THE FIRST THING Madison says when Leo arrives at the roller rink is, “Okay, you look amazing, please do not kill me.”
Leo stops in her tracks. “Well, hi to you, too,” she replies. She has to almost shout because the music is so loud, some girl band singing about getting the beat? Having the beat? Something like that. There’s an actual disco ball over the rink, giant neon-colored palm trees painted on one wall, and Leo can hear the whoops and shouts of the skaters.
Despite Madison’s initial greeting, Leo’s a little excited. She hasn’t been to a birthday party in, well, a long time, and she hasn’t roller-skated since she was six. The person who had been truly excited, though, was Stephanie. Last week, when Leo went over to her dad and Stephanie’s for their regular Friday night dinner, she had told them where she was going and Stephanie literally screamed and clapped her hands together.
“That was my era!” she cried. “Do you need any clothes? Hair clips? What about hair spray? You definitely need hair spray.”
Leo shrugged. “I’ll take whatever.”
Her dad looked amused. “I can’t believe that Madison’s dad wants to celebrate fifty years of life by strapping wheels to his feet. Sounds risky.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes and then pushed her plate away. “You’re no fun. C’mon,” she said to Leo, holding out her hand. “You at least need some neon.” She had a harder time standing up from her chair, letting out a little “oof” as Leo helped her to her feet. “Maybe a side pony,” she added as she headed for the stairs.
“Dad, I’m scared,” Leo said.
“You should be,” her dad calmly replied, then ate another bite of steak. “Godspeed, kiddo.”
Stephanie’s enthusiasm had paid off in the outfit department: Leo’s wearing striped leggings, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt that’s huge on her, and about half a bottle of hair spray holding up her hair. Stephanie had also insisted on a “statement necklace,” which feels way heavier than any piece of jewelry actually should.
“Why am I not going to kill you?” Leo asks Madison now.
“Where did you get those leggings?” Madison replies instead. “Are those vintage?”
Leo’s not sure if Stephanie would appreciate being referred to as “vintage,” so she settles on “Kind of.”
Madison, of course, has a side ponytail, and a ratted-looking tutu, a studded belt, and an old Madonna T-shirt. “This was my mom’s,” she says, gesturing to it now. “C’mon, let’s get you some skates! What size are you?”
“Wait, answer my question first.”
Madison just smiles.
Leo crosses her arms.
“I swear I didn’t know anything about this until today,” she says. “And then I was afraid to tell you because then maybe you wouldn’t come and then I’d be stuck here alone with my dad and all of his old-people friends, reliving their ‘glory days’ or whatever.” Madison makes finger quotes around the phrase, looking both embarrassed and disgusted.
“Oh my God, is the doughnut machine broken?” Leo asks. “Because you’re right, that would be a deal breaker.”
“What? Oh, no, they fired it up when we first got here. My older sister, Chloe, insisted. She’s the DJ.” Madison gestures toward the DJ booth at the end of the rink, where a girl with long brown hair is wearing giant headphones and looking intently at the computer. “She doesn’t really need the headphones,” Madison adds. “It’s a whole thing.”
“So if the doughnuts are safe . . .” Leo trails off, looking at Madison, who’s biting her lip.
“I swear I didn’t know!”
“Madison! Just tell me!”
“East is here.”
Leo feels her stomach flip and then settle somewhere around her legwarmer-clad ankles.
“I know you had this big fight or whatever, but my dad hired him to be a videographer-slash-photographer person,” Madison continues, and Leo follows her gaze out to the rink, where East is gliding on skates with his camera and stabilizer, wearing a black shirt and torn black jeans, weaving in and out among the skaters, some of whom are, generously speaking, better than others. She hasn’t talked to him at all since their big fight six weeks ago, has only seen him in the hallways at school. She hates the fact that she misses him, hates the way her heart jumps a little when she sees him on the rink.
But “East knows how to roller-skate?” is all she says instead.
“Guess so,” Madison replies. “Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?” She folds her hands and tucks them under her chin, looking both sorry and not very sorry at all.
“Not today,” Leo says. “I borrowed this outfit from my stepmom. I don’t want to ruin it.”
Madison claps her hands together. “Excellent! C’mon, let’s get some skates and get this party started!”
It takes Leo a few minutes to get used to the skates, and there’s a scary moment where she first hits the rink and feels like every important part of her body is about to go out from under her, but then Madison grabs her hand and steadies her. East is still on the rink, looking both serious and bemused, and when he sees Leo, he stutters and almost falls, too. Leo just looks away, not sure how to start a conversation underneath a disco ball while Prince is singing about this thing called life.
