“Coffee,” I say, shoving my mug across the floor toward Mia. “More coffee. I would get up myself,” I add when she shoots me a look, “but that seems tiring.”
“There is no more coffee,” she says, pointedly taking a sip of her decaf green tea. Decaf. The single worst word in the English language. “You went through the last of it.”
“Coffee!” I say again, pounding a fist on the floor. “Coffee!”
Owen sighs, climbs to his feet, and stretches. Mia pretends not to be looking at the waistband of his boxers, which is briefly visible, and I look at her so she knows she’s been busted. “I’ll make a run to 7-Eleven,” he says. “I could use some coffee myself. Or some rocket fuel.”
It’s nearly three a.m., an hour since we made it back to Vermont and set up camp in Owen’s living room. That’s what it feels like—like we should be reviewing military strategy or staging a coup on a foreign dictator. Papers litter the floor and surfaces, pinned in place by random objects: a picture frame, an iPhone, a pair of cheap sunglasses. Well-thumbed stacks sport new Post-it notes. Owen’s been staring at the same few pages for the last hour, and Abby’s been making notes in a spiral notebook. Wade has been counting how often the Shadow shows up. Mia’s been trying to organize pages based on who wrote what, a nearly impossible task, since half of it is a jumble of all our ideas combined. I’ve been working on getting the world’s worst headache, reading through pages of material Summer wrote—or at least, we thought she wrote—and never showed us, all of it signed with only her name. Cups and mugs everywhere, an empty bottle of soda, overturned, balled-up napkins and the powdered dregs of chips in an empty bowl.
Wade stands up too, releasing a mini avalanche of crumbs. “I’ll come along for the ride,” he says. “I could use a break.”
“I’ll come too.” Mia gets quickly to her feet, deliberately avoiding my eyes. Stupid. It’s obvious she’s still half in love with Owen. Every time they’re close, she freezes, as if he’s an electric fence and she’s worried about getting zapped.
That’s the thing about hearts. They don’t get put back together, not really. They just get patched. But the damage is still there.
“Stay,” I tell her, thumping the floor. “Let the boys have a joyride.”
“I want some air,” she says, still not looking at me. Stubborn. Mulish. Or like a pony, all skinny arms and legs and jutting lip, determined to have her way.
That’s the thing I always admired about Mia. Mute little Mia. I never heard her say a word until Summer moved to town. She talked to Owen, sure, but since Owen was such a nutter butter back then, I stayed well clear of him, too. And Mia was so shy she would burn up if you even looked at her the wrong way.
But deep down, I always suspected she was the strongest of any of us. Like in the way she stood up to Summer. The way she refused to laugh when Summer started in on Mr. Haggard for being gay or a pervert. Summer turned me to string, tangled me up. I forgave her everything, did everything for her, twisted and twisted trying to turn her into something she could never be. But Mia would stand there, arms crossed, staring at the ground and frowning slightly, even when Summer laid into her or played nice, trying to get Mia back on her side. Eventually Mia would give in, sure, but not like I did. I could tell it made Summer nervous, too, that you could never really know what Mia was thinking, that she had her own ideas.
It was the same with Owen. Mia had something that was hers, and she just held on to it, even though everyone said Owen was a freak and would wind up becoming a criminal. But Mia was so loyal, and Summer didn’t get it, couldn’t get it.
So Summer had to take it away.
“Don’t worry,” Owen says. “We’ll make sure she doesn’t run away.”
“Whatever you say.” I don’t like looking at Owen’s stupid swollen eggplant eye because then I start to feel sorry for him. Even if he didn’t kill Summer, he nearly killed Mia. That’s what heartbreak feels like: a little death. “We’ll hold down the fort.”
Everything in Owen’s house is oversize: the rooms, the furniture, even the sounds, which echo in the emptiness. Footsteps are mini explosions. The front door wheezes open again and closes with a whoompf. Funny how much quieter it is once the others are gone, even though we haven’t been talking. Too quiet. It makes me miss the weird crammed corners of my house, the way the furniture looks like people leaning in to each other at a party, trying to tell secrets.
I can even hear the noise of Abby’s pen across the paper. Scratch scratch. I mentally track the distance between us. One, two, three, four, five feet. A lot of sleek polished wood, like a golden tongue. I imagine for no reason crawling over and sitting right down next to her.
“You’re staring at me,” she says.
“No, I’m not.” Quickly, I pretend to be studying the table behind her instead.
She looks down again, continues making chicken-scratch notes. “Go on,” she adds after a beat. “I know what you were thinking. So just say it.”
