Totally and Completely Fine(15)

I went searching for her, catching the sound of her laugh as I descended the stairs. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room.

“Hey,” she said as I came down into the basement.

I never went into the basement.

Us Parkers kept to ourselves these days. During the day, I took the top floor, my mom took the ground floor, and Gabe hid out in the basement with Spencer, who had reintegrated into our lives. They’d dusted off Gabe’s old games and set them back up on the TV that I could sometimes hear them smacking on the side to get it to work.

Occasionally we’d run into one another in the kitchen or the bathroom, but for the most part we were three people living three different lives.

Jessica was sitting on the couch between Gabe and Spencer playing some sort of game that involved a lot of clackety buttons and two people hitting each other on-screen until blood spurted out and one of them died. Or something.

I could tell from the expression on Gabe’s face that he was not pleased about this new development.

Spencer was neutral as always. I wasn’t sure the last time I’d seen him express any kind of emotion—maybe Dad’s funeral, when he’d been silently crying next to his wailing mother. He reminded me sometimes of my grandmother’s dog, Nugget, who we suspected had been dropped on his head a few times as a puppy and was mostly content to sit in his bed in the kitchen staring at everyone with a blank look in his eyes. Not unhappy, but not happy either. Just…there.

“Hey,” Jessica said when she noticed me standing at the bottom of the basement stairs.

“Hey,” I said, but what I really meant was “What are you doing down here?”

“This is fun,” she said, pointing at the screen.

Her eyes were red, pupils dilated.

“Yeah?” I asked, not actually caring.

Jessica was lost in the game.

Gabe shot me a glare. Spencer said nothing. Did nothing.

“He’s cute,” Jessica said, when I finally managed to drag her away and we were walking back to her house, the summer night cooling around us, the smell of lilacs in the air.

I turned up my lip.

“Gross,” I said. “That’s my brother.”

“Not Gabe,” she said. “Though, he is kind of cute too.”

“Spencer?” I asked. “Really?”

Jessica blushed a little at that. “He is,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

I didn’t really see it, but then again, I hadn’t really been looking. Why would I, when there were older, cuter, more experienced guys around? That’s what I was interested in. I didn’t need a guy who was “cute.” I needed a guy who was hot. Who made me feel all squirmy and excited and eager.

“He’s nice too,” Jessica said.

Another thing I didn’t care about. Nice was meaningless.

“Okay,” I said.

Jessica shrugged. “I mean, he’s no Mikey Garrison.”

Now we were talking.

“No, he’s not,” I said.

Mikey was on the baseball team. He was tall and broad and looked really squeezable in those tight white pants. He was lifeguarding that summer, and looked just as good in his red shorts.

And I was more than ready to leave little-kid things behind in the basement.

Chapter 10

Now

I arrived at the museum with pads, tampons, an extra set of pants, and underwear. Ben dropped me off out front and I watched him drive away.

I was a weird combination of disappointed and relieved. The further away I got from the situation on the couch, the more I realized how insane the whole thing would have been. How reckless. Wild.

I hadn’t been that person in a long time.

I power walked to the museum bathroom, bag in one hand, the other tracing my lips. As if I could hold the feeling of his mouth on my skin forever. As if he’d left a mark.

Lena’s discomfort, which quickly morphed into anger, was all-consuming, so even if I wanted to think about Ben, it was Lena and that keen sting of embarrassment that was now fixed at the center of my attention.

It was better that way.

* * *

—

“Hey.” I came into the guest room where she was lying on the bed on her stomach, looking at her phone.

She’d barely said a full sentence since snatching the bag of sanitary products and pants from under the bathroom door. When she came out, her jeans crumpled in the plastic CVS bag, she didn’t look at me or Gabe. Her eyes were red, her jaw set.

It was like looking at a portrait of myself, age ten through eighteen.

We’d come back to Gabe’s rental, where she’d immediately gone into the shower and stayed there until the bathroom resembled a rainforest in summer.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She was wrapped in a big, fluffy robe that Gabe had clearly stolen from some fancy hotel. It was comically large on her, which only made her seem younger.

Like a little me, and not like me at all.

I hadn’t even realized how quickly time was moving.

Like a spinning ballerina, I’d been keeping my eyes on one fixed point while the rest of my life blurred around me. I didn’t think about the things that would change. The things that had to change.

Still no response from Lena, who was doing her best to act like I wasn’t there, even though the stiffness of her shoulders and the way she wasn’t even pretending to swipe through stuff on her phone indicated she was painfully aware of my presence.