The Unexpected Everything (50 page)

ME

Toby, I'm so sorry.

Are you okay? I'm worried.

I looked down at the screen, waiting, hoping she would respond. After a full minute I set my phone down on my nightstand and started to get ready for bed, even though it was only a little after ten. I felt like I was moving underwater as I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then turned off my light and got into bed. I'd just rolled over onto my side when my phone
ding
ed with a text message.

TOBY

I waited to see if there would be more, but nothing else followed. I didn't know what I was supposed to say to that—had no idea how I was going to make any of this right, or if that was even possible. I looked at my phone, glowing in the darkness of my room, for a long moment.

Then I turned it off.

T
amsin looked across the shadows of the dungeon at the old man who always sat huddled against the stone, the one whose voice was like the rattling of bones, the one who hadn't seen sunlight in fifteen years. He'd asked her to describe the sun when she'd first been thrown in here, which she had thought was ridiculous. Who could forget what it looked like when light dappled across leaves in the forest? She could recall them so easily—the early-morning light, so cool and blue and not yet warm; the way sunsets in Castleroy seemed to linger, putting on their best show before disappearing for the night.

But now, though it had been only three months, she was beginning to understand better. She'd forgotten about warmth, forgotten that once, she'd been lucky and free and able to raise her face to the sunlight, closing her eyes and breathing in the day. Once, she never could have imagined herself in a place like this. Now she was having trouble remembering that she'd ever been anywhere else.

“The Elder is dead,” she said out loud for the first time. As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. He would have come for her if he hadn't been. He would have done something. She would not have still been in here if he could have prevented it. “I'm all alone.”

The old man in the corner turned to face her, moving inch by inch, until she could see his face, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the light of the flickering torches. “We're always all alone,” he said, his voice cracked and worn.

Tamsin shook her head. She knew that wasn't true. She had years of proof to the contrary. “No,” she said. “Not always. Not even often.”

“Oh,” the old man said, with a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his being. “I forget you're still young yet.” He coughed then, a dry, rattling sound. “Sometimes we get a little bit of a facade. We think we have people. Family, friends . . . but in the end, it's just you and the darkness. Everyone leaves eventually, my young friend. It's better, really, to learn it early. This way, you can save yourself some disappointment.” He sighed then and slumped back against the wall once more. “Because believing you're not alone is the cruelest trick of all.”

—C. B. McCallister,
The Drawing of the Two.
Hightower & Jax, New York.

I stood in the back of the Stanwich Community Theater, clutching my iced latte and a blended java chip drink for Palmer. I'd been at Flask's, getting my usual, when I'd found myself blurting out Palmer's order as well. I decided, there in the coffee shop, that I'd bring it over to her as a kind of a peace offering and hope she'd forgive me, so that we could start to sort this out. Because the longer my phone stayed silent, the longer there was no communication on our group text, the more worried I was getting. Toby and Bri were both equally stubborn, and I didn't want to know what would happen if more than a few days of this standoff went on. I was afraid that at some point this would just become our reality. This had to change, and I knew I couldn't do it without Palmer, especially since Toby wasn't mad at
her
, as far as I knew.

But now, standing at the very back of the theater, looking at Palmer sitting at her stage manager's table, her bright hair glowing in the dimness of the room, I was starting to get nervous about my plan. I ran my thumb over the condensation on my cup as I walked down the aisle to the row where her table was set up, telling myself not to be ridiculous. This was
Palmer.
I shouldn't be nervous about talking to Palmer. But that didn't change the fact that I was.

I hesitated at the end of her row, shifting my weight from foot to foot, waiting for her to notice I was there. But her eyes were fixed on the stage, where Tom was being yelled at by the actress playing Camp Director Arnold. I walked down the row, hesitating for a second before taking a seat next to her and placing her drink in front of her. “Hi,” I whispered.

“Ready follow spot forty-seven,” Palmer said, but under her breath, like she was saying it to herself. “Forty-seven, go.” She looked over at me, then turned to face the stage again.

“Palmer,” I said, leaning forward so that I would be in her line of vision. “Come on.”

“Ready sound forty-eight,” she said, half under her breath, her eyes moving between the stage and the marked-up script in front of her, making tiny check marks with a pencil. “Forty-eight, go.”

“Hold!” The bearded director stood up and started making his way to the stage, shaking his head as Tom and the actress moved downstage to talk to him.

Palmer looked over at me, then sighed and put her pencil down. “I can't really talk,” she said. “I'm practicing calling the show.” She looked at the drink in front of her, and it was like I could practically sense her struggle before she picked it up and took a sip.

I took a sip of my own, to give me some courage, then blurted out, “I'm so sorry, Palmer.”

She looked back at the stage, where the director was now standing next to Tom, gesturing big, while Tom nodded and scribbled notes in his script. “What are you sorry about?” she
asked, not looking at me. “That you lied to me about what was happening with Bri and Wyatt? That you asked my boyfriend to keep lying to me?”

“You don't think I wanted to tell you?”

“But you told Clark,” Palmer said, looking at me evenly.

“I did,” I said quietly, knowing there was no way out of this. “But we have to fix this, P.”

“Yeah,” Palmer said quietly, reaching for her drink but just holding it for a moment and rolling it between her palms. “But I don't know if we can.”

I sat back in my seat. This was what I'd been worried about, when I'd even allowed myself to go there. But hearing her say it was something else. The fact that she wasn't seeing the best and looking on the bright side was almost more than I could take.

