99 Days(15)

“Yup,” Patrick says, without elaboration. “That’s why.”

“Okay.” I nod and wonder who he is now, to toss something he wanted for so long like it didn’t even matter. I wonder if somehow I made him that way. “Look, Patrick. I just—there’s nothing going on with me and Gabe, okay? I just want you to know that. I came home for the summer, and I was being pathetic and so he invited me to that party, but it isn’t—we’re not—” I break off, unsure how to keep going. When we were twelve and thirteen, Patrick always talked about serious stuff sitting back-to-back, like it made it easier if we didn’t have to stare at each other. I wonder what would happen if I asked him to do that with me now.

Instead, he holds up a hand to stop me. “Look, Mols,” he says, echoing my tone exactly. It’s the nickname he’s had for me since we were little kids in pre-K, the same one his dad used to use. “Here’s the thing: You can whore around with my brother every day of the week if you want to. I really don’t care.”

I take a step back like Patrick’s hit me this time, like tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and find both my eyes swollen shut. My whole body goes prickly and hot. Patrick’s calm as the woods in dead winter, though, turning his full attention to the young family coming through the door, a practiced indifference like maybe I never interrupted him to begin with. Like maybe I was never here at all.





Day 15


“Done for the day?” Penn asks me at quitting time, both her kids trailing her down the staff hallway toward the exit that leads to the side parking lot. Fabian takes karate twice during the week and once on Saturday afternoons, and is skipping across the linoleum in his immaculate white gi. Desi follows silently, her tiny hand tucked into her mom’s.

“All done,” I tell her, spinning the combination on my locker—the ones lining the hallway are small, like the kind at gyms and skating rinks, big enough to hold my canvas purse and emergency cache of Red Vines and not much else.

“Any luck with the TVs?”

“Not yet.” I shake my head. “But I’m working on it. Oh, also, remember you’ve got that meeting tomorrow with the guy from—” I break off suddenly, staring at the contents of my locker. Big enough for my purse and not much else, right—the not much else, at this particular moment, being a long strip of a dozen foil-wrapped condoms that I definitely didn’t put there myself.

Penn stops a few feet away and turns to look at me, quizzical. “Meeting with the guy from . . .?” she prompts.

“Oh! Uh,” I say, shoving the condoms into the bottom of my purse before I take it out, praying that Penn—or, God forbid, the kids—don’t get a glimpse of them. I blink at the vents on my locker door, just wide enough for somebody to slide the foil strip inside. “With the glass guy, about the cracked windows on the second floor. I called to confirm yesterday afternoon.”

“Good girl,” Penn says, still looking at me a little uncertainly. Then: “You coming?”

“Yup,” I manage. Fabian flings his tiny body against the PUSH bar on the door, sunlight leaking into the hallway. “Let’s go.”

I wave good-bye to Penn and the kids, and cross the blacktop to my car—it’s sitting right under a pine tree where I left it this morning, exactly the same save a long, jagged scratch along the side.

Someone’s keyed my driver’s door good, leaving a deep white scar clear across the body.

Not someone.

This is all Julia.

“Damn it,” I say out loud, slamming my palm down hard against the window, loud enough that Penn and the kids, climbing into their spaceship-like minivan, look up in alarm.

“You swore,” Fabian calls out cheerfully from the backseat, sneakered legs kicking. Penn clicks the remote and shuts both kids inside.

“You lose your keys?” she calls, crossing the lot in my direction. “Molly?”

“No, it’s—” I shake my head, ashamed and embarrassed, not wanting her to come any closer. I hate the idea of Penn seeing, like she’ll be able to figure the whole sordid story just from a fistful of condoms and one stupid scratch on my car.

In the end, I’m pretty sure it’s my face that gives me away more than the damage to the Passat. “Yikes,” Penn says, looking from me to the gouge and back again. “Molly. You know who did that?”

I think of Julia’s hands all of a sudden, her knobby knuckles that she hates and how she always has a neon manicure, hot pink or electric yellow. She used to like to paint mine, too. I remember the chemical smell of the nail polish hanging low and heavy in her room—back when the rule in the Donnelly house was that I could still sleep over as long as I crashed with Julia, the two of us piled head-to-toe in her twin bed, her chilly ankles brushing my arm. “Oh my God, this mattress is not big enough for the both of us,” she complained one night, rolling onto her side and whacking her elbow on the nightstand. The tiny bottles of polish rattled in protest. Julia swore.

“I said I’d go get the sleeping bag!” I protested.

Julia sighed theatrically. “No, it’s fine,” she said, then made a goofy face so I knew she wasn’t actually irritated. “Just hurry up and marry my brother so you can crowd him instead, will you?”

My eyebrows arced, surprised to hear her say the words out loud. Not even Patrick and I talked like that, forevers and whens. Possibly we were both too afraid. “Oh, is that the plan?” I asked teasingly.