“Scar.” There is pleading in my voice: Let’s start over. I don’t have the energy to fight this one out. No, energy is not the problem. Courage is. I can’t bear the thought of us yelling at each other, dissecting each other’s weaknesses, saying out loud the things those who love you the most are never supposed to say. Things like what she just implied: You only think about yourself. I can’t bear the thought that we might not be friends in the aftermath of those kinds of words.
“Let’s just not talk about it, okay?” Scarlett bites into her lemon again, and a drop of bitter juice slides down her chin. I hand her a napkin.
“Okay.” I finish off my two slices, but Scar just picks hers up, dressed and uneaten, and dumps them in the trash.
—
Scarlett sits next to Adam on the couch, her legs dangled over his lap. Deena’s brother, Joe, who is a freshman at the local community college and as annoying as his sister, has brought a case of beer, perhaps the new price of admission to Scar’s parents’ basement, and Deena passes cans around even though they’re warm. Adam’s best friend, Toby, is here too, and though we’ve known each other since preschool, I’m not sure we’ve ever had an actual conversation.
Everyone looks different but the same. Adam’s face is clearer—Scar was right—and he seems less gangly and boyish, like it’s not as ridiculous a proposition that he could be somebody’s boyfriend. That Scar would choose to hook up with him. I picture Adam lifting weights he ordered from the Internet in his basement, which is exactly like the one in my old house—linoleum-covered and low-ceilinged and the perfect locale for that sort of self-conscious project. Deena seems older too, but maybe it’s just that she’s standing straighter, her scoliosis less pronounced, and she keeps whispering things into Scar’s ear and then laughing. Okay, I get it, I want to say. You guys are besties now.
“What’s LA like?” Adam asks, and then the room turns its collective attention to me, and though just a minute ago I felt stuck on the outside, I suddenly feel too much like the center of attention. Talking about LA might make Scar even angrier at me, especially when the questions come from her—boyfriend? friend with benefits?
“You know,” I say, and swig my beer. “Sunny.”
“Scar says that you, like, live in a palace and shit,” Toby says, and clinks his beer against mine, as if my moving to LA was some sort of personal coup, like getting into my first-choice college.
“Yeah, not really. I mean, it’s a nice house, but it’s not mine. I miss it here.” I try to catch Scar’s eye. She’s not looking at me because she’s too busy snuggling with Adam. I think about Rachel’s house—the walls of windows that beg you to look outward—and then I look around this basement. Remember that we are underground.
“She said that you go to, like, some fancy-ass private school, where all the kids are super-rich and are followed by paparazzi.” Toby’s voice surprises me; it’s deeper than I imagined. I can hear his Chicago accent, which I’ve never thought of as an accent at all until right now. Is this what I sound like to everyone at Wood Valley? All low, growly “da’s” instead of “the’s”?
“I don’t know. The kids are definitely different.” All this time, did Scar think I was humblebragging whenever I described my plush new world? She and I have always spoken the same language. Surely she must have understood that I’d so much rather be here, in this basement, maybe not drinking warm beer with Deena and Adam and this strange crew, but eating popcorn and watching Netflix with her. That the stuff that makes Wood Valley sound interesting and cool is exactly what makes it so lonely. I’m not impressed by tall hedges and Kobe beef.
I picture my new friends hanging in Chicago, wonder whether they could slip into my old life the way I’ve tried to slip into theirs. Despite their excessive coffee-spending money and their after-school SAT tutors and the fact that they’ve never set foot in a Goodwill, Dri and Agnes would happily help themselves to a can of Schlitz and chat about whether Scar should let her hair grow out again. Caleb could hang here too, because he blends. Sort of. They’d all adapt.
Ethan is the only one who I can’t superimpose on this image, but maybe that’s because I