20. Chapter Twenty
Penelope
I’ve done this every morning since I’ve gotten back.
I tell myself I’m tired from the flights.
Then I tell myself I’m readjusting. Then I tell myself I’ve earned a slow week.
But the sheet stays bare, the pencils stay sharp, and I don’t draw a single line.
I drink the tea and don’t look at it again.
Ivory’s on the couch with her legs over the arm, scrolling through my Instagram grid of Portugal.
“This is stunning, Penelope. You must have designed something insane after that trip.”
She goes back to the photos, satisfied, and I look out the window and don’t reply.
Portugal wasn’t like that for me. My aunt ran dinner like an oral exam — name the architect, name the period, defend the fa?ade, and don’t embarrass your mother, who paid for the flight.
Six weeks in Chicago before that, doing work adjacent to a firm I quit, to prove a point I’m not sure anyone noticed I was making.
Then six more weeks of being shown off at tables where my mother said we about my future.
I was composed for the entire summer. I performed daughter, protégé, and cultured young woman across two countries and an ocean.
I did it flawlessly. Now I can’t pick up a pencil.
“I’m just glad to be back,” I say.
“God, me too.” Ivory sighs. “There’s no place like this apartment.”
That isn’t what I mean.
“Okay, so, Drew,” she says, sitting up. “You are not going to believe what he did last month.”
I already believe it. She told me in July, on the phone, in full, for two hours.
“He left,” she says, “in the middle of the trip, for his cousin’s bachelor thing, and he didn’t tell me until the night before—”
I know the whole story. He didn’t tell her until the night before. I know the cousin’s name, and what Ivory said, how it resolved, and she’s telling me anyway, not forgetting a single part.
“—and I’m not dramatic,” she finishes. “I’m a person with feelings.”
“You’re not dramatic,” I agree.
“Thank you.” She flops back. “So, there’s a thing tonight. You’re coming with me. It’s a Sig Ep thing. Leah knows the house.” She’s already getting up. “It’s a new school year. Don’t tell me you’re still not coming out?”
Last year, I had a reason. A deadline, a studio problem, sixteen credits. I had a whole architecture of reasons.
“I’m coming,” I say.
Ivory turns around. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
She lights up. “Get dressed. We’re getting crazy tonight. Fuck Drew.”
“Fuck Drew,” I say, and I mean it about as much as I mean anything tonight, which is not at all.
I walk into my room and open my closet. I’ve missed my wardrobe here.
I start digging through my clothes like tonight’s going to solve all my problems. And maybe it will.
I want to be in a room too loud to think in.
I’m so tired of being composed and keeping it together.
For once, I’d like to let loose. And tonight is the perfect night.
Welcome back to Camden U, where the education is great, but the parties are even better.
“Let’s match,” Ivory calls from my door. She holds up her knee-high boots.
I pull mine out from the back of the closet, and her eyes light up.
The party is a big ugly house on the far side of campus, nowhere near Hawthorne Street, full of people I’ve never seen — business majors, a soccer crowd, girls being loud in a kitchen that isn’t cute one bit.
Not one face I’d recognize from anywhere.
It’s a separate universe, and I move through it like a tourist. But there’s something restful in it.
If I don’t know them, they don’t know me.
Nobody here has an opinion about what I do with my life or who I am. We’re only here for a good time.
I have a drink. Then another, faster than I’d normally allow, and the tight thing at the center of me loosens half a notch.
“Okay, where did you get your boots? Because I absolutely need a pair.”
Ivory turns to the brunette, looking up at us with a straw in her mouth.
“Mara!” she squeals.
They hug.
“How are you? How was summer?”
They dive into a conversation while I look around the room. I catch eyes with a few people, and then I finish off my drink.
“You went to Portugal?” Mara asks me, so now I’m part of the conversation.
“This is Penelope,” Ivory explains. “We live together. Penelope. Mara.”
“Hi,” I say. “What are you drinking?”
“Trash can punch. Want some?”
