The Leaving(44)

Black troops here.

Gray troops there.

Occasional AWOL brown or cream. Sam disappeared into a dressing room to try on his newly tailored suit, so she sat in a leather armchair and called Emma. There was a lot of background noise on the other end.

“Where are you?” Avery asked.”

“The mall in Bonita Springs. Oh my god, I just saw Courtney. She told me if you don’t audition, she’ll probably get the lead and I want to kill her.”

Emma said, “Yeah, just hold on a minute.” But not to Avery.

“Who are you with?”

“Just my mom and brother,” she said. “My brother who is driving me crazy.” Then after a second, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Avery said. “Tell him I said to buzz off.” The urge to cry snuck up on her and she tried to dodge it. “And listen up. You’re a way better singer than Courtney. Just make sure you project. You’ll be onstage. Not in your shower.”

“You can’t bail on this.” Emma sounded far away. “I only wanted to do it because you were doing it and it’s like the only remotely fun thing to do between now and summer vacation.”

Avery stood and started walking among the suit troops. “It just doesn’t feel like a priority right now? Things are so crazy.”

“Well, it’s good that there’s the reward now, right? It’ll be good to have answers and it seems like you’ll have them soon.”

The reward had been announced that morning; a tip line had gone live.

“And then what?” She stopped in front of a wall of ties. Men were so weird. The idea of Sam in a suit . . . something about it bothered her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what then? When there’s not this big thing hanging over the three of us anymore.”

“You’ll get back to normal.”

“But we never really were normal.”

“Well, then you’ll become normal.”

Avery closed her eyes and tried to picture normal.

Her and Lucas, girlfriend and boyfriend, kissing at the lockers between classes.

Going to prom together.

Huddling in bleachers on cooler fall afternoons, watching football.

Making out in her room while trying to get homework done.

Going to movies.

Bowling.

The beach.

Her mother decorating for Halloween again, maybe even baking.

“Avery?” It was Sam standing beside her.

“I gotta go,” she said into her phone. “Call you later.”

“He needs like twenty minutes to fix a problem with the pants,” Sam said. “Let’s get lunch.”

The IHOP was frigid and everyone was old and/or overweight. Their booth table held tented placards that announced SIGNATURE SPRING PANCAKES!—loaded up with whipped cream and more—and some new menu item, HAND-CRAFTED GRIDDLE MELTS!

A slow death between two slices of bread.

Everything looked and sounded and probably tasted fake.

They ordered and Avery looked out the window at the suit store, and imagined a platoon crossing the highway—Left! Right! Left! Right!—sending cars into tailspins and armed with enough ammunition to turn the IHOP into the international house of pain and take it down to the ground.


He dropped her back at home to get ready and drove off before she even hit the mailbox because now they were running late.

The pelican’s mouth was open.

She looked in.

Another note:


WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT TRUST THEM !

—MAX



Up the street Mrs. Gulden’s yippy dogs were having a conniption.





Scarlett


On their way out of the bar, down a long flight of stairs, Scarlett skipped the bottom step


landing hard on her right foot

on the ground level.





A moment later Lucas did, too.





/



“Why did you just do that?” she asked.

The entry foyer smelled like old beer and cigarettes. The smell had crept into her hair, her pores, her nostrils—would probably stay with her all day.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Why did you just do that?”

She shrugged.

Realized she’d done it before.

The steps from Tammy’s back deck down to the patio in the yard. Had he done it that day, too, and they just hadn’t noticed?

She said, “Habit?”



/

/

/



Then thinking out loud: “Maybe we were somewhere where that mattered? Where the bottom step was . . .” She looked at the stairs there in the hall . . .

“Squeaky?” he offered.

She pushed the door to the street open.

Rogue drops were falling from clouds the color of steel.

He reached out and took her hand and squeezed it and she squeezed back, ran a thumb along his thumb.

Which also felt like a habit.


They held hands the whole way to the car.

They had a new destination.

Because the bartender had shouted across the room. “Hey, Jimmy!”