Since You've Been Gone

“I’m good,” Beckett said, Velcroing his shoes and jumping to his feet. “See you in a couple hours?”

“Great,” I said, and Beckett gave me a grin and ran off toward the climbing wall. As I looked around, I realized that this was actually the perfect place to leave him. I had no doubt my brother would be occupied all afternoon. I decided to wait just a minute more, so I wouldn’t feel like the worst sister in the world, and watched Beckett take his place in line for the climbing wall, hopping from foot to foot the way he did when he was really excited about something.

“Eight?” I turned and saw two things, neither of which made sense. Frank Porter was standing in front of me, and he was holding out a pair of shoes.

I knew who he was because everyone knew Frank Porter, one of the undisputed stars of Stanwich High School. He was never off the High Honor roll, he was a National Merit Scholar, he’d been sophomore and junior class president. He seemed to actively be trying to make the world—or at least our school—a better place, constantly circling petitions and founding clubs and organizations, always trying to save a program or monument or bird. He would be a lock for valedictorian if it weren’t for his girlfriend, Lissa Young, who was just as disciplined and dedicated as he was. They’d been together since something like ninth grade, but they weren’t one of the couples constantly making out against the lockers or having screaming fights in the parking lot. They just seemed like a unit, like even their relationship was focused and properly directed. I had heard that they went off every summer together to an academic enrichment program—so I didn’t understand why Frank Porter was currently standing in front of me. He was one of the few guys in our class who seemed totally comfortable when there were formal events and he had to wear a suit and tie, which was why it was a little jarring to see him now, wearing a gray T-shirt with Xtreme Attitude! written across it, in a font that looked like graffiti. Frank, his name tag read, just in case I had any doubt this was him.

The shoes that were extended to me drooped a little, and Frank tilted his head to the side. “Emily?”

I nodded, a little surprised, even though we’d been in the same school for three years. Since Sloane had come to town, I’d happily existed by her side. People called out to her by name and waved at me, and I had a feeling that the majority of my class would, like the landscaping guy, identify me as “That girl who’s always with Sloane Williams” or something along those lines. And I never minded—even just being Sloane’s friend made me much more interesting than I ever would have been on my own.

“Hi,” Frank Porter said, giving me a quick smile. “How are you?” Despite the T-shirt, Frank looked the same as he did during the school year. He was tall, maybe six-two, and lanky. He had reddish-blond hair that was cut short and neatly combed, and curled just slightly at the nape of his neck. His eyes were a light brown, and his skin was freckled. Even in his T-shirt and holding a pair of rentable shoes, Frank somehow radiated authority. It was like you could see him moving beyond the world of Stanwich High, with no doubt he would succeed wildly—running for office, chairing a board, inventing something tiny and electronic and essential. He just had that air about him—competent and trustworthy and, especially, wholesome. If he hadn’t clearly had grander ambitions, I could have seen him in ads for peanut butter and heart-healthy breakfast cereals. When Sloane had first come to Stanwich High, she had looked him up and down and asked, not unappreciatively, “Who’s the Boy Scout?”

“Hey,” I stammered when I realized I had been staring at him silently for a moment too long. Frank was looking at me, like he was waiting for something, and I remembered, much too late, that he’d asked me a question, and I still hadn’t answered it. “I mean, good.”

“Did you need these?” Frank asked, lifting the shoes. I couldn’t think why I would, and shook my head. “Oh,” he said, retracting them. “I heard someone over here needed climbing shoes, and I thought it was you. I guessed on the size.” He glanced down at my flip-flops, and I did too, then immediately wished I had gotten a pedicure recently, as the vestiges of the last one I’d gotten with Sloane—bright red, with a cat done in black dots on the big toe—had mostly chipped off. “But was I at least right?” he asked, looking up from my feet. “Size eight?”

“Um,” I said. I realized that I was waiting for someone else to jump in and direct this interaction, but unfortunately, there was just me, doing a very poor job of it. If Sloane had been here, she would have known what to say. Something funny, something flirty, and then I would have known what to say too, whether to chime in, or make the kind of joke I only ever seemed to be able to make around her. I didn’t know how to do this by myself, and I didn’t want to have to learn. Also, I didn’t think I’d exchanged more than a few sentences with Frank Porter in three years, so I wasn’t sure how we were spending this much time talking about the size of my feet. Which was, incidentally, something I wasn’t super thrilled to be talking about, since they were bigger than I liked. “It’s just because you’re tall,” Sloane had always said to me, with the confidence of someone with tiny feet. “Otherwise, you’d look weird. Or tip over.”

“Nine,” I said finally, leaving off the and a half  because, really, why did Frank Porter need to know my shoe size?

He shrugged. “Well, I’m still learning the ropes.” If Sloane had been next to me, I would have said So to speak or That’s for sure or some other punny remark, since there were actual ropes here and Frank had pretty much opened up the door for a joke like that. But she wasn’t, so I just looked away, trying to find my brother somewhere on the line for the climbing wall, so that I could just verify that he was okay and I could leave.

“Porter!” We both turned and I saw Matt Collins, who I knew from school but wasn’t sure I’d ever spoken to, dangling in midair from one of the rappelling ropes. He was wearing a T-shirt like Frank’s, along with a bright-red helmet, and was turning slowly on his rope, kicking at the wall to spin himself around. “Tonight. We’re hitting the Orchard, right?”

The Orchard had, at one point, been a functioning orchard, but the land was now just sitting empty, and it had become the place for parties, especially in the summer. It had the benefit of existing in the hazy border between Stanwich and Hartfield, the next town over, which meant the cops tended to stay away, mostly because, rumor went, nobody was sure whose jurisdiction it was. I had gone a few times, mostly that spring, when it had been Sloane and Sam and me and Gideon. The Orchard conjured, for me, memories of sitting close to Gideon and rolling a bottle between my palms, trying to think of something to say.