Once she’s down, he shakes his arms out and rolls his neck and shoulders a few times, then carefully straightens an edge of her skirt that rode up during the transfer. Ivy murmurs something but doesn’t wake.
“Is she…shouldn’t she be conscious by now?” I ask. The last time I saw Ivy pass out from her needle phobia was in seventh grade, when somebody found a discarded syringe on the soccer field at school and started waving it around during gym. My memory from that time is a little hazy, but I could swear she woke up within minutes.
“I don’t know,” Mateo says. “She was pretty freaked out.” He leans over her, pressing his fingertips against one side of her neck. “Pulse seems normal. Breathing’s normal. Maybe she just needs a little more time.”
“You know Ivy,” I say. “She can probably use the rest.” Mateo gives me a tight-lipped smile in recognition of the weak joke. Back when we hung out with Ivy, she never slept more than five hours a night. I’d miss texts from her after I went to bed, and then a bunch more before I woke up the next morning. Now that I think of it, I feel kind of nostalgic for the weird, random facts that used to strike Ivy while everyone else was sleeping.
Did you know it would only take one hour to drive to space?
THERE ARE PINK DOLPHINS （YouTube link）
Cal you have to get a friend for Gilbert. In Switzerland it’s illegal to own only one guinea pig because they get lonely.
She had a good point about Gilbert. My guinea pig was a lot happier after my parents agreed to let me buy a second one. Except then George died, and Gilbert was so inconsolable that he died three days later—so. Not sure it was a win, in the end.
I gaze around the dim room, nervously biting the inside of my cheek. I’ve never been in a bar before, which is the sort of thing I’d mention under different circumstances. “So this is where you work, huh?”
“Yeah,” Mateo says. “The owner doesn’t usually show up till around two, so I think we’re okay for a while.” He crosses over to the bar and ducks behind it, grabbing a couple of glasses that he fills from a small sink. He hands one to me, then sits down at a table close to Ivy. I lower myself into a chair across from him and take a long sip. My mouth tastes slightly less horrible when I’m done.
“You okay?” Mateo asks.
“I don’t know,” I say weakly. “You?”
“Same.” Mateo shakes his head, then drains half his water in one gulp. “That was a nightmare, back there.”
“I know.” I wipe a hand across my mouth. “Not really what I had in mind when I suggested we re-create the Greatest Day Ever.”
“We should’ve gone to the fucking aquarium,” Mateo says.
I can’t help it: despite everything that just happened, I snort out a laugh. A semihysterical one, sure, but it’s better than crying. “Cosigned,” I say.
Then Mateo’s expression shifts. It’s still tense, but more focused, like he’s getting ready to peer into the hidden depths of my brain. It’s a look I remember well from his mother—which is ironic, since he always hated it when she gave it to him.
I know exactly what’s coming next.
“Cal,” he says. “Who’s the girl?”
“Huh?” I drink my water, stalling for time.
“Your friend. The one who works there.” Mateo’s tone sharpens when my glass is half empty and I’m still chugging away, studiously avoiding his gaze. “Was that by any chance her studio we were standing in?”
“Yeah.” The word slips out before I can stop it. Damn it. I can’t run my mouth here. I need to think. And I need to talk to Lara. I pull out my phone as I add, “But she wasn’t there.”
“Just because we didn’t see her doesn’t mean she wasn’t there,” Mateo points out, and I wish he’d stop being so reasonable for once in his life. “You said she’s there every Tuesday, right?”
“Usually.” My fingers fly across my phone as I fire off a text to Lara. Are you at the studio?
“So why wouldn’t she have been there today?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I’m staring at my phone, willing her to respond as fast as humanly possible, and my heart takes a giant leap when gray dots appear.
No, couldn’t make it today.
I exhale a long breath. I’m beyond glad to hear that, but…Why not? I text back.
Decided to take a ceramics class! More gray dots, and then a picture of a glazed green bowl sitting beside a kiln appears.