Spectacle
by
Angie McCullagh
Copyright © 2012 by Angie McCullagh
Smashwords
Edition
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Dedicated to my parents,
who raised a six-foot-two-inch
girl
with grace and humor.
Table of Contents
Chapter
1
Chapter
2
Chapter
3
Chapter
4
Chapter
5
Chapter
6
Chapter
7
Chapter
8
Chapter
9
Chapter
10
Chapter
11
Chapter
12
Chapter
13
Chapter
14
Chapter
15
Chapter
16
Chapter
17
Chapter
18
Chapter
19
Chapter
20
Chapter
21
Chapter
22
Chapter
23
Chapter
24
Chapter
25
Chapter
26
Chapter
27
Chapter
28
Chapter
29
Chapter
30
Chapter
31
Chapter
32
Chapter
33
Chapter
34
Chapter
35
Chapter
36
Chapter
37
Chapter
38
Chapter
39
Chapter
40
Chapter
41
Chapter
42
Chapter
43
Chapter
44
Chapter
45
Chapter
46
Chapter
47
Chapter
48
Chapter
49
Chapter
50
Chapter
51
Chapter
52
Chapter
53
Chapter
54
Chapter
55
Chapter
56
Chapter
57
Chapter
58
Chapter
59
Chapter
60
Chapter
61
Chapter
62
Chapter
63
Chapter
64
Chapter
65
Chapter
66
Chapter
67
Postscript
Acknowledgments
About
the Author
It wasn’t that Emily Lucas didn’t like her jeans; it was that they had shrunk. Or something. This particular pair had been her favorite: a dark blue wash with worn spots on one hip and the opposite knee.
But lately they hadn’t been skimming the tops of her feet so much as swinging around her ankles. It was embarrassing, actually, the way they’d gone from Cool to Floods in a matter of a few weeks.
Emily tried not to catch a glimpse of her pant leg as she swung one foot over and off her bike, a heavy ‘90s Schwinn, brush painted sky blue. She leaned the Schwinn against the porch, trudged inside and dropped her backpack at the base of the stairway.
In the kitchen, she scrounged for a snack that wasn’t kale or garbanzo beans, and found a can of diet soda, a jar of creamy Jif (her stepmom’s one vice), and a box of crackers.
Plopping down at the kitchen table, she dug in.
“Hey Emily! You’re early,” Melissa said, coming in and beginning her detailed ritual of brewing green tea. She filled a red kettle with water, measured exactly one teaspoon of dried leaves into a diffuser, and snapped it closed. She tapped it against the counter, then added exactly one more teaspoon of leaves, and snapped it closed again. She retrieved a cup and saucer from the cupboard’s top shelf.
Emily, a cracker jammed into the side of her mouth, said, “It was an early release day.”
“What for?”
“Teacher meetings or something. I don’t know.”
October sun streamed through the bank of windows above Melissa’s beloved rectangular farmer’s sink.
Emily took a swig of soda and said, "I need new jeans."
"Oh? What's wrong with those? And your Luckys?"
"They're shrinking."
"No," Melissa said, sounding mildly devastated. "We're so careful."
Which was true. Emily did her own laundry, but Melissa helped stretch her jeans after every wash, pulling the hems while Emily yanked the waistband, like denim tug-of-war. But it worked. It usually worked, anyway.
"You're growing again," Melissa said.
Emily shook her head, refusing to accept that possibility. "I can't be."
"Let's measure you."
Emily thought Melissa took a weird overinterest in the actual numbers of her height. When someone asked Emily how tall she was, which was often, Melissa would crow, "Five eleven and three-fourths!"
Who cared about the stupid three-fourths?
"C'mon! It'll be … exciting!"
Emily swallowed a large gob of cracker and peanut butter and said, "Unlike you, I don't need specifics, okay? I don't wanna know."
Melissa crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. She nodded. "Denial."
"Fine, whatever," Emily scooped up her snack, went to the family room, and folded herself into the couch.
She clicked on the TV and stared hard at some reality show she didn't care about.
Soon, Melissa joined her and settled herself on the leather chair across from Emily. She flipped her hair, shiny and black. "It's okay to be tall," she said. "You should hold your head up high."
"Tall pride. Got it."
"When I was a kid, I would've killed to be taller."
Right, Emily thought. Taller. Not three-story-house tall. Not oak-tree tall. Not Emily Lucas tall.
She looked at Melissa, whose dainty foot was slung over her knee. She wished Melissa wouldn’t try so hard to be her friend. To be all Girl Power. She was ten years younger than Emily’s dad and had good music on her iPod, so she thought she and Emily should be besties.
“Can I just eat my snack?” Emily pleaded. “And watch some trashy TV? It’s been a crappy day.”
Melissa pretended to stare at the show with her for a few minutes, then stood, stretched noisily, and left. She bopped around the house with her earbuds in, straightening, cooking, getting on the computer, and generally being overly cheery.
Just before dinner, Kristen came crashing in, dropping her duffel with a thud on the floor by the front door and disappearing into the bathroom for a shower. She came home just before dinner most days, finally done with whatever practice she was involved in at the time. Volleyball, softball, soccer. It could be any sport. She was good at them all.
Athletic, normal-heighted Kristen.
Emily always wondered how they could be sisters. Really, how?
Emily had to hate her a little bit.
She went up to her room, kicked the door closed, lay across her bed, and tried to concentrate on algebra. She could smell rice cooking and the fruity scent of Kristen’s shampoo.
She heard Kristen’s door open and close.
The phone rang, and Emily assumed it was her dad calling to tell Melissa he was going to be late again.
She chewed her pencil, loathing the x’s and y’s. The numbers that, to her, looked like a jumble of noodles in a bowl. She doodled across the margins of her paper. She thought about calling Trix but decided against it. Trix was probably working at Frederick Hui’s, the fabric dyeing plant where she put in 20 hours a week, or wandering Seattle’s twilit streets.
Frustrated with math, Emily stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the back of her door. There was her long, long body and thin face and big hands.
There was the very-much-not-ideal teenage form. The girl without a petite or sprightly bone anywhere within her skeleton.
Her eyes, thankfully, were bright. Alert. Her henna-brown hair hung in a thick wave past her shoulders. Her lips were a nice shape—kind of full and wide, though she didn’t like how they spread like melted butter when she smiled.
