I want to live my life on the internet. Everything is perfect there.
I found Kendall Baker on a computer in a library in some forgettable town along the way. She’s beautiful. A girl with glow. Eighteen years old, but the kind of eighteen they write about in books. The kind of eighteen that lives faster than the speed of hurt.
A girl who has no reason at all to believe she isn’t permanent.
As I scrolled through her Instagram feed, it struck me that every curated, perfectly captured moment in her life would still look wonderful without all the filters she slaps on them. Kendall Baker has a hectic social life. Weekdays are spent being a perfect daughter and friend, but weekends are dedicated to blowing off the steam required to maintain that kind of facade. Through her feed and the comments on her pictures, I find out that most weekends, she and her brother, Noah, and their special chosen few leave the city where they live, Montgomery, and drive an hour away to slum it in a bar called Cooper’s.
Cooper’s is where I find myself now, Wagner hundreds of miles behind me. I arrive on a Thursday, park across the road and wait.
They don’t show until Saturday.
Kendall Baker is my line to Silas Baker, Marlee’s brother, and Marlee wasn’t kidding when she said he got everything. He got college. He got college. He made a lot of good investments and reinvested his money back into his community. A lot of his money is tied to a lot of the businesses in the city. He got the Montgomery Good Citizenship award six years ago for his Outstanding contributions toward making Montgomery, CO, a city we’re proud to call home! In the accompanying photo, Silas, radiant, white and blond, was surrounded by his wife and his children, and even though he’s the one I want—the one who will lead me to Keith—his kids were the ones I lingered on.
And now Kendall Baker’s life has a sick little hold on me.
Her feed led me to other feeds and soon, I could imagine her whole world. One of Kendall’s friends, Javier Cruz—Javi, they call him, the J silent—the way he takes pictures of her makes me think he feels something for her. The way she is about him makes me think she doesn’t feel it back. There was this one video—they were here, I think, Cooper’s—and he had his phone’s camera filming her and she was dancing like something out of a movie, her arms outstretched, her hands floating in front of her. I watched it over and over, entranced by his enchantment. I have never been kissed the way I want to be kissed and I have never been touched the way I want to be touched. I don’t often let myself think of it, but ever since I saw that video, I can’t seem to stop.
Cooper’s is a two-story getup with a sleazy wooden exterior, the top half of it made up of rooms for rent. I’ve parked as close as I can to the front door. I leave my car and pass a line of motorcycles, following a gritty guitar riff inside. The walls are dark cherry awash in red light. There’s a band at the opposite side of the room and stretched in front of them, the dance floor, where people are grinding against nothing or each other.
It’s a hardscrabble crowd consisting of the middle-aged and the old as dirt and one anomalous group of perfect teenagers who Definitely Don’t Belong But Didn’t Get the Memo. They’re clustered together in a booth in the corner, hands wrapped around PBRs. It’s strange, seeing them live and in the flesh, and I realize stalking their social media has given them the vague sheen of celebrity. Kendall and Noah Baker are as blond as their aunt Marlee, but they don’t possess the same sallow complexion that speaks to hunger, sleeplessness and stress. They’ve been turned golden by the sun. Kendall’s hair is in two loose pigtails and her lips are pouty and pink. She has an air of practiced boredom but I can tell there’s nothing else she’d rather be doing. Noah has a tidy buzz cut and broad shoulders. Of the two of them, he looks more like their father. Javi has shaggy brown hair, light brown skin, a sharp nose and a lean body. A girl I recognize from their feeds but whose name I never caught sits next to him, her head tilted back, laughing at something Noah’s said. She has beautiful brown curls that almost waterfall over her shoulders, her skin a warm brown with golden undertones. There’s a diamond stud in her nose and it glints every time it catches the light. She’s prettier than Kendall, but something about her makes me think she doesn’t know it. That’s a real tragedy and I mean it. It’s sad when people don’t realize their worth.
I make my way to the bar and ask for a shot of whiskey. The bartender is this built, white guy with long, greasy black hair that definitely needs a cut. He wipes his hands on the towel hooked into his belt loop and eyes me skeptically. Says, “Look a little young to me.”
He sounds as gritty as the band.
