“It’s from my dad,” I say. Nelly nods and smiles; he doesn’t need expounding. “Some of the clothes in the other bags might fit you and James.”
The last thing out of every bag is a travel pouch with a wad of cash and papers. I unfold a map and see different routes highlighted, all leading up to the cabin. I count the cash, seven hundred-fifty dollars in smaller bills.
“Wow,” I say. “Guess I don’t have to hit an ATM.”
“Same amount over here,” Nelly says. “That’ll make three thousand if the other two have the same.” He looks quickly and nods. “Yeah.”
The bags just need some unexpired food. My dad put a lot of thought into the contents; I don’t think there’s anything missing. Except weapons.
“Are the guns still here?” Nelly asks. He’s talking about the small cache of weapons my dad kept in the city.
“I think so. Eric put them in a bin marked ‘sewing stuff.’ ”
The bin is under others, one of which bears my name in Eric’s scrawl. My curiosity gets the better of me, and I leave Nelly to unearth the guns while I investigate. My college diploma is on top. An old cigar box that I remember throwing out is in there, too. It smells faintly of dried flowers that Adrian brought me. I find the silver ring with a tiny star on it that Adrian gave me because he knew I loved stars. It feels warm in the cool air of the basement. I put it in my jeans and run a finger around the circle it makes in the pocket. Old concert tickets are in there, too. I think of something I haven’t thought of in a while and start to giggle.
“Nelly, remember when we went to see The New Pornographers and Adrian smoked too much weed?”
Nelly puts down a bin and guffaws. “When he thought he’d walked into cobwebs and they were on his face and wanted us to help get them off?”
Adrian had been swiping at his face and looking frantic. He was always so composed that it made it a hundred times funnier, and the rest of us had crumpled to the ground, we were laughing so hard.
Footsteps sound down the stairs, and I can hear Penny laughing before she appears at the bottom.
“There’s no way the candy bars that girl gave us were only chocolate,” she says, and shakes her head. “No way.”
“I never let him live that down,” I say. “It still makes me laugh out loud, every single time. The look of panic…”
My stomach hurts from laughing, but when the laughter stops it continues to hurt in a different way. I never bring up Adrian. I stare into the bin as though I’m fascinated with its contents, but there’s no fooling your best friends. Penny’s arm snakes around my waist. I try to stop the tears. I hate crying in front of people. I cry over stray cats, old people eating dinner alone and lonely looking little kids. I’m a huge crybaby, but I like to cry by myself.
“I miss him, you guys,” I whisper.
“Don’t you think we know?” Nelly asks, like he can’t believe I think it’s a secret. I wipe away the tears, but the more I think about it the faster they come.
“You know, I could have chosen a better day to decide I’ve made a huge mistake. Only I would choose the day of the zombie apocalypse,” I say, which makes them laugh. I smile through my tears, and the lump in my throat eases. “There’s no way to contact him, even just to make sure he’s okay.”
“If anyone’s fine, it’s Adrian,” Nelly says with certainty. “He’s on a farm in northern Vermont. I can’t remember the name. I had an email he sent, but it was my old account.”
“I didn’t know you guys still spoke.” I’m jealous and have to remind myself I have no right to be.
“We’ve emailed now and then. The last time was about a year ago. I wrote him twice to tell him my new email address but never heard back.”
He shrugs, but I know he cares. Adrian was his friend, too. When I broke up with him it must have been hard to straddle two friendships.
I touch Nelly’s arm. “I’m sorry I made you guys lose touch.” I mentally add another item to the list of things Cassie has messed up in recent years. It’s growing by the minute. I’m dying to know what he and Adrian talked about. “Did he…? I mean, what did…”
“He wanted to know how you were, said he missed you. The last time he wrote he asked if I thought you would talk to him. I tried to bring it up, but you were so opposed to talking about Adrian that you shut me down. I told him he could try, but I didn’t know how it would go over.”