Emily could go days sometimes without noticing herself, without catching her reflection in the chrome toaster or a dark store window, without glancing down at her stretched out legs and thinking she was anything other than normal. But then there would come a surprising objective moment, and she could see what others saw: the lanky limbs and how, when she sat with crossed legs, she looked angled and severe. It was a wonder, in a way, that people didn’t exclaim more when they saw her, didn’t gawk for longer than they did.
She checked out her jeans, at how they stopped too soon now above her feet. She examined her sleeves, which, sure enough, had hiked up an inch or so, showing her bony wrists.
Frustrated, she spun away. How could she be growing again? And how tall was she actually going to get?
Trix opened her window as far as it would go. Sounds from Aurora Avenue filtered in: five lanes of traffic rumbling, the occasional shout, barking dogs. She removed the screen, lit a cigarette and leaned out into the night, a breeze blowing her curly hair off her face.
Trix’s mom would flay her if she found her smoking.
Her mother, Fiona Jones, used to smoke herself, but quit when she was diagnosed with early emphysema. Now she filled the nicotine void with food and TV.
Still, Trix was sixteen. She was supposed to try all sorts of things, figure out what and who she wanted to be. Smoking, she had to admit, made her feel kind of badass. It gave her something to do and look forward to.
She thought about the guy her mom was on a date with. Rodney. He had an octopus tattoo on his left bicep. “Look!” her mom had squealed when he’d come to pick her up, “He can make it swim!”
Sure enough, with a little flexing, the tentacled legs rippled. Trix had smirked and looked away. She couldn’t bear the thought of her mom with that guy, laughing at his jokes and swooning over his stupid octopus. But her mom had made it clear a couple years back that Trix had no say in the matter. Fiona’d go out with whomever she wanted, and no amount of protesting or sulking on Trix’s part was going to change that.
Fine, Trix thought now, you go out with who you want to, and I’ll go out with who I want to.
The person Trix really wanted to date was Ryan McElvoy, a cute, quirky, and egregiously decent guy she’d crushed on since middle school. She’d liked him since seventh grade, when she understood nothing about boys except maybe who was nice and who wasn’t. And, though Trix probably didn’t seem the type to go for a sweet guy, she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to the way he held doors open for people and looked everyone, even adults, in the eye when he talked to them.
Whenever she saw him at school her heart pumped hard and stupid words came out of her mouth.
Sometimes she let herself believe that he could like her back, even though she knew it was extremely unlikely. He was from a normal family that skied and cooked with cilantro and picked up litter on Earth Day.
There was no way he’d give the time of day to a girl who lived in a trailer park on Aurora.
A metallic guitar riff signaled that she’d gotten a text on her crappy old cell phone. It was the flip kind no one had anymore.
Emily: Bord. What r u up 2?
Trix texted, Just hangng, and noticed her fingernails needed attention. Her purple polish was chipping and her cuticles looked shredded. As soon as she finished her cigarette, she’d fix them.
Wnt 2 come ovr?
Trix shook her head at the phone. As a matter of fact, she didn’t. As big and nice as Emily’s house was, Trix hated being in it. Emily’s stepmother Melissa kept the place perfect—nothing askew, smelling of clean laundry, the kitchen stocked with exotic spices and expensive cutlery. And every time Trix set foot in the McMansion she felt dirty and even more disheveled than usual. She was afraid to sit on the white microfiber sofa or leave lipstick prints on the Crate and Barrel glassware.
U come here.
She knew Emily felt weird at Trix’s, too. Trix didn’t exactly live in a palace. The rooms were narrow and cluttered. The “front yard” was a makeshift patio lined with fake grass and a short wire fence. And city noise filtered in all day and all night. It was pathetic. Trix couldn’t wait to get out on her own. The second she turned 18 she was going to put down a deposit on an apartment or rent a room in a decent neighborhood. She was tired of recognizing prostitutes and living next to Butch’s Gun Shop.
Emily texted back that she needed jeans, and did Trix want to hop the bus with her to Northgate before it closed?
Shopping with Emily was brutal. She had this perfectly proportioned but crazy long body. Occasionally she’d find something she was happy with, but reaching that point took eons. Because not only did whatever pair of pants or top have to fit, but also had to pass Emily’s cool barometer. Which meant nothing the least bit interesting. No sparkles, low necklines, or short skirts. Trix itched to dress her friend more flamboyantly but her suggestions of ruching or color never went over well.
We wont make it b4 9.
Trix tapped the last bit of ash from her cigarette, then carried it into the tiny bathroom and flushed it.
She got out a shoebox she kept under her bed. Inside were wadded dollars and coins. She added a few quarters that’d been in her pocket and counted the entire stash. A hundred and thirty-two dollars plus some change. She still needed another $196 to buy the sewing machine she had her eye on, a used model at Quality Sewing and Vacuum Center.
To reach her goal, she’d need to stop buying cigarettes for a while, force her mom to pay for the groceries herself from her disability check, and maybe pick up a few more shifts at work.
Once she had the Singer, she wouldn’t be limited to lurking around the home ec room at school. She’d be able to bring her designs to life, wear them around, show off a little.
She reached for her sketchbook. There’d been a jacket, short leather, but with a crocheted bustier underneath that had been rattling around her brain for the past few days. She spent the rest of the night drawing, tweaking, filling in colors with her pastels.
She had to fill the time because, though she’d never admit this to anyone, she couldn’t go to sleep before her mom came home from one of her dates.
Finally, at one thirty, when Fiona’s keys rattled in the doorknob, Trix shoved the sketches under her pillow and closed her eyes. She hoped her mom wouldn’t invite Rodney the Octopus Guy in.
“Hey, Em!” called Trix, in her tall black boots and short fake-fur lined coat, catching up to Emily outside the massive, multiwinged brick building that was their school. “Was that algebra homework not impossible?”
“It sucked,” Emily said. She rose a good seven or eight inches over the top of Trix’s head. “I have to finish it first period.”
“I’m not gonna bother. Screw it. When am I ever going to need to know that stuff in real life?” Trix was lying. She always finished her homework, almost effortlessly. She’d been gifted with an amazing memory that made it all a breeze for her.
It was overcast, threatening rain. A typical Pacific Northwest fall day.
“Never. If you’re going to be a designer for Betsey Johnson,” Emily said.
“No,” Trix held up one finger. “My own design house. Remember?”
