99 Days (7 page)

They’re doing a Summer of Spielberg thing at the hundred-year-old theater over in Silverton, and Gabe’s grin is bright and crooked in the light from the vintage marquee. “Oh, hey, I brought you something,” he says as we’re crossing the parking lot, digging into the cargo pocket of his shorts and coming up with one of those plastic glasses sets with the nose attached, complete with a fuzzy synthetic mustache. “To avoid detection.”

I laugh out loud as we head into the lobby, grabbing them out of his hands. The very tips of his fingers brush mine. “Oh, you’re funny,” I tell him. “Nobody will notice me now.”

“Nope.” Gabe smirks, reaching for his wallet as we step up to the ticket counter. “I got it,” he says easily, waving me off when I try to pay.

“You sure?” I ask, tucking my disguise into the collar of my shirt. Until now we’ve always split dead even when we did anything together, lunch at Bunchie’s or the first night we went to Frank’s for hot dogs. I’m not totally sure what it means that he’s changing the rules.
It’s not a date
, I told myself as I got ready tonight, even as I wiped vanilla behind my ears and flicked on mascara.

In any case, Gabe lets me pay for the popcorn, and we settle into the tattered red seats, bits of crimson thread dangling from the edges. The chilly air is heavy with the smell of old butter and salt. The theater’s old, and the rows are crammed close together: Gabe’s knees bump the back of the seat in front of him hard enough that the girl sitting there whips around and shoots him a dirty look in the half second before she realizes how cute he is, and smiles instead.

Gabe shakes his head sheepishly. “Look at me, I’m like Andre the fucking Giant,” he murmurs to me, snorting a little. “Do you know I actually got asked to go stand in the back of a bar in Indiana last winter? It was a
Game of Thrones
watching party; I was blocking everybody’s view of the dragons.”

That makes me laugh. “Life’s hard,” I tell him, and he mock-scowls and makes a big show of not knowing what to do with his elbows. It’s surprisingly goofy, not a side I’ve ever really seen out of him before—growing up, I always thought of him as Joe Cool, not somebody who ever felt self-conscious or unsure about anything.

“Is this a date?” I blurt as the lights dim, squinting a little to track his curious, open expression in the fading light. He looks surprised. “I mean, like, right now? You and me?”

Gabe looks surprised. “I don’t know, Molly Barlow,” he says, shaking his head like he’s setting me up for a riddle. “Do you want it to be?”

Do I want it to be?

“I . . .”
don’t know, either
, I almost tell him, but just then the lights darken completely, the familiar old score starting up. Gabe reaches for my hand in the dark. Instead of holding it like I’m expecting, he turns it over, though, rubbing the tip of his index finger in patterns over the inside of my wrist, stroking over my pulse point until it feels like every nerve ending in my body is concentrated in that one place, an icy hot sear like the stuff my old track coach used to have us rub on our knees after practice. It’s Gabe. It’s
Gabe
, and I’m pretty sure it
is
a date—that I
like
that it’s a date, the dark private feeling of being here alone with him, even though the theater is more than half-full. It feels illicit, like if anyone found us we’d be hauled off to jail in handcuffs. But it also feels good and easy and right.

Gabe’s fingers play over my wrist all through the first third of the movie, drawing idle curlicues there. I wonder if he can feel blood beating against the inside of my skin. I hold my breath, feeling my heart twitch with anticipation at the back of my mouth as he touches me, like one of my mom’s crazy fans speeding through her chapters to see what will happen next.

What happens next, as it turns out: nothing.

E.T. and Gertie watch
Sesame Street.
Gabe reaches for the popcorn. I wait for him to take my hand again but he doesn’t, just sits back in his seat right through
E.T. phone home
and the bicycle over the moon, arms crossed over his chest like he’s been there all night long, like this was never anything but a friendly hangout to begin with.

So. That’s confusing.

I could take his hand myself, obviously. I’m not twelve years old or Amish or from the year 1742, and God knows I used to reach for Patrick’s whenever I felt like having mine held. I’m not shy. But there’s something about Gabe’s sudden retreat that throws everything else into sharp relief, the shine wearing off and my foggy head clearing enough so that I can finally see this whole night for what it is—and what it isn’t.

I guess I was wrong, then.

I don’t know why I feel so disappointed about that.

I pull it together as the lights come back up and people start shuffling out into the narrow aisles, pasting the same “everything’s great” smile on my face I’ve used for everyone but Gabe all summer long. “That was fun,” I say brightly, in a tone so fakely jocular I might as well add “. . . bro.” Gabe only nods. I pick up my purse and follow him out toward the exit, telling myself there’s no reason to feel so let down.

