Since You've Been Gone

“It’s there,” I said, pointing to the driveway.  You would have missed it unless you’d been searching for it. There was a brick pillar on either side of the drive, and they both had brass plaques on them that read 4 Brookside, but the bricks were crumbling and it looked like the brass hadn’t been polished in a while.

Frank turned down the driveway and I felt my heart start to beat faster. When a house came into view, I took off my seat belt and leaned forward to look closer.

The house was big and white and sprawling, and you could tell it had once been impressive, but the paint was peeling, and the lawn looked overgrown. But I barely noticed this, because there was a girl sitting on the mansion’s steps in the falling darkness, reading a magazine and sipping a Diet Coke.

Frank had only just stopped the car before I was getting out of it, closing my door behind me and walking toward the house and my best friend.

Sloane looked up from her magazine and her jaw dropped open. She stared at me as I walked closer in the fading light and looked up at her.

I smiled at her before I spoke. “Hi.”

17

FIND WHAT’S LOST

“Emily?” Sloane dropped the magazine and stood up, stumbling once as she took the steps down to the driveway. She stood in front of me, her eyes wide and shocked, like she wasn’t entirely sure this was actually happening.

“Hey,” I whispered, feeling tears come to my eyes.

“Oh my god,” she said, still looking stunned, shaking her head. But then she smiled, and I saw that her blue eyes were shiny with tears as well. “Oh my god,” she said again, and reached out and hugged me close. I hugged back, and couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying, or both, but whatever it was, it sounded like Sloane was doing the same. “What are you doing here?” she asked when we broke apart. “How did you find it? I mean . . .”

“It’s a long story,” I said, still looking at Sloane, trying to take her in. I’d expected to see the Sloane I remembered—wearing some fabulous vintage dress, with red lipstick on and earrings that jangled when she turned her head. But she was dressed in a pair of jean shorts and an old T-shirt that she’d only ever worn before as a pajama top. Her hair was back in a messy ponytail, and her pink toenail polish was chipped almost to the point of no longer existing. She was still Sloane, of course . . . but not a version I was familiar with.

I took a breath to begin to explain when the truck door slammed and we both looked in its direction. Frank was walking around to the hood and leaning against it. Anyone else would have probably stayed put—or at least looked deeply uncomfortable, but Frank seemed like he was taking this in stride, like helping to reunite friends was just a normal thing he did. “Hi,” he called, raising a hand in a wave.

Sloane squinted through the darkness. “Emily, I might be hallucinating,” she said calmly, as she turned to me. “Because I could almost swear that was Frank Porter.”

I nodded and motioned Frank over. “Like I said,” I told her as she turned to me, jaw dropping once again. “It’s a long story.”

Twenty minutes later, it was just the two of us, sitting on the house’s back porch.

The porch was wide, with a screened area just off it, and a swing, flowerpots, and wicker chairs with patched and sun-faded cushions. It looked out on the brook that the street was named for, that I could now hear better than I could see, as night was falling, a blue night with fireflies already lighting up intermittently from all sides. Sloane was on her own in the house—Milly and Anderson and her aunt Laney had gone to Charleston for the weekend. Because it seemed that they lived with her aunt now—they’d been living here the whole time.

Frank had claimed that he was exhausted, and asked if he could crash on the couch for a while. I wasn’t sure if this was because he was giving Sloane and me some time to talk, or if he was actually tired.  As I thought back on the day, and the fact that he’d been driving in the sun for hours—and hadn’t taken a nap, like I had—I realized it might have been some of each.

Sloane had gotten us both Diet Cokes, and was walking around the porch barefoot, lighting citronella candles and plugging in the twinkle lights that she’d told me her aunt absolutely hated, but that she’d gone ahead and covered the porch with anyway.

When the lights had been lit, she came and sat next to me, and we looked at each other. It suddenly seemed like there was so much to say—so much to get through—that it was hard to even begin.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, tucking her legs up underneath her and shaking her head. “I keep thinking this is a dream, and I’m going to wake up at any moment.” She studied me, tilting her head to the side. “I love the hair,” she said. “It looks amazing.”

I smiled and brushed my bangs back. There was a piece of me that wanted, so badly, to just jump back into being Sloane-and-Emily again, for as long as I was here. I could see it would be easy; she’d already been giving me several We need to talk about this looks in terms of Frank, and I could feel the pull to keep things light, just have fun and let things go back to how they were. But I needed answers, and I hadn’t come all this way to leave without them.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the list, the paper deeply creased from a summer of folding and refolding. “I got your list,” I said. “I did them.”

Her head snapped up. “All of them?”

“All of them,” I said, handing it to her.

“Really?” she asked. She looked shocked—and a little skeptical. “Even the skinny-dipping?”

“You just left,” I said, hearing my voice shake, remembering her disappearance, the weeks of silence, and then what it had been like to get the list and nothing else, no explanation. “I had no idea where you were or why. Just this.”

Sloane just looked at me for a moment, and I could practically feel the part of her that hated confrontations shrinking away. But, surprising me, she nodded. “I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I just thought it was for the best.”

“How could it be for the best?” I asked. “I’ve spent the whole summer wondering what happened to you, and why you somehow didn’t care enough to tell me.”

“It’s not that,” she said quickly, her voice hurt and a little sharp. “Are you kidding me?”