I WAS WAITING FOR HAYDEN and Gabby on the blanket we’d laid out by the lake, picking through the macaroni salad on my paper plate with my plastic fork, separating out the mushy, green, formerly frozen peas from the mayonnaise-coated macaroni and cubes of cheese. Someone had gotten edgy this year and used sharp cheddar. Hayden and Gabby were waiting in line for barbeque.
I’d never been a huge meat eater—I couldn’t quite get past imagining the faces of the animals—but the switch happened all at once. We had a bunch of people at the house after Mallory’s funeral, and there was a ton of food. I remember Mom and Dad hadn’t eaten for days, and I felt like I should’ve lost my appetite too, but I was starving—it was all I could think about during the service.
I went into the kitchen, and when I realized I was alone, no witnesses, I grabbed for the first thing I could find: the plate of pigs in a blanket I suspected one of the mothers had brought. I swiped a whole napkin full of them and smuggled it to the bathroom, where I could eat without judgment. I locked the door behind me and laid the napkin out on the bathroom sink. They smelled so delicious—the warm buttery dough, the salty sweetness of the meat—I ate five of them in a row, devouring them as if I’d never eaten anything before in my entire life.
Someone knocked on the door, I remember, and I swallowed one last huge mouthful and yelled, “Just a minute.” I flushed the toilet and ran the water, and as I looked up into the mirror, I remember being struck by this overwhelming sense that I didn’t quite recognize myself. It was something subtle, but unmistakably altered.
I leaned in closer. Was it my hair, something around my eyes?
No. It wasn’t either of those things.
It was Mallory. Or not Mallory. Her absence from my life made me look physically different to myself, made me into a stranger. Then suddenly that full, warm, satisfied place in my stomach opened up like a hole inside me, and started churning faster and faster, like the slushie machine at the gas station. It had been days since she’d died, but this was the moment it first hit me that she was gone. Not just gone for the weekend or staying at a friend’s house or off on some photography expedition with Neil. But gone. Forever.
And the person I was when she was here was gone too.
Losing control over my own body, I stumbled through the two short steps it took to get from the sink to the toilet, barely making it in time. On my hands and knees, I leaned over and I threw up everything inside me—I threw up my heart, my lungs, and all of the vital organs I imagined had been swimming around within me—purging the last remnants of my life as I knew it. Then I lowered myself the rest of the way down onto the floor and closed my eyes, all those people on the other side of the door taking turns knocking and calling, “Are you okay?”
No. I was not okay.
I gave up meat in that very moment, with my cheek pressed against the icy tiles, the bitter, acrid taste of my insides still on my tongue.
• • •
Hayden and Gabby were holding on to each other’s arms and squealing, each precariously balancing a flimsy paper plate in her free hand, as they made their way back to our blanket. Gabby kicked her sandals off in the grass and plopped down next to me. She was wearing these short-shorts and a bikini top. She had found all these yoga videos online and had been doing them every day for the past year. Now she took any chance to show off her flat stomach and sculpted arms and thighs—at school, she had taken to walking around the locker room in only a bra and underwear.
“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing,” Hayden said, waving her hand.
“Yeah, you kinda had to be there,” Gabby added.
The weirdest part of suddenly being the third wheel in our friendship was that they were both my friends first. They hadn’t even liked each other—I’d practically had to force them to start hanging out together, and now, when I wasn’t looking, they had somehow become best friends, rendering me useless.
“I’m sure you could catch me up.” I smiled and tried to laugh, as if I was merely joking, but I don’t think it was very convincing.
“It was just this stupid thing someone said,” Hayden insisted.
“Who?”
“Maia, dude.” Gabby called everyone dude. “Why does it matter?”
“I just want to know.” I don’t know why I couldn’t let it go. Maybe part of me thought they were laughing at me. Or maybe I was trying to pick a fight. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“It was something stupid Gabby’s little sister said—she didn’t realize she was saying something sexual,” Hayden finally told me.
