“What are you, crazy?”
“Wil!” Her voice bounces from the ceiling beams, louder than I’ve ever heard it. “Don’t you want to show that asshole that you’ve moved on? Don’t you want to show—everybody?”
All of a sudden, I’m woozy, a strange combination of pissed and sad and still a little turned on, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.
“I don’t really care about . . . other people,” I say.
Ana’s eyes don’t believe me.
“You have to live your life,” she says. “We can’t decide not to go out just because we might run into Buck or—”
“Here. Come here.” I reach for her and pull her into my chest. Breathe her in. “You really want to go?”
“I’m just saying,” she murmurs.
I close my eyes and I see Christmas lights hanging from the shop’s rafters. I open my eyes, but it doesn’t matter. Bridge lives in everything: in this concrete floor, in the bricks downtown, in our booth at Nina’s Diner, in the waves. There’s no way to erase her. The only thing I can do is let her fade.
“We’ll go,” I say into Ana’s hair. “We’ll have fun.”
We take Dad’s truck and I tell Ana that she looks good in a pickup. She tells me she loves how retro the truck is, which makes me smile because my asshole dad bought it new.
“Do you know how to get there?” she asks, propping her bare feet on the dash just like Bridge used to do.
“Not this house. Give me directions?” Growing up, Buck lived down the street from me. One morning, in the summer between eighth and ninth grade, Buck’s mom got bitten by a plastic surgeon’s German shepherd. Now the Travers family lives in one of the rich gated communities off Atlantic. It’s hard to tell the houses apart, so you have to go by the cars in the driveway. Travers drives this year’s F-450, probably the most expensive truck a lawsuit can buy.
Ana slides her hand over the console and rests her palm on my thigh. I think about saying screw it and taking her to the beach.
“Down this way,” she says without hesitation, and I wonder if every girl I know has fooled around with Buck Travers. But when I look over, I see the glow of her iPhone and realize she’s just looking up directions.
I turn where she tells me to, and soon we’re coasting down a street lined with parked cars and pickup trucks.
“If you want to leave, we’ll leave, okay?” Ana fixes her gaze on the house.
“Thanks.” I smile and put my hand over hers.
We park as close as we can get to the house and walk. The party is every high-school party: loud music with a bass so deep it rattles you, a couple of guys puking their guts out in the shrubs, too-sweet air. The front door is wide open, so we just walk in. The place is enormous, and everything is white: the walls, the couches—even the painting over the fireplace is white canvas, which is probably supposed to mean something.
“This place is huge,” I yell over the music, accidentally kicking a red Solo cup under a round entry table.
“Huh?” Ana shouts.
“Huge!”
Ana smiles and nods back.
“Ohmygod, you guys came!” Emilie Simpson bellows, looking up from a game of flip cup on the coffee table.
“Give me just a second,” Ana yells as she waves at her friend. “I’m gonna go say hi.”
“Sure.”
I push my way through the house by way of the kitchen, waving and nodding when people call my name, grateful for the loud music. If it was quiet, I wouldn’t know what to say. There’s a patio out back that looks over a lake, and there are a few tiki torches stabbed into the grass. Three or four kegs litter the yard, and a girl is doing a keg stand in a jean miniskirt. I look for Bridge because I can’t help it.
She’s just across the patio, only a few bodies between us, hanging on Leigh. My eyes adjust to the low light and I watch her. Her body’s not her body, and she looks like she’s learning to walk for the first time: these jerky, unsure baby-deer movements. I’ve never seen Bridge this drunk. The sky must be spinning for her.
“I got it, I got it,” she slurs. She pushes Leigh away and tries to stand on her own. Her eyes roam the yard, sweeping past me and then returning.
“WilohmygodWil.” She takes a step forward and trips, falling to her knees in the grass. I’m on my knees next to her without even thinking about it.
“Don’t!” The word bursts out of her. “Don’t. I’m okay.”
My heart is going to explode. I want to get her out of here: take her home and tuck her in.
“I got her.” Leigh kneels next to us and pulls Bridge into her lap. Bridge’s skirt sneaks up her thigh. I look away.
“I’ll carry her to the car or something,” I tell Leigh. “Are you driving her home?”
“Later. She needs to lie down for a while.”
“You needa lie down for a while.” Bridge’s eyelids flutter.
“Here.” I scoop her up and stand, holding her head against my chest while her knees flop over the cradle of my elbow. This is why! I want to scream. This is why I wanted to hang out in the workshop, with the goddamned lights!
I carry her back into the house and up the carpeted stairs, Leigh trailing behind me. And I know people are watching us, but I absolutely do not give a fuck.
Bridge fights me the whole way, pushing against my chest, telling me to leave her, leave her, she’s fine without me. I clench my jaw so tightly, my skull could shatter at any second. Leigh scopes out the bedrooms and finds one decorated in too much pink. Definitely not Buck’s room.
In the dark, I lower Bridge onto a single-sized bed with lace pillowcases and teddy bears piled at the headboard. I brush her hair away from her face while Leigh brings a trash can from the bathroom.
“Commere,” Bridge orders, and slings her arms around my neck. She pulls me in with a strange kind of drunk-girl strength. “I’m so sorry, Wil. I fucked up and I’m so sorry and I fucked up.”
I pull away.
“Don’t leave her,” I tell Leigh roughly. “Do not leave her up here by herself. Got it?”
She nods. “Got it.”
I close the door behind me and take the stairs three or four at a time, flying back into the blur that is the party I never wanted to go to in the first place. I almost knock Ana over on the last step.
“Ooh! There you are.” She holds onto me for balance and doesn’t let go. “What’re you doing up—”
“We have to go,” I tell her.
“You okay? You’re sweaty.” She slides her hands over my damp T-shirt.
“Yeah. I’m good. I just need to get out of here. Want to get something to eat? Nina’s or something?”
She smiles. “Nina’s? Yeah, I guess.”
“Or wherever you want. Just . . . anywhere but here.”
“Okay.” She slips her hand into mine, which is humiliating because mine is drenched with sweat. Still, she doesn’t pull away. I hate leaving Bridge here because she’s not okay. She is so obviously not okay. But I can’t help her. I can’t save her from drowning under a spinning sky.
BRIDGE
Spring, Senior Year