“Oh, right,” he replied hurriedly. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, or something.”
“Small town,” I agreed.
“Yeah.” A pause. Everything seemed awkward, for some reason. “Bye, Emaline.”
“Bye.” I hung up, then put my phone in my lap. Over the camera, the screen now directed us to SMILE! and began to count down from five with a series of beeps. Benji stuck his tongue out as the first flash went off. Pop.
“Do something silly,” he told me, demonstrating by pushing his nose up to make it into a pig snout. But even as I watched him, I couldn’t think of anything in time. Pop. Two more to go.
“One serious,” I said, sliding my arm over his skinny shoulder. “For me.” He crossed his eyes anyway. Pop. I poked him with my free hand.
“Okay, okay,” he said, giggling. The machine was counting down again. As it did, I looked up at all those other pictures, happy and laughing, loving and sweet, all tiny manufactured moments in imagined lives. I felt suddenly, and inexplicably, sad. But then I looked at Benji, who was smiling, just as I’d told him to. So I fixed my own face, just in time. Pop.
* * *
An hour or so later, I dropped Benji off in front of Miss Ruth’s. Then I sat in the car, watching him as he walked up to the house, the paddle ball game he’d cashed in points for in one hand, three of our four pictures in the other. Once he was safe inside, I tucked the final one, which I’d kept, over my gas gauge before pulling away from the curb.
It was a warm night, steamy almost, but I kept my windows down, needing fresh air after breathing in arcade smells for so long. I’d still not heard from Luke, which was now not just annoying but unsettling, so I went to look for him.
My first stop was the parking lot at the end of the boardwalk, in case he was at Abe’s Bikes or Last Chance. When I had no luck there, I headed out to the Tip, which was pretty dead save for a group of freshman girls hanging out in the back of an SUV. Doubling back, I cut through his neighborhood, on the off chance he was home. He wasn’t. I was driving towards my own house, trying to figure out where to look next, when I saw his truck parked outside of Finz, right next to his buddy Will’s Land Cruiser.
I pulled in on the other side, then cut my engine and sat there to think. I knew I needed to just go in and work this out. But Will was one of those gossipy types (a trait I disliked even more in guys than girls), which meant any visible tension between me and Luke would go public almost immediately. So instead, I got out and walked over to the truck and tested the driver’s-side door. When I found it unlocked, I got in, found a pencil in the console, and started looking for something to write on.
There was a Double Burger wrapper on the floor, but it was greasy, so I opened the glove box and dug around. After a moment, I unearthed a slip of white paper with something scribbled on one side. The other was blank, so I smoothed it out on the dash. I was sitting there, trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say, when it occurred to me to double-check that whatever was on the reverse wasn’t important. I turned it back over.
Really. You look better without it (your shirt). Melissa 919-555-2323
I had a flash of the dark-haired girl from the office, sliding this under the wiper. He hadn’t discarded it, but folded it neatly and tucked it away, like something precious. Then I noticed the bit of faint scribbling in pencil below her message. It was hard to read, as always, total chicken scratch. But, unlike most people, I had experience deciphering Luke’s penmanship. So it only took a moment for the message, and the situation, to become clear.
Fancy Free, he’d written. Till Sunday
Probably, he’d used the same pencil I was now holding to jot down this information after he called her. But when had he done that? That day? Or since he’d seen me and Theo?
I put the pencil back in the console, then folded the paper up again. It was like I was watching someone else as I got back out of the truck. I had left the paper on the seat, where he’d see it first thing. Another message from me he could ignore, if he chose. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t.
When I got home and pulled into my driveway, I could see lights on upstairs in the house. As I came in and walked down the hallway to my room, though, there was for once no sound or signs of occupation. Just my bed as I’d left it, made, the towel I’d used for my shower that morning hanging from the hook on the bathroom door. I should have been happy that my mother and sister had finally given me the solitude and respect for my space that I’d been demanding for ages. Instead, I found myself listening for any sound of life from upstairs. A footstep, a voice, a door being shut. Just something to let me know I wasn’t really as alone as I suspected.
* * *
“Coffee?”
I nodded, then flipped my mug over and moved it closer to the edge of the table. The waitress—a girl with a lip ring and a tattoo of what looked like a circle of protractors on her bicep—filled it up. “Thanks.”
“Sure. Still waiting for one more?”
“Yeah.”
Still waiting, I thought, as she moved on to the next table. I glanced at my watch. It was just before eight a.m., almost twelve hours since this whole nightmare had started. Although calling it that made it sound like sleeping had been involved at some point, which was not the case. Even after Luke and I had arranged to meet for breakfast, I’d tossed and turned until daybreak, tracking the hours one by one in the red numbers of the clock beside my bed.