Chapter Eight
So you came to me,” a girl’s voice said.
“Drunk girls aren’t exactly my area of expertise.”
“Are you saying they’re mine?”
I was on my back on a cool floor. It occurred to me I should probably open my eyes, but they felt heavy, as if weighted.
“How much did you give her to drink?”
“A couple of beers. And FYI, she asked for them.”
“This is two beers?” Now I was a “this.”
“She was pretty upset. Said she’d been dumped,” he told her. “There was also something about a goat.”
“Weird.” I felt a hand grip my shoulder, then shake it. “Hey. Finley.”
I slitted one eye open to see Lana bent over me. Ben was beside her. I shut my eye again.
“Wait. Did you hear that?”
“I hate when people say that,” Lana complained. “Just say what you heard, would you?”
A beat. “It sounded like a car.”
“Shit. Let’s get her into her room.”
A moment later, arms were around me. A quick glance confirmed it was Ben who was lifting me up: I could see his ear, the tiny hairs of his sideburn. My face was pressed to his tee. It smelled faintly of fabric detergent and breakfast, a better scent than you’d expect.
While being carried down the hallway, I tried to do a quick recap. I remembered telling him about Colin and obviously Seymour. The Disney cruise. Grapes and drinking the beers. Hummingbirds. And then?
My room was stuffy and hot when we came in. As Ben bent to put me on the bed, it occurred to me I should try to be released gracefully. But then my stomach rolled. When I moaned, he just kind of dropped me, not that I could really blame him.
I heard Lana opening the window. “Don’t try to jump out,” I mumbled. “Could break an elbow.”
“What’s she saying?” she asked.
“She’s telling you not to jump,” Ben replied.
“Why would I do that?”
“Maybe she’s worried you’re depressed.”
“Just pull over that trash can.” There was a loud scrape. “Pick it up, for God’s sake. Are you trying to make extra noise?”
“I told you. I don’t do this often.”
I felt a burp working its way up my throat. I tried to hold it back: no luck.
“O-kay.” Lana’s voice was suddenly farther away. “Let’s go. If she pukes, I don’t want to have to see it.”
“She’s gonna be all right, though?”
There was shuffling, a creak. “The goat got you invested?”
“It didn’t hurt.”
She snorted. A moment later, the door shut.
Lana’s instincts were spot-on: It wasn’t long before I needed the trash can. Ugh. After, I curled up in a ball and made various promises about never drinking again. Eventually I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was dark and noticeably cooler.
I managed to sit up—God, my head was banging—then patted my pockets in search of my phone. No luck. Maybe it was with my shoes, which I was also missing. I turned as slowly as I could to the door, where my flip-flops, flecked with grass, sat neatly side by side.
I slid my feet off the bed, then took a few tentative steps to the door, which creaked again as I opened it. It was a straight shot down the hall to the screen door, the porch beyond. I could see Lana and Ben sitting on the steps.
“Hey,” I called out. “Have you seen my phone?”
They both turned. “Look at that,” Lana said. “It lives.”
Ben held it up. “Right here.”
I made my way down the hallway and outside, with the kind of careful steps I associated with a person who was totally in control. “Thanks.” When he handed the phone to me, it was sticky.
I had multiple messages from Marisol, and missed calls from my dad and Nalini. I swiped over to UMe, where Colin had posted a picture of himself on a surfing simulator. Riding the waves, he’d captioned it. He’d dumped me and gone surfing?
“You might want to drink some water,” Lana advised. “If you can hold it down. Actually, maybe do it somewhere else.”
I ignored this as I stepped around them, heading down the steps. My signal remained weak: On the grass I had two bars, closer to the water, three. Also, I was really thirsty.
Just then, I felt the dock bounce with footsteps. Someone was coming up behind me. Then a bottled water appeared at my elbow.
“Go slow,” Lana said when I took it. She took a big step back. “I’ll be over here.”
I unscrewed the top, taking a tiny sip. So far, so good. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” She sat down on the dock, stretching her feet out in front of her. She wore a ring on one big toe. Her ankle had a thick outline of a star. “Want some advice?”
“Is it also about drinking water?”
She nodded at my phone. “Don’t call him.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I said. She arched an eyebrow. “I was just checking his socials.”
“To torture yourself?”
“He’s surfing,” I said.
“Because he’s an asshole. He dumped you over video call, right?”
“He’s not an asshole,” I muttered, loyalty like a reflex.
“See?” She pointed at me. “Exactly why you should stop chasing him. Your heartbreak is warping your judgment.”
“Why are you so invested in this?” I demanded. “You don’t even know me.”
“True.” She thought for a second. “But I do know Kasey. In fact, she’s been really good to me. So I can’t just sit here and watch her niece pull the emotional equivalent of walking out in traffic. That would make me an asshole.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” I said.
She smiled. “Just put your phone away. For me. For yourself. For humanity.”
I did not. In fact, I turned back to the screen, defiant, just as it sounded. Chirp!
