“Oh my God,” she says once she’s recovered, coming around the counter and hugging me fast and antiseptic, then holding me back at arm’s length like a great-aunt having a look at how much I’ve grown. Literally, in my case—I’ve put on fifteen pounds easy since I left for Arizona—and even though she’d never say anything about it, I can feel her taking it in. “You’re here!”
“I am,” I agree, my voice sounding weird and false. She’s wearing a gauzy sundress under her French Roast apron, a splotch of deep blue on the side of her hand like she was up late sketching one of the pen-and-ink portraits she’s been doing since we were little kids. Every year on her birthday I buy her a fresh set of markers, the fancy kind from the art supply store. When I was in Tempe I went online and had them shipped. “Did you get my texts?”
Imogen does something between a nod and a headshake, noncommittal. “Yeah, my phone’s been really weird lately?” she says, voice coming up at the end like she’s unsure. She shrugs then, always oddly graceful even though she’s been five eleven since we were in middle school. Somehow she never got teased. “It eats things; I need a new one. Come on, let me get you coffee.” She heads back around the counter, past the rack of mugs they give people who plan to hang out on one of the sagging couches, and hands me a paper to-go cup. I’m not sure if it’s a message or not. She waves me off when I try to pay.
“Thanks,” I tell her, smiling a little bit helplessly. I’m not used to making small talk with her. “So, hey, RISD, huh?” I try—I saw on Instagram that that’s where she’s headed in the fall, a selfie of her smiling hugely in a Rhode Island School of Design sweatshirt. As the words come out of my mouth I realize how totally bizarre it is that that’s how I found out. We told each other everything—well, almost everything—once upon a time. “We’ll be neighbors in the fall, Providence and Boston.”
“Oh, yeah,” Imogen says, sounding distracted. “I think it’s like an hour, though, right?”
“Yeah, but an hour’s not that long,” I reply uncertainly. It feels like there’s a river between us, and I don’t know how to build a bridge. “Look, Imogen—” I start, then break off awkwardly. I want to apologize for falling off the face of the earth the way I did—want to tell her about my mom and about Julia, that I’m here for ninety-five more days and I’m terrified, and I need all the allies I can get. I want to tell Imogen everything, but before I can get another word out I’m interrupted by the telltale chime of a text message dinging out from inside the pocket of her apron.
So much for a phone that eats things. Imogen blushes a deep sunburned red.
I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say, pushing my wild, wavy brown hair behind my ears just as the front door opens and a whole gaggle of women in yoga gear come crowding into the shop, jabbering eagerly for their half-caf nonfat whatevers.
“I’ll see you around, okay?” I ask, shrugging a little. Imogen nods and waves good-bye.
I head back out to where my car’s parked at the curb, pointedly ignoring the huge LOCAL AUTHOR! display in the window of Star Lake’s one tiny bookstore across the street—a million paperback copies of Driftwood available for the low, low price of $6.99 plus my dignity. I’m devoting so much attention to ignoring it, in fact, that I don’t notice the note tucked under my wipers until the very last second, Julia’s pink-marker scrawl across the back of a Chinese take-out menu:
dirty slut
The panic is cold and wet and skittering in the second before it’s replaced by the hot rush of shame; my stomach lurches. I reach out and snatch the menu off the windshield, the paper going limp and clammy inside my damp, embarrassed fist.
Sure enough, there it is, idling at the stoplight at the end of the block: the Donnellys’ late-nineties Bronco, big and olive and dented where Patrick backed it into a mailbox in the fall of our sophomore year. It’s the same one all three of them learned to drive on, the one we all used to pile into so that Gabe could ferry us to school when we were freshmen. Julia’s raven hair glints in the sun as the light turns green and she speeds away.
I force myself to take three deep breaths before I ball up the menu and toss it onto the passenger seat of my car, then two more before I pull out into traffic. I grip the wheel tightly so my hands will stop shaking. Julia was my friend first, before I ever met either one of her brothers. Maybe it makes sense that she’s the one who hates me most. I remember running into her here not long after the article came out, how she turned and saw me standing there with my latte, the unadulterated loathing painted all over her face.
“Why the fuck do I see you everywhere, Molly?” she demanded, and she sounded so incredibly frustrated—like she really wanted to know so we could solve this, so it wouldn’t keep happening over and over again. “For the love of God, why won’t you just go away?”
I went home and called Bristol that same afternoon.
There’s nowhere for me to go now, though, not really: All I want is to floor it home and bury myself under the covers with a documentary about the deep ocean or something, but I make myself stop at the gas station to fill my empty tank and pick up more Red Vines, just like I’d planned to.
I can’t spend my whole summer like this.
Can I?
I’m just fitting my credit card into the pump when a big hand lands square on my shoulder. “Get the fuck out of here!” a deep voice says. I whirl around, heart thrumming and ready for a fight, before I realize it’s an exclamation and not an order.
Before I realize it’s coming from Gabe.
“You’re home?” he asks incredulously, his tan face breaking into a wide grin. He’s wearing frayed khaki shorts and aviators and a T-shirt from Notre Dame, and he looks happier to see me than anyone has since I got here.
I can’t help it: I burst into tears.