“Yep, still,” she says. “He’s incredible. He made me a picnic last night.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Prospect Park,” she says, her eyes glazing over.
“You went to Brooklyn?”
She snaps back to attention. “I think I’m in love,” she says.
I feel my stomach clench and release. Claire says this a lot, and most of the time she just forgets after a bit, like the emotion was a symptom of a passing cold or something. But once, one glaring time, it totally shook up her universe. And, by extension, mine. David Crew, sophomore year. They dated from September through February, and when they broke up, it was hellish. She dropped ten pounds in two weeks. Claire doesn’t have ten pounds to lose.
I take another sip of water. “That sounds serious.”
She comes closer, in a rush, and leans over the marble counter toward me. “He’s just remarkable. You know what he said to me? He said he wanted to tell me things he has only ever written down.”
“I’m not sure that’s an improvement from his initial opener,” I say. “When he was quoting Coldplay lyrics to you?”
She raises her eyebrows at me and then nods in understanding. Claire and I have this thing we do when she’s on first dates. She leaves her phone on, and I listen on the other end. It’s supposed to be so that if he’s boring, or she’s having a terrible time, I can come down and interrupt it. I’ve only ever done it once, though. A guy suggested they karaoke, and if there is one thing Claire really, really hates, it’s singing onstage. I crashed and told him her cat was in the hospital. Claire doesn’t have a cat, but it got her out of there.
Most of the time, if he doesn’t sound like a serial killer, I let her suffer her way through.
“What does that even mean, though?” I say, squinting at her.
She rolls her eyes. “Like he wants to tell me things he’s only put in songs or in poems but he’s never spoken out
loud
.”
“Okay . . .”
“Stop being so cynical.”
“I’m just surprised,” I say. “You’re talking a little out of character.” Claire usually sees dating as a pastime, not something to get invested in. Love to her is like a holiday—fun while it lasts. It took her like a year to understand why I’d make Trevor my boyfriend. She loves love, but commitment? Not really. Like I said, she can barely commit to spending the entire evening with one dude.
Claire tucks some hair behind her ear. “I don’t know, I really don’t. It’s like everything I believed about relationships before this was completely false. Like I was just operating from this place that didn’t
know
yet. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I say, keeping my eyes down. I bite my lip, but the words come out anyway: “That’s how I felt with Trevor.”
Claire’s voice gets quiet. “Right. Have you heard from him yet?”
I shake my head.
“I’m sure you will. I think he just thought you needed some space.” She plays with a hangnail, her eyes fixed on her fingertips.
She keeps saying that: “He thought you needed space.” But he could have asked me. He could have done anything except just leave. I don’t know how to say that to Claire, though. Because she doesn’t have all the information. There are some things you cannot share with friends. Even best ones. Some secrets that are kinder just to keep.
“Should we go up to the roof ?”
Claire squeals. “Really?” She pulls down the strap of her sundress to show me her bare shoulder. “Do you see this?”
“See what?” I ask, leaning forward.
“Exactly,” she says, shaking her head. “No tan line. Travesty.”
“We can rectify,” I say. “Do you have a sun hat?”
I’ve forgotten mine, and I’m sure I’ve already gotten singed on the way down. No matter what I do, how much sunscreen I wear, my skin always opts to burn, not tan.
“Sure,” she says.
I follow her out of the kitchen and into her room, where she has full-length mirrors on one side and windows on the other. It’s impossible to avoid seeing yourself in here, and when I look, I see that I’m right: My cheeks are the color of tomatoes. She tosses me a floppy straw hat with a huge brim
and puts on a bathing suit top. “Want one?” she asks, holding up a blue polka-dot piece of nylon.
“No, thanks. I think I’ve gotten enough color today.”
She purses her lips in the mirror, like she’s blowing it a kiss, and then we’re walking back out through the living room and over to the kitchen. There is a spiral staircase that leads directly from the apartment to the Howards’ own private roof deck.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she says, pausing on the railing. “I got some inside info.”
“Yeah?”
She looks down at me and smiles. “Kristen is coming back to the city.”
