Page 44 of The Last to Let Go
The rest of the night is a blur, but in a good way—a fantastic dream half remembered. As I lie down in bed and close my eyes, I replay the movie of this night on the walls of my eyelids, feeling connected, as if there’s an invisible thread still tethering me to that place, to Dani.
Then comes my favorite part. The part where Tyler and I are standing outside waiting for Dani to pull the car around, the perfectly chilled autumn air flowing through me, our backs against the brick wall, and Tyler looks at me, his eyes slightly glazed, and says something I didn’t know I needed to hear so badly. “You know Dani likes you, right?”
I open my eyes. I am here in my bed. I place my hand over my heart, but it’s almost like it’s beating outside of me now. In the floor and ceiling and walls.Boom-boom,boom-boom,boom-boom, contracting and expanding in pairs. I hear its pulse in my ears, whispering this one word over and over, like a bass line:NowNowNowNowNow.
AVALANCHE
I FORCE MYSELF TOgo into work. The bell dings overhead as I walk through the door, assaulting my eardrums like a giant gong. The smell of dough and sugar makes my mouth salivate but my stomach nauseous. There are only a couple of people in here, a man sitting at the counter, a regular, and a woman doctoring up her to-go coffee. I let myself exhale; maybe this will be an easy day. But then Owen approaches from the other side of the counter, tossing a rag somewhere underneath.
“Hey, you!”
I wave but don’t say anything as I make my way behind the counter. When we’re face-to-face, he starts laughing like he knows some big secret about me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re totally hungover, aren’t you?” he says, leaning up against the doorframe, watching me too closely as I clock in on Jackie’s computer.
“Is it that obvious?”
He laughs again. “I thought you were supposed to be a Girl Scout or something.”
But before I can answer, Jackie suddenly appears behind him, carrying a tray full of pastries drizzled with chocolate and vanilla icing. “Brooke!” she shouts, making my head throb once more. Her smile fades, though, as she looks at me. “Oh, sweetie, do you feel okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie.
Owen walks away, snickering.
“Hey, so I’m dying to know,” Jackie begins, lowering her voice. “Did Aaron say how it went? We’ve been playing phone tag all day.”
“How what went?”
“The exams.”
“I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He had the GED tests this week.” Her brow creases as she looks at my face. “He didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head no, but I can’t shake this nameless dread that’s suddenly creeping up through my veins, poisoning my blood.
“Well, that’s strange,” she breathes, her eyes crinkling up around the corners. “He better not have forgotten about it with everything else that’s going on.”
“I’m sure he didn’t,” I tell her, and I mean that. Because he wouldn’t just forget—he’s been studying, even. The only reason he wouldn’t have mentioned it is if something happened, something worse than forgetting. I can feel it like something collapsing under my feet, the beginning of an avalanche.
When I get home that night, I find Callie sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, grinning as she messes around on her phone. I ask her where Aaron is and she doesn’t even look up; she raises her arm and points to the hallway, where my bedroom door is open, light on.
“Thanks,” I tell her.
The window’s open. I stick my head out and hear voices from up above. Carefully, I maneuver myself through the window and onto the platform of the fire escape. The higher I climb, the louder they get. They’re laughing. When I crawl over the brick ledge, I see Aaron and Mark, in two lawn chairs set up near the edge of the roof, their feet kicked up on the wall.
I planned on asking Aaron about the exam, but as I get closer, I know I’m not going to be able to talk to him about that tonight. They have a collection of empty beer bottles sitting in a cluster on the ground next to each of them, an overflowing ashtray on the plastic table that sits between them. Mark mutters something I can’t quite understand, but whatever it was, it makes Aaron fall forward, wheeze-laughing, just like he did that day in the kitchen with me. A twinge of jealousy pokes me in the side.
I must make a noise, because they both turn around at the same time.
“Hey, Brooke,” Mark calls out to me. “Did you bring us some scones?” he asks, referencing my work uniform, and they both start cracking up again.
I try to smile. “Nope, sorry.”
“Hey, sorry—just realized,” Aaron says. “Your window, right?”
