Текст книги "Since You've Been Gone"

Автор книги: Morgan Matson

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I walked toward the water, to where the sand got soft and more pliable, but where my feet would still be dry. There was just something about the beach at night. It was so quiet, without anyone else yelling or playing Frisbee or blasting their music.  And maybe because of this, the sound of the water—even though we didn’t even have real waves—seemed that much louder.  And then there was the moon. It was huge tonight, in a sky that was filled with stars that reflected down on the surface of the water.

I expected that this would be it—I’d seen that Frank’s house was, in fact, on the water, and now I’d leave and go home. But as I turned back, I saw Frank sitting on the sand looking out at the water, his legs extended in front of him. I hesitated for only a moment before I sat down as well, not too close to him, pulling my knees up and hugging them. “I like your backyard,” I said, and Frank smiled.

“Well, I should enjoy it while I can,” he said, picking up a handful of sand and letting it fall through his fingers. I sensed there was more to come, so I just looked at him, waiting, trying to be as patient with him as he’d been with me. “My parents are getting a divorce,” he said. He let the rest of the sand fall and brushed his hands off. “That’s what you saw the other morning.” I could see the hunch in his shoulders. “It’s gotten pretty messy.”

I felt myself draw in a breath. It was what I’d guessed, given the screaming fight that I’d witnessed. “I’m really sorry, Frank.”

He nodded and looked over at me, and it felt like in that moment, I was getting to see the real Frank Porter, like he was finally letting his walls down a little, not putting a good face on things. “Yeah,” he said, giving a short, unhappy laugh. “They work together, so they’re keeping it quiet, so they don’t lose any jobs. But they’re having trouble dividing assets, so they’re not supposed to be in the house together without their lawyers present.” His mouth was set in a sad, straight line, and though he was trying to sound like this wasn’t bothering him, he wasn’t really pulling it off.

“So,” I said, leaning a little closer to him, trying to understand this, “I mean, who’s living here with you?”

“Well, they’re trading off,” he said. “In theory. It seems to be easier for them to just stay near their other projects.”

I nodded and looked down at the sand, smoothing out a patch of it, over and over again. Even though my parents weren’t paying any attention to me or Beckett, they were still there. And I knew if I needed them, I could shake them out of their writing stupor.

“Anyway, that’s why I’m here for the summer. I usually go to a program at Princeton. And I was going to go back again, but neither one could agree on who should pay for it, so . . .” He shrugged and gave me an attempt at a smile.

Even as I started to form the question, I knew I wouldn’t have asked him if it hadn’t been dark and I couldn’t have looked down at the sand instead of at him. “Is your—I mean, is Lissa at the Princeton program?” It was what I’d been wondering since Frank had been trying to get in touch with her on the drive here. It had reminded me that, in all the times I’d seen Frank this summer, he’d never been with his girlfriend.

Frank nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We didn’t think she should have to miss out just because I couldn’t go.” I waited for there to be more, but Frank just looked out to the water, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded like he was trying his best to be upbeat. “Anyway, Collins got me the job at IndoorXtreme, and here I am. It wasn’t the summer I was expecting, that’s for sure,” he said. But then he smiled, a small smile, but a real one this time. “But it’s turning out better than I imagined.” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, just tonight, I might have saved someone from getting arrested.”

I smiled. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

Frank waved this off. “All in a day’s work.”

“Does the offer still stand?” I asked, not knowing that I was going to, just blurting it out. “To help me with the list, I mean?”

“Of course,” Frank said, turning to me. “Actually,” he said with a smile, “I kind of already started.”

I laughed, and knew that I really shouldn’t have been surprised by this. “Of course you did.”

“So,” he said, and in his voice, I could hear Frank Porter, class president, beginning an assembly.  “I’ve made a list of all the Jamies at our school, and divided them by gender, and—”

“Actually,” I said, feeling myself start to smile as I leaned back on my hands, “that one’s taken care of.” Frank raised his eyebrows, and I extended my legs out in front of me, settling in for the story. “Okay, so the other night . . .”

