11. Lilah
LILAH
“Itold you you didn’t have to pick me up.”
The streetlights flashed over us as we pulled out of the Hawthorne parking lot.
“I’m sorry I’ve been MIA. If you’re not feeling up for tutoring, it’s no big deal. I’ll just eat three of the four loaded baked potatoes and steak my mom packed up for you and be on my way.” He reached into the back and set the steaming container on my lap.
“Back off!” I grabbed it, bared my teeth and shoved my backpack beneath the hot Pyrex glass, so I didn’t scorch my legs. “Trying to steal my food? I shouldn’t tutor you, b—”
“I said I’d leave you one,” he said, feigning innocence.
“But.” I shot him a pointed look. “I’ve got to start sometime. It’s already been a month since the accident. I need to get back to normal, which includes cramming a few chapters of chemistry into your brain.” I knocked on the side of his head while stopped at a red light.
“Since you’re getting back to normal, does that mean I get to spin you around the next time I see you.”
I leveled my gaze at him.
“Fine, but then it means you can come to my game this weekend.”
“Using your card so early in the season?”
“Figured you’d want to since my girlfriend’s going to be there.”
I jolted up so fast that the seat belt caught me across the chest. “What?” I slapped his arm. “Since when?”
“Since her boarding school’s on break and she’s going to take the bus down to stay the weekend.”
“At your house?”
“My mom already washed the Lilah sheets for her to sleep on.”
“Wow, so serious.” I grinned, happy for him. “Traveling to see each other and staying over at your house.”
“What, you jealous?”
I snorted. “Happy you’re not sleeping your way through Verona High anymore. Or were you blacklisted by all the other senior girls?”
“You say it like I was a man-whore.”
“Was?” I stared pointedly into his footwell. “That shoe is still on your foot…”
“She’s excited to meet you too,” Rye bulldozed forward. “So can you promise you’ll be there?” He held out his pinky.
I sighed and linked my pinky with his, excited to meet the girl who’d finally got him hooked enough to earn her the title of girlfriend. “I promise.”
“It’s the Hawthorne Prep game.”
My stomach dropped. “Rye!”
“You promised.” He cringed, bracing his shoulder close to his ear as if anticipating a smack.
“Without knowing all the details.”
“It’s the only one Molly can come to this season and I want you to meet her.”
“You know I don’t want to go to Hawthorne games.”
“I thought things were fine with Mason now.” Even in the darkness, I could feel his probing gaze.
They were, but I didn’t want to upset the delicate balance. The magnetic thread between us tugged stronger every day, and every day I fought harder to keep myself from imagining things could be like they were over the summer between us.
How long would I get a pardon based on my head injury? Now that I was back at school full time, I had no idea what switch might flip that would make me suddenly become Public Enemy No. 1 all over again.
Tonight showed me that we could be civil, friendly even, but showing up in the cheering section for Verona High might be a red flag waved in front of a currently docile bull. A little calm now didn’t mean I was immune from a goring.
But there would be hundreds of people at the game. No way he’d notice me there. And I’d promised. “Fine, I’ll go. And just like that, my Saturday is filled up.”
“The med school interview, right?”
I fidgeted with the plastic lid tabs of the container on my lap. “Joint degree program interview at ten tomorrow. I wish they’d given me more than two days’ notice.”
“Don’t be nervous.”
“How can I not be nervous? There are only a handful of programs out there with accelerated BS/MD programs. If I botch this interview—”
“You’ll still have at least nine more chances.”
“You remember how many programs there are?”
“Only because you’ve talked about this non-freaking-stop since you found out it existed.”
“Sorry,” I said mockingly. “I had to have a topic to go toe-to-toe with your nonstop hockey talk.”
He reached over and mussed my hair. “Puck hit straight to the back of the net.”
I swatted his hand away and pressed myself against the passenger door with a menacing glare.
“You’ve worked your ass off, Lilah. They have to know how good you’d be.” He pulled up to the Willowcrest gate and typed in the code.
“There are thousands of people out there just like me with even better grades who have invented new ways to splice DNA or trekked the Himalayas when they were thirteen that aren’t clinging to the top five percent of their class.
” Slipping down a rank spot had sent me into a panic and ignited a headache that lasted fourteen hours.
So I breathed with one hand on my chest to calm myself.
“If they don’t take you, they’re morons.”
“I’ll be sure to mention that to the interviewer.”
“Where are you meeting?”
“A coffee shop. It’s a fifteen-minute walk from the house, so I don’t have to worry about catching a bus.”
“I’d have taken you.”
