Authors: Katie Cotugno
Vita doesn’t.
Imogen doesn’t, either. When I was staring down my summer-long sentence in Star Lake, the idea of seeing her again was the only thing that made it feel at all bearable, but so far my
hey
,
I’m back
and
let’s hang out
texts have gone resolutely unanswered. Could be she hates me, too. Imogen and I have been friends since first grade, and she stuck by me pretty hard at the end of junior year, sitting beside me in the cafeteria at school even as everyone else at our lunch table mysteriously disappeared and the whispers turned into something way, way worse. Still, the truth is I didn’t exactly give her a heads-up before I left Star Lake to do my senior year at Bristol—an all-girls boarding school plunked like a missile silo in the middle of the desert outside Tempe, Arizona.
Absconded under the cover of darkness, more like.
By the next day it’s been a full ninety-six hours of minimal human contact, though, so when my mom knocks hard on the bedroom door to let me know her cleaning lady is coming, I pull some clean shorts out of the pile of detritus already accumulated on my floor. My T-shirts and underwear are still in my giant duffel. I’ll have to unpack at some point, probably, although the truth is I’d almost rather live out of a suitcase for three months. My old sneakers are tucked underneath the desk chair, I notice while I’m crouched down there, the laces still tied from the last time I wore them—the day the article came out I remember suddenly, like I thought I could somehow outrun a national publication. I had sprinted as hard and as fast as I could manage.
I’d thrown up on the dusty side of the road.
Woof
. I do my best to shake off the memory, grabbing the photo of me and the Donnellys—still facedown on the desk where I left it the other night—and shoving it into the back of the drawer in my nightstand. Then I lace my boots up and take my neglected old Passat into Star Lake proper.
It’s cool enough to open the windows, and even through the pine trees lining the sides of Route 4 I can smell the slightly mildewy scent of the lake as I head for the short stretch of civilization that makes up downtown: Main Street is small and rumpled, all diners and dingy grocery stores, a roller rink that hasn’t been open since roughly 1982. That’s about the last time this place was a destination, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell—the lakefront plus the endless green stretch of the Catskill Mountains was a big vacation spot in the sixties and seventies, but ever since I can remember Star Lake has had the air of something that used to be but isn’t anymore, like you fell into your grandparents’ honeymoon by mistake.
I speed up as I bypass the Donnellys’ pizza shop, slouching low in my seat like a gangbanger until I pull up in front of French Roast, the coffee shop where Imogen’s worked since we were freshmen. I open the door to the smell of freshly ground beans and the sound of some moody girl singer on the radio. The shop is mostly empty, a late-morning lull. Imogen’s standing behind the counter, midnight-dark hair hanging in her eyes, and when she looks up at the jangle of the bells, guilty, awkward panic flashes across her pretty face in the moment before she can quell it.
“Oh my God,” she says once she’s recovered, coming around the counter and hugging me fast and antiseptic, then holding me back at arm’s length like a great-aunt having a look at how much I’ve grown. Literally, in my case—I’ve put on fifteen pounds easy since I left for Arizona—and even though she’d never say anything about it, I can feel her taking it in. “You’re here!”
“I am,” I agree, my voice sounding weird and false. She’s wearing a gauzy sundress under her French Roast apron, a splotch of deep blue on the side of her hand like she was up late sketching one of the pen-and-ink portraits she’s been doing since we were little kids. Every year on her birthday I buy her a fresh set of markers, the fancy kind from the art supply store. When I was in Tempe I went online and had them shipped. “Did you get my texts?”
Imogen does something between a nod and a headshake, noncommittal. “Yeah, my phone’s been really weird lately?” she says, voice coming up at the end like she’s unsure. She shrugs then, always oddly graceful even though she’s been five eleven since we were in middle school. Somehow she never got teased. “It eats things; I need a new one. Come on, let me get you coffee.” She heads back around the counter, past the rack of mugs they give people who plan to hang out on one of the sagging couches, and hands me a paper to-go cup. I’m not sure if it’s a message or not. She waves me off when I try to pay.
