carefully everywhere descending (14 page)

But what if I'm wrong? And if I'm right, should it even come from me at all?

Scarlett shakes her head sharply and digs her fingers through her dried, curling hair.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I'll get out of here and let you get on with your other work. I know you've probably got charts and timetables to keep to, so.”

This isn't too far off, but I feel like my blood is jumping under my skin, like the last door of a train or plane is closing and I'm about to miss it.

Scarlett gathers her stuff and heads for the door. I trail after her.

“See you tomorrow,” she says without turning around. I hold the door as she walks toward her car. I open my mouth, then close it, then open it again and take a breath, but don't say anything. Almost to her car, in the gloaming, she stops. She turns to face me. “What would you have done if I hadn't stopped by?”

I blink. “What?”

“For food. What would you have done if I hadn't stopped by?”

“Probably phoned Jimmy or Dad and asked them to pick something up. Why?”

“What if they missed your call, or couldn't make the trip, or something? What then?”

“I don't know. Fixed some lentils or something.” I think we have some left in a bag in a cupboard. “Why is it any of your business?” I'm growing angry. I don't appreciate these implied attacks on my family.

She snorts. “Yeah. You're right. It's none of my business.”

She opens her door and throws her backpack into the passenger seat with force. Without saying good-bye again, she gets in and slams the door shut behind her.

Tired of being left by her, I get inside and swing the door shut before she even turns the ignition.

 

 

I
MARCH
to the living room and sweep my supplies back into my schoolbag. By unspoken agreement, we'd left the board and write-up with me.

The righteous high I'm riding subsides almost immediately, and I return to my worries about Serhan and Carolina. I chew on my bottom lip, staring into the middle distance.

It hits me as Jimmy walks through the kitchen door. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. My head must have been clouded by Scarlett. I glance at the clock; it's not even eight.

“There's Chinese in the fridge,” I say. “Can I use the car?”

“Huh? It's late.”

“No it's not. I just need to take care of something before school tomorrow. I won't be an hour.” He eyes me but only briefly. The mention of school wins him over.

“Sure.” He tosses me the keys and turns to the refrigerator. “Chinese? Awesome.”

As I walk out to the car, I pull up an address on my phone. I drive to the northern part of the city where I don't tend to go and get turned around several times before I finally find the building.

I park in a guest spot and hop out, peering through the dark at the tall apartment building. There's a green awning over the entrance, and a little over half of the windows are lit up with occupants and activity. I see through the window on the second floor a large television screen playing a sports channel.

I go to the entrance and try the door, but it's locked. There's an intercom system next to it, with a series of names scrawled in different colors and different stages of newness next to fat black buttons. I squint from the bright bulb overhead and read through them, racking my brain back to the tail end of our conversation on the park bench. Who had he said his friend was again, the one he would be staying with at the Hartford Apartments? Was it Chase or Cass or— There it is: Chasin. I push the black button and hold it for a second.

After a few heartbeats, a wary male voice asks, “Hello?”

“Hello? Is Mitchell there?”

A long pause. “Yes. Who is this?”

“I'm a… uh, a friend of his. Audrey. I was hoping to see him?”

Another pause and then the door buzzes loudly, making me flinch. I grab the handle and jump inside before it locks again. The number next to Chasin had been 512, so I find the elevator and take it to the fifth floor.

I walk along a long hall with faded maroon carpet until I reach 512 in the middle. I knock on the door, and it opens almost immediately. A man in his midthirties looks at me and frowns. He's wearing a plaid shirt and faded, loose jeans. He's got thick-framed glasses and a five-o'clock shadow.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he says. He opens the door wider and gestures me in. It's a nice apartment, with sand-colored wood floors and a large leather couch in front of a massive television, currently on mute and advertising a peppy woman eating yogurt with her friends. There are large windows with a nice view of our city, which appears more cosmopolitan at night and from this viewpoint. “Mitchell!”

