At eight P.M. on Thursday night, we arrive at the school in our pajamas. We check in at the front doors where Mr. Jackson, Officer Delvin, and a slew of parents glance in our bags and make sure we’ve brought our signed waivers before sending us downstairs to the cafeteria, where pizza and pop await.
At ten o’clock, they project a Nicholas Sparks movie in the gym, which seems like asking someone in a nostalgic, sensitive, emotionally heightened state to get impregnated in a bathroom stall, but hell! It’s only rated PG-13, and we’re graduating! I spend those two hours like I spend every hour lately: miserably checking for e-mails or missed calls from Dr. Alice Chan.
After the movie, it’s back to the cafeteria for more sugar, in the form of an ice cream sundae bar. While Megan and I are in line to make our ice cream mountains, she nudges me and points to the corner table where Matt and Rachel are waiting for Derek to get back with the bathroom pass. Rachel, Matt, and Derek are among a coterie who have clearly had a few too many tiny, smuggled-in tequila bottles, and the bathroom passes have become a hot commodity as the football players and their girlfriends start to fall like dominoes to Jose Cuervo.
Rachel’s slumped against Matt’s shoulder, her mouth smushed open and her head dropping as she nods off every few seconds. As his glossy eyes find mine, I see that Matt doesn’t look so great himself.
“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” Megan says, as if reading my mind.
“I know,” I say. We haven’t shared a single word since our fight on the float, which might make this the longest stretch we’ve ever gone without talking. My chest feels like it’s tied into knots. Even when I’m not thinking about it, my body feels the wrongness of being at odds with him. I never wanted it to be like this—half the point of breaking up was avoiding getting to a point where we hate each other, and now it feels like we’re teetering on that line.
“Sooner might be better,” Megan says.
“Maybe.”
“Like, ideally by Saturday night.”
“Ugh, his birthday party,” I groan, remembering. “I was thinking I might skip it and do something fun, like dust my entire house, instead.”
“Nat,” she says gently. “I leave for training at Georgetown in, like, sixteen days. I don’t want you to be alone all summer.”
“How dare you initiate a countdown,” I say sullenly. “I’m doing my best to stay in denial.”
She frowns and gives me a hug. “Me too.”
“Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?” I suggest.
“I think I’ll notice the Nat-shaped hole that will form in my heart when I’m not seeing you every day,” she says.
“No, I mean, maybe there’s a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.”
“Okay,” she says, pulling free. “That sounds nice. We’ll move to Denial.”
At one A.M., the boys are sent to set up their sleeping bags in the gym, and the girls are banished to the library, where our respective chaperones check off our names and very definitely lock us in. At first the room bubbles with conversation and laughter, but soon we fall into whispers and hushed giggles, until a chorus of deep, measured breathing takes over. One by one, the stragglers drop off into sleep too, and still I lie awake, staring up at the ceiling.
Tonight marks one full week since I last saw Grandmother. That’s one less week I have to save whoever’s in danger, and I haven’t gotten so much as an out-of-office automatic reply from Dr. Alice Chan. I toss and turn all night, worrying about Grandmother and where she went, about who might be in danger and what life will be like without Megan, and Matt, and even Rachel and Derek and everyone else I know.
Finally, hours after the last set of lungs slips into a steady rhythm, I feel myself drifting toward sleep, and my mind swirls away from everything dark and unsettling toward all that is warm and magical. That night on the football field with Beau, and all the enchanting nights that came on that field before it, when the crowd bristled with excitement, voices going hoarse from screaming into the wind as the sun slid down and the stars slid up to replace it on the far side of the sky.
I see the purple of twilight, hear the chorus of cheers punctuated by the whistling of fanatical parents, feel the buzz of people falling in love with each other, with the field full of gnats and lightning bugs, with the nighttime itself.
I’m almost asleep, flat on my back, when my stomach lifts up toward my throat and the world is rearranged once again. The walls, the bookshelves, the ceiling disappear, leaving behind only a wide night sky.