Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
From my desk, my phone lights up with a text.
Jenna: I’m soooo bummed you can’t come to the party tonight.
Me: Me too! You’ll have to tell me all about it later.
Jenna: Will do. Steve will be there. *drool emoji*
I thumbs-up her last text and put my phone down.
Was I actually disappointed to miss the party?
Not really. Before Braden left for college, parties didn’t bother me as much because we were always together, but now it seems like I mostly sit in Jenna’s periphery.
Or hang out with Jake, but that’s a more recent development.
Without Braden, my social life has gaps with no obvious way to fix them.
There are more important things on my mind these days anyway.
Thoughts of Braden make my chest tighten, a feeling that’s becoming all too common.
He used to exclusively bring feelings of joy and happiness, but now it’s either anxiety or a surge of anger.
Between dealing with Analiese, my mom, and the whole Hunter/bus debacle, I hadn’t had much time to analyze the conversation I overheard on Braden’s phone to my satisfaction.
I also hadn’t texted Braden about it because I wasn’t sure what I would even say, and sadly, it was getting to the point where I didn’t feel confident Braden would even answer me.
I glance at my reflection in the mirror again.
What would a woman like Marie Curie do? She’d likely think through things logically, with facts, then come to a conclusion that explains the evidence.
Unfortunately, my emotions are high, clouding my judgment.
Who else would I ask? Jenna would tell me to dump Braden immediately, but Jenna also loves drama of any kind and she has been hot and cold with Braden over the years.
My mom would usually be a sounding board for issues, but she’s dealing with her own problems.
What about my second connection? They seem fairly logical and wouldn’t know any of the personal details involved, especially if I’m careful to keep everything vague and gender-neutral. After grabbing my school tablet from my backpack, I pull up our conversation on Connection Services.
80085 [Me]: Hey, can I ask you a hypothetical question? I need an outside perspective.
55378: As long as it’s a legal hypothetical. Who knows who is reading these conversations.
I pause at that. Well, it does involve listening to a conversation without the consent of both parties, but can I really be blamed for that? And also, they have a point—maybe everything said in the conversations on this beta test belongs to Holden Lovell’s company.
80085 [Me]: Let’s say you are in a cross-country long distance relationship, and your significant other (SO for short) accidentally butt-dials you.
You, being curious and not realizing this was an accidental call, pick up.
You then listen to the conversation between your SO and a group of strangers.
55378: Okayyy. Did you hear a murder, the planning of a murder, OR the planning of another crime? If so, you should definitely report that.
80085 [Me]: What? No!
55378: Alright. You didn’t clarify if this hypothetical was legal so I wanted to cover my bases for the powers that be. Please continue.
I’m having second thoughts, but my lack of options for talking this through forces my hand. Plus, I desperately need input.
80085 [Me]: Anyway, it sounds like the SO is planning some kind of trip with these people.
Except… it’s not somewhere they’re supposed to be.
And one person in the conversation kind of implies your SO is really close with someone in the group—someone they’ve never, ever mentioned to you.
Which is extra fun because you may have doom-scrolled their Instagram and noticed that same person commenting a little too much on all their posts.
55378: Ok. This is much less interesting than I expected.
80085 [Me]: Are you going to help or not?
55378: Fine.
80085 [Me]: Am I crazy for thinking my SO is lying to me?
Ouch. A drop of blood beads on my fingertip from biting my nail too aggressively. I pull a tissue from the box on my desk and dab the injury.
Will 55378 proclaim my relationship doomed?
Their judgment on my predicament feels irrationally important, but maybe it has less to do with their opinion and more to do with the fact that I feel like I have no one to confide in.
I’ve been best friends with Braden for so long, we’re practically one unit in my family’s eyes.
He was a constant presence in my home and life since third grade.
To let everyone know that Braden has dropped me unceremoniously pretty much the moment he set foot on a college campus feels…
I don’t know. Embarrassing. What does it say about me if the person who knows me best thinks I’m not worth keeping in their life?
55378: I have questions.
80085 [Me]: Shoot.
55378: Long distance seems like a losing battle, not that I would know from personal experience. Was there a discussion before they left about how you two would communicate?
Yes! I knew good ol’ 55378 would understand.
80085 [Me]: Absolutely. We had a schedule for phone calls and the expectation that we should check in via text daily.
55378: And have you both kept to the agreement?
As much as I want to cover for Braden and say we have been… I can’t.
80085 [Me]: Well, I have…
55378: And SO hasn’t?
80085 [Me]: No.
55378: It sounds like SO is violating the agreement and not acting in good faith. The call you heard is probably the tip of the iceberg. I’m sorry. Your feelings are valid IMO.
Those are the words I expected, and somehow they still knock the air out of my lungs.
