And then of course, there was the vanishing thing.
The very first time she’d done it was six weeks after they first started seeing each other. One day, they had plans and she just didn’t show up. Xavier called me, insane with worry, certain something terrible had happened to her. He wanted to call her parents but didn’t have their number, so he went over to her house. No one was home, and this scared him even more. Maybe her parents were already with her at the hospital! What other reason could there be? Ivy finally texted him twelve torturous hours later: I forgot we had plans and my phone was out of batteries. You are a sweetie to have been worried. And Xavier was so very happy and relieved.
She did it again a couple weeks later. That time she claimed she had food poisoning and couldn’t get to her phone. “But how hard is it to send a text?” I had asked. “She was really sorry,” Xavier said, as though that explained it.
The next time, she didn’t even have an excuse, was just full of self-hatred, offering no explanation other than her tears. She didn’t know why she did it, she said. Maybe it was because of her controlling parents—she needed to know she didn’t have to answer to anyone. But she swore it wouldn’t happen again. And when it did, Xavier forgave her then, too.
Xavier told me, whenever Ivy did anything maybe not that great to him, she was always so upset about it after that he just ended up wanting to comfort her. I had overheard him doing it on the phone more than once, talking to her in these sweet, gentle tones, telling her please, please not to worry about it, that everything was just fine. It always filled me with anger and longing in equal measure.
How could he be mad at her, he said, when she was already so mad at herself?
I thought it was a pretty messed-up trick, using her self-flagellation as a way to excuse herself of anything. But it worked.
After a while, Xavier stopped telling me the details of their relationship. We were still in touch all the time, sending drawings (his) and stories (mine) back and forth by text, and we still hung out, watched animal movies and ate too much candy and tried to teach ourselves magic tricks from YouTube videos or whatever. But we basically stopped talking about Ivy, even though I knew he thought about her pretty much all the time.
There is this parasite I had read about once. If a rat catches it, it makes them love the smell of cat piss. They love that smell of cat piss so much that they just hang out wherever cats have been peeing, all happy and drugged up and loved up on all that cat piss, until the cat comes, pounces, and kills them dead. That’s what it was like with Xavier and Ivy. It was like Xavier had a brain disease and there was no hope for him.
“I know she can be a weirdo,” Xavier had said to me once. “I love her, though, that’s the problem.” Then he smiled, resigned.
I had wanted to tell him that loving someone should never be a problem, should never feel like one, but by then I already knew firsthand it wasn’t really that simple.
July 31, 4:08 p.m.
Jake: why do you text me so much
Ivy: What do you mean?
Jake: I mean all day long we text text text a million times a day and have been for the past ten days. I just crunched the numbers here and that’s 10 million texts, which is a lot
Ivy: Well why do YOU text ME so much?
Jake: You can’t just repeat my question with DIFFERENT EMPHASIS
Ivy: OH can’t I?
Jake: I guess you CAN
Ivy: The full truth? I feel like you’re a voice in my head now. And it’s less lonely in my brain with you in there. So instead of thinking thinking thinking, I say hello
Jake: What was in there before? In your brain?
Ivy: JUST SCREAMING
Ivy: Really though, it was just my own mean thoughts rattling around in there. My brain made them all
Jake: It’s lonely to be trapped inside your own brain all the time
Ivy: Is that a question or a statement?
Jake: A statement
Ivy: So then we agree
Jake: I guess we do
Ivy: PLOT TWIST: you’re not even real
Ivy: I made you up
Jake: Or maybe I made YOU up
Jake: See what I did there?
Ivy: now I know you’re real . . . if I made you up, you’d have better jokes
Jake: Mean!
Ivy: KIDDING!
