Since You've Been Gone (16 page)

“I hope so,” she said. “And thanks for coming with me tonight. The company really helped.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt myself smile at her, and I knew now wasn’t the moment to tell her the real reason I’d wanted to come along. “I’m glad,” I said truthfully. Dawn lifted her hand in a wave, then headed back up to the pizzeria, and I crossed the parking lot toward my car. I started to head home—after all, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. But as I got closer, the thought of going back—to my quiet house and the hot, empty stillness of my room—started to make me feel claustrophobic. I turned off the road that would take me there and steered my car toward Stanwich’s main downtown. There didn’t seem to be a lot of activity going on—it was getting late, and this was, especially during the week, an early-to-bed town. The lights were still on in the diner, and I could see some booths that faced the windows were filled—the diner was pretty much the only place to eat after ten during the week. Most of the businesses
downtown were closed, their lights off, and I could see, through the glass doors of the movie theater, a yawning employee cleaning the popcorn machine.

I knew I was just wasting gas at this point, but I kept on going. The mechanics of driving, plus the new mix playing on my iPod, helped me keep my mind off what I’d failed to do tonight, and the fact that I’d probably just blown my best chance to cross number eleven off the list.

I found myself driving farther and farther out, away from the main commercial districts, and it wasn’t until the streetlights fell away and the stars took over the sky that I realized I was heading toward the Orchard. I slowed as I passed it—down the drive, I could see a few cars parked, but there were none on the side of the road, and had a feeling that whoever was hanging out there now was a pretty small group—nothing like the weekend parties. I kept on driving past, and when I saw the lights of Route 1 Fuel up ahead, I realized that it might not be the worst idea to fill up, especially since I’d been driving around aimlessly and had lost track of where I was with my gas levels.

As I stepped inside the mini-mart, I saw that it was the same guy who had been working behind the counter as the previous time I’d been there. He gave me a small smile, like maybe he remembered me as he set down the book he was reading and took my twenty. I was in better gas shape than I’d realized, and the car only took fifteen dollars. I headed inside for my change, and the guy set the book aside again, but this time it was faceup,
and I read its title—
Beginning Sudoku: Tips and Tricks
.

Suddenly, it all came back to me. Frank, trying to get this guy to try it—I’d have to mention it, if I ever talked to him again—and him telling me that this guy’s name was James. He handed me a five, and I took it, not quite able to believe I was going to do this. “You’re, um, James, right?” I asked as I pocketed my change.

“Yeah,” the guy said, sounding a little wary, probably wondering how I knew that, since he didn’t have a name tag on.

“That’s great,” I said, speaking fast, and probably sounding insane, but not really caring. “Did, um, anyone ever call you Jamie? Like, ever?”

“My nana,” he said after a pause, clearly confused as to why on earth I was asking this. “You know, when I was little.”

That was good enough for me. That counted, right? It had to. “Okay,” I said, nodding. I didn’t let myself think about what I was about to do, because I knew I’d talk myself out of it. I just reached across the counter and gave him a quick hug, my arms just touching his back before I dropped them again. I took a step back from the counter and saw that he was staring at me, looking taken aback and more confused than ever. “Um, have a nice night,” I said as I gave him a nod and hurried out to my car. I waited to feel incredibly embarrassed, but the feeling didn’t come. It was more like a small victory, a secret to everyone else but me.

I started the Volvo and glanced back once at the gas station
before I drove away.  Through the window, I could see James still standing behind the counter, but not reading his book. Instead, he was looking down, off to the side, with a tiny smile on his face.

I pulled out into the dark night, feeling giddy, incredulous laughter starting to bubble up. I didn’t try and keep it down, but just laughed out loud, alone in my car, not quite able to believe I’d just done that. “Jamie hugged,” I said, in a
mission accomplished
voice to myself—or maybe to Sloane. I knew she would have loved that. If she could have seen me hugging the mini-mart guy, she wouldn’t have stopped laughing for about two weeks. I felt the smile still on my face as I turned up my music, louder than normal, and drove home, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel.

FEBRUARY

Four months earlier

I woke up with a start and blinked up at my bedroom ceiling and the inexactly placed glow-in-the-dark constellations that paraded across one side. I looked around, trying to figure out what had happened, why I was awake. I sat up and saw, at the foot of my bed, a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back at me.

“Godot!” I hissed at him, flinging my pillow in his general direction. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to injure the
cat—not right then, anyway—but he had startled me, and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat.

My aim was wide, and the cat didn’t even flinch as the pillow sailed past him. He gave me a look that could only be described as contemptuous, then stretched and hopped off my bed, crossing to my door that was open a crack and squeezing himself through it. “Stupid cat,” I muttered as I got out of bed to reclaim my pillow. As I did, I noticed that a pile of shirts on my dresser was lighting up intermittently.

I crossed to my dresser and quickly found the source of it—my cell, which had been buried under my clean laundry. I saw that I had four texts, all from Sloane.

Hey are you awake?

I’m downstairs

Outside

It’s cold!!

I immediately typed a response back.

Be right there!

Then I eased open my bedroom door and made my way down the stairs in the dark as quietly as I could. Even though I’d seen on my phone when I texted back that it was technically Saturday, we were still solidly in the middle of what my grandmother called the “wee smalls.” My dad could be a notoriously light sleeper, and since he was teaching an eight a.m. class that semester, I didn’t think he’d appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night on a day when he could
normally sleep in. I’d only taken a few steps when I realized it had been a mistake to do this without shoes or something warm on. The house was incredibly drafty, especially in the winter, and my feet already felt half frozen. I kept pressing the button on my phone to light my way down to the front door, illuminating the picture that was on the home screen—me and Sloane at the Call Me Kevin concert we’d seen in August, my shirt turned inside out because I hadn’t known until she’d told me, and made me change, that you weren’t ever supposed to wear the T-shirt of the band to their concert.

