Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,95

say.

Weird, says Lindsay, and it makes me almost laugh for the first time in almost forever.

I come inside. The house is warm and tight. Our voices bounce off the sides of things. It’s large but enclosed: it feels safe, a fortress.

Angelo and Maxie come bounding toward us and Lindsay kneels down beside them and says Hi, hi!

I have never been good with dogs so I stay back, but one of them sniffs at me and I pet him on his head.

C’mere, says Lindsay, and makes her way into the kitchen. Sit down, she says, pointing at a stool.

You want a smoothie? she asks, and I almost say yes until I see it is a little joke. She’s joking about her mother. Let me make you a smoothie, she says again, but in her mother’s voice.

Lindsay puts her elbows on the island and looks at me.

What happened to you, where have you been, she says. Everyone’s been talking about you.

She shakes her head. I can’t believe you punched Matt Barnaby, she says.

But I can see that she is laughing a little. I smile too, thinking of it. The look on his face: like This is so unfair.

You know it wasn’t even him? she says. It wasn’t even him who told me.

It wasn’t? I say.

—Nope.

—Who was it?

Just some girl, says Lindsay. Some girl that Christy’s friends with from gymnastics. She was at the party you guys went to.

Shit, I say.

Poor Matt, says Lindsay, laughing. Then: Whatever. He probably deserved it. For something else.

She turns away from me, toward the fridge, and I look at the glossiness of her hair, her healthy girl hair, brown and straight, in a ponytail.

I’m starving, she says. She pulls pounds of food out of the refrigerator: cheese and apples and leftover pasta with tomatoes and olives in it. Then she goes to the pantry and gets chips and Oreos and peanut butter. She pours herself a glass of milk. She takes a spoon and heaps some peanut butter onto a cookie, then dunks the whole thing into a glass. She bites it. Yum, she says. Oh my God, I was so hungry.

She looks at me. Take something, she says. Whatever you want.

I feel the weight of her offer. I slide around the island and pass her. I open the fridge for myself.

Oh my God, you stink, she says, laughing. Where the hell have you been?

When I have made myself a sandwich we go into the living room and sit together on the same couch. But we’re both facing straight ahead. We’re not looking at each other.

I eat my sandwich slowly.

Kel, says Lindsay, I’m still mad at you.

I know, I say. I’m sorry.

Is it your mom? asks Lindsay.

Yes, I say.

All she knows about her is that she’s sick. Thinking about all that has happened in the past week makes me tired.

Do you want to tell me? asks Lindsay. I think you should tell me.

Yes, I say.

But I can’t find the words to begin with.

OK. Do you want to take a shower? asks Lindsay suddenly. Would that make you feel better?

It would. It does. Lindsay brings me upstairs and gives me a towel from her parents’ linen closet. It’s green and soft. You can shower in my bathroom, says Lindsay. Her bathroom is just off her bedroom, which we walk into together. It is just as I had imagined it, green and goodsmelling: a dark wooden desk against one wall, her laptop shut on top of it, a peace-sign sticker slapped over its logo. Yesterday’s shirt hanging over one post of her canopied bed. The heat in this house makes a low comforting hum, a rush of air.

The bathroom off of Lindsay’s bedroom looks like something I guess you would find at a fancy hotel. The shower has a bench in it. The showerhead is as wide as a sunflower.

OK, says Lindsay. All yours.

I shut the door behind me and unbutton my shirt. The smell of me. The sight. I’m a skeleton. My hip bones stick out over the tops of my jeans. I have a full beard.

I turn the shower on as hot as it will go and watch the water for a while, pulsing and turning, making patterns on the glass.

When I step into it my knees go weak and I have to sit down on the bench. I lower my head. I let it wash over me.

Lindsay only has girl things in here. Girl shampoo and conditioner, which smell exactly as she does, like lemons and