It’s a close work environment. Alex leans over the cats while I’ve got them tucked under my arm like a football. She smells like cold air and the late-evening showers that are two degrees away from being snow.
“What are you wearing?” I ask.
She grunts something that might be a question, her usual word choice lost in concentration as she digs into a tom’s ear.
“Perfume? Body spray? You smell good,” I clarify as her confusion deepens.
“I suppose it could be my shampoo,” she says as she squirts medicine into the tom’s ear, massaging it down into the canal. Inexplicably, he purrs.
“It was raining earlier, and I jogged here. Wet hair smells,” she adds, as if this statement is nothing odd. “He’s done.”
I unwrap the tom and he jumps down, leaving us empty-handed and looking at each other. “What do you mean you jogged here? It was almost snowing this morning.”
“My car is in the ditch,” she says, like it’s been casually misplaced.
“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
“It was last weekend. I’m fine.”
“Okay . . .” I look at her for a second, unsure how much I get to pry now that we’ve shared lunch meat through a fence. I don’t ask why she didn’t get her mom to bring her, because I consider other people’s parents an out-of-bounds topic. I’ve been picked on enough about mine.
“Do you want a ride home or something?” I ask slowly, not sure if I’m even supposed to offer. If Alex says no, then it’s a very clear statement: she’d rather run home in cold weather than have our friendship move any further.
She puts the unused Q-tips back in the box one at a time while she deliberates. “Yes, that would be nice.”
“Cool.”
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
She’s said my name before. I know it. I remember because it came out funny, like she was stumbling a little with it. But Alex licks her lips as if they’ve gotten dry from this new experience of talking so much and repeats herself.
“What’s your name?”
“Peekay.”
Alex shakes her head and sprays down the counter, sending fluff from every disgruntled cat we’ve worked on today flying into the air. Tiny black, gray, white, and ginger hairs settle onto the floor before she tries again.
“That’s not your name. It’s what people call you.”
“It’s my nickname,” I say, an edge of defensiveness sneaking into my tone. “It stands for—”
“I’m aware of what it stands for. I’d like to know your name.”
Alex holds eye contact, almost always. Even when she says insignificant things like “Is it my turn to clean the toilet or yours?” it’s like the fate of the world hangs in the balance. So when she’s staring me down over a stainless steel table asking me what my name is, I feel a weird bump in my throat . . . like maybe it actually is important.
I clear my throat to make room for the answer. “Claire. My name is Claire.”
Her smile breaks out, ear to ear, infectious as hell. “That’s a lovely name. I would go by that, if I were you.”
I drop my eyes. “People have always just called me Peekay.”
And I let them. Even though maybe in the beginning it wasn’t meant to be nice. Maybe in the beginning there was a taunt underneath it, an edge born on the playground that supposedly matured into affection. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was a constant affirmation of who I’m supposed to be, said into my face every day to remind me of my place. Maybe when I sucked Adam’s dick and he said my name at the end it wasn’t because he wanted me but because he just got a blow job from the—
“Preacher’s kid,” Alex says.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling that stupid bump again. “I’m the preacher’s kid.”
“I’m the girl with the dead sister.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I say quickly, and she cocks her head exactly like one of the dogs. “The first day when I called you . . .”
“Anna.” She waves it off. “It’s understandable. Sometimes it’s how I perceive myself, too.”
I laugh a little, and the bubble in my throat pops. “Why do you talk so funny?”
Alex doesn’t hesitate. The answer is right on her lips, like she’s had it prepped in anticipation.
“I read a lot. I don’t have a lot of experience in conversation, so my turn of phrase is different from . . .”
“Pretty much everybody else, yeah,” I finish. “Don’t you pick it up, though? Like in the hallways or whatever?”
“I try not to listen.”
