A Million Miles Away (19 page)

“It’s a long story,” she said, and before she could reconsider the solemn, handsome figure on the porch, she let a new beginning tug her away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The next afternoon, the first day back from spring break, Kelsey sat in the far corner of the Lawrence High cafeteria, her tray of spaghetti ignored, unwrapping a 3 Musketeers bar. First she bit into the end, to snap off the chocolate casing. Then a bite from the top, and the bottom. She watched the nougat reveal itself, as Peter had put it. The chocolate nonsense.

“Sugar is bad for you,” she heard a voice say. She looked up.

Above her, Ingrid stood, jean jacket unbuttoned over her purple dress, her golden hair curling more than usual in the moist chill.

“But chocolate is good for your emotional well-being,” Kelsey said, and held the half-eaten candy bar out to her friend.

Kelsey hadn’t had more than a couple minutes alone with Ingrid since the iciness between Gillian and she began.

Ingrid took the candy bar and tore off a big chunk with her teeth. Kelsey smiled.

She handed it back. “Speaking of no sugar, how’s rehearsing for Rock Chalk Dancer auditions?”

“Oh, geez. I haven’t—I haven’t thought about that for a while,” Kelsey said, feeling her brow furrow at the reminder. “Want to sit together?”

Kelsey motioned for her to join, but Ingrid jerked her head toward the window, where the three of them used to sit.

Kelsey stood with her tray and followed, cautiously. She had avoided their usual table near the window since she and Gillian had begun to fight. And even before that, right after she had returned to school, she had made excuses to be alone during lunch.

“Just for the heck of it, huh? For old times’ sake?” Ingrid said as they plopped down across from one another. They used to have competitions to see who could speak the longest in British accents. Ingrid always lost. Gillian used to teach the two of them Korean swearwords, which they delighted in shouting over the din without getting in trouble.

The spring sun shone warmly on the courtyard, through the glass, and Kelsey couldn’t help but burst out laughing as Ingrid, after finishing another mouthful of candy bar, began to chug an entire carton of milk.

“Thatta girl,” Kelsey said. “You can have mine, too.”

Ingrid finished, swallowed, and let out a small burp. “So,” she said. “I heard that you and Davis broke up.”

“Yea.” Kelsey furrowed her brow. “It was a long time coming, actually.”

Ingrid dug into her lunch, still looking at Kelsey with her puppy-dog eyes as she slurped spaghetti. “Why?” she asked.

“Why? Um…” Kelsey stalled, poking at her food.

Ingrid always had a way of cutting to the chase. When they were freshmen, she asked the Sex Ed teacher what the difference was between a banana, on which she was putting a condom, and “the real thing.” Gillian, who had also been in the class, answered, “Bananas aren’t attached to morons.” They had been best friends ever since.

Ingrid swallowed a mouthful of noodles. “You seemed happy.”

Kelsey felt her throat tighten. She thought of lazy days on the front porch with Davis, bullshitting for hours. “Yeah, we were, weren’t we?”

“I liked his T-shirts.”

“Me, too,” Kelsey replied. But Davis didn’t strike her with anything other than friendly nostalgia now. Now her thoughts, her heart, her future: All of it was Peter. “I can’t believe we spent three years together,” she muttered, almost to herself.

“Do you wish you hadn’t?” Ingrid asked.

Kelsey folded her arms. She wasn’t ready to think about all this. She bit into her candy bar and said, “I don’t know.”

“You were both just kids,” Ingrid said, thoughtful. “I mean, I think we’ll always look back and wonder what the heck we were thinking. No use trying to justify it.”

Kelsey looked in surprise at Ingrid. She was rarely so reflective.

“That’s what my mom tells me, anyway,” she continued. “She tells me I better get all my stupid out now, because soon I won’t be so cute, and no one will forgive me.”

“I can’t decide if that’s really wise, or kind of mean,” Kelsey said, trying not to laugh.