“Yes,” I say reluctantly.
Mara laughs her head off. “It doesn’t taste like a trash can.”
“Thank God.”
Ivory and I follow her through the party until we reach the kitchen.
Ivory is talking nonstop about Drew Faulkner like Mara knows their entire history.
And Mara has opinions. He’s a fuckboy. Hockey players don’t do girlfriends.
She’s rolling her eyes. She mentions Hawthorne and the party that’s going on right now.
For a moment, I think about the house and who resides there. Then I drink half of the cup of trash can punch.
Ivory cackles. “Whoa.” And then she’s chugging hers. “Another one?”
I nod. Mara catches up. We laugh, filling our cups up again.
We walk to the living room. Mara is loud and unfiltered.
She reminds me of someone. It takes a minute to figure it out, but once I do, I can’t unsee it.
She reminds me of my best friend, Taylor.
The old Taylor. Before we drifted. Mara has the thing Taylor used to have — the easy, unguarded, immediate warmth.
“Gianna!” Mara calls out to the brunette walking by. “Hey!”
Gianna stops and smiles. “Hey, Mara.”
“Gianna was supposed to be my roommate in the dorms, but she found an apartment above a Thai place.” Mara rolls her eyes.
“I know,” Gianna says. “I’m sorry.”
Mara waves her off and starts asking her about her classes for the year.
An hour later, Gianna is a force of nature in a crop top, arguing with a boy twice her size about hockey, and winning.
“All I’m saying is that you play soccer,” Gianna says. “A highlight isn’t luck.”
“A highlight isn’t luck,” Mara agrees. “Who’s this?”
“A soccer player,” Gianna says.
Mara leans in and says to me and Ivory, “Her brother plays hockey.”
Gianna ignores the soccer player, turning to us. “His name is Benson Reeve,” Gianna says. “The most annoying boy alive. And his roommates are worse. You would not believe the state of that house. There’s a whiteboard with rules on it—”
Something moves through me. I hold my cup a little tighter, and I don’t say anything.
“—like they’re a fraternity. Like they invented having a house.” She waves it off. “Anyway. Please don’t tell me you’ve been to one of their ‘Hawthorne House’ parties?” she mocks.
Ivory says, “I know Drew.”
“Drew!” Gianna gasps.
“What?” Ivory asks, offended.
“Nothing. Just –– you know. Hockey boys. No, thanks.” Gianna looks at me. “Do you dance?”
“I don’t dance,” I reply with a laugh.
“We’re going to fix that,” Mara agrees, and the two of them pull me into the next room.
I’m home by two. Ivory drunk-dialed Drew and then met up with him. Mara made me put my number in her phone and texted me a photo of my face before I’d even left the party. Gianna hugged me goodbye like we’d known each other for years.
It was a good night. I think I collected a person or two tonight that I’m going to keep. When I step inside of my apartment, I stand over my drafting table and stare down at my pencils. I have no urge to use them.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I had fun tonight, met a few new girls, and still, I can’t shake the summer.
I walk into my bedroom and take off my boots. I put them back in the closet. Then I walk into the bathroom to shower, but instead, I pull out my phone and stare at the screen.
I click on his name. The last message is from last month, and it’s from me, and under it, there’s nothing. I scroll up through the summer. Every reply he sent is four words or less. He has never once texted me first. I start typing.
There was a girl tonight. She reminded me of Taylor, my best friend from home, from before we drifted, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you about her, or about the before part. I’m a little drunk and it’s two in the morning. I keep thinking about the fire escape.
My thumb stops over the arrow.
The whole thing sits in the grey bubble, every word I’d never say to his face.
He’s awake. He should be awake. He’d answer in four words and never once ask me what I meant.
I hold my thumb over the arrow for a long time.
Then I press and hold the backspace, and I watch it eat the sentence a letter at a time — Taylor and the fire escape, all of it — until the bubble is empty and the cursor blinks in the white like I never wrote anything at all.
He never texts first.
This year, neither will I.