Here So Far Away(53)

You could sink a ship with all the lies I’d told lately. The biggest were the ones I’d told myself. Like, the only reason I’d taken the job at Rupert’s was to make some extra cash. That good people sometimes do bad things. That I kept forgetting to take the stone out of my pocket.

I peeled off my mitten and rubbed the smooth, shimmery pink surface. Then I hopped down from the hood, picked my way across the rocky beach, and threw it into the water.

Two things happened next: number one, I felt immediate and profound regret before the stone even broke the surface; and number two, I’d just become the kind of girl who would dramatically throw a love symbol into the ocean.

If we were ending, Francis and me, it shouldn’t be like this, with half a conversation in a parking lot and a ploink into the bay. Not our love. Not us. But I didn’t know what to do about it, and there was no one I could ask how a person was supposed to get her head out of her brown dot.

So I decided to do what I did best: shake it off at a shack party.

When Bill and I arrived, I slipped out of my coat and tossed it onto the pile in the corner of the bedroom with the grace of someone who knows they look good. I’d lost the weight that had been bothering me in the fall and then some, despite having given up running over the winter. After the last time Francis and I had slept together, he’d touched my hip bone and said, “Where did this come from? Did you always have this?”

“I think it’s meant to keep my lower part from collapsing in on itself.”

“Don’t disappear, my love.”

I grabbed the bottle of Screech that Bill had set on the windowsill, and checked myself out in a cracked mirror. My hair was falling just so, and I was glad I had chosen the vintage ballet sweater that crisscrossed my front and tied around my waist. Behind me, Bill was staring.

“Dude,” I said.

“You’re wearing something that makes guys think about how to get it on and off.”

I spied Lisa’s hot-pink feather key chain on the floor and instinctively reached down, but before I got my hand on it, Bill said, “Alright, that’s enough.” He closed the door. “Stand up. Put your ass away.”

“Why did you close the door?”

“I like you, but you’re not going to seduce me.”

“Uh, no, I’m not. Also, who says seduce?”

“Not that I haven’t thought about it. You have a good rack, you do. There’s a nice curvature on the left one there in particular. But Sid and I swore a pact that we’d never get together with any of you girls, even if you begged us.”

“Even if we begged you?”

“It’s been pretty obvious. You’re always ‘finding my binder’—”

“You’re always leaving it somewhere—”

“Making sure I get to class on time. Remember when you brought me cake?”

“You were just complaining about me bailing on you.”

I looked down at the key chain on the floor. Maybe there was more to it. Probably wasn’t a coincidence that Bill and I got closer after Sid left and Lisa and I broke up. Like those nicotine patches that Dad’s doctor couldn’t convince him to try, we helped each other kick our best-friend habits. And he was also sometimes my Francis patch, holding me over when we couldn’t be together.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that I’ve been doing too much for you, and I’m sorry that I haven’t always been around to do more for you. Does that cover it?”

“Yes. Are you going to get emotional because I don’t want to have sex with you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

And that, right there, was the best thing about being friends with a boy. Wasn’t a lot you couldn’t work out in two minutes or less.

“Gotta whiz,” Bill said.

I tossed his jacket to him. “I saw a couple of Elevens go into the bathroom together. Think they’ll be a while.”

He was partway out of the room when he turned around. “Lisa’s here.”

“And?”

He fiddled with the door latch. “She had a bad week. The play is . . .”

“She needs to fire half the actors.”

“I tried to tell her that, but then she looked like she was going to cry.” He shuddered. “She said she wished she could talk to you about it.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Okay, she said you’d know how to do it, which is basically the same thing.”

“What do you want me to do? Start firing people for her?”

“I’m just saying that if you think you might want to start talking again, this might be a good night to do it.”

The party was at someone’s uncle’s oversized lake cabin on the far side of the south mountain. The music was loud, and practically everyone was already messed up. “How’s it goin’?” Doug asked. He’d sank deep into a gigantic armchair, his hat tipped over his eyes.

“Comme ci, comme ?a. You?”

He peered at me from under the hat brim. “Nat’s avoiding me.”

“I can’t figure you two out,” I said, perching on the arm of the chair. “Are you dating?”

“Naw.”

“Do you want to go out with her?”