Ingrid smiled. “Well, you know best. It’s love, you know? If you are, you are. If you aren’t, you aren’t.”

Kelsey uncrossed her arms, leaning forward. Finally, the word she had been looking for. The word that wove through everything and injected her with a good kind of poison, the kind that sent soda through her veins, that made everything else a blur. She was dying to tell someone about Paris, how the simplest things like traffic lights and water fountains reminded her of its beauty. Maybe Ingrid would understand.

“That’s the thing, Ingrid, I am in love, but not—”

Suddenly, a bang. Kelsey and Ingrid jumped. Gillian dropped her tray next to Ingrid’s, an apple held in her teeth, her eyes cold.

“Oh, um—” Ingrid looked at the two of them in turn, pasting on a smile, as if she was about to introduce them to each other.

Gillian removed the apple and matched Ingrid’s blank smile. “Hello, Kelsey! Where have you been?”

Kelsey’s face turned hot. “You mean, in general, or—”

“How was the open house weekend at the University of Kansas?”

Kelsey tried to keep her eyes locked on her best friend, but Gillian’s stare was too hard. She looked down. “I didn’t end up going.”

“What?” Gillian said, her voice lifting in mock surprise. “Did you get
tired
all of a sudden?”

Kelsey’s eyes snapped back to Gillian. She wasn’t even giving her a chance. She opened her mouth to speak, but Gillian interrupted her again.

“Don’t tell me that you lied? I never took you for a liar, Kelsey.”

Kelsey tightened her jaw. If Gillian wasn’t going to give her a chance to tell the truth, then she would just have to take it. “I told my parents I was going to KU because I had to tell them I was going somewhere. They would never have let me go.…” Kelsey gulped, her chest tightening. “They would never have let me go to Paris.”

“Paris, France?” Ingrid gasped.

“No. No way.” Gillian put a hand on Ingrid’s arm. “You went to Paris? Do not tell me this is about that soldier.”

“What soldier?” Ingrid asked, excited.

Gillian stared at her in disbelief. “I thought you said you were going to end it.”

Kelsey leaned toward her, trying to keep her voice low. “I messed up. I know. But I can’t end it because—”

“Yes, you can.”

“You’re not even giving me a chance to tell you why!”

“I gave you a chance!” Gillian almost shouted. “I went to your friggin’ house over spring break! I came to you!”

Kelsey felt as if she had been punched in the gut. “And I wasn’t there?”

“You weren’t…” She could see Gillian’s eyes beginning to water, but she resisted. “You’re never there anymore.”

Kelsey put her head in her hands. “I’ve had a rough year, Gil.”

“Not so rough that you couldn’t go to Paris, huh?” Gillian sat up straight and pushed back from the table, refusing to look at Kelsey.

Kelsey jumped on the silence, trying to get it out as fast as possible. “I’m so sorry—I went because he invited me—Well, not me—But I went and while I was there—”

But as she spoke, Gillian stood, leaving her tray, and walked toward the cafeteria exit.

“Ingrid,” she called from the door. “I need you.”

“She needs me,” Ingrid said, avoiding Kelsey’s eyes. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Tell her I’m sorry!” Kelsey called, and watched her walk away.

She fought the urge to bang her fist on the table. It seemed the only people who would listen to her were so far away. The only person, rather. Maybe she wasn’t saying the right things. Or maybe she just wasn’t saying them to the right people. Should she follow her friends?

No point, she decided. No point in trying to wrangle their anger into understanding.

She unwrapped the bottom of her 3 Musketeers bar and put the rest of it in her mouth in one bite, trying to savor its sticky richness until it was all gone. Michelle loved sweet things, too. Michelle and her hot chocolate. She would never tell her sister that sugar was bad for her. She would never tell her to give up something or someone she loved.

Ingrid had said it herself.
It’s love, you know? If you are, you are
.