They walked through the mist into the bright school, which echoed with voices and laughter and the sounds of lockers slamming. Even though the school smelled like stale grilled cheese and moldy paper, Trix was actually glad to be there. Home was too fraught right then.
In the hallway, the girls separated.
Emily twisted her locker combination and got the books she needed for English Comp. Just as she was shoving them into her backpack, Ryan McElvoy appeared. “Hey, Lean Bean,” he said.
She pulled the zipper on her pack. Ryan came up to her eyebrows. “The name’s Emily,” she said. She wanted to call him a turnip or potato or some other stubby vegetable. But, in all honesty, he didn’t remotely resemble a turnip or a potato. He was more like a yam or an ear of corn. Kind of ropey and strong.
“I know. But I can have my own special nickname for you, right?”
His nose was long, like a carrot, Emily thought.
He took her in from head to toe.
She was glad her jeans were tucked into her boots that day. So he couldn’t see their shrinkage. Or Emily’s growthage.
“Leave me alone, McElvoy,” she said and sighed. She navigated her way around him and headed for English.
“Ryan just accosted me in the hallway again,” she murmured to Trix.
Trix blinked up at Emily, stung, though she tried to hide it. She’d never told anyone, not even Emily, how she felt about him.
Her crush had always been very cloak-and-dagger. She couldn’t risk the hurt of finding out for sure that she wasn’t his type.
And now Ryan was trailing Emily, Trix’s best friend, of all people: teasing her, grinning a lot, and watching her as she walked away.
Trix, to cover her extreme annoyance, started singing the k-i-s-s-i-n-g song under her breath.
“Oh stop,” Emily said. “It’s the opposite.”
“No, he’s like a little boy chasing you around the playground. He can’t get enough.”
Mr. Johnson jumped up from his desk then and began acting out two parts of a play neither Emily nor Trix recognized. He whispered and shrieked and tiptoed and vaulted around. And that was why they loved English Comp and Mr. Johnson. He always made it interesting.
“Rhinoceros!” he said triumphantly, finishing his first act. “By Eugéne Ionesco. A drama from the genre Theatre of the Absurd. Can anyone tell me about Theatre of the Absurd?”
Mr. Johnson didn’t make kids raise their hands, but no one spoke up.
“Similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images,” he said. “Characters caught in hopeless situations, dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense. Those are just a few definitions of Theater of the Absurd.”
Emily whispered to Trix, “Sounds like my life.”
Mr. Johnson yanked a screen down over the whiteboard, tapped his laptop to life, and played some video of Charlie Chaplin, who, he explained, was a direct influence on Theater of the Absurd.
He told everyone to read Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and to write his or her own Theater of the Absurd play. Two acts. Due the first week of November.
Trix slipped glances at Ryan and saw him staring at the back of Emily’s head (not that he could really help but stare at her head, since it stuck out above everyone’s). His eyes glittered.
Trix squirmed. The imaginary ants were back. She had to resist the urge to flick them off her arms and swipe them from her legs. She scratched her back through her sweater.
Johnson jumped around like a fool, reciting something, and Trix’s thoughts drifted to the Octopus Guy. Her mom had, indeed, invited him in after their date. Trix’s bedroom was barely an alcove shielded from the rest of the trailer by thin drywall, and through it she heard noises she’d rather forget.
“Go home,” she’d whispered under her covers. But the clink of beer bottles, giggling, and groaning filtered through the skinny walls. It had been at least three thirty before she’d fallen asleep. And now here she was at eight fifteen with a pounding headache, trying to take in her homeroom teacher’s lecture and convince herself that Ryan’s interest in Emily was fleeting.
Thanks mom, she thought. Thanks loser Octopus Guy.
Filing from class, Emily said, “Can I just jot down everything my dad and step-mom say for my Theater of the Absurd play? That’d get me an A for sure.”
“Melissa? She’s cool.” Trix didn’t comment on Emily’s father. He was decidedly uncool.
Emily shrugged and said, “She has her moments I guess.”
“I’d love to live with Melissa. She’s young and hip—way more interesting than my old fish of a mom.”
Emily’s eyes flashed—a searchlight swooping across her irises. “At least your mom is your real mom.” As faulty as Trix’s mother was, Trix knew her. Lived with her for God’s sake.
Emily’s memories of her own mother were hazy at best. She’d been four when her mother left and her recollections were nothing more than decomposing mental snapshots. Riding in the car together. Picking her a fistful of buttery dandelions. Hearing her arguing with Emily’s father in the next room.
Daily, Emily wondered about her, about what she looked like now, where she lived, if she had other kids. Emily had fantasies: that her mother was tall and beautiful, living in a suburb somewhere, baking cookies for neighborhood children and chairing a garden club, that she was a fashion designer in New York dressing celebrities for premieres, or that she had been in a terrible head-on car accident and had forgotten who she was and that she had two daughters named Emily and Kristen.
Emily had no idea of the reality. She had no clue if her mom was a doting family woman or careerist or really a drug addict strung out in some other state. Or if she was even alive.
Trix and Emily walked down the hallway, talking loudly enough to hear themselves over the din of 1,500 other kids. Trix said, “My mother being real makes everything worse. Believe me, you’re the lucky one.”
“Trix. C’mon,” Emily said. She hated comparing hardships, trying to out-tough-luck each other.
“Seriously. If I could trade Fiona in for the Melissa model, I’d do it in a second.”
Maybe Trix was trying to make Emily feel better, but her method wasn’t working. Hearing anyone complain about her mom irritated Emily to no end. But when Trix, who knew how desperately Emily wished for a mother, went on about it, Emily took it as open hostility. “Can we talk about something else?” Emily pleaded.
“Jesus,” Trix said. “You just need to get over it.”
It was then that both of them felt the rumble of the tectonic plates on which their friendship was built. The shudder was brief and almost undetectable, like the ripple of seismic activity before an earthquake. But it happened, causing Emily and Trix to traipse shakily off to their individual classes as if their feet moved across tilting rock.
The doctor’s office was stark. White paper crinkled under Emily every time she moved. In a rack on the wall were magazines, mostly for little kids: Highlights. My Big Backyard. Cricket. One Seventeen.
This doctor was a pediatric endocrinologist. Emily’s dad, who, unlike Melissa, found her staggering growth infinitely disturbing, had suggested the appointment. Melissa set it up and drove Emily downtown.
