Since You've Been Gone (27 page)

An hour later I left the salon with sideswept bangs and hair in long layers that grazed my shoulders, feeling like someone else, but in the best way—like this was a me I hadn’t known existed until that moment.

“In a well-ordered universe,” I said to Frank, “there would be no mysteries.”

He glanced over at me. We were doing a late-afternoon run, seven miles this time. He’d noticed my hair as soon as I’d stepped out of my house. This surprised me, because, well, he was a boy, but also because it was back in my usual running ponytail, so the change wasn’t that obvious. But he’d told me that he liked it, which was more than I’d heard from my parents, who still hadn’t noticed anything different. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Sloane?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “You’d just know things. There wouldn’t be these big, hanging questions.”

Frank nodded, and we just ran for a while. “Lissa would argue with you about that,” he said. “She got really into philosophy last year. So I’d have a feeling she’d say something like ‘To know is not to know.’ ”

I glanced over at him. Frank didn’t bring up Lissa very often, so I noticed whenever he did. “Is she having a good time at Princeton?”

Frank nodded, but then added, “I mean, I assume so. We’ve both done it before, so it’s not like it’s a new experience. And it’s not really about fun. But she says the classes are great, really intense.” We ran in silence for a few minutes, and I thought maybe we had moved on, when Frank said, “I would have seen her more, but they don’t leave you a ton of time for socializing.”

“Absolutely,” I said, wondering why he felt the need to justify this to me.

“And she’s coming for my birthday,” Frank said, “so there’s that.”

“When’s that?”

“July nineteenth,” he said. He glanced over at me and raised his eyebrows. “Why? Are you going to get me a present?”

“No,” I said with a shrug, as I picked up my pace. “I just thought maybe that was the day I’d let you finally beat me.” I turned us down Longview, which had a hill that was going to be murder on the way up, but I’d been feeling that our runs had been a little too flat lately.

“Where are we going?” Frank asked, and he sounded worried, which I attributed to the fact that he’d just seen the hill. “Em?”

“Come on,” I said, nodding ahead. I knew that I wouldn’t
have enough breath to talk, so I slipped in my earbuds and turned on Frank’s iPod. I’d scrolled through his list of band names, and I was pretty sure, at this point, that he didn’t even
like
any of these bands, and was just doing this to mess with me.

I struggled up the hill, and when I turned to look at Frank, I noticed that he was looking straight ahead, not meeting my eye, probably concentrating on the run. We had just crested the top of the hill when a sign in front of a house caught my eye.
A Porter & Porter Concept
, it read, in the same font as the sign by Frank’s house. I slowed as I looked at it. It was stunning, a beautiful three-story house done in a similar style to Frank’s, but on a larger scale. The front was landscaped, and there was a bright-red mailbox by the end of the driveway, but the driveway was empty, so I took a tiny step closer to it. “Hey,” I called to Frank, who was running in place, earbuds still in his ears. “This is one of your parents’ houses.”

“I know,” Frank said shortly, nodding toward the road. “Come on.”

“It’s so cool,” I said, taking a step closer, and then seeing what I’d missed before—there was a Realtor’s sign on the lawn, a for-sale sign, with
Price Reduced!
across it.

“Emily,” Frank called, and I walked away from the house, glancing back at it once before joining him and starting to run.

“Sorry,” I said, when we’d made it down the other side of the hill and were cooling down. I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for, but I somehow felt the need to say it.

“It’s okay,” Frank said. “I just try and avoid this place if I
can.” We walked in silence for a few moments, and I realized that Frank had more to say and was just figuring out how to say it—and then I realized that I could now tell this. “I hate that house,” he finally said. “It’s pretty much what ended my parents’ marriage.”

“What happened?” I asked after a moment, when Frank didn’t go on.

He sighed. “It’s a spec house. They built it with their own money, no buyer, all their own design, it was supposed to be their ‘crown jewel.’ ” The way he put audible air quotes around the last two words made me think he’d heard this phrase a lot, and that he hadn’t been the one to come up with it. “But they started having disagreements right from the beginning. Could they afford it, was it worth it, was it a good idea? They started arguing about the design, the direction, everything. It turns out they’re really good working together when there’s someone else in charge. When it’s just them . . .” Frank’s voice trailed off. “They fought a lot,” he said quietly, and in that moment, I got a flash of what Frank must have been going through when this was happening, and how when I saw him at school, he just seemed so perfect, like everything in his life was working out.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

Frank shrugged and gave me a small smile. “Thanks,” he said. “Anyway, it’s done. It’s empty inside, but it’s done. And now that it’s done, nobody’s buying it.” I thought back to the house, the cheerful red mailbox that now just seemed depressing. “They
keep lowering the price, but nobody’s even made an offer. It’s not such a great situation.”

