Milo looked okay. By nine o’clock that night he was sitting on the couch in Hollis’s living room, and JJ was making him laugh. Noah was texting Josh. Abby was writing in her notebook. There was so much to write about. They’d seen their father today. His wife was having a baby. Milo could have died. Whenever Hollis thought about Milo lying on the floor of the coffee shop, barely breathing, she wanted to barf. Milo drove through life without a seat belt—without a crash helmet. The worst part was that it could happen again. He could eat the wrong thing. He could—
No. Hollis shivered. She wasn’t going to think about that now. She was going to put this bowl of popcorn that her mother had asked her to make on the coffee table, in front of Frankie and Suzanne, who were flipping through Hollis’s baby album. God, that thing was so embarrassing. She was naked in half the pictures. Naked and wearing a Kleenex box. Naked and riding a tricycle.
“You were adorable,” Suzanne said, looking up at Hollis and beaming.
It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. “Thanks.”
She perched on the arm of the couch next to JJ. He squeezed her knee. “Hello, Hollis Darby-Barnes.”
“Hello, JJ Rabinowitz.”
He grabbed her thumb.
She felt herself smile. She couldn’t help it.
Hollis looked around the room and thought, Everyone is here. In my house. She felt an odd sense of calm. But she felt something else, too. An almost panicky feeling underneath. Don’t leave!
They had only one day left. By Monday afternoon, everyone would be gone. Milo and Frankie and Suzanne. JJ. Abby and Noah. What was Hollis supposed to do then? Just go back to her stupid life? Homework? Quiet lunches with Shay and Gianna? She was no longer hooking up with Gunnar. She was no longer receiving slut mail. Ever since that day in the bathroom with Malory, everything had stopped. The texts. The voice mails. The posts. It wasn’t that Hollis missed being called a slutbag ho—she wasn’t that messed up—but still. School was dullsville. Maybe she needed some new friends.
An image popped into her head then, of Milo and JJ and Abby and Noah walking down the hall with her—all in a row the way Malory and her friends walked—taking up all the space in the world. The image twinged Hollis’s heart.
“This sucks,” she announced.
“What sucks?” Milo said.
“We only have one full day left.”
“I know. It’s a bummer.”
Move to Saint Paul, Hollis thought. Go to my school! JJ and I can hook up in the janitor’s closet! Everyone can live in my basement!
“We’ll just have to come back,” Abby said.
“You’re welcome anytime,” Hollis’s mom said.
And Noah said, “If we do this again, Josh wants to come.”
Everyone looked at Noah.
“Seriously?” Hollis said.
“I texted him so many pictures, I think I wore him down.”
“I know,” Abby said, closing her notebook and sticking her pen behind her ear. “You should all come to Sheboygan this summer. We have a lake house.”
“Or Brooklyn,” Milo said. “We could sit around sweating and wishing we had a lake house.”
“Or Chicago,” Noah said. “We could go to a Cubs game.”
It wasn’t until later, when everyone was asleep, and JJ lay heavy and warm beside her on the basement floor, that Hollis thought about Will Bardo. In all the drama surrounding Milo, they’d forgotten to debrief.
“You guys?” Hollis said.
There was no response.
“Anyone awake?”
Nothing. Breaths and sighs and gentle snores. Hollis didn’t have the heart to wake them.