Chapter 10 #2
We were going to go to Ball State. Be roommates.
Explore what it was like to live outside the shadow of our younger selves—be new people.
That could have been exactly what Alissa needed.
Escape. To be someone else in the real world, not just in a game.
She could have become anyone. A famous journalist. A jet-setting adventurer.
A game developer making her own CoH Online.
She could have left this town and everyone we knew behind.
I guess, technically, she did.
Ash’s car is the only one in the driveway. I hit the doorbell and wait.
He opens the door wearing shorts and a black long-sleeve shirt with the words MONSTROUS SEA down the arms in neon lettering.
“I made chili,” he says without preamble. “You want some?”
I blink. “You made it. Like right now?”
“No, last night, but I warmed it up. It might be terrible. You want a bowl?”
“Sure.”
I follow him into the kitchen. Nothing here is different. Ash and Alissa’s childhood drawings are still attached to the refrigerator with magnets. Alissa’s box of tea sits next to the coffeepot. The room smells like chili spice and meat cooking; there’s a huge pot on the stove, wafting steam.
“You make enough?” I ask, peering inside. My stomach grumbles.
“I always make too much,” Ash says, looking almost dejected as he stirs.
“But like, have you ever seen a chili recipe that didn’t make too much?
And who are you even trying to impress by making exactly the right amount of chili?
” He gets two bowls down from the cabinet and slops a few ladlefuls into each.
The movement is both competent and slightly unhinged in a way only teenage boys can manage.
He hands one to me. I get us spoons out of the silverware drawer.
“I didn’t know you cooked,” I say. Instead of the kitchen table, he heads to the staircase by the front door and sits on the steps. It’s weird, but instead of pointing that out, I sit next to him.
“I’ve gotten into it more in the last week,” he says. “It takes my mind off of things.”
“What do you like making? Besides chili.”
He thinks for a moment. “Rolls. I like the smell of yeast.”
“Yeah, me too.” The chili has cooled a bit, so I eat a spoonful. “Hey, this is good! I like how spicy it is.”
He smiles. “My parents hate spicy food. You’re going to have to take some with you.”
“Okay fine, twist my arm.”
We eat in companionable silence. In the past, it would have felt awkward.
Growing up, Ash was always on the periphery.
Ghosting through the house when I came for sleepovers.
Hanging by the sidelines eating sno-cones or giant pretzels at our track meets and softball games.
I didn’t know what to do around Ash, especially when Alissa wasn’t also in the room.
It got worse after his car accident; everything he said came out in a snap or a snarl.
He was always so tall and quiet and didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to anyone, and if he did talk to you, he might bite your head off.
But now that I might bite someone’s head off, I get it.
He finishes his chili first. He seems way more relaxed than when I arrived. “You want some water?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He goes to the kitchen and comes back with two glasses.
I’m done eating by then, so he takes my bowl.
I notice the way he walks now—there’s the slightest favoring of his right leg, imperceptible if you didn’t know to look for it.
I stand there in the foyer, wondering what I’m really doing here.
The house is so quiet. It’s never been this quiet.
Alissa’s dad is always talking on the phone, her mom watching TV and doing something in the kitchen, and Ash is upstairs listening to music.
I look up at the chandelier and listen, but all I can hear is the water running into the chili bowls.
“Computer now?” he asks when he comes back.
I nod. We head up the stairs. At the top, he turns left, but I stop, glancing to the right.
There is a door there. White, with a chip near the bottom where Alissa once clipped it with her Rollerblades when she was skating in the house when her parents weren’t home.
The door is closed.
“You can go in,” Ash says. He’s stopped by his own door. There’s no expression on his face.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
My blood pounds in my ears as I step toward the door.
It’s just a door. I know the room behind it as well as my own.
But my pulse throbs, and for a moment all that pent-up energy in my body tells me she’ll be here.
She’ll be on the other side of this door, sitting crisscross in bed with one of her Children of Hypnos books open in her lap, worrying her pinkie finger between her teeth the way she does when she’s intensely focused.
I open the door.
The bed is empty. The pale pink sheets are neatly made and folded, the pillows untouched, her ivory comforter without a wrinkle.
Her desktop computer is turned off, the monitors black.
The closet door is closed, the dresser untouched, and the curtains are pulled back from the window.
I catch sight of myself in her standing mirror and flinch.
My hair is windblown, messy; my eyes look hollow.
My cheeks are pale. I slap my face to bring some color back into it, then drag my fingers through my hair.
The room still smells like her. Grapefruit shampoo.
Her pictures are still pinned to the corkboard above the desk.
The track girls gathered around and smiling at one of last year’s meets.
Me and her at basketball practice when we were eleven.
Me and her again, when we went to King’s Island two years ago, before we got on the roller coasters and she got sick.
A picture of her and Ash as little kids, Ash bigger and holding her hand at the park, scowling at the camera while she smiled with dimples and a row of white teeth.
“What the fuck, Liss,” I say to the empty room. My hands curl into fists. I want to tear the pictures down. Mess up the bed. Smash the mirror. She doesn’t need any of this stuff anymore. She threw it away. Why should the rest of us have to deal with it?
I leave the room before I break something.