I crept down to the first floor and no longer needed the cell phone light, thanks to the moonlight streaming in through the windows. I also didn’t have to worry about being as quiet down here, and crossed to the mudroom as fast as I could. If I was freezing inside the house, I could only imagine what she was feeling outside of it.

I opened the front door wide and there was my best friend, her cheeks and nose pink, her shoulders sagging with relief when she saw me.

“Thank god!” Sloane gave me a tight, quick hug—one of her specialties; she somehow managed to make her hugs feel meaningful but also efficient—and crossed behind me into the mudroom. I could smell the perfume she always wore, more than usual tonight—woodsy notes mixed with gardenias. I pulled the door shut and she hustled into the
house, rubbing her hands together. “I’m so glad you got my texts,” she whispered. “I was
freezing
out there.”

“What are you doing here?” I whispered back, even though we were in the kitchen now, a floor below where my parents were sleeping, and probably could have risked using something closer to full volume. I looked at her and took in, for the first time, what she was wearing. She was in a floor-length black gown with a neckline that dipped down and was gathered somewhere around her sternum with a rhinestone brooch. Over this, she wore a little fur capelet that I had no doubt had been found in one of her grandmothers’ extensive closets, or was from Twice Upon a Time, her favorite consignment shop, as it was clearly vintage. “Was there some dress code for tonight I wasn’t told about?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “I was at that party Milly and Anderson dragged me to, remember?”

“So how was it?” I asked. Something felt off, and I couldn’t put my finger on what, until I noticed that we were almost eye-to-eye, since I was barefoot and Sloane was in heels.

“Can we go upstairs?” she asked, yawning and covering her mouth with her hand. “I’m exhausted.”

I nodded and she turned and headed for the staircase, leading the way. She spent enough time in my house that she knew her way around and was finally comfortable enough to just reach into the fridge and take something if she was hungry. I followed a few steps behind, still not clear on why
she’d come to my house after the party but happy to have her there nonetheless. She was walking a little more carefully than usual, her ankles wobbling just slightly in the heels, holding her dress out to the side so she wouldn’t trip on it.

When she made it into my room, she kicked off her heels and went right to the drawer where I kept my pajamas. Sure enough, she pulled out one at the bottom of the stack, the crew T-shirt from the disastrous
Bug Juice
movie. It had been beset by problems the whole way through, starting with the fact that the producers had changed the ages of the kids from eleven to sixteen, and the lead actress had been shipped off to rehab mid-shoot. The shirt read
You Can’t Handle the Juice,
a crew in-joke, and the first time Sloane had seen it, she had cracked up. She loved the shirt for some reason, and was always threatening to steal it.

“I swear,” she said, yawning again as she pulled the shirt on over her head and then wriggled out of her dress, dropping it into a pile at her feet and stepping out of it, “one of these days. This shirt will just disappear, and you’ll have no idea where it’s gone to.”

“I think I’ll have some idea,” I said. I went to the laundry pile on my dresser and saw my best pair of pajama pants was clean. “Want these?” I asked, holding them up. She nodded, I tossed them to her, and she pulled them on.

“Oh my
god
,” she said, yawning again as she beelined for my bed. My bed was old and the mattress sagged in the
middle, but it was queen-size, and there was enough room that we could face each other and still have enough space to see each other and talk. She took the side she always took when she stayed over, nestled down under the blankets, then hugged her pillow and smiled at me. I knew when she had something to say, and I could tell that she had been waiting for this moment—quiet, with my full attention—since I’d opened the front door. “So I met a boy tonight.”

“You did?” I asked, getting into bed as well, pulling the blankets up and turning to her. “At the party?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “He was there with his parents too.”

“Does he go to Stanwich?” I settled back, only to realize my pillow was still on the floor. I leaned half out of the bed to grab it, then plumped it once and settled into it, preparing to hear the story.

Boys had been besotted with Sloane since she’d shown up at Stanwich High, but she’d been picky. She’d dated a senior for a few weeks our sophomore year, then a fellow junior this past fall, and the summer before, had a brief fling with a guy who normally went to boarding school and was just in town for the summer. But none of these had lasted, and she hadn’t seemed particularly devastated when they didn’t—she was always the one who did the breaking up. But it had been a while since a guy had appeared on her radar—until tonight, apparently.

“No,” she said. “Stanwich Academy.” It was the private school in town, and while I vaguely knew some girls who went there, the two schools didn’t really have much overlap socially. “His name’s Sam. Sam Watkins.” She pronounced the name carefully, like it was a foreign word she wasn’t used to saying but nonetheless loved the sound of. She smiled, wide, and I saw in that moment that she really liked him.

“Oh my god,” I said. “You’re smitten already. I can tell.” She didn’t deny it, but buried her face in the pillow, so all I could see was her hair, the waves coaxed into curls for the evening. “So tell me about him.”

She turned her head toward me, yawning, but didn’t open up her eyes again when the yawn was finished. “He’s great,” she said, her words coming slower than before. “You’ll see.”

I waited for something else to come, an explanation of his greatness, when it occurred to me it was probably Sam who’d dropped Sloane at my house—Milly and Anderson would have just taken her back with them. Not because they would have cared if she slept over, but because they wouldn’t have wanted to make an extra trip. I tried to recall if there had been a car there when I’d opened the door, someone waiting to make sure she got in okay, but I just couldn’t remember.