Brynn loads her duffel bag and slams the trunk—harder than necessary—then climbs into the passenger seat, immediately slumping backward and putting her feet on the dashboard without asking for permission, so her knees are practically at her chest. If Brynn were a dance she’d be something modern, coiled and tight and explosive. A dancer on her knees, but ready to leap, punch, tear down the theater.
#18. Words that want to be screams.
“Are you going to drive?” she says.
Earlier, when Brynn came through the lobby doors, I couldn’t believe it was really her—not because of how much she’d changed, but because she looked the same. It was like my idea of her, my memories, had simply doubled and spat her out a few years older, in a different setting, but unmistakably her: the wild tangle of dark hair, the heavy jaw, the way she walks almost angrily, with her hands curled into fists.
But now, it’s the changes I notice: the fact that she has stopped biting her nails, which used to be chewed nearly raw; the three studs in her left ear, which used to be unpierced; the small tattoo of an infinity symbol on the inside of her right wrist. She catches me staring at it and tugs down her sleeve.
She’s a stranger.
Evidence of the storm is everywhere: roads blocked off because of downed trees or power lines, men and women in waders and hard hats redirecting traffic, detours looping us around and back again so I begin to worry we’ll just end up back at Four Corners. There are a thousand things I’m dying to ask Brynn, a thousand things I want to tell her, too, but the longer the silence drags on, the harder it is to know how to begin. She keeps her nose practically glued to the window, knees up. When I put on the radio, she immediately punches it off.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “You could at least say something. I’m not your chauffeur.” Too late, I realize I sound like a mom.
“You want me to say something?” She turns to me at last, narrowing her eyes. “Fine. I’ll say something. You’re out of your mind.”
This is so unexpected, I can’t immediately find my voice. “What?”
“You’re out of your mind,” she repeats. “Showing up out of nowhere—talking about Lovelorn.” She makes a face, as if the word smells bad. “What were you thinking?”
I almost say: Excuse me. Didn’t I just pick you up from rehab? I almost say: Which one of us is really crazy? But I don’t.
#19. Words that stick spiny in your throat, like artichokes.
I say, “I was thinking you might actually care about what happened that day. I was thinking you might want to help.”
“Help what?” She puts her legs down, finally. She’s left footprints on the dashboard and doesn’t bother to wipe them off. “It doesn’t matter what happened that day. Don’t you get it? She’s dead. Everyone thinks we did it and they’ll never stop thinking it and that’s the end of that. Move on. Change your name. Get a life.”
“Oh, because that’s what you did?” In my head, a dancer breaks formation. Rapid frappés, striking the floor. One two three four five. “Were you moving on when you landed in rehab? When you landed in six rehabs?” The words are out of my mouth before I can regret them.
She mutters something too quietly for me to make out.
“What?” I say.
She exhales, rolling her eyes. “I said yeah, actually. I was.” Then she turns back to the window. “It’s called survival of the fittest.”
“Oh, thanks,” I say sarcastically. “And here I thought you slept through seventh-grade science.”
She doesn’t bother responding.
I’m half-tempted to pull the car over and order her out, see how she likes trekking the last however-many miles home to Twin Lakes through a sludge of mud and garbage. It was craziness to think she would help me, to think she would even care. She hasn’t asked me a single thing about Lovelorn, hasn’t even asked me what I found, why I drove two hours through a once-in-a-century storm just to talk to her. All she did at Four Corners was stand there, staring at me like I was a smelly stuffed animal she’d ditched in the local Dumpster—like she couldn’t imagine how I’d crawled back into her life. “Put that thing away,” she’d said, when I’d shown her the book—wincing slightly, as if it pained her. And then: “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’m about five minutes away from splitting. And that makes you my ride, so.”
