The cool, antiseptic supermarket was a relief, the neat uniformity of the products lined up along the aisles and the quiet Muzak tinkling overhead. It felt like nothing bad could happen to me here, like I’d left all my problems on the other side of the sliding doors. I took my time, trying to balance some semblance of Charla’s diet with stuff my mom would actually eat; I had just tossed some iceberg lettuce into my basket when I turned around and came face-to-face with Olivia and Mrs. Maxwell, who was pushing a cart packed full of groceries.
I felt myself go as cold as the freezer section, but Mrs. Maxwell’s face broke open in a grin. “There’s my other famous girl!” she crowed, wrapping her arms tight around me. She was wearing capri pants and one of her Moms “R” Us blouses, a geometric pattern in purples and blues; she smelled familiar, like Olivia’s house. I felt my throat tighten up unexpectedly at the endearment—I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her. “How are you, sweetheart?” Then, before I could answer: “We’re just picking some stuff up for tomorrow. What do you think, should I get sausages? Or just regular hot dogs?”
“Tomorrow?” I asked dumbly, realizing even as the words came out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake.
“For the party.” Mrs. Maxwell looked at Olivia, curious. “You told Dana about the party, right?”
“I—” Olivia faltered, her eyes going wide like they always did when she was caught. “I—”
“Oh, yeah, of course she did,” I lied, wanting to save all of us the awkwardness. The handle of the basket was digging into my arm. “But my mom wants to spend some time with me while I’m home, so. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”
“What! Just bring her,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “I’ve got plenty.”
Well, that definitely was not about to happen. “I don’t know,” I hedged. “I mean, you know my mom, she’s . . .” I trailed off.
Mrs. Maxwell shook her head. “I mean it, Dana,” she told me, and though her tone was breezy in that moment, there was something about her that reminded me, weirdly, of Guy—this overwhelming sense that she was pulling the strings here, that she knew more than she was letting on. “Come by for an hour, have a hamburger. We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I looked from Olivia to her mom and back again, the rock and the hard place. “Maybe for a little while,” I finally said.
“That’s a girl,” Mrs. Maxwell said, smiling. Olivia examined the pears.
It was late afternoon by the time I made it home with the groceries; I’d planned to fix my mom something for dinner, but she was in the bathroom putting on eye shadow, getting ready to go out. “Sorry, baby,” she said, shrugging like there was nothing she could do about it. “If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have made plans.”
You did know I was coming, I didn’t say.
“Okay,” I told her instead, ignoring the sting of it. “Have fun.”
I sat alone in the house for a little while. I took Elvis for a walk around the block. I called Alex and Trevor’s apartment in Orlando; it rang and rang but nobody answered, and finally I hung up with a sigh. There were a million places he could be, I told myself firmly. Not picking up the phone didn’t mean he was off somewhere having the time of his life without me.
This was ridiculous; I was being ridiculous, sitting home alone and feeling sorry for myself on my one weekend off. Finally, I combed my hair and caught the bus that went downtown, then walked the seven blocks to Burger Delight. It was Friday, after all.
There they all were, just like I’d known they would be, in our usual booths at the back: Sarah Jane and Becky and Jonah, the whole noisy crowd. “Hey,” I called as the bells above the door chimed my arrival. “Got room for one more?”
Sarah Jane let out a squeal when she saw me, jumping up and flinging her arms around my neck. “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed. She looked honestly delighted to see me—everybody did, actually—and I felt like kind of a jerk for not keeping in better touch. Aside from a couple of quick phone calls, we hadn’t talked at all since SJ and Becky and Kerry-Ann had shown up on their way to Miami.
“I missed you guys,” I told them, and it was the truth.
Tim was sitting on the outside of the booth, baseball cap perched just like always on top of his head. “Here,” he said quickly, scooting over to make room for me, his knobby knee bumping the underside of the table, rattling the cheap metal silverware and almost spilling a soda. “Have a seat.”
He sounded so eager that I almost laughed—and Sarah Jane actually did, a full-throated bray that echoed across the restaurant. “Don’t even try it, Timothy,” she scolded.
“I’m just letting her sit down, SJ.” Tim frowned. “Jesus.”
I smiled, sliding into the tattered booth beside him. “Hi, Tim.” There was a quality to him that reminded me of Mikey, but a little scruffier around the edges, and I wondered if that’s what it would be like if I came back to Jessell for good: everything here reminding me of something from Orlando, nothing quite measuring up.
I caught up on everyone’s headlines, filled in everyone’s blanks: Kerry-Ann’s sister’s wedding, Jonah’s mom’s latest round of chemo. Becky had gotten a new job at a clinic in town and I listened eagerly as she described the doctors there, the outreach they were trying to do in the poorer parts of Jessell. For a second I remembered what I’d told Alex, how I’d thought about doing something like that when I was younger.
“So what about you, pop star?” Sarah Jane asked, pointing at me with a French fry. “How goes it with the hundred-dollar T-shirt committee?”
“Kristin and Ash?” I made a face. “They got cut, actually.” I gave them the highlights of the last few weeks, leaving out the part about how Olivia and I were barely speaking. I’d been worried it would be weird, trying to explain to these guys what my life was like back in Orlando, but the reality was, aside from one or two questions, everybody seemed kind of uninterested. It wasn’t something they could relate to, I realized; I might as well have been talking about my recent trip to Mars.
Sarah Jane smelled blood, though: “So it’s just you and Olivia competing now, huh?” she asked when I was finished explaining, looking at me shrewdly across the table. “What’s that like?”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly, then shoved a handful of onion rings in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything else about it. Sarah Jane fixed me with a gaze that let me know she thought I was full of shit, but she didn’t press. She probably didn’t need to, I realized: after all, the fact that Olivia wasn’t here tonight said more than I ever would have.