Now I do stare at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You want to ask me why I’m so fat, right?” she says—casually, like it doesn’t matter. “You want to know why I don’t even try and change.”
She’s dead wrong. I wasn’t going to ask. Not even close.
I was going to say I like the way she rolls her lips toward her nose when she’s distracted.
I was going to say I like her bangs and how they look like someone cut them by lining them up to a ruler.
But there’s no way I’m saying either of those things out loud. I didn’t even mean to think them. So I say nothing.
“My body wants to be fat,” she continues impatiently, as if we’re mid-argument already and she’s cutting me off. “Why bother hating something you can’t change?”
“That’s stupid,” I say automatically. “You can change. Everyone can change.”
“Really?” She gives me a flat-out you’re an idiot stare. “Like you can change who you are? Like you can stop being so scared?”
That makes the anger click on, a little flame in my chest. “I’m not scared,” I say. “I’m not scared of anything.”
She gives me the look again. “Uh-huh. That’s why the drugs and the drinking. That’s why the rehab. Because you’re so good at facing up to reality. Because you’re so brave.” She shakes her head. “You’re scared. You’re hiding.”
This brings the flame a little higher, a little hotter, so I can feel it burning behind my cheeks. She’s right, of course. Maybe not about the drugs or drinking, but about why I’ve stayed in rehab, why I’ve been desperate to go back, why I’ve been avoiding my mom and sister, too. “Well, you’re scared too,” I fire back. “You’re hiding too.”
“Hiding?” She snorts, gesturing to her outfit: the taffeta skirt, the crazy shoes. “I don’t think so.”
“Sure you are.” I’m picking up steam now. “You hide behind your weirdo outfits and your makeup tutorials and your loudmouth everything. So no one will have to look at you. So no one will have to see you.”
I don’t even plan on saying the words until they’re out of my mouth. Abby blinks, as if I’ve spit on her, and I know then that I’m right. Abruptly, the flame goes out with a little fizzle and I’m left swallowing the taste of ash. I want to apologize, but I’m not sure how.
The worst is that she doesn’t get angry. She studies her hands in her lap—plump, heart-shaped, and soft, with nails the color of watermelon. I think of kissing them one by one and then shove the image out of my mind. She’s not even my type. She’s not even a lesbian, as far as I know.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” Abby says, looking up at me again. “I’ve never been anything but too fat. Ever.”
It isn’t any of my exes that come to mind but Summer, Summer hovering somewhere around the ceiling, maybe exhaled by the pages, her blond hair transformed by the lights into an angel’s halo, but her lips curled back into a sneer. Chubby chaser. Freak parade. Dyke.
“You’re not too fat,” I say. My voice sounds overloud. Like I’m shouting.
And maybe I am, partly. Shouting at Summer to shut up. To leave me alone. To leave Abby alone.
She isn’t yours to break, Summer.
“You don’t have to say that.” Abby cracks a smile.
“I’m serious,” I say. What’s shocking is that in that moment, I realize I am. “You aren’t too anything. You’re just fine. You’re . . . good.”
Long seconds of silence. Summer, wherever she is, holds her breath. Finally, Abby smiles.
“Wow,” she says. “I guess you’re not a total bitch after all.”
I roll my eyes. Just like that, all the awkwardness between us is gone. “Stop. I’m blushing.”
“Hey, check it out.” She scoots over to me, closing the onetwothreefourfive feet of distance. Leaning forward so our shoulders touch and I get a nice shivery feeling. Like eating ice cream with a really cold spoon. She flips open her notebook and shows me what she’s been working on: a two-columned list, with Return to Lovelorn characters and places in the left-hand column. The right-hand column is mostly empty, except that she’s written football stadium next to arena and Mrs. Marston next to the giantess Marzipan.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I want to keep track of all the real people you guys wrote about,” she says. “The real places, too. Maybe we’ll see a pattern.”
“Some of the characters we didn’t make up,” I say. “Some of them we took from the first book.” I point to Gregor, the thief, and Arandelle, the fairy, and she crosses them off her list.
“What about Brenn, the fierce knight who takes off everyone’s heads in the tournament?” She looks up. All smirk and smile. Lashes midnight-black and lips a vivid bloodred. “Sounds like someone I know.”
“Brenn was my idea,” I admit. “Summer wouldn’t let my character enter the tournament, since we were supposed to be in the stands cheering Gregor on. So we wrote in Brenn instead.”
“And the kiss she demands from Summer after she decapitates the troll?”
I look away. “That was Summer’s idea. Kind of a joke.”
“Were you guys . . . ?” Abby licks her lips. Her tongue is pink, small, catlike. “I mean, was she your . . . ?”