I told Frank the story about delivering pizzas, and chickening out, but then going back to the gas station, remembering what he’d told me about the guy’s name, and then we somehow moved on to other things. Before I knew it, the conversation was just flowing without me having to try and guide it, or be aware of its every twist and turn. I was no longer thinking about what I should say.  I was just going with it, letting the conversation unfold.

“That makes no sense whatsoever.” He just stared at me. “It’s on the list because you’re afraid of horses?”

“Yep.”

Frank just tilted his head to the side, like he was trying to figure this out. “So, uh,” he said after a moment. “Would these be, like, regular horses? Or possessed demon horses?”

“Regular horses,” I admitted as Frank looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “I don’t really know why.”

“Well, for me it’s heights,” he said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me and I could see him start to blush a little. “As you probably saw the other day. My dad took me on a site visit when I was three, and I remember looking down and just freaking out. It’s one of my earliest memories, and it involves sheer terror. And I tried to get over it last year, when we flew to Montreal for an academic decathlon . . .”

“It is not a good movie.” Frank and I were now walking along the water’s edge; as he’d been sifting through the sand, he’d come upon a rock and wanted to try skipping it. He also wanted to try and convince me that Space Ninja, the movie that had been playing at the multiplexes since Memorial Day, was an example of quality filmmaking.

“It is,” he insisted, and when I raised my eyebrows at him, he laughed. “Okay, maybe the fact that I saw it with Collins colored my appreciation of it. But you have to admit, it was way better than Ninja Pirate.”

I just stared at him, wondering how he’d ever gotten a reputation for being one of the smartest people in school. “How is that proving your point?”

“In a well-ordered universe,” Frank said as we looked for more stones, since the first round of skipping hadn’t gone as he’d hoped, “skipping stones would boomerang back to you, and wouldn’t just be an exercise in futility.”

“In a well-ordered universe,” I countered, “people would stick to skipping stones on lakes and not,  you know,  Long Island Sound.”

“Can I ask about Lissa?”  We had temporarily moved back to the steps after Frank had gone inside to get us both sweatshirts. “Do you miss her?”

He nodded and was silent for a moment before he said, “Yeah. I mean, we’ve never really spent this much time apart, so . . .” He shrugged. There was a long pause before he added, his voice quieter, “I think it’s harder to be the one left behind.” He looked over at me. “Do you?”

I knew he meant Sloane. “Yeah,” I said. I thought about telling him how it sometimes felt like I was only half there, without Sloane to talk to about what I was experiencing. How it felt like someone had chopped off my arm, and then for good measure taken my ID and sense of direction. How it was like I had no idea who I was, or where I was going, coupled with the fact that there was a piece of me missing that never seemed to stop hurting, never letting me forget, always reminding me I wasn’t whole. But instead, I just looked at him, somehow understanding that he knew exactly what it was like to feel these things. “I do.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Frank said as I tried my own hand at skipping a stone. But I must have been missing some crucial component, because my stone just landed in the water and sank. “I checked with my mom. I saw Bug Juicewhen it was on Broadway—my first Broadway play.”

I glanced over at him, and wondered if I’d been at the theater that day, as I usually was, hanging out with the merch girls and trying to score some peanut M&M’s from concessions. I wondered what I would have thought of eleven-year-old Frank, if I would have known him back then. “It’s based on me,” I said. “Cecily is.” Frank raised his eyebrows, looking impressed, and I went on. “I mean, in the beginning. She becomes less like me as the play goes on.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as he picked up a stone, tossing it in his hand a few times, like he was testing the weight.

“She becomes . . . brave,” I finally said. “And really strong. Fearless.” I dug my toes into the sand, then added, “Plus, there’s the whole arson thing.”

“Well, that too,” Frank said, nodding. He sent his rock flying across the water, and it bounced off the surface five times before finally sinking.

I smiled. “Nicely done.”

“We’ve been friends since we were little,” Frank said. We were back to sitting on the sand, and I was writing my name with my first finger, over and over, the looping E, the hook on the y. The conversation had turned to Collins, and the likelihood of him having any success with Gwen the Projectionist (slim to none) versus the likelihood of her ditching him for another guy as soon as they arrived at the party (high). “One of those friends you can’t even remember making, you know?” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “He was really excited I was staying in town this summer. We usually don’t get to hang out this much.”