Ivy: I guess the truth is, I can be my real self with you
Ivy: I literally cannot ever do that with anyone
Ivy: Even people who think I’m close to them . . . I’m not REALLY honest
Ivy: Even with my supposed best friend
Ivy: I’m who she wants me to be when I’m with her
Ivy: Because it’s easier
Ivy: THAT IS SO CORNY I THREW UP
Ivy: I think you are not not not not not not not not not not not terrible
Ivy: Which is to say, pretty damn good
Ivy: And I literally never tell anyone that
Ivy: I don’t believe in luck
Ivy: But I feel very lucky to have found you
Ivy: DELETE THIS IF ANYONE EVER SAW THIS IT WOULD RUIN MY REP
Jake: Deleted. Your secret is safe with me
Ivy: Thank you
Ivy: SO YOU BETTER NOT FUCK THIS UP!
Xavier
A week and a half after Xavier’s birthday, Ivy invited him to a party. Actually what she said was, “Some people are going to get fucked up at this guy Nikolai’s. He has a pool. Maybe if we’re lucky, someone will drown and we can watch.”
When Ivy and Xavier were together the first time around, there was always somebody else’s house, liquor stolen from a cabinet or a box in a basement or bought by an older brother. There were things to smoke, pills to take, sometimes something to snort (though Xavier never did). Always a group of people that Ivy somehow knew and Xavier didn’t. And they were constantly inviting her places, and Ivy would say she was totally not in a mood to see any of them, but then she’d go anyway because she wanted alcohol or drugs, or a way to kill time. “I know one million people but have no friends at all,” Ivy said once. “No one cares about me, and I don’t care about them, either . . . except for you.” “What about Gwen?” Xavier had said. “She’s your best friend.” And then he immediately felt embarrassed because probably she’d been kidding. But she just shrugged, and said, “Gwen’s not a friend. . . .” His heart beat hard. Xavier was sometimes scared by how easily she could discard people. Only then she finished with, “she’s family.”
Xavier thought Nikolai might have been someone Ivy had hooked up with when he and Ivy were apart. He wasn’t sure exactly why he thought that. Maybe it was the way she said his name. Xavier could imagine her saying it naked. But he tried not to. Sometimes it’s better not to imagine anything at all.
What was notable about this party, though, wasn’t the Nikolai part. It was that after Ivy had told him about it, she’d said, “Hey, why don’t you bring your buddy along?” And Xavier knew she meant Sasha. The idea made Xavier nervous, even though he was sure it was a good thing. Stuff had been increasingly weird between him and Sasha ever since his birthday. They hadn’t been hanging out nearly as much as usual, though they still texted sometimes, but only sometimes. And the tone was different. Have you looked at Ivy’s phone yet? was the last one he’d gotten from her. She’d sent it a full twenty-four hours before and he hadn’t responded because he didn’t know what to say. It was hard to go back to regular joking after something like that.
* * *
The day of the party, the black clouds rolled in thick and heavy, hanging low enough to crush you. When the storm finally broke, there would be a six-car pileup on the interstate that would kill a boy that none of them had ever met or heard of, but whose face would be plastered all over the news, until someone else’s face appeared to replace it. But they didn’t know any of that yet. Later, Xavier would look back on this night, searching for clues of what was to come. Looking for hints of the future in the way the day played out.
But the actual danger was lurking so deep beneath the surface, they never saw it coming.
It was over ninety by midmorning. There was a heat advisory in effect and a storm warning, and nothing felt real. Ivy texted him to let him know the party was still on. Maybe lightning will hit the pool and someone will FRY, she wrote. I’ll get you at 7. I don’t want to miss anything.
Sasha texted, too. Meet you there. Hope it doesn’t rain. I want to swim around and look for sea creatures
Ivy was late picking him up, and by the time they got to the party, the place was already crowded. Nikolai’s parents seemed to be very rich—there was a massive in-ground pool with a hot tub, a trampoline, a tennis court, and a giant open lawn. There were beach chairs everywhere, grouped in twos and threes, and a huge table under a big umbrella off to one side.
“I bet his mommy’s medicine cabinet is stocked the fuck up,” Ivy said, then grabbed Xavier’s hand and headed straight for the drinks table.
