“Fine.”
“Did you drive here?”
She shook her head. The waitress returned with the bill. “I got this,” Maya said.
“Sure you don’t want a ride?”
“No, thanks. I could use the walk.”
“Be careful,” he said.
“It’s not far,” she assured him.
“If you go to Frank’s cabin, I mean. I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but if I were you, I’d stay away from that place.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Maya wakes refreshed, birds singing in her window. The clock reads 10:42, much later than she usually sleeps. She yawns, turns over, content to sleep a little longer, because why not, it’s summer, but then she spots the wet clothes crumpled on her bedroom floor and remembers last night.
She bolts up. She had planned to tell her mom about the time she lost in the woods with Frank. She gets out of bed, hurries down the hall. The house is quiet, her mom in her room with the door closed.
Just as she’s about to knock, Maya thinks of the overnight shift she worked. Her mom could really use the sleep, and now that she’s paused here a moment, Maya asks herself what it is she will say.
She’s less sure of herself today, and last night is already feeling like a blur, a vague impression, almost as if Frank drugged her, but then—how could he have? It’s not like she ever tried his soup, or anything else at the cabin. Never drank or smoked anything. So she’d spaced out a few minutes here and there—is that really so unusual for her? She has been known, after all, to gaze out of windows rather than listening to her teachers at times and has missed many a bus stop due to daydreaming. She’s been this way since long before she met Frank.
Could someone like her really blame him for lost time?
She returns to her room. Maybe she’ll tell her mom later.
* * *
— Maya began packing for college weeks ago, then stopped after she met Frank. How strange to consider this now—that she actually thought about deferring. After all the work she poured into earning a full ride at BU.
What the hell was she thinking?
She resumes packing to distract herself from her uneasiness, and it works. Her thoughts turn to her soon-to-be dorm. Warren Towers is home to over 1,800 undergraduates, and in three days, she will be one of them, surrounded by people her age from all over the country and the world. Her new roommate is named Gina, she’s from San Francisco, and Maya can’t wait to meet her.
Each of them will have, on her half of the room, a narrow bed, a desk, a dresser, a shelf, and a slim closet. Not a lot of space, but Maya has plans for her side. She’ll hang her Salvador Dalí poster, the one of elephants on legs like stilts, and her cork bulletin board covered with photos, most of them of Aubrey and her. Maya will only have room for her favorites of everything at the dorms: CDs, clothes, decorations, and books, including, of course, the one her father wrote.
Her father’s book sits on her desk. She hasn’t looked at it much since meeting Frank. As she picks it up, she flashes back to last night, steam rising from their bowls at the table. Her father’s book is the last thing she remembers thinking of before she found herself walking in the rain with Frank.
It used to be that these pages made her think of her father, but now they bring back the smell of Frank’s cabin—his soup, the fire, the cold night air—so she leaves them behind. Tells herself she won’t have time to read the book anyway once classes start.
Moving on to her closet, she takes out a chunky sweater that will be good for fall, and her thoughts turn to fall in Boston. Cool days and crisp, glittering nights. Foliage in the city. Halloween parties. It’s like all the excitement she should have been feeling for the past few weeks is finally upon her, and now she can’t wait. Strange, she thinks, how she has thought of only Frank pretty much since the day they met, yet today it’s like all her outsized feelings for him—the longing, the jealousy—were a house of cards that suddenly collapsed.
Aubrey was right. She’d mistrusted him from the start. Which is probably—Maya suddenly realizes—why she wore the red dress: to bring to the surface what she had sensed in Frank before she even met him. That he was bad for her best friend. Maya can’t explain, much less excuse, the way she’s been acting these past few days, but she can apologize. They’ve argued over small things before, like what DVD to rent at the video store, but never anything like this.
She’ll apologize before the Tender Wallpaper concert tonight. She has her ticket tacked to the corkboard on her wall, and the band sticker that came with it stuck to her nightstand. Around noon, she goes to the kitchen for cereal and a glass of orange juice. The phone in the kitchen blinks red with missed calls—the ringer’s on silent, as it usually is after her mom works a night shift.
She gets a bad feeling even before she sees who the seventeen calls are from.
As she goes to check, the receiver lights up with yet another call.
It’s him.
She recognizes his father’s landline on the caller ID and sets the receiver down as if it were alive. She doesn’t want to answer but knows that if she doesn’t, he’ll keep trying until someone picks up—and Maya doesn’t want that person to be her mom.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey, Maya . . .” He’s always been so confident, so cool, but now he sounds raw and anxious. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
She should’ve thought more about what she was going to say. How she would tell him.
“You seemed pretty upset last night. I was worried.”
She considers explaining why she was upset, but doesn’t, because what good would it do? Frank’s a liar. She just needs to make him stop.
“Maya?”
“I’m here.” She takes the cordless phone to the porch, so she won’t wake her mom.
“What are you up to today?”
“I’m actually pretty busy . . .” she says as gently as she can. “I have a lot to do before I go . . . Listen, I don’t think we should see each other again.” This feels like the easiest way out—quick and to the point. And it’s true she wants to spend what little time she has left with the people she’s going to miss the most: her mom and Aubrey. Maya’s only sorry she didn’t realize this sooner.
Frank is quiet a long time. “Okay,” he says. “Cool. No problem.”
She exhales.
“Oh, so the other reason I was calling,” he adds, “and I hope this isn’t weird, but I was wondering if you could hook me up with Aubrey’s number?”
A knee-jerk flash of envy is unavoidable—it was only yesterday that this question would have punched a hole right through Maya—but today it is hard not to laugh at Frank’s pitiful attempt to make her jealous. “Sure,” she says with purposeful, pleasant indifference. “I don’t see why not. Do you have a pen?”
“Mm-hmm.” A yes through clenched teeth.
“Four-one-three . . .” she begins. But then it occurs to her that Aubrey probably wouldn’t want Frank to call her.
“Hello?”
“You know,” Maya says, “I should probably ask before giving out her number.”