In This Moment(37)

I duck my head and cough into my curled hand. I know that I don’t need to worry yet because Daniel’s not the type to ask questions right here. He’ll wait until he’s got me trapped by myself in some corner where he thinks I can’t give him one of my bullshit excuses.

There are four of us that live in the house. Nate and Daniel and I are all teammates. Somewhere along the way the three of us picked up Adam and we couldn’t quite shake him. It’s all good though. Adam keeps things interesting around here. Like right now he’s asking my advice on how to sneak weed past the security guards into the football stadium. And I know for a fact that he’s already got two little plastic bags of vodka tucked into the inside pocket of his shorts.

“What the fucking hell?” I laugh. “You’re already blazed. Are you going to light one up in the stadium?”

Adam gives me a don’t-be-crazy look. “Hell no, Everly. I’m not a fucktard.” He lifts his shoulders. “But I’m not gonna make it home before I go out tonight and I want to be prepared. I just have this feeling that tonight is going to be a shit storm. It’s in the air or something. Don’t you feel it, man?”

Like I’m some kind of expert on shit storms. Just then, Kate squeezes her fingernails into my thigh and I realize that maybe I am. Maybe I am.





Aimee



Jilly used to do this thing right before a run. She’d huff loudly and pop her arms in the air while she bounced up and down on her toes like a boxer. She did it to make me laugh and it usually worked.

I haven’t gone on a run since she died.

That was more than fifteen months ago.

I don’t run anymore. I don’t swim anymore. I don’t go out with guys anymore. And on the bad days I’m not even sure that I exist anymore.

Today is a bad day.

I don’t know why. I just wake up with a head full of cloudy grey skies and thoughts that bounce off the ceiling and land heavily in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it has something to do with how I couldn’t fall asleep last night after Cole dropped me off. I don’t really know and I’m not sure that I want to start analyzing it right now.

My sister is worried. She’s been watching me all morning and I can tell that she’s wavering about what to do. She disappeared into her room awhile ago, and anyone that knows Mara would tell you that it’s a pretty good guess that she’s in there making a pros and cons list about whether or not to call Mom. When she finally reappears, I have to sit her down on the couch and assure her at least five times that it’s not like it was in June.

I would know.

That’s what I say to get her to leave it alone, but the thing is—I’m not sure what it means.

Know what?

What would I know?

Mara is still uncertain. She’s going to the game and she begs me to go with her. Even Jodi’s going, she says. And when that doesn’t work, she pulls out the big guns. Isn’t Cole going to be there? As if being in the same place at the same time as Cole Everly has become the end-all and the be-all of my life at the moment.

I want to be irritated, but I give her some slack because she doesn’t get it. Not really. The two of us give our mom a lot of hell for being the person that she is, but in a lot of ways, Mara is the same—she’s just less annoying and primitive about it. Deep down, both Mara and our mother think that if I want it bad enough, I can decide to move on. They think that second chances and new beginnings are something you just do, but I know the truth. Those are things that you have to earn.

I try to explain to Mara that the thought of being confined in a stadium with thousands of people crushed against me and the noise splintering my head is enough to make my stomach convulse. She doesn’t like it, but eventually she gives up and leaves me on the couch staring at the TV.

Hours later I’m still sitting here and I don’t even know what I’m watching. It’s one of those completely bone-numbing made for TV movies that airs on Saturday afternoons in between infomercial cycles. I can’t even explain the plot. All I know is that it has something to with a girl falling in love with a down-on-his-luck prizefighter and that he’s doing the signature air-popping warm-up move.

It makes me think of Jillian and our runs Monday and Thursday afternoons and on Saturday mornings when we didn’t have a swim meet. We always started at her place and looped around to the north side of the neighborhood because there were fewer cars. Sometimes we’d talk and other times we’d pop in our earbuds and just go. And even if we weren’t saying anything to each other and the only thing in our heads was the music, it was still better to be together than alone.