“Thanks,” I tell her, smiling a little bit helplessly. I’m not used to making small talk with her. “So, hey, RISD, huh?” I try—I saw on Instagram that that’s where she’s headed in the fall, a selfie of her smiling hugely in a Rhode Island School of Design sweatshirt. As the words come out of my mouth I realize how totally bizarre it is that
that’s
how I found out. We told each other everything—well,
almost
everything—once upon a time. “We’ll be neighbors in the fall, Providence and Boston.”
“Oh, yeah,” Imogen says, sounding distracted. “I think it’s like an hour, though, right?”
“Yeah, but an hour’s not that long,” I reply uncertainly. It feels like there’s a river between us, and I don’t know how to build a bridge. “Look, Imogen—” I start, then break off awkwardly. I want to apologize for falling off the face of the earth the way I did—want to tell her about my mom and about Julia, that I’m here for ninety-five more days and I’m terrified, and I need all the allies I can get. I want to tell Imogen everything, but before I can get another word out I’m interrupted by the telltale chime of a text message dinging out from inside the pocket of her apron.
So much for a phone that eats things. Imogen blushes a deep sunburned red.
I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say, pushing my wild, wavy brown hair behind my ears just as the front door opens and a whole gaggle of women in yoga gear come crowding into the shop, jabbering eagerly for their half-caf nonfat whatevers.
“I’ll see you around, okay?” I ask, shrugging a little. Imogen nods and waves good-bye.
I head back out to where my car’s parked at the curb, pointedly ignoring the huge
LOCAL AUTHOR!
display in the window of Star Lake’s one tiny bookstore across the street—a million paperback copies of
Driftwood
available for the low, low price of $6.99 plus my dignity. I’m devoting so much attention to ignoring it, in fact, that I don’t notice the note tucked under my wipers until the very last second, Julia’s pink-marker scrawl across the back of a Chinese take-out menu:
dirty slut
The panic is cold and wet and skittering in the second before it’s replaced by the hot rush of shame; my stomach lurches. I reach out and snatch the menu off the windshield, the paper going limp and clammy inside my damp, embarrassed fist.
Sure enough, there it is, idling at the stoplight at the end of the block: the Donnellys’ late-nineties Bronco, big and olive and dented where Patrick backed it into a mailbox in the fall of our sophomore year. It’s the same one all three of them learned to drive on, the one we all used to pile into so that Gabe could ferry us to school when we were freshmen. Julia’s raven hair glints in the sun as the light turns green and she speeds away.
I force myself to take three deep breaths before I ball up the menu and toss it onto the passenger seat of my car, then two more before I pull out into traffic. I grip the wheel tightly so my hands will stop shaking. Julia was my friend first, before I ever met either one of her brothers. Maybe it makes sense that she’s the one who hates me most. I remember running into her here not long after the article came out, how she turned and saw me standing there with my latte, the unadulterated loathing painted all over her face.
“Why the fuck do I see you everywhere, Molly?” she demanded, and she sounded so incredibly frustrated—like she really wanted to know so we could solve this, so it wouldn’t keep happening over and over again. “For the love of God, why won’t you just go away?”
I went home and called Bristol that same afternoon.
There’s nowhere for me to go now, though, not really: All I want is to floor it home and bury myself under the covers with a documentary about the deep ocean or something, but I make myself stop at the gas station to fill my empty tank and pick up more Red Vines, just like I’d planned to.
I can’t spend my whole summer like this.
Can I?
I’m just fitting my credit card into the pump when a big hand lands square on my shoulder. “Get the fuck out of here!” a deep voice says. I whirl around, heart thrumming and ready for a fight, before I realize it’s an exclamation and not an order.
Before I realize it’s coming from
Gabe
.
“You’re
home
?” he asks incredulously, his tan face breaking into a wide grin. He’s wearing frayed khaki shorts and aviators and a T-shirt from Notre Dame, and he looks happier to see me than anyone has since I got here.
I can’t help it: I burst into tears.
