Since You've Been Gone (41 page)

When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I put the car in gear and headed home.

And when I started to cry as I pulled into my driveway, it was coming down hard enough that I could pretend that it was only the rain hitting my face, and not the fact that I’d just lost another friend.

“Em?” my mother knocked on the doorframe and stuck her head into my room, her expression worried. “You okay, hon?”

I looked up from the floor, where, in an effort to try and deny the fact that everything in my life was falling apart, I’d been cleaning out my closet.

The morning after the kiss, I’d texted Frank, but had gotten no response. I’d spent the day staring at my phone, waiting to hear from him, glad for once that Paradise was totally deserted, since I would have been useless to anyone who wanted ice cream. I’d finally run out of willpower that night and had called him, but it had gone right to his voice mail. I still hadn’t heard from him the next day, and I finally told Beckett to hide my phone somewhere high so I’d stop staring at it. On the third day, trying to pretend I wasn’t stalking him, just getting some exercise, I’d walked past his house, and saw that his truck was gone. I figured maybe he was at work, but it was still gone at night when I drove past. It was that night, when I’d begun to think I really was never going to hear from him again, that I got a text.

Hey, can’t talk right now.

Sorting through things. More soon.

As someone who had been raised by two playwrights, I understood subtext.  And this text, coupled with the fact I hadn’t heard from him in three days, meant Frank was brushing me off, acting like I was a stranger. He clearly wanted to forget what had happened, and act like the kiss had never taken place—as though that would make it go away.

I’d been dodging Dawn’s calls, not wanting to tell her what happened until I spoke to Frank. But since I no longer felt like I owed him anything, the next day, when Dawn called, I picked up.

“Oh my god,” she said, before I even said hello, her voice high and excited. “I’m so glad you’re finally around! Have you been sick or something?”

“Well—” I started, but she was already continuing on.

“I have a date tonight! With Matthew! He asked me yesterday. We’re going to the movies, isn’t that great?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling myself smile for the first time in days, beyond glad that Collins had taken my advice. “That’s fantastic.”

“So you have to help me figure out what to wear,” she said. “But maybe later tonight? I’m at work now anyway, and it’ll help to be in front of my closet.” She took what sounded like a much-needed breath. “What’s up with you? Are you okay?”

“Frank and I kissed,” I blurted out. I knew I wouldn’t be
able to make small talk about anything else with that on my mind, since it was pretty much the only thing I had thought about for the last three days. “I kissed him,” I admitted. There was just silence on Dawn’s end, and I went on, in a rush, “And now I don’t know what’s going on. He texted me back, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants to talk to me. And I just want things to go back to how they were. . . .” Even as I said this, I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t really want that at all. But I would have preferred that over whatever we were doing now.

“Emily,” Dawn said, and her voice was colder than I had ever heard it. “He has a girlfriend.”

I blinked, a little startled by Dawn’s change of tone. “I know,” I said slowly. “And I feel terrible about this. I—”

“Do you?” she asked. “Because you knew he had a girlfriend when you went ahead and kissed him, didn’t you?”

“Dawn,” I said, trying to regroup. I had actually hoped to talk to her about this, to get her take on things, and instead, it felt like I was being attacked. “I—”

“Did you honestly think I would be on board with this?” she asked, her voice rising. “After what Mandy did to me? After what Bryan did?”

I closed my eyes for just a second and rested the phone against my head. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do, and—”

“Look, I can’t really talk right now,” she said, her voice clipped and cold. “I’m at work.”

“Okay,” I said, a little confused, since Dawn had never exactly been committed to her job. “Should I call you later?”

“I have to go,” she said, not really sounding angry any longer, just sounding sad. “I have to work, and then I have this date to get ready for, so . . .”

A moment too late, the penny dropped. Dawn didn’t want to talk to me anymore. She didn’t want to be friends with me, not after what I’d done. We said stilted good-byes and I hung up the phone, feeling like everything in my life was suddenly breaking apart and floating away just when I needed it most.

After I hung up with Dawn, I called Collins. When he answered the phone, he sounded wary, and I hadn’t gotten far in my halting explanation when he cut me off.

“I know what happened,” he said, letting out a long breath. “This isn’t good, Emily.”

“I know that,” I said.  Any last hopes I was holding on to that Frank might want to still be friends again, or that we might be able to move past this, ended when I heard the resigned tone in Collins’s voice. “But I just wanted to—”

“You know I can’t do this, right?” he asked, not sounding angry, mostly just tired. “I can’t take your side. He’s my best friend.”

“I know he is,” I said, “But if you could just talk to him—”

“I can’t,” Collins said. “Even if I wanted to, which I
really
don’t. He’s in New—” Collins stopped abruptly, but I’d heard enough to put it together. I hadn’t realized that I could feel
worse, but I did. I now understood why Frank’s truck hadn’t been at his house. He was gone. He had gone to Princeton. He had chosen his girlfriend. Of
course
he had; it wasn’t even a question.  And he’d slept there, with her.

I knew I had no right to feel mad about this, but even so, I had to fight back the tears that were threatening to escape—for what Frank and I had had, and for what we would never have, and for what I’d broken.

“I’m sorry, Em,” Collins said, and I could hear that he meant it.

“Yeah,” I whispered, not trusting myself to say much more, trying to keep my voice steady so that he wouldn’t hear that I was about to burst into tears. It was suddenly becoming clear to me that I had nobody on my side. “Have a good time tonight.”

“Thanks,” he said, and his voice was gentle when he added, “Take care, okay?”

And I’d nodded, even though Collins couldn’t see me do it, and hung up, realizing that he had just told me good-bye. So I’d lost Dawn, and Collins, and of course, Frank. With one stupid action, I’d just wrecked everything that I’d built over the course of the summer.

