Julia at the Drive-In (The Edge of Everything #2)

Chapter 1

Ijust think it’s really toxic for you to bring up my voice,” Chloe said, “when you know I have trauma about it and probably ADHD.”

“I didn’t bring up your voice,” Aiden said. “I just said you’re being whiny.”

“That’s worse,” Chloe said.

Julia didn’t say anything. She was sitting in the back seat of Aiden’s Wrangler—in the middle, on top of the seat belt latches, so she could see the movie screen between Aiden’s and Chloe’s shoulders. She still couldn’t really see the screen . . .

Julia had never been to a drive-in movie before. She hadn’t realized that sitting in the back seat was going to be a problem.

“You always do this,” Chloe said.

“And you always do this,” Aiden said.

Chloe and Aiden had started dating a few months ago, at the end of junior year.

Aiden played soccer and was very active in DECA, which was some sort of marketing club.

(Marketing what, Julia always wondered. Like, shouldn’t marketing be for something?

Was it like when people did cheerleading without any sport to cheer for?) He was small and muscular, with thick, tan calves—he was always wearing shorts—and his hair was cut in a mullet; “a modern mullet,” Chloe called it.

Aiden was handsome in a fierce, compact way.

His cheeks always looked a little sunburnt, and his tan made his teeth look really white. He laughed a lot with his friends.

Julia had known Aiden longer than she’d known Chloe. They’d gone to the same middle school.

Chloe was new to their school last year. Her dad was in the Air Force, and she’d transferred in at the beginning of second semester.

She’d made friends with Julia almost immediately.

It really did feel like Chloe had made this happen—Julia had never had a best friend before. She didn’t even have the recipe.

Chloe was leaning toward Aiden now, pointing up over her own shoulder like there was a list superimposed in the air beside her. “Narcissism,” she said. “Toxicity. Gaslighting.”

Aiden jabbed at the invisible list with his finger. “Projection!”

Julia hunched down farther, trying to find a place between their bodies to see the movie screen. They were being so loud, she couldn’t even hear the dialogue. It was Jurassic Park, so Julia already knew the dialogue. But still. This was so awkward.

“Um,” she said, touching the back of Chloe’s seat, “I’m gonna go get some popcorn?”

Chloe had to get out to let Julia out—the Jeep was a two-door—and she kept arguing with Aiden the whole time. “Classic narcissism,” she said. “Textbook.”

Julia fell more than climbed out of the Jeep and landed on one foot, hopping.

“Like, I don’t even think you can see the red flags,” Chloe shouted into the car, “because you’ve acclimated to the dysfunction! Everything is red with you, all the time!”

Julia was used to them fighting like this. It wasn’t the first time she’d gone along on one of their dates. Chloe always said that they weren’t dates. That she and Aiden were just hanging out.

But they were hanging out exclusively. And making out exclusively. And arguing so much that Julia didn’t understand how either of them could stand it.

Aiden didn’t seem to mind Julia tagging along all the time . . . He hardly seemed to notice her. Boys never did.

Julia started to carefully pick her way through the parked cars.

The theater still had those old-fashioned speakers that you could hook on to your car window; she didn’t want to get tangled in the cords.

This place was exactly like a drive-in movie theater in a movie.

Like in Grease or The Outsiders. A lot of people were sitting in the backs of pickup trucks.

Or in SUVs parked backwards with the gates up.

Some people had lawn chairs. Julia wished she had a lawn chair.

“Hey!” Chloe shouted after her. “Bring back some Twizzlers!”

Julia waved her acknowledgment.

“And Aiden wants Sour Patch Kids!”

Julia waved again.

A guy sitting in a lawn chair shouted, “Shut up!”

Julia waved at him, too, then felt embarrassed about it.

There were so many families here. And other teenagers. Lots of people from school came here. Julia had never been invited.

And her parents would never bring her to a place like this.

They didn’t like to go out or stay up late.

Or do anything, really. Julia’s parents were both such antisocial nerds, she didn’t know how they’d ever found each other.

Her mom said that everything social was easier before social media. Even being an outcast.

“Have fun at the drive-in,” her mom had said when Julia left. “I hope you like mosquitoes. Also—don’t drink anything. Drive-in bathrooms are always disgusting.”

Her dad had given her twenty dollars and told her to bring back the change.