Gabe doesn’t blink. “Hey, hey,” he says easily, getting his arms around me and squeezing. He smells like farmer’s market bar soap and clothes dried on the line. “Molly Barlow, why you crying?”
“I’m not,” I protest, even as I blatantly get snot all over the front of his T-shirt. I pull back and wipe my eyes, shaking my head. “Oh my God, I’m not, I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing. Hi.”
Gabe keeps smiling, even if he does look a little surprised. “Hey,” he says, reaching out and swiping at my cheek with the heel of his hand. “So, you know, welcome back, how have you been, I see you’re enjoying your return to the warm bosom of Star Lake.”
“Uh-huh.” I sniffle once and pull it together, mostly—God, I didn’t realize I was so hard up for a friendly face, it’s ridiculous. Or, okay, I
did
, but I didn’t think I’d lose it quite so hard at the sight of one. “It’s been awesome.” I reach into the open window of the Passat and hand him the crumpled-up take-out menu. “For example, here is my homecoming card from your sister.”
Gabe smoothes it out and looks at it, then nods. “Weird,” he says, calm as the surface of the lake in the middle of the night. “She put the same one on my car this morning.”
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“No,” Gabe says, grinning when I make a face. Then his eyes go dark. “Seriously, though, are you okay? That’s, like, pretty fucked up and horrifying of her, actually.”
I sigh and roll my eyes—at myself or at the situation, at the gut-wrenching absurdity of the mess I made. “It’s—whatever,” I tell him, trying to sound cool or above it or something. “I’m fine. It is what it is.”
“It feels unfair, though, right?” Gabe says. “I mean, if you’re a dirty slut, then I’m a dirty slut.”
I laugh. I can’t help it, even though it feels colossally weird to hear him say it out loud. We never talked about it once after it happened, not even when the book—and the article—came out and the world came crashing down around my ears. Could be enough time has passed that it doesn’t feel like a big deal to him anymore, although apparently he’s the only one. God knows it still feels like a big deal to me. “You definitely are,” I agree, then watch as he balls up the menu and tosses it over his shoulder, missing the trash can next to the pump by a distance of roughly seven feet. “That’s littering,” I tell him, smirking a little.
“Add it to the list,” Gabe says, apparently unconcerned about this or any other lapses in good citizenship. He was student council president when he was a senior. Patrick and Julia and I hung all his campaign posters at school. “Look, people are assholes. My sister is an asshole. And my brother—” He breaks off, shrugging. His shaggy brown hair curls down over his ears, a lighter honey-molasses color than his brother’s and sister’s. Patrick’s hair is almost black. “Well, my brother is my brother, but anyway, he’s not here. What are
you
doing, are you working, what?”
“I—nothing yet,” I confess, feeling suddenly embarrassed at how reclusive I’ve been, humiliated that there’s virtually nobody here who wants to see me. Gabe’s had a million friends as long as I’ve known him. “Hiding, mostly.”
Gabe nods at that. But then: “Think you’ll be hiding tomorrow, too?”
I remember once, when I was ten or eleven, that I stepped on a piece of glass down by the lake, and Gabe carried me all the way home piggyback. I remember that we lied to Patrick for an entire year. My whole face has that clogged, bloated post-cry feeling, like there’s something made of cotton shoved up into my brain. “I don’t know,” I say eventually, cautious, intrigued in spite of myself—maybe it’s just the constant ache of loneliness, but running into Gabe makes me feel like something’s about to happen, a bend in a dusty road. “Probably. Why?”
Gabe grins down at me like a master of ceremonies, like someone who suspects I need a little anticipation in my life and wants to deliver. “Pick you up at eight,” is all he says.
Gabe’s right on time, two quick taps on the horn of his beat-up station wagon to let me know he’s outside. I hurry down the stairs faster than I’ve done much of anything since I’ve been here, the noisy clunk of my boots on the hardwood. My hair’s long and loose down my back.
“You going out?” my mom calls from her office. She sounds surprised—fair enough, I guess, since my social circle up until now has pretty much consisted of Vita, Oscar, and the little Netflix robot that recommends stuff based on what you’ve already watched. “Who with?”
