“It wasn’t strategic.”
“Then what was it? I’ve spent all this time telling myself that what you’re going through is so much bigger than you not talking to me. Sometimes it works. But sometimes it doesn’t.”
“What happened with him . . . ,” I say. “What happened at the end of the summer . . . It was more than you know.”
Amazing, how difficult these words are. They are barely anything. I know that. But they terrify me. Because even with the healing I’ve done, and the many ways in which I’ve pulled myself together, I haven’t said any of this out loud.
“Well,” she says. “I’m listening.”
“I had to leave.”
“You just disappeared.”
“No. I didn’t. I came here.”
The words make sense, but deeper than the words is the truth. She’s right. If Mabel’s talking about the girl who hugged her good-bye before she left for Los Angeles, who laced fingers with her at the last bonfire of the summer and accepted shells from almost-strangers, who analyzed novels for fun and lived with her grandfather in a pink, rent-controlled house in the Sunset that often smelled like cake and was often filled with elderly, gambling men—if she’s talking about that girl, then yes, I disappeared.
But it’s so much simpler not to look at it that way, so I add, “I’ve been here the whole time.”
“I had to fly three thousand miles to find you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
She looks at me, trying to see if I mean it.
“Yes,” I say again.
She pushes her hair behind her ear. I watch her. I’ve been trying not to look too closely. She was kind enough to pretend she didn’t notice me holding on to her scarf and hat earlier; I don’t need to test my luck. But again, it hits me: Here she is. Her fingers, her long, dark hair. Her pink lips and black eyelashes. The same gold earrings she never takes out, not even when she sleeps.
“Okay,” she says.
She presses a button and here is movement after so many minutes of suspension.
Down, down. I’m not sure I’m ready. But now we’re on the third floor, and Mabel and I reach for the gate at the same time, and our hands touch.
She pulls back before I know what I want.
“Sorry,” she says. She isn’t apologizing for pulling away. She’s apologizing for our accidental contact.
We used to touch all the time, even before we really knew each other. Our first conversation began with her grabbing my hand to examine my newly painted nails, gold with silver moons. Jones’s daughter, Samantha, ran a salon and she had her new hires practice on me. I told Mabel I could probably get her a discount on a manicure there.
She said, “Maybe you could just do it? It can’t be that hard.” So after school we went to Walgreens for nail polish and we sat in Lafayette Park while I made a mess of her fingertips and we laughed for hours.
Mabel’s ahead of me, almost to my doorway.
Wait.
Not enough has changed yet.
“Do you remember the first day we hung out?” I ask.
She stops walking. Turns to me.
“At the park?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. And I tried to paint your nails because you liked mine, and they turned out terribly.”
She shrugs. “I don’t remember it being that bad.”
“No. It wasn’t bad. Just my nail-painting skills.”
“I thought we had fun.”
“Of course we had fun. It’s what made us become friends. You thought I’d be able to give you a manicure and I failed miserably, but we laughed a lot, and that’s how it all started.”
Mabel leans against the doorway. She stares down the hall.
“How it all started was in the first day of English, when Brother John had us analyze some stupid poem, and you raised your hand and said something so smart about it that suddenly the poem didn’t seem stupid anymore. And I knew that you were the kind of person I wanted to know. But what I didn’t know yet was that you can tell a girl you want to hang out with her because she said something smart. So I looked for an excuse to talk to you, and I found one.”
She’s never told me this before.
“It wasn’t about a manicure,” she says. She shakes her head as though the idea were absurd, even though it’s the only version of the story I’ve known until now. Then she turns and goes into my room.
“What have you been doing for dinner?” she asks.
I gesture toward the desk, where an electric kettle rests next to packages of Top Ramen.
“Well, let’s do it.”
“I bought food,” I say. “There’s a kitchen we can use.”
She shakes her head.
“It’s been a long day. Ramen is fine.”
She sounds so tired. Tired of me and the way I’m not talking.
I take my usual trip to the bathroom sink for water, and then plug in the electric kettle at my desk and set the yellow bowls next to it. Here comes another chance. I try to think of something to say.
But Mabel rushes in before me.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“I met someone at school. His name is Jacob.”
I can’t help the surprise on my face.
“When?”
“About a month ago. You know the nine hundredth text and phone call you decided to ignore?”