I nod to the teens across the room.
“So d-do they.”
He serves up a shot, tells me if I get sloppy and in trouble, it’s on me but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I toss the shot back, grimacing at the kick, and wait for it to hit. There’s this perfect line between sober and blurry that softens my stutter. When I drink myself to it, it’s easier to talk. I scrub my hands through my hair and ask for one more and throw that down too, relishing the sting of it. Then I figure I’ve paid for the privilege of asking some questions.
Before I can start, I’m distracted by a man and woman, halfway down the bar. I can’t see his face but I can see hers, the perfect cut of her pale cheeks, her thin blond hair pulled back with a pink clip. She’s wasted. She can barely hold her head up. She reminds me of my mother. My mom met Keith in a bar. Joel’s. She got drunk and he brought her home. I picture it sometimes, their meeting, her telling him, in her muddled voice, soured by drugs and booze, how hard she had it raising two little girls all on her own. Keith, suddenly interested, asking her their names. In my mind, she has to think about it, her glassy eyes fixed on nothing.
Then she offers us up.
The bartender swipes away my empty glasses before moving down the bar.
“H-hey.” I call him back. “You know those k-kids?”
The bartender nods. “Sure.”
“T-tell me what you know.”
“Well, two of ’em belong to Si Baker. The two with ’em are their friends.”
“You know S-Silas B-Baker?”
He laughs. “I know of him, sure. He owns this bar. But a guy like him don’t hang around here. I don’t deal with him direct. I wouldn’t even know those were his kids if they weren’t so set on telling everybody.”
I make a noncommittal noise and turn back to the group and watch them until Javi seems to sense it. He raises his head and starts scoping the room. I duck away, to the bathrooms, because I feel like this isn’t how I want to be seen. I examine my reflection in the cracked mirrors over the sinks. It took me long enough to drive out here that my sunburn peeled into a tan that could almost look like it belongs with them. I find a rubber band in my pocket and knot my hair into a messy top bun. I roll the bottoms of my shorts until they’re as far up my thighs as I can get them and then I knot my T-shirt at my waist, tight. I stretch my arms up and watch as the skin of my abdomen peeks through. My stomach gives a poorly timed gurgle, desperate for something to digest. I pinch at my cheeks and bite at my lips until I see color in both.
When I push back through the door, the band is taking fifteen and the sound system is filling in, the song over its speakers dreamy and slow. I guess it’s not to the crowd’s taste because they scatter back to the bar. I glance over at their booth and Kendall’s eyeing the floor. Noah, Javi and the other girl all seem to be trying to push her out of the booth and maybe that video I saw, the one of Kendall dancing, wasn’t just some wonderfully unexpected moment in time, but a moment she makes happen over and over again.
What would happen if I took that moment from her?
Kendall climbs over Noah but by then, I’ve already taken her place. I’ve moved myself to the middle of the floor. Kendall stops when she sees me. I don’t think she’s used to being stopped. I stand there long enough, with her eyes locked on me, and then their eyes locked on me.
I feel the heaviness of everyone’s curiosity.
Kendall’s perfect mouth forms a perfect, What the fuck?
And this girl.
What’s she going to do?
I hold my arms out to my sides and sway. I close my eyes and I let the music own me, turning myself into the idea of a girl, or an idea of an idea—a Manic Pixie Dream, I guess, the kind everyone says they’re tired of but I don’t know that they really mean it. The girl nobody ends up loving long or loving well, but nobody wants to give up either.
I open my eyes and Kendall looks like murder. Noah and the brunette look uncertain. Javi takes a swig of his PBR and leans across the table, murmuring something to Kendall. She shrugs and he pushes himself out of the booth and makes his way over to me. My pulse quickens. I know your name, I think. I know your name and you have no idea who I am. He’s taller than I thought he would be. He looks nervous. I reach my hand out to him and he swallows visibly before taking it. His palm is sweaty. I lead him farther out onto the floor and guide his hands to my hips and somehow they find the softest parts of me, parts I didn’t realize were there to find. I bring my hand to the nape of his neck, the tips of my fingers teasing the edge of his hair and wonder over the sensation because I’ve never touched anyone like this before. He smells sweaty, but it’s nice, and when I meet his eyes, he’s looking at me like he’s thinking this is unreal, this is right out of a movie he made but never dreamed of starring in—except he did because who doesn’t want to be the boy mysterious girls are made for?
