the corner, maybe to get their shoes and leave, so I leapt up and took the stairs two at a time. The second floor was dark, and most of the doors were closed. I turned my phone’s flashlight on and then plugged my ears as I ran by every bedroom, searching for an unoccupied bathroom. I found one at the end of the hall. When I flicked on the light I gasped; it was bigger than my bedroom, and maybe my mom’s as well: tan granite and dark tile everywhere, and a glass-enclosed shower so cavernous it creeped me out a little. I closed the door behind me and stepped closer to the giant gilded mirror to examine the damage. I was puffy, but not terribly so, and the little bit of eyeliner I’d put on had mostly remained in place. It took me a minute to figure out how to work the sink, but when I did I ran my hands under cold water and pressed them to my face. I looked at the curved metal faucet and had an idea I knew, as I had it, was a drunk one. I leaned forward to press my puffy eyes against it, figuring this was basically the same technique I’d seen my mother use with spoons she kept in the freezer. Anyway, it felt good, and grounding somehow, and I stayed hunched over like that for longer than I planned to, until someone knocked on the door, and in my hurry to get my face off the faucet I somehow poked myself in the eye with it.
“Ow!” I yelled.
“Quinn?”
“Ruby?”
With one hand cupped over my presumably empty eye socket I opened the door slowly until I confirmed that it really was Ruby on the other side.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, knowing this was a ridiculous answer as long as my hand was covering my eye.
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“It might be really gory. I hit it really hard.”
Ruby tried not to laugh. “Okay, well, I’ll steel myself.” She lifted her hand to mine and pulled it gently away. I wanted to be mad at her, for having the nerve to come here and touch me like that just minutes after her freaking lovers’ rendezvous in the kitchen, but I also didn’t want her to ever stop touching me. When she saw my eye she gasped, which made me gasp, and I whirled to face the mirror to find my injured eye…mostly identical to my uninjured one, save for slightly smudged eyeliner.
“You scared me!”
Ruby shook with silent laughter.
“It really hurt. It really felt like I broke something.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing weird. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re drunker than I thought.”
“Yeah, well.” I had to cope somehow, I thought.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I felt the rest of my face redden to match my eye wound. I didn’t really mean to get into this, but I could already sense my feelings threatening to spill from my mouth. I knew they weren’t all fair, but it felt like if I did not say them, I would die.
“You didn’t come with me. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Ruby smirked, but not meanly. “There are, like, a lot of other people here to talk to.”
“Yeah, but nobody else I want to talk to.” She looked at her feet, watching them take a tiny step closer to me. I stayed where I was. I’d been this person so many times before, even before I understood what it meant: waiting for a girl to choose me the way I’d chosen her. My entire middle school experience was defined by girls I was crazy about abandoning me the moment they got boyfriends. None of them understood why it hurt me so much. I knew why, but couldn’t put it into words. Boyfriends, even ex-boyfriends, remained a somewhat special presence in my life. I envied them, and I was afraid of them, and when I’d had a little to drink, I hated them. “You have…people here.”