I can dig that. I’ve overheard things I definitely wish I hadn’t. I suddenly remember Branley, her shiny, waxed legs stretched out in front of her while she talked about Alex loud enough to be heard, shooting snide glances and waiting for her to take the bait. And Alex reading Dostoyevsky like it was nothing, her own world blossoming around her.
Her own world. Population: 1.
When we get in my car, I jack the heater up, the stale air blowing out of the vents and fanning Alex’s hair away from her face. She gives me directions to her house and I flip off her car, resting in the ditch, when we pass it. She actually laughs at that. It’s funny to hear such a natural sound when her conversation comes out so stilted. As soon as I think it, I hear my mom’s Sunday school teacher voice in my head, about how a smile is the same in every language. I guess that goes for laughing with the socially awkward, too.
I sneak a glance at her when I pull into the driveway. We kept the conversation on the drive to shelter talk—who we hoped would get adopted next, and Rhonda’s creative non-swearing insults (friend-eater is my current favorite; Alex likes sweater-unraveler). I put the car in park and open my center console to grab the last senior picture I have.
It’s an awkward pose, the one I liked least. I’m leaning against the stone wall at the local park, my mouth stuck in a grimace that suggests I’m at the end of my shoot and patience at the same time. Mom loved this one, a traditional shot that she ordered more of than necessary, the pose I pawned off on freshmen who asked if they could have one.
“Hey, want one of my pictures?” I ask impulsively, and Alex pauses, her hand ready to unlock the passenger door. She thinks about it a second, as if accepting it might mean taking an irreversible step. And maybe for her it kind of is.
“Yes,” she says.
I take a pen off the dash—turquoise ink—and am about to scribble “Peekay” and our graduation year on the back, but I stop. Instead I twist the pen in my fingers for a second, the unfamiliarity of writing my given name making my hand awkward. It actually takes concentration for me to write it in cursive, the handwriting shaky and childish. But Alex smiles when she accepts it and nods when I tell her I’ll see her in school on Monday.
And the truth is, I’m kinda looking forward to it.
17. JACK
I’m in bed with Branley again.
She dragged me upstairs even though I was so drunk I didn’t think it would be worth her effort. But the girl knows me, and while the party music from downstairs pumps so loud I can feel it vibrating the floor in Park’s bedroom, Branley climbs on top and does what she wants. She’s over-the-top with a push-up bra and her hair a wild mess while she makes noises straight out of low-budget porn.
I’m man enough to know I shouldn’t let her do this shit to me, but enough of a boy to be completely turned on.
She shrieks dramatically and falls forward, heavy and panting onto my chest. I let my eyes slide closed as her breathing evens out, and the dark clouds of unconsciousness gather in my brain. I’m fading, but I know that my mouth is hanging open and I might have just snored a little when Branley starts drawing little circles on my chest with her finger.
“Tickles,” I mutter, shoving her hand away.
“Fine.” She rolls onto the other pillow. I don’t need to look to know she’s pouting.
I’m supposed to do something now. Reach out. Tell her I’m sorry.
Touch her hair. Instead I ask her where her boyfriend is.
“What?” She sits up, her necklace pooling in her cleavage. “Why?”
I shake my head, and can’t pinpoint exactly when it stops moving.
“I said, WHY?” Branley shoves me.
Jesus Christ.
“Because maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, okay?” The words smell like everything I’ve drunk, mixed with stomach acid. “How do you not get that?”
An easy smile—a Branley smile—slides across her face. “But this is what we do.”
“Maybe not anymore.”
She leans in, the necklace swinging away from her chest and slipping down to touch mine. “As long as there’s a maybe,” she whispers, and then her mouth isn’t talking anymore, and all I can think is Why’d you say maybe, dumbass?
But I know why. It’s because I’m addicted to her and have been ever since we discovered things together in junior high, all sloppy and confused in the backseat of her brother’s car. She’s gotten a lot better since then, and I’m still a drunk idiot fumbling in the dark.
And it is dark. And I am drunk.
