You Know Me Well(27)

Violet smiles. Not a happy smile—a melancholy smile.

“It’s actually not a contradiction at all,” she says. “You want the continuation that feels like a start.”

At that moment, my phone vibrates on the table.

I’m afraid to look.

It’s Katie who picks it up. Who reads the screen. Who says, “Oh.”

“Is that a good ‘oh’ or a bad ‘oh’?” I ask.

She holds up the phone so I can see it.

I’m glad you have my back.

I check the time he sent his message against the time I sent mine.

There’s a six minute, forty second difference.

It took him six minutes and forty seconds to type: I’m glad you have my back.

I start to compose my next line. I’m glad you’re glad. No. Any time. No. Don’t you know what I mean when I say I’ll fight for you?

No.

“Put down the phone,” Violet insists.

“I wasn’t going to—”

“I’m serious—put down the phone. Now. I know about these things. He’s not done. He just needs to realize he’s not done. And if you respond, you will prevent him from realizing that.”

“How do you ‘know about these things’?” Katie asks.

“Songs of innocence, songs of experience,” Violet replies.

I can tell Katie is not entirely satisfied with this answer. She’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted by the phone vibrating again.

I need you, it says.

More typing. And then:

Come over?

I look at Katie and Violet. They look at me.

We all know what I’m going to do.





10

Kate

Now there are two of us at a table set for three.

And I guess the reality that Violet is here is finally settling in, after the humiliation of Brad and Audra and my paintings. After the giddy high of Violet’s purchase, and the bravery of Mark’s text, and the dreadful anticipation of Ryan’s response.

Now it’s just Violet and me, and I’m searching for something to say.

“So tell me about the trapeze. Is it scary?”

“It must be terrifying. I’ve only been on one a couple times, though, and only when it was very close to the ground.”

“Your scar, though. I thought…”

“This?” She touches her eye. “I got this by falling off a skateboard when I was eight.”

“Fucking Lehna,” I mutter.

“What?”

“Nothing. So you weren’t actually studying the trapeze, then?”

She laughs. “No. I did a lot of watching. It’s so captivating. But it takes years to learn. Mostly, I was doing homework packets. Homeschool curriculum is … not the most stimulating unless you have parents who make it fun by, like, doing art projects and going on field trips and dissecting artichokes to discover they’re flowers—”

“Artichokes are not flowers.”

“Oh yes,” she says, pointing her chopsticks at me. “They are.” She pops an edamame bean into her mouth and grins. “I learned it from a packet.”

I grin back at her. She’s so confident, so effortlessly funny and smart.

“What about you, though? UCLA, right? So you must be into school.”

I shrug. “I guess so. Mostly, I just really like art.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” she asks.

I cock my head.

“Finally meeting each other.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I only wish it wasn’t so late. So close to when you’ll leave, I mean.”

I don’t want to think about leaving for college. But now the thought is here, all around me, the heaviness of it, the way it pulls me under. I want to lose myself in Violet, but she’s right across the table, not in a faraway place I can only reach in daydreams.

I feel panic rising, and I need to turn away from it.

“I got your rose,” I say.

Surprise flashes across her face.

“How did you know about that?”

It feels so long ago now, even though it’s only been a couple days. I call it all back: the way it felt to hang out with Mark that first night, how I discovered a new way friendship could feel. The song “Umbrella,” my icy glass, the relief on Mark’s face when I asked him to be my friend.

“I did go back to Shelbie’s house that night. I was just too late. And Lehna told me that you had brought me a flower.”

“But, still…?”

“And June told me that you had left to see the sea lions, so Mark and I went to track you down. We thought we could catch you. We went to the pier and we walked all over, but no one was there. But then, there was a rose.”

“Amazing,” she says. “Talk about putting things out into the world.”

“I’m sorry about that night.”

She shrugs.

“Things happen,” she says. But she sounds hurt, so I go on.

“I wanted to meet you so badly. And I got so nervous.”

“What happens when you get nervous?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I want to know everything I can about you. I’ve been waiting and wondering for so long.”