“Girlfriend?” I say, and she nods, obviously relieved she doesn’t have to say it out loud. “No. She wasn’t even gay. She just liked to mess with me.”
And then, before I can stop it, I remember the time she came in through the window after she and Jake Ginsky broke up in February, her clothes smelling like cold, her skin like a freezer burn. How she climbed into bed with me but wouldn’t stop shivering, even when I squeezed her so tight I wondered how she could keep breathing. How she lay there gasping and snotting all over my pillow while her back drummed a hard rhythm on my chest. How we took off our clothes down to our underwear. For body heat, she said. And how she turned to me just as I was starting to drift off. . . .
Do you love me, Brynn?
So much.
Show me. Show me.
That was more than just messing with me. Or so I thought.
I kissed her.
And for a single, time-stopping moment, her tongue slid into my mouth, warm and needy, like something alive and desperately searching. But almost as quickly, she jerked backward with a sharp quick gasp that to me sounded like glass breaking.
Her smile then was just like a blade. I ran straight up against it; I felt everything it cut apart.
She smiled like someone dying, to prove she didn’t care.
She smiled like I was the one who’d killed her.
And afterward I couldn’t walk down the halls without girls hissing at me and calling me dyke, and even Summer began to avoid me, pivoting in a new direction when she saw me coming toward her. I knew she must have told everyone, and all the time the memory of her smile was still embedded in my stomach like shrapnel. I felt its pain in every one of my breaths.
“But you are.” Abby’s still giving me that look I can’t figure out.
“I am what?” We’re close, I realize. So close I can see three freckles fading like old stars on the bridge of her nose. So close I can smell her, a fresh smell, like grass after it rains.
The tongue again. Pink. Electric. “Gay.”
“Guilty,” I say. I pull away, widening the distance between us, realizing I’m thinking about that tongue. Wondering whether she’d feel soft to kiss. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to attack you.”
“That’s all right,” she says quickly. “I mean, I’m gay too. Or—bi. At least, I think I am.”
“What do you mean, you think?” She looks like she feels soft. Cloudlike.
“I’ve never kissed a girl before. Don’t tell Mia,” she adds quickly. Her cheeks flush. “I told her I’d hooked up with a girl at Boston Comic-Con last year because . . . because, well, I’ve always wanted to, and there was this one girl in a Wonder Woman costume, and when I saw her, it was just like . . .”
“Magic,” I finish for her, and she nods.
She looks so naked—scared, too, like a little kid. Like she’s waiting for me to punish her. And in that moment I wonder if maybe Lovelorn wasn’t so special after all. Maybe everyone has a make-believe place. Make-believe worlds where they play make-believe people.
And without thinking any more about it or wondering whether it’s right or really fucking stupid, I lean in and kiss her.
I was right. She does feel soft. Her lips taste like Coca-Cola. I can feel the heaviness of her breasts against mine, and I lean into her, suddenly all lit up, zing, Christmas lights and candy stores, suddenly want to roll her on top of me and feel the weight of her legs and stomach and skin, the heat of her. But just as quickly, she pulls away with a little “Oh,” bringing a hand to her lips, as though I’ve bit her.
“Why—why did you do that?” she asks me.
“Because I wanted to,” I say.
She stares at me for a half second. Now she’s the one who leans in first. Her tongue is quick and light. She’s not used to doing it. But the way she smells, the way she brings her palm up to touch my face once, as if to make sure I’m real, unhooks something deep in my chest—something that’s been locked up for a long time.
Then Summer hisses back into my head.
What are you doing? she whispers, and then Abby jerks away and I realize Summer has spoken in my voice, through me. I’m the one who said it.
“What are you doing?”
And Abby’s looking at me like I just puked in her mouth, and that’s what I feel like, like I just threw up something dark and old, and it’s too late to take it back, too late to do anything but let it all come up.
“What am I . . . ?” The way she looks at me, Christ, she looks just like an animal. Like that poor crow we came across in Lovelorn, all those years ago, like she’s just begging me to save her, to make it stop. “You kissed me. I thought we were . . .”
I stand up, feeling like I’m going to be sick. Seeing that bird again, choking on the feel of feathers, Summer’s voice ringing out across an empty space of snow. It’s Lovelorn. It doesn’t want to let us go.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because that’s what you do. You drown it, you strangle it, you make the pain stop any way you can. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have.” She’s still looking at me, those big blue eyes, fringed with lashes, that face all pinks and softness, all promise. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore, or why I’m saying it. Words that speak for you. Ghosts that speak through you. “I’m really sorry.”
I’m out of the house and into the summer heat before she has the chance to respond, before I have to see her react.