Since You've Been Gone

As I pulled onto I-95 and skipped through on my playlist to what had become my favorite Eric Church song, I realized that there was something else that was bothering me about having to spend time with her. Lissa seemed to belong to a different world, the school world where Frank was Frank Porter, this impossibly perfect guy, the one who was nothing like the one I’d gotten to know this summer, the Frank who tripped over his own feet occasionally and was scared of heights and who sometimes had flecks of orange paintball paint in his hair. Someone who could speak in Beatles lyrics for two days, and who I’d watched have a nacho fight with Collins.

I’d been driving for about an hour when my phone started to ring from the passenger seat. My car was old enough that I couldn’t use any hands-free devices with it, so I jabbed at the screen, trying to hit the button that activated the speaker. Sloane had told me once that when she talked to me like this, it sounded like I was at the bottom of a cave with bad cell reception, but I figured it was better than getting a cell phone ticket, like Collins had gotten the week before.

“Hello?” I called in the phone’s general direction. It hadn’t looked like it had been a call from any of my saved contacts, but I didn’t want to look away from the road long enough to really investigate this.

“Hello?” I looked at the phone and saw, to my shock, that Lissa had appeared on my screen—I must have pressed the button to do a video call.

“Oh,” I said, trying to lean a little more into the frame. “I didn’t mean to—just hold on a second.” I signaled, glad to see that I was almost at a rest stop. I didn’t know what the cell phone laws were regarding video calls, but I also didn’t want to risk finding out. I pulled off the highway and into the rest stop. It was a small one, just bathrooms and some vending machines. But it was pretty crowded, several minivans filled with families, exhausted-looking parents and kids running around in the late afternoon sun. I pulled into a space away from the noise of the families and put the car in park, holding up the phone, wishing that I’d brushed my hair recently, or that I’d put on more makeup this morning than just a swipe of lip balm. “Hi,” I said. “Sorry—I was just trying to put it on speaker, I didn’t mean to select video.”

“Hi,” Lissa said, giving me a small smile. “It’s fine.” She looked the same as she did in school, maybe a little more tan. But I couldn’t help notice that her eyes looked red and a little puffy. “How are you, Emily?”

There was something about Lissa that made me want to sit up straighter, and made me wish I’d read a newspaper recently. “Fine,” I said, straightening my posture. “I think I’m about an hour away right now. I have the address, so—”

“That’s what I’m . . . well . . . ,” Lissa said, looking away, and pressing her lips together. After a pause, she turned back to me. “I just wanted to talk to you before you got too far. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling. Collins gave me your number.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Like I said, I should be there in an hour. I drive slow.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back, just looked a little bit stricken and I suddenly realized why. “Slowly,” I added quickly.  “I drive slowly. But if I get back on the road, I should—”

“I’m not coming,” she said, interrupting me. “I . . .” She looked down and let out a breath before she looked at me again. “I know I should have been planning on it, but there’s just too much going on here.”

I just looked at her for a second. I didn’t know this girl at all, but I could tell that something wasn’t right. I just sat there in silence, hoping that it wasn’t obvious I didn’t believe her.

“I thought I’d be able to get away,” she continued, still not looking at me. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to drive all this way for nothing.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um . . .” I suddenly thought about Frank, about how disappointed he’d would be, and what this would do to the party that Collins had been organizing.

“I’ll call Collins and tell him about the change in plans,” she said, sounding more businesslike now, like this was one more thing to be checked off her to-do list. “And Frank,” she added after a moment, “of course.”

“Okay,” I said. “Um . . . all right.” Lissa nodded. I realized I wasn’t sure how to wrap up this conversation.

“So you’ve gotten pretty close with Collins, I guess?” she asked, looking right at me. “I was a little surprised when he told me that you were coming to get me, but I guess if you two are—”

“No!” I said, more vehemently than I meant to. Not that I couldn’t understand the appeal, in theory—Dawn had been going on and on the other day about how he looked just like the astronaut’s cute sidekick in Space Ninja, and I could kind of see it—but I just wasn’t interested in him like that. “Um, no,” I said, a little more quietly. “We’re just friends. Frank, too,” I added. If Frank hadn’t told her, I wasn’t sure I should be the one to let her know that I’d been hanging out with her boyfriend. But I also didn’t want to let her think that I was just Collins’s friend. It seemed too much like lying, somehow, or like Frank and I had been sneaking around.

“Good,” she said after a moment. “That’s . . . good. I’m glad.” We just looked at each other for another moment, then she glanced away. When she looked back at me, the vulnerability that I’d seen a moment before was gone, and she looked somehow distant, her voice all business. “I shouldn’t keep you,” she said. “I’m sorry, again, about not reaching you sooner.”

“No problem,” I said, and then a moment later immediately regretted not saying something more impressive. “I’ll . . . um . . . see you around?”

She gave me a quick smile. “Absolutely,” she said. “Thank you, Emily.” And with that, my screen went dark, and I was staring back at my own confused expression.

My phone rang again an hour later—but an hour in which I’d only moved a few miles. There was something going on—I figured it had to be some sort of accident, and I’d been trying to scan through the radio stations, looking for some answers, but somehow only getting ads and weather. Because I wasn’t moving very fast, I could see that it was Collins calling me, and I was able to answer without accidentally starting a video call with him. “Hey,” I said, as I answered. “Did Lissa call you?”