Famous in a Small Town(54)

I finally got my bike out. I didn’t say anything. Just got on and started to pedal.

“Sophie.”

Terrance ran alongside me, passed me before I could amp up speed and stopped in front so I was forced to stick my feet out, grind to a halt. He grabbed the handlebars and looked right at me.

“I know it wasn’t right. Technically.” He shook his head. “And I’m sorry. But also I’m not.”

I backed my bike up, pulling the handlebars from his grasp, and then pedaled away, ignoring him as he called after me.



* * *



I was in the back seat of the Cutlass, and then suddenly I wasn’t anymore. I found myself at Brit’s house, somehow. A series of quick cuts, except they weren’t quick at all—a dragging montage of the car and me trying to get my feet under myself, of Brit’s arms and August’s arms and a pounding nausea that had taken over.

I ended up in Brit’s room, curled around her wastepaper basket. She was afraid to set me up in the bathroom, lest her parents wake up in the night, so I puked into plastic grocery bags, which Brit somehow disposed of—I didn’t quite track their disappearance.

We had lost August somewhere along the way, maybe once we got to Brit’s room—maybe they had a talk by the door, in hushed tones. Maybe he had helped put me in Brit’s bed, before I ended up on the floor, and maybe he had paused for a moment, looking at me, with his hands loosely curled at his sides, something like sorrow etched on his face, except that didn’t make any sense.

Now it was just me and Brit. She sat on the floor across from me, her back against the wall.

I threw up until I couldn’t anymore, and when I curled up on the floor, she took the trash can away and slipped a pillow under my head and put a blanket over me. I felt both too cold and too hot at the same time. My skin hurt.

“You’re being nice to me,” I said finally, voice croaky.

“Yeah?”

“Thought you were mad at me.”

“Why would I be mad at you? I was the one being an asshole.”

It was quiet for a bit. I thought she’d get up, get ready for bed, but she just stretched her legs out, rubbing one socked foot over the other. Finally she spoke.

“Do you remember when we were little, and that girl Ashley was babysitting us, and we were playing hide-and-seek outside and I peed my pants?”

I did remember it, vaguely. Mostly I remember that Brit had cried that day.

“I had to pee so bad, but I was seeking. It got worse and worse but I just kept looking because what if I went inside to go to the bathroom and you thought I gave up? What if you thought I wasn’t going to find you? So I kept on looking, and then I peed myself, and I was so embarrassed. But you just drew me pictures of flowers while she cleaned me up, and you were … soft toward me, like it wasn’t my fault. Like it was something bad that had happened to me, instead of something stupid that I had done.”

“It wasn’t stupid. You were a little kid. You had to pee.”

She didn’t speak for a bit after that, and when she finally did, her voice sounded odd. “I just don’t want you to ever think that I’m not going to find you. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”





forty-two


I shuffled to the bathroom the next morning. Brit’s bed was empty when I woke up, but I could hear someone moving around in the kitchen, so I moved there next, slow and zombielike. Everything was too bright.

It wasn’t Brit standing in front of the fridge, though. Luke looked up at me, raised an eyebrow.

“Some night, huh?”

I nodded and instantly regretted the movement.

“Brit went for a run, said she’d be right back. Probably thought you’d sleep longer.”

“Nope,” I managed. “Awake.”

He pulled some stuff out of the fridge. “Want some toast?”

“No.” Wasn’t going to make the head-shaking mistake again.

“Sure you do.” He started untwisting the tie on a loaf of bread.

I thought about that night in Bloomington, about Brit laying into Tanner Barnes. I couldn’t imagine she had told Luke about any of it—seeing Tanner, or even the idea of wanting to see Tanner in the first place.

She thought of everything that had happened with Tanner as ruining Luke’s life. But Luke was still here, setting down a plate of slightly burnt toast with butter in front of me.

“You gotta eat something,” he said kindly, and he was older, and thinner, and a little rougher-looking, but his eyes were the same as those of the boy who used to bike up and down the street with Ciara’s hands on his shoulders.

Brit felt like staying in Acadia was a failure somehow. Maybe Luke was stuck. I knew he drank too much sometimes, smoked too much weed, stayed out too late. Argued with their folks. Wanted to move out. Didn’t. People talked about his “lost potential,” like it was something he’d misplaced, like a glove or an umbrella. But maybe potential was more like a candle—you could relight it. You just had to find a flame.

Maybe he would. Or not. I didn’t know.

He filled up a cup with water, set it down next to my plate.

“Go on,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”



* * *