“And plus, now he’s got a wingman,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “For all the good I’m doing him.” He shook his head, but then smiled. “He’s actually got some big camping trip planned for the two of us in August.”

“In a well-ordered universe,” I said, smoothing out my name and starting again, “camping would take place indoors.”

The conversation started to slow around the time I began to feel the coldness of the sand through my jean shorts, and Frank started to yawn. We brushed off our hands and feet but tracked sand across the deck nonetheless. As we stepped inside, I waited for it to get strange, now that I could see him clearly again—his brown eyes, his reddish hair, his freckles.

But it didn’t.

And I didn’t understand why until I’d gotten back into the car and Frank had waved at me from the door and I’d turned in the direction of home. It seemed that somewhere between the arguments about the merits of ninja movies, he’d stopped being Frank Porter, class president, unknowable person. He’d stopped being a stranger, a guy, someone I didn’t know how to talk to.  That night, in the darkness, sharing our secrets and favorite pizza-topping preferences, he’d moved closer to just being Frank—maybe, possibly, even my friend.

6

KISS A STRANGER

I pulled my car through the gates at Saddleback Ranch, feeling my hands tighten on the steering wheel. This was what I’d been afraid of, ever since Frank told me that he had an idea for the list. Since he didn’t know what Penelope meant, or which dress Sloane was talking about, and whenever he’d brought up the list, he’d avoided even mentioning the skinny-dipping or stranger-kissing, that only left a few options. And it seemed that Frank had decided today was the day I would finally ride a horse.

When I woke up the morning after our talk on the beach, I’d surprised myself by reaching for my phone and texting him, asking him if he wanted to run. And we’d been running every day since—usually mornings, but occasionally in the afternoons if neither of us had to work. It was the last thing I would have expected, becoming friends with Frank Porter, but it seemed like that was exactly what was happening. The downside to this, apparently, was that he did things like schedule horseback rides for me.

I parked in front—it looked like there was a small office and, across the parking lot, a barn and an outdoor riding ring where horses and riders were going through a jumps course, much nearer to me than I would have preferred. I got out of my car slowly, wanting to stay close to it in case one of the horses went rogue and charged at me or something. I could hear horses in the barn, and I tried not to think about how close they were, and how Frank expected me to ride one of them—horses that could kick you or step on you or fling you off their backs, if they so chose.

“Hey,” Frank said, coming out of the office, looking relieved. “You came. I was worried you might have seen the sign and bolted.”

“Ha ha,” I said hollowly, suddenly wishing that Frank hadn’t done this. It was one thing to share embarrassing stories with him; it was quite another to let him see me at my most pathetic and afraid.

“You doing okay?” Frank asked, taking a step closer to me. “You look kind of pale.”

“I’m just . . . ,” I started, looking toward the barn again. My heart was hammering violently, and I could feel that I was starting to sweat, and I wiped my palms on my jeans. “I’m not . . .”

“You here for the eleven o’clock?” I turned and saw a woman in jeans and a Saddleback Ranch T-shirt leading out a horse that was so enormous, I almost had to tilt my head back to see the top of it. “Oh,” she said, looking from me to Frank. “Were you here for the couples’ ride?”

“No!” Frank and I said immediately, in unison.

“Just Emily,” Frank said, nodding toward me.

“Okay then,” the woman said, patting the horse hard on his flank, which made me wince.

What if he didn’t like that, and took it out on me? Were horses one of those animals that could smell fear? It seemed likely, after all, their faces were practically all nose. Maybe sensing—or smelling—this, the gigantic horse snorted and stamped his feet, making me take a giant step back and bump into my car.

“Well, I’ve got Bucky all saddled up for you,” she said.

“Why is he called that?” I asked, trying to take a step even farther back, not remembering that I was already pressed against my car. I could hear how high-pitched my voice sounded, but I also didn’t think I was going to be able to do anything about it. “Is it because he throws people off?”

The woman frowned at me. “You okay, hon?”

“Do you maybe have a smaller horse?” I asked, trying to think of some way that this could maybe still be salvaged. “Like, something not so high?”

“Em, you okay?” Frank asked, taking a step toward me, his voice low.

“Like a pony?” the woman asked, looking confused.

