All We Can Do Is Wait(23)

Jason picked his head back up and shot him a withering look. Scott felt immediately embarrassed, but Morgan laughed. “Actually, yeah,” she said, her face then falling into a darker expression.

“Sorry, I didn’t—” Scott stammered, but Morgan waved it off.

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It was funny.” Scott nodded appreciatively as Jason rolled his eyes and returned to his inspection of the table.

The other four smiled at each other nervously, but maybe hopefully too. If Morgan had heard something about her dad, had heard that he was alive and on his way, maybe that meant good things for the rest of them. For Skyler’s sister and Alexa’s parents. (And Jason’s parents.) For Aimee.

Scott pictured Aimee doing her ponytail thing, one effortless motion pulling her hair tie off her wrist and then up into her hair, just a little idle thing that she did, Aimee whom he knew so well. Aimee, the first love of his life, the girl he’d lost his virginity to. The girl he wanted to follow into her new life and never look back. If she was O.K., Scott knew then that he’d say goodbye to his parents, goodbye to the store, and head off wherever Aimee was headed, if she would let him.

They just had to get through this. This shitty thing. This awful bit of life before they became special together.





Chapter Five


    Skyler



SKYLER WONDERED IF she should clarify for Mary Oakes that her sister’s real name, her Khmer name, was Kun Thea. What if news came in and no one knew to update Skyler because she had only inquired about “Kate”? But they had her last name, Skyler reminded herself. Which would probably be enough.

Everyone called her sister “Kate,” just like everyone called Skyler “Skyler.” Her real name, or her birth name anyway, was Srey-leak. But only her grandfather called her that, and even then not that often. Only when he was in one of his weird, misty moods, lost in the past. Skyler had two cousins who grew up in Cambodia, though they were both at university in France now. When they were younger, they’d cooed over Skyler’s American name, calling her a “Valley girl” with jealousy and awe. But to Skyler it was just Skyler, not terribly special, just her name, just who she was.

That all felt like a million years ago now, those hazy, humid summers with her cousins and Kate, the four girls gabbing about faraway things, about what they hoped to do with their lives once they were older.

Kate always said then that she wanted to be a veterinarian, but she was now getting an English degree. “Too much science,” she’d said of vet school. She’d told Skyler about her big plan to not apply to veterinary school—a plan her grandparents fully endorsed—in the very same car that Kate might have just died in. They were driving somewhere, to the Fenway movie theater or maybe to Coolidge Corner; all Skyler remembered was they were off to see a movie. And Kate said, “Yeah, I don’t want to do it, turns out. I think I just wanna, like, read books and write stuff. Maybe teach.”

Skyler had no doubt she could do it, but it was surprising to see her sister, her steady, level sister, make such a big, sudden swerve in her life. School was only a few months away, and now there was this bombshell. Kate hadn’t yet told their grandparents, and Skyler certainly wasn’t going to blab. So for a while it was just their secret, one on top of a pile of many.

At the time, Skyler was holding back a big secret, a big fact of her life, from her sister. And she’d wanted to tell her that day in the car, now that her sister had divulged the truth about school. She almost did. But then she caught herself, knowing after she told her sister about Danny, about what was happening, that there would be no going back. Not once Kate knew. She’d never let it go until it was done. So she said nothing, just let Kate ramble on about her big plan, the car zooming down the Jamaicaway, fast but safe.

? ? ?

When Skyler became a teenager, some innate presence in her, maybe some genetic rebelliousness inherited from her long-gone mother, kicked in. So when she met Danny, two grades above her, a not terribly close friend of Kate’s friends, she felt an irresistible pull toward him.

“He’s an asshole,” Kate said when she first found out that Skyler and Danny had hooked up. “Seriously, Sky, he’s, like, the worst. I don’t think Owen and Ryan even want to be friends with him anymore.”

They’d met at a party in Roslindale, Kate taking Skyler along after a week of begging. It was at some Xaverian boy’s house, a shabby place that could have been nice with a little paint and attention. As it was, though, it had sallow shag carpeting and fading, smoke-stained wallpaper. The lighting was dim, and the downstairs—cramped living room and dining room, grim, dated little kitchen in the back—was crowded with kids, red cups strewn everywhere, a pulsing Zedd song blaring from unseen speakers.

Skyler quickly lost her sister in the crowd, near immediately regretting coming to this party full of strangers. She wished she was just hanging around Copley with her regular friends, joking about dumb things and taking turns on the one skateboard shared between them. But here she was, alone at a party of juniors and seniors who didn’t even go to her school. Skyler was clinging to the wall by the staircase, the upstairs looking dark and ominous, save for one light coming out from under a closed door, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

She turned around and there was a boy, rangy and red-haired with a pronounced Adam’s apple, a little beery-eyed but still staring, intense and focused, right into her eyes.