99 Days(13)

Or me.

The instinct to run is physical, as if some kind of rabid animal is snapping at my heels; I make for my car as fast as I can without breaking into an all-out sprint and calling even more attention to myself. I twist my ankle on a tree root anyway, trip a bit before I catch my balance. All I want is to get out of here without talking to another breathing soul. I had a hoodie at some point, I think vaguely; I don’t know what happened to it. I’m jabbing at the UNLOCK button on my key ring over and over, frantic, when Gabe catches up to me. “Molly,” he says, catching my arm and tugging gently until I turn to face him, his handsome face painted dark with worry. “Hey. Wait up.”

“Are you kidding me?” I gape at him, echoing his brother without meaning to—I can’t believe what just happened here, that I just walked into it so completely blithely. I feel like a moron. I feel like what people are probably calling me. I feel like a dumb slut. “You think for one second I’m going to stay here?”

Gabe takes a step back, like he suspects I’m about to rip his throat out. “Okay,” he says, holding up both hands in surrender. “That was bad. But just listen to me for a second, okay?”

“Uh-uh,” I manage, breathing hard. The jagged edge of my car key is digging into my palm. “That was shady. You knew he was here, obviously you knew he was here, and you just—you set me up, Gabe. Like, I don’t understand—why—”

“I didn’t set you up,” he says, shaking his head, looking wounded that I’d think that about him. “Molly, hey, come on, it’s me. I wouldn’t do that. I knew he was home, okay, but I didn’t think he was going to show up here. And I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t have come out.”

“You’re right,” I tell him flatly. “I wouldn’t have.”

“But I wanted you to.”


“So you lied?” There’s something about that that really doesn’t sit right with me. Patrick used to complain about it all the time, I remember suddenly—that Gabe was the nicest guy in the world as long as he’s getting his way. I don’t like seeing that side of him turned in my direction. “You wanted me to come, so you lied?”

Gabe’s forehead wrinkles. “I didn’t lie,” he argues. “I was going to tell you at the end of the night, I swear. I just, we were having a good time, you were having a good time, and I knew—”

“Yeah,” I cut him off, wrapping my arms around myself and caring a little more about my missing hoodie now, how I feel so absurdly exposed. “That’s still a bullshit excuse, Gabe.”

Gabe lets a breath out, rubs a bit at the back of his neck. “You’re right,” he says after a minute. I can still hear the sound of the party through the trees, people laughing. “Okay. You’re right. I screwed up. I’m really sorry. It was stupid of me. Look, why don’t we get out of here, go get a coffee or something? I don’t know what’s even gonna be open now, but let me make it up to you.”

I shake my head, holding myself a little bit tighter. I keep picturing the totally disgusted look on Patrick’s face. “I just wanna go,” I tell him quietly. “I just—I’m done for tonight, okay?”

Gabe exhales again, but he doesn’t argue. “Text when you’re home,” is all he says. I don’t tell him I have no idea where that is.





Day 13


I re-up my supply of Red Vines and spend the next day learning about the intricacies of General Sherman’s march to the sea, courtesy of Ken Burns’s The Civil War documentary, wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt even though it’s seventy degrees outside the house. I get all the way to 1864 before I even leave my room to pee. I was never into documentaries before I went to Bristol, but my roommate, this ferrety brunette named Karla who hung a sheet from the ceiling around her bed to disguise whatever the hell she was doing in there, was surprisingly generous with her Netflix password—probably because she thought it would keep me from doing anything crazy like trying to strike up a conversation. That was when I started working my way through one after another, a chorus of soothing, mostly British narrators explicating the details of various terrifying oddities, both natural and not: the Alaskan frontier, Steve Jobs, the Aryan Brotherhood. The knowledge felt like power, a little. It felt like a way to keep control.

Today I wait until I hear the crunch of my mom’s wheels receding down the gravel driveway before I creep downstairs for some avocado on toast. I’ve been living mostly on corn syrup and red 40 since I got here. I can feel a zit sprouting on my cheek. I fiddle with the fancy coffeemaker and stare out the window at the yard while it gurgles away on the granite counter. Oscar sighs noisily on the black-and-white tiled floor. Used to be when I had a sulk on Patrick would tell me stupid jokes until I snapped out of it: What did the buffalo say when he dropped his kid off at school? (Bye, son) and What’s green and has wheels? (Grass, I lied about the wheels).

I think of his face the first time he ever kissed me. I think of his face when he saw me last night. I take my coffee and my toast and get back under the covers with my laptop, and I do my best not to think at all.





Day 14


I’m not sure if Patrick’s working his old shifts at the shop now that he’s back in Star Lake for the summer, but I can’t get it out of my head that I have to see him, so the next afternoon I find him parked behind the ancient register just like two years ago, ringing a middle-aged lady up for three large extra-cheese pies.