says.
I expect Mrs. Patterson to scream, to call for her husband or even the police. There’s a butcher’s block of knives right next to her, another option. Instead, she wipes her eyes, blinking tears away.
I stand up, and Mallory tries to pull me back down. I lift up my hand, slowly at first, testing a hunch. I wave, but she doesn’t respond. She can’t see us.
The yelling starts again, Becky’s dad at an epic level. Every word is audible: “That’s right. I’m the bad guy. I’m always the bad guy. That’s just perfect.” When Mallory says my name, I flinch.
“Should we go to the party?”
“I guess,” I say. As we walk away from the house, the yelling gets even louder, like somebody has turned up the volume. We’re barely out of their yard, walking along the tree line that fences the neighborhood, when Mallory says, “I’m never getting married.”
“Everybody fights,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. “What’s the point?”
I try to step around a hole and tweak my leg. I bend over and try to breathe through the pain. When I’m back upright, I don’t know what else to say but “You’ll probably end up here in Deerfield, married, with a Labrador. Just like everybody else.”
She stops. “No, I won’t.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to end up here with a fucking dog. Okay?”
“Um, okay,” I say, not sure why this is so contentious. Why she’s getting all pissy about Deerfield. The garages here are nicer than the house either of us lives in. She curses under her breath and rubs the back of her neck.
“I’m sorry. I think I’m just tired.” When her phone rings, she laughs and shakes her head. “Right on time.”
“Hey, I appreciate your help. But maybe you should go home. I’ll find him eventually, and I’m sure Wayne will drive me around. Then you can call Will and fix all of this.”
She bites her lip, nods again. For a moment everything about Jake falls away. Mallory looks broken, the way Jake looked when he first came home. Like something is missing. “Are you okay?”
She nods again, two quick movements, and says, “I’m fine. I promise. Let’s go to the party and find your brother.”
But I don’t move. She was always there for me, always willing to look past the idiotic things I did. She never cut me loose, not really. We were unconditional, and maybe we still are. Maybe that’s something that never goes away no matter how poorly you maintain it.
“You don’t look fine,” I say. “You look like you should probably go home and sleep.”
She forces a smile. “I can’t leave you with those two dumbasses. You won’t have working arms or legs by sunrise. Besides, Jake’s probably at the party with Becky.”
I try to believe it as we start walking again.
Mallory puts her arm around my shoulder as the sounds of the party get louder. It doesn’t take a genius to see how her face is crimped and anxious. When her phone rings again, she pulls away to silence it, and when she does, I see the digitized picture of Will and Mallory smiling, a self-portrait of them in the mountains. Leaves—or maybe muted flowers?—swirl behind them. The screen dies, and Mallory sighs.
“So . . . why did you hit him?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she says.
“Try me.”
She looks straight ahead, smiling sadly into the growing light from the party. She squeezes my shoulder once and says, “Not tonight. Okay?”
We move slowly because of my leg, but soon enough we’re on the porch of the house. People look past us, their party still going strong. I expected them to point, to relive Mallory’s dramatic exit immediately upon our arrival. Instead, they drink and laugh with the same enthusiasm as earlier in the night.
“I’ll go see if Jake’s here,” I say. “That way you don’t have to go inside.”
Mallory looks around the front lawn, the party having expanded outside the house. “I’d rather just come with you. Safety in numbers and all that.”
She laughs weakly.
We don’t get three steps inside the door when Wayne and Sinclair tumble through the crowd, pulling Becky Patterson behind them. My heart jumps. She’s pretty and popular, and if you had asked me before I heard her parents fighting, I would’ve told you her life was perfect. Perfect clothes. Perfect hair. Perfect BMW convertible in the school parking lot. Perfect.
Wayne takes a swig of the beer he’s holding. “Tell him.”
“Your brother was acting like a total freak—no offense.”
“Where is he