“I know, but you don’t need to be my personal chauffeur. You’re busy enough.”
“Yes, a couple of rides a few times a month counts as chauffeuring,” he said dryly. “Next time, you sit in the back seat and I’ll buy a dumb little hat.”
“Aww, you’d look so cute.” I climbed out of the car with my food and backpack.
I hurried down the path beside Rye, who’d taken my backpack from me, careful not to look up at Mason’s balcony. But even now I could feel the emptiness. He wasn’t there. The air wasn’t charged with his presence. Thankfully, my house was empty, so we could spread out to study.
An hour later, I was stuffed and only the tiniest throb of a headache was starting at the base of my skull.
“Hope that wasn’t too painful.”
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. “No, it was good. Flexing my brain muscles a little more.”
Kelsey and Eliza banged through the front door like a crash of cymbals. All laughing, phone notifications and a tumble of shoes, bags and coats dumped on my bed.
Kelsey scrunched up her face. “What is that smell?”
Eliza peered into the kitchen.
“There’s food in the fridge, more than enough to share since Dad’s not getting groceries until tomorrow,” I said, hoping they’d had dinner.
Rye shot me a gritted-teeth stare and stood.
“Food poisoning isn’t on the menu for us, thanks.” Kelsey said it like I’d offered her prechewed gum and swept her hair up into a hair tie.
“We had burgers and fries with some guys from our class,” Eliza offered with a tentative smile. “Smells good though.”
“Rye’s mom made it.”
“Aww, that was so swe—”
Kelsey shoved her phone in Eliza’s face. A pause and then she chuckled.
“I know, right?” Kelsey took her phone back and tapped at the screen.
Rye fired a dagger-slicing glare at them.
I pushed him toward the door with the container his mom had sent over already washed. “Thanks for the ride and the food.”
He held up an arm in the direction of their closing bedroom door.
“I know. Let it go. Kelsey only said that because she thought I made it.”
“And that makes it better?” He stared at me with fierce annoyance.
“Just let it go. I’ve already forgotten about it. You should too. Night, Rye.”
“Night, Lilah.”
I closed the door and rested my back against it.
Then came the big ask I hadn’t wanted to think about until now.
My severe lack of clothing outside of well-worn basics and my uniform meant I didn’t have many options for my interview tomorrow.
I knocked before I could chicken out.
Kelsey opened the door and leaned against the door frame. “Yeah.”
“Tomorrow’s my interview for Bellevue U.”
“The one for the joint med school program?” Eliza chimed in and walked over to the door.
“Exactly.”
“And…” Kelsey rolled her eyes.
“I don’t have many business casual things. I didn’t want to go in my uniform, but I wanted to know if I could borrow anything business casual you might have.”
Kelsey raked a scrutinizing gaze from head to toe.
“A dress or skirt and I could use my Hawthorne shirt.”
“I think I have—”
Kelsey cut Eliza off. “We’ll see what we have and let you know.”
“My interview is at ten. If—”
She closed the door, cutting me off. Their muffled conversation of stops and starts went on for a while.
I sat on the floor in front of my trunk and opened it. The smell of vanilla and cherry hit me hard. It still smelled like her. Like Mom had breathed herself into the very fabric lining the inside of the trunk.
I plucked out one of my stashed Butterscotch Krimpets and sifted through the contents for anything I could piece together to make an interview-appropriate outfit.
Grabbing my phone, I replayed my mom’s message and tried to pretend she’d be home later to help me figure this out.
There wasn’t much in here that wasn’t a reminder of her.
Physical photos of us I’d printed out to decorate her hospital room.
Souvenirs from our road trip vacation to the beach, where I’d gorged myself on funnel cake, crab fries and freshly squeezed lemonade, then had to make the trip home with my head hanging out the car window.
I’d repeated that same mistake every year until she died.
A bit of fabric slid out of the opening of a satin bag. The unfinished dress Mom had been working on before chemo zapped all her energy and made the skin on her fingers split and peel.
The beadwork on the bodice would’ve probably been tedious to anyone else, but she picked it up whenever she needed to relax.
I zipped that bag closed, moved a few other bundles aside, hopefully someday I’d have a closet to hang the few dresses I’d hung onto and picked up the dress I’d been looking for.
She’d worn this during our last Thanksgiving before the pain in her hips she’d thought was from her car accident turned out to be a cancer dissolving her bones.
She’d looked so beautiful, hanging a glass ornament on the tree with the lights hitting the satin of her rose-red dress. She could have been a movie star on a magazine cover, not a tired mom who worked two jobs to afford our old-but-cozy apartment.