Frank lets out a dark, sarcastic laugh. “How is it,” he asks, “that you can be jealous of Aubrey at the same time that you so obviously look down on her?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says angrily. “Listen, Frank, I have to—”
“You know what I’m talking about. You don’t want me to call her, do you?”
Maya grips the phone tighter. “I honestly don’t care what you do, Frank.”
“You don’t want me to call her, but at the same time, you don’t want to call her either. I’ve seen the way you treat her, it’s like she doesn’t matter. Like she’s some townie and you’re not. Like you’re smarter, you’re going places, and she’s a loser for staying here.”
“What?! But I—”
“And now you’re doing the same thing to me. Blowing me off because I’m not good enough, just like I’ve seen you blow off your best friend and your own mother whenever you had something better to do.”
Her eyes sting with tears.
“I mean, is there anyone you’re loyal to?”
“Fuck you, Frank. Don’t ever call me again.” She hangs up.
But Frank does call again. And again and again.
Eventually she has to tell her mom, who has taken the day off work and is relieved to hear the relationship is over. “We’ll just leave the ringer off,” her mom says. “I’m sure he’ll get the message. Let’s get out of the house, go do something.”
Maya feels her departure in the air as they hike up Bousquet Mountain that afternoon. She remembers when she was little, and her mom had to carry her part of the way. Now they walk straight up the slope without stopping, in and out of the chairlift’s frozen shadow. Her mom yodels when they reach the top, as usual, something that usually embarrasses Maya, but today it makes her smile, and when she looks out over the hemlock and white pine sea and sees her hometown in the distance, it’s more beautiful to her than the Alps. She can’t explain the tenderness she feels today, not just toward her mom but toward Pittsfield as well. To be from here is to know the Housatonic River, to have walked alongside it, maybe crossed it on the way to school each day, but been unable to swim in it because General Electric had contaminated the river with PCBs. It’s to have grown up either before GE left—back in the days of holiday window displays at England Brothers, the popcorn wagon on Park Square, and cruising North Street on Thursday nights—or to have grown up after. Maya has wanted to leave Pittsfield for so long, but now, even before she has left, she feels as though she is seeing it through the eyes of someone who’s already gone.
* * *
— Summer is fading, the light tinted orange, and for the first time in a while, it isn’t too hot out as Maya parks on the street in front of Aubrey’s duplex. It’s late enough that most of the birds have gone quiet, but a single mockingbird sings in the hemlock out front.
Aubrey is knitting again on her porch, bare feet kicked up on the wooden railing. She wears cutoff shorts and a D.A.R.E. shirt, not dressed yet for the concert, but then again Maya is early.
“Hey,” she says. The porch creaks as she crosses it and sits in the other plastic patio chair.
“Hey,” Aubrey says. She puts down her knitting. She’s still working on the scarf she began the day they went to Wahconah Falls, the day Maya learned that Aubrey knitted. Now the scarf is almost finished, and its pattern is apparent. Stripes of lime green and viridian.
“Pretty colors,” Maya says.
“Glad you like them.” Aubrey relaxes into a genuine smile. “This is for you. A going-away present.”
And, once again, Maya thinks she might cry. She has carried Frank’s words with her all day, each one a heavy stone she takes as punishment, because the truth is she has been jealous of Aubrey’s beauty, and although she hadn’t realized it, not until Frank pointed it out, a small part of Maya had looked down on her choice to stay in Pittsfield. “Wow,” she breathes. “Thank you. I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole these past two weeks.”
Aubrey is quiet. “I don’t know about asshole, but yeah, you’ve been kind of a jerk.” Her tone is light. She swigs from a can of orange soda on the plastic table, then offers some to Maya, who accepts it gratefully.
I mean, is there anyone you’re loyal to?
“But,” Aubrey says, “it’s not like I’ve been the world’s best friend either.”
It’s true, Maya thinks—but then, a bigger part of her understood from the start that this is just Aubrey’s way. She hasn’t had other long-term friends. And isn’t it easier to say goodbye to someone you can’t wait to get away from?
“So, yeah,” Aubrey says. “Me too. Sorry.”
Their apologies hang between them. Maya doesn’t even consider bringing up the red dress.
Aubrey snorts out a laugh. “We’re such jerks.”
Maya laughs too, and the laughter builds until there isn’t any awkwardness left.
Aubrey’s little brother, Eric, wanders home as the sun sets, clutching a set of cards. “Hey,” he says, dawdling on the porch. He looks up to his teenage sister and knows he could be shooed away at any second. “Guess what?” he says. “I got my Charizard back!”
“No way!” Aubrey says. “Way to go, dude.”
Eric beams and shows them a Pokémon card, a little orange monster on its front. Maya’s known him since he was six, blue eyes wide with curiosity at whatever his cool big sister and her friend were up to. Maya used to think he was annoying, but now she has an urge to hug him. “Nice!” she says about the card.
“There’s mac ’n’ cheese on the stove,” Aubrey says.
“What are you guys doing?” he asks.
“Just talking, Smalls. Go inside and eat.”
He looks disappointed but does as she says.
Maya’s about to tell her about Frank when Aubrey says, “I decided to apply to LSU. Not this year, obviously, but next.”
“What? Oh my god!”
“I know!”
“Why LSU?”
Aubrey thinks Louisiana is cool, all the bayous and Spanish moss and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. She wants to catch beads at a rowdy parade. The other reason is that she has a scheme to pay in-state tuition. “My mom has a cousin, Justina,” she says, “who lives in Lafayette, and as of today, I get all my mail at her house. Next month I’ll visit so I can register to vote there and sign up for a library card. I’ve also been checking Craigslist for a onetime temp job I can do while I’m there, stuffing envelopes or something, so I can establish a work history.”
“You think that’ll work?”
Aubrey looks hopeful. “Maybe?”
“I bet you’ll get in.”
“They have a high acceptance rate. Seventy-five percent or something. Still have to figure out what I want to study.”
“That’s okay, a lot of people don’t know going in.”
“You do.”
Maya shrugs. She would, of course, be an English major so she could study the magical realists as her father had and go on to become the renowned writer he should have been. “You write poetry,” she says. “Maybe you could do creative writing too?”