Before I knew that Connor would get lost again, which he became, terribly so, I went back to my regular life. I continued training Mabel and doing my homework (we’d moved onto Antigone now . . . ), and, bizarrely, I hung out a lot with Michael L, who, surprise, surprise, had a girlfriend now, so in a way it was like things used to be when I had pined and pined for him. Only that was gone now. How nice was it not to yearn and ache and want and want? But how is it that one second you will die for someone to only brush by you, and then the next, just nothing?
But it was great to be friends. He tried to get me out and about more. The week I got back from my adventure with Connor, he convinced me to go to a field hockey game.
“Don’t think so,” I said initially. What would going to a hockey game possible do for me? Aside from make me sad.
But he insisted. “You gotta support your girls, Lizzie! You’re strong enough.”
I wasn’t sure, but it seemed wrong not to go. And it involved too much explanation.
From the bleachers I watched. The sidelines: big yellow plastic barrels of Gatorade and water. The gleaming bench. The pile of extra hockey sticks; the land of lost toys. And Mr. Crayton cupping his hands over his mouth from the sidelines, screaming. And yes, my old team on the field, moving. Lydia. Dribbling out front. Her plaid skirt. Her shin guards. Her ponytail. On the field Lydia was still herself. She was quick and nimble and beautiful. How I missed her as I watched her do what we had once done together so often.
I missed all of it. The grass, the scorekeeper, that smell, the pep talk before, the talking-to we got during, the losing, and winning.
No going back for me. Elbows on my knees, head in my hands, Pumas on the bleachers in front of me. I missed being teeny. I was smaller than I’d been before the hospital, but tininess was behind me. I turned to Michael, who was crouched over. “I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“Fuck,” he said. “What do you need?”
I looked out at the field. “No, no, just watching this. I just can’t. I’m leaving, okay?”
He moved to stand. “You sure? It’s kind of lame to just leave.”
“Oh well.”
“Okay, I’ll come then!”
“Nah, I’m good!” Whodathunkit: Michael L would turn out to be the nicest guy of all. “I’m going to walk home.” I stood up and looked down at him. In any other life I would have chosen him. In any other moment in my life I would have stayed and waited for him anywhere. “Thank you, though,” I said. Such a prince. Who knew.
I felt him watching me as I made my way down the bleachers, one for each step, the sound of feet stomping on metal. And then I was out the exit the nonathletes use to leave the field.
When I was out and crossing through the school parking lot, I could hear the crowd cheering behind me.
There’s a shortcut through this apartment complex by the train tracks that I used to take when I walked to school, back before my mother started dropping me off and picking me up each day. Before before. After leaving the hockey game, I went down that little path and sat on the train tracks. I laid down a penny, like Zoe and I did when we were kids, waiting for the trains to come, watching the penny tremble and then running, coming back for it, all flattened.
I sat on the cold metal tracks and dialed Connor. Straight to voice mail. It was the drill, our drill, I knew. I didn’t leave a message. Also part of the drill. Maybe he had his phone; maybe he didn’t. It was so hard to know. But if he did have his phone, he knew it was me. He knew my number.
Then I called Nora, because I missed my obnoxious, selfish, criminal friend.
“Dahlink!” Nora said when she heard my voice.
I picked at the sticks along the tracks and decided to tell her about Connor. “Hey, hunny!” I said. “I miss you!”
“Likewise, Bun-bun,” she said. We had just taken to these odd forms of endearment. Bizarre but sweet. “I’m so glad you rang. I wanted to tell you about this party I went to this past week-end. Just cracking, I tell you. Crack-ing.”
I sighed. There was no talking to Nora. Or more, I didn’t want to talk to her. Our relationship was just me listening. “Cracking? How is everything over there?”
“Smashing, my good friend. Sma-shing. Three kegs. Dancing on tables. That was me, of course. Did you have to ask?”
“I thought your parents were keeping you home, Rapunzel-style.”
“That’s all over,” she said in her regular Nora voice. “They couldn’t bear me. Shall I tell you about the game of Truth or Dare that went très far afield?”
“Lovely,” I said. I toed the dirt. There were smashed beer cans and burnt sticks scattered across the tracks.
“Et vous?”
“Tu,” I said.
“Tutu!” said Nora. “I need one. Lots of tulle and sequins. Hot, hot pink.”
“A good look for you,” I said.
“Bien sûr.”
“Anyway, same ol’, same ol’,” I told her. “Living the dream over here.”
I heard her sigh, air out of a tire. “Actually,” Nora said, “actually it’s all shiit here. Really, doll, school is shiit, the party was shiit. There was no dancing. Not on tables, not on chairs, not even on the hideous wall-to-wall carpet. Truth or Dare was a snooze. I had to be home by ten p.m. Honestly, I just can’t wait for camp.”
The tracks rumbled beneath me. That meant at least three minutes before it arrived.
“That’s the only time it’s any real fun. Angelo or no Angelo. That will be aces, my dear. Aces. Not so far away, really. In some ways.”
“I’m not going back to camp,” I said.
“Of course you are! You’ll be all done with being hanged, drawn, and quartered. And we’ll be counselors! After all these years. It’s finally going to be our turn. Our time,” she said. Her accent was just regular now. She was only herself.
I hadn’t thought it over really, but just then I knew. “I’m not going back. I’m going to be volunteering with Mabel. In hospitals and old-age homes. I’m training her now.”
“That sounds perfectly dreadful,” Nora said.
“And maybe I want to try and work at a vet’s. Maybe Mabel’s vet even.”
“Dear God,” Nora said, British once again. “Is this for college applications? No one cares if you like animals. That’s not going to get you into college. Sign up for Model UN or debate and call it a day.”
“True,” I said. “About the apps.”
The train was getting closer. “Well, there you have it anyway,” I said. “I gotta go. I’m about to lose service,” I said, holding the phone up to the oncoming train.
“Talk soon, luv,” she said.
“Talk soon, Nora,” I said.
I imagined watching sick dogs come into the office, and I imagined them leaving healthy.
I hopped off the rails, slipped my phone in my back pocket, watched the train speed by. Chugga chugga chugga. Everything was different now. I held my face up to the wind. Where was Connor? Was he okay? When would he come back to me? Why wasn’t I worried? For some reason I wasn’t worried.
I imagined holding kittens and snakes and birds with broken wings.
I watched the train recede in the distance, and I went to get my penny. It was flat and smooth and as warm as a stone on the beach.
What can I say? I just felt so happy.