She makes several loops around the rink before Leo forgets about East, forgets about her outfit and her necklace and her sister and starts to have fun. Madison’s parents’ friends look like they’re having a blast, even the ones who are, frankly, terrible skaters, and the music is both loud and good, despite the surly DJ.
“The next person who requests ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles will be ejected from the building,” Chloe says at one point before starting a Cure song. Leo vaguely recognizes it from her dad always listening to the oldies radio station in the car, and it’s fine enough, but the rest of the skating crowd loses their mind. “I fuckin’ love this song!” one guy shouts as he zooms by, and both Madison and Leo laugh with joy as they try to keep up.
“That’s my dad!” Madison yells over the music.
“That explains the crown he’s wearing!” Leo yells back and Madison happily nods.
East is in the middle of the rink, always present but rarely noticed by anyone except Leo, and she feels the tug between them as she goes around and around, the sweat gathering at the back of her neck, her mouth dry. When a slow song comes on (“This one’s for all you looovvvveerrrsss,” Chloe purrs into the mic), Leo exits the rink and heads for the snack bar, gets herself a cherry-flavored ICEE and a doughnut, and sits down at a plastic table to catch her breath.
Madison finds her a few minutes later, fanning herself as she gets a fountain Coke, then plops down beside Leo to watch the skaters, holding up her drink for a silent “cheers.”
Well, Madison watches the skaters. Leo watches East. He glances over at them a few times and Leo quickly busies herself with her doughnut, which, like all doughnuts ever, tastes fantastic. At one point, East zips over to the skate rental and switches out some equipment before coming back with another camera, weaving through the coupled-up skaters and taking some candid shots as people grin and hold up peace signs with their fingers. He looks different when he’s working. He doesn’t look like East, her friend, if they are still even friends. He looks professional, composed, quick glimpses of what he’ll be in the future.
“Girls!” Madison’s dad clomps over to them. The plastic crown on his head is slightly askew and someone’s thrown some Mardi Gras beads around his neck and he looks flushed and happy and officially fifty years old. “How amazing is Chloe doing right now?”
“She’d be the first to agree with you,” Madison replies but then smiles sweetly when her dad just presses a kiss to the top of her head.
“You doing good? You need anything? I’m Mike, Madison’s dad, by the way.”
“Hi,” Leo says. “I’m Leo. Happy birthday. Thanks for having me.”
“Hey, the more the merrier! Did you get a doughnut yet?”
Leo holds her grease-stained piece of waxed paper in response.
“Excellent!” He claps his hands down on Madison’s shoulders. “Gotta get your mom a Sprite, she’s parched out there,” he says, then clomps away.
“Wow, your dad is . . . ,” Leo starts to say, then realizes that she doesn’t have the word for that kind of energy.
“He’s a lot,” Madison says, but she’s still smiling ruefully.
“No, I was going to say that he seems really nice.”
“He is,” Madison agrees. “A lot of nice.”
Leo uses the spoon end of her straw to scoop the rest of her drink out of the bottom of the cup. “You said that he was sick a few years ago?”
“Yeah, back when I was in middle school and Chloe was in high school.” Madison shakes her Coke, the ice rattling. “It was his thyroid. Things were, uh, kind of scary for a while.” She laughs a little, nervously this time. “Sorry, I feel kind of bad telling you this after, you know, Nina.”
“It’s okay,” Leo says, because it is. “I’m glad your dad’s still alive.”
“Me too. But after he got the all clear, he just started saying ‘yes to life,’ to quote him. He quit his job, he learned how to windsurf, all of it.”
“Wow,” Leo says, and tries to imagine her dad either windsurfing or roller-skating. It’s impossible. “That’s so cool that he’s open to everything.”
“Yeah,” Madison says, but there’s a quiet ache to her voice that Leo recognizes. “But sometimes, it’s like, he just goes so far. He’s really good about encouraging Chloe and me, and he’s a great dad, but sometimes . . .” She pauses, shakes her ice again. “Sometimes you want a dad who’s going to catch you when you jump off a cliff, not jump right alongside you, you know?”
Leo nods. “Yeah,” she says, and thinks of her own dad, who’s probably home watching Netflix with Stephanie, probably something that aired ten years ago that everyone else has already seen. “I get it.”
“Do I sound like a terrible person?” Madison says. “Because I, like, really love my dad. He’s the best.”