I finger the concert tickets and imagine how different my life would be if I hadn’t been too stubborn and ashamed to admit that I fucked up, even to myself.
“I wish you would have made me listen,” I say, even though I’m sure he tried.
Nelly raises an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea what you’re like when you don’t want to talk about something? I know you do. You are the most stubborn human being in the world. Please.”
His face is stern. I might be able to lie to myself, but Nelly won’t stand for me lying to him.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s my own fault. I didn’t listen. But you’re the second most stubborn.” I make a silly face at him.
“Hey, I can admit when I’m wrong. I just never am,” he says. Penny groans and rolls her eyes. “Plus, I’m bossy. There’s a big difference.”
I raise my hands in surrender.
“Okay, enough memory lane, people,” Penny says. “There’s a ton of crap to go through before my mom gets here. James is on the computer, and Ana is mooning over Peter, so I figured I’d come down here and help.” She reads the bin labels. “Sleeping bags, mats, lamps, cookware. Jeez, did you get rid of anything?”
“Nope. Eric organized it all. That’s who put all this stuff I threw out in this bin.”
I’m grateful he rescued the wooden box and promise myself I’ll tell him when I see him. I wonder what Adrian’s doing right now. If that farm in Vermont is his. The night I met him he already knew that was exactly what he wanted.
***
I was sitting on a couch at a frat house party at my upstate New York college and wondering what I was doing there. My roommate of a week was across the room. I watched as she draped herself over any guy with a pulse.
“Not your kind of scene? Mine either.” The voice came from a guy who sat on the other end of the couch. His sandy hair was messy and his lips formed a wry smile as he saw me take in his shirt with Greek letters on it.
I looked at the letters and then back up at him. “Yeah?”
“I have no choice,” he drawled, his accent more apparent. “I’m a legacy. If I don’t embrace the life of a frat boy my daddy will disown me.” He held out a big hand. “Name’s Nel. I’m from Texas originally.”
I shook it. “Cassie. Nice to meet you.”
“So, Cassie, who are you and what are you doing here? You don’t look like the usual clientele.”
I shrugged and pointed at my roommate. “She begged me to come with her. I figured I’d give it a whirl. I’m from Brooklyn. Sociology major.” I shrugged. “Boring.”
“Brooklyn? That’s not boring. I’m moving to the city once I graduate. This is boring.” He took in the room. “The funneling and male chest-beating. The drunk girls and their screaming fights. A lot of the guys are okay if you don’t take it too seriously, but the parties are terrible.”
I knew he wasn’t your average frat boy; his eyes twinkled as he made fun of it all.
“My roommate is auditioning for the role of Drunken Girl.” I pointed to where she sat on someone’s lap giggling.
“It’s times like this I’m glad I don’t like girls.”
While I couldn’t have cared less, fraternities aren’t known as a hotbed of equal rights. “And everyone here is cool with that?”
“Yeah. Especially since they know they’re not my type. They all think they’re God’s gift to women and were surprised to find it didn’t extend to men, too.” I laughed as he grinned. “I came out senior year of high school and took some shit for it. I refuse to hide anymore.”
“Absolutely,” I agr
eed. “But, Texas? That must have been rough.”
“Well, it didn’t hurt that I can beat the crap out of most guys who might have a problem with me.” He made a mean face and then replaced it with a sunny smile. “I was a football player and my closest friends on the team knew. They stood up for me, too.”
I tease Nelly that he told me he was gay right away so I didn’t fall in love with him. Girls are always falling in love with Nelly. But there wasn’t time for me to fall in love with him, because at that moment he spotted someone across the room and waved.
The guy made his way toward us. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and pretty green eyes. They really were pretty, and with his light olive skin and high cheekbones he might have been pretty, too. But his strong jaw and his nose, which was just slightly imperfect, were enough to make him interesting. He was wearing a t-shirt with some indie band’s name on it and jeans. When he smiled one deep dimple appeared.
