After school I wait for Zenn for fifteen minutes but he never shows. He might not be at school today since he wasn’t at lunch, but I wait for him just in case. My ego is taking a bit of a smackdown because I thought he would have texted me now that our relationship has moved on to texting status.
I know I’m fooling myself about what our lunches and our texting could mean. But there is still a part of me that hopes we could have a normal relationship. I tested his jacket the other day when he stepped out of the room and it nearly flattened me again with that dark, almost violent fractal, implying something I’m not ready to face yet. It was deep crimson red and smoky black. It had the sensation of fighting, of battle. Plus a touch of the floaty, drunk feeling I got when I touched his mom’s clothes, and when I touch Josh. He may have a lot of secrets we haven’t talked about yet.
Oh, who am I kidding? We both have a lot of secrets we haven’t talked about yet.
I eventually give up on waiting and head home, irritated with myself that I didn’t catch the bus when I had the chance.
I’m crossing the school parking lot when I hear Charlotte calling my name.
I turn and there she is, lovely as always.
“Hey!” she says, slightly out of breath from running to catch up. “I saw you at lunch today! Are you done tutoring?”
Is she afraid I’ll be back for good and she’ll have to make a choice between the popular kids and me? If she’d have me back, would I go?
“Um, not yet. He just … wasn’t here today.”
“Oh! Cool.” She pulls her jacket more tightly closed and I realize it’s because she’s wearing a fairly low-cut shirt. Not super low-cut — I mean, it’s Charlotte — but it’s more revealing than anything she usually wears. We’re talking collarbones showing, not boobs. I wonder if she was fine with wearing the shirt today until she ran into me, the only one who would notice.
“So, how’s it going?” I ask.
“Good!” she answers cheerfully. Too cheerfully. “Pretty good,” she amends, and bites her lip.
“Great!” My voice has the same awkward quality. What the hell has happened to us? “How’s Josh?” I ask politely. I assume this is what we’re supposed to do: back and forth, keep it simple.
“Good. He’s good.”
“That’s good.” This is ridiculous. I remember texting her from the bathroom stall when I was thirteen and got my period for the first time. She once told me her dad used to apologize for her height, and that she would take cold baths and stack books on her head because she thought she could slow her growth. I used to tell her everything. I never thought we’d get to a point where we could barely have a conversation.
“Do you … want a ride home?”
I wave my hand. “No, that’s okay. I can walk.”
She looks a little hurt. I know she knows how much I hate walking home. But God help me if I’m going to hop into her car like a dog desperate for a ride.
“I mean, I don’t mind. It’s nice out.”
Charlotte looks up at the cloudy sky. She can see right through me. It is not that nice.
“Okay. Well … I’ll talk to you later, then?” she asks.
I want to say, I don’t know, will you? But instead I just say, “Sounds good.”
The next day Zenn still isn’t at school and I don’t bother waiting. I head for the bus but I’m barely out the door when Charlotte calls to me again.
Today her collarbones are covered by a T-shirt with garden gnomes on it and Chillin’ with my Gnomies underneath. It’s one of my favorites. I smile a little.
Better. Much better.
“Hey, Ev. You want a ride?” she asks. Something in her voice challenges me to say no again. Her chin is high, and she looks a little … angry.
Why is she angry at me? I’m not the one who started dating a popular jock. I’m not the one who abandoned her for a new group of friends.
“Or is it so nice out that you want to walk?” Okay, I’m not imagining it. There is definitely some anger there.
I look down at my boots and wonder for the first time how much of the distance between us has been her, and how much has been me.
I hesitate. “I guess. If you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I minded.”
There is a pause and then I say, “Yes, you would have.”
“Yeah. I probably would have.”
We walk away from the buses toward her car.
She talks me into swinging by Java Dock and before you know it we are pulled into the parking lot at the beach, sharing a muffin and watching the waves break against the sand, just like old times. I think of Zenn’s sand art, how temporary and fleeting it is. Just like everything else.
We get out of Charlotte’s car and walk for a bit, like we used to. I pick up a couple of pretty stones that I intend to leave on my parents’ grave. My favorite one is a dark gray that looks black when it’s wet, with a thread of white cutting right down the center. It has a yin-and-yang feel to it, and it reminds me of the two of them, buried side by side.
As we walk, I point out evidence of a bonfire to Charlotte, the charred remains of wood piled on the beach.
“Yeah,” she says. “Halloween. I was here.” I don’t think she’s telling me to make me jealous. Her voice sounds kind of sad. “I texted you that night. You didn’t text me back.”
Oh, right. Halloween. That was the first night Zenn texted me and when hers came through, I promptly ignored it. I don’t even have a good excuse to give her. I was mad at her. And I was caught up with a boy.
Just like her.
“I thought you went to some kind of costume party,” I say.
“Nah. Everything changes at the last minute. It was just a bonfire.”
I nod, knowing that she probably hates that: plans changing at the last minute.
“In movies they always make those beach bonfires seem so cool.”
“It wasn’t?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Josh disappeared with a couple guys for a while and I kind of sat by myself. It was too hot for a bonfire, so I was sweating.”
I laugh. Charlotte may be gorgeous, but she’s also a sweater. She’s almost never cold, especially on a night as warm as this Halloween.
“Sometimes it feels like …” But she doesn’t complete her thought. She seems sad, hurt by more than just my distance and half-assed friendship. I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.
I reach out and touch her arm and she just looks down at my hand. I assume her new friends touch her all the time, in the way that all teenagers do, and that she’s used to it. Maybe she won’t realize I’m spying.