Then Paul’s mom hired Jess Winters at the orchards. When Dani drove over one afternoon for Paul’s tutoring session, her underwear stuffed in her purse, she found Jess behind the counter, head thrown back in laughter, her long hair brushing her arms. Paul laughed with her, leaning in, as if they were old friends. For a moment, Dani stood puzzled, unsure whether to be annoyed, but then Paul saw her. He turned away from Jess and in one swift movement pulled Dani into a hug, lifting her off the ground, her ballet flats slipping off her heels, her glasses knocked crooked. A breeze snuck up Dani’s skirt and grazed her naked buttocks, the soft damp spot between her thighs, and she’d shivered with the sensation. She, Dani Newell, in the arms of a beautiful boy. Her whole body hummed, softened.
When Paul set her on the ground, she’d smoothed her skirt down, her cheeks buzzing. Flustered by her emotions, she turned to Jess. She’d babbled something about that idiot cheerleader, and Jess tossed off something tart and smart, making Dani smile. This girl was no idiot.
Paul took her hand, leading her toward his house behind the office, toward the desk in his bedroom, toward his bed.
“See you at lunch, then,” Dani had said with a wave. Jess had waved back, her eyes shining like a planet, and Dani squeezed Paul’s hand harder. If she could be a girlfriend, maybe she could be that, too. A friend.
And she had been. A friend. A best friend. With Jess, Dani got to try on yet another version of herself, one no one expected of her in that town, a girl who went camping in Mexico, her hair stiff with ocean salt, who wore kohl eyeliner and listened to music with atonal chords. With first Paul and then Jess, Dani felt almost wild, riding shotgun in a pretend life, skirting the edge of danger. She had not expected it of herself, so long had she known the safe, mapped-out direction of her life. She watched that shiny, exquisite version bounce and roll toward her, and she reached out to grab it.
A ball that turned out to be a hand grenade.
In the days and months after Paul blurted her father’s secret at dinner, Dani didn’t cry, or wail, or throw fits, or lash out like her mother had. She simply locked all the hot, lovely parts of herself away. She put up the screen of glass again, although this time it thickened into an opaque block of ice. Everything on the other side—her father on his knees, weeping so hard his eyes swelled shut, begging her to forgive him; her mother throwing all his clothes into the street; him driving away in her old car because she’d refused anything he’d touched; the row of solid Fs on her transcript after her first year at college, from 4.0 to 0.0 in a year, when instead of studying or going to class she spent her days huddled in a carrel in the library or riding the bus into San Francisco and wandering the streets she’d once read about; coming home to her old bedroom in this old town; the whispers and glances as she stocked shelves or mopped floors—was recognizable but distant, arctic, tinged blue.
Dani flipped the bathroom light off and hurried down the hall, pouring herself a whiskey from Hugh’s stash in the cupboard over the stove. She didn’t add ice, unwilling to reach around the Captain in the freezer. She couldn’t even bear to touch the handle. She looked to the side of it, thinking of how she’d looked to the side of Maud’s face as her blood flowed into the vial.
She sat in the window seat and rested her forehead on the warm glass, peering at the yard in the late afternoon, the shadows long and leggy. She looked to the corner of the yard again. Nine, ten, she’s coming again, one, two, Jess is coming for you.
Dani drained her whiskey. She went to the freezer, and holding her breath, she pulled the Captain into her arms. Even frozen, he was still as light as a wrapped Christmas toy.
She stepped into the yard, hazy with the day’s warmth and fading sun, and walked across the dry grass to the far left corner of the lot. She set the frozen dog on the ground and rubbed at her inner arms, the tender place where she prodded and flicked others before jabbing them with a needle. She kneeled and pressed at the plastic bag until she could see the dog’s shape. The air was as warm as a bath, but she began to shiver.
That last night, Dani had looked up from reading her book at the dining table to see Jess standing on the deck, her hands pressed against the sliding glass door. Jess’s brown curls, soaked from the rain, were pulled straight and stringy, and her mascara and eyeliner streaked under her eyes and down her cheeks. Dani should have been startled, but she wasn’t. She looked up as if she expected to see her there, and there she was. The first thing Dani felt was happy to see her, and she started to smile. Then she remembered.
She rose and walked to the door, staring at her through the glass. Jess dropped her hands. The roof overhang shielded her from the rain, but her shoulders jumped, her lips trembling. Dani pulled the door open to a frigid gust.
“Look who it is,” Dani said. “My best friend.” She laughed. “Let me guess. You were in the neighborhood.”
Jess pushed her hands inside her coat. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Dani laughed. “Never better. Perfect. A million bucks.”
Jess reached out and grabbed Dani’s wrist. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Dani yanked her wrist away. “But it did happen. You did it.”
Jess clawed at the air, got hold of the fabric of Dani’s shirt, and pulled.
“Please,” she said. “You have to believe me.”
From behind the blue ice, Dani noted Jess’s chattering teeth, and her first impulse was to pull her inside out of the cold. Instead she tugged her shirt from Jess’s grip. Her knees shook until she remembered to lock them.
She said, “Stop trying to make me feel sorry for you. God, go home. You look terrible. You need to get out of the rain and get warm.”
Jess swayed before grabbing the doorframe. “He asked me to go with him. But I said no. I couldn’t.”
“Go where?”
“With him.” She looked at her feet. “To his new place.”
Dani stared at her. “You mean, like live with him?”
Jess nodded.
Dani laughed. “Move in with my father. And be, what? My stepmother?”
“No. I didn’t go. I told him no.” Agitated, Jess unzipped her coat, catching her notebook as it slipped down.
Dani laughed harder. “How good of you. How moral of you. What a good friend you are.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Jess said.
“I don’t care what it was like.” Dani stopped laughing and instead started to cry. Hot, fat, salty sobs that burst forth from her tight chest. Which infuriated her. She stepped across the threshold and pushed Jess with both hands, hitting her full force in the ribs. Jess stumbled into one of the wooden chairs but caught herself. Her notebook landed at Dani’s feet.
The rain stung Dani’s hands and arms and neck as she bent and picked up the book. She swatted it against her palm. “Oh, your precious notebooks. Your precious, precious writing. Did you write about him? Did you write him love poems?”
“No,” Jess said.
Dani opened the book and flipped through it, rain spattering the pages, smearing the ink. Her eyes grew blurry again, her throat clenched and raw.
“Did you write about me? Or my mom?”
“No,” Jess said.