99 Days (24 page)

I’ve got a ton of packing left to do after dinner, my same old duffel openmouthed and gaping on the bed. I made myself more at home here than I ever meant to: clothes spilling out of drawers, and crinkled Lodge stationery scattered across the desktop.

I think of the last time I packed up like this, grabbing huge handfuls of socks and underwear and shoving them into my bag to bring to Arizona, the whole affair taking roughly twenty minutes and completed in total silence: I’d turned off my phone and computer to dam the incessant ping of text and email and Facebook, one nasty message piling up on top of another and never a single word from Patrick himself. The Bristol track team didn’t need me anymore, they’d told me primly—though I was welcome to try out in the fall—but they’d agreed to take me anyway, the only new senior girl in a class of sixty-five.

One year later and I take my careful time with it, packing up my jeans and my boots and my hair ties; I take the
Golly, Molly
artwork and the collage of the lakefront Imogen sent me home with the other night. It made me cry when she handed it over. After a minute, it made her cry, too.

I’ve got Netflix for company, the same low drone that’s ferried me through this whole summer, and I’m halfway through a documentary about the secret lives of birds when my phone rings, a number I don’t recognize appearing on the screen. I answer with some trepidation, wondering briefly if it’s someone new and different calling to whisper something poison in my ear: “Hello?”

“Molly?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Roisin,” an unfamiliar girl’s voice says, pronouncing it
RO-sheen
, and it’s only after she adds, “Your roommate?” before I put things together.

“Oh my God, Roisin!” I exclaim. Then, not wanting to explain
I’ve been pronouncing your name like
Raisin
in my head all summer
: “Sorry. I had, like, a brain fart there, I don’t know.”

“The name thing?” she guesses, laughing a little. “You’re . . . definitely not the only one. I couldn’t spell it until I was in, like, seventh grade.”

We spend a few minutes small-talking about our parents and if we have any brothers and sisters, the logistics of who’s going to bring a TV (me) and mini fridge (her). “Do you know what you’re going to major in?” she asks me.

“Business, I think.” It’s the first time that anyone’s asked me that question and I’ve had a answer ready. “I think business.”

“Yeah?” Roisin asks. “I always think that’s so neat, when people can just answer that question. I have no freaking idea what I want to do with my life, so those emails the dean was sending out every three seconds about declaring a major were, like, super appreciated.”

“Ugh, I know,” I say, laughing. She has a Southern accent, Roisin from Georgia. It’s nice. “He’s eager, for sure.”

“I told myself I was going to figure it out this summer,” she continues, “but instead I got bogged down in all this drama with my boyfriend. I’ll bore you with the details of that mess during orientation, I guess, but basically it’s just really hard to remember your hometown isn’t the only place in the world, you know?”

That lands for me, sharp and sudden. I look at the lush green trees outside. In five days I’ll be in Boston, someplace where I’ve got no reputation. Where everyone, not just me, will be fresh and clean and new. “Yeah,” I say slowly, pressing my forehead against the cool glass of the windowpane. “Yeah, I know.”

I stay way past the end of my shift putting paperwork together, a bible for whoever comes next. The sun’s already setting, and Penn and the kids are long gone by the time I head out to the lot and realize with a sharp, fast intake of breath that there’s somebody sitting on the hood of my car, waiting.

Gabe
.

“Hi,”
I say, my eyes filling up unexpectedly at the sight of him, how every day this summer his face has been my good, good thing. I want to hug him, want to hold tight and keep on holding. I wrap my arms around myself instead. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.” Gabe shakes his head, crossing his own arms and looking annoyed at himself, or maybe at me. He’s got his baseball cap on, that handsome face shaded in the gold-purple light. “I wanted to see you. I’m an idiot, but I did.”

“You’re not an idiot,” I say, my voice breaking a little. There’s a cut at the corner of his mouth, his lip a little swollen, the physical damage right there for all the world to see. Something sharp and painful twists inside my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I messed up.”

Gabe shrugs. “You could have told me,” he says, and, God, he sounds so
disappointed
. “All summer, we’ve been—you could have—I said I
loved
you, Molly.” He huffs out a frustrated laugh. “And, like, I’m not a lunatic, I know how fast that was, but—”

“Did you, though?” I interrupt suddenly. “I mean, did you actually love me? Or did you just need to beat Patrick at this, too?”

“Molly.”
Gabe touches his tongue to the split place on his mouth, looks at something over my shoulder. “Maybe it started that way.”