“Adrian, this is Cassie. Cassie, Adrian.” Nelly said, just as someone called his name. “Ah, I’ll be right back. They always want the gay guy for the things that involve food. You’d think I know how to cook.”
Adrian sat down on the couch. I’m not very good at making conversation in general, and most definitely not with good-looking men. I smiled nervously and consoled myself with the thought that he was Nelly’s date, even though he was my type, too. There was no reason to act like a tongue-tied second grader.
Adrian turned those eyes on me with interest. “Hi, Cassie. What year are you? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“Junior. I just transferred this year. How about you?”
“Junior, too. It’s a decent school, people are pretty nice.”
I nodded and tried to think of something to say, but my mind was a complete blank. It occurred to me that I shouldn’t be allowed to participate in social interactions without a set of note cards. Adrian saved me.
“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked. His smile was disarming. And although it’s the second question everyone asks when they make small talk in college, he gave the impression he really wanted to know.
“Well, if you mean what am I majoring in? I started out thinking of art. But that’s not going to line up a decent job, so I switched to sociology with an art minor.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. I knew what he wasn’t saying and conceded to his unmade point. “Yes, I know sociology’s not much better.” I smiled. “But I’m not planning to work on Wall Street. I have to study something I love or what’s the point? I’m thinking I’ll work in a non-profit somewhere.”
He nodded. “What kind of art do you make?”
“Mostly I paint.” I felt too shy to talk about it and changed the subject. “So, how about you? What’s your major?”
“Engineering.”
“Now that’s a grown-up degree,” I teased. He was so friendly I could feel myself relaxing. “So what do you plan on doing with it? Building bridges and making tons of money?”
He grinned. When he shook his head his hair fell into his eyes, and he pushed it out of the way. “Not exactly, I’m majoring in environmental engineering. I want to create things that might be used for food production and soil conservation.”
I shook my head. “Ah, a do-gooder!”
“Hey, don’t worry. I won’t start lecturing you on what you’re doing to ruin our planet or anything.” He held his hands up and the dimple showed.
“I’m just kidding. So you want to be off grid? Zero waste?” I asked.
“Exactly.” He looked at me like I had caught his attention and my face grew hot under his scrutiny. “I spent this summer volunteering on a project and learned enough to put in a solar hot water system for my mom. Next I’d like to completely solarize her house.”
I nodded and drank some beer so he wouldn’t notice how pink my cheeks were.
“I’d like to create a farm that generates its own food, power, maybe biodiesel—” He stopped abruptly. “Sorry, sometimes I start to talk about this stuff and can’t stop.” He waved his hand in front of my eyes. “Are they glazed over yet?”
“No, it’s like talking to my dad.” I lowered my cup. My face had finally cooled down. “My parents are putting in solar at their house upstate. Their plan is to be entirely off the grid by retirement and raise most of their food themselves. I like to talk about it with my dad, until it gets too technical and I can hear the gears in my brain grinding.”
I made a whirring noise that didn’t sound at all like gears, but he laughed. “I wish I could pick your dad’s brain sometime. I’d like to see what he’s done.”
“You could, you know. If you’re serious. He’s desperate to talk about it. My mom and I just nod and smile and wander off when he gets going. Now that my brother’s away at school, he’s slowly dying inside from lack of interest in his plans.”
Adrian nodded like it was something he would consider. I had to say this for the lovers of solar electrical systems: they sure were a committed bunch. I recognized the dreamy-eyed look on Adrian’s face.
“So how do you know Nel?” I asked. I wondered if they were serious or not.
“We were in a class together last spring and just hit it off. He’s a great guy.”
“He seems like it.”
Right then Nelly appeared with a plate of burgers. “So, what’d I miss? I think you may have missed your roommate puking in the bushes and heading home, Cassie.”
I stood up. “Maybe I should go after her.” I didn’t want to. Holding her hair back in the communal bathroom was not high on my list of things to do.