“You okay?” he asks now, and I look up at him. We came out through a side door, just the two of us walking along a narrow strip of sidewalk outside the theater, the lights from the parking lot casting orange pools onto the concrete and everything else shadowy dark. He bumps his arm against mine, gentle. Right away I feel the hair stand up.
“Hm?”

“Uh-huh.” Both of us have stopped walking. I can hear car doors slamming out in the parking lot, the sound of engines rumbling to life. I swallow. “I’m good. I just—”

Gabe interrupts. “Look,” he says, “I didn’t mean to wig you out earlier, if I did. With, like, the date talk. You were with my brother a long time, I get it. I’m not trying to be a creep.”

Wait. “What?” I ask. “No, no, no, you didn’t wig me out. I mean”—I shake my head—“I’m the one who brought up the date talk, remember? I thought I wigged
you
out.”

“You sure?” Gabe asks, taking a step in my direction slow and easy. Like an instinct I lift my chin. He’s not touching me at all, but I can feel him everywhere anyhow, so many atoms vibrating between us that it seems like the air should make a sound.

“Uh-huh,” I promise, feeling a smile, feeling something like relief spread itself across my face. “Definitely not wigged.”

“Oh, no?” Gabe puts his hands on my cheeks, careful. I can feel the heat of his body bleeding through his shirt and mine. “What about now?”

The smile turns into a grin. “Nope,” I say.

“What about now?” he asks again, then kisses me before I can answer.

Kissing Gabe stokes a fire I didn’t know I had in me; when I wake up the next morning it feels like everything’s spilling open all of a sudden, like maybe this summer holds a sliver of possibility in its pocket after all. I march into French Roast like a general heading to battle, like Gabe stamped a badge of courage on my heart. For the first time in a long time, I feel brave.

“Here’s the thing,” I tell Imogen, leaning over the counter where she’s wiping down the espresso machine, her hair twisted up in a tidy hipster sock bun. The shop is mostly empty, just one guy in big headphones near the door. “I know you’re super mad at me, and you have Tess, so you probably don’t need me anymore, but, like”—I take a deep breath, and admit it—“I could really use a friend, Imogen.”

For a second, Imogen just stares at me, rag in hand, unblinking. Then she laughs out loud.

“
You
need a friend?” she asks, shaking her head like she’s been waiting for this moment, like she saw me coming a mile away. “Seriously? What about all last year, Molly? I stuck my neck out the whole entire time everybody was being shitty to you, and you didn’t even say good-bye when you left.” She drops the rag down on the counter like a red cape at a bullfight, eyes wide. “My mom had skin cancer last fall, did you know that? She had to get a giant chunk of her back carved out, she couldn’t walk or move or do anything, and I couldn’t even talk to you about how scared I was because you ran away and never returned a single phone call. And now you’re back and Patrick’s here and, yeah, it’s probably weird for you, I get that, but honestly I don’t know if I want to stand here at my job and listen to you tell me how
you need a friend
.”

For a moment I just stand there, motionless, rooted in place like one of the hundred-year-old pine trees lining the shore of Star Lake. “You’re right,” I tell her, my cheeks flushed red and the tips of my fingers gone icy; I feel more cowed in this moment than if Julia Donnelly keyed my car every day for the rest of the summer. I feel like the worst friend in the world. “I’m so sorry; you’re totally right.”

There’s a long, loaded beat before Imogen answers: “She’s okay now,” she says quietly. “My mom.” She looks wrung-out, now that she’s said it—Imogen has always hated to fight, or people being mean to one another. When we were in third grade some boys pulled the wings off a butterfly at recess, and she was inconsolable all afternoon. “It didn’t spread.”

We look at each other for another long minute. We breathe. Finally, Imogen shrugs and picks the rag up again, wiping the shiny chrome body of the espresso machine even though it’s already gleaming. “I like a boy,” is what she says.

I feel a smile spread over my face, slow and uncertain. I know a gift when I see one, and I’m so very thankful for this. “Yeah?” I ask her carefully. “Who’s that?”

His name is Jay, Imogen tells me as she finishes cleaning up behind the counter, switching the music on the ancient iPod they use for music in the shop. He’s a regular at French Roast; he’s nineteen, goes to culinary school in Hyde Park. He’s in town to do an externship at the Lodge.

“Oh! I know Jay,” I realize, grinning. He’s quiet and easygoing, the sous chef who puts coffee in the dining room every morning; I’ve met him a few times on my various detours through the kitchen on one errand or another for Penn. He helped me find juice for Desi once, when I needed three different kinds because she wouldn’t tell me out loud which one she wanted. “Jay’s
handsome
.”

“He is, right?” Imogen goes pink from the tips of her ears down to the neckline of her flowered sundress. “He’s half-black and half-Chinese; his parents met in London.” She makes a face. “I mean, he volunteered that information, I wasn’t like, ‘Hello, nice to meet you, please tell me about your cultural heritage’ or anything.”

