carefully everywhere descending (16 page)

“You look great!” she says when she arrives and gets out of her car. She's wearing a brand-new olive green scoop-neck dress with a dark wide ribbon around the waist and a faint glimmer on the hem of the skirt.

“You do too,” I say warily as she digs around in her purse. “What?”

“A little lip gloss would make a ton of difference,” she says, handing me one. “Trust me. And keep that. I think the color would look better on you, anyway.”

“Thanks, Amber,” I say, unscrewing the lid and using the store window next to Vapiano's to quickly swipe it over my lips. I add it to my tiny, secondhand purse, which also contains a twenty (babysitting emergency fund), my phone, and a few assorted coins.

Steven arrives right on time and bounds up to Amber, moony-eyed and happy.

“You look beautiful!” he says to her, looking awestruck. She blushes and lowers her eyes. He seems to remember I'm there after a moment. “Hey, Audrey! How are you?”

“Fine, Steven,” I say, not able to help a genuine smile from twitching across my lips. I really like Steven. “How's football?”

“Oh, man…,” he starts while Amber covers her face in her hands. After five minutes, she cuts in.

“Should we get a table and wait for Brenna inside?”

The setting sun is directly on us, and we're all gleaming with a faint sheen of sweat, especially large Steven in his jeans and polo shirt.

The hostess seats us near the window, which is nice. Amber and Steven sit facing the door so Steven can wave Brenna over when she walks in. I sit across from Amber with my back to the door and an empty seat next to me. My stomach's nervous. I don't think I like blind dates.

The waitress brings us ice water as Steven continues detailing his diet and exercise regime. The man's committed, I'll give him that. We wait another ten minutes before Steven pulls out his phone to text Brenna and ask where she is. Amber and I discuss the menu options as he types out the message with his thumbs and full concentration.

“She's five minutes away,” Steven announces, pocketing the phone.

I grab a lukewarm roll from the basket in the center and stick a pad of butter in it to melt.

“Steven and I were thinking of going to see
GPA
tomorrow,” says Amber after a moment of strained silence. “It's a comedy about college. Have you seen the trailer for it?”

“No,” I say, and that stops that line of conversation.

“What's the plot?” I ask after futilely searching to think of another topic to talk about. Hanging out with Amber has never been this difficult.

She gratefully begins to describe it in detail, including everyone who is acting in it and their complete filmographies. Steven and I listen, ask questions, and pull off pieces of rolls to eat.

Finally, Steven's face lights up and he waves an arm wildly, almost knocking Amber's head as he does. I turn in my seat to see a dark-haired girl striding toward our table in new jeans, a purple button-down shirt open at the neck, and gleaming shoes.

“Hey,” she says as she drops into the seat next to me. “How is everyone?”

“Hi,” I say. “I'm Audrey.”

She smiles at me and jerks her chin up in greeting. She's got deep brown eyes and thick eyebrows over them like exclamation marks. “Hey, Audrey. I'm Brenna. Did you guys order yet?”

We barely get a chance to say we haven't before the waitress swoops in to let us know the specials and take our orders.

“I'll go last,” Brenna says, snapping open a menu and skimming it. The waitress looks at me, pen poised expectantly over her pad.

“I'll have the fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, please,” I say, passing my menu back to her. “And water is fine.”

“Does anyone want to share a pizza?” Brenna asks, flipping the menu to the back to skim over it before going back to the list of entrees. “Do they have good pizza here?”

“I'm pretty committed to my order,” says Amber. “But order a pizza if you feel like it, Brenna. You can always take home the leftovers.”

Brenna makes a face. “Eh. I hate leftovers. They're never as good.”

Amber orders spaghetti carbonara and Steven lasagna while Brenna hums to herself in indecision.

“Screw it,” she says, slapping down the menu. “I'll take a ham and mushroom pizza. And a Coke.” She grabs a roll from the basket. “Did you watch the Red Sox game last night? Insane.”