The doctor talked to Melissa about things like “bone age” and phalanges and cartilage. He was going to send Emily to the lab to have her hand X-rayed. From the X-ray, the doctor would be able to predict, to a certain extent, how tall Emily would grow.
She’d overheard a conversation between her dad and Melissa a couple weeks before, Emily standing at the top of the stairway while her dad said, “She’s going to lap me, M. Jesus Christ. My daughter’s an amazon.” There was silence then. Until he burst forth with, “We know she doesn’t have anything wrong with her pituitary gland, from what Dr. Watkins said when she was, I don’t know, nine or ten, but my God. What if she’s going to hit seven feet or something?”
Ever the optimist, Melissa said, “WNBA?”
Emily pressed her toes into the nap of the Berber carpet. It was like small, fuzzy peas under her big feet.
“Don’t joke,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s so bad.”
“For her it will be. She’s not athletic. She’s creative.” Emily was surprised her father even knew this.
Sitting in a flimsy gown in this pediatric endocrinologist’s office was embarrassing. And Emily was scared of what the X-ray would tell them. She thought she’d rather not know where she’d end up. Kind of like she’d rather not have any inkling of the day she’d die.
The doctor left and Emily was allowed to get dressed. Then she and Melissa took their paperwork down two floors and followed the signs to X-Ray.
The hallways were quiet and squeaky. The exact opposite of the dirty, noisy corridors at school.
A youngish guy in his twenties with red hair and freckles across his nose took the papers. He smiled at Emily and winked. He told her to have a seat, that they’d call her name soon.
Slightly buoyed by the positive attention, however brief, she sat next to a fish tank and watched a bottom feeder slide over the glass. His mouth was a perfect black circle, his whiskers wiggling. She wished she’d brought her camera—an old Canon Rebel she’d gotten used off Craigslist. She would’ve zoomed in on him and taken a photo of that mouth, gaping like a manhole.
She looked away. She picked up a Ladies’ Home Journal and read a recipe for cornbread. She stared disdainfully at ads for ugly figurines she imagined old ladies in Nebraska ordering.
When her turn came, the freckled guy led her into a dim room full of machines. A quiet hum filled her ears. With another wink, he left.
An Asian woman arrived and introduced herself as Fay. She instructed Emily to rest her hand on a white table. Fay spread out Emily’s fingers.
She laid a heavy lead apron over Emily’s chest and left the room.
Emily loved the lead apron. She loved it when she got dental X-rays and she loved its comforting heft now. She wished she could wear it around all day, that she could deflect stares and mean comments with the lead apron.
Within moments, the X-ray tech came back in, removed the apron, and told Emily she could go.
Freckles, on the way out, promised the endocrinologist would read the film and call soon.
Swell, she thought. I can hardly wait.
“Want to go to Starbucks or something?” Melissa asked, unlocking the car doors with her remote.
Emily said, “How about Café Obscura?” She tried not to frequent Starbucks. She and Trix had decided it was too corporate.
“Obscura it is,” said Melissa.
They drove in silence, listening to a woman singing with a deep, smoky voice. “Who is this?” Emily asked, turning it up a little.
“Cat Power. Hot, huh?”
Emily said, “Don’t say ‘hot.’”
“Oh, sorry. Wrong word?”
“Wrong word coming from the wrong person.”
Melissa could’ve laughed at that, should’ve really. Since Emily was half joking. She’d meant to say “old” instead of “wrong.” To joke about Melissa’s age. But “wrong” had popped out.
Melissa looked sideways at her and shut off the stereo.
“Sorry,” Emily said.
Melissa sped through two yellow lights and got on I-5. Once she’d merged into traffic, she said, “You know, I apologize that I’m not her. I deeply apologize. Because I know you want me to be her. But I am me. Your dad loves the me that I am. And I thought you and Kristen did too. But all I’ve been getting lately is … attitude. And it’s making me tired, Em. It’s making me really tired.”
Emily stared out the window as they crossed the bridge and passed exits for the University District. She could see, in the distance, the stadium, the Safeco building, treetops that were turning yellow and orange.
Though he never showed it, she supposed her dad loved Melissa. She was reliable. She was pretty for a woman in her thirties.
But there was also something sad about her. She tried too hard. She wanted so badly to be part of Kristen’s and Emily’s lives that she was always throwing herself in front of them.
Emily said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Melissa said, her voice flat.
“Why don’t you have a job?”
Melissa made a noise that sounded like a spoon stuck in a garbage disposal. “I do! You know that. I’m a data engineer.”
“But you’re always … around.”
Melissa reached over and gave Emily a light chuck on the forehead. “That’s because I work from home, you knucklehead. I want to be there for you and Kristen when you come in from school.”
The mood had lightened and Emily was relieved. She vowed not to say another inflammatory thing between there and the house.
Emily leaned her head against the cool window and watched trees and cars whip by. She imagined her mother living in this very same city, over in Wedgwood or down in the Central District, nearly missing running into Emily at Whole Foods or Nordstrom. Over and over. Like the movie Sliding Doors.
Trix brewed a pot of coffee and fried herself an egg in the kitchen, which was so small she could reach the sink, stove, and garbage can without taking a step. She had her earbuds in and listened to The Bad Fathers.
After eating the egg in front of a mute TV, she grabbed her coat and purse and went into her mom’s room, just big enough for a double bed and narrow dresser. She nudged the mattress with her knee.
“I’m going,” she said.
Fiona mumbled something, then opened one eye. “Where?”
“I dunno. Wherever dad deigns to take me this time. McDonald’s, probably.”
Voice still thick with sleep, her mom said, “You tell him he owes me two hundred thirty dollars.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Fiona was always claiming that Trix’s dad was behind on his child support payments. Trix didn’t doubt he was, but she knew her mother would never see a penny of what her dad didn’t feel like paying. Fiona violently distrusted the court system and wouldn’t take her father anywhere near a courtroom. Trix’s dad was equally adamant about doling out only what he felt Fiona deserved. Which wasn’t much.
Before she left, Trix yanked open Fiona’s bedroom blinds. “Trixie, Christ!” her mom shouted after her.
She hustled to the front of the trailer court to wait for her dad. From another double-wide, a baby wailed. Trix lit a cigarette and watched Metro buses, cars, and delivery trucks rumble past. She had no way of predicting how her dad would be that day. Or any day. He could be in one of his jovial moods where he played Lynrd Skynrd loud and drove them up to the mountains for a pseudo-hike, which meant finding a flat two-track road and walking along it for a while. Usually they would then stop at a bar on the way home and her dad would claim Trix was his girlfriend so she could drink. Or he could be in a foul place where he barely muttered hello and dropped her off at the mall while he sat in his truck smoking a joint.
