“You hate the idea,” Mom says.
“I do. I hate it. Dad, you’re stressing me out. You’re going to bruise your face.”
“I don’t even,” Dad says. “I don’t even know…”
“I think what your father is saying is that we need a little time to sit with this.”
I have no idea what’s going on inside her head. Her voice is calm; she’s even smiling. But she works in the Human Resources department at an investment firm. She’s used to telling people what they’ve done wrong in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. She’s used to firing people and making it sound like an opportunity.
“Fair,” I say. “It’s seven thirty anyway.”
We all rise. Dad puts his glasses back on.
“We love you, Katie,” Dad says.
“Kate,” Mom corrects.
“Right,” he says. “Kate. We’ll pick this up later on, okay? When we have more time.”
I nod. We clear the dishes and we rinse them. We grab our bags and hoist them over our shoulders. We walk single file out the door and to our three cars.
“Just a year,” I say, before we all slide in.
My mother nods. My father sighs.
And then they pull away, and I hear my phone ringing from the back. I haven’t left yet, so I jump out and get my bag, and I look at the caller.
Ryan. His name on my screen takes me by surprise. We haven’t texted since last year when we were working on the lit mag cover. I had forgotten that I even had his number.
“You answered,” he says. “Are you with him?”
“Mark?” I say. “No. I’m on my way to pick him up.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Um … getting ready for school I’d imagine?”
“Not right this second. That’s not what I meant. Or maybe I did. Right now he’s probably finishing his homework for first period. Or brushing his teeth? He brushes his teeth a lot. Like a lot a lot. Or maybe that’s just because he thought we might be making out and he was trying to be prepared. I never thought about that, but it’s probably what it was.”
“Hey,” I say. “Are you okay?”
“No. I don’t know. I’m tired. I didn’t sleep.”
“At all?”
“He saw the poem, right? I mean the rest of it, right? I know he did. I can just feel it. And his phone was off. Off at midnight, off at two, off at five, off at seven. It’s just been totally … off.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He read the rest of it.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew it. We left. I was … upset. At least that’s what Taylor kept saying, ‘You’re upset. You’re upset,’ and he said we should probably leave, so we left. And then we got back to his place and I remembered that I dropped my poem. That it was just lying there on the stage somewhere, all alone, for anyone to find and make fun of, and I panicked. I left him and I ran all the way back, and everything was over and almost everyone was gone, but they let me back in anyway and I looked all over the stage, but it wasn’t there. But then I found it, and it was face up, right there on the table, and I knew it. I knew he’d read it. How did he react?”
“You should probably ask him that yourself,” I say.
“I told you already! His phone. Is fucking. Off.”
“Then ask him at school.”
“I don’t think I can go to school today. I’m not really feeling well.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t need to state the obvious. I didn’t know Ryan was capable of this kind of emotion. I thought he was all literary allusion and little feeling, all critic and no poet. But then I think of him onstage last night, all tremor and fear, and I feel myself softening for him, even though he’s crushed my friend’s heart and might not deserve my sympathy.
“Are you okay, Ryan?” I ask him. “That’s a sincere question and I want a sincere answer.”
Silence.
“Ryan?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just breathe. We’ll be there soon.”
Mark’s waiting for me when I pull up to his house. He looks a little worn-out himself, and I can’t help it—I reach out and mess up his floppy, all-American boy hair.
“Is that really necessary?” he asks, but I can tell that he didn’t really mind.
“Where does Ryan live?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where we’re headed.”
“You know,” Mark says, “there’s this thing called ‘first period’? And then this other thing called ‘first period on the second to last school day of the year’?”
“Address,” I say.
“Howard Street. Behind the Seven-Eleven.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s this about?” he asks as I drive.
“You’d know if you turned on your phone.”
“Maybe I kept my phone off precisely so that I wouldn’t have to know.”
“Then you should be happy that he called me so that I could tell you this: Your friend needs you. It might not be fair. It might really suck, because you’ve needed him and he’s been off slip-dip-dripping with a college boy—”
“Don’t forget mortar-pestling.”