“You sound like a person person,” Leo reassures her. “And your dad sounds like another person. And we all just have to figure out how to navigate around other people, you know?” She shrugs. “Just like out there. On the rink.” They watch as two people almost collide, grabbing on to each other and then the wall. “Maybe a little bit better than that, though.”
Madison laughs and then shakes the ice in her cup. “So is East still a person you’re navigating around?” she asks, and Leo shoots her a glare.
“Tonight, East is a paid employee,” Leo clarifies.
“So?” Madison takes the top off her drink and uses it to gesture toward the skating attendant who’s cruising in slow circles around the rink, keeping an eye on the crowd. “That guy’s a paid employee tonight, too, but Chloe’s totally going to make out with him after this.”
“Are you serious?”
Madison holds out her hand. “Twenty bucks. I know my sister.”
Leo shakes on it.
The party seems to hit a fever pitch a little while later, with everyone on the floor singing along with the music, fist-pumping to the lyrics like they’re all back in high school again. Madison and Leo join in when they know the words, and sometimes even when they don’t, howling like they mean it. “Don’t you want someone to care about yooooou?” Leo belts out at one point, just as East glides past her. She’s pointing and being super exaggerated about it, and when he goes past, she stops, feeling silly and embarrassed. He doesn’t acknowledge her, though, his eyes focused on his own work, and Leo’s not sure if that’s good or bad.
She’s taking another break, leaning against the wall with Madison and waving at people who wave at them as they skate past, when the fast song starts to slow down. “Here’s one last slow jam for all you wild things,” Chloe says, and yeah, she’s definitely making eyes at the skate attendant. Leo’s going to have to borrow twenty bucks from someone.
And then Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” begins and all of the air leaves Leo’s body as a memory rushes in, one she’s never had before, something that she thought was lost forever suddenly occupying every cell in her body, transporting her back in time.
“Leo?” Madison says. “You okay?”
Nina’s singing. Her beautiful, brilliant sister is in East’s car and she’s smiling, and for just a second, Leo can almost feel her, how happy they were in the moment, the music blasting and East laughing with them, singing about ticking clocks and lost people and going slow—
Madison’s saying something, but she’s far away from Leo now, and Leo closes her eyes against the light and the sound, grips on to the carpeted wall and feels the warm wind through the car’s open window. The air smells like eucalyptus and car exhaust and chlorine, it’s whipping Nina’s hair around so that she has to hold it back and Leo feels herself reach out and try to touch it, to feel her sister in this memory, in this moment.
She can feel Madison’s arm holding her up now, can hear someone else saying, “I got it, Mads, I got it,” and it’s confusing because East is talking to her, but he’s looking at her before glancing at the road and then laughs as Nina thrusts an imaginary microphone into his face, she’s alive and it’s like all of their hearts are beating at the same pace, at the same time.
Leo’s heart is beating so, so fast.
“Leo,” East says, and she opens her eyes to see that he’s in front of her now, he’s not driving the car anymore, even though she can still feel the music pounding through her body, she can still hear her sister’s laugh.
“East,” she whispers, scared by how much her voice is shaking. “I can see her.” She feels Madison’s arm slip from around her waist, leaving her and East on the rink, alone together, surrounded by strangers.
“We sang this song,” Leo continues, and her hands are reaching for Nina’s, but it’s East who catches them.
“We did,” he says. His eyes are shiny, almost too bright, and Leo wonders if it’s the disco lights or something else. “We were together, all three of us.”
“We were really happy,” she says, and even though she’s smiling, she can feel the tears slipping past her cheeks and over her mouth. All she can hear is this song. She can smell Nina’s perfume. She can feel her own hair, tangled and wild. She can see the flashing red lights.
She can feel everything and it’s too much to hold.
“It’s okay to remember,” East says, only his voice is shaking, too, his eyes wide and wild. “It’s okay, Leo.”
Leo shakes her head. It’s like she’s woken up from a dream, the soft intimacy of the memories dissolving into a few sparse scenes, impossible to describe to anyone else who wasn’t there.
But East was there. And he’s here now. Leo tightens her hand around his, squeezing hard, willing him to stay with her, to hang on to her so that she doesn’t slip away, too.
“Do you want to go outside?” he asks. “Maybe get some air or—?”
“No. I need to listen,” Leo says just as the music soars past both of them, like a car out of control, something neither of them can or could ever stop.