“Maybe,” I said, happy to have an option that would still be horseback riding, but just not quite so far off the ground. “Do you have any of those?” Before she could answer, my phone rang, and I grabbed for it, happy to delay the moment when someone would expect me to get on one of these horses and take my life into my hands. “Hello?”

“Hey,” the voice on the other end said, and after a moment I recognized it was Dawn. “Are you at work?”

The day after my pizza ride-along, I’d stopped by Captain Pizza to say hi, making sure to glower at Bryan as I did so. I figured he deserved it—not only for what he’d done to Dawn, but also because he’d been wearing mirrored sunglasses indoors. We’d exchanged numbers, and Dawn would sometimes call me before she went into work, asking me to go into Captain Pizza and see what was happening with Bryan and Mandy.

“No,” I said, then suddenly realized I might be able to turn this to my advantage. I would still be chickening out, but at least Frank wouldn’t have to necessarily know I was chickening out. “Why, do you need me to come in to work?” Work, I mouthed to Frank, trying to ignore the woman holding the still-stamping Bucky by the reins.

“What?” Dawn asked, sounding confused. “No, I was just wondering if you could scout the Mandy and Bryan situation for me. I was trying to figure out how much time to put into my hair.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said, hoping that Dawn wouldn’t think that I’d lost my mind—I figured I’d just explain things to her the next time I saw her. “Totally. I’ll come in as soon as possible.”

“Emily, what are you—” Dawn said, sounding more confused than ever. I hung up, then quickly switched the phone to silent in case she called back.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the woman, trying to make my voice match my words, but I could hear the relief creeping in. “I’ll, um, have to reschedule.”

“Trouble at Paradise?” Frank asked. His voice was light, but he was looking right at me, and I somehow had the feeling that he knew I was lying.

“Yeah,” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket, looking down at the ground. “Really unexpected.”

“I’m going to have to charge you for this since it’s outside the cancel window,” the woman said, leading the gigantic horse back to the barn. “But I’ll give you half off your next ride, how about that?”

“Sure,” Frank said. “We’ll try again another time.”

“I’m so sorry about the money,” I said. “I can pay you back.” But it was more than the money that was suddenly making me feel awful, now that the giddiness of getting out of this situation had subsided. I had the opportunity to cross something else off the list just handed to me, and I’d taken the first excuse to run away from it. And I’d wasted Frank’s time, all because I wasn’t brave enough to even try to get on a horse.

I gave Frank a half smile and got into my car, pulling out faster than was probably advisable when surrounded by giant horses, but I just wanted to get out of there. And as I turned down the street that would take me back home, I suddenly wondered if trying to ride a horse would have actually made me feel any worse than I did right now.

Mix #7

Don’t You Worry Child

Swedish House Mafia

Jolene

The Weepies

King of Spain

The Tallest Man on Earth

She Doesn’t Get It

The Format

Dirty Paws

Of Monsters and Men

Blackbird

The Beatles

High School Reunion

Curtis Anderson

The Gambler

fun.

Now Is the Start

A Fine Frenzy

5 Years Time

Noah and the Whale

I Will Wait

Mumford & Sons

Paperback Writer

The Beatles

Synesthesia

Andrew McMahon

Where Does This Door Go?

Mayer Hawthorne

House of Gold

Twenty One Pilots

Misadventures at the Laundromat

Curtis Anderson

Young Love

Mystery Jets

It Won’t Be Long

The Beatles

Truth in the Dark

The Henry Gales

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The Beatles

Re: Your Brains

Jonathan Coulton

Hannah

Freelance Whales

Mtn Tune

Trails and Ways

Home

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Trojans

Atlas Genius

When They Fight, They Fight

Generationals

Take a Walk

Passion Pit

“I’m really sorry about that,” Frank said as he looked over at me. It was two days later, and we were running. I’d shown up at his house that afternoon, ready to apologize, but Frank had just shaken off my apologies and then, to my surprise, had offered his own once we had gone about a mile into the five-mile loop I’d planned for us. “I never should have just sprung that on you. I keep thinking how I would have reacted if someone had just told me to go to the top of a skyscraper, with no warning. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“I am going to need to do it at some point, though,” I pointed out.