Then nothing. Just ordered me into the car and told me to wait, like I was a limo service she’d hired to be her getaway.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Somehow I believed that if I could only talk to Brynn, she would make it better—or at least know what to do. I thought the old magic would come back, that special force that bound us together as a unit, that spun the rest of the world off into the distance. Back then, I thought Brynn could handle anything. I truly believed Summer would grow up to be famous.
I truly believed we were special.
But maybe the magic, like Lovelorn, never really existed: just another memory to let go.
As we near Twin Lakes, we have to slow down behind a line of cars waiting to be fed into a single lane. Half the road is blocked off by a police cruiser, and flares fizzle on the road, marking a wide circle around an uprooted tree, roots raised to the sky like the spokes of a gigantic wheel.
We inch into the left lane, following the instructions of a cop, who gestures us forward. I suck in a quick breath when I see the line of low-rent row houses just past Meers Lane, or what’s left of them, anyway. Whole porches have collapsed; garbage is scattered across the grass. One of the houses—where Pia, my old babysitter, used to live—has a chunk missing from one of its walls, like a giant has taken a bite out of it. I can see straight through into the living room.
“Holy shit.” Brynn sits up a little in her seat. “Isn’t that where your babysitter used to live? Pita?”
“Pia,” I correct her. But the fact that she remembered—that she remembers—makes me suddenly and stupidly happy. She hasn’t totally forgotten.
“Right. Pia.” Brynn seems more alert now. She leans forward. Farther toward the historic district—a name I’ve never understood, since it’s where all the newest shops are—9A turns into Main Street, and the sprawl of Laundromats and shingle-sided houses becomes instead a tidy collection of cafés, organic restaurants, jewelry stores, and art galleries. At the intersection of Main and Maple, the exact center of downtown Twin Lakes, Brynn whistles. “Damn. Check out Luigi’s. It looks like something exploded.”
My heart gives another squeeze. Luigi’s is actually now Flatbreads & Co., and has been since we were in fifth grade. Now the big glass windows that belly out onto the street are gone, shattered by winds. One of the tables has made its way out onto the sidewalk, where it’s lying, legs up, like a drowned insect.
“I didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” I say. Abby told me Twin Lakes got hit hard—hammered like a frat boy on a Friday were her exact words—but hearing about the damage is different from seeing it.
“You weren’t here?”
“I missed the worst of it,” I say. The streetlights at the corner of Main and Maple are down. There’s another cop directing traffic, and yet another long line of cars waiting to turn right. This portion of Main Street is completely blocked off, and we have to reroute down Maple and onto King. The parking lot behind Nooks & Books is still flooded. A Prius is just sitting there in a sludge of dirty water. “I left on Saturday afternoon, before the wind really picked up.” I don’t tell her I spent the night a few miles away from Four Corners, at the Sunshine Motel and Motor Lodge, on sheets that smelled like old cigarettes. I don’t tell her it took me hours this morning just to work up the courage to drive those final 3.6 miles.
“I can’t believe you drove a car in this.” She turns to stare at me. “I can’t believe your mom let you. Weren’t you scared?”
“Yeah, well.” I don’t answer directly. And of course, she doesn’t know that my mom is currently 110 miles away, probably sneaking dinner napkins into her purse and collecting junk mail from Aunt Jess’s house, and that she thinks I spent the whole storm safely tucked away in my bedroom. “It was kind of important.”
Brynn’s still looking at me sideways, like she’s never really seen me before. “We made it all up, you know,” she says in a low voice. “There was never a Lovelorn. Not really. We went crazy.”
“I know that,” I snap.
“Crazy,” she repeats, with a funny expression on her face. “And half in love with each other.”
“You weren’t in love with me,” I say. “You were in love with Summer.”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth. #31. Words like shrapnel: they get inside before they explode. For a split second, she recoils, as if I’ve slapped her. I see her spotlighted on a stage, on her knees, a small, coiled ball of fury.
Then she leaps. She’s out of the car even before I’ve stopped moving. I jerk to a stop. The trunk is already open. The bag is in her hand. By the time I get the window down and call her name, she’s gone.