21. Lucy
LUCY
THEN
By the time Naomi had burned herself with the curling iron for the third time, we had reached the portion of prom preparation where survival became more important than beauty.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, holding two fingers beneath the bathroom faucet while heat shimmered from the iron on my vanity like it had committed a felony and felt no remorse.
“You cried out ‘ow’ in three syllables.”
“That was for dramatic effect.”
“You threatened to throw the curling iron out my bedroom window.”
Naomi glanced at the open door behind us, then lowered her voice. “Because it knows what it did.”
I laughed, and for one small, sparkling second, everything felt normal.
My bedroom had been turned into the kind of disaster that would have made my mother pause in the doorway with one hand pressed to her chest and a quiet, helpless laugh slipping out before she tried to organize us.
Makeup compacts sat open across my dresser.
Bobby pins had scattered over the carpet like tiny metal insects.
Naomi’s pink floral dress hung from the back of my closet door, bright and cheerful and aggressively optimistic.
My own dress floated over the armchair in a spill of green chiffon, the bodice embroidered with pale lace and beadwork that caught the afternoon light whenever the ceiling fan shifted the air.
It was the prettiest thing I had ever owned. I had tried very hard not to feel guilty about that.
Dad had taken me dress shopping three weeks ago after my mother said she was too busy settling into the apartment to come with us.
He had stood awkwardly outside the dressing room with his hands in the pockets of his wool coat while a saleswoman brought me gowns in colors I would never wear.
Red. Silver. Pale blue. One alarming bright yellow gown that made Naomi whisper that I looked like a decorative lemon.
Then I had stepped out in the green one.
Dad had stopped breathing for half a second. “That one,” he had said quietly.
I had looked at myself in the mirror, at the soft skirt falling around my legs, at the sweetheart neckline and the delicate embroidered pattern across the bodice, and I had thought, absurdly, that my mother would have loved it.
Then I had hated myself a little for thinking it.
Now the dress waited for me in the corner of my room like proof that beautiful things could still happen inside a house that felt half-empty.
From downstairs, a cabinet closed too loudly.
Naomi’s eyes flicked toward the sound. “How’s your dad?” she asked.
“Probably pretending he isn’t emotional.”
“Arlo?”
“Probably pretending he isn’t completely wrecked.”
“Balanced household.”
“We do our best.”
She turned off the faucet and inspected her fingers. “No permanent damage. I remain available to fulfill my role as the devastatingly beautiful best friend.”
“That’s very brave of you.”
“I know. People don’t understand the burden.”
I smiled as she crossed back into my room and dropped onto the edge of my bed.
She already had most of her makeup done, soft pink gloss and shimmering eyeshadow that made her hazel-green eyes look brighter than usual.
Her hair was half pinned up, loose pieces escaping around her face no matter how many clips she attacked them with.
The pink dress behind her suited her completely.
Shorter than mine. Sweet and bold at the same time, with white flowers scattered across the skirt and bodice like spring had gotten carried away.
She looked like prom.
I looked like I was pretending not to monitor the mailbox from the second-story window.
Naomi noticed, because she knew me far too well. “You checked twelve minutes ago,” she said.
“I was looking outside.”
“Sure.” She leaned back on her hands, unimpressed. “The mailbox just happens to be the one you’ve been emotionally stalking all afternoon.”
“I have not been stalking it.”
“Lucy, you paused with mascara in your hand because you heard a truck three streets over.”
“That could have been anything.”
“It was an delivery van.”
“You don’t know that.” I looked down at the mascara wand in my hand and carefully scraped the excess product against the tube. My fingers were steadier than the rest of me. They usually were.
Naomi’s teasing softened around the edges. “They said letters went out this week, right?”
I nodded once.
“And St. Croix already said yes.”
“That’s different.”
“I know.”
The way she said it made my throat tighten.
She had seen the brochure tucked inside my sketchbook sophomore year, watched me reread the writing program page until the crease down the middle started wearing thin, listened to me pretend Boston was just an interesting option instead of the place I pictured whenever Northbend felt too small to breathe inside.
“It’s probably not coming today,” I said. “And even if it does, it might not be…” My voice caught. It was too scary to say out loud. What if I jinx it?
