“I—yes.” In less than an hour, actually, but it’s not that easy. It can’t possibly be that easy, and it’s not. “Your whole family hates me,” I remind him. “It’s a disaster wherever we get anywhere within fifty feet of each other. I think it’s pretty clear the whole of Star Lake would rather I just stayed in my room and watched documentaries all summer. I mean, there’s one about farmers who grow giant pumpkins for cash prizes that I’m really looking forward to, so . . .”
“So.” Gabe just looks at me, patient, like someone who’s willing to wait me out. The lobby is quiet, sun streaming in through the freshly wiped French doors at the far end of the lobby and a jungle’s worth of green plants newly arranged on the mantel of the tall stone fireplace. “So what, exactly?”
I huff out a noisy breath instead of answering. “Why?”
Gabe laughs. “’Cause I like you. I’ve always liked you, and now you’re a social outcast, so I’m figuring you’re free.”
I snort. “Rude,” I scold, ignoring the compliment. Ignoring the always, and everything that might mean. “What happened to being on the same team?”
“I’m a social outcast, too!” Gabe exclaims immediately, which is as absurd as it is weirdly winning. He grins wide and pleased when I crack up. “Come on,” he says, like he senses he’s got me. “Nobody will see, you can crouch down in the seat until we get to the highway. Wear a disguise.”
“Those glasses with the nose attached, maybe,” I suggest, shaking my head and smiling. Screw it, a tiny voice inside my head is saying—the same voice, just maybe, that told me to go to the party at the lake. Almost everybody in this whole town hates me or is totally indifferent. Everyone, it feels like, except for—“Gabe.”
“Molly,” he says, echoing my tone exactly. “Trust me.”
So. I do.
We drive an hour to Martinvale with the windows of the station wagon rolled down to let the wind in; it’s bracing, the feeling of old skin sloughing off in the breeze. “So, biology, huh?” I ask him, reaching across the center console and flicking the Notre Dame key ring dangling from the ignition with one of my short, naked fingernails. I expected the ride out to be loaded or awkward. Instead it just feels nice. “What’re you gonna be, a mad scientist or something?”
“Uh-huh, exactly.” Gabe lets go of the wheel and puts his arms out like Frankenstein’s monster, his warm shoulder bumping against mine as he does it. “Sex robots, for the most part. Some secret stuff with lizards.” Then, as I’m laughing: “Nah. I’m premed.”
“Really?” That surprises me for some reason. I always thought of Julia as the brains of the Donnelly family. Gabe had the personality. Patrick had the soul. “What kind?”
“Cardiologist,” he says immediately, then huffs out a wry little breath and shakes his head at the windshield. “I guess it’s kind of lame and obvious why, huh? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this kid’s dad keeled over from a heart attack, behold as he works out all his issues in the world’s most obvious way.’”
I’ve never heard Gabe talk about his dad before. I don’t know why I always thought of Chuck’s death as Patrick’s loss more than anyone else’s—because I felt it from him most, I guess, because Patrick was my favorite Donnelly and so somewhere in the back of my unconscious head I’d always assumed he must be Chuck’s, also. That was the great thing about Chuck, though, why six hundred people showed up at his funeral: Everybody he knew thought they were his favorite. That was just the kind of person he was.
“Not the most obvious,” I tell Gabe now, tilting my head to look at him in profile. The sun makes dappled patterns on the smooth skin of his cheeks and forehead. His nose is very, very straight. “The most obvious would be joining a band.”
That makes him laugh. “True,” he allows, signaling to pull off the parkway. “Joining a band would be worse.”
We get lunch at a drive-through burger joint not far from the exit, wax-paper sacks full of French fries and tall plastic cups of iced tea. I feel weirdly self-conscious as I’m eating, glancing down at the wide white expanse of my thighs sticking out of my shorts. New running routine or not, probably the bacon on my burger is not helping the situation here.
“What’s the word?” Gabe asks now, nudging me in the shoulder—it’s an old expression of his mom’s. I shake my head, crumpling my fry bag up into a little ball.
“Your sister keyed my car,” I confess.
Gabe gapes at me. “Wait, what?” he demands, blue eyes widening. We’ve been sitting in the open hatchback of his station wagon, our legs dangling out over the bumper, but all at once he’s springing to his feet. “Jesus Christ, Molly. When?”
“At work,” I mutter, looking down at my lap again, hiding behind the curtain of my long, wavy hair. I haven’t told anyone until right this minute and admitting it to Gabe feels like lancing a blister, a combination of satisfying and completely, abjectly gross. I don’t know how I became this person, one of those girls with a lot of drama around her. A person whose romantic garbage literally fills an entire book. Patrick and I would have judged the shit out of me, two years ago. I’m judging the shit out of myself right now.
Gabe doesn’t seem to be, though: When I glance out from behind my waterfall of hair his face is painted with anger, but it’s definitely not directed at me. “Look,” he says, “I’ll deal with her, okay? That’s, like . . . that is actual bullshit, right there. Julia gets away with murder sometimes. And, like, I’ve been trying to go easy on her lately because of—” Gabe breaks off, shaking his head. “Whatever. I’ll handle her.”