She was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Weeks passed, embedded in routine. The sun got higher in the sky, up earlier, out later. As graduation grew closer, the seniors at Lawrence High School were starting to anticipate the leap they were expected to take, equally itching for it and fearing it. They flocked in the cafeteria and the courtyard like inquisitive birds around bodies of water, disseminating at the slightest ripple of responsibility.

Kelsey kept her head down. She cleaned her room. She dragged herself out of bed to practice her routine for the Rock Chalk Dancers audition. And she wrote.

She wrote to Peter as often and as deeply as if she were writing in a journal. Since the company’s loss, security had tightened, and he wasn’t able to Skype until they moved bases.

4/2

Dear Peter, I was in the locker room and I put my right shoe on my left foot because I was thinking of how the end of one of your eyebrows is somehow a shade blonder than the rest of your hair. Did you know that? Did you get a lemon in your eye at a young age?

xo,

Michelle

4/20

Michelle— Abstract Expressionism is in fact the vomit of a sea creature. I mean that in a really good way. Think of it as an orca having just ate a school of angelfish, then he gets sick, and the pool of sickness is suspended in water. I’m writing that here because I don’t think Mrs. Wallace would appreciate it like you would.

Yours,

Peter

She was still Michelle in his eyes, but besides the name, she was Kelsey in every way. She would tell him the truth when his tour was over. And then, well, she didn’t know what would happen then.

Today, Kelsey was returning to the main doors of the high school from lunch, which she now opted to eat downtown. She waved at a car full of classmates and they waved back, their music fading as they squealed out of the parking lot.

She felt the itch and fear as much as anyone else, wishing she could duck out of the gymnasium doors and pile into a car bound for Clinton Lake. But she had said no for too long. There were friendly hellos from the dancers in the hallway, condolences about the breakup, and nods from the fringe of ordinary faces who used to cheer for her team at pep rallies and guzzle beer in her house.

Her phone lit up, and she grabbed for it, hoping to see Peter’s name, but it was just a text from Davis:
It’s hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch
, it said. Kelsey smiled. She typed,
It’s hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock
, then deleted it. He was always better than she was at them, comedian that he was.

And she couldn’t keep going back and forth. She remembered what Davis had last thought about their breakup:
For now
, he had said. She shouldn’t give him any ideas.

At her locker, she could smell Gillian before she saw her. Hair spray. She turned, finding Gillian there, trying to look at anything in the surrounding hallway but Kelsey. Next to her, Ingrid froze.

“Please ask Kelsey if she wants to have the dance team meeting at four or four thirty tomorrow,” Gillian said, her eyes locked on Ingrid.

Things between Kelsey and Gillian had turned from bad to worse. Gillian had even requested to move desks in Chemistry, the only class they had together.

Ingrid, meanwhile, was trying to remain neutral, but found herself more on Gillian’s side because Gillian was the one who, literally and physically, yanked her there.

Ingrid looked at Kelsey, saying sorry with her eyes. “Did you hear that, Kels?”

“Four,” Kelsey said. “And, Gil, please, just talk directly to me. This is so immature.”

“Tell Kelsey she doesn’t know the definition of mature.”

“Forget it,” Kelsey said, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I have to get to Art History.”

“Hear that?” Gillian said, talking to Ingrid as they walked away. “Kelsey has to go to class.”

As usual, the room was already dark when she got there, and half empty now that the year was winding down. Mrs. Wallace was bathed in the light from a slide featuring a complex orange-and-pink flower shape. Below it were the words “Feminist Visual Culture.”

“Good afternoon, Kelsey,” Mrs. Wallace said. “You’re late, but I’ll let it go this time.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Wallace,” Kelsey said, smiling sheepishly, because she was late most days. But she was always there, and never fell asleep, like she would have had this been any other year, any other time.

“The first slide is of a painting by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.”

Kelsey’s eyes followed the lines of the painting slowly, taking in every detail from top to bottom, as she had been taught.