35
“Do you think Ryan’s cute?”Chelsea asks me later on the back porch, as Mila and Emily look on with interest.
I nearly spit out my gemonade—raspberry lemonade with a splash of gin. It’s a bad habit, I know. I took my first curious sip when I was maybe around ten. I noticed that when I snuck a wine cooler from the fridge, the world around me blurred a little, and that included the quiet people. Fuzzy, like static. I asked my parents if I could drink a small glass of wine at dinner. I was careful never to have too much. Just enough to blur the edge of the world. But sometimes, in this house, that line begins to move further and further away.
Chelsea is staring at me, and I shake my head uncomprehendingly. No, I don’t think Ryan is cute, and I don’t think she’s cute for asking when she still hasn’t admitted to my face that they were together when I considered us to be on hiatus. Then I realize that the question is for Mila’s benefit. The guys have gone off on a walk to “talk shit out” while the rest of us showered and settled down for snacks and decompression. My parents are busy upstairs getting ready to head up to Albany for some bar association dinner my father has to speak at. I’d hate to be important. It carries so many obligations. It’s cumbersome enough being the perennial mediator. For once I’dlike to be the impulsive one like Chelsea or live out one of Emily’s romantic melodramas. I never get to misbehave. Even when we break the rules, I’m the one who sets the rules for the rule breaking.Okay, guys. No sex in my parents’ room. No drinking and driving. Keys in the key basket. Empties in this cardboard box. No stray bottle caps! If you’re too drunk to remember your bottle cap, you’ve had too much. Bottle caps, guys. Bottle caps.
“Not cute,” I say with a quick look to gauge Mila’s interest in the conversation.
But Emily is watching me closely. This whole conversation is for Emily.Iknow that Mila did consider Ryan and it was a definitive no. But in friendship, you commit to the part. I suddenly feel so exhausted. The lengths we go to protect one another’s feelings exceeds the bounds of normalcy.
“He was cute five years ago,” I add. “He’s too intense to be cute now.”
“True. Too mature for cute,” Chelsea says, missing the ever so slight edge in my tone. “Chase is cute, though,” she continues. “You know how some people are still cute even at eighty years old? Like they never grow up. Ryan is an old soul. I feel like heknowsthings.” I hum a nonresponse. Ryan isn’t the one who knows things. And his intensity has nothing to do with maturity.
“My mom always says he’s an old soul,” Emily says shortly. I raise an eyebrow at Chelsea, and she makes anoopsface. It’s a sore spot with Emily. She has a sort of inferiority complex where their mother is concerned. She’d lose her shit if she ever learned the truth about me. Emily turns to Mila. “Old souls or new souls? Which do you go for?”
“It depends,” Mila says. “Is it a sexy old soul?”
“Good luck finding out. Ryan keeps his girlfriends secret. For all I know, he’s a sex god.” I take another sip and avoid Chelsea’s eyes.
“He doesn’t keep secrets from me,” Emily says coldly.
Fuuuuuuuuuck. “Not from you,” I say quickly. “And not because there’s anything wrong with them. I’d probably choose the exact same lineup,” I finish awkwardly.
Now everyone is staring at me. I finish my drink and look Chelsea in the eye, thoroughly annoyed. She doesn’t look happy either. “To answer your question, I think he’s sexy as fuck,” I say. I shouldn’t drink when there’s tension in the air. There’s no reason to believe it will ever make things better.
Mila looks back and forth between the three of us. “Did I miss something?”
“Not at all,” Chelsea says. She pauses for a moment and then opens her mouth, and I just know that what comes out is going to lead to disaster. “Actually, no secrets between friends. You’re our friend, now, right? Here’s the thing. We all love Chase. He’s the best. But we don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Mila laughs. “I’m not going to.”
I eye her carefully. So far, she’s presented herself as shy, timid, and kind of clingy. Now she seems pretty laid-back and confident.
“Chase and I are just having fun. You guys seriously have nothing to worry about. You’re so sweet, though.” She smiles and again, I feel so guilty.
“We’re not at all,” Emily says.
Worried. Sweet.
“Not at all,” I repeat, the guilt approaching my breaking point, and refill Mila’s glass with a quarter cup of ice, the rest of the tea, and a fresh sprig of mint.
Before dinner, Chelsea corners me in the bedroom. “What was that comment about Ryan the sex god and his secret lovers?”
“Nothing. It was out of line.” One weekend. This talk can wait one weekend, until we’re out of this house. Asking Chelsea about Ryan right now would definitely ruin everything. Because we are a powder keg about to blow—Chelsea and Ryan and me, Ryan and Mila and Chase, Emily and Chase and Mila. I am the one standing between the match and the gasoline. One wrong move, one wrong word, and boom. I feel the quiet ones watching, waiting for a mistake. There is anger in this house, and I can’t contain it. But there are consequences when I don’t. I’ve learned the hard way.
I was six the first time I angered them, when I brought Chelsea to the lake house, to her first tea party. There were more of them by then. The blue lady had introduced me to the backward girl, whose head was twisted around behind her. Then there was the woman on the stairs, who wore her hair in a long, dark curtain over her face. The crushed man rarely came to tea, but he was nice too. They all were, except for the dripping man. And we were safe from him inside the house. I thought Chelsea would see what I saw. That we could share my secret, that it could become our secret. That I would no longer be the one who knows. The knowledge was becoming heavy already. The funny way my parents had looked at me and questioned me when I talked about my “imaginaryfriends.” The doctors and social workers they made me talk to. I learned to keep them secret. I learned that knowing was a weight to carry. I was sure that once someone else saw, when someone elseknew, the weight would lift.
When we got to the attic, the backward girl stood by the window, her face turned toward the lake. The woman on the stairs hovered behind Chelsea. I was filled with dread. They were my friends. We shared the same spaces. They lounged upstairs while I played in the living room. They strolled in the garden while I roasted s’mores. I was sure they would want to be Chelsea’s friend too. But the blue lady pointed angrily to the ladder.
Chelsea couldn’t see, but she felt them—the blue lady’s anger, sadness from somewhere else, another feeling I couldn’t pin down. Her teacup rattled in her shaking hands as proof. Then in a blur, I felt arms hook around me and yank me to my feet. Chelsea screamed and scurried down the ladder, and I teetered dizzily for a moment, and then turned furiously to face the blue lady. I threw a teacup to the floor and shattered it. I smashed, stomped, destroyed, until there was nothing left of the set, and there would be no more parties and no friendship between us. My parents were furious. Chelsea cried all night, convinced that I had blown up at her unprovoked.
And in the morning I woke up to a headless Kennedy doll at the foot of the bed.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my real mistake wasn’t bringing Chelsea to the party. It was getting angry. They don’t like anger. It’s dangerous to test them on that. They began to fade after that night. I figured out the wine trick eventually,and they faded faster. I knew the blue lady had forgiven me when she began leaving me gifts and doing chores for me again.
But I never did find my doll’s head.