I nod, trying to mirror the bland look on her face. Of course I already know the Donnelly boys work opposite shifts now, that they spend as little time together as humanly possible. That they hardly even speak, and it’s my fault. “I just came for some pizza.”
A slice of sausage and pepper is my cover, maybe, but I find the brother I’m looking for in his sauce-speckled apron behind the counter, scattering cheese on a wheel of raw dough. Patrick likes assembling pies, or at the very least he used to. He used to say it made him feel calm. “Hey,” I say softly, not wanting to startle him; the shop’s pretty empty at this hour, just the jabber of a little kid playing Ms. Pac-Man in the corner and the sibilant hum of the lite music station over the loudspeaker. Then, stupidly and a beat too late: “Buddy.”
Patrick rolls his eyes at me. “Hey, pal,” he says, the corners of his mouth twitching: It’s not a smile, not really, but it’s as close as I’ve gotten with him since I’ve been back. He looks even more like his dad than he used to. I grin like a reflex. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know.” I shrug, hands in my pockets. “The usual. Kicking ass, fiending pizza.”
“Uh-huh.” Patrick smirks. He used to tease me for this exact thing when we were together, how when I get nervous sometimes I’ll just get cornier and cornier until someone finally stops me. He looks at me. He waits.
I make a face: He’s not going to make it easy, then, this being friends thing. I guess it’s not his job to make it easy. I try again. “You’re coming to Falling Star, yeah?” I ask. It starts in a few days, the Catskills’ exquisitely lame take on Burning Man: a bunch of teenagers camping in the mountains, all the weed you could possibly smoke and somebody’s brother’s fratty band playing the same three O.A.R. songs over and over. We went two summers ago, though, a whole bunch of us, just for the day—it was after me and Gabe but before the book came out, and I remember feeling happy, just for the space of one sunny afternoon. “You and Tess, I mean?”
Patrick nods, finishing up with the cheese and sliding the pie into the oven. He’s a little shorter than his brother, and ropier. He leans the paddle against the wall. “Looks that way, yeah. She wants to check it out.”
“Okay, well. Me too. So”—I shrug awkwardly—“I guess I’ll see you there, then.”
This time Patrick really does smile—at how hard I’m floundering, probably, but I’ll take what I can get.
Day 32
“Hey,” Tess says the next morning at work, finding me in the hallway outside the dining room as I’m readjusting the old black-and-white photos of Star Lake that Fabian for some reason loves to reach up and tilt askew. “This is probably a stupid question, but . . . what do people wear at Falling Star?”
I smile. “Like, do you need to pack bell-bottoms and macramé?” I ask her, standing back a bit to see if the frame is level. “Nah, you’re probably good. Unless you wanna join the love-in; then there’s a special dress code.”
“For the orgy, right.” Tess laughs. “I was thinking more, like, just shorts and stuff, right? I mean, it’s just camping; I don’t need a dress or anything?”
“I mean, I definitely will not be wearing a dress,” I assure her. “If you ask Imogen I dress kind of like a dude, though, so . . . she might be a better person to ask.”
“Shut up, you always look cool. Okay,” she says, before I can react to the compliment. “Thanks, Molly.” She starts to go, then turns around at the last second, pivoting on the hardwood in her lifeguard flip-flops. “Listen,” she says, “it doesn’t have to be, like, weird or anything, does it?” She gestures vaguely, as if the it in question is possibly the whole world. “Like, all of us going, I mean?”
“No, not at all,” I assure her, though I can’t actually imagine how it could possibly be anything but that. I wonder if Patrick told her about us on the lawn the other night. I wonder if it’s weird that I didn’t tell Gabe. “Of course not.”
“Okay, good.” Tess nods. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out more at the party,” she says then. “I know Julia hasn’t exactly rolled out the welcome wagon.” She looks hesitant, like she’s not sure if she’s crossing a line here, but before I can say anything she presses on. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re going.”
I look at Tess’s freckly face, open and expectant; it’s impossible to hate this girl, truly. God help me, I want to be her friend. “I’m glad you’re going, too.”
Day 33
Handsome Jay isn’t coming up to Falling Star until tomorrow, so Gabe and Imogen and I all carpool into the mountains, a winding drive that takes just over an hour and a half. I’m worried the trip is going to be hugely awkward—I’m worried this whole weekend is going to be hugely awkward, truthfully, that the whole thing is going to feel like some extended blast-from-the-past double-date nightmare with everyone I know there to witness the carnage—but Gabe and Imogen are both talkers, and she’s hardly even settled herself into the backseat of the station wagon before they’re engaged in a cheerful debate about the new Kanye West album. After that they move on to the lech-y driver’s ed teacher at the high school and a gross new sandwich place near French Roast that Gabe keeps calling “Baloney Heaven”; I let out a breath and lean my head back against the seat, happy to listen to them talk.
“So, Handsome Jay is working today?” I ask Imogen, turning around to glance at her in the backseat. She’s wearing a vintage-looking scarf as if she’s Elizabeth Taylor in some old movie, dark sunglasses obscuring half her face. She’s too glam for camping, but she’s always loved doing it, ever since we were little kids tucked into a fort on her living room rug. She was the one who got us started coming to Falling Star to begin with.
“Uh-huh,” she says now, sighing dramatically, then, peering at me over the tops of her lenses: “Don’t you make the schedule at that place, P.S.?”