Who doesn’t want a love story?
I wish this was a love story. A love story about lovers whose mouths meet like two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly into place, about the electric feeling of one person’s name on the other’s tongue because no one has ever spoken them out loud like that before. About people who spend the night together looking at the stars until entire constellations exist within them. Everyone is perfect in that indistinct way most characters are and every perfectly constructed scene in their fictional lives is somehow more real than anything you’ve known or lived. Love stories, romances, leave a person secure in the knowledge they’ll end Happily Ever After and who wouldn’t want a story like that? I wish this was a love story because I know how it goes in one like mine, where the only moments of reprieve are the spaces between its lines. But here’s the thing I tell myself to dull the sharp edges of everything that’s surely left to come:
The worst has already happened.
The song ends.
“Hey,” Javi says, and his voice is deep, soothing.
It makes me shiver.
I know your name.
“H-hi.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Y-yeah,” I say, and then: “I st-stutter.”
His mouth breaks into a warm smile.
“Cool,” he says. “I’m Javi.”
“So you’re new,” Kendall says, after we’ve all introduced ourselves.
Her voice is older than the rest of her, the kind of voice you earn by years of drinking whiskey and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. I don’t know how that happens to some girls, but it just does. She’s feeling me out in that pointed way girls do, but I’m used to people looking at me twice, from the stutter. I don’t like it but it’s something I know I can withstand. Kendall doesn’t look like she’s used to being withstood, and for now that’s my advantage.
I’ve told them my name is Lera.
“Y-yeah,” I say. I’m squished between Javi and the other girl, whose name is Carrie Sandoval. His thigh touches mine. Carrie’s doesn’t. I have to believe the contact, and the lack of it, is on purpose. “J-just m-moved in.”
I take a swig of the Pabst Javi bought me and it tastes like piss, but between it and the shots, I’m humming and wondering why my mother couldn’t have ever stopped at a feeling like this because this is when it’s good and you still have control. I remember the first time I drank just to see if I could. May Beth tried to scare me away from it, told me that what Mom had was a catching thing, a passed-down thing, a sleeping disease that works its way through bloodlines and if you’re lucky, it won’t wake up, but why ever tempt it? I did. I had to. And guess what? I didn’t turn into a junkie. Maybe that was the real reason May Beth never wanted me to try; it was just one more thing I’d never be able to forgive my mother for.
“And you just … ended up … here?” she asks. “Cooper’s?”
“W-well.” I pick at the label on my beer. “Your Instagram m-made it look like s-some kind of p-place to b-be.”
Noah smirks. Javi’s mouth drops open and he ducks his head. Kendall and Carrie share an incredulous look. Kendall says, “Did you just admit to Instagram stalking me?”
“W-wanted to see how you h-held up a-against your own hype.”
Javi lets loose a peal of laughter then tries to take it back by covering his mouth with his fist. I stare at Kendall and wonder what it must be like to live a life so unchallenged that my unspectacular retort could make any kind of successful landing. There’s a fire in her eyes that tells me maybe I need to walk this back if I want access to her father.
And that’s what I’m here for, after all.
“How am I doing so far?” she asks coolly.
“T-too early to tell.”
“I like you, Lera,” Noah declares, tipping his bottle to me. I clink mine with his. Noah Baker has a TV news anchor’s voice, if the news anchor was a little drunk. “You can stay.”
“So where do you live?” Javi asks, and immediately flushes at the question, like it’s somehow too personal, even though not that long ago his hands were on my hips. Kendall rolls her eyes but relaxes back into the booth.
Carrie snaps her fingers and says, voice sweet as a bell, “Hey, wait … did you move into the Cornells’ place? You’re the … Holdens, right?”
That’s the gift of the city, I guess. The constant flow of it. I can’t remember people coming in and out of Cold Creek the same kind of way, the kind of leaving and arriving with the energy of a promise behind it. In Cold Creek, it’s only birth and death, that kind of coming and going. The Cornells’ place. The Holdens. It’s too good for me not to take.
