“Yeah,” he said, though he hadn’t thought about it at all until this moment. The whole party was kind of a blur. He’d had a really good time, he remembered that much. The details were a little bit harder to place. “You play every Friday with your family, right?”
Gabby nodded slowly, like she wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to admit to this. “What else do you remember?” she asked.
Ryan shook his head. “Not much, honestly,” he admitted. “Talking about BuzzFeed lists. Puking all over your solar system bathroom.”
“It’s constellations, not the solar system,” Gabby snapped. “I’m not a third-grade boy.”
It was all the same to Ryan, but that didn’t seem like the kind of thing he should say out loud. “Constellations, then,” he agreed. He looked at her, something tickling at the very back of his brain. “Why?” he asked, voice cautious. “Is there something else I should remember?”
For just a second Gabby’s face flickered like a burned-out lightbulb. Then she shook her head. “Nope,” she said finally. “Although the truth is I kind of only invited you to Monopoly because I figured you were too drunk to ever take me up on it.”
“Ouch,” Ryan said, huffing out a laugh to cover the fact that he was strangely stung by the rejection. His friend Anil said his need to be everyone’s favorite person was pathological, although for some reason this felt like more than just that. It occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t really want to spend tonight getting drunk out of his brain at Remy Dolan’s party, or home at his mom’s, where everything was empty and quiet and strange. It occurred to him suddenly that he really, honestly just wanted to go play Monopoly at this girl’s house.
“I’m kidding,” Gabby said after a moment, shaking her head like he was a ridiculous person. “Sort of.” She shifted her weight. “We play at like eight, usually. Clearly you know where I live.”
Ryan grinned his most winning smile. He felt like he’d won something, himself. “I do,” he agreed. “I’ll see you then.”
“Sure,” Gabby said. There was another pause then, and he thought she was going to walk away, but instead she gestured at his face in a way that sort of looked like she was going to punch him. “What’s that from?” she asked.
“Oh.” Ryan had almost forgotten about it; sheepishly, he touched the yellowing bruise on his cheekbone. “Practice. I got hit in the face on Wednesday.”
Girls were generally impressed by this, Ryan had learned over the last couple of days, asking about the details or running their delicate fingers along his cheekbone, cooing. Gabby, clearly, was not. “Does everybody get hurt so much, playing hockey?” she asked. “Or just you?”
Ryan bristled. “I don’t get hurt a lot,” he said, trying not to sound defensive. “I mean, I guess I got a concussion a couple months ago, but mostly it’s just, like, a normal amount.”
Gabby looked like she might be about to ask what a normal amount was, exactly, but instead she nodded at the red Pampered Paws van pulling into the cul-de-sac in front of the building. “Is that your ride?” she asked as his mom beeped a little tattoo with the horn, cheerful. Ryan winced.
GABBY
Michelle came over once Gabby got home that afternoon, the two of them sitting in Gabby’s room listening to music on her laptop, Gabby skimming Teen Vogue while Michelle scrolled through Instagram. Michelle was Gabby’s easiest friend in that she didn’t need to talk all the time, the two of them content to be alone together, each of them doing their own thing while occupying the same physical space. They’d known each other since elementary school carpool; Gabby, as a general rule, much preferred old friends to new ones.
Michelle was also Gabby’s only friend, really, but Gabby didn’t like to dwell on that too much. It wasn’t like she was lonely or anything like that. She was choosy. It was different.
“Do you know that you have like, three thousand followers on this thing?” Michelle asked now, holding her phone up so that Gabby could see her own Instagram profile.
“Yeah.” Gabby shrugged, rolling over on the mattress and flicking past an ad for lip balm. “They’re not people I actually know or anything.”
“No, that’s my point,” Michelle said. “They’re strangers. And considering you’re not taking pictures of your boobs, that’s a huge number.”
Gabby smiled. “I guess.” She’d started posting her own photos the previous summer and was secretly proud of the modest collection she’d put together: Celia’s feet poking out of the deep end at the town pool while she did a handstand, a shot of the sparklers at her cousin Madison’s wedding, a bin of fat orange pumpkins she’d seen outside the hardware store one Saturday morning with her mom. Most of them were just iPhone pictures, but she’d gotten a cranky secondhand DSLR with her eighth-grade graduation money and was slowly teaching herself how to use it, experimenting with f-stops and exposures. She’d been surprised and kind of embarrassed when people started following her, but by now it had become a game she played with herself, amassing a little audience like she’d collected stickers in her Sandylion book when she was a kid.
“Okay,” Gabby said, closing the magazine and peering over the edge of the mattress. She’d thought about her ridiculous conversation with Ryan all through dinner, working it over like a particularly gristly bite of steak. She knew she’d probably sounded cold, bitchy even, but she hadn’t been able to help it. She was just so irritated. He’d ignored her all week. “So can I tell you something kind of weird that happened?”
Michelle raised her pale eyebrows. “Always,” she said.
“Okay,” she began again, then promptly broke off when she heard the telltale squeak of Kristina’s footsteps in the hallway. “Come in here and stop lurking,” she called.
Silence; then, a moment later, Kristina appeared in the doorway. “I wasn’t lurking,” she protested, looking injured. “I was passing by.”
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.” Kristina was ten and small for her age, with big round glasses and a slightly crooked haircut that made her look like a Williamsburg hipster. Gabby loved her like all hell. “I need you to tell Mom something for me anyway,” she instructed. “Go downstairs and tell her there is an extremely slim possibility that Ryan McCullough is going to come for Monopoly.”
“Who’s Ryan McCullough?” Kristina asked.
“The hockey player?” Michelle said, sitting upright on the fluffy white area rug. Then, to Kristina: “He’s a super-hot hockey player; he’s the only freshman on varsity.”
“And he’s coming here?” Kristina asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabby said, feeling her stomach flip over again at the possibility. “Probably not, in reality. I just saw him after school today and we were talking—”
“And you randomly invited him to Monopoly and he said yes?” Michelle asked. “How did you not tell me this?”
“I mean, not randomly,” Gabby admitted, already wishing she hadn’t said anything. Now when he inevitably didn’t show up she was going to look pathetic on top of being let down. “He was here for Celia’s party last week.”