It takes me a moment to register what she’s said, but when I do, it doesn’t matter that the apartment is ten degrees too warm. Inside, I feel frozen.
“Where did you hear that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level.
Claire shrugs and continues to climb. “Can’t remember. Around? Pretty cool, right? Guess she’s doing better.”
I swallow. Hard. “Yeah, guess so.”
Claire stops again and peers at me. “How come you don’t seem happy? That means she’s okay, you know. You did a good thing.” She jabs me in the ribs, but I barely feel it. All I can feel is that cold seeping out into my veins, like my heart has sprung a leak.
I follow her all the way up the stairs. Claire’s rooftop is impressive. I’m reminded every time I’m up here. You can see over the whole Hudson, and they have lounge chairs and outdoor furniture set up, a big barbecue in the corner. A bar and a bunch of potted trees—something that sort of looks like a palm but isn’t.
We’ve had a few really good parties up here. And by parties I mean me, Claire, Trevor, Peter, and Claire’s friends, most of them older models or photographers or DJs, sitting around drinking champagne and watching the sun set—or come up.
We set up our towels on two matching recliners, and Claire grabs Evian waters from the outdoor refrigerator. The sun is beating down hard, but I can’t feel it. Even as my back begins to sweat, the beads gathering on my collarbone, my hairline, the bridge of my nose, I still feel cold.
You did a good thing.
If I could go back to that night in May, I’d do things very differently. I’d never end up on that rooftop with Kristen. I’d never save her. I wouldn’t have to.
But even stories with the biggest impact, perhaps particularly these, don’t have the power to be rewritten. If if if if . . . would everything be different? It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.
Let’s keep going.
I first met Kristen Jenkins in the third grade. She had just moved from Minnesota, and she was this tiny girl with strawberry-blond hair and the thinnest arms I had ever seen. She was quiet and shy, and I remember thinking she was too fragile to withstand Manhattan. I may not like it all the time, but at least I was born here. I know how to deal with this city.
She generally kept to herself, and she continued to when we got to Kensington. I didn’t really know her. Not well, anyway. I knew the standard things, the things that everyone knew: only child, lives on Lexington Avenue, father is a lawyer. But I didn’t know
her.
Not until May, anyway. That was the night I learned that the things we often don’t ask
about—ignore, walk by—those can be the most deadly of all.
After the May incident, as people started referring to it, she left town. Immediately, actually. It was the end-of-the-year party, but we still had a few finals to take the next week. She didn’t show. Abigail said that they mailed her the exams. There was talk of her returning to Minnesota, but one girl, I think it was Constance Dunlop, said she saw the forwarding address. It was some hospital in Maine.
I try not to think about that now. There is no way to change what happened. It just did. And she didn’t end up dead, anyway.
I’m just going to go ahead and tell you up front the truth about May. No one knows this. Not Claire and not Trevor. Not Peter, not my parents. Not even Abigail Adams herself. Only Kristen and I.
Look, technically I did save her. But she wouldn’t have needed to be saved if I hadn’t been up there in the first place. If I hadn’t been standing on that ledge. I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to hear that, but things haven’t been so easy since January. I thought maybe I could make them easier. Maybe I could just not be around anymore. How could I tell people that, though? How could I tell people that the reason I was up on that roof was that I no longer wanted to be alive? And I can’t tell them now, either. Claire would freak out and my mom would probably put me in a mental hospital. They
don’t need to be burdened with this. They’ve been burdened enough already.
I told you this story wasn’t about a hero. Do you see what I mean now?
Claire is in her closet trying to figure out what to wear to meet Band Guy, the new love of her life, when I decide to go home.
“If I don’t see you before tomorrow, have a great first day!” she calls from the floor, two opposing wedges in her right and left hands.
“You too,” I say. I don’t think I’ve ever told Claire just how much I miss her at school. I know she’d feel bad about it if she knew how miserable I actually am there without her. I know Kensington. I’ve lived at Sixty-Fifth and Madison my whole life. But it doesn’t mean I fit in there. That’s the thing about the places we come from—they probably say the least about who we really are than anything.