“Yeah,” I say.
“That’s like three streets away from me,” Javi says.
“My sister-in-law sold that place,” Carrie says. “It’s real fucking cherry. There’s a sauna and like, some kind of treehouse in the back?”
I nod. Sure.
Noah eyes me. “Parents got it good, huh?”
“G-good as yours.”
“And what do you know about them?” Kendall asks.
“Your d-dad seems like a b-big shot,” I say, meeting her eyes. Noah knocks his fist against the table in affirmation, and then takes a swig of his beer.
“You g-guys.” I nod at the four of them. “You g-grow up t-together?”
“You tell us,” Kendall says. “Since you know everything.”
“My family moved to Montgomery around third grade,” Carrie says. She gestures to Javi, Noah and Kendall. “These three are lifers, though.”
“Their dad was my T-ball coach,” Javi says, nodding at Noah, who polishes off the rest of his bottle in one impressive swig. He reaches across the table to thump Javi on the arm.
“Come on, dude. ’Nother round. On me.” He flashes me a bright white smile. “In celebration of our new friend.”
“I’m g-good, thanks.”
I tap my nail against my mostly full bottle. Any more than this and I don’t think it would be good. I turn to Kendall, “You know a g-guy named J-Jack Hersh?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Who?”
“N-no one.” I pause. “Or D-Darren M-Marshall?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
We sit there in silence. I never know what to do with girls. Pretty girls. I want them to like me. It’s a strange, almost visceral need that settles itself inside and it makes me feel stupid and weak because I know it’s a fault line I can trace all the way back to my mother. Worse than that is the fact that I can recognize this need inside me and yet never work myself right enough to satisfy it. Ask me how many friends I’ve had, even before Mattie was killed.
“That was quite the entrance,” Carrie says and I don’t know if that’s a compliment or insult. Kendall’s lip curls. She says, “I dunno. It seemed kinda familiar.”
A weird sense of pride rushes through me. It was ridiculous—so brazen.
But it was good because it got me here.
“Javi was pretty into it,” Carrie says.
Kendall stares at me from under her long eyelashes. “He’s such a pussy, it’s kind of amazing he made a move. You better be nice to him.”
“He’s c-cute.” I glance at the boys, still at the bar. “What about Noah?”
“He has a boyfriend.”
I finish off my PBR and Kendall’s phone chimes. She digs it out of her pocket and the screen lights her face. She says, “It’s from Matt.”
“Don’t answer him,” Carrie says.
“I have to,” Kendall snaps. “You told me not to answer him the last time and I didn’t, so this time, I have to or else he’ll—”
“What, be even more of an asshole to you?”
“Who?” I ask.
“Matt Brennan. Kendall’s asshole boyfriend.” Carrie stares Kendall down. Kendall lets it roll off her back. “You’ll meet him at MHS, if Kendall hasn’t pulled her head out of her ass and dumped him like she should by then—”
“M-MHS?”
This draws Kendall’s eyes from her phone.
“Montgomery High?” You fucking idiot seems implied.
I force a laugh. “H-haven’t made the mental t-transition yet.”
“What was your old school like?” Carrie asks.
I give her a tight smile and try to remember high school. I never liked school; no one was interested in knowing me beyond making fun of my mouth and by the time my classmates were past the point of caring, so was I. High school always felt like an elaborate lie to me, some made-up fantasyland I was locked in for a set number of hours a day and just beyond its doors was the trailer my mother walked out of and inside that, my sister—and my sister needed me. So what was the point of algebra? Has there ever been one?
Kendall’s phone goes off again, saving me.
Carrie groans. “Fuck him.”
“Fuck who?” Javi asks, sliding back in the booth beside me, Noah just behind him.
“Matt,” Carrie answers, despite the warning glare Kendall shoots her.
Noah reaches over and snatches Kendall’s phone from her hands. She tells him to give it back, you motherfucker, give it back, but Carrie says, “You’ll thank us for this later,” and Noah says, “Jesus, Kendall, if you’re not going to drop him at least make him beg.”
“Give me my fucking phone,” she says.