Nelly waved a hand. “Some other girl was with her. Bethany? Tiffany? Someone, anyway. She’s fine!” He sat on the floor and patted my spot on the couch. “Sit. Eat.”
So I did. My eyes wandered over to Adrian constantly. A few times I caught him looking at me and whenever our eyes met my stomach jolted. I told myself to get a grip. That maybe he was cute and nice, but he wasn’t interested in me. He wasn’t even interested in girls.
I always felt like the girl whose name people forgot. Usually the guys who ended up interested in me were the ones I’d known for a while. The ones I could talk to without being self-conscious. I was fine with it by that point; I didn’t mind being a person who inspired love and loyalty over time. But it usually meant that I was overlooked, at least at first. And with Adrian I knew I would have minded that.
“Well, I have to work in the morning, library work-study,” I said, after we’d talked for hours. It was the kind of conversation where you have so much to say that you despair of ever getting it all out, even if you’re awake until dawn. I didn’t want to break the spell and go home, but it was late. The rest of the party was passed out or making out at that point. “I might be able to drag myself out of bed if I go to sleep now.”
“No walking home alone, darlin’,” Nelly said. “Let me walk you.”
I didn’t want to make him walk me home along the safe, tree-lined streets. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I grew up in Brooklyn, remember?”
“Let’s walk together,” Adrian offered. “Our dorms are right near each other.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Nelly—” I realized I’d called him Nelly, the beer having loosened my tongue, and blushed. I’d already concocted a nickname for him but hadn’t meant to use it.
“I like Nelly!” Nelly exclaimed. “Like Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie.”
“I used to pretend I was Laura!” I said. “When I practiced my pioneer skills.” Adrian smiled at me. “Anyway, Nelly, it was really nice to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you around?”
Nelly grinned and swallowed me in a hug. “Oh, you won’t get away from me, Half-pint. Let’s all meet for lunch tomorrow.”
“I’d like that,” I said, and beamed at him.
I moved away to give them a moment of privacy, and with a last wave at Nelly we set off. We walked to campus while Adrian told me about his mother, who’d raised him and his s
ister with lots of love but hardly any money. He was smart, funny, liked his mom and was environmentally conscious. I sighed.
Adrian poked my arm. “Why the long sigh?”
“Oh, nothing,” I replied, watching my feet.
He pulled my arm through his. “C’mon. Tell me.”
I made my lips a line and shook my head. Then I decided that if I told him it might be funny and also stop my crush in its tracks.
I sighed dramatically and elbowed him. “It’s just depressing. No guys are ever interested in the same stuff I am. Even my dad would love you.” Adrian stopped walking and looked stupefied.
“You know,” I stammered, “because you’re gay.” Now I really felt like an ass. If only I’d kept my mouth shut.
“I’m not gay.”
I thought I saw a tiny smile on his face but couldn’t keep eye contact long enough to be sure.
“What?” I’d heard but needed a moment to think.
“Am I giving off a vibe or something? I was trying to give off a vibe that I wanted to go on a date with you.”
I hardly listened to what he was saying because I was wondering if I could turn and run. The chance that I could avoid him on campus for the next two years was slim, however. Plus, I could only run a block before I got a stitch in my side and he still had my arm. I’d told him that I liked him and that my dad would like him.
The beer and food were mutinying in my stomach. “I just thought, because of Nelly, and you said you two hit it off…”
“I don’t care about that. I do care about the date thing, though.”
I stared at him blankly. He looked so relaxed, while everything inside me was buzzing and jumping.
“You know, the thing about wanting to go out with you?”
“Oh.” I was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question, so I made a joke. “Okay. But maybe we could save meeting my dad for the second date.”
His grin was huge, and I smiled back, relieved that maybe I hadn’t made a complete fool of myself. I was still mortified, but underneath was a warm flicker of excitement. It hadn’t been my imagination; there was something there. Somehow we got to my dorm without my dying of embarrassment.