“What are you saying?” I asked, my voice coming out unsteady. “That we're all just done? Friendship over?”

She took a long drink and then set her cup back down. “I don't know.”

“Okay!” the director yelled, walking back down to the auditorium from the stage. “We're picking it up from Duncan's line, people. Let's go!”

“I have to do this,” Palmer said, picking up her pencil again and flipping a few pages back in her script binder.

I nodded and shouldered my bag but didn't leave yet. I still didn't know where we stood, and the thought of leaving with things so unsettled was making me feel panicky. “So,” I started, then hesitated. “Are we okay?”

Palmer looked over at me for a moment before looking back at the stage. “I'm not sure,” she finally said.

I nodded, swallowing hard. “Okay,” I said as I stood up. I paused there for just a moment when I realized there was nothing else to say. I walked up the aisle, to the back of the auditorium, looking at the stage one last time, where Tom and the camp director were starting the scene over again, having made their adjustments, trying to get it right this time.

The afternoon dragged on, one of the worst of the summer, time seeming to crawl. I ended up just driving around aimlessly, from Flask's to the beach to the Orchard, but no place felt right, and I didn't stay in any of them for more than a few minutes. I couldn't go home, because Peter was there. I couldn't hang out with any of my friends. Two of my constants had vanished, and I was getting more agitated with every hour that passed. I didn't know what my life looked like if we weren't all still friends. It was a reality I couldn't even fully grasp. For the last five years, it had been the four of us, what I had always believed to be an unshakable unit. The thought of not having them—the thought of some reality I might have to accept where I didn't have them—was making me feel like I wanted to scream, cry, and throw up, all at the same time.

These feelings were reaching a boiling point when I pulled into Clark's driveway to walk Bertie. I was angry and on the verge of tears, always a dangerous combination. A tiny voice in the back of my head was whispering that I should just leave, come back later, that I was spoiling for a fight and in no condition to see anyone, much less Clark. But I ignored it and got out of the car, heading up the walkway and letting myself in the side door.

“Bert,” I called as I stepped inside the house. The dog was
standing in the kitchen, giving me his biggest doggy smile. His tail was wagging so hard his butt was shaking back and forth. “Now, Bertie,” I said, in a tone that was intended to let him know I meant business. “I don't want to do this today.”

But Bertie didn't seem to pick up on any of this, and as I took a step closer, he did a little leap into the air and galloped out of the room. When Clark did Bertie's inner thoughts—in a voice Bri had told me sounded like a decent Jimmy Stewart impression—he always said, “The game, Andie. It's afoot!” when Bertie jumped like that and went running off. Normally, this routine cracked me up, since Bertie always seemed so pleased with himself, like he was sure he was getting something over on us. But today it was just irritating me.

“Stupid dog,” I muttered as I walked into the kitchen, getting his leash from the cupboard and making sure I had enough plastic bags with me, then slamming the cupboard door harder than I needed to.

“Hi, you,” Clark said, standing in the kitchen doorway. He had the rumpled, unfocused look that I had learned meant he'd been writing all day, his eyes bleary behind his smudged glasses.

I made myself look away from him, back down to Bertie's leash, which I was coiling in a loop. “Hey.”

“How are you doing?” Clark asked, walking over to me. He wasn't asking it in the rhetorical way, where you don't even really expect an answer. He asking it in the careful way you ask people who've just suffered a loss or undergone a trauma. After all, he knew the bare bones of what was happening—I'd texted him the situation that morning.

I shrugged, then shook my head. “Not so good.” Clark
reached out for my hand, but I took a step back from him and picked up Bertie's leash. “I have to take him out,” I said, looking away from Clark. “Bertie,
now
,” I yelled, willing the dog to listen to me just this once.

“Hey,” Clark said, taking a step toward me. He wrapped his arms around me, and for a moment I leaned against them and let my eyes close. There was a piece of me, a big one, that just wanted to let everything out. To hug him back, to cry on his shoulder, to tell him everything and talk about it together—things always seemed a little better once I'd talked to Clark about them—and he'd tell me that everything was going to be okay. But that thought jerked me out of the fantasy, as appealing as it was. Because everything very possibly
wasn't
going to be okay.

I broke away from him and picked up Bertie's leash. I saw a flash of hurt cross Clark's face, but I made myself look away from it. I took a breath to yell for Bertie again at the moment he came barreling into the kitchen, nails scrabbling on the wooden floors. Clark reached out for him and so did I, and we managed to corral him between the two of us. I snapped on his leash, then straightened up. “See you in a few,” I said, realizing that it would probably be best to put some distance between us, just so I could try to get my emotions under control and stop this powder-keg feeling that was getting stronger by the minute.

“I'll come with you,” Clark said, giving me a full-dimple smile. “I could use a break anyway.”

I didn't know how to tell him that I wanted to be alone, especially since I wasn't sure that
was
what I wanted. After all, I'd been alone all afternoon and had hated it. So I gave him something between a shrug and a nod and headed out the front door,
half running behind Bertie, who was straining as hard as he could against the leash. We stepped outside, and I was about to pull out my keys, but Clark was already locking the door with his set. I saw him reach down for my hand and quickly transferred Bertie's leash to that hand. I was feeling that if I really let Clark touch me for too long, if I let myself feel everything I was feeling, I would be venturing into dangerous territory, where if I started to cry in front of him, I wasn't sure when I'd stop.