It’s so dark that Branley’s hair isn’t catching much light when her face hovers near me. It could be any color as it cascades around us. Not the blond I’m so used to seeing splayed across the pillow, but dark, like the strands that were left behind on my passenger seat. I’m so drunk that when I touch skin all I have to do is imagine freckles and they might as well be there.
And then they are. They just are. And I pull her down to me and roll onto her, wishing the smell of rain and cold air into the room with the misfiring of a synapse. We’re skin to skin, and I’m into this with an urgency that didn’t exist before and she’s making noises I’ve never heard. Never heard because they’ve always been practiced and perfect, and I’ve taken her by surprise. She’s loving it and I am too. But I’m not just in it for the fuck right now. I want this. I want her. I want to see the smile that flashed ever so briefly at me in the hall the other day. I want—
“Alex.” Her name slips through my teeth as I collapse, utterly spent and crushing her.
Crushing Branley.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Bran. I’m so, so, sorry.”
And I am, because that was shitty as hell. Branley shoves me away and rips through the covers looking for her clothes. How could it be so dark in here a few minutes ago I could let that happen, but now be damningly light? Light enough to see that she’s crying.
“Branley, wait,” I say, reaching for her hands, trying to stop her as she struggles into her jeans.
But she’s saying only one word, over and over. “No, no, no, no, NO. You don’t do that to me. I’m Branley Jacobs! Do you understand that? Branley Jacobs!” She says her own name the way most of the guys do, a mix of How the Hell Can That Even Exist and Can I Make It Mine?
“Guys fuck other girls and think of me,” she says. “Not the other way around. You’re an asshole, Jack Fisher. A real fucking asshole.”
She slams the door so hard I feel the reverberations in my spine. I collapse back onto the bed, and for the first time in a long time, Branley has my undivided attention.
Because I think she might be right.
18. ALEX
I never thought it would be Jack Fisher.
In third grade, our class went on a field trip to the state park. We were at the end of a hike, the last hundred feet or so impossibly angled and difficult. Most of the kids and all the teachers were taking the stairs, gripping on to the rails, holding hands and saying encouraging things to one another about almost being there. I left the trail, not wanting to move at their pace. I climbed the hill on my own, reaching for tree branches and pulling myself forward, feeling a deep burn in my calves and loving the half second of panic every time I slipped a little.
I passed Jack and Branley as they picked their way up the stairs, him carrying her little plastic bag of whatever she’d bought for herself at the gift shop. I remember the slightest trace of impatience on his face as he offered Branley an arm, pulling her up where a step had been washed out. Our gazes met as I moved past them, ripped hands and filthy knees making my own way, and I saw a flash of envy, quickly stifled. And I knew that he’d rather be off the path with me, moving quickly, tearing his clothes.
But he stayed where he was, and I heard another boy’s voice behind me. “It ain’t easy but it sure is faster,” he said, just as he lost his foothold. My arm shot out and he grabbed for me instinctively, and I steadied him until he got a firm grip on a tree trunk. We climbed up together, passing our classmates and ignoring the adults who yelled at us that we were going to break our necks. Sweat dripped off our foreheads, cutting clean tracks through the dirt on our faces, but we beat everyone to the top, breaking out of the shade and into the light.
We looked at each other and he said, “I have a tree frog in my pocket; don’t tell anyone.” I promised I wouldn’t and we huddled together in the back of the bus on the way home, marveling over the little creature.
We fell into the habit of meeting each other outside at recess, climbing trees and wading in mud puddles, not worried about getting dirty. His name was Mike and he came to school dirty anyway. Mike was gone the next year. I stood on the playground on the first day of fourth grade, looking for the only person I called my friend, and he wasn’t there.
I think he was the first boy I ever noticed.
And now Jack Fisher has my attention. Jack, who I always thought was like everyone else, loud and boring. Jack, who is more intelligent than I gave him credit for. Jack, who looks like he has something he desperately wants to say to me, and doesn’t know how. Jack, who wouldn’t leave the trail to follow me when we were little.
