Since You've Been Gone

“Never this long,” he said. “This—is too long.”

“No, that’s your problem,” I said, wishing that this could have been a shorter explanation, as I was getting a stitch in my side that felt like someone was stabbing me. “Running actually gets easier the longer distances you cover.”

Frank shook his head. “In a well-ordered universe, that would not be the case.” I looked over at him sharply. He’d said the first part of this with a funny accent, and I wondered if maybe we should stop, that maybe he’d pushed himself too hard for one day. Frank glanced back at me. “It’s Curtis Anderson,” he said.

This name meant nothing to me, and I shook my head. But then I remembered the CD that had slid out from under the passenger seat of his car. “Was that the CD you had the other night?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “The comedian. That’s his catchphrase. . . .” Frank drew in a big, gasping breath. He pointed ahead of us, three houses down. “There’s my house. Race you?”

“Ha ha,” I said, sure that Frank was kidding, but to my surprise, a second later, he picked up his pace, clearly finding reserves of energy somewhere. Not wanting to be outdone—especially since I was supposed to be the expert here—I started to run faster as well. Even though every muscle in my body was protesting it, I started to sprint, catching up with Frank and then passing him, but just barely, stumbling to a stop in front of the house Frank had pointed at.

“Good . . . job,” Frank gasped, bent double, his hands on his knees. Not having the breath to speak at the moment, I gave him a thumbs-up, and then realized what I was doing and lowered my hand immediately.

I straightened up, stretching my arms overhead, and got my first look at the house we’d stopped in front of. “This house is amazing,” I said. It looked like something out of a design magazine—pale gray, and done in a modern style that was pretty unique for the area, which tended to favor traditional, especially colonial-style, houses.

“It’s okay,” Frank said with a shrug.

There was a small sign in front of the house that read, in stylized letters, A Porter & Porter Concept. I nodded to it. “Are those your parents?”

“Yeah,” he said, a little shortly. “My dad’s the architect, my mom decorates.” He said this with a note of finality, and I wondered somehow if I’d overstepped.

“I didn’t know you lived so close to me,” I said. “I’m over on Driftway.” The second I said this, I hoped it hadn’t sounded creepy—like I made it my business to know where Frank Porter lived. But it was a little surprising—I thought I knew most of the kids who lived around me, if only through from the pre-license bus rides we’d all endured together.

“We’ve only been there about a year,” he said with a shrug. “We move a lot.” I just nodded—there was something in Frank’s expression that told me he didn’t want to go into this.

I nodded and unwrapped my earphones from where I’d wound them around my iPod. Frank was home, so clearly our run, unexpected as it was, had come to an end.

“Do it again soon?” Frank asked with a smile, but he was still breathing hard, and I could tell he was kidding.

“Totally,” I said, smiling back at him, so he would know I got the joke. “Anytime.”

I started to put my earbuds back in and noticed Frank was standing still, looking at me, not heading back inside. “Are you going to run back to Driftway?”

“It might be more like a walk,” I admitted. “It’s not that far.”

“Want to come in?” he asked. “I’ll buy you a water.”

“That’s okay,” I said automatically. “Thank you, though.”

Frank shook his head. “Oh, come on,” he said, starting to walk toward the house. After a moment, I followed, falling into step next to him as we walked up the driveway. It was beautifully landscaped, with flowers planted at what seemed to be mathematically precise intervals. He walked around to a side door and reached under the mat for a key, then unlocked the door and held it open for me. I stepped inside a high-ceilinged, light-filled foyer, and had just turned to tell him how nice his house was when I heard the crash.

I froze, and Frank, standing just behind me, stopped as well, his expression wary. “Is—” I started, but that was as far as I got.

“Because this is my project!” I heard a woman screaming. “I was working on it night and day when you were spending all your time in Darien doing god knows what—”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” a man screamed back, matching the woman in volume and intensity. “You would be nowhere without me, just riding on my success—” A woman stalked past us, her face red, before she disappeared from view again, followed by a man, red-faced as well, before he too passed out of view. I recognized them, just vaguely, as Frank’s parents from pictures in the paper and school functions when they were usually standing behind their son, polite and composed and smiling proudly as he received yet another award.

I glanced over at Frank, whose face had turned white. He was looking down at his sneakers, and I felt like I was seeing something I absolutely shouldn’t. And I somehow knew that, however bad this was for him, it was worse because I was there to witness it. “I’m going to go,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Frank nodded without looking at me. I backed away, and as I reached the door, I could hear the voices being raised in the other room again.

I let myself out the door and started walking up the driveway, fast, wishing I had just gone home when I’d had the opportunity, and not had to see the expression on Frank’s face as he listened to his parents screaming at each other. I started walking faster once I hit the street, and then broke into a run, despite the fact that every muscle in my body objected to this.

I ran all the way home and it wasn’t until I’d almost reached my house that I noticed I’d been sticking to the outside, leaving enough room for someone to run next to me.

4

HUG A JAMIE

I stood behind the counter of Paradise Ice Cream and looked longingly at the door. In the four days that I’d been working at the ice cream parlor, I’d had exactly five customers. And one of them was just a guy who wanted change for the parking meter. If Sloane had been there, and we’d been working together, it would have been awesome, and the lack of customers would have been the job’s biggest perk. But since it was just me, alone, all day, I found myself looking up hopefully whenever anyone walked by, crossing my fingers that they wanted some ice cream. But although people sometimes glanced in the window, they walked on, usually to the pizza parlor.