I take everything from Peak, setting the drinks on the table, and she pulls her coat off, hanging it on one of the hooks near the door. She looks around, taking in the house—it’s a lot, I know, too much—before looking at me, really looking at me, and sighing.
“I hate your father,” she says, coming closer and running her hands through my hair.
“I don’t,” I say, shutting my eyes.
“That’s more than half the problem.”
It’s barely scratching the surface, actually, but it’s probably best not to say that out loud.
“I don’t want to go.”
“You’re not.” She takes the bag from my hand. “Can you eat? I brought bagels and butter and cream cheese. It always settles my stomach when I’m nerved up before a big performance or something. I thought it might—”
Her words cut off in a whoosh when I pull her into a hug and hold on too tight, shaking my head. The bag crinkles between us until it falls to the floor, a stray bagel rolling out, and I bury my forehead into her shoulder, breathing her in, letting her hold me together.
“Let’s go lie down for a while,” she says, and I nod against her neck before leading her up the stairs, the bagels abandoned on the floor where she dropped them.
I perch on my bed, watching her catalog the contents of my room. It only takes a minute; there’s not much. My mom never got around to sending most of the things I asked for, and I threw out half of what she did send because of bad memories.
“Where’s all your stuff?”
I shrug, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed. “I travel light,” I say, because that’s easier than explaining that nothing really feels like mine.
She glances in the empty closet, the doors wide open. “Really light, I guess.”
I reach over the side of the bed and rummage through my duffel bag, searching underneath the wrinkled clothes and the boxer briefs and about a dozen Sharpies that I somehow collected, until I feel the pointy plastic of the mask and curl my fingers around it.
“Still have this, though,” I say, holding it up.
She takes a step closer, pulling the Batman mask out of my hand and running her fingers over it. “Awww, Bats.”
“And this,” I say as she watches me snap the back of the case off my phone and pull out her feather. It’s a little wrinkled, sure, but still hanging in there.
“You kept that this whole time?”
She says it like it’s been an eternity instead of a month and a half. It kind of does feel like that with everything we’ve been through, and are going through, and hopefully will keep going through, together.
“Is that weird?” I ask, twirling the feather. Because maybe holding on to it is a little stalkery or whatever, but it feels right.
“No, I think it’s sweet,” she says. “But—”
“But what?”
“But if you get to keep my feather, then I should get to keep the mask. Fair is fair.”
I glance at the mask, wishing the idea of giving it away didn’t come with such heavy regret.
“It was a joke,” she says, trying to hand it back, but we both know it wasn’t.
“No, no, keep it.” I push it back toward her. “I want you to have it.”
“You look like I broke all your crayons,” she says, studying my face, “and then ran over your puppy.”
“No, it’s just—it’s good memories. But maybe I don’t need it anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re here.”
She smiles at me, genuine but cautious. She’s smart to be like that—I know she is—but I wish that she wasn’t. Because that’s the truth under the lie. She can say it’s going to be okay as much as she wants, but one phone call and my dad could have me on a flight back to Seattle. One slip-up and Vera could learn everything and keep us apart.
“I am,” she says. It feels like she means more, but I don’t want to