While You're Away (17 page)

But a mad little bit of my brain wanted him to realize that something had happened, and I needed him. I wanted that psychic connection we seemed to have to kick on. Where was he? Why didn’t he know I needed him?

“Hailey,” I said, louder.

“Sorry, it’s crazy here,” came the reply. “As soon as I find him, I’ll let him know, okay?”

I couldn’t bring myself to thank her. Or to say goodbye. I just hung up and put my phone on the mirror ledge.

Staring into the glass, I tried to wash away the red splotches that stung my cheeks. And I tried not to wonder why he was out with Hailey. Why Hailey had his phone. And where he was in the middle of a party, when no one could find him.

Because I’d met him at a party. I couldn’t help but be reminded—I’d met him at a party, when he was supposed to be with someone. And he’d ended up with someone else completely. Wrenching the water off, I snatched my phone and hit the bathroom door a little too hard.

That was different, I told myself viciously. You were different. Are different.

I’d heard those exact same words from Will’s lips, not so very long ago. Why was it suddenly so hard to believe them?

W
ill didn’t call me back that night.

He didn’t call the next morning, either. I tried to busy myself with a new song for Jane’s movie, but nothing came out right. A single chord put me right back in that smoke-stained office with Dave. Everything else sounded sour and distorted. Since music was part of the problem, I couldn’t escape into it.

That meant I had to resort to cleaning. Anytime things were really messed up, I liked to straighten. Physically organizing things was the only way I could feel like my emotional life was in some kind of order.

Turmoil meant I was going to wipe down the ceiling fans and scrub the crown molding with a brand-new sponge. The good china, the set we only used at Thanksgiving and Christmas—it was so soothing to pull down all twelve place settings and wipe each gilt-edged piece individually.

For 345 days of the year, I was a perfectly normal person. I kept my clutter to a minimum, wiped up my spills, and took the trash out before it tipped over the edges. The other twenty days, spread randomly throughout the calendar? I danced just out of reach of OCD. Today I felt compelled to break out the vinegar and old newspapers. It was a two-story house. We had a
lot
of windows.

Climbing onto the stepladder, I pushed curtains out of my way. The picture window in the living room was tricky. It was extra-wide, and it had no panes. One little streak in the middle invariably meant starting over. I attacked it with relish.

Padding through in slippered feet, Grace stopped with her cup of tea. She peered up at me, watching as I alternated between vinegar and newsprint. The glass squealed with each stroke, a sound that drove Ellie crazy. Clearly, it didn’t bother Grace. She sipped and watched, watched and sipped. Finally, I looked down at her.

“Are you that bored?”

With a shake of her head, she sat on the arm of the couch. “No, I just think it’s interesting.”

“What?”

Setting her tea on the end table, Grace folded her hands in her lap. Her hair fell in soft waves around her face, remnants of last night’s braids. Dark eyes thoughtful, she trained them on me as she weighed her words. Grace was always deliberate. This was no different.

Finally, she seemed to nod to herself. “You and Ellie are so much alike. Except when you’re upset. I like to clean away the pain, too.”

Being that she was immaculate all the time, I was surprised. What was left to clean when her apartment and her room were always so perfect? But it was sweet for her to find a similarity between us.

She was right—I would have never considered us alike. Except in the usual ways; if we stood next to each other, people knew we were sisters. We had the same coloring and the same crooked smile. But that was on the surface.

Attacking a few white-ringed spots, I said, “Yeah. Ellie likes to break things. She’s the yin to our yang. Or the other way around. I don’t know.”

Her voice buttery soft, Grace asked, “Did something happen last night?”

A lot of things happened last night. Performing as Dasa was weird. Dave’s personality facelift was uncomfortable. Hailey answering Will’s phone sucked. Then, waiting up until four in the morning for Will to return my call, for nothing . . . But I wasn’t sure I wanted to confide that in Grace.

“It’s just stuff,” I told her. “Senior year, the band, Jane’s movie. It’s a lot.”

Grace stood and looked around. She peered down each hall, precisely, then came back to me. Putting a foot on the bottom of the stepladder, she put a hand on my back. “Don’t get mad . . .”

I stiffened. “That’s the worst way to start a conversation if you don’t actually want somebody to get mad.”

Quietly, Grace glanced around again. “Ellie overheard you talking to Will about . . . um, how do I put this delicately?”

The picture window was about to get streaked. I put my vinegar bucket down and turned on the stepladder. With my best dark look, I pretended I wasn’t trapped there. I was, unless I wanted to knock Grace out of my way. Depending on what she said next, knocking her down might have been an option.

