Open House(48)

THIRTY-SEVEN

Emma

Ten years ago

I text my sister where the party is so she can meet me, but then I lose my cell service deeper in the woods. The trees and foliage are thickening, and I’m cursing myself for hanging back and telling Noah and Josie to go ahead without me. I nearly stumble over a rock, catching my balance at the last second. I try to calm down, try to tell myself I’m overreacting, and that the woods are safe. I know this trail, and that it leads to a clearing as long as I keep following it. That’s where Josie and Noah will have the tents set up, and I remind myself that as soon as I see those tony red-and-white coolers full of beer, I’ll be in college again and everything will feel closer to normal.

I use the flashlight on my phone to illuminate the path, but my hands are shaking enough from fear and cold that the light scatters the dirt like a strobe. I sing a Bob Marley song my dad used to sing to Haley and me just to hear the sound of my own voice instead of the crushing brush and animal calls. I’m almost there.

Moments later I see a golden glow, and something like euphoria hits when I realize I’ve made it. I start to run, and the low beat from some song I don’t recognize filtering through the trees gets louder as I push faster toward it. When I crash into the clearing I can’t get over how many people are there. They must have taken the trails closer to campus to get to the party. There’s a group of guys and a few girls I don’t recognize, and then Noah’s lacrosse teammates clustered together drinking beers. A girl who manages their team, who Josie doesn’t like, hangs on the fringes of the lacrosse group like she isn’t sure how close she should get. I can see her guitar resting against a large rock. She’s got a pretty good singing voice, but that’s not why Josie doesn’t like her—it’s not anything simple like jealousy. Josie doesn’t like her because there’s an air of desperation about her, and that’s the one thing Josie won’t stand for.

Chris is off to the side by himself nursing a beer, his eyes glinting with something I can’t read, until I follow his gaze to Josie and Noah. The music pulses, and I feel sick when I see them together. Noah’s sitting in a folding chair with Josie on his lap, laughing. Josie lifts her beautiful face and sees me over Noah’s shoulder, and when she smiles it doesn’t look right. I make my legs walk toward them, forcing myself to look less upset than I actually am.

“Hey,” I say coolly, and Noah turns, guilt all over his face for whatever this is.

I try only looking at him instead of at Josie, attempting to somehow telegraph that I got freaked out in the woods and that I’m the one who needs him right now, not her. But Noah and I don’t know each other well enough yet to communicate in glances. If anything, I’m sure it’s Josie who can read my face, and it makes me so furious that my eyes well with tears. I don’t want her to be the one holding all my truths in her hand like a fistful of candy.

“What’s up?” Josie asks easily, almost kindly, but I don’t answer her. I turn to Noah.

“Can we talk?” I ask him. To Josie, I want to say: Can you please get off my soon-to-be boyfriend’s lap? but I restrain myself. I stand there and watch as Noah gets up quickly and practically dumps Josie off his lap into the dirt.

Noah’s friends crank up the music, and one of the guys I barely know does a keg stand while the others cheer him on. As quickly as I’ve come, I want to get out of here. The woods suddenly seem too close, Noah’s friends too childish and leering, and my supposed best friend too cruel and suffocating. I want to scream, but I can’t: not here, not now.

“What’s wrong?” Noah asks as he gets closer. His voice is full of something that feels genuine and worth trying for. I love Josie, and I never wanted a relationship with Noah to come between us, but maybe I was too naive to even think that could be possible. Maybe she’s writing an email to Noah like the one she wrote today, not out of overprotectiveness for me, but because she likes him. Maybe she’s been lying about being upset that he’s stealing me away from her; maybe what she really means is that I’m the one doing the stealing. Maybe she didn’t realize she wanted him like that until I wanted him, too.

“I need to talk to you alone,” I say softly to Noah, and then I narrow my gaze on Josie, daring her to stand in my way. He wants me, not you.

Noah puts his hands in his pockets. “Okay,” he says. “Want to walk toward the river?”

An image floods my mind: the choppy current of the river, unforgiving and unrelenting, the water black as night. It makes me shudder, but I want to be alone with him, and I want to be far away from this party.

“Emma,” Josie protests, but I won’t hear it.

“Sure,” I say. “Let’s go.”





THIRTY-EIGHT

Priya

Priya held Elliot tightly against her and tried to stop shaking. Elliot was still skinny enough to fold up his limbs inside her embrace, and she held him curled in her arms like a baby as they sat together on a leather sofa in the TV room. She’d wrapped a raspberry-colored afghan around him, and now she rubbed circles over his bony back as he cried against her collarbone and begged her to explain what had just happened.

“A woman was hurt today at an open house we went to,” she told him, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. “And because we were there, the police need to question us and make sure we didn’t do it.”