“It’s not like that!” I replied more forcefully than I’d intended. “He’s just … just not … not…” I couldn’t even come up with what he wasn’t, he was so not whatever it was Trish was making him out to be.
“Ahh,” said Trish with a grin. “There’s the reaction I was looking for. You like him.”
I paled. “I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not. I barely know him.”
“Who,” Trish said, “besides your aunt and uncle and Norah, do you spend the most time with in Stony Creek? And don’t say me, because if that’s true, it’s sad.”
I thought about it. “He lives near me, so he gives me a ride to school, and we’re in the same study hall, so we talk.”
Trish just looked at me.
“But sometimes we don’t talk! Sometimes we sit. And read.” She smiled at me and I frowned at her. “I’m making your point for you, aren’t I?”
“I’m just saying, it would make sense if you liked him.” She yawned and stretched. “Or maybe I’m full of shit; I dunno. See you in the morning.” And she rolled over and fell asleep.
I crawled over to the air mattress we’d blown up earlier and slipped inside the faded Beauty and the Beast sleeping bag. My curls had deflated, and I was sure I had mascara all over my face, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Trish had a point. We were alike. But so what? He’d graduate in eight months and go who knows where. I’d graduate the year after and go to New York. We’d probably never see each other again. Not that any of that mattered, because I was still convinced he didn’t like me—or women in general—so the whole conversation was pointless.
Sleep pressed down on me like a weight, like a dozen feet of water and dark silence and I slipped into a dream, snuggled in Adrian’s clothes.
*
Monday morning, the house smelled good, like pine and wood smoke and cinnamon. The rain outside drizzled down in tufts of mist as the wind blew lightly through the forest surrounding the house. I was downstairs in the kitchen pouring myself a cup of coffee when Rachel walked in, smiling.
“Hope you had a good time at Trish’s. You didn’t say much when you got home.”
I shrugged, already bristling. “It was fun.”
Rachel had not given up on her attempts to be cheerful and welcoming. I hadn’t given up on being really, really mad at her.
“I’m glad you’ve made a friend,” she said. “Maybe you could invite her over sometime. Maybe to your birthday party?”
I looked up sharply. “What birthday party?”
“Joe and I were thinking you might want to have one here, and invite some school friends.”
I poured creamer into my mug. “No, thanks.”
I could feel the tension radiating off Rachel in waves. Or maybe that was my tension, it was hard to tell these days.
“Okay, well, have you at least thought about what you want? It’s coming up pretty soon here.”
I froze. For a second, for a split second, she’d sounded just like my mom. Or, like my mom a year ago, before her voice had gotten hoarse and raspy from intubation tubes and chemo. Rachel was her younger sister—her prettier sister. After my dad died, my mom had gotten slowly larger every year, then dramatically thinned out when she got sick. She was never really beautiful, but by the end she was downright scary to look at, with bags of loose skin pooling through the sleeves of her hospital gown and her head all dry and bald. Even with those differences, it was impossible to look at Rachel and not see her.
But my mom wouldn’t have had to ask me what I wanted for my birthday. She would have driven me to our local craft store where we knew every employee by name. She would have handed me a cart and told me to pick out anything I wanted. I’d usually get a couple yards of a fabric I couldn’t normally afford, or stock up on zippers, needles, elastics, pins, bobbins, seam rippers (I always managed to lose mine), pattern paper, backing, or any of the other thousand and one things you need to have a fully functional workshop. My freshman year, she’d surprised me with my own sewing machine—it was expensive enough that it had doubled as my Christmas present, but I didn’t care because it was the best thing I’d ever been given in my entire life, and it meant that much more because it drove home just how much my mom knew me, better than anyone. Rachel, though—she had no idea what to do with me.
I slowly put the spoon into my mug and stirred, trying to stay calm. “I’m all good on the birthday front. Thanks, though.”
Even from here I could see a vein beating in her temple as she struggled to keep her smile in place. “Come on, it’s your golden birthday! It’s not every day you turn seventeen on the seventeenth!”
“I don’t need anything,” I replied a little more sharply than I’d meant.
“Well, that’s fine, because birthdays are about receiving things you want.” She wasn’t going to give up. “So what do you want?”
I turned to face her so fast that coffee sloshed over the rim and burned my fingers, but I didn’t care. “I don’t want anything from you.” I’d said it quietly, but my voice was shaking.