LATER, IN THE kitchen, picking over a plate of pizza rolls, Ashleigh invites me to stay with her until the Read-a-thon.
“I haven’t had a roommate other than Duke in a long time,” she says. “And this house is fucking huge. It’d be fun.”
“Speaking of the size of your house, you’ve never mentioned . . .” I trail off.
“That I live in a Bond villain lair?” Ashleigh says.
Which gives me permission to more openly call a spade a spade: “That you’re rich as fuck.”
She snorts. “I am not. Duke has cookie money.”
“Cookie money?” I repeat. “Like he knocked over a Girl Scouts truck and started a black-market operation?”
“Like, he’s the heir to a cookie fortune,” she says.
“I didn’t know cookies could have fortunes,” I say. “I mean . . . other than . . . fortune cookies.”
“Oh, yeah.” She pops another pizza roll in her mouth. “Anything can have a fortune if you’re greedy enough.”
At the look on my face, she adds, “I mean, obviously not Duke. He could’ve fought me for the house, and he didn’t. But I’m positive that if you go far enough back through his family tree, someone made a deal with the devil or, like, killed someone to get their hands on a secret recipe.”
“I look forward to their HBO drama,” I say.
She’s quiet for a moment. “You should let Miles know you’re staying here.”
“It’s not like that with us,” I remind her.
“You don’t want him charging into the FBI offices, claiming you’ve been taken, do you?” she asks.
“Taken?” I say. “Like kidnapped?”
“I don’t know, whatever happens in those movies you two are obsessed with,” she says. “Like, held at gunpoint and forced to rob a museum with your highly specialized skill set, or whatever.”
“Right, I’m going to be ‘taken’ by someone who needs the inside scoop on children’s literature.”
“Just let him know you’re staying here,” she says.
“Fine,” I groan.
Staying with Ash, I type out. He replies almost instantly, k.
“There,” I tell her.
“Good.” Ashleigh tips her head toward the back doors. “Now, let’s watch something gory.”
“Real Housewives?” I guess.
“This,” she says, “must be what it’s like to be a proud mother.”
“Did you forget about Mulder?” I say.
“Just for a second,” she says. “He’s back now, though.”
Tuesday, on our way in, we hit up a drive-through coffee kiosk near her house. She’s not a morning person, and we barely speak until we get to work, at which point her first real words of the day are, “Wow! Maybe you should move in with me. I could be on time every day.”
“We’re four minutes late,” I point out.
“Which is four minutes earlier than usual,” she says.
“If I moved in with you,” I say, “I don’t think our friendship would survive that.”
“I’m not sure we would even survive that,” she says. “It’d be like some deranged eighties sitcom, with a vaguely haunted laugh track.”
“What’s this about you moving in together?” Harvey asks, emerging from his office, mug in hand.
“We’re not,” Ashleigh and I both say.
“Relieved to hear that,” he says. “It’s manageable for one of you to be late every day, so long as the other is early.”
“And which of us is which?” Ashleigh asks, feigning ignorance.
After work, we grab burritos, then pick up Mulder from after-school band practice. “This is my friend Daphne,” she tells him as he climbs into the backseat of her hatchback with a trombone case nearly as big as he is. “Daphne, this is Mulder.”
“Hi!” I wave.
I expect a sulky preteen nonresponse, but despite his overall aesthetic projecting this, he nods politely and says, “Nice to meet you, Daphne.”
“You too!” I say.
“She’s staying with us for a couple of days,” Ashleigh tells him.
“Cool.” He pulls a handheld video game out of his backpack. She asks about his day, and he confirms it was “so boring he almost died” and also that “Ricky Landis puked in first period, and Tinsley G”—there are two Tinsleys in his first period—“was so grossed out, she threw up too.”
Then, without taking a breath, he asks what’s for dinner, and Ashleigh hoists the burrito bag into the air.
A minute later, he adds, “Aren’t you guys a little old for sleepovers?”
Ashleigh looks dismayed. I cackle, until she tells Mulder to guess how old I am.
Guilelessly, he says, “I don’t know. Forty-five?”
And then she’s cackling.
“That’s older than your mom,” I point out.
He just shrugs, goes back to playing his game.
On Wednesday, after work, I shut myself into the guest room to do a video interview with Anika and Clay, the Ocean City Library district manager and branch manager, respectively. “How soon could you be out here?” Anika asks with a sunny smile as we’re saying our goodbyes.
My heart shoots up into my throat, but my voice stays even. “As soon as I fulfill my two weeks’ notice.”
Anika and Clay exchange a smile. I’m rarely the most confident person in the room, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’ve got it when Clay says, “We’ll be in touch as soon as possible.”
When I leave the guest room, Ashleigh’s waiting for me in the hall with champagne.
“I don’t want you to go,” she says, “but I want you to be happy.”
By Thursday, I’m actually ahead of schedule for the Read-a-thon, but the school calls Ashleigh at work to come pick up Mulder early, because he’s finally caught the stomach bug that’s been going around.
The very last thing I need is to get sick right now, and I debate going back to the apartment for the next two days. Instead I double my handwashing.