“You will,” Frank said, with such confidence, that I almost believed him. We ran for another mile before he looked over at me. “Music?” he asked.

I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.

We fell into our running rhythm, and I noticed that our shadows were lengthening out in front of us in the late-afternoon sunlight, occasionally overlapping each other on the pavement. Even though it had been a hot day and was very humid out, I pushed us, keeping the pace up, and we both struggled to maintain it for the last three miles. As ever, we sprinted toward the finish. Frank was right next to me until the very last second, when I managed to spring forward, hitting our mailbox with an open palm, then bending double trying to catch my breath. I turned my head to the side and saw Frank doing the same.

“Would you think any less of me,” he managed, “if I collapsed in that hedge?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I might just join you.” I straightened up and started shaking out my legs and hands, getting a fun preview of just how sore I’d be in the morning.  We started walking in the other direction, cooling down, like my track coach was always yelling at us to do.

“I liked the mix,” I said, handing him back his iPod. “But what was with all the handclapping songs?”

“That was Mumford,” Frank pointed out, looking scandalized. “Do you know how many awards they’ve won?”

“Then you would think they’d be able to hire an actual drummer,” I said, as Frank shook his head.

“Do you have any idea how many songs about trucks I just listened to?” he asked, as he handed me my iPod. “Five. Seriously. Not even just the country songs. What’s that about?”

“You’re the one with the actual truck,” I pointed out. “So you’d think you’d be more in favor of them.”

“If that logic made any sense—which it doesn’t, by the way—you, with your Volvo, would have been way more into Swedish House Mafia.”

“Which one was that?”

“Track one,” Frank said, and I made a face. “Told you.”

“Well,” I said, trying to think back to what I’d just heard, “I’m sure the Beatles sang songs about trucks occasionally.”

“Not that I can think of,” Frank said immediately. “Unless you mean the fire truck in ‘Penny Lane.’ ”

I shook my head and he lifted up his shirt to wipe his face, and I took a long look, then glanced away quickly, before he could catch me staring. “So what’s with the Beatles?” Seeing the look of incredulity on Frank’s face, I added quickly, “I mean, you told me why you started listening to them, because of the codes. But there were a lotof Beatles songs on that playlist.”

“Do you not like the Beatles?” Frank asked, sounding shocked, as we finished our cool-down and started walking back toward my house. “Do you also not like sunshine and laughter and puppies?” I just stared at him, waiting for Frank Porter to reappear and realize he was being a little crazy, but apparently Frank was just getting started. “I don’t think the Beatles get enoughrecognition,” he said, speaking fast. “I mean, when you look at their body of work and how they changed music forever. I think there should be federal holidays and parades.”

“Well, you can work on that,” I said, as we arrived back in front of my house. “In case you need another summer project.”

Frank laughed and looked toward the house, wiping his sleeve across his face. “Think you could spare a water?”

“Sure,” I said automatically, not thinking about anything except how thirsty I was as we headed up the driveway together. I opened the front door and we stepped into the dark and cool of the mudroom, and it wasn’t until the door was shut behind us that I suddenly realized what I had done—invited Frank Porter into my house.

He’d already seen my father in his robe, and I had just hoped—if he was going to come inside again—that I might be able to convince my parents to wear actual clothing. I suddenly realized I had no idea what Frank might be walking into.

I just crossed my fingers that the house wouldn’t be too much of a disaster, that my parents would be quietly typing in the dining room, and that Beckett wouldn’t be lurking in doorways, lying in wait to terrify us. “My parents are probably working,” I said. “So we might need to keep it down—”

But as soon as we’d crossed through the mudroom and into the house, the sentence died on my lips. My parents were not only away from the dining room and their laptops, but they were in motion, pushing the sofa against the wall while Beckett skated around the TV room on his sneakers that turned into skates when he leaned back on his heels. Stacks of plays were balanced in his arms, and the cat seemed to be deliberately as underfoot as possible.

“Um,” I said as I closed the door to the mudroom, causing everyone to stop for a moment and look over at me. I was very grateful to see that neither of my parents were wearing robes or sweatpants, but my mother had her hair in curlers and my dad was wearing two ties around his neck, so I wasn’t sure this was thatmuch of an improvement. “What’s going on?”

