Chapter Five
The four of us split at the Metro, me disappearing into the deep concrete cavern of the station while Sam, Julian and Elliott are going for half-price green chia seed smoothies at the idiotically named F’resh: the world’s most soulless salad bar chain, where Julian works a few days a week.
Sam gives me a look before she rounds the corner, just as Julian loops an arm over her shoulder and jokingly messes up her hair.
But as a flash of jealousy ignites in my stomach – their ease, the way Sam doesn’t even jump at Julian’s touch – I glance away quickly, pretending not to see.
When my train arrives, I find a seat at the very back of the car, one that’s blocked in by a plexiglass wall. The lady at Seconds wrapped my dress in a trash bag, which I set on the empty seat beside me.
From the back pocket of my jeans, something sharp digs into my skin.
I squirm to adjust whatever it is, my fingers closing around a hard object.
I pull it out and let the fake pearls crusting the gold plastic surface catch under the Metro car’s fluorescent lighting.
Avery’s hairclip. In the library, between the feeling of her hands around my shoulders and my mouth on her neck, I forgot I’d even pocketed it.
I bring the clip to my lips, let the soft skin press against the pearls’ smooth, shiny surfaces.
I can almost taste her lip gloss, smell her perfume, a dangerous warmth flooding my stomach at the memory.
The hairclip is still clutched in my palm by the time I make it to my stop, ascend the elevator and emerge above ground.
It occurs to me that Avery only lives a few blocks from the station; I went to her house once when my mom was running a reiki workshop at our place and Avery and I had to rehearse our Wuthering Heights project.
It’s in the opposite direction to my house, but I can just picture what Sam will say if she catches me with Avery’s hairclip, what Avery will say if she doesn’t get it back.
Avery’s street is tucked off the main road that cuts through our neighbourhood, the houses quiet and still in a pre-rush hour calm.
A few people are scattered across their various porches, sipping drinks on cushioned benches or reading on their iPads.
I vaguely remember the general shape of her house: a row home, like many in the DC suburbs, with a short, scrubby lawn.
A black front door, maybe. I scan each house from top to bottom as I pass, the trash bag from Seconds pressed against my chest.
Across the street, a woman in an apron is pacing down the stairs that lead to her browning lawn.
Her hands are on her hips as she steps around kids’ bicycles lying on their sides.
Leafy bushes border the entrance to the basement of her house.
‘Peggy!’ she shouts, peering into them. ‘I swear to God, this isn’t funny any more! ’
Next door is a row home whose black front door is partially obscured by a springy-looking wreath.
But it’s the gauzy purple curtains hanging in the front window upstairs that make me pause.
The memory of when I was in Avery’s bedroom and I asked if she had to fight her six-year-old sister for them and Avery took my shirt off for the first time.
This is her house.
I pause on the sidewalk across the street, staring up at her bedroom window and thinking back to her expression when I said I didn’t vote for her.
Did her face actually fall, or did I imagine it?
It wasn’t like I could ask. I’m not supposed to care, much less act like I do.
About her, or prom. I can just picture being there – it’s going to be on a river cruise, which means I’d be literally trapped – freezing my butt off on the Potomac while everyone slow dances to the cheesy love songs Sam and I used to lip sync to in her bathroom mirror.
Me, in my blue dress. I’d see Avery in her champagne one and she’d glare at me from across the dance floor like she always does whenever we’re in the same room, except this time there wouldn’t be anywhere we could sneak off to together to break the tension.
Fingers stroking the clip’s plastic pearls, I let my eyes flutter closed.
Maybe I’d decide I didn’t care any more about what Sam or anyone else would say – about the improbability of it all, of the blatant mismatch between the prom queen and Indigo – and ask Avery to dance.
She’d be too shocked to say no. We’d dance slowly, quietly.
The blue of my dress a perfect complement to hers.
If I was going to go to prom with anyone, if I was going to go at all – going with her might be okay.
It would surprise me how good it would feel, running my hands along her waist with everyone there. Watching us. Knowing Avery was mine.
My eyes shoot open suddenly, the realisation closing over me like a net: I think – I think I am in love with Avery.
Which would mean …
‘Peggy, where are you?!’ shouts the woman across the street.
‘Crap,’ I groan, eyes levelling on Avery’s house just twenty feet away, her little white BMW parked out front.
My monster count just clicked up to two.