“Really?” Even I could tell it wasn’t a question; it was a dare. “Well, what was it?”
Hayden and Gabby exchanged a loaded glance.
Gabby sighed, and then said, “Is this ’cause we went to the beach without you?” Adding, before I could answer her, “Even though we asked you—no, begged you—to come a million times?”
“What’s ‘this’ supposed to mean?” I set my plate down and air-quoted with my fingers for effect. “There is no this. I’m just trying to get you guys to fill me in on the funny story. Why can’t you just tell me what she said?” I insisted again. “Why is it such a big deal?”
“She said ‘beating off,’ okay!” Hayden yelled, her eyes growing all wide and dark the way they do when she’s really passionate or angry about something. “But it’s not funny without the rest of the whole situation, and . . .” Hayden looked at Gabby, to finish.
Gabby rolled her eyes. “And we didn’t think we should be going on and on telling you some pointless story about my sister that wasn’t even really all that funny to begin with.”
“You can talk about your sister. What do you guys think, I’m gonna fall apart at the mention of the word? Sister!” I yelled. “Sister!” I cupped my hands around my mouth, and shouted it: “Sisterrrrr!”
“Jesus,” Gabby mumbled.
“Fine,” Hayden said, talking over me. “It’ll never happen again. Will you stop yelling?”
“No problem, I’ll stop embarrassing you.” I stood and picked up my plate and my bag.
“Maia, come on,” Gabby whined as I started walking away from them.
“Let her go,” Hayden countered.
Raw, formless anger coursed through my body as I made my way over to the edge of the lake where the ducks and geese were waiting; they immediately began to close in on me, sensing I had food to spare. All I’d been able to eat was a handful of greasy, salty potato chips and half a hamburger bun that I’d filled with condiments only—lettuce, tomato, ketchup, relish, mustard, onion—but without the burger part, there wasn’t much of a point. So I started ripping pieces of plain bread off and tossing them to the smaller ducks. I tore at the bread until all that was left on my plate was a pile of soggy, discolored, condiment mush and pale green-gray peas.
“You know, that’s really bad for the birds,” a voice said. It took me a minute to realize the words were directed at me.
I looked over my shoulder to see that Chris was walking up behind me.
“Oh, hi.” I was surprised at how relieved I was to see him standing there and not Hayden or Gabby. “Wait, what?”
“The bread,” he clarified. “It’s not good for them.”
“Oh,” I said again, looking down at my plate. “Why not?”
“It causes all kinds of problems. Malnutrition and deformities and things like that. It can even kill them,” he told me. “I read an article about it a while ago. They have these little pouches in their beaks where they store food, and if the bread gets stuck in there, it can get moldy and poison them.”
I thought about it for a second as I watched the geese pecking through the grass for crumbs. “Everyone feeds them bread, though.”
“Yeah, I know. Exactly.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels and said, as if just realizing the strangeness of this conversation, “So, spread the word.”
“I will.”
We looked out at the lake for a second before he said, “How’s your bike? Still out of commission?”
I nodded.
“That sucks,” he sighed. “Well, let me know if you want help with the tires,” he offered.
“You know how to do that?”
His gaze drifted off and he grinned in this shy way, like he’d only just realized that might be helpful. “Well, no,” he admitted. “But I know how to look up videos that will show us how.”
“Thanks,” I told him. “I might take you up on the offer.”
“Cool.” He nodded and looked around uncomfortably. “Well, I just wanted to say hi. Again.” He smiled and said, “So hi,” as he started backing up.
“Hi,” I echoed. “And thanks for the PSA.” I gestured toward the ducks and geese.
He glanced over his shoulder as he walked away, and waved, calling out, “Anytime!”
I looked back at my friends, and they appeared so small in the distance, sitting there together, probably discussing me and my outburst, deciding if keeping our trio intact was still worth all the effort it took to be my friend lately.
I started walking, and without having a clear idea in my mind of what I was doing, I walked right past my friends.
I followed Chris.