How many times will Braden hurt me? How much more can I take?
It all feels so unfair and so wrong that I want to crawl out of my skin and find a new reality to live in—one in which Braden adores me the way he’s supposed to. The way he promised me.
When Braden left for college, I was filled with optimistic hope that we would beat the odds, survive the distance, and stay together forever.
Now I’m left questioning if I’d hallucinated our agreement altogether.
He did agree to it, didn’t he? Did I force it on him?
Why wouldn’t he just tell me if he wanted to break up?
Tears blur my vision but I blink them back.
Through the blur I see a notification—a couple messages from Mr. Pi.
But I can’t bring myself to check them. I toss my tablet on my bed and head to Hunter’s room to see if he’s dressed and ready to go trick-or-treating.
As usual lately, our mother is working, and I’m the one on parental duty with our dad still in Australia.
He’s due to come back for a week around Thanksgiving, and I'm both excited and dreading his visit. I’ll be glad to see him.
I love my dad. But I’m worried about how things will go between him and Mom—there’s definitely tension there.
“Hey, Bud, you ready?” I call as I knock on Hunter’s bedroom door. “It’s almost time to go plunder the neighborhood for our chocolatey bounty.”
The door opens and Hunter appears dressed as a pirate, a pumpkin-shaped bucket in hand, clearly more than ready to fill it to the brim with candy.
“Ready!” He grins, then realizes he isn’t in character and his face contorts into an adorable, lopsided grimace. “I mean, aye, matey!”
I smile. “Alright, let’s go.”
As we make our way downstairs to the front door, the doorbell chimes.
I grab a bowl of candy and get ready to greet trick-or-treaters, but when the door opens I’m surprised to find Jake standing there instead.
Except he doesn’t look like Jake. His outfit is some kind of drapey concoction with multiple layers in brown and linen.
The brown boots on his feet are nearly knee high—certainly not something a teenage guy would normally wear.
Then I see the telltale sign: a lightsaber at his hip.
“Jake!” Hunter exclaims happily at the same time I say, “A Jedi, really?”
Both Jake and Hunter look at me, incredulous.
“He’s not a Jedi, Avery,” Hunter mansplains to me in his little boy voice, “he’s a Padawan. Like a Jedi-in-training. See? Look at his braid.” They fist bump, grinning.
A quick glance at Jake’s hair reveals a long, thin braid behind one ear that must be a clip-on. “Maybe Jake just wanted a braid of his own for once.”
Hunter rolls his eyes. “It’s a real thing. Padawans have braids. They cut them when they become Jedi Knights.”
I’m about to ask Jake how he managed to turn my brother into his Star Wars-obsessed protégé despite barely spending time here, but then I realize that’s not the most pertinent question. “What are you doing here, Jake?”
“We decided we were going to trick-or-treat together, remember? Aves, we talked about this yesterday,” he replies.
My forehead wrinkles in confusion. “I mean, you mentioned it, but I figured you’d be at the Halloween party.”
“Who wants to go to a lame Halloween party when I can go trick-or-treating with a pirate and—“ Jake pauses as his eyes move over my figure, “a… nun?”
I place a hand on one hip and cock an eyebrow. “Does this look like a nun habit to you?”
Jake purses his lips, and glances at Hunter with an exaggeratedly confused expression. Hunter eats it up and starts giggling at the idea that my costume is too confusing to guess. It seems a tad unfair, given how not obvious Jake’s costume is, in my opinion.
Jake snaps his fingers. “A governess! You love those historical type movies.”
“No.”
“A witch who lost her hat.”
“No.”
“Wednesday Addams.”
“No!”
At this point Hunter’s doubled over with laughter. Typical of men to not recognize a great female scientist!
“I’m the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize, Marie Curie,” I stand taller, as if this will imbue the situation with gravitas and respect for our foremothers of science. “This outfit is fashioned after early 1900s styles, and Curie became known for wearing black after—“
“After her beloved husband died in a tragic accident,” Jake interrupts me to finish.
I’m slightly annoyed by my moment being stolen, but I’m also impressed that Jake even knows about that. I give him a questioning look.
“What? I remember you practicing your presentation about Curie years ago. Seventh grade, maybe?”
Wow, I can’t believe he remembers that. That year we had an assignment to pick a historical figure and present about them.
I was so nervous about public speaking and wanted to do it well, so I practiced it in front of my family and friends numerous times, including at Jenna and Jake’s house.
I also practiced a lot with Braden. Just thinking about memories of him sends a pang of anger and sorrow through me, but I shake it off, determined to not let him ruin my entire Halloween.
“Um, yeah, good memory. Anyway, let’s go pillage the neighborhood for candy.”
Hunter bounds out the door and Jake falls in step beside me.