Trix never knew.
Her parents had divorced when she was a baby. Her older brother Vox moved down to Tacoma with friends when he was Trix’s age and now tended bar and worked sound at concerts. She only saw him on major holidays. If then. She was pretty sure Vox never contacted their dad. The two hadn’t gotten along since Vox hit age 13.
A couple guys hooted at her from a passing Honda. She tried not to care that they might be mistaking her for one of the prostitutes, but she wanted to yell after them, this is a Badgley Mischka jacket! What hookers wore Badgley Mischka jackets? She’d gotten it at a thrift store, but still.
She heard him before she saw him, some twangy song blasting from the speakers of his pickup. He slammed on his brakes with a spray of gravel, leaned over the seat and pushed the door open.
“Hey babe!”
“Hi Dad.” Trix didn’t bother to put out her cigarette as she hopped in. She could be tripping on hard drugs and he wouldn’t care.
They zoomed south on Aurora, through three yellow lights, toward downtown.
“Where are we going?” Trix asked.
“A buddy of mine needs help moving a couch in Georgetown. You good with that?”
Her dad wore a t-shirt that showed a band of his heavy, white gut. His frizzy salt-and-pepper hair was tied back with a twist tie. Like a garbage bag.
“Would it matter if I wasn’t?”
“Not really,” he said, guffawing and turning the music down a notch.
She’d given up being annoyed when he dragged her on an errand or off to a car show she didn’t give a crap about. She wanted to spend time with her dad, as sporadic and halfhearted as his attempts at father-daughter togetherness were.
They zipped through downtown, past CenturyLink and Safeco stadiums and finally came to Georgetown—a strip of old brick buildings that housed restaurants and shops, but mostly seemed forgotten, tucked between I-5 and Boeing Field.
Her dad’s friend, Buck, lived above a bar and you had to take a rickety, outdoor staircase to get up to his apartment.
As soon as they entered the dusty space, sunlight streaming through dirty windows, a cat with a half tail curling itself around Trix’s leg, Buck offered them cans of Pabst.
Her dad took one, but what Trix really wanted was more coffee, not to start drinking and dragging so early in the day.
She bent down and picked up the cat. The backs of his ears were flea bitten and he had no collar. She scratched under his chin. He extended his neck and purred uproariously.
“That’s David,” Buck said. His laugh sounded like Trix’s mom’s. Heavy with thirty years of smoking.
Trix cooed his name. “David. Sweet little David.”
“Want him?”
She did, as a matter of fact. As soon as he offered, her mind sang, “Yes.” But she said, “Oh, nah. I don’t think I’m around enough to take care of him.”
“You’d take better care of him than he’s getting here.”
“My mom would kill me.”
“Take him!” her dad cajoled. “She’ll get over it.”
Trix found herself actually considering stealing David home. “Don’t I need, like, a litter box and food?” And a flea comb.
Buck tossed her half a bag of Friskies and said, “He shits outside.”
And just like that she had acquired a pet. She hung out with David on the curb while her dad and Buck moved the sofa into the back of the truck. Then, all smashed together in the cab with David crawling around their heads and feet, they drove the couch to Beacon Hill and unloaded it into a small white house surrounded by a chain link fence.
Buck and her dad shook hands.
“Can we get a coffee on the way home?” Trix asked.
“What, you want to stop at Starbucks or something?”
“No, I don’t do Starbucks. Anything else. Even7-Eleven would be fine. Just, you know, I need a caffeine fix.”
“I thought we’d go back to Nine Pound Hammer.” Another Georgetown bar.
For once it bugged her that her dad didn’t even remotely observe the legal drinking age. Wasn’t a parent supposed to be on top of that? “I’m 16,” she said. “Besides. We can’t just leave David in the truck for that long.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you should just take us home.”
Her dad shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
“I’m not the boss!” she snapped. “I’m the kid.”
Except that she didn’t feel like a kid anymore. She felt like she had to parent herself, like her mom and dad were the stupid teenagers, too self-involved to pay attention to her.
She talked her dad into stopping at a vet’s office on 45th Street, where she waited a half hour trying to hold a dirty, squirmy cat. She left with pills to kill fleas, several vaccinations, and $120 less. Luckily, Frederick Hui was paying her later that week.
She’d gotten a cardboard carrier from the vet, and when her dad dropped her off, she lugged David into the trailer.
Fiona stood in the bathroom doorway doing one of her breathing treatments, which involved a boxy, white machine, a long tube, and a mouthpiece. When she saw David wriggle out of his box and begin prowling around sniffing things, she flapped her hands and pulled the tube from her mouth. “What is that?”
“A cat I just adopted,” Trix said, squatting on the thin carpet and trying to coax David to her.
“Oh, a cat you just adopted? Do I get any say in the matter?”
Trix shrugged. “I think he needed somewhere to go.”
“Did you even remember that I’m allergic to cats? And I already have enough problems with my lungs as it is.”
“You are? Allergic?”
“Yes, Trixie! I always have been.” Fiona jammed the mouthpiece back into place and shook her head. She gazed into the mirror and, with her free hand, poked at her sandy brown curls.
Trix decided to wait and see if her mom showed any signs of allergy before getting worked up about possibly having to get rid of David. On the ride home, she’d started liking the idea of a pet, a built-in friend. And then there was all the money she’d spent on him, money that could’ve gone in her sewing machine fund.
Plus, she figured her mom owed her. She was kind of subpar, as far as parents went. She’d never been one to chaperone school field trips, cook well-balanced meals, get Trix a puppy, or even a goldfish, or supervise her much. The least Fiona could do was let Trix have this one furry thing that already seemed to love her.
Emily poured nonfat milk in a fern pattern across the top of a customer’s latté. She’d gotten really good at it the last few months, working at Shutter Joe, half coffee shop, half camera store. Her boss was a flamboyantly gay guy named Thomas, whom Emily loved.
“You’re looking glum, girlfriend,” he said, once the customer had departed with her coffee.
Thomas wore skinny jeans, a white belt and a tight rugby shirt that totally worked on him. His hair was gelled into small meringue-like peaks, and black liner etched his eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “I guess I am kind of blue.”
“Wanna talk?”
