I don’t care that the ambassador from the fictional country was poisoned.
Autumn said to me once, “When you’re reading a book and you can’t focus, ask yourself, ‘How much is the writer’s fault, and how much is mine?’ Be honest. That’s how you’ll know if you should set it aside forever or for a few hours.”
I can’t tell if it’s the book or me, so I set it back on the nightstand.
Autumn’s curtains are still closed.
I get off the bed and reach for the light switch.
It isn’t fully dark yet, but Autumn’s house sits in the shade of mine. I’m pretty sure her lights are not on. I would see a glow between the curtains.
What kind of stalker am I that I’ve stared at her window enough to come to that conclusion?
I can read her moods by assessing a variety of factors: the time she’s taken with her appearance, her level of concentration while reading, how forthcoming she is with different topics. At school, I could pick out her laugh in a crowded hallway. In class, I could predict her feelings about books assigned and events studied.
Even when I could have escaped her or avoided thoughts of her, I chose not to. For example, I’ve used Autumn in my mnemonic devices for countless vocab words in school. She is comely, hallowed, and impervious. My love for her is vehement, protracted, and interminable.
Sylvie caught me at it once. We were studying for the SAT and running flash cards together on the couch. The word was pulchritudinous (I pulled her to me after Christmas).
“Autumn—beautiful!” I said, my brain too focused on studying to remember to keep my secrets.
“What?” Sylvie looked at me over the cards.
“Beautiful, right? That’s what it means?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But you said—”
“Oh! Autumn, like my birthday! Fall leaves and stuff. You know how I like the leaves changing color.”
Sylvie knows I love fall leaves. It’s my favorite season, my birthday, etc., etc., but I honestly don’t know if she believed me.
No, that’s not true. I know that Sylvie didn’t believe me.
She had looked at me for a long moment. She didn’t seem angry. She seemed resigned. She flipped through the stack of cards in her hand to find one in particular.
“Mendacious?” she finally quizzed me.
“Dishonest. Next word?”
She let us move on.
I hate myself for interrupting her, but I take my phone out and type, Can I come over? and send it before I can second-guess it.
I head downstairs to the kitchen and eat the leftover pizza. I recycle the box and pour a Coke. There’s an inch of rum left. I look at it and then put it back on the counter. It won’t help me. Maybe Autumn will want it before The Mothers come home tomorrow.
I check my phone even though I’d have heard her respond.
I sit down at the computer and watch a few clips of the Strikers game I missed. I can give them website traffic at least.
I glance at my phone again. This summer, she’s always texted me back quickly.
What if, this morning, she woke up in the tent before I thought? What if she woke up as I lifted my arm off her, then lay there wondering why I had been touching her, why I was still lying close to her and not speaking? If that was the case, she would have—or could have—heard me say many, many, incriminating things to Jack outside the tent.
For fuck’s sake, talk to her, kiddo!
Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you know she doesn’t feel the same way. Tell her you’re working on it. Tell her that you just want to be there for her.
That isn’t the speech I should be working on tonight.
I have to figure out what to tell Sylvie, because I can’t tell her the truth.
Before Sylvie took me back after our breakup sophomore year, she asked, again and again, if I was really, really, really sure that I no longer had romantic feelings for Autumn.
I lied to Sylvie, again and again, because I loved Sylvie, I missed her, and I desperately wanted her back.
I even used the idea that had so offended me when my mother shared it: I told Sylvie that Autumn was my first love, but now, we were like brother and sister. Finally, she believed me. Or rather we both pretended to believe me.
I cannot tell Sylvie, “I can’t be with you anymore because I am in love with Autumn. She doesn’t want me that way, but it isn’t fair to you now that she wants to be my friend again.”
Because Sylvie would say that if I still loved her, I should stop being friends with Autumn.
I can’t tell Sylvie that I’m choosing friendship with Autumn over our nearly four-year relationship. She’s worked so hard to value herself again after what happened before we met.
It strikes me how backward my plan sounds: give up a girl who adores me, who I love well enough, to be a disciple for a different girl who will never fall for me. Jack has always said I’m irrational when it comes to Autumn, and maybe I should have taken him more seriously, because he was right earlier today.
I’m in way over my head.
six
It’s only Aunt Claire and Autumn’s house. I go over there all the time. It wouldn’t be weird to head over, ask if she’s eaten, because we still have cash from The Mothers and a little rum—just a little!—or whatever. It’ll be clear that we don’t have to keep hanging out if she doesn’t want to.
Then, depending on how she acts, I’ll know if she overheard anything this morning, if I need to explain myself.
No matter what, I will tell her how I feel…eventually. But it can wait. I’ve waited this long. The thing to worry about now is what I will say to Sylvie. I escape the guilt of thinking about Sylvie by getting off the couch and heading out.
Aunt Claire always locks her back door. My mother often forgets to lock ours and she often loses her keys, so she keeps an extra key hidden. Aunt Claire doesn’t keep a key hidden, but Autumn often loses her keys and forgets to lock the back door, so I’m betting that she forgot to lock it today.
She forgot to lock it that day she snuck Jamie over freshman year. I saw them go inside from my window, then closed my curtains. But to my horror, Mom asked me to run next door and ask Autumn if they had eggs. As I crossed the lawn, I prayed that she’d left the back door unlocked. She had, but it hadn’t saved me from intruding on them.
Today, I knock gently, but there is no answer. I try the doorknob, and it turns. It’s Aunt Claire’s house. Autumn hadn’t been surprised or confused to see me that day I came over for eggs. The only awkward part had been when Jamie emerged from the hallway, making eye contact with me while Autumn was looking in the fridge. I could tell she didn’t want me to know that Jamie was there. We both knew her parents wouldn’t want Jamie over while they were out.
I even pretended I thought that no one had been home to save her the embarrassment.
Jamie, on the other hand, made his presence known, staked his claim. I wanted to say something, but then Autumn was handing me the eggs for Mom. Should I have exposed him? Would Autumn have realized back then that his ego was more important than her wishes?
Autumn hadn’t minded me inviting myself in. She hadn’t minded that day or a million times before or after. That’s what matters. It’s always been that way with The Mothers and our houses. Still, my heart is beating hard. Where is she?
I expected her to be watching a movie in the living room or eating in the kitchen, but the rooms are empty and the lights are off. I turn to the stairs and listen to the creak and groan under my feet as I climb. Surely, she can hear me? Has she gone out?
I knock and push open her bedroom door, half expecting the room to be empty. But deep in the darkness, in the far corner of her bed, I see her shape.
“Autumn?”
“Hey,” she says. Her voice is calm, yet it shakes.
My shoulders tense. What happened?
“I came to check on you.”