Maybe now he will.
19. PEEKAY
It’s like Adam and Branley got married over the weekend and now we all get to watch the honeymoon.
“She’ll be pregnant by fourth period at this rate,” Sara says, tossing her books onto the desk. “I mean, I don’t know if you saw, but he had her pressed up against—”
“I saw,” I say a little too sharply. Everyone in the room looks at me, and I realize how nasty I must have sounded, because I even have Alex’s attention.
I lower my voice. “Sorry,” I tell Sara. “It’s just not cool.”
She nods and touches my hand, but I hardly feel it. I might as well still be out in the hallway, watching Branley drape herself all over my boyfriend (ex-boyfriend, dammit). Adam was always casual with me. Some hand-holding at lunch, a peck on the cheek in between classes, a tossed “See you, babe” as we walked out of school.
Branley he can’t get enough of. Branley he touches constantly. Branley he won’t be separated from. Branley—
—walks into the classroom reapplying her lipstick because it’s all been kissed off by my boyfriend.
And I’m going for her. There’s no logic involved, no weighing of pros and cons or thought of consequences. I smack the lipstick out of her hand just as it reaches her lips and she yelps in surprise.
Violence in real life is not the streamlined performance art of movies. It’s not sexy. It’s awkward and confusing. Branley just looks at me, like maybe there’s been some kind of mistake, some weird blip in physics that made my hand hit hers and makeup fly across the room.
“What was that?” she asks, and I see a smear of glittery pink across her front teeth where the lipstick dug in a little. Her eyes are wide, totally clueless. She’s waiting for me to say something, and the entire class is listening. But I don’t have the words, and Branley’s glance shifts over my shoulder to someone else.
Alex’s voice is in my ear. “You should stop now,” she says quietly.
“I don’t want to,” I say, eyes still on Branley, who looks concerned.
“What did I do?” she asks, and now Jack Fisher is with her, one hand on her elbow. Park immediately joins them, loyal as hell.
“Leave it alone, Bran,
” Jack says, and tries to pull her away, but she’s still locked on me.
“What did I do to you?”
“You took my boyfriend,” I say, hating the childishness of the words the second they leave my mouth, the fact that the word boyfriend makes tears come to my eyes.
Branley’s face changes then, the honest confusion replaced with a smug mask, the one she wears so well. “No, sweetie,” she says. “I didn’t take him. He left you.”
I swing. It’s so simple I don’t understand why I never did it before. My fist is on an arc that will break her perfect nose when it’s stopped in midair, my elbow locked with Alex’s, her strength so superior to mine that her arm is like a steel pipe and mine the pipe cleaner.
“Get your shit under control, Preacher’s Kid,” Park says, and I lunge at him before the last syllable is out of his mouth. Alex spins me into the wall, the knuckles of her fist in my spine pinning me in place like a butterfly.
“You need to calm down, Claire.” It’s the same voice she uses on the cats at the shelter, the one that makes them melt a little bit. I kind of get their reaction, because I understand that if I’m unable to do it on my own, she will make me.
I take a shaky breath. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
Alex relaxes her grip and I turn to see Branley nestled behind Jack, her boobs pushed up against his back. Sara rustles around in the corner and picks up Branley’s lipstick. “Here,” she says, handing it over as if restoring it makes everything better. Branley takes it as Miss Hendricks walks into the room, the bustle of the hall dying behind her.
“What’s going on?” she asks, eyes narrowing at the sight of the tears that finally spill over onto my cheeks.
“Peekay lost her shit,” Park says.
“Parker Castle,” she screeches at him, but he only shrugs. She narrows in on me. “What happened?”
“Nothing, it’s fine,” Branley says suddenly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m the one who decides what’s worth worrying about,” Miss Hendricks snaps back, but Branley walks away, leaning into Jack more than necessary.