6
O n Friday morning, Conrad discovered that the Destroyer of Worlds had a flat. MC, as the most recent driver, felt responsible, but Gabby assured her the car had been acting odd earlier on Thursday.
Conrad whipped out his phone in a self-important huff, messaging Ms. Kim about catching a ride.
MC had planned to accompany him to school, so that she could walk to the library and make another go at conversation with Nora before the Explorations meeting that afternoon.
But she decided she was in no rush. The last thing she needed was an extra ten minutes of her brother’s judgment.
“There’s definitely a YouTube video for this,” Gabby said, out on the driveway and typing on her phone, hair gleaming in the morning sunshine. She was wearing Conrad’s flannel pajama bottoms. MC stood next to her, useless with cars, but ready to do any kind of oil-smudgy stuff when the time came.
It’d been surprisingly easy to go back to hanging out with Gabby.
They’d even watched a movie together the night before, like old times.
It’d been Gabby’s pick: How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days .
A painful reminder that MC, like Andie Anderson, was on a secret assignment of her own.
She’d never been big on rom-coms, but she respected the vicarious form of wish fulfillment, not so different from the escapism she’d sought in the fantasy novels she’d loved as a kid.
Conrad hadn’t joined them for the movie. When he’d finished his lo mein, he’d excused himself and absconded to his basement office. That was where, according to Gabby, he spent most nights. They’d had a surprisingly tense exchange about it just before he’d cleared his plate.
“Okay,” Gabby said, “we need to jack it up, take off the tire, then put the doughnut on.”
MC blinked. “Doughnut?”
“The spare.” She pulled it out from under a flap in the trunk. It was surprisingly small. “Aw, so cute.” Gabby ended up working the pneumatic lever that raised the undercarriage. And removing the hubcap and the tire. And putting the doughnut on.
Even in the realm of basic automotive repair, MC was incapable.
The whole time that she was standing there with her hands in her pockets, she kept glancing over at Nora’s house, wondering if she’d see Jen Turner rolling out of the garage in her monster truck.
Memories of Jen bouncing tennis balls all over the school grounds came back to her.
The flexing hand. The forceful, precise release.
“Yay!” Gabby said, pumping her fist in the air. “We did it!”
“You did it.”
“With your moral support.” She tossed her hair from her eyes in a well-worn gesture. “I’m going to take our Destroyer to the tire place, but you should stay here and get started on work.”
“I was thinking of hitting up the library, actually.”
“Weren’t you there last night?”
“Tried to go, but it was closed.”
“Oh. Well, come back for lunch?”
“Sure.”
“And let me give you a ride.”
“No need. Wouldn’t want to stress the doughnut.” MC smiled. “I was thinking of breaking out my old bike anyway.”
“Exercise, love that.” Gabby rubbed MC’s arm. “Honestly, it’s so good having you around again.”
MC ignored a swell of guilt in her stomach. “Happy to be here.”
After they said their goodbyes, MC went into the dark, dank cave of the garage.
It was a little unsettling to be reminded of how completely Gabby had shaped MC’s taste in women.
She was why MC always went for the sweet ones, the ones who made her feel like she was valuable.
Her most recent girlfriend, Lisa, had been the epitome of this type: short and freckled and serious about experimental theater.
She worked at a coffee shop in MC’s neighborhood, and had dropped subtle, then not-so-subtle come-ons anytime MC came in.
Do you work in the area? Lisa had asked, smiling to herself as she tapped MC’s order on her tablet.
Sort of. I’m freelance, so usually I can work anywhere.
Lisa had turned the tablet over to MC like she was about to tell a joke. You should work here sometimes.
Half an hour later, MC finished clearing the spiderwebs and mysterious egg-like packages deposited all over her old ten-speed.
She oiled its chain, achieving the smudged hands she’d been looking for, though the effect was much grosser than she’d expected.
She pumped up the crusty-looking tires, then set off, pedaling hard.
Her childhood helmet was tight and itchy on her head.
Her legs burned from the unfamiliar movements.
But it was nice to be getting around on her own, channeling some of her unease into forward motion as she scaled the unimpressive hills that’d given the town its name.
It took her forty minutes to get to the library.
She locked her bike up front with a self-satisfied smile.
She didn’t need a big, showy truck. She didn’t need to be ripped.
She was just a regular person, traveling through the world in an eco-friendly, heart-healthy way, nothing to prove.
She took off her helmet and smoothed her sweaty hair into a bun, ignoring the fact that her T-shirt was soaked.
When she walked into the library, she felt like she’d arrived directly from an unplanned visit to a water park.
But she fit right in. The Green Hills library, like all public libraries, was a sanctuary for out-of-sorts individuals, especially on a weekday morning.