I laugh. “So you and Handsome Jay are chatty, then, huh?”

“Uh-huh.” Imogen nods almost shyly. She reaches into the pastry case and pulls out a chocolate croissant, sticks it on a plate, and hands it over. “Here, try that, we switched bakeries, and they’re new. We talk a bit, yeah. And he had a lot of really cool suggestions for my art show—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupt, mouth full of delicious croissant. “What art show is this?”

“I’m doing one here at the end of the summer,” Imogen tells me. “They gave it over for a night; we’re going to have food and stuff. You should come.”

“I will,” I promise immediately. “I wouldn’t miss it; I’ll be here with bells on.”

“Okay, relax over there, tiger,” Imogen says, but she’s smiling. “And, hey, what’s going on with you and Gorgeous Gabe?”

I shake my head, breaking off a hunk of pastry and handing it over. “You don’t want to know,” I warn, then settle in to tell her anyway.

I’m rushing out the door on the first morning the Lodge opens when my phone dings in my back pocket, the alert for a new email. I fish it out, thinking it could be a last-minute missive from Penn, but it’s actually a notice from school reminding me that I still haven’t picked a major. It’s not mandatory but
strongly suggested before class registration
, the dean of students wants me to know.
Selecting a field of study in advance of arrival on campus aids incoming students in course selection and maximizes the efficacy of that student’s faculty advisor.

I grimace, clicking the button to close out and shoving the whole outfit back into my pocket. My entire life feels undeclared. It’s hard to imagine I’ll ever get out of Star Lake, let alone be able to decide what I want to do with the rest of my existence. I can feel the beginning of a headache pulsing hotly behind my eyes.

Luckily, work is busy enough that I don’t have a ton of time to dwell on it. It’s strange and weirdly gratifying to see the lobby full of people after two weeks of it feeling like a ghost town: dads in dorky cargo shorts wheeling giant suitcases and potbellied kids floating on brightly colored rafts in the lake. A group of middle-aged ladies from Plattsburgh planned their annual book-club retreat for this weekend, and they camp out on the porch drinking rum runners all afternoon.

I wave at Imogen’s Jay as I dart through the kitchen, smile at Tess as I hurry past the pool; Penn’s got me running all kinds of tiny, urgent errands: sussing out sugar cubes for a persnickety tea drinker in the dining room and wiping up an unidentified spill on the wide-planked pine floor in the hallway off the lobby. Penn went for a vintage-rustic look in the redesign, the big leather couches coupled with thrifted plaid blankets in all the guest rooms, a giant stuffed moose head holding court on the wall above the reservations desk that all of us have taken to calling George. “He’s fake,” I assure one stricken-looking elementary schooler, although I have no idea if that’s true and in fact suspect it’s not. Win some, lose some, I guess. Poor George.

“Nice job today,” Penn tells me, a lull just before dinner giving her five minutes to play a quick game of tic-tac-toe with Fabian on the back of some hotel stationery. Desi’s sacked out on the floor under her desk, thumb shoved into her mouth. “And since you started, really. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem,” I say, attempting to swallow down a yawn with only partial success—I feel good, though, like how I used to feel after track practice back at the beginning of high school, like I’d accomplished something worth doing. I think of the email from Boston still sitting in my inbox, the one about picking a major—about figuring out, once and for all, what I want. “Can I ask you something?” I say. “How did you know that coming here and opening this place was what you wanted?”

Penn looks over at me for a moment, like she’s surprised that I’m asking. She’s wearing a suit today instead of the jeans and T-shirts I’m used to seeing; this morning I grabbed her by the arm on my way through the lobby and yanked off the tag that was still sticking out of her collar. “Well, I managed restaurants for a long time,” she says, drawing her
O
on Fabian’s paper and rattling off the names of a couple of places I actually recognize, spots my mom and her editor go when she’s in New York City. “Before that I used to plan parties for rich people.”

“You did?” I ask, picturing it—Penn in a fancy dress and heels and a headset, directing caterers and designing lighting schemes. I nudge Fabian in the shoulder, pointing to a spot on the grid that’ll give him a win no matter where his mom goes next. “Did you like it?”

Penn considers that. “I liked being the boss,” she tells me. “I liked solving problems. I liked being around other people. Kept me from disappearing into myself too much, I think.” She reaches out and sifts her hands through Fabian’s silky curls, looking almost dreamy. “I loved the city,” she confesses softly.

“Yeah?” I ask, curious. “What made you leave?”

Penn comes back to herself then, smiles as Fabian holds up the notepad, triumphant, three wobbly
X
s all in a row. “Was time for a change,” is all she says.