Julia made her way through the cars to the little building at the back of the field where the bathrooms and snack shop were. There were picnic tables set up outside and a swing set where some little kids were playing.

It was the last Saturday night before school started. The days were still hot, but it was cool enough that night to wear long sleeves. Chloe had lent Julia a pink satin baseball jacket. She was wearing it with jeans and an old T-shirt of her mom’s that said The Breeders.

She went to the bathroom first. She already had to go. It was perfectly clean (Take that, Mom), even though the floor was concrete with a big drain in the middle like they hosed the whole thing down every night.

Julia washed her hands and tried not to look up at the mirror over the sink. She was still getting used to the person she’d see there . . .

It wasn’t her.

Julia Kimball was a weirdo. Not even a weirdo—a kind of nothing girl that nobody noticed.

She had long, heavy, dirty-blond hair and thick glasses that made her eyes sort of pop out of her temples.

Her clothes were fine, her face was fine.

Nobody ever made fun of her—but only because nobody cared that much.

Like, nobody avoided Julia. She’d always had friends.

Lowercase-f friends. She got invited to parties when people were inviting the whole class.

And the other girls at school didn’t mind talking to her or letting her sit at their lunch tables.

When her mother won tickets at work to see Olivia Rodrigo, Julia didn’t have any trouble finding someone to go with her.

A girl named Addison. They’d bought matching purple sweatshirts.

But no one ever thought Julia Kimball was interesting.

No one ever thought she was pretty.

Julia dried her hands with a paper towel and glanced up carefully at the mirror.

The girl in her reflection looked wary . . .

She had layered, curly hair that coiled against her cheeks and shoulders. When Julia shook her head, the curls bounced and trembled.

There was something uncanny about the girl’s face. It looked too big, too flat. There was too much space between her eyes.

Julia swallowed. She remembered the lip gloss—lip tint—that Chloe had given her for her birthday, and dug it out of her pocket to reapply.

There was no reason to have pink lips, standing here alone in this bathroom. Or sitting alone in the dark in the back seat of Aiden’s Jeep. But Chloe said it had to be a habit.

“Beauty is a habit,” Chloe said. She also called it “a commitment,” “self-care,” and “good strategy for life, if we’re being honest.”

You might think, Oh, easy for Chloe to say all that. With her doll-like face and huge hazel eyes.

But on top of being naturally beautiful, Chloe also worked at it. Julia admired that—working hard at something when you didn’t have to. (That was how Julia approached her schoolwork.)

Chloe was like no one Julia had ever met before . . .

She’d lived in Germany and Korea and Delaware.

She bought all her clothes from limited-time drops—she was obsessed with online influencers who no one else had been influenced by yet.

(Chloe wore an oversized sweater to school once with no pants, and she didn’t even get sent home for it!) She was religious about skin care and makeup.

She wore pink eye shadow that made her look like a slightly bruised newborn.

Her skin glowed so much, she looked wet. She had hair like chestnut silk.

Julia would have expected Chloe to make friends with some of the other cool girls at school—even though none of them were as cool as her—or at least some of the other pretty girls. But Chloe sat down next to Julia in choir on her very first day, and that’s it, they were friends.

Chloe acted like they were already friends. She asked for Julia’s number. She asked when school got out for the summer. She invited herself to Julia’s house, and they sat leaning against each other on the couch, watching TikTok on Chloe’s phone.

“What do you have in common with that girl?” Julia’s mother kept asking.

Nothing, Julia would think. Isn’t it wonderful?

Julia had only ever lived in Bellevue, Nebraska.

She bought all her clothes at the outlet mall just outside of town.

Her parents were totalitarian about social media, so Julia had never been directly influenced by anyone.

She didn’t wear makeup. At least she hadn’t, before Chloe.

And she’d never thought about her hair beyond thinking, It is what it is, I guess.

It was Chloe’s idea for Julia to cut it.

Chloe didn’t have any curl in her hair—again, silk—but she followed several hair blogs on socials, and she was pretty sure that Julia was a 2B—“wavy, fine, and prone to frizz.” Julia just needed a routine, she said.

She needed to invest in quality product.

She for sure needed to see a curl specialist.

Julia’s mother didn’t fully agree. But for Julia’s eighteenth birthday in July, her mom had taken her to a real salon and dropped $150 on a curly cut. It was like buying magic. The stylist snipped away at Julia’s dull, ropy hair and revealed a mop of shiny curls.