“That’s gross,” I say immediately, stepping backward, feeling my face go hot and prickly with building tears. “That’s
gross
, Gabe.”

“You don’t think I know that?” Gabe asks me. “Walking around with a bunch of feelings for my little brother’s girlfriend, like he had one thing I didn’t and I—”

“I’m not a
thing
!” I burst out, shocked at the unfairness of it. “For fuck’s sake, Gabe, I’m a
person
, and there were these huge consequences for me, and you just—”

“I know you are,” Gabe interrupts. “Of
course
I know that. And it might have been about my brother in the beginning, in a way. But the fact is I did, I spent this whole summer falling in love with you, and if you knew this whole time you were never gonna love me back, then—”

“I
do
love you, though,” I tell him. “That’s the worst part, don’t you get that? I do.” I climb up onto the hood beside him then, the metal warm from sitting in the sun all day. I take a deep breath. “Patrick was the first person I ever loved, but you . . . I’ve spent this summer wondering what it would have been like if I’d been with you from the very beginning,” I tell him honestly.

Gabe sighs. “Me too,” is all he says.

We sit there for a while, watching the sunset. I can hear the crickets beeping in the trees. It’s the end of August now, the world gone heavy and expectant. It doesn’t feel as awkward as it should. “When do you leave?” I ask him finally. “For Indiana?”

“Day after tomorrow,” he says. “I didn’t get the MGH thing. Not that it matters, I guess.” He shrugs. “They say I can reapply for next spring.”

I think of the fantasies I had earlier this summer, the two of us piggybacking through the New England leaves. I’ll miss him, I realize, something like homesickness setting up residence behind my rib cage. “I think you should,” I tell him. “Reapply, I mean.”

Gabe raises his eyebrows, a flicker of interest passing across his handsome face. “You do, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

Gabe nods slightly like maybe he’ll think about it. Slides off the hood of the car. “Be seeing you, Molly Barlow,” he says softly. Kisses me on the cheek before he goes.

The next day is my last shift at the Lodge, everything wrapping up for the season and a walk through the grounds with my replacement, a community college bro named Hal. Penn and the kids get me a memo book as a going-away gift, already filled with half-sensical Penn-flavored notes-to-self like,
Watch out for dining-hall meat products
and
Floss your brain
.

“I love you,” I tell her, standing on my tiptoes to squeeze her tight and not realizing how true it is until the words are out of my mouth. The thought of leaving the Lodge makes my chest feel tight, like the band of my bra’s a size too small.

“Love you back, Molly,” Penn promises quietly. She gets both hands on my face and plants a kiss there. “Go do good.”

I smooch Fabian good-bye and turn to Desi, who’s standing in the corner with one thumb shoved thoughtfully in her mouth, watching me with those big dark eyes.

“What do you say, Des?” I ask her, squatting down on the carpet so we’re at eye level. “You wanna tell me bye?”

Desi looks at me solemnly and for one heart-stopping moment I think we’re about to get there, that she’ll finally open her mouth after months and months of silence. I hold my breath and wait for it. She kisses me once and wordlessly on the end of my nose.

*

I’m in my car on the way out of the parking lot before I realize I forgot my last check in the office, and I let out a quiet swear under my breath. I managed to make it all the way to the end of my shift without running into anyone who hates me. The last thing I need is one more
screw you
for the road.

Instead of driving all the way back around to the employee door, I pull up in front of the main entrance and leave my hazards on—I’ll grab my check and get out of here ASAP, I promise myself, sweaty palms slipping on the brass handle of the Lodge door. After that, I’ll be gone for good.

Shit.

Julia and Elizabeth are all hanging out around the fireplace in the lobby, ankles crossed and fountain sodas sweating in their hands. Penn doesn’t like us to park ourselves here, she says it’s off-putting to guests, but Penn’s long gone for the day and here they both are, folded into the same club chairs Tess, Imogen, and I went to check out a couple of weeks ago. It feels like a lot longer than that. As soon as they spot me they fall completely, abruptly silent, like a record coming to a screeching halt in some old movie.

“I’m just getting my check,” I tell them, hands up in surrender, feeling my face flush—none of that piss-off, don’t-mess-with-me vinegar I felt coursing through my veins the other night at the party. “You don’t—I’ll be out of here in a second.”