Lifting my chin, I said, “Just put it however, Gracie.”

“Fine.” Pressing her lips together, Grace drew a deep breath. “She heard you making a date to get naked on camera with Will, and far be it from me—”

“What the hell?”

There was no way I was going to stand there for
this
conversation. Lifting one of her hands, I stepped down and seriously considered bolting for my room. But why should I bolt? I hadn’t done anything wrong. It was my nosy, gossipy sisters who were on the side of fail this time.

Grace held out her hands to me, like she expected me to take them. “Sarah, sis, it’s okay! We’re just worried! Did he upload some of the pictures? Is that why you’re so frantic to reach him?”

“Who says I’m frantic to get ahold of him?” I demanded.

“You talk when you text,” Grace said. I must have looked baffled, because she demonstrated. “Hey, Will, did Hailey give you that message? Hey, Will, could you give me a call? Hey, Will, I need to talk to you. Hey, Will . . .”

“Shh, shush, zip it,” I said. My cheeks flamed. One, because what kind of first-grader was I, that I talked when I texted? And two, because my sisters had taken a tiny scrap of inaccurate information and spun it into something completely shady.

“You can talk to me,” Grace said. She was so earnest. So incredibly earnest. I still wanted to hit her.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I told her. Snatching up sheets of newspaper, I rolled them into balls to use on the windows. “We haven’t done anything like that yet. That’s not why I want to talk to him.”

“Is there something I can do? I really am a good listener.”

She kept standing there, perched like a sparrow on a windowsill. She seemed tiny and delicate. Telling her to buzz off felt cruel. There was just enough sincerity in the air around her, and I was still so upset and confused, that I broke. I’d finished half the downstairs windows and didn’t feel any better. Maybe dumping it in Grace’s lap would do the trick.

“Dave hit on me last night after the show, okay? It freaked me out, and I wanted to talk to Will.”

“Oh,” Grace said, surprised. She must have had a no-sexting-the-Internet-is-forever speech all prepared. When I busted out with something completely different, it gave her pause. Finally she said, “He didn’t have his phone? With the time difference, he should have still been up when we got home.”

Once I’d started, the rest came spilling out in a rush. “He was up! He was at a party. I know that because his next-door neighbor
Hailey
answered his phone. She said she couldn’t find him, but she’d pass the message on.”

Grace blinked at me. If she’d had pearls, she might have clutched them. “Is Hailey a girl?”

“Of course she’s a girl,” I yelped.

“I wasn’t sure!”

“I told her to have him call me. Anytime. No matter what time, but he didn’t. And he hasn’t answered my texts this morning, so I’m freaking out just a little bit, Grace. Just a little bit. Do you have any idea how many windows this house has?! It’s a lot!”

Slumping, I was exhausted and relieved. At least it was out; at least I wasn’t the only one with all this garbage in my head, even if I had just dumped it all over Grace the Doomspeaker. Okay, that wasn’t fair. And I felt really bad thinking it, because Grace abandoned her tea instantly and bundled me into her arms.

I didn’t want the hug, but it was so weird that she was giving it to me that I gave in in spite of myself. My chin bumped uncomfortably against her shoulder. I felt like a little kid. Like she’d just picked me up after I fell off my bike or something.

With a soothing croon, she petted my back. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why they can’t control themselves when they go away . . .”

I pulled my head back and squinted at her. “He’s not Luke, Grace.”

A more familiar expression appeared on her face. This one was just a little bit patronizing. That older-sister-knows-best face, where she shook her head ever so slightly, pitying me because I just didn’t understand yet what she knew to be the truth. “Everybody’s different, it’s true.”

Backing out of her arms, I shook a finger at her. “No. No. What Luke did was skeevy and disgusting. I’m still actively hoping a walrus sits on him. But that’s Luke. That’s not Will.”

“I hope that’s true—”

“Don’t.”

White-hot rage flashed over me. She’d been creeping around behind me for weeks, listening for signs of trouble. It was almost like she wanted things with Will to fall apart. If they did, then it justified her suspicion. She could prove she tried to protect me. Even, perhaps, she could find some justification for Luke’s behavior if Will was just as much of a dog. If all men cheated, then she might feel less damaged.

Too bad for her, she wasn’t going to get that from me. Or Will. Snatching up my bucket of vinegar water, I pulled myself up to my full height. “We’re not talking about this. Because there’s nothing to talk about. I’m not mad that he hasn’t called me back. I’m worried. About him. Because I
trust
him.”