By midday Friday, Mulder texts Ashleigh that he hasn’t gotten sick at all that day. So far, neither she nor I have any symptoms, so things are looking up.
Until I remember I forgot to grab a couple of bags of Target dollar-section prizes I’d been stockpiling under my bed.
I tell myself that Miles will already be at work when I get there, but the truth is, I cut it close, tempt fate.
If the universe wants us to run into each other, we’ll run into each other.
He’s not there, though.
He’s so thoroughly not there that I wonder if he’s been staying elsewhere, a thought I immediately regret, because now it’s bound to recur when I’m lying in the guest bed tonight.
Just because the apartment is spotless, no lamps on, no scent of weed whatsoever, doesn’t mean Miles has been sleeping somewhere else.
Peter’s words echo through me: They’ll get back together. You know that, right?
I refuse to let the thought take hold. Partly because I don’t believe it, and partly because I have no mental space.
It’s not dark out yet, but the shades are drawn, everything cast in shadow. I make my way into my room, not bothering with the lights, and dig the Target bags out from under the bedframe.
When I stand to go, something draws my eyes to the corner of my dresser, the part of it nearest to the door.
A small white box.
My heart lurches. I’m fairly sure it’s the box of fudge, minus the note, but I open it just to be sure: chocolate.
I’m about to drop it in the trash when I catch sight of Dad’s note crumpled there.
No part of me is itching to read it, but I’m also thinking about what Mom said, about not wasting time talking ourselves out of hope, and avoiding anything that might hurt.
I can see now how much time I’ve spent doing that.
I stopped trying to make friends I’d have to move away from. I let Sadie’s and my friendship fade away rather than risk confronting her about it and learning, once and for all, that I didn’t really matter.
When Peter dumped me, my life shrank, not just because of him but because of me. I didn’t want to go anywhere I might run into him. I didn’t want to be reminded of my broken heart.
And, not to excuse any of his shortcomings, but I hadn’t known Dad was married because I hadn’t even read my birthday card.
I think about Ashleigh too, and her ex, how he was fine with things being just okay, too scared to go deeper in search of greatness when it meant risking change.
I don’t know whether I’ll eat the fudge, or read my dad’s letter, but I stuff both in the bag of Dollar Spot prizes to take back to Ashleigh’s. Then I leave my room. I turn into the living room, and I collide with something hard enough that red scorches cross the backs of my eyelids.
Not something. Someone.
A shadowy figure.
I scream.
Then they scream.
There’s a brief clumsy scuffle. Neither of us seems totally sure whether we’re attacking or trying to get away. Then a voice yelps, “I’ll fucking end you if you don’t leave!”
Ordinarily, this is the last thing I’d want to hear from someone moving around in the dark in my apartment. In this instance, cool relief rushes from my head to my feet.
“Julia?!” I say.
“Daphne?” Julia cries.
I scuttle sideways and flick the lights on. “You’re back?”
“You’re back,” she says.
“I didn’t go anywhere,” I say.
“Tell that to my brother,” she says. Heat hits my cheeks and ears. A hand goes to Julia’s hip. “Wait, I’m mad at you.”
“He told you?” I ask.
“That he professed his love to you?” she says. “Might’ve mentioned it. What was more surprising, though, was hearing you didn’t tell him you feel the same way. Which you do.”
“Julia,” I say. “It’s complicated.”
She squints, head cocking, the Nowak tilt. “Is it, though?”
An awkward silence unfurls.
Finally, she sighs. “I guess I also need to thank you.”
“What? For what?” I say.
“Miles told me you’d been pushing him to be honest with me,” she says. “About how he felt about me moving here.”
“You guys talked about it?” I say.
“We did,” she confirms.
“How was it?” I ask.
“Horrible,” she says. “I was so upset. Crying. Mad. The whole thing.”
I wince. “I’m sorry.”
“And then we kept talking,” Julia continues, “and I understood. It’s exactly the same thing he did with you.”
“I’m not following.”
“I always thought it was amazing, how Miles managed to escape our childhood without becoming suspicious of everyone,” she says. “But then he was talking about what happened with you—how he messed up and it convinced him he couldn’t be who you need, yadda, yadda, yadda. And I realized, all that shit our parents did? It might not have made him mistrust other people, but it sure as hell made him mistrust himself.”
My heart tightens and twists.
“He can’t see himself clearly,” she says. “They made him feel like all he ever does is let people down.”
I’ve seen it, over and over again—that self-doubt, the mistrust of his own feelings, the fear of letting any bit of darkness out of himself.
“Here I am, keeping all my problems secret so he won’t rush in to fix them,” she says, “and he tells me he’s scared his childhood broke him. That because of it, he can’t be the brother, or friend, or whatever the people he loves deserve.”
I swallow hard. “What did you say?”
“I told him that, because of my childhood, I know he can. He always has.”
A lump of emotion climbs my esophagus.
“Anyway.” Her gaze falls. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do.”
I swallow. “Welcome back, Julia.”
“Thanks,” she says. “It’s good to be home.”