“It’s just, all this,” she said, gesturing to her long frame as if she were a prize on The Price Is Right.
“All that bodacious girl goodness,” he said, resupplying the bakery case with molasses cookies.
Scoffing, Emily said, “Please.”
“I’m serious, Em. You got it goin’ on. Curves in all the right places. Those crazy long legs. You must have to fight off the boys. Wish I could say the same.”
Emily laughed. “Well, it seems I’m still growing.”
“You’ll be like Brigitte Nielson.”
She winced. “Can we say Gabby Reece?”
“Or, you know, yourself, only amplified.”
“I’m not an amplified type of person.”
A spiral staircase rose above them. It led to a small sitting loft where people often went with laptops or schoolbooks. She stared at the metalwork along the railing.
“Just own it, girl.”
Talking to Thomas always made her feel better. Even if there was no way to prevent her growth spurt, at least she had him, who would accept her no matter how tall she got.
She went back to grinding beans, which she’d been doing before the last wave of customers came in.
He stepped up to her, shoved a hand in her back pocket and pinched. Over the grinder, he said, “You know the freakier you get, the more I’ll love you.”
When Emily came home, Melissa was waiting.
She ushered Emily into the family room, handed her a can of Hansen’s raspberry soda and a piece of string cheese.
“What am I? Five?” Emily asked.
“Of course not,” Melissa said, and ruffled her dark bob nervously. “I just thought you’d want a snack. You know, like you always do.”
“I’m a growing girl.”
“Yeah.” Melissa paced the room now, back and forth between the microfiber ivory sofa and flat panel TV. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Emily looked at her. She tucked her feet under her butt and sat up straighter. “What?”
“Dr. Haskins called. You know, the pediatric—”
“Endocrinologist,” they both said together.
Melissa said, “Right. He read your X-rays and he thinks … he thinks you’re still, well, shooting up.”
“Awesome,” Emily said flatly.
“In fact, his prediction is—,”
“Wait!” Emily yelped. She vaulted to the window. Behind their house was a deep ravine, green with trees and moss and shrubs. When she and Kristen were younger, they loved to explore down there, loved to pretend they were slashing their way through a jungle, watching for snakes and wildcats in the branches.
“Don’t tell me.”
She heard Melissa inhale. “It’s up to you.”
Emily wondered why Melissa wasn’t beaming, wasn’t filled with glee to know that she was still sprouting like an overfertilized sunflower. Dread filled her stomach like wadded up newspaper. The news must be bad. Really bad.
In that moment, she decided. She had to hear the truth. “Okay. What? Tell me fast.”
“Six two to six three,” Melissa said.
Emily squeezed her eyes shut. Two to three more inches. She was going to grow two to three more inches. She would tower over everyone except the tallest of the tall. She’d never have a boyfriend. Girls would be too squeamish to hang out with her. “I’m sure you’re happy about that,” she said.
“No,” Melissa shook her head. “I mean, I think it’s kind of neat, yeah. But I know it’s really hard on you.”
The furnace clicked on, but goose bumps rose up and down Emily’s arms anyway.
“Hey,” Kristen said.
Emily looked up and noticed her sister standing in the doorway between the kitchen and family room. She rubbed an apple on the hem of her softball jersey.
“You okay?” Kristen asked.
Emily shrugged.
Melissa left.
Emily heard her pick up the phone and make a call, speaking in low tones, probably to Emily’s dad.
Kristen flopped onto the couch. “You should totally join the track team this year. You’d kick ass on the high jump.”
Emily bit her lips, forcing herself not to cry.
“Seriously. You have tons of poise.”
“Poise doesn’t equal athletic ability,” Emily snapped more forcefully than she meant to. Kristen was only trying to be nice. But Emily didn’t have it in her to be nice back. Not right then.
She collapsed next to Kristen.
Kristen lowered her voice and said, “How’s Melissa acting? Is she bugging the crap out of you?”
Numbly, Emily said, “She’s being okay. She actually seems sympathetic. Which just shows you how horrific it is.”
Kristen clicked on the remote and said, “Watch TV with me. It’ll help you forget.”
So they sat through dating reality shows, an hour of dysfunctional crazies living together, and contests where pretty but strange-looking girls competed for a modeling contract.
During the last genre, Kristen raised her eyebrows. “There’s always that,” she said.
“Right.”
“No, really. You’re good looking enough to do that. You’re way better than those weirdos. That one with red hair? Her eyes are like two feet apart.”
Kristen and Emily dug in and criticized every girl on screen, commenting on the chins or brows or shrill voices. It wasn’t nice, of course. It was awful and mean and petty. But it made her feel a little better.
Their dad came home around eight. He popped open a bottle of beer, changed into khaki shorts, and stood at the counter eating tortilla chips and salsa.
Emily stayed in the family room, her eyes trained on the TV. She didn’t want to talk to her father about The News. He would treat it as if it were just another hurdle to overcome. Everyone has issues, he would say. While inside Emily would know he was mortified.
He came to the doorway and said, “Em.”
She looked up at him sheepishly. Kristen had stiffened.
He hesitated for a minute before he said, “So, another couple, three inches, huh?”
“That’s what the doctors think,” Emily said.
She searched for the tiniest hint of concern etched around his eyes, but she couldn’t see any. Bob Lucas was an okay-looking guy, she guessed. For a forty-two-year-old. He’d lost a lot of hair, but what he did have was shaved close to his head. He was trim. He wore silver-rimmed glasses and had perfect teeth.
“Character builder!” he bellowed.
He crunched a handful of chips. He was a fast chewer. Which fit his personality. Always thinking, angling, hurrying.
“Sure, Dad.” Emily wished she could disappear into the couch cushions.
“Thatta girl,” he nodded and took a swig of beer. His BlackBerry trilled. He answered it and, talking loudly enough for half the neighborhood to hear, went back into the kitchen.
“Thatta girl?” she whispered to herself. Her dad just wanted to acknowledge the news and move on. Do what he thought was his fatherly duty. He didn’t care how Emily felt or what she might fear.
Emily, Melissa, and Kristen sat down to a meal of smothered pork chops and mashed potatoes, which were two of Emily’s favorites, but a huge departure for Melissa, who usually served things like quinoa with organic chicken breasts and yams seasoned with lime juice. Her dad had moved his call into his office, but they could still hear his voice pulsating through the walls.
Emily politely ate a few bites, but wasn’t hungry.