She headed for the study wing, noting a man at the computers who was guzzling something chunky from a Styrofoam cup, a grim old woman in a reading nook surrounded by back issues of Men’s Health —the teen who’d been reading the Financial Times the night before was, presumably, in school—and a guy in his twenties who’d set up an entire hard drive and gaming rig complete with blinking lights near the circulation desk.
Passing the reference section, MC nodded at Nora. Nora spared a quick look at MC’s waterlogged body before flashing the world’s shortest, fakest smile.
MC decided not to linger on it. She picked a table deep in the nonfiction section. From that vantage point, she’d still be able to keep an eye on Nora, and hopefully plan some excuse to approach her without seeming creepy.
She sat and opened her laptop. Checked her emails and did a little real work, perfecting some paragraphs about the value of data-driven supply chain logistics in today’s fast-paced business environment. Before she knew it, a few hours had passed.
She needed to get a move on.
She gritted her teeth. She was well aware she should’ve actually read Girl Next Door before embarking on this mission.
But it still seemed too treacherous. Like it would give her an outsize or false sense of how Nora felt about her, or the type of person Nora was.
Mostly she’d just been scared to hear a stranger—that’s what Nora was to her now, more or less—waxing poetic about her own deepest desires.
Her greatest fears. Her parents’ divorce, as Joe had reminded her.
She’d never thought Nora was paying the slightest attention to any of that.
Maybe she hadn’t been. But even an imagined version of herself was too disturbing to confront.
No time to fix that gap in research now.
Even thinking about it dimmed her resolve.
She’d never been great at pushing herself to get what she wanted.
The risk of suffering was too palpable. Besides, she’d always been able to find contentment with something that was close enough—not a career as a hotshot writer, but a relatively stable setup as a freelance copywriter.
Not the star of a sweeping and desperate romance, but the even-keeled girlfriend whose thoughtful insistence on not getting too deep would one day, she hoped, result in a partnership that didn’t end in plate-shattering divorce.
It was boring. But the nice thing about being boring was that it was safe. Typically.
She decided that overthinking was getting her nowhere. She would go up to Nora and say something insightful. Probably about the weather.
She made her approach.
“Wanna know something crazy?” she blurted.
Nora looked up from her computer. She was wearing glasses.
MC was transported back to senior year, when Nora would break out big circular wire frames on long stretches of layout work.
Once, MC had asked if she could try them on, and Nora had obliged, skeptical.
Well , MC had asked, do I look smarter? Nora had snorted.
You look like you need a new prescription .
And she’d slipped the glasses off MC’s face more gently than MC had expected, her fingertips brushing MC’s temples.
“I’m running an Explorations meeting,” MC said. “This afternoon.”
Nora pursed her lips. “Good for you.”
“Ms. Kim’s the principal now. They don’t have an advisor for the magazine, so she asked if I’d sub in. Just for today.”
“Best of luck.”
Nora went back to typing, hammering the keys harder than ever.
MC cleared her throat. “It’s making me think about the old days, you know?”
Nora stared at her.
“I mean, it’s made me wonder how’ve you been.”
Before Nora could reply, the only other youngish person MC had observed working at the library cut in front of MC and shouted at Nora with her hands in the air.
“Darryl is motherfucking ‘sick’!” she said. “Meaning he’s a motherfucking liar.”
“Language,” Lois drawled, walking by with a cart of books.
“I have eight million psychotic moms RSVP’d to story hour tomorrow,” the woman fumed. She seemed to be in her forties, with bright red lipstick and a large sweater featuring a punk rock Smokey Bear looking baked.
Nora blinked. “So find someone else to wear the costume.”
“Who? No one’s going to touch that ratty old sack of shit.”
“Ask if Darryl has any friends.”
“Friends who’ll roll in here on a Saturday morning to entertain a horde of spoiled toddlers?”
“Say it’s his responsibility to find a replacement.”
“He’s an unpaid intern.”
“If you’re asking me to do it, Maureen, the answer is no. It’s annoying enough just to be the one reading the book.”
Maureen curled her right hand, then lifted it to her face and studied her bejeweled manicure. “I guess we’ll just have story hour without Winnie.”
“I could do it,” MC said.
Nora’s eyes widened. “There’s really no need—”
But Maureen was already giving MC an up-and-down. “Who are you?”
“MC,” she said, “like Master of Ceremonies.” She stuck out a hand, then regretted it, feeling overly formal. “Nora and I went to high school together. I’m here for the weekend, visiting my brother, but I don’t have any real plans.”
Maureen frowned. “And you’re willing to wear a Winnie-the-Pooh costume on a Saturday morning for a bunch of screaming children?”
MC shrugged. “I like kids.”
Maureen’s eyebrows lifted. “See you tomorrow at ten.”
MC smiled and went back to her desk.
As she typed, she felt Nora staring at her. Finally.