We walked in silence, until Frank started to pick up the pace, moving into a jog. I started jogging along with him, keeping up even as we went faster, as he pushed our pace to the edge of where we’d gone, understanding that sometimes, you just needed to run.

The Fourth of July fell on a Wednesday, and with a stroke of good fortune, none of us had to work early the next day. So we’d all gone over to Frank’s, and had watched the fireworks from the beach as they exploded over the water in a bright shower of sparks. Whenever I hung out at Frank’s at night, we had the beach to ourselves, so it was strange to suddenly see other people sitting in front of their houses, on beach towels and blankets and lawn chairs, gazing up at the fireworks, bright against the dark sky.

Collins had decided a week before to take up the ukulele. He insisted on calling it his “uke,” and was vehement that the ladies “loved a uke.” To my surprise, he’d actually learned some chords, and as he played softly, I could almost tell what song it was. I leaned back on my hands and looked around, at Collins bent over his tiny instrument, and at Dawn leaning close to him, her eyes half closed as she listened to the music. Frank had his face turned up to the sky, and I watched him, rather than the
fireworks, as the light changed over his features, from red, to blue, to orange.

I looked back up at the sky myself before he caught me staring, and realized how peaceful I felt. I couldn’t help but think about last year’s Fourth, when I’d gone with Sloane to a party. She had been invited to it, but I hadn’t, and even though she’d assured me it would be okay, I’d spent the entire night feeling like I was in the way, knowing I didn’t really belong. I didn’t feel that way now.  And while I would have given anything to have Sloane there with me, it didn’t change the fact that I was having a good time.  And as I watched Collins play his last chord with a flourish and Dawn clap for him, as I watched the fireworks overhead bathe Frank’s face in blue light, as I saw myself in the middle of it all, I realized that this was better. Even though Sloane had been there with me last year, this felt like I was where I belonged.

Hours later, I pulled into our driveway and then stepped hard on the brake. My mother was sitting on the porch steps, a mug in her hand. I glanced at the clock, even though it was pointless, and then down at the time on my phone. It was almost three a.m., which meant I was in big trouble. I’d avoided having the curfew conversation with my parents all summer, and had been coming home whenever I wanted, but I had the distinct feeling my luck had just run out on that front. I hadn’t intended to stay at Frank’s so long, but after the fireworks, none of us had wanted to stop hanging out. We’d played
Honour Quest
, Collins
had attempted to make pancakes at midnight, and then we’d all ended up back on the beach.

I parked in my usual spot, trying to judge by my mother’s expression in the moonlight just how much trouble I was in. I got out of the car, grabbing the striped beach towel that was going to let me cross off number three on the list. It had belonged to Frank’s neighbor, but it had been forgotten on his deck post-fireworks, and with everyone cheering me on, at one a.m., I’d dashed across the sand to grab it. I knew I should probably feel bad about my first criminal act, but mostly I was just happy to get this one crossed off. It wasn’t Sloane’s sign, but it was something.

I took a big breath as I walked toward my mother, who smiled at me as I got closer, and braced myself for the worst.

“Late night?” she asked, taking a sip from her mug, and I could see how tired she looked.

“I guess,” I said, not wanting to pretend it was an anomaly, just in case she had noticed me gone this late other nights. “You too?”

She shrugged. “Well, you know how the second act goes. Plus, there’s a bit of a crisis with your brother.”

“With Beckett?” I took a step closer to her, hoping that he hadn’t finally fallen off something. “Is he okay?”

She nodded, but didn’t look certain about this. “It’s this camping trip. We’re right in the middle of the play, so your dad had to tell him they weren’t going to be able to go this summer.”

I glanced up at Beckett’s bedroom window, as though this would somehow give me some insight into how he was feeling. Of course, it showed me nothing, but I had a pretty good idea nevertheless. “How’d he take that?”

My mother bit her lip and looked down into her mug, cupping her hands around it. “Not well.  Your dad told him there will always be next summer, but . . .” Her voice trailed off and I felt an acute pang of sympathy for my brother. I knew all too well what it felt like to have the summer you’d looked forward to taken away just like that.  After a moment, my mom looked up at me and tapped the spot next to her on the porch. “Want to sit for a minute?”

Knowing this wasn’t really a question I could say no to, I settled in next to my mother, setting my ill-gotten towel down next to me. She squinted at it. “Is that one of ours?”

“Kind of,” I said, pushing it off to the side. “I got it at Frank’s.”  This was, at least, slightly close to the truth.

“Ah,” my mother said with a smile. “Frank. I like him.”

I sighed. I’d gone through this with my mother the morning after Living Room Theater, but she still didn’t seem to grasp it. “He has a girlfriend, Mom.”

“I just said that I liked him,” my mother said mildly, raising her eyebrows at me. “I think he’s nice.  And I’m glad you’ve been able to make some new friends this summer.”