I’d use. His Adam’s apple sticks out like it’s trying to poke through the skin of his neck. We’re supposed to be dressed up for this dinner, but he’s wearing khaki shorts and a faded old T-shirt that has something Fortnite on it. His red-brown hair is uncombed and so long it almost covers his eyes. His shoulders have a weird hunch.
Afton’s right. I can’t imagine sex with Nick.
For all of two seconds I get a flash of Leo on the virtual movie screen in the back of my brain. His red face hovering over mine. “I love you,” he whispers.
“Fuck you,” I whisper back. I’ve never been big into swearing before the past twenty-four hours happened. At least not out-loud swearing. But now it’s like that word won’t leave my brain.
“Looks like you’ll have to spend this vacation in celibate self-reflection, after all,” says Afton sympathetically.
“Yeah, I’m very disappointed.” I try to shove thoughts of Leo away. It’s hard to stop thinking about someone when you’ve done nothing but think about them for the longest time. “I’ve heard rebound sex is awesome. Wait, have you ever had rebound sex?”
“Well, no,” she admits. “Not yet.”
“So how would you know?”
“What are you talking about?” asks Abby then, loudly.
“Yes, what are you two scheming over there?” asks Mom, her mouth pinched up. She must have heard me say an inappropriate word or two. She disapproves, of course, but she doesn’t like to parent us in public—Mom relishes the idea that her children are well-behaved without being threatened or bribed. I think she’s proud that we’re so self-governing. Even if she had very little to do with it.
“Nothing,” Afton says swiftly.
“Yeah, it’s nothing,” I concur.
12
That night I dream that Leo leads me into a room I don’t know. It has a concrete floor. Shelves with sports equipment and cardboard boxes. A bicycle leaning against the wall.
It doesn’t make sense, but it’s a dream, so I don’t question it.
“Here,” Dream Leo says, and whips his arms to spread a red-plaid blanket on the floor next to a washing machine.
It’s a garage, I realize dimly as he reclines on the blanket and I slip down next to him.
His hand brushes my cheek, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
I run a quick hand up my calf to check. My legs are smooth as a baby’s butt this time. This could actually work.
But then it happens exactly the way it did before. Kissing. Touching. His fingers on the button of my shorts. My breath seizing up in my chest. Sitting up.
Stopping us.
“Wait,” I gasp, and it’s so frustrating I feel this way that I want to cry. “Afton’s right. I can’t do this. I’m not ready.”
There’s the look on his face: the one I sketched before. The shuttered eyelids. The frown. And then the frown becomes a sneer.
“Oh, Ada,” Leo says. “Don’t be such a fucking square.”
I wake up in darkness, the kind of velvety black that makes me feel swallowed whole. For a few seconds I have no idea where I am, and I can hear the ocean, the shushing of waves. Then my eyes adjust. I remember I’m in Hawaii. It’s a clear night, the sky a deep blue outside the wall of windows, punctuated by the ebony shapes of the palm trees.
I turn to look at Afton in the bed next to mine, but she’s not there. After dinner she set out on her own and hadn’t come back by the time Mom put Abby to bed and closed the door between our rooms. I fumble for my phone and check the time: it’s not quite one in the morning.
I open the texts and stare at her last text conversation with me, all from before our fight. Most of our texts are silly: a string of emojis or funny remarks to show one another how brilliantly sarcastic we both are. I can’t shake the sense that everything’s going wrong. Leo. Mom and Pop. Afton, where she seems fine one minute, pissed off the next, and is now missing. She’s a big girl, I tell myself as my finger hovers over the screen of my phone, tempted to check up on her. Afton is fierce and fearless. She always has been. She can handle herself.
Plus, the words don’t be a fucking square are still stinging in my brain.
So I tell myself that I am not my sister’s keeper. And I roll over and try to