A sign reading HUNGRY DAN’S in garish neon letters hung above a 1950s-style restaurant covered with blinding chrome. I got my first good look at Layla and Anna as we left the car. Layla stood as tall as me, with black hair and creamy skin. Anna barely reached Chloe’s shoulder and her long, shimmering blond hair flowed to the bottom of her red Bible Camp T-shirt.
Inside, framed posters for movies like Grease and Rebel Without a Cause hung on the two back walls, and menus with cracked fake leather binding and plastic covers lay on the table.
As the waitress took our orders I checked my phone and realized it was dead. I started to ask if I could borrow one of the other girls’ phones to tell Dad I’d be home late, but then hesitated. I might still make it back before he got back from work, and I didn’t want to tell him I’d missed the bus on my very first day.
“So anyway,” Layla said with an air of ceremony, “there’s a football game this Thursday.” She turned to me. “You’re coming, right?”
“Ooh, yes,” Anna agreed.
“I don’t really like sports.” I shrugged.
“But our best linebacker has a crush on you,” Layla replied, smiling coyly.
“Who?”
“Parker,” Chloe said. “You know him?”
“Oh, she knows him,” Layla said, raising her eyebrows knowingly.
“I d-don’t—” I stammered.
“There’s no point playing dumb,” Layla said, a fry held gingerly between her fingers like a cigarette. “Him and Grant sit by me in biology. I heard them talking about how you shot Grant down.”
My cheeks burned as I remembered Grant’s easy smile. “It wasn’t like that.” I shook my head. I wondered, for a moment, what my response would have been if Grant had asked me out for himself.
“Quit torturing her,” Anna said. She turned to me. “So how’s Lambertville been for you so far? Everyone been nice?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, I’ve only met five people so far, including you guys and Grant.”
Anna smiled. “Who’s the fifth?”
“Her name’s Bee. We have art together.”
The girls exchanged a quick glance, their eyes meeting and then darting quickly away.
“What’s wrong with Bee?” I asked.
“Nothin’,” Chloe said.
“She’s fun in small doses,” Layla said. “Emphasis on the small.”
I sucked at the dregs of my soda, unsure what to say.
“God, I’m a bitch,” Layla said after a moment. “Hang out with whoever you want. We just met! But you’re welcome with us anytime.”
When the check came, they refused to let me pay. I fell into the Southern ritual I’d watched Mom play out for years without even thinking: Offer to pay once, they refuse, pull out your money and insist, they refuse again, and then concede. I wished all social interaction had such clear rules.
*
Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside my apartment building, an unimaginative tan brick box sitting beneath a tall ridge choked in kudzu vines.
“So you’re coming to the game then, right?” Anna asked.
The cicadas buzzed persistently in the growing dusk. I had read once that they lived underground for most of their lives, only emerging as adults to live out their final days. Was that going to be me? Was I going to live underground for the better part of my life, never coming out into the world?
They were all looking at me hopefully, the car’s engine running. Finally I said, “I’ll meet you guys there.”
Layla honked the horn happily, and they drove off.
After the car disappeared around the bend, I stood alone in the blistering parking lot. It was way past six, and Dad must have been home for a while, wondering where I was, with no way to reach me. I wanted to avoid whatever waited in the apartment, to wander around until midnight and sneak in once he fell asleep, but even at dusk the heat was still overpowering.
I climbed the stairs, turned the key in the lock, and stepped inside. Dark filled the space like a living thing. A single sunbeam came in through the gap in the balcony blinds and cut across the living room, red dust motes floating in a golden sea.
“Where were you?” Dad walked into the light, a hard edge in his voice.
“Sorry,” I said quietly.
“Sorry isn’t a place.”
“With some friends,” I said, looking down. “I missed the bus.”
“When I got home and you weren’t here I called over and over. I was worried sick.”
I started to speak, choked, and took a deep breath. “You never worried before.” I remembered the days after I woke up in the hospital and realized I was still alive. I remembered having nobody to keep me company but nurses and Mom and the television—no friends, no family, no Dad. I remembered suspecting, for the first time in my life, that he might not actually care if I lived or died.
I clenched my fists and looked up at him. “You never even sent a letter. I almost died and you were a ghost.”
“What did you want me to say?”
“Anything.”
He sighed, letting out his breath long and slow.
“I didn’t know what to do, okay?” he said, rubbing his brow. “You hold a baby when it takes its first breath, you sing it to sleep, you rock it when it cries, and then you look away for what feels like a second and your baby doesn’t want to live anymore. You’re my child.”