I almost don’t even tell her—the urge to lie like a reflex, to keep myself from winding up fodder for Oprah’s Book Club one more time. Then I decide I don’t care. “With Gabe,” I announce, my voice like a challenge. I don’t wait for her response before I walk out the door.
He’s idling in the driveway with Bob Dylan in the CD player, low and clanging and familiar. His parents were both giant hippies—Chuck wore his hair to his shoulders until Patrick and Julia were five—and we both grew up listening to that kind of stuff on the stereo in his house. “Hey, stranger,” he says as I climb into the passenger seat, in a voice like I’m not one at all. “Wreck any homes today?”
I snort. “Not yet,” I assure him, rolling my eyes as I buckle my seat belt. It’s not until I let out a breath I hadn’t quite known I was holding that I realize I’ve been nervous about this moment all day long. I didn’t need to be, though, of course I didn’t need to be—it’s just Gabe, who I’ve known since I was in preschool; Gabe, my literal partner in crime. “But, you know. It’s early.”
We drive fifteen minutes outside of town to Frank’s Franks, a hot dog truck in a parking lot off the side of the road where his mom and dad used to take us all when we were really small. The perimeter’s strung up with Christmas lights, picnic tables gone tacky with the humidity and too many layers of glossy paint. Families eat ice cream in noisy clusters. A baby fusses in a stroller; a boy and a girl play on a jungle gym in the last of the deep blue twilight. Gabe’s arm brushes mine as we wait in line to pay.
He’s gotten handsomer
, I think, broader in his back since the last time I saw him—two full years ago, before he left for Notre Dame. He’s almost startlingly tall now.
We sit on top of a free table instead of at one, my boots and Gabe’s preppy leather flip-flops lined up side by side on the bench. He gets a giant paper boat full of onion rings, the smell of fried batter and grill smoke hanging in the air. His body’s warm next to mine, the closest I’ve been to a boy since Patrick told me he never wanted to see me again. In Tempe, I didn’t exactly date. “So, what are you doing back here anyway, huh?” Gabe asks.
I take a sip of my soda, swat idly at a mosquito hovering near my bare knee. “School’s out,” I tell him, shrugging a bit. “Nowhere to go after graduation. Could run, I guess, but . . .”
“Can’t hide,” Gabe finishes, an echo of our conversation at the gas station yesterday. I smile. We sit in comfortable silence for a minute—it’s strange to be with him like this. I was least close to Gabe out of all the Donnellys before everything happened. He wasn’t the person I told my secrets to—at least, not until things fell apart so hard with Patrick. He was never the one who knew my every tell and shudder. Maybe it’s fitting he’s the only one who’ll have anything to do with me now.
We eat our hot dogs, and Gabe tells me about school in Indiana, where he’s a bio major, how he’s hanging out this summer and working at their pizza shop to help his mom.
“How’s she doing?” I ask, thinking of Connie’s thick gray ponytail and easy smile, how instead of folding in on herself like an origami swan after Chuck died, her spine only ever got straighter. Chuck had a heart attack at their kitchen table one night when I was fourteen and over for dinner, right in the middle of an argument between Gabe and Patrick over whose turn it was to hose down their motorboat, the
Sally Forth.
Connie sold the boat the following summer. She manages the shop by herself.
“She’s good,” Gabe tells me now, and I smile. We talk about dumb stuff: a costume party he went to a couple of weeks ago where all the dudes dressed up as their mothers, and what we’ve been watching on TV. “Wow.” Gabe laughs when I let loose with some truly scintillating facts I’ve gleaned about Prohibition and the Transcontinental Railroad from all the documentaries I’ve been mainlining. “You really are starved for human contact, huh?”
“Shut up,” I tell him, and he offers me the last of his onion rings with a guilty grin. I make a face but take them anyway—after all, it’s not like he’s wrong.
“Well,” Gabe says, still smiling. His eyes are a deep, lake-water blue. Across the lot a car hums to life and pulls out onto the parkway, headlights cutting a bright swath through the summer dark. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow, I’m really glad you’re back.”