“Wait a second,” Gabe says, shaking his head a little. “Isn’t that how we play, though: You don’t notice, you don’t take the pot?”
Patrick makes a face like, nice try. “I don’t think so, dude.”
Gabe frowns. “I’m just saying, you’re hardly even playing, you needed somebody else to tell you that you even won—”
“Yeah, okay, but I did win,” Patrick says, the faintest hint of an edge creeping into his voice, the kind you wouldn’t even notice if you hadn’t known him pretty much forever. I’ve known him pretty much forever, though. I shift my weight, not liking the trajectory here.
So has Gabe: “Dude, it’s, like, twenty bucks we’re talking about,” he says now, shaking his head like Patrick’s being stupid.
“Dude, it’s, like, my twenty bucks.”
Shit. Patrick mimics his tone exactly, which I know from when we were kids is one of the fastest ways to get under Gabe’s skin. Sure enough: “Why are you being such a dick about this?” Gabe asks, eyes narrowing.
“Why am I being a dick?” he asks, sounding pissed about a whole lot more than twenty bucks in George Washingtons. I wince. “You didn’t win, bro. I know it contradicts your whole entire understanding of the universe, but—”
“It contradicts my understanding of the universe to be a little bitch about everything, yes,” Gabe interrupts.
“You wanna talk about who’s being a little b—”
“I left my sunglasses in the car,” I announce suddenly, standing up so fast I almost turn over the table. “I’m going to go get ’em.”
“Molly,” Gabe starts, sounding more irritated than I’m used to. “You don’t have to—”
“No, no, I’ll be right back.” It’s bailing, I know it is, just like I always do, but sitting there listening to them argue feels like trying to hold still while centipedes crawl all over my naked body. I can’t do it; I don’t have the stomach. I gotta, gotta go.
“You want company?” Imogen asks me.
“Nope, I’m good.”
I take off at a pretty quick clip, but the raised voices have already caught Julia’s attention; I pass by right as she’s getting up off the old Donnelly camp blanket, where she’s been reading magazines with Elizabeth Reese. “Did you just start another fight between my brothers?” she demands, shaking her head like she honestly can’t believe me. “Seriously?”
“I—no,” I defend myself. “Jesus, Julia. They’re into it over a stupid game, I don’t know.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, brushing by me. “Sure they are.”
On my way to the lot I see Jake and Annie from the Lodge, who’ve got a complicated setup involving a generator—Jake’s an Eagle Scout, I remember vaguely. He works behind the reception desk, so I see him more than I see Annie, who’s a lifeguard. “Hey, Molly,” Jake calls. “You want a beer?”
For a second I almost accept, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth Annie’s shooting him a look that could peel the sap right off a pine tree, so I shake my head awkwardly. I swear I’m not after your boyfriend, I want to say.
Instead I get my sunglasses out of the station wagon and sit on the bumper for a minute, trying to take deep breaths and calm down a little. In my logical brain I know this one wasn’t really my fault, not entirely—Patrick and Gabe were never super-close, even before everything happened. When we were kids it was fine, regular brother stuff, but once Chuck died it was like they swerved sharply in opposite directions or something, like they were never quite traveling in the same car after that. Gabe’s personality, his gregariousness, got bigger and more exaggerated, like if he was surrounded by his friends 24/7 then it meant he never had to be alone. Meanwhile, Patrick did exactly the opposite: He didn’t want anything to do with anybody who hadn’t known Chuck well enough to have a nickname, didn’t want to go out or hang out or do much at all besides sit in the barn or his bedroom with me, the two of us wrapped up in our own private Idaho. Julia would drop in and watch movies with us sometimes, but for the most part it felt like other people just didn’t understand what was happening: “His dad died,” I protested when Imogen complained about how often I’d blown her off lately.
“Yeah, a year ago,” she countered.
I didn’t know how to reply to that. I’d always known how Patrick’s aloofness sometimes played to the outside world. It didn’t look that way to me, though—after all, Patrick was my person, my other half. I never felt stuck or cut off or like there was other stuff I’d rather be doing, never felt like there was anyplace else I’d rather be.
At least, not until the moment it did.
*
It was a few weeks after my meeting with the Bristol recruiter in the guidance office, April of sophomore year—I’d gotten another email from her a couple of days before: Just wanted to say again how nice it was speaking with you. I’d written back, asking a few more questions. I hadn’t brought it up with Patrick again, but the idea was still itching at me like the tag at the neck of a cheap cotton T-shirt, like walking around with a tiny shard of glass in my shoe. It was weird, feeling like I had something to say that he didn’t want to hear about. That had never happened to me before.