A Million Miles Away(45)

“Don’t tell me that you lied? I never took you for a liar, Kelsey.”

Kelsey tightened her jaw. If Gillian wasn’t going to give her a chance to tell the truth, then she would just have to take it. “I told my parents I was going to KU because I had to tell them I was going somewhere. They would never have let me go.…” Kelsey gulped, her chest tightening. “They would never have let me go to Paris.”

“Paris, France?” Ingrid gasped.

“No. No way.” Gillian put a hand on Ingrid’s arm. “You went to Paris? Do not tell me this is about that soldier.”

“What soldier?” Ingrid asked, excited.

Gillian stared at her in disbelief. “I thought you said you were going to end it.”

Kelsey leaned toward her, trying to keep her voice low. “I messed up. I know. But I can’t end it because—”

“Yes, you can.”

“You’re not even giving me a chance to tell you why!”

“I gave you a chance!” Gillian almost shouted. “I went to your friggin’ house over spring break! I came to you!”

Kelsey felt as if she had been punched in the gut. “And I wasn’t there?”

“You weren’t…” She could see Gillian’s eyes beginning to water, but she resisted. “You’re never there anymore.”

Kelsey put her head in her hands. “I’ve had a rough year, Gil.”

“Not so rough that you couldn’t go to Paris, huh?” Gillian sat up straight and pushed back from the table, refusing to look at Kelsey.

Kelsey jumped on the silence, trying to get it out as fast as possible. “I’m so sorry—I went because he invited me—Well, not me—But I went and while I was there—”

But as she spoke, Gillian stood, leaving her tray, and walked toward the cafeteria exit.

“Ingrid,” she called from the door. “I need you.”

“She needs me,” Ingrid said, avoiding Kelsey’s eyes. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Tell her I’m sorry!” Kelsey called, and watched her walk away.

She fought the urge to bang her fist on the table. It seemed the only people who would listen to her were so far away. The only person, rather. Maybe she wasn’t saying the right things. Or maybe she just wasn’t saying them to the right people. Should she follow her friends?

No point, she decided. No point in trying to wrangle their anger into understanding.

She unwrapped the bottom of her 3 Musketeers bar and put the rest of it in her mouth in one bite, trying to savor its sticky richness until it was all gone. Michelle loved sweet things, too. Michelle and her hot chocolate. She would never tell her sister that sugar was bad for her. She would never tell her to give up something or someone she loved.

Ingrid had said it herself. It’s love, you know? If you are, you are.

She was.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


Weeks passed, embedded in routine. The sun got higher in the sky, up earlier, out later. As graduation grew closer, the seniors at Lawrence High School were starting to anticipate the leap they were expected to take, equally itching for it and fearing it. They flocked in the cafeteria and the courtyard like inquisitive birds around bodies of water, disseminating at the slightest ripple of responsibility.

Kelsey kept her head down. She cleaned her room. She dragged herself out of bed to practice her routine for the Rock Chalk Dancers audition. And she wrote.

She wrote to Peter as often and as deeply as if she were writing in a journal. Since the company’s loss, security had tightened, and he wasn’t able to Skype until they moved bases.



4/2





Dear Peter, I was in the locker room and I put my right shoe on my left foot because I was thinking of how the end of one of your eyebrows is somehow a shade blonder than the rest of your hair. Did you know that? Did you get a lemon in your eye at a young age?

xo

Michelle





4/20





Michelle—Abstract Expressionism is in fact the vomit of a sea creature. I mean that in a really good way. Think of it as an orca having just ate a school of angelfish, then he gets sick, and the pool of sickness is suspended in water. I’m writing that here because I don’t think Mrs. Wallace would appreciate it like you would.

Yours,

Peter





She was still Michelle in his eyes, but besides the name, she was Kelsey in every way. She would tell him the truth when his tour was over. And then, well, she didn’t know what would happen then.

Today, Kelsey was returning to the main doors of the high school from lunch, which she now opted to eat downtown. She waved at a car full of classmates and they waved back, their music fading as they squealed out of the parking lot.

She felt the itch and fear as much as anyone else, wishing she could duck out of the gymnasium doors and pile into a car bound for Clinton Lake. But she had said no for too long. There were friendly hellos from the dancers in the hallway, condolences about the breakup, and nods from the fringe of ordinary faces who used to cheer for her team at pep rallies and guzzle beer in her house.

Her phone lit up, and she grabbed for it, hoping to see Peter’s name, but it was just a text from Davis: It’s hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch, it said. Kelsey smiled. She typed, It’s hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock, then deleted it. He was always better than she was at them, comedian that he was.