“You promised.” Noah waves the phone in front of her face before shoving it into his pocket. “You promised you’d leave this bullshit at home tonight and I promised you I’d do this if you didn’t.” He reaches across the booth and covers Kendall’s mouth with his hand when she starts to protest and I think if any boy did that to me, even if he was my brother, I’d rip his arm out of its socket. “So shut the fuck up about Matt and drink your stupid drink that I bought you.”
Kendall scowls, but she takes a mutinous swig of her new beer, giving Noah the finger with her free hand while she does.
“Hey,” Javi says to me.
“Hi.”
“Didn’t stutter that time,” he says and I vow to let it be the only time he makes me blush for however long I’m around him. “My cousin used to stutter but he could sing, though. Like, he didn’t stutter when he sang. Is it like that for you?”
I shake my head, even though I actually don’t stutter when I sing—but I can’t sing worth a damn and I’m not in the mood to become some party trick.
“I don’t st-stutter when I’m a-alone.”
“Cool,” Javi says, even though that’s not the word I’d use. “My cousin grew out of it.”
“Lucky h-him.”
Kendall squints at me. “So do you do it because you’re nervous? I don’t get it.”
I bite back the urge to tell her it doesn’t matter if she fucking gets it.
Javi laces his fingers behind is head. “So what do you think of Montgomery so far? Why’d your family move out here?”
“We…” I stare at the table for a long moment and then I decide maybe it’s easier to tell a lie steeped in just enough truth because it won’t be as hard to lose track of. “M-my little s-sister d-died. We needed a ch-change of scenery.” It quiets them the way it should. When I look up, Kendall’s expression has softened because she’s not a monster. “But you c-can’t really get away from s-something like that.”
“I bet you can’t,” Javi says.
“Th-thought I’d try, though,” I say, brightly as I can muster. I give Kendall a small smile. “Hence, c-crashing your party.”
“Well. I’m sorry about why you’re here, but … I’m glad you’re here,” Javi says and it still doesn’t sound right. “Because Montgomery’s fucking boring. It needs someone new.”
“It’s not that bad,” Carrie says.
“No, it is that bad,” Javi replies. “It’s the same old shit, every day…”
Noah wads up a napkin and tosses it at Javi’s head. “If the same old shit is you not doing shit, then I’ll bite, you goddamn benchwarmer.” Noah looks at me and points to Javi. “He needs someone new. You into guys, Lera?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Javi says.
I shrug. “S-sometimes.”
“You, buy this girl a drink,” Noah tells Javi, and then to me, “You, get this boy laid.”
Javi’s face is a shade of red I didn’t think could exist in the natural world.
“You’re such an asshole,” he mutters.
Noah gives Javi the biggest, assholiest grin. “Hey, if you’re not gonna buy her a drink, you can at least buy me one.”
“We just went up there!”
Noah turns his bottle upside down. “And I’m out.”
“I’ll g-go with you,” I tell Javi, and that’s all it takes.
“I’m sorry,” Javi says after we climb out of the booth. He half-turns to give me the full force of his sincerity and ends up tripping over his own feet. “He’s really—”
“It’s f-fine.”
When we reach the bar, the bartender sets us up with a line of shots but instead of walking them back, Javi knocks one down and texts Noah, flashing the screen at me before he hits send: You want em come and get em. Javi picks up another shot and nudges one my way.
“To your sister,” he tells me.
I find myself blinking back tears at the unexpectedness of it, his kindness stealing some part of me away. I grab the shot with a shaking hand. I say, “T-to her,” and I barely manage to swallow the fiery alcohol down. I cough into my palm. “W-what was that?”
“Jäger,” he says and I know I’ll never be able to drink Jäger again. It will remind me of this moment, of her, of choking on my own grief in front of a boy whose name I knew before he knew mine.
“You’re, uh.” He pauses. “When I saw you dancing, I was like, wow.”
The liquor has loosened his tongue.
“Y-you act like a g-girl’s a brand new thing.”
“I’m just telling you you’re interesting,” he mumbles.
I notice Noah crossing the room toward us and I want … space. I want to take this moment alone with Javi and I want it to last longer. Something about that makes me ashamed. This isn’t what I’m here for. And maybe I’m a little wasted, thinking that it could be.