“Emily, thank god you’re home!” my mother said. She grabbed a stack of plays and papers from the ground and thrust them into my arms. “Go put these somewhere. And then could you see if we have anything to eat? Is there something in the freezer? Mini bagel micro whatsits?”

“I finished those last week,” Beckett said, skating past me. “So no.”

“I should probably go,” Frank said to me quietly, but apparently not quietly enough because my dad straightened up from the couch and spotted him.

“A boy!” he said, relief in his voice. “Wonderful. Come help me lift this.” He squinted at Frank through his glasses. “Hey, don’t I know you?” he asked.

“Seriously, what is happening?” I asked, stepping slightly to the left to stop Frank from going to join my father. Both my parents looked at each other and then down at the floor and I suddenly worried that they’d really let the bills slide this summer while they’d been working, and everything in the house was about to be repossessed, or something.

“Living Room Theater,” Beckett finally piped up when it became clear my parents weren’t going to, as he skated deftly around the cat. “They forgot.”

“Wait, here?” I asked, my stomach plunging, as I suddenly understood why everyone was running around. “ Tonight?”

“Tonight,” my mother said grimly, depositing another stack of plays into my arms. “We weren’t exactly prepared.”

“Living Room Theater?” I heard Frank echo behind me.

“Did someone cancel or something?” I asked.

“Well,” my mother said, “we technically did volunteer to host it this year. But that was before we knew we would be writing. And your father thinks that e-mail is interfering with his creative process, so he missed the reminders.”

I closed my eyes for just a moment. “How soon?” I asked.

My dad looked at his watch and winced. “An hour.”

“Um, what’s Living Room Theater?” Frank asked me, as this information seemed to panic the rest of my family, who all sprang into motion again.

“Well, unless you leave now,” I said, realizing it might even be too late as my mother dropped a stack of printer paper into his arms, “I think you’re going to find out.”

JULY

One year earlier

“Explain this to me again,” Sloane said as we—me, Sloane, my parents, and Beckett—walked up the driveway to Pamela Curry’s house. “You guys don’t get enough theater during the school year?”

My mother smiled and took a step closer to Sloane, linking her arm through hers. The two of them had gotten along right from the beginning, and a lot of times when she stayed over, I’d come downstairs in the morning to see Sloane and my mom sitting across the kitchen table from each other, talking, almost more like friends than anything else. “It started a few years back,” she said. “At a theater/English department meeting about parking, of all things. We ended up talking about all the plays we loved, and how they had to be so carefully selected at the college—not to offend anyone, to cast as many students as possible, come in under budget, all the usual concerns. And then someone . . .”

“Harkins,” my dad piped up from the other side of our group. “Remember? He got this thing going and then left when he got tenure at Williams.”

“Anyway, Professor Harkins suggested that we get together once a summer—both the theater and English departments—and put up a play that would have been impossible to do during the school year. No props, no costumes, everyone holds the book.”

“Sounds fun,” Sloane said as we reached the front door, and my mother knocked once and then just pushed it open and stepped inside. Living Room Theater tended to make things a little more casual, and there was usually enough chaos going on before the show that people weren’t bothering with details like answering the door.

We walked in and, sure enough, the downstairs was packed, mostly my parents’ colleagues from both their respective departments, plus their kids. Kids were always invited to Living Room Theater, unless it was Mamet, in which case there was a strict thirteen-and-over rule. People were milling about, tonight’s actors were walking around holding scripts and muttering, and everyone else was clustered around the food table.

I looked around, trying to be as subtle about it as possible, but apparently not succeeding, because Sloane leaned closer to me and whispered, “Seen him yet?” I felt myself blush as I shook my head. Pamela Curry and her two kids had moved here the year before, and she’d started working with my dad in the English department. Her son and daughter had been seniors when I was a sophomore, and I really only knew her daughter, Amy, because she’d shocked the whole school when she’d started getting all the leads in the plays, as a newcomer, right out of the gate. But I’d had an irrational and kind of gigantic crush on Charlie Curry, even though he went on to captain the tennis team and didn’t seem particularly interested in dating non-tennis-playing underclassmen.