Mitchell comes into view from around the kitchen island as I step inside. He seems about the same. He's still rocking the stubbly, just-off-of-a-bender look.

“Why is there a high school girl on my doorstep at eight o'clock on a Tuesday evening?” his friend asks, crossing his arms.

Mitchell scowls at him. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Jake, and make yourself useful by getting her something to drink.” Jake's eyes widen, and Mitchell hastens to add, “Water! Get her a glass of water for f—for Pete's sake. Cripes. I don't even know who you
are
anymore.”

“That's okay. I'm good,” I say. “I just wanted to ask your advice on something.”

Both Mitchell and Jake look at me like I'm crazy.

“Me?” Mitchell asks, the same time Jake says, “This guy? You want advice from
this guy
?”

Mitchell punches him in the arm. Jake rolls his eyes and goes to sit on the sofa, picking up the remote and flipping to the guide screen to see what else is on. He lands on a news station that's showing the tail end of an interview with the late state senator's teary wife.

“Okay, kid,” Mitchell says skeptically to me. He eyes me with a perceptive glance. “Let's step out to the balcony. I have a feeling I'm going to need a cigarette for this.”

He leads me through a door next to the large window to a small but cozy balcony with a tiny table shoved onto it that's bookended by two sports event folding chairs. It's slightly cooler than when I opened the window for Mom, but still a pleasant spring evening. Mitchell pulls out a cigarette as he goes to the railing. He ignites the white stick with an expert push of his thumb and a click from a lighter. He levels a finger at me with the hand holding the lighter before stashing it in his back pocket.

“
You
don't get one. Don't smoke, Audrey. It's bad for you.” He leans back against the railing and the end of the cigarette glows deep orange for a second. “So, what did you need to ask me?”

I join him at the railing and recap the conversation I overheard between Carolina and her friend, and what Scarlett had said to me just an hour ago.

“…and Serhan's her best friend, so I….” I trail off.

Mitchell snorts bitterly. “So you naturally thought of me.” He takes a drag on his cigarette and exhales on a long sigh, smoke pouring from his nose and mouth.

“I don't know if I should tell her or not,” I say. “And I wanted to know what you would have preferred.”

Mitchell turns around and crosses his arms over the top of the railing, face brooding. His cigarette juts from the corner of his mouth and he crosses his feet behind him, and for a moment he reminds me of a cowboy. He pulls the cigarette out and flicks it absently.

“Never thought I'd be anyone's moral compass, Audrey,” he says. “So I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you. The dissolution of a seven-year marriage is in no way, shape, or form comparable to a high school crush.” I flinch back. “But yeah. I would have wanted to hear it as soon as possible. From someone I trusted. I think if I were in your girl's place, I'd still want that.”

I release a breath. “Okay. Thank you.”

He turns to face me, now leaning sideways against the rail and scowling. “And one other point I'm going to make clear, because I really like you, kid, and I don't want to see you get hurt worse by this girl than you already have been. I have absolutely no interest in forming a romantic attachment to anyone right now. Letting go of someone and what you used to have with them is hard enough without another person trying to move in and take up that space. You may really like this kid, and she may have acted like she likes you, but if you really hope for something with her, you need to back off first and let her sort her stuff out. The way you were talking about this whole thing just now? It couldn't be clearer you can't wait to push down on the gas. If you go to her like that, it's just going to end in misery.”

“Okay,” I whisper. I drop my head and look at the grubby tile on the tiny balcony. It blurs a little as my eyes mist. I hear Mitchell heave a huge sigh and see the butt of his cigarette fall to the floor and glow a second before he crushes it out with his boot.

“C'mon, Audrey, don't be like that,” he mutters. “You're breaking the pieces that are left of my heart. This kid isn't worth it. If she didn't drop everything and grab you while she had the chance? Nah. She's not worth it.”

I blink and try to smile at him, but it comes out wobbly. “Can I hug you?”