“You w-wanna get s-some air?”
“Yeah.” Javi nods eagerly. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Leaving the bar is a truly wonderful feeling; I didn’t realize how stale the air was in Cooper’s until I take a deep, clean breath.
“N-Noah gives you a lot of sh-shit, doesn’t he?”
“That obvious, huh?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“W-what’d he call you? B-benchwarmer?”
Javi blushes. “Yeah … I’ve just never been that guy, you know? I mean, it’s not easy for me to…” He fumbles for the words but can’t seem to find them. “It’s kind of why I fell in with Noah and Kendall. They at least try to make things happen. But that’s the big joke—because I just sit on the sidelines and pretend to be part of it.”
“D-didn’t see them d-dancing with me.”
He smiles such a small, earnest smile. I can’t think of the last time I made someone so pleased with themselves. It makes me want to cry.
“I guess not,” he agrees quietly, like it means something.
“I’m g-glad you did.”
“I’ll be hanging at Noah and Kendall’s place tomorrow,” he says. “You should come.”
“Th-think she’d like that?”
“Kendall needs a shake-up.” He shrugs. “I see the way she looks at you. She knows she needs one. I told you, Montgomery’s a … it’s one of those cities that feels like a town. That’s why we end up here every week, just to get away from it.”
“W-will their parents b-be home?”
“Yeah, they might be around.”
“W-where do th-they live?”
“Two-twelve Young Street.”
A soft click inside me. A piece locked into place. This will lead me to Silas, who will lead me to Keith and in the meantime …
Maybe I could let myself have whatever this turns out to be.
“S-sounds like it could be fun.”
“Great,” he says.
We walk the edges of the parking lot. I stare at the stars dotting the ink-black sky. The farther we get from the bar, the more stars there are to see and it’s beautiful and its beauty makes me ache. I didn’t tell Mattie enough about this kind of thing, I don’t think. About small miracles, like the stars at night and how much brighter they seem in wintertime. The sun rising and setting and rising again. I decide to share the thought with Javi, just to release myself from it and he gives a small smile and says, “Small miracles. I like that.”
I think he’d like anything I said.
That’s new to me.
I point. We’re in front of my car.
“Th-that’s where I l-live.”
“What?”
“K-kidding. But it’s m-mine.”
I unlock the door and open it before I really know what I’m doing.
He climbs into the back and says, “Cozy,” and I follow in after him and stare at his profile and he shifts uncomfortably under my gaze. I imagine pressing my palm against his chest, pressing my body against his. I imagine feeling his heartbeat under my palm. I imagine kissing him and his mouth is as soft and tender as the rest of him. I would let his gentleness take me somewhere else, let myself pretend what it might be like to belong to someone. I would let myself push his hair out of his eyes so I could see them seeing me and this is not a love story … but in this small space, the sound of our breathing between us, I wonder what it would take to make it one.
I swallow hard, lick my lips, the ghost taste of the shot still on them.
To your sister.
I lean forward and reach across the front seat, open the glove box and grab a marker. I hand it to him and he stares at me, confused.
“I l-left my cell at h-home,” I tell him. I roll up my sleeve and stretch my arm out. “R-write your number and I’ll c-call you f-first th-thing.”
Javi opens the marker and worries the cap between his teeth. He scrawls his number up my wrist and the light, careful graze of his touch makes me believe being with him would have been exactly how I imagined it. He asks me if he can have my number and because he can’t, and because I don’t know what else to do, and because maybe I want to do it, I kiss him on the cheek. I don’t think I’m very good at it, the clumsy meeting of my mouth against his lightly stubbled chin, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Y-you c-can have that,” I say. “I h-have to go n-now.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, b-but I’ll c-call you t-tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he says. He gives me a shy smile, and gets out of my car. Then, after a second, he turns back to lean in and say, “It was really, really good meeting you,” and I promise I’ll call him again because I don’t know how else to respond. I watch him walk back to the bar and then I stare at his number on my arm and repeat it softly to myself, until it’s stuck in my head, like how any other girl might do.
Then I climb into the front seat, put the key in the ignition and head to the city.