“Thank fuck,” Julia says, in a voice exactly loud enough for me to hear her. So much for laying the smackdown, I guess. I think of what Roisin said on the phone the other night,
It’s easy to forget that your hometown isn’t the entire universe
. I wish there were a way to convince myself that’s true.

I slip into the office and fish my check out of my mailbox, which is already retagged with a label reading HAL. It’s crazy how fast things can change. I stuff it in my pocket and head for the doorway—

And that’s when I see Tess.

She’s standing in the hallway waiting, smooth braid and Barnard T-shirt, looking a thousand times more pulled together than she did the other day by the pool. “Hi!” I blurt, some weird muscle memory, that feeling of
my friend is here
. Then I blush some more. “I mean. Hi.”

Tess doesn’t smile. “I broke up with Patrick,” she tells me flatly, crossing her arms across her chest. “For good this time.”

“You did?” I echo her posture without totally meaning to, then drop my arms to my sides. I think of how guiltily my heart leaped when I heard that news the last time. All I can call up now is numbness and exhaustion. “I’m really sorry.”

Tess shakes her head. “No,” she says, sounding a little impatient. “That’s not why I’m telling you. I just—” She breaks off for a moment. “You and me are never going to be friends again, Molly, okay? We’re not. But I just wanted to tell you, I guess, that you were right. What you said at the party. That you’re not the only one who screwed up, and it sucked for us all to act like you were.” She raises her eyebrows. “Me included.”

For a moment, I just gape at her, uncomprehending. It sounds like something Imogen would say. It probably
was
something Imogen told her, as a matter of fact, but wherever it came from, hearing it feels like being hit with a wrecking ball, like my heart actually breaking in half. I didn’t always deserve them, friends like Tess and Imogen. From now on I’m going to make sure I do.

“Thanks,” I tell her finally, swallowing down the sharp press of tears—it feels like there shouldn’t be any more left in me by this point. My insides should be dried up like a prune. “I mean it. Thank you.”

Tess shrugs. “Take care of yourself, Molly,” she tells me. She waves to me once before she walks away.

My mom and I leave for Boston in the morning, the two of us hefting my packed duffel into the trunk of her car, plus the TV and my shower shoes and starchy extra-long sheets printed with tiny dots. “Oh, one more thing,” my mom says, then runs back into the house and returns with the biggest box of Red Vines I’ve ever seen in this lifetime, enough to keep me in candy for the entire semester at least.

“I went to Costco,” she says, and she grins.

I say bye to Vita and scratch Oscar under his doggie chin, then zip up my hoodie—it’s colder in the mornings now, the lake breeze tempting fall—and pick up my shoulder bag, doing one last mental double check for anything I might have missed. There were two texts on my phone when I woke up today: a pattern from this summer, maybe, but instead of twin missives from either Donnelly brother this morning, they were from Imogen and Roisin—
good luck!
and
can’t wait!

“Ready to go?” my mom asks me, a hand on my arm as we stand in the driveway. I glance up at the lilac Victorian, then higher at the treetops. The sun is warm and yellow-feeling on the back of my neck.

“I am,” I tell her, and smile. I squeeze her hand once before we get into the car.

Oh,
hey
, this does not get any easier the second time. So many people make it possible for me to do this thing that I love so hugely, and every last one of you holds my heart and truest gratitude:

To Alessandra Balzer, for your keen vision and steady guidance—you make me want to be a better man, and by “man,” I mean “writer who is not in fact a man.” To Emilie Polster, Jenna Lisanti, Nellie Kurtzman, Caroline Sun, Ali Lisnow, Bethany Reis, Alison Klapthor, Andrea Pappenheimer, Kerry Moynagh, Kathy Faber, Ruiko Tokunaga, Susan Katz, Kate Jackson, and every other gorgeous soul at Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins for your unflagging support and general wonderfulness. I’m so honored to play for this team.

To Josh Bank, Joelle Hobeika, and Sara Shandler: I honestly just love the shit out of you. To everyone at Alloy—especially Les Morgenstein, Natalie Sousa, Liz Dresner, Romy Golan, Heather David, Lauren Metz, and Theo Guliadis—
thank you
. You’re champions of the world.

To Christa Desir and Julie Murphy, for your fearlessness; to Court Stevens, for your heart; to Jasmine Warga, for your insight and encouragement on these pages.

To the Fourteenery, who make sure I am never alone.

To Rachel Hutchinson, best and most, always and always.

To all the Cotugnos, for launching me onto this delicious, unbelievable flight path, and all the Collerans, for giving me a safe place to land.