He rolls his eyes but smiles a little as he lifts his arms from his sides. I hug him around his middle and press my cheek into the rough fabric of his denim shirt. He smells smoky with a distant scent of cologne, like he had put some on a day ago, and it's comforting, like the way hugging my dad or Jimmy is. He carefully puts his arm around my shoulders and pats me between my shoulder blades.

“Thanks,” I say as I step back. “I knew you were the right person to talk to.”

“Not sure how you figured that,” he remarks as he opens the door and gestures me through. “But it's always nice to be thought of.”

He gives me his number before I leave. “If you need to talk again, or need any help, just call, okay?”

“Thanks,” I say once more, saving the number under his first name on my phone. “I will. Have a good evening, Mitchell. Bye, Jake.”

Jake raises an arm holding a green beer bottle. “Bye.”

So the next day after school, I wait by the girls' locker room, feeling conspicuous and ill at ease. I get a lot of weird looks from the girls trooping out in their soccer uniforms, but I pretend not to notice as I scrawl the outline of my last English paper in my notebook that I've braced against my forearm.

Finally, Scarlett emerges with three other girls I recognize but couldn't name. One catches sight of me, and then another head turns before Scarlett's follows suit. I lift a hand.

“Hi. Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, brow furrowed. She says to her friends, “It's probably about how I screwed something up on our science project. Go on ahead. Don't witness my shame. I'll see you on the field.”

They laugh and a couple slap her on the back as she jogs over.

“What's up?”

I've been practicing in my head all day, and a couple of times before the mirror, to make sure I'm as dispassionately sympathetic as possible.

“I may have some bad news, and I wanted to tell you before you found out in a bad way.”

Panic flashes over her face.

“Are you okay?” she demands.

“What? Yes,
I'm
fine. I just overheard something… about Carolina. I may have misheard. But if I didn't, and I'm not wrong, I just wanted you to know. She is (she may be) interested in Serhan. I don't know if she plans to do anything about it, but….” I trail off before forcing myself through. “But she may… do something, and I wanted you to be prepared.”

She stares at me blankly.

“Oh,” she says and then turns and walks away.

I watch her depart with my jaw hanging open. It wasn't the reaction I had expected. I was braced for anger, for hurt, for biting dismissal—
You're crazy, you're jealous!

I stand for a minute, wind ruffling my hair and clothes. I close my notebook, finding the thicker poly cover amidst the, at this point, mostly used pages, and swinging it around the spiral binding. The sturdy cover is a slate blue that reminds me of Mitchell's shirt last night, of Scarlett's normally bright, bright eyes. I tuck it under my arm, up against my rib cage, and walk to catch the bus.

 

 

I
T
TURNS
out I don't need to fabricate a plot to get me to my neighbor's door (who, I would like to point out, has yet to post his last name anywhere around the house or emerge during daylight for more than a minute. All highly suspicious, if you ask me). Sam's class needs to raise money for their eighth-grade field trip to Chicago next year, so Saturday I help him go door-to-door to sell fruit and frozen cookie dough.

“Come on,” I say, marching to the end of our road, passing the thumping bass line of the twenty-somethings' rental. “We'll start here.”

Sam lags behind me. “Why?” he whines. “Let's start on the rich streets and get done faster.”

I ignore him and bang (cheerfully) on my nameless neighbor's door. No response. No surprise. I try a couple more times while Sam sighs heavily behind me and crouches down to poke at a bug on the overgrown driveway. The porch has scattered, gently used odds and ends on it, like he went to a garage sale and grabbed random items to display. But, given the neighborhood, it doesn't look any shoddier than the other properties.

Trying to look natural, I slide a foot to the side, past a flower pot full of dirt and a lone butterfly stick, and crane my neck around to look in the window. Nothing. The blinds are down, and what looks like a heavy curtain is drawn over them. The place is more tightly locked up than Fort Knox.