“What?” I don’t even know what she’s talking about. Her words are all running past me, blurring together. I’m holding on to the towel rack, afraid I’ll fall over. The shower is on way too hot and there’s thick steam everywhere, clouding up the mirror, condensing on the tiles.
“You, Rob, some Miller Lite, and his flannel sheets.” She laughs. “Very romantic.”
“I have to shower.” I try to close the door, but she wedges her elbow in at the last second and pushes into the bathroom.
“You haven’t showered yet?” She shakes her head. “Uh-uh. No way. You’ll have to do without.”
She reaches into the shower and turns off the water, then grabs me by the hand and drags me into the hallway.
“You definitely need some makeup, though,” she says, scanning my face. “You look like shit. Nightmares?”
“Something like that.”
“I have my MAC stuff in the Tank.” She unzips her coat and I see a white tuft of fur peeking out from her cle**age: our Cupid Day tank tops. I suddenly have the urge to sit down on the floor and laugh and laugh, and I have to struggle not to have a fit right there while Lindsay’s shoving me into my room.
“Get dressed,” she says, and pulls out her cell phone, probably to text Elody we’re going to be late. She watches me for a second and then sighs, turning away.
“Hope Rob doesn’t mind a little BO,” she says, and as she giggles over this, I start pulling on my clothes: the tank top, the skirt, the boots.
Again.
DOES THIS STRAITJACKET MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?
When Elody gets into the car she leans forward to grab her coffee, and the smell of her perfume—raspberry body spray she still buys religiously from the Body Shop in the mall, even though it stopped being cool in seventh grade—is so real and sharp and familiar I have to close my eyes, overwhelmed.
Bad idea. With my eyes shut I see the beautiful warm lights of Kent’s house receding in the rearview mirror and the sleek black trees crowding on either side of us like skeletons. I smell burning. I hear Lindsay yelling and feel my stomach bottom out as the car lurches to one side, tires squealing—
“Shit.”
I snap my eyes open as Lindsay swerves to avoid a squirrel. She chucks her cigarette out the window and the smell of smoke is strangely double: I’m not sure whether I’m smelling it or remembering it or both.
“You really are the worst driver.” Elody giggles.
“Be careful, please,” I mutter. I’m clutching the sides of my seat without meaning to.
“Don’t worry.” Lindsay leans over and pats my knee. “I won’t let my best friend die a virgin.”
I’m desperate to spill everything to Lindsay and Elody at that moment, to ask them what’s happening to me—to us—but I can’t think of any way to say it.
We were in a car accident after a party that hasn’t happened yet.
I thought I died yesterday. I thought I died tonight.
Elody must think I’m quiet because I’m worried about Rob. She loops her arms around the back of my seat and leans forward.
“Don’t worry, Sam. You’ll be fine. It’s just like riding a bike,” Elody says.
I try to force a smile, but I can barely focus. It seems like a long time ago that I went to bed imagining being side-by-side with Rob, imagining the feel of his cool, dry hands. Thinking about him makes me ache, and my throat threatens to close up. I suddenly can’t wait to see him, can’t wait to see his crooked smile and his Yankees hat and even his dirty fleece that always smells a little bit like boy sweat, even after his mom makes him wash it.
“It’s like riding a horse,” Lindsay corrects Elody. “You’ll be a blue-ribbon champion in no time, Sammy.”
“I always forget you used to ride horses.” Elody flips open the lid of her coffee and blows steam off the top.
“When I was, like, seven,” I say, before Lindsay can turn this into a joke. I think if she starts making fun of me now I really will cry. I could never explain the truth to her: that riding was my favorite thing in the world. I loved to be alone in the woods, especially in the late fall when everything is crisp and golden, the leaves the color of fire, and it smells like things turning into earth. I loved the silence—the only sound the steady drum of the hooves and the horse’s breathing.
No phones. No laughter. No voices. No houses.
No cars.
I’ve flipped the visor down to keep the glare out of my eyes, and in the mirror I see Elody smiling at me. Maybe I’ll tell her what’s happening to me, I think, but at the same time I know that I won’t. She would think I was crazy. They all would.
I keep quiet and look out the window. The light is weak and watery-looking, like the sun has just spilled itself over the horizon and is too lazy to clean itself up. The shadows are as sharp and pointed as needles. I watch three black crows take off simultaneously from a telephone wire and wish I could take off too, move up, up, up, and watch the ground drop away from me the way it does when you’re on an airplane, folding and compressing into itself like an origami figure, until everything is flat and brightly colored—until the whole world is like a drawing of itself.
“Theme song, please,” Lindsay says, and I scroll through her iPod until I find the Mary J. Blige, then lean back and try not to think of anything except the music and the beat.
And I keep my eyes open.
By the time we pull into the drive that winds past the upper parking area and down to the faculty lot and Senior Alley, I’m actually feeling better, even though Lindsay’s cursing and Elody’s complaining that one more tardy will get her Friday detention and it’s already two minutes after first bell.