And that’s when Xavier spotted Sasha.
There she was, lounging in a beach chair in that red-and-white polka-dot bathing suit she always wore, holding a beer, and watching the crowd. If Xavier had been invited to a party where he knew only one person, he’d have made sure to get there after they did, so he wouldn’t be alone. But Sasha just didn’t care about things like that, which Xavier so admired and was so perplexed by. As she watched the party, Xavier watched her. The funny thing about spending a ton of time with someone is that eventually you can’t really tell what they look like. Your brain just fills in what you already know. But suddenly, it was like she was a brand-new person he’d never seen before. She looked powerful and strong and solid. She was beautiful.
Sasha glanced up and spotted them. Xavier waved and held up a finger like there in a sec, and she shrugged and smiled and did a bunch of hand motions in a row. A thumbs-up, the check please motion. She gave herself bunny ears and used her thumb to give her fist a mouth. For a moment, it felt like the past weird week and a half had never even happened.
Xavier turned back toward Ivy and realized she’d been watching him watch Sasha. She grabbed a beer off the table, took three quick gulps, and then topped the bottle off with rum.
“Let’s go say hi to your friend,” Ivy said. She stuck her phone into one of her bathing-suit straps, gulped her drink, and started walking toward Sasha. She looked determined in a way that filled his stomach with cold dread. He tried to shake it off. This was a good thing, he reminded himself. It would be good if they became friends.
Ivy and Sasha had never quite clicked the first time around, but it was his own fault, Xavier knew. The one time the three of them had hung out, he was so nervous he babbled away like an idiot and made it awkward for everyone. And after that he’d told Sasha too many stories about Ivy that probably didn’t make her sound so great. But now things could be different. Xavier just needed to step back, to give them a chance.
Ivy leaned down to hug Sasha. “So glad you came,” Ivy said.
“Me too,” Sasha said. “This place is . . .” She looked around.
“Absurd, right? I think his parents are oil barons or something. Cute suit.”
“Oh thanks . . . I like your bracelets.” She motioned to the big jangly stacks on Ivy’s wrists.
Ivy grinned. “They’re so heavy, it’s like I’m doing a little workout every time I move my arms.” She did a pumping-iron motion. Sasha laughed. And Xavier felt his insides uncoil. Ivy was really trying. Both of them were. “So how’s your summer going?” she went on. “Xavier said you’ve been working at . . .”
Xavier stood there while they talked. He felt himself starting to smile.
A couple minutes later, Ivy held her beer bottle upside down. A few drops spilled out onto the ground. “Let’s get another one.”
Ivy grabbed Xavier by the arm and pulled him over to another table full of drinks. “Hey,” Xavier said. He took Ivy’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you so much for . . .”
But Ivy wasn’t listening. “What do you think?” she said. She nodded at Sasha and then motioned toward three guys sitting in lawn chairs near her. Xavier couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he got the general gist from the way they were looking at her. Xavier felt immediately protective. Not that Sasha needed protection.
“You mean what do I think about those creeps?” Xavier asked.
Ivy grinned.
“I think Sasha should date one of them,” Ivy said. “Or at least fuck them.”
“That’s . . . ,” Xavier started to say. But he had no idea what it was.
Ivy leaned over to reach into one of the coolers. Her phone slid out of her bathing-suit top and onto the pavement with a thunk. She stared at it confused, and that’s when Xavier realized she was already a little buzzed. He got the phone for her. There was a crack in the corner of the screen. “Oh no,” Xavier said. Ivy snatched it from him and stuck it in her pocket.
“I want her to fuck one of them so she can stop being so obsessed with you. It’s honestly incredibly pathetic.”
“Whoa . . . what are you talking about?”
Ivy shrugged, then leaned over again, and pulled out a coconut seltzer. She splashed half out onto the ground and filled the can back up with rum.
“She wants to climb your dick,” Ivy said. She gulped her drink.
It took a while for his brain to process the words she was saying.