“Luce.” Naomi’s expression gentled. “You’re allowed to want it.”
I looked toward the window again before I could stop myself.
Aldenmere University.
Even the name still felt like something I should not say too loudly.
I had found it for the first time when I was eleven, sitting on the floor of the public library while Dad was at a Frosthawks event two blocks away.
I had pulled a college guide off the bottom shelf because the building on the cover looked like it belonged in a storybook.
Old stone. Tall windows. Ivy crawling up brick walls.
A courtyard dusted with autumn leaves. Students crossing beneath bare trees with books tucked against their chests.
It had seemed less like a school and more like a doorway.
My dream school had one of the best writing programs in the country.
Small workshops. Literary journals. Professors whose names appeared in the backs of novels I read under the covers long after I was supposed to be asleep.
It sat just outside Boston, close enough to the city that I could imagine coffee shops and used bookstores and brick sidewalks shining after rain, far enough from Northbend that nobody would look at me and see Ezra Thomas’s daughter before they saw anything else.
I had wanted it before I fully understood what wanting could cost.
Then St. Croix State had accepted me two months ago, and everyone had acted relieved.
It was a good school. A practical school. A Minnesota school. Close enough to come home on weekends. Close enough to see Dad. Close enough to see Ty if St. Croix kept circling him the way everyone expected them to.
Aldenmere made St. Croix State look like clown college in Tampa. A plane ticket and a time zone away. Old brick and ocean air and a future where I had to learn how to be myself without a safety net.
A car slowed outside. My entire body went still. Naomi’s head turned toward the window at the same time mine did.
I glanced toward the mirror. I had done a horrendous job. Maybe clown college in Tampa is my true future, I thought, scrubbing my face down with a makeup removing wipe. I sighed. “Fix me.”
“With pleasure.” She stood and took the mascara from my hand, then turned my chair toward the light with the concentration of someone performing surgery under poor conditions. I sat still while she cleaned the smudge beneath my eye with a cotton swab.
The house made another quiet sound downstairs. Dad moving through the kitchen. Arlo’s voice answered him, lower and amused. The normalness of it pressed gently against the wrongness.
My mother should be here. The thought soaked through me until I was small and young and unfairly heartbroken. She had her own apartment now. Her own dishes. Her own towels. Her own life across town, where cardboard boxes no longer sat half-open in the hallway.
She had asked to see pictures. She had said she couldn’t come help me get ready because things were complicated.
Complicated. The word adults used when they did not want teenagers to understand how thoroughly they had broken something. As if that made absence tidier.
Naomi’s thumb touched my chin, turning my face slightly. “Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking.”
I swallowed, then let myself smile because she was trying. Because I needed her to keep trying. Because if she went soft on me too long, I might start crying before my eyeliner had fully dried.
She finished fixing my makeup and stepped back. “There. Balanced. Elegant. Devastating. Ty Burns is going to forget every word he has ever learned.”
The laugh that escaped me was easier that time. “That would only take a few seconds.”
Footsteps moved through the entryway below. The front door opened. A low murmur of voices followed, but not Ty’s voice. Not that bright, familiar energy that always seemed to enter a house before his body did.
Then Arlo called up, “Lucy?”
I stood too quickly, nearly knocking my knee into the vanity. “What?”
Arlo appeared in my doorway a few seconds later holding a stack of mail.
My little brother was sixteen and already taller than me in a way he enjoyed far too much. He wore dark jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, because Dad had apparently decided prom pictures required every man in the house to dress for the occasion.
He held one envelope apart from the others. White. Thick. Creamy paper. My name and address printed across the front. In the upper left corner, in deep navy ink, were the words Aldenmere University.
For a second, the entire room narrowed to the envelope in Arlo’s hand.
Naomi whispered something. I didn’t catch it.
My pulse moved everywhere at once. Throat.
Wrists. Ribs. The backs of my knees. I stared at the envelope like if I looked too directly, it might disappear, like hope was a skittish thing that would bolt if startled.
Arlo stepped inside slowly. “This came.”
I couldn’t move.
He looked down at the envelope, then back at me. His face softened with the kind of protective tenderness he usually tried to disguise under irritation. “Want me to leave it here?”