“Okay, okay,” East says, and then he’s motioning to Madison, he’s passing her his camera and she grabs it without a word as East takes Leo’s hand and leads her back out onto the rink.
Leo’s still crying, she knows she is, but it doesn’t matter. East won’t let her get lost. His hand is warm and damp against her own, his grip so tight that she can feel his pulse under his palm, and she hangs on just as tight, afraid to let go, afraid to lose him again. When she looks up at him, he keeps his eyes straight ahead and squeezes her hand. She squeezes back, their apologies exchanged and accepted as they go around in circles, bathed in the twinkling light of a false star.
East’s face is wet. Leo doesn’t know if it’s sweat or tears. She guesses it doesn’t matter. All salt water is the same, after all.
When they leave the roller rink, with Chloe loudly announcing, “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here!” into the microphone before the staff has to take it away from her, the coastal night air feels frigid in contrast to the overheated, humid rink. It’s quiet, too, like a hotel hallway or when you get into your car after a loud concert, the absence of noise pushing against your ears, and Leo’s sneakers feel weirdly smooth after being on wheels for three hours. She feels like she should glide toward the parking lot, not just walk.
East walks out with her, his camera bag over his shoulder. His face is dry now, surreptitiously wiped on his shirtsleeve as they exited the rink together. Madison was staring at them both with huge eyes, but didn’t say a word when East thanked her for guarding his camera, just nodded. When he skated away, she grabbed Leo’s arm. “What was that?” she hissed.
“It’s . . . between us,” Leo said, trying to sound casual even as her heart continued to pound, as her skin still felt warm and tight. Madison didn’t say anything after that, but Leo could practically hear her thinking about it.
Madison stays behind to help her parents clean up, or so she says, and she gives Leo a hug before she leaves. “I’m really glad you came,” she says.
“I am, too,” Leo says, and she is. She had some fun—and it was the first time in months that she’d been able to go more than thirty minutes without thinking of Nina, of her limp arm dangling off the ambulance gurney. She spins the ring on her finger now, swallows hard, and tries to smile.
East holds the door for her as they walk out, all of Madison’s dad’s friends laughing and shouting their goodbyes back and forth, their words feeling like they could form a little bubble around East and Leo. They stand next to each other on the curb as the crowd disperses, as their quiet suburban world settles back down.
“You okay?” East asks her and Leo feels a tiny twinge of pleasure that he’s the one who’s spoken first.
“Yeah,” she says. “It was just, you know, a moment.”
East is looking at her like she’s a wild animal, which is weird. It’s not like she’s never cried in front of him before. “Did you, uh, remember anything else?”
“No, just the song. My dad should be here soon,” she adds.
East nods and says, “Yeah, same. I told him eleven just to be safe.”
Leo glances at her phone. It’s a few minutes before. “You didn’t drive?”
“Still grounded.” East shrugs. “Another week. He only let me do this because it’s a paid gig.”
“Oh, cool. I mean, that they paid you. Did you get some good shots?”
East laughs a little, dropping his head down so he can rub the back of his neck. “Leo, what are we—?”
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. Smooth, she can hear Nina’s voice tell her, annoyed and amused. “Seriously, East, I’m so sorry. I just, I freaked out on you, and that whole fight we had last time . . . I didn’t think. I don’t really care what you do, you know? As long as you’re happy.”
Under the parking lot lights, East’s eyes seem to glitter.
“Happy,” he repeats. “Are you happy, Leo?”
“I don’t . . .” She trails off, trying to think of how to respond to such a seemingly simple question. “I don’t really know what happy is supposed to feel like anymore, I guess, so I don’t know.”
He looks at her, the sides of his jaw flexing. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s like it’s not a thing that exists anymore. Not like it used to.”
“Nothing is like it used to be,” Leo says, and thinks of Stephanie’s rounded stomach, Nina’s wet hair. “But I guess, if everything had stayed the same, then she wouldn’t have been that special. You’re supposed to change, right? If you just stay the same, then what was the point of loving someone in the first place?”
East doesn’t say anything for a long time after that, just looks down at the ground for a while, thumbing at his eyes. “Yeah,” he finally sighs, and then he reaches out and grabs Leo, pulling her into his arms and hugging her tight. “I’m really sorry, too,” he says.
Leo doesn’t realize how much she’s missed him until she’s touching him again, can feel his sweaty shirt and his rapid pulse, the sheer aliveness of East. She’s missed the rudder of their shared boat, now the only two people in the world who know what that song means, who once heard it under a starry sky in a brilliant, