold it for five seconds before opening my mouth again.
“Do you think about what happens when you die?” I asked.
“Yes.”