Ivy smirked. “Sasha’s a total psycho about you, and don’t pretend you don’t know it.”
Xavier knew Ivy got sort of crazy when she was drunk sometimes, would get into this reckless mood where she might just say anything. But this seemed different somehow. She wasn’t that drunk. And she sounded so calm, and like she genuinely meant what she was saying.
His stomach flipped.
“I have no idea where you’re even getting this from,” Xavier said. “She doesn’t . . .” He paused. “We don’t think about each other like that. Not even a little.”
Ivy took her phone out again and looked down at it. “Why do you think she’s even here?” She started scrolling through her messages, as though this was just a casual conversation.
“She’s here because you invited her,” Xavier said. “And you were just being nice to each other.” His blood was pumping in his ears.
Ivy shook her head. “Couldn’t you tell that neither of us meant it? She’s here because you are a magnet for her pussy and she will follow you wherever you go. Also she doesn’t like me and she wants to check up on us.”
“Stop!” Xavier said. He turned to look for Sasha, to make sure she was out of earshot. But she wasn’t in her chair anymore. Where was she? “She’ll hear you.”
But Ivy kept going. “She’s not exactly slick about it. I know what she’s up to. Have you seen the way she looks at you?” She stuck her tongue through her teeth, and curled her lip. “It’s so gross and weird and sad. You can practically smell her pussy juicing when she sees you. Spreading like a flow-er, dripping into that dumb bathing suit that is too small for her weird body.”
“Jesus Christ, Ivy!” Xavier said.
He turned again. Sasha was heading for the diving board, her face completely calm. She hadn’t heard, he decided, but his relief was quickly replaced by anger. He felt it fizzling hot in his stomach, so unfamiliar that he didn’t even know what it was at first. Xavier had never really been mad at Ivy before. Even when she’d cheated on him, he’d only been hurt and sad. But now . . . He clenched his jaw. “She’s my best friend,” he said. His voice was low and he barely sounded like himself. “And there is nothing between us, and she has never been anything but nice to you, so do not talk about her like that to me. Ever again. EVER. I mean it.”
Ivy was smiling ever so slightly as she dumped the rest of her drink down her throat. “I’m just messing around,” Ivy said. “Sorry, okay? Seriously, I’m sorry. That was out of line. I’m just a little drunk and saying dumb things I don’t even mean, okay?” She grabbed the rum again and took a swig s
traight from the bottle. “You’ve never talked to me like that before, though.” Ivy looked him up and down slowly, looked at his hands, tightly gripped around the back of a deck chair, at his narrowed eyes, and his gritted teeth. Then stepped toward him, grinning. “Not bad . . .”
Sasha
I climbed to the top of the diving board. Bounced once, twice, jumped, splashed, sank. Only when I was underwater did I let myself scream.
Fuck.
Ivy.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Ivy.
Ivy had known I could hear her. She’d wanted me to hear her—she was staring at me over Xavier’s shoulder the entire time. When she said the word “pussy,” we’d locked eyes. She’d smiled.
And Xavier had no idea.
I pushed off the bottom of the pool. When my face broke through the water, I took a deep gasping breath.
But Ivy was wrong about one thing. She said she knew just what I was up to.
She had no fucking clue.
My eyes tingled as the tears collected. Because under the anger was something else, something so embarrassing I could barely even admit it to myself: in the past ten days, I had actually started to like her.
I had felt as though maybe I’d been getting to see some secret hidden piece of her. Maybe all along she had been covering up the most real part of herself. Like so many of us. Like even me sometimes.
But more than that, worse than that, worse than anything . . .
There had been times late at night, when I was by myself in my house, in my bed, and texts from Ivy had made me feel less alone.
I pressed on my eyelids, forced the tears back in.
It was fucking pathetic.
I looked around. I was the only one in the pool. The three guys who’d been talking about me in the grossest ways were in chairs near the edge, watching me. Did anyone at this party other than Ivy understand how sound travels? That other people have ears?