Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(32)
“Tomorrow,” Clare tells her. “You?”
“Not till next weekend, actually. Yale starts on the later side. I think I might be the last man standing.”
Reflexively, Clare glances toward the doorway where Aidan disappeared. “You excited?” she asks, forcing herself to turn back to Anjali.
“Totally,” she says. “And you know how I swore I’d never take math again after a whole year with Mr. Mitchell? Well, I actually got into this special economics program, so it looks like it’s more statistics for me. What about you? Have you figured out your major yet?”
“Uh, we don’t have to declare until sophomore year,” Clare says distractedly as someone pushes past her. She presses her back up against the wall. “Lucky for me.”
“Same with Yale, but I feel like most people already sort of know what they want.”
“Well, not me,” Clare says a little too brightly. “I still have no clue.”
“Oh, come on,” Anjali says with an encouraging smile. They’re the same type of person, cut from the same mold. They’ve been in all the same honors classes for as long as Clare can remember, have gone head-to-head in GPA rankings, and have worked alongside each other at countless bake sales and soup kitchens and student council meetings. They’ve spent all of high school working hard and making plans, and now they’re supposed to go off to college and jump headlong into whatever comes next.
Only Clare has no idea what that is yet.
“You’re gonna have a million options,” Anjali is saying, but Clare just stares at her.
“I don’t know,” she says. The room suddenly feels much too warm, and she wipes at her forehead. “I don’t… everything’s really up in the air right now. I guess…”
Anjali is watching her expectantly.
“I guess I’m just feeling a little lost.”
“Oh,” Anjali says, clearly surprised. “Well, that’s okay.”
“Do you mind if I just…?” Clare pauses to lick her lips. “Sorry, I just…”
Anjali steps aside to let her pass. “Sure, yeah. Of course. Good luck with everything if I don’t see you.”
The bathroom is just at the other end of the foyer, and after pushing her way through a group of underclassmen huddled around a video that’s playing on someone’s phone, Clare’s relieved to find that it’s empty. Someone has left a red cup on the sink, and the roll of toilet paper is unraveled on the tile floor, but otherwise, it’s not in bad shape for a party like this.
The idea was just to escape, but she realizes now she actually has to go, and when she’s done, she splashes some cold water on her face, then pauses to study herself in the mirror. It’s just about eleven thirty now, but it feels much later, and she realizes how exhausted she is. It seems like a million years ago that she told Aidan there would be no sleeping tonight, that they only had so much time left, and they had to make it count. Now, all she wants to do is curl up and go to bed.
When she opens the bathroom door, she’s surprised to find the foyer is nearly empty now. But there’s cheering coming from the direction of the backyard. She hurries through the kitchen, where a few people—unbothered by the commotion—are still sitting around the table playing cards, and then out past the living room and onto the patio, where the rest of the party seems to be bunched into a loose, shifting circle.
From where she’s standing, a few feet back, Clare can tell it’s a fight—the heavy thwack of landed punches, the jeering and shouting, the scraping of sneakers—but it’s not until she pushes her way through the huddle that she realizes, with a shock, that it’s Aidan and Scotty.
Aidan’s head is low; he’s got Scotty tucked in a headlock with one arm, and he’s using the other to pummel him. It almost looks to Clare like they’re just messing around, the way they so often do, and for a half second she lets herself believe it’s true. But then she sees Scotty’s face, which is red and distorted, and Aidan’s, his teeth gritted and the vein on his forehead standing out.
As she watches in horror, Scotty twists free, swinging out and landing a punch squarely across Aidan’s cheek. The smacking sound it makes, bone-crunching and solid, sends her heart skidding in her chest. But Aidan barely reacts; he rocks back on his heels, then lurches forward again, landing a punch that cracks the side of Scotty’s glasses.
Around them, everyone is shouting, though it’s hard to tell whether they’re egging them on or trying to get them to stop. Clare catches a quick glimpse of Stella’s panicked face on the other side of the circle, her eyes flashing in the yellow light that’s spilling out from the kitchen. And then Scotty takes another swing, and before she can think better of it, Clare’s moving in their direction.
“Aidan,” she shouts as she comes up behind him, but he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even look at her. He’s too busy staggering toward Scotty again. But Clare charges forward anyway, skidding to a stop right behind Aidan and reaching out to grab his arm, determined to end this before it can get any worse.
He shakes her off without even turning in her direction, his entire focus on Scotty, and so on her second try, Clare—still shouting for him to stop, determined to make him listen, though he’s so clearly unable or unwilling to hear her—loops both arms around his waist in a kind of backward bear hug, then yanks back hard.