Maritza turned around one more time, the expression on her face something I wouldn’t be able to get out of my head later.
My parents were still standing with their mouths hanging open, looking between me on the deck and my friends walking out of the house. I was shaking, trying not to cry, and staring determinedly at the wooden deck panels.
There was the sound of Maritza’s car starting in the driveway, and a few moments later they were gone.
“Codi,” my mom said softly.
I shook my head and marched past them. My brother stood at the kitchen counter with a shocked expression on his face, but I hurried up the stairs and into my bedroom, where I locked the door and fell onto my bed. I cried until the fireworks started up, blasting and crackling somewhere high above me.
16
The next few days were a slow, dragging weight. I felt like I’d been sprinting for weeks, fueled by adrenaline and novelty and giddiness, and now I was crashing hard. For a while there I’d actually thought I was becoming someone new, that I was creating another social and emotional landscape in my small, compressed world, but now I could see that it had all been a short-lived, bound-to-burst dream, and that I was the one who had killed it.
Summer felt markedly different now. It was always different after the Fourth of July, when the new school year loomed much closer, but now it was also emptier, more drawn out, more depressing. I could feel the school year crawling closer and knew it would be exactly the same as it had always been. Being a senior wouldn’t make me any different or more real. It might even be worse than the past three years, because now I might be going into it without my two best friends.
“What happened, though, honey?” my mom asked for the millionth time that week. “I’ve never seen you three fight like that.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But Codi, they’re your best friends,” she said gently. “They’re practically a part of the family.”
I didn’t want to tell her the truth: that the three of us hadn’t spoken to each other in days, that JaKory had been posting emo poems on Tumblr, that I couldn’t help worrying about Maritza going back to face Rona without her parents or JaKory or me by her side.
And, more than anything, that I’d never felt so lonely.
“I guess these things happen,” Mom sighed. Then she turned businesslike. “Okay, let’s talk about anniversary weekend. Dad and I leave next Saturday morning, which means you’re going to be in charge. I need you to make sure your brother gets to wherever he needs to go … He mentioned something about Darin’s house…”
I tuned her out. Grant’s social life was the last thing I needed to hear about right then.
* * *
A week after my fight with Maritza and JaKory, I woke up early and lay in my bed for a while. The sound of a lawn mower outside made everything feel so mundane and ordinary. I felt like there was no energy in my body, like the muscles and veins and blood flow weren’t working properly. It was a feat just to drag myself down to the kitchen for a bagel.
My brother was there, eating ravioli out of a cereal bowl, wearing a faded T-shirt that didn’t fit him anymore. I hid my face and set about toasting a bagel. For a moment, it was just the two of us breathing in the empty kitchen.
“Are you trying to burn your bagel?”
I looked up at the sound of Grant’s voice. “What?”
“It’s been in there too long.”
I popped the toasting button up; sure enough, my bagel had started to blacken around the edges.
“Oh,” I said dazedly. “Thanks.”
Grant’s fork clanked against his bowl. “Mom’s worried about you,” he said with his mouth full.
His tone was casual, matter-of-fact, like he was telling me it might rain that day. I kept my back turned to him, scraping cream cheese onto my bagel. “Why?”
“Because you screamed your head off at Maritza and JaKory, and now you’re just moping around doing nothing.” He burped and kept talking with his mouth full. “Dad says you’re just being a moody teenager.”
I tried to say I was fine, that Grant should mind his own business, but the words got stuck in my throat.
“Why’d you get so mad at them, anyway?” Grant asked.