I decide to take the subway uptown. I need some time to think, and I can never think as well in cabs as I can on the subway. For one, I get carsick, and for another, I always feel self-conscious in cabs. I feel like I should talk to the driver or something. That’s what one-on-one interaction forces. I prefer being underground. It’s comforting, in an odd way. Too many people crammed into this moving metal space. You feel really small down there, insignificant. You’d think that would be a
bad thing, but it’s not. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
I consider getting off at Fifty-Seventh Street and going to find my mom at Barneys—it would make her so happy—but I just don’t feel like seeing Abigail or Constance or any of the other girls who could be there the day before school starts. So instead I head home. It’s well into the afternoon and still so hot I welcome the subzero environment of our apartment.
When I get back, I see a suitcase in the foyer. Blue Tumi,
PSC
stitched on the front.
“Peter?” I call.
I hear some movement on the stairs, and then Peter is standing on the landing, a smile on his freckled face. “Hey, kid. Miss me?”
“Yes,” I say. “Despite myself, of course.”
“Of course.” He wrinkles his nose at me, and then he’s tearing down the steps, grabbing me into a big hug.
“Okay, okay,” I say after a moment, although I’m just now realizing how much I’ve missed him this summer. It’s the first summer we’ve spent apart in our entire lives. Camp was never really our thing; we always just went to the beach. I can smell the sand and ocean air on him. It makes me long for things—some that have gone and others that I left. None that I know how to get back.
“How was the summer?” I ask.
He pulls back and makes a face at me. “I saw you three weeks ago, Caggs.”
“Yeah, well . . .” I glance down at his suitcase. “You packing or unpacking?”
“Both,” he says. “But my flight leaves tomorrow. You want to hang tonight?”
I eye him. “Felicia okay with that?”
Felicia is Peter’s girlfriend. They’ve been together for about two years and have been trying to make it work long-distance this past year. She’s at Columbia, here in the city, but Peter is off in Los Angeles at USC. It doesn’t seem to get him down, though. Not much does. Peter is the kind of guy who can spin just about anything into a positive.
“I’ll see her later. I need some time with my baby sister.” He slings an arm over my shoulder, and we step around his suitcase. “How’s Claire?” he asks.
“She’s good. In love.”
“Love?” Peter drops his arm and gets in front of me. “Our Claire?”
“Since when is she ‘our Claire’?” I say, trying to jostle past him.
Peter doesn’t let it slide. “Since forever, Caggs. How long has she been your best friend?”
I shrug. I’m not surprised, exactly, that Peter cares about Claire’s romantic life. I think he’s always carried a torch for her. He’s just never copped to it before.
“Speaking of being someone’s . . .” He puts his arm back around me as we continue toward the kitchen. “Have you seen Trevor?”
Peter thinks this thing with Trevor is a break. He doesn’t get it. All at once I’m angry again. The same anger that’s licked at me all of July and August like a white-hot flame: Peter decided to spend the summer there when he should have been here.
“No,” I say. “We haven’t exactly been in touch.”
He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “I think it’s temporary,” he says.
“Yeah, well, when he broke up with me he didn’t really give me a timeline.”
“Come on, Caggs. You two were together for like a year and a half. That’s about a decade in teenage years. You don’t just throw that away.”
I punch him lightly and he laughs. “Okay, okay,” he says.
I move to take a cup down from the kitchen cabinet. I stand over the sink and let the water run before I fill the glass. My parents have some fancy purifier attached to the faucet, but I don’t bother to turn it on. With everything that’s happened in my life, I doubt some chlorine is really going to be the thing to do me in.
The thing is, though, Trevor did throw it away. It was obvious for months, possibly even since the start of spring, if I think about it. Things just kept getting worse and worse.
I
kept getting worse and worse. And I wanted to be the girl he remembered, the girl who ate ice cream with him on the High Line and snuck champagne into movie theaters and ran around Washington Square Park in the summer in the rain. If not for me then definitely for him. But I couldn’t. After Hayley I just didn’t work the same way. I could have done all those things, but we wouldn’t have enjoyed them. I wouldn’t have really been there.