It was our StuCo group chat. SPECULATOR STARTS NOW! someone had posted, with a link below.
I clicked it and the boxes arranged themselves. There was Hannah in her bedroom. Nalini by a lamp. Jorge with a J, George with a G. Finally, to the far right, Colin appeared. He was perched on a deck chair, or part of one. A girl was beside him.
My first thought was, surprisingly, not shock or hurt. It was that she looked like me.
Dark, wavy hair to her shoulders. Green eyes. She wore a white top, a thin yellow beaded necklace loose around her neck, and was smiling at Colin.
It was one thing to be removed, snipped cleanly from the bigger whole. This was worse. As if there really was nothing special about me, my borders and edges identical to any number of others. All this time I’d thought of that place, if nothing else, as mine. Until I saw someone else in it.
They were still on the screen when I threw my phone into the water. The light was visible for just a moment, floating. Then it sank down and disappeared.
“She just hooked it.” Lana snapped her fingers. “Boom! Right in. All I said was to put it away.”
“You threw your phone in the lake?” Ben asked. We’d come in—Lana chuckling, me already remorseful—to find him sitting at the porch table next to the printer, the manual open in his lap.
“Boyfriend popped up on a group chat with another girl,” she said.
“Already?”
I just looked at him.
“You and Ben can twin now,” Lana told me, pulling out a chair and plopping into it. “The only way to reach him is stepping outside and screaming his name.”
“Not true,” Ben replied, flipping pages. “There’s also the landline at the Egg.”
“When it’s open.”
“Or,” he countered, “you can always call Clark, who lives and works with me.”
“Like I’d want to do that.” The printer suddenly sputtered, a row of lights coming on. Lana eyed it. “What’s the problem there?”
“Not connecting for some reason,” he replied, turning to my mom’s laptop, which was at his elbow. When he hit the space bar, an error message popped up.
Oh my God. What had I been thinking? Just because I was mad at Colin did not mean I wanted to be technologically stranded. Now I’d have to explain to my dad, whose plan I was on. Maybe I could just say I just dropped it?
As I turned toward my room, already thinking, I heard Ben say, “So. You going home tonight?”
Lana didn’t answer. Turning back, I saw her pulling the computer over to squint at the screen. “This queue is insane,” she said instead. “How long has she been trying to print?”
“Long enough for me to have to do it for her earlier at Home Office,” he replied.
I heard keys clicking as I went into my room and sat down on the bed. Suddenly, I just felt so tired, as if the sum total of the day—not to mention the aftermath of the drinking—was hitting me all at once. It wasn’t even nine yet.
I’d just stretched out as someone began to come up the drive.
“Did you hear—” Ben stopped himself. “Is that a car?”
There was some frenzied whispering and a couple of clanks, followed by the scraping of chairs. A moment later, the door banged shut. The exit was so fast, I had to wonder how many times they’d done it.
Then I heard my mom’s voice.
“… on her schedule,” she was saying. “No, not at the moment. But I can easily get there if she has an opening.”
She went into Juvie and it was quiet except for a sudden, growing whirring. A beat later, I recognized it: the steady beat of paper printing.
I got up, going into the hall. My mom’s door was closed, her voice muffled behind it. On the porch, the printer was steadily at work, page after page jerking out in increments. By the time I walked over, papers had overwhelmed the tray, some fluttering to the floor.
I bent down, picking one up. It was a property deed, dated 1948.
Beneath it: a PDF of some legal document, signed in spidery, slanting cursive by an Emily Finley Woods.
The other pages I gathered also had to do with the sale, by the looks of it.
It was only when I got to the paper from the tray that I saw the lab results, marked Timlee Medical Group. My mom’s name was at the top.
I glanced at her door, then back at the sheet in my hand. Treatment plan. Lumpectomy. Mastectomy. Chemotherapy. What?
“… deal with this first,” she said, suddenly emerging, her phone to her ear. Quickly, I stepped back from the printer. When she saw me, she stopped where she was. “Marella, I’ve got to go. I’ll get those documents to you later tonight.”
I watched her hang up, those words still settling in my head. Cancer?
“Hey,” she said, tilting her head a bit to the side. “How are you doing? I was worried about you.”
I made myself nod. “I’m okay.”
“Good,” she replied, as another sheaf of papers fluttered to the floor. Seeing this, she said, “Meanwhile, I just drove all the way to get a new cord, and you fix it.”
Not me. I was pretty sure it had been Lana. I didn’t say this, though, and then she was moving to the porch, stooping to pick up a sheet on her way and scanning it.
“I’m going to bed,” I called out. “Start fresh tomorrow.”
She looked up, studying my face for a moment. I wondered what she’d been thinking about on that long drive, all by herself. Then she stood, sliding the paper under the stack. “Sounds good. Sleep well.”
I nodded, then went into the bathroom. As I started to brush my teeth, I could still hear papers being spit out, one after another. When I came out later, though, it was quiet, and all the sheets, plus the printer, were gone.