Danielle made a face. Which was really rich, coming from a child who often wore the same outfit three days straight, only taking it off for a mandatory change of underpants.
Satina Galt was the character who made Silver Arrow what it was, to me. The boots made me feel strong. They made me feel like something Possible. Maybe if I wore them long enough, I would actually be that something. My mother understood the boots. She never let on, but I could tell by the way she looked at them sometimes, like they were a memory of a memory. Occasionally, she looked at me that way, too.
Something over my shoulder caught Danielle’s eye and her face lit up. “Oh! Madison’s here!”
I turned to see a girl I recognized from Dani’s class, and the kids ran to each other, hugging and squealing like they hadn’t spent seven hours at school together the day before.
When does that stop? I thought. When you’re not afraid to claim your friends, to clasp them to your chest and shout to the world, Mine! When you know for sure, pinkie promise, that the way it is now is the way it will always be.
Kendall and I hadn’t hung out in weeks. We’d both been so busy, of course. She had the special year-end edition of the school newspaper and already started work at Scoop-N-Putt. I had Dani and a job at Richard’s art supply store and a really packed schedule of hanging out alone in my room, lurking on Silver Arrow fansites.
It stung, to watch the little girls now.
I located and approached Madison’s mother: huge sunglasses, stylish beach hat, paperback in hand.
“Hi,” she said, grinning. “How are you?”
“Good. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. I actually meant, how are you? You look like you’re doing really well.”
I smiled and said, “Thank you.”
I said it because I lived in a small town, and people don’t want good stories to end, and everyone thinks they know a little bit about depression, and because these were just a few of the terms I unknowingly agreed to that night over a year earlier.
“I have to go to the restroom. Do you mind keeping an eye on Dani for a few minutes?”
“Of course not, sweetie. She’s lucky to have you.”
Yes, she is, I thought as I walked toward the restroom building, my head swimming. I miss Kendall. There was still gossip about me.
Inside, the cool and the dark and the silence and the quick bliss of being unseen.
I went into an empty stall and jiggled the lock shut. You look like you’re doing really well. What exactly does that look like? What would not-doing-well look like? Because I had once been not-doing-well for a long time and nobody noticed at all.
Turns out, I wasn’t completely alone in the bathroom. I could hear someone in the next stall going, too. It was one of those awkward situations where you find yourself in sync with a stranger.
After I was finished (first!), I stepped out of the stall to wash my hands. I heard the other stall door open and glanced up into the mirror.
“Am I in the wrong bathroom?” asked Camden Armstrong. Like it was simply an intellectual question.
This is where I wondered if I was having a hallucination.
Then in the mirror, I could see a urinal on the wall behind me.
And this is where I panicked.
“Um, no,” I managed to say. “Apparently, I am. Sorry!”
I ducked my head and walked quickly past him out the door. I’m not sure what ducking my head was going to accomplish, but as I mentioned: the panic.
No. No, no. Pleasetellmethatdidnotjusthappen. I stumbled across the beach, my feet not going where I wanted them to go, trying and failing to get away from my own mortifying self.
Once I got back to my blanket, I waved at Madison’s mom and she waved back. The two girls were swimming nearby. I grabbed my phone and texted Kendall with quivering thumbs.
Just saw Camden Armstrong at the lake. Went into the men’s restroom by accident. Call me.
Those days, I was always looking for things to connect over with Kendall. Our friendship was like the drawstring in a pair of sweatpants, always slipping out of sight and out of reach. We always knew it was there. One of us merely had to retrieve it with that safety-pin trick until next time.
I waited for a reply, looking out at the lake so I wouldn’t have to watch Camden come out of the restroom, so maybe he wouldn’t see me back. He was here. I had spoken to him. I wasn’t sure what I felt other than an overwhelming urge to dive into the lake, swim past the far boundary rope, then keep going and never come back.
My phone chirped with a message from Kendall.
Bad reception here, can only text. But now very intrigued.
I was in the middle of typing out more details when Dani bolted up the beach from the water, full-body shivering, lips nearly blue.
“Make me a burrito,” she demanded, as if she knew I needed something else in my brain that moment. I put my phone down, grabbed her towel and wrapped it tight around her body and arms, tucking in the end corner at her neck so only her head and feet stuck out. Then I pulled her into my lap as she giggled.