Melissa sipped from her glass of iced tea, eyeing her as she gulped. “It’s okay. You want to go?”
Emily nodded and, with tears in her eyes, left the table.
Lying across the twin bed in Trix’s tiny room, Emily scrolled through her friend’s iPod, listening to a few seconds of a song, commenting on it, and moving to another.
“Anger,” she said, staring at the water-stained ceiling. “That’s all I’m getting from this. Anger.” Emily was into indie pop stuff, a little electronica, and some jazz. She hated a lot of Trix’s hard-core rock.
“What’s wrong with a little anger?” Trix asked. “We’re teenagers, we’re supposed to be angry. Rage cleanses the soul.”
David was curled up on Trix’s pillow, twitching in his sleep.
“No, it doesn’t,” Emily said. “It just riles up the soul. It feeds on itself.”
Traffic whizzed by on 99, practically shaking the walls.
Trix grabbed the iPod from Emily. “What about this one?” she said, choosing a rap that was more catchy than demeaning.
“Eh, not bad,” Emily said.
“Oh, you. With all your trip blip clip hop whatever.”
In the kitchen, Trix’s mom microwaved popcorn, and its aroma filled the trailer, obliterating the nighttime city smells wafting in the window. Trix hoisted herself off the floor, left for several seconds, then came back with two cans of Diet Rite and a plastic bowl filled with popcorn. “Wish these were hard lemonade,” she said, referring to the sodas, “but this’ll have to do.”
They ate and drank for a few minutes, crunching and slurping quietly.
Trix asked, “Should we go out somewhere?” She was restless, feeling too confined by the trailer walls.
“Like … ?” Emily thought of Vera Project for an all ages show, or Dick’s for burgers, but neither of those places inspired her enough to stop flipping through tracks.
“I’m not going to Vera,” Trix said, reading Emily’s mind. “Ben’s working there this weekend.”
Honestly, Emily wanted to go out, too, to see and blend, to the extent she could, before being just one of the crowd became a complete joke.
Trix said, “I could go for a coffee.”
“You could always go for a coffee.”
“Yeah, well, it’s something.”
So Trix and Emily grabbed their bags, said goodbye to Trix’s mom—who ate popcorn with one hand and held the remote with the other while watching a medical drama on TV—and went out into the night.
“Well, well, well,” Trix said from the table where she and Emily sat at a coffee shop on 80th. “Look what the mangy old cat dragged in.”
Emily turned and saw Ryan McElvoy. He caught her eye and flashed a mischievous smile.
She gripped her white, porcelain mug hard, burning her fingertips. Kind of liking the sting.
“McElvoy!” Trix called. “Why the hell aren’t you somewhere with beer and hot chicks? This place is for losers.”
“God, Trix,” Emily hissed.
Ryan sauntered over, shoving his wallet into his back pocket. He rested his hands on the back of Emily’s chair. “You two don’t look like losers to me.”
“We are,” Trix said, smiling a little too brightly. “The biggest.” She felt the ants again, in her hair this time, skittering across her scalp. Maybe she’d caught David’s fleas.
Ryan stood back, “I guess that makes me the biggest lameass, then.”
“You said it, not me.”
Emily was struck mute, unable to find a way in to Trix and Ryan’s exchange.
“I bet money you’re just passing through. On your way to a party. Am I right?” Trix said, her heart jackhammering.
“Over in Wallingford. Jason Bleak’s.”
“I knew it!”
Emily hated how overly boisterous Trix was around guys. How she turned into a ridiculously animated version of herself. Emily had to admit, though, that her approach seemed to work. Guys responded. They liked the attention, she guessed.
“You coming?” Ryan said.
Trix gazed into her coffee and all but stuck out her lower lip. “Not invited.” A party was just what she was in the mood for.
“Who cares,” Ryan said, hearing his name and starting for his beverage, which sat waiting on the counter. “You know Jason. He’ll be totally slizzard. He won’t even know. He won’t care. I guarantee it.”
Trix tossed off a playful little shrug.
Ryan glanced at Emily and said, “You’re coming, right, Lean Bean?”
“Wallingford?”
“Yep. Behind QFC on 48th.”
“Maybe.”
Emily’s coyness drove Trix crazy. It wasn’t like she had Evites flying into her mailbox. What could it hurt to check out one little party?
“Cool.” He waved and dashed out to a waiting Hyundai just before it squealed away from the coffee shop.
“Whaddya think?” Trix asked. “Want to take the 358 to Wallingford? Crash the shindig?”
Emily shook her head. There were too many variables that could turn Trix’s plan into disaster.
1. It could be a small get-together, just a few guys with a case of beer.
2. Parents could show up.
3. Trix might end up drunk, which would force Emily to get her home and clean her up, something she did not at all have the energy for.
“We’re not invited, remember?”
“It was probably an open call. Anyone can show,” Trix said.
Emily was torn between going along and coming off as a buzzkill.
Then she remembered her doctor’s appointment. Six foot three. Would she even have the guts to enter rooms full of snarky guys and sneering girls when she was that much taller? Would she become a teenage shut-in, homeschooling online and socializing only through Facebook?
“Okay, for a little while,” she muttered.
The party at Jason Bleak’s, as it turned out, was big. There were at least 100 kids. Some Emily and Trix recognized from school, but many faces were new. Rap thumped through invisible speakers.
A group of guys stood to the left of the door, near a potted ficus, slamming beer from plastic cups.
“Hey, Big Bird’s here!” someone shouted.
Emily froze.
Trix prodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “Ignore them.”
The swirling crowd pushed the girls forward. But Emily’s face was hot, her feet heavy.
Trix felt bad for her friend when it came to making public appearances. People could be so rude. But she didn’t want to turn around and go home, either.
A girl wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a blue streak through her bangs instructed Trix and Emily to pay ten dollars, handed them cups, and pushed them toward a silver keg.
They found a spot in the dining room and sipped their beer. “Not bad,” Trix said. She could easily chug six of them. Fast. The fizz felt great sliding down her throat. Soon the invincible warmth that came when she drank would envelope her, and all would be right with the world.
Emily thought the beer tasted like dirty socks filled with old coffee grounds. Dutifully, though, she sipped. It wasn’t that she was dead set against drinking; she just wasn’t wild about the flavor of beer and didn’t have any desire to end up sick and spazzy the next day like she’d seen Trix.