And now my mother was standing in my doorway, because even she had noticed that something was wrong. “Hi,” I said, setting down the pair of shoes Sloane had bought for me the last time we’d been at a flea market together. I squinted at my mother, and noticed that she was wearing actual clothing, and
that her hair was washed. “Did you guys finish your play?”

My mother gave me a smile that was equal parts thrilled and tired. “Late last night,” she said.

“Wow,” I said, making myself smile at her. “That’s great. Congrats.”

“Thanks,” she said, her smile fading as she took a step closer into my room. “I’m just a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, automatically. And if my mother had still been deep in writing mode, she would have left it at that. But she just looked at me a moment longer, the kind of look that let me know that she was back, and the slack I’d been able to have all summer was pretty much over.

“We’ll talk later,” she said, her tone leaving open no real discussion of this. “But right now, Frank’s downstairs.”

I stared at her. “He is?”

She nodded as she headed out of my room. “And you might want to rescue him,” she added. “I think Beckett’s down there with him.”

That was all I needed to hear. I pushed myself off the bed, and glanced at the mirror briefly before taking the steps downstairs two at a time. I didn’t look my best, but Frank had seen me, for so many mornings, right after I’d rolled out of bed.  And since I had a feeling that he was only there to tell me what I already knew—that we weren’t friends anymore—I wasn’t sure I necessarily needed to look great for that.

I found him and Beckett on the front porch, Beckett
showing off his ninja kicks, all of which were getting distressingly close to Frank’s face. Just seeing Frank again was enough to make it feel like one of Beckett’s kicks had landed right in my stomach, and I hated how much I’d missed him. “Beck,” I said, looking away from Frank, not sure I was really up to talking directly to him just yet. “Be careful.”

My little brother looked at me scornfully. “I’m always careful,” he said, before attempting a roundhouse kick that landed him flat on his back on the porch. “Ow,” he muttered.

“Can we talk?” Frank asked me.

Since Beckett was showing no signs of moving from the porch, I nodded toward the driveway. “Want to take a walk?”

“Sure,” he said easily. I looked at him and realized that for some reason he looked
happy
. Clearly, he had not had the same few days that I had. He had just rolled with it, and probably everything in his life was still going wonderfully.

I could feel my anger start to build as he followed me up the driveway, toward the mailbox.  As we walked, I noticed there were only our cars parked there. “Did you walk here?”

He nodded, and smiled at me, like life was just so great. “I kind of felt like it.”

I nodded, swallowing hard, wishing he would just get this over with. When I hadn’t heard from him after his text, I’d assumed that this would be our new status quo—we’d just never speak again, and forget about everything we’d shared over the course of the summer. But I’d forgotten I was dealing with
Frank Porter, who probably wanted to make sure that I was fine with pretending that we’d never been friends, so he could cross this issue off, one more thing neatly and successfully resolved.

We had only gone a few steps down the road when he stopped and looked at me. “Listen,” he said. He was smiling again, like he was just so happy he couldn’t hide it, even as he was preparing to break my heart. “Emily. I just wanted to—”

“You know, we don’t have to do this,” I said, cutting him off. I couldn’t do much about this situation, but I could limit the number of times this week that people told me they were done with me forever. “I get it, okay?”

He just looked at me for a moment, his brow furrowed. “You do?”

“I do,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I got the message.”

Now he looked very confused, his head tilting to the side. “What message?”

“That we’re not friends anymore,” I said, and even though I was trying to keep my voice steady, it broke on the last word. “And you know what, maybe we never were. And it’s not like we’re going to be friends when school starts, so it’s probably just better this way.”

Frank shook his head. “What are you talking about? I wanted to—”

“I just don’t need to hear it, okay?” I could hear how high and shaky my voice sounded. “We don’t have to do this.”

Frank looked at me, and I could see some of his sureness—his confidence—begin to ebb. “We don’t?”

I shook my head. I just didn’t want to go along with it. Maybe for once, Frank Porter didn’t get to have everything neatly resolved. “I get that you were trying to be the good guy and come here so we could put it behind us. But I don’t need it.” And then, because I didn’t think I could stay there and look at him anymore, I turned and walked away, back toward my house.

I heard Frank call my name, but I didn’t turn around, and when he called it again, I broke into a run, aware as I did so that it was the first time all summer that I was running alone.

The summer had come full circle.

Once again, I was all alone. I had no friends, and nobody to hang out with, but this time, it was all my fault. Once again, I was having trouble grasping how I’d gone from having people to talk to, plans, some semblance of a life—to nothing, all in a moment.

I was going to work and avoiding Captain Pizza, though I had once passed Dawn while she was talking on her phone as I headed into Paradise and she sat outside the pizza parlor. We’d made brief eye contact before we both looked away and she went back to her conversation. I only caught the occasional word, but I could hear how happy she sounded—her voice was
suffused with it, and she kept calling the person on the other end “Matty”—which seemed to indicate that the movie date had gone well. I hated that I didn’t know more, that I hadn’t heard the recap, moment by moment. And while I was happy for both of them, it made me feel all that much more alone.

I’d started taking long runs by myself, in neighborhoods I’d never run with Frank, going out of my way to avoid bumping into him. I hadn’t heard from him since the morning I ran away from him. And while I didn’t regret what I’d done, there were still moments when I wondered what would have happened if I’d just let him finish, heard him out. But then I would tell myself, firmly, that I’d done the right thing—Frank, as junior class president, had once convinced me that school really
should
start fifteen minutes earlier. He was that talented a speaker.  And I hadn’t wanted to hear him talk his way out of our friendship, talk his way around the fact he’d kissed me back, talk me into agreeing with him that it had just been a huge, terrible mistake.