As if shedding an unwanted coat, Grace backed off. “Okay. Your life is your life. You’re the one in control.”

“You’re damned right I am,” I snapped. I sounded so fiery, so furious, that I thought Grace believed it.

I only wished I did.

~

Since I couldn’t wash windows in peace, I retreated to my room. Dragging my laptop into bed, I slipped slowly into crazy-person mode. First, I pulled up Will’s Twitter account. He’d last updated it at nine o’clock his time, which was ten my time, so just before I’d called. His last message, mysteriously, said
OTP COME SEE ME OTP
. No tag. No reply. It made no sense.

I plugged it into a search engine and got an urban dictionary definition that meant either Will had started to care really, really deeply about getting two TV characters to kiss, or I had the wrong definition. Back to Twitter, I dug through his friend list. A couple of other people had the same message on their timeline, at the same time. And then, nothing.

Maybe it was a party password. But wouldn’t a party have pictures? With a few quick clicks, I called up Instagram and even the sad little Facebook account that Will never updated. The last thing on his wall there was
Packing for college, going to miss my girl.
Wistful, I stared at that for a few minutes while I tried to examine my life and my choices.

Was I really worried about
him
?

My head made a good case for worry. What if he was hurt? But my heart knew that he was fine. He’d been partying. No doubt, he was sleeping it off somewhere. I didn’t want to let myself wonder, even for a second, if he was sleeping it off somewhere
with
someone else.

But wonder I did. Why did Hailey have his phone? Why was she—now that I was scrolling through his Instagram with a more critical eye—in all of his pictures?

With her sun-streaked hair and her freckled nose, even I had to admit she was cute. Almost every picture featured her pulling a face or striking a pose. In some shots, she had feathers dangling from her hair. In others, a peacock blue streak dyed right in. Glitter sparkled from her skin; her clothes were casual pop star, and fit her perfectly.

She looked like
fun
. The kind of girl that a semi-reformed party-boy would love.

Heart sinking, I slapped the lid of my laptop closed. I couldn’t keep looking at this. Instead, I pulled up the camera on my phone and sent Will a video message for once. I did my best to sound sort of okay. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want him to think I was completely unbalanced.

With the camera blinking at me, I hesitated. Then I finally just said what I was thinking.

“Hey, Will. It’s, like, three on Saturday. I haven’t heard from you, I hope you’re okay. Something weird happened after the gig last night. We can talk about it when you call. I’m missing you so much today. I’m so glad your homecoming is soon. I miss your face, and the rest of you, too. Call me. Love you. Bye.”

Rolling out of bed, I ducked my head so I wouldn’t have to face myself in the mirror. I was more than a little ashamed of myself. I just felt powerless to stop it. Will had been so good about staying in contact until now. The sudden drop-off combined with constant reminders of another girl in his life was the perfect storm of long distance anxiety.

A long, hot shower would clear my mind. Unfortunately, with all three sisters back in the house, a short hot shower had to do. I scrubbed my skin pink and nearly broke my neck when I heard Will’s voice saying, “Hey, Athena” from the next room. I grabbed the towel, but didn’t take the time to wrap it around me.

I lunged for my phone, answering it with shaking hands. I couldn’t help but judge myself as I answered. “Will! I was starting to get worried!”

“Just got your message, what’s up?”

His voice sounded sleepy and warm. Soft, like flannel—like he was still in bed. Was it in his bed? A sour taste rose in my throat, but I forced it back down. “I tried to call last night. Hailey answered . . .”

“Yeah, she was holding my phone for me,” he said.

I wanted to ask
why.
I wanted an explanation for him being gone all night, for his weird tweets. For the reason he wasn’t waking up until three in the afternoon. Instead, I laid my towel on the bed and sat on it.

Shivering a little, I curled into myself. If I asked any of that, I might not like the answer. That’s not what I wanted. Or needed. I just needed Will to be there and for everything to feel right again.

My quiet went on too long, because Will said, “You there?”

Swallowing down all my anxiety, I nodded. “Yeah, I am. I just had the worst night. Dave’s not acting like himself, and the gig was . . . strange.”

With a muffled
hmm
, it sounded like Will rolled over. “Was he a dick?”

Suddenly, I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want him to think I had led Dave on. It was so generous of Will to be cool about the band. In his place, I’m not sure I would have been that chill. So I shook my head. “No. He was professional. The chemistry was just off.”