“Any sign of Ryan yet?” Trix asked.
“Ryan? Oh, uh, nope. No sign.” Emily tried to pretend she didn’t care. But she couldn’t help scanning over everyone’s heads, looking for him.
“Maybe in the basement?”
“Look,” Emily said. “It doesn’t matter. We didn’t come here for him. We came here to get out of our coffee house rut.”
Trix said, “Right. But it’d be nice to bump into him, yes?” She was hoping to bump into him herself. Preferably without Emily.
“Whatever.” Emily was grumpy and already sick of the spastic throng of giggling girls and sloppy boys. The music was giving her a headache and she felt horrendously tall.
“Drink more,” Trix said. “It’ll help.”
So they stood around and slurped beer. Trix gestured a lot with her hands and laughed crazily if Emily made an even slightly amusing remark.
After a while, Trix half turned and involved some guy, who went to Seattle Prep, in their discussion of, of all things, jigsaw puzzles. Trix thought he was cute. Just the right mix of rebellious nonchalance and intensity.
“Yeah, dude,” he said, “I once put together this mammoth 5,000-piecer. It was of Snoqualmie Falls.”
“By yourself?” Trix asked doubtfully.
The guy, blond, hazel-eyed, nodded and said, “Every last piece.”
“Wow, impressive,” Trix said.
Emily couldn’t tell if she was being serious or sarcastic but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she liked this guy.
Soon, Trix was talking more to him than to Emily. Oddly, though, Emily was okay with it. The beer was working its magic, making her feel less raw, more open, like she’d accept anything that came her way: another Bud Light, a chat with whoever staggered by. Even a tall joke wouldn’t hurt as much as it usually did.
Other kids eddied around them, eating chips and laughing, but mostly drinking. Jessie Turner and Zeke Masey stood together in a corner kissing. His hand gripped her thigh, just below the curve of her butt and both of Jessie’s arms were wrapped around his shoulders. They were into it. Nuzzling and kneading with their fingers. Even from there Emily saw the flick of their tongues. She couldn’t look away.
“They need to get a room, eh?” said a male voice.
Emily turned and found she had to tilt her head up. He stood a good four inches taller than she did, had bushy black hair, a wide, horsey jaw and eyes so sunken she couldn’t tell if they were blue, brown, or some color in between.
“Yeah,” she said. She whirled the dregs of her beer around her cup, as if she were tasting wine and holding a fragile stemmed glass.
“Talk about PDA,” he said.
“It’s a little over the top.”
He shook his head and took a long swallow of beer. “How do you know Bleak?”
“Oh, Jason? I just … he goes to my school. We were invited by one of his friends.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure most of the people here don’t even know who lives in the house. I’m Sam, by the way.”
“Emily.”
“It’s nice to talk to someone who’s not, you know, a midget.”
“Yeah,” she said.
The music thumped so loudly she could hardly hear him. She had to lean in when he spoke and his breath was warm across her ear.
“Bleak and I have known each other since we were this big.” He lowered his hand to toddler height. “Well, maybe I was up here.” He raised his palm. “My sister’s about five eleven, six foot. Same as you?”
She nodded, a little self-conscious of Sam’s and her combined stature. She imagined people looking over and thinking, Of course those two are talking. Of course. She asked, “What does she think of it?”
“Oh, she digs it! She plays basketball, volleyball, goes out for track. The whole deal. So it’s a huge advantage for her.”
“Like my sister,” she mumbled. Why didn’t she care more about sports? It would make her life so much easier if she were coordinated, fast, aggressive.
“So,” he said. “Cannon High, then. You love it?”
Emily shrugged, “It’s … just … classrooms and lockers and a bunch of kids. Some mean, some nice.”
“None in between?”
“Probably,” she said. “Me, I guess.” She looked over at Trix, hoping she was done with the blond/hazel guy. But, not only was Trix not done, she’d slipped further into the shadows and was gazing up at him adoringly, nodding at everything he said.
“That your friend?” Sam asked.
She nodded.
“Looks like she’s gonna hook up.”
Emily swallowed hard. She glimpsed Jessie and Zeke again, still groping in the corner. A thought flashed through her mind. Hadn’t Ryan McElvoy dated Jessie for a while?
The site of her with Zeke now made Emily queasy. Was this what always happened at these parties? Was the main goal to get drunk and stagger around looking for something to make out with?
She regretted agreeing to leave Trix’s house that night, regretted hopping on the 358 and taking it over to Wallingford.
She said to Sam, “I’m sorry, I’m just—”
“Hormonal?” he said and laughed, a machine gun ra-ha-ha that set Emily’s teeth on edge.
“I was going to say tired.”
“Oh, right.” He laughed again.
And a little envious and a little disappointed that you’re not someone else. And yes, tired too, she thought.
“Hey, need another beer?” he asked.
“I think I’ve had my fill.” She turned and took a step away from him. “It was nice to meet you though.”
“Wait,” he sputtered, still having to shout over the music. “Mind if I call you some time? It’s not often I meet girls I can see eye to eye with.”
She was both flattered (it wasn’t every day, or EVER, that a guy wanted her phone number) and bummed (that the guy who wanted her phone number was condescending and kind of ugly).
She considered giving him a wrong number, a trick Trix sometimes pulled. Or she could take the high road and say No thank you, or maybe lie about some imaginary boyfriend, but in the end, she didn’t know how to reject him to his face and said, “Sure, I guess.”
“Well, don’t act so excited,” he said. But he didn’t seem flustered. He whipped out his cell phone. “Okay,” he said. “What is it?”
As Emily rattled off the numbers, he punched them in.
She said, “Well, I think I’ll head out. Past my bedtime.” She turned to Trix and hissed into her ear, “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Trix poked her in the ribs and said, “Silly girl.”
“Seriously,” Emily said. “This isn’t really my scene.”
Trix looked at her then, “Your scene? What are you? From the ‘70s?”
“I just want to go, okay?”
Scowling, Trix said, “Well, you might want to go, but I don’t.” She wanted Ryan to see her with this guy and think, Who’s Trix Jones talking to? Maybe it should be me.
“Okay, I’ll get back myself.” Emily spun and tried to push her way toward the door. Wherever the door was.
She’d made it through two rooms when she stopped in a promising-looking hallway. Dead in front of Ryan.
He had no beer. Both hands, in fact, were buried in his pockets. “Hey, Lean Bean,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips. “You made it.”