I don't have much to contribute to the conversation, and Brenna doesn't address me until the waitress returns with the other three's sodas.

“So, how excited are you for the end of the school year?” she asks, pulling off the top of the straw wrapper the waitress had left on and wadding it up. She drops it on the floor.

“I won't miss Spanish,” I say. “But I like school. I like to keep busy.”

“I can't wait to get to college,” she says. “It's going to be
insane
. No parents, no rules, no curfews. Nothing but partying and having fun. Total freedom to do whatever we want. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait.”

At this point I've realized this is a totally lost cause as a date. I'm not interested in Brenna and can't imagine ever being. However, she does have something I'm very interested in: experience with college admissions.

The waitress returns with our food. Steven's is in a bowl coated with still-bubbling cheese.

“You're going to Northwestern, right?” I ask.

“Yeah. They have some great sororities.”

“I know it's highly competitive as well,” I say and wind my pasta around my fork. “What was it like trying to get accepted? It must have been cutthroat.”

I see Amber hiding a smile behind her soda as she takes a drink. Brenna puffs up a little.

“It was really tough. They had some of the smartest kids in the country trying out for it, you know. Not everyone gets in.” I nod seriously. “Well, I put in my application and wrote about how hard it was when my parents got divorced, you know. It shows character to them that I went through that. I heard they pay a lot of attention to the writing submission, so I spent most of my time on it, adding in the struggle of growing up neglected and trying to be competitive at school. I put in all the activities I did, even if I only did something once. Like, I helped one day at a homeless shelter last year, so I put that on. Except for the part that it was only one day. I figured every little thing helps, you know?”

She grabs a second slice of pizza. She's been eating while talking, obviously very practiced at doing both at the same time. My pasta's a third gone and I'm paying more attention to what she's saying than it at this point. Steven's elbow hits his nearly empty soda and almost sends it cascading to the floor, just saved by a last-second grab. Those football exercises must really be doing the job. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amber freeze, eyes wide, and wonder if she got hit by a stray ice cube.

“What about the interview process?” I ask, watching Brenna. “How did you prepare?”

“Yeah. I almost didn't do an interview. They don't require it, so I figured, what was the point? But it turned out someone was going to be in the area, so I decided why not?”

I turn to face her more fully. “Really? That's fascinating.”

“Well, well. What's a nice group like you doing in a place like this?”

I start violently at Scarlett's wry voice, directly behind me. I twist around in my chair and look up at her, positioned between Brenna and my chairs. She's standing with her hands in her back pockets, a pose very similar to the last time she and I were in this restaurant at the same time. The setting sun through the window gilds her, and I suddenly feel winded, her appearance hitting me like a punch to the gut.

“Hello, Scarlett!” Amber chirps, saving me from gawking at her like a guppy in total silence. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to open a bank account,” she deadpans with a grin at her. “No, I'm here with my brother.” She turns and points to a table where a young man is sitting. He resembles Scarlett in a smudged way; Scarlett's features are neater. He watches us as we all turn to look at him. He waves. We wave back.

“What's his name?” Brenna asks. “Red?” She laughs.

“It's Connor,” says Scarlett. “But you were so close.” Her smile is sharp, which I've never seen before on her. It looks out of place on her normally amiable face. “He just got back from Princeton today.”

“Then why are you over here with us?” Amber asks, making shooing motions with her hands. “Go catch up with your brother!”

“I just wanted to say hello,” she says, eyes drifting to me.

I quirk half a smile up at her. “And hello to you too. Lovely weather we're having, isn't it? How's the family?”

She chuckles, slow and happy, eyes crinkling at the edges. Her skin is golden from the last rays of the sun, and all I want is to stay in this moment forever, smiling at each other like this, her leg so close to my knee.

“Where is that waitress?” Brenna asks, craning her neck around. “I've been out of Coke for like five minutes.”

Scarlett's eyes flicker to her, and her smile fades.

“I'll get out of your way,” she says. She lifts a hand in farewell and ambles back to her table. I'm dying to know what her brother is like, how they interact. I try to refocus on Brenna.

“So, the interview?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, it was fine. We only talked for like twenty minutes. He had a list of other people he needed to see as well. We talked about my goals and what I wanted out of my education, that sort of thing. He was in Sigma Chi.”

Brenna finally gets the attention of the waitress. She and Steven start talking about their last finals as high school students, and which ones they're going to blow off. I try to pay at least enough attention to not be rude, but all my senses are directed toward the table behind me and to my right, where Scarlett and Connor are. I try to discreetly sneak glances behind me in a natural way—
oh, who was that at the door? What could that commotion be about? Time to get our waitress for the check?
Scarlett's mostly listening and nodding, from the snatches of sight I get. Connor seems like an animated talker, full of waving hands and leaning forward. I am so curious about what they're talking about.

The waitress comes with our check.

“Would you like a box to take your fettuccine home, sweetie?” she asks me. I could only manage half of my heavy dinner.

“Yes, definitely.”

“What about you, honey?” she asks Brenna, who has five slices of pizza left.

“Nah. I hate reheated food.” My mouth drops open a little at the wastefulness.

“Brenna,” Amber cuts in, “I know this is weird, but if you don't want it, can I have it? It's such a shame to just throw away a good pizza.”

She shrugs and eyes her as though mentally weighing her. “Yeah, why not?”

The waitress takes away our food to box, and we figure out how to split the bill.

“I've got it,” says Steven, waving away Amber's purse. She beams at him.

Brenna tosses in a ten and a five; enough to cover her pizza and drink, with a 1 percent tip. I drop in my twenty and reach for the five before hesitating. I'd hate to see the nice waitress cheated just because Brenna was stingy, so I leave it.

Amber puts in a ten and hands me the five. “Let me cover our tips, then,” she says to Steven, who balks showily before nodding.

We hand her the mess of bills when she returns with our Styrofoam boxes. As we leave, we pass Scarlett's table. She's nodding at what Connor is saying, and I catch a section of the conversation as we go by: “…but they're all writing with their own perspective, because we're all biased based on where we're born, in what
order
we're born, what happens after we're born, what we can and can't control about our situation…. So there's no such thing as unbiased journalism, because it
can't exist
!
Life
is a bias.”

Scarlett's eyes slide up and catch mine as I pass. I repress a grin. She winks, subtly.

Then there's a hand on my arm, and Brenna is saying, “Hey, do you want to skip during senior skip day with us?”

My attention is yanked back to her. “
What
?”

“We're thinking of riding roller coasters at the amusement park,” she continues as we go outside into the warm, still air. “Or playing paintball. It isn't firm yet.”

“I can't skip for senior skip day.”

“Why not?” she asks, looking genuinely confused. She stops in front of the restaurant windows.

“One, I'm not a senior. Two, I'll get in trouble.”

“I think you could use a little trouble,” she says and smirks in a truly annoying way.

“I'll pass,” I say, moving toward my car. Brenna follows me. Amber and Steven are huddled close together next to his car, which is parked behind mine.

“Okay. Well, do you want to grab ice cream or something?” she asks. I can't imagine what the inside of her brain is like that she thinks this date went well.

“Thank you, but no,” I say. I stop by my car door and evaluate her. She's clearly not the kind of person to take a hint, so I add, “I enjoyed the dinner, Brenna, but I don't think I want to repeat it. I'm sure you'll find a nice girl at Northwestern.”

I can almost see the penny drop for her. It's painful. I don't like embarrassing other people, and I'm not comfortable myself right now.

“Fine,” she says, with some acrimony. “I just wanted to throw the junior a bone. But whatever.”

I watch her go to her car, feeling cringey inside. But at least the whole unpleasant interaction is behind me.

“Bye, Audrey!” Steven calls, half in the driver's seat of his car. He waves an arm jubilantly. I respond with a limp wave back.