“Aite.”
“Mr. Barnhill mentioned you’ve just experienced a loss, and I just wanted to say that I’m here if you need anything.” She speaks with gravity, like she’s giving out a life achievement award at the Oscars or something. The most we have ever spoken before this is when she challenged me on the frequency of my period during the semester we had to take swim.
“Um, thank you,” I say, attempting to use the same tone. Sometime this week, I figured out that the secret to being nice to everybody all the time is to just assume that everybody you interact with is going to be killed in a car crash the next day, and this is one of their final interactions on Earth. That’s, like, the only way you can be nice 24/7. It somehow makes Mrs. Johnston more relatable to know she’s nice because she’s fantasizing about my broken body being pried from the wreckage with the Jaws of Life.
“I brought your mom a quiche.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You know”—she lowers her voice conspiratorially—“He has a plan.”
“Mr. Barnhill?”
“The Lord, our God. With Jesus at his right hand.”
“I’m Jewish mostly,” I mumble, then say, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I head for the handicapped stall in the bathroom by the band hallway, which has become my natural habitat, a Melville tradition for emotionally bereft girls. Let’s just say if Moaning Myrtle ever wants a change of scenery and doesn’t mind the smell of cigarettes followed by a few sprays of Gap Dream, I know just the place.
Back home, from the solace of my bed, I hear Dawn open the front door and greet somebody, saying, “She’s in her room,” even though I don’t feel like hanging out with anyone. I burrow back under the covers, hoping whoever it is will just go away.
“Hi.”
I peek over the blanket. Avery’s standing in the doorway.
“You weren’t answering my texts.”
I shrug. She pulls her TOMS off, one by one, hesitates for a second, then climbs into bed with me, still far enough on the edge that she’s sort of hanging off. This is quite abnormal for us. Snuggling is definitely not part of our “two brains in a jar” dynamic.
“So . . . yeah, this is happening,” she says, like she just heard my thoughts. I nod.
“It’s kind of okay.”
“Yeah.”
We lie there for a minute saying nothing.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
She rolls her eyes, flops her arm to the bed in frustration. “Jesus, Scarlett, come on.”
“I don’t know. I’m . . . sad, I guess.” As soon as I utter the word sad out loud, I make it real, which makes me tear up again. There’s no end to the crying, maybe. Avery turns over to face me and moves more toward the center of the bed, close enough to me so that I can see tiny green waves in her hazel eyes.
“It’s really sad,” she says, plainly.
“I was just so caught up in other stuff that I didn’t even . . . like, in movies, people get to say their thing to the person.”
“Thing, like, what thing?”
“Their thing. Like, ‘You’re important to me, even though I took you for granted sometimes, and I’ll miss you for X and Y reasons’—all that shit.” I do air quotes. “‘Closure’ or whatever.”
“I think that mostly only happens in movies,” she says.
I nod.
“Bad movies,” she says.
“I guess.”
She sighs. “Scar, that’s what a eulogy is. It’s all the stuff you didn’t think to say.”
I grunt, annoyed, and turn my head toward the wall. “So Dawn told you about that?”
“Yeah, and I think you need to do it. If you don’t, you’ll never get to say your thing.”
“Maybe.” I’m being stubborn, but it still just seems like a horrible idea, going up there and freezing like a deer in headlights. “Let’s just change the subject, okay?”
“Sure.”
“How’s Ashley?”
Ave’s answer is slightly guarded. “Fine.” Then she adds, almost despite herself, “She’s in her room most of the time. Crying, I think.”
I wonder if I look like the mean girl from where Ave’s sitting, too.
She continues. “Gideon and Ashley definitely stopped doing whatever it was that they were doing. Hooking up on the regs or whatever. If that makes you feel better . . .”
“It doesn’t,” I say.
I’m about to confide in her what happened when Gideon came over, but something stops me. For one thing, it feels like it was ages ago now, swallowed up in the bigger stuff I’m trying to work through. Or, really, sleep through. It also feels private somehow, something between me and him that I feel wrong telling her, and I get a glimmer of what it must be like to be a girlfriend.
There is a pause. It seems like she is weighing the dynamic of the conversation.
“Uh,” she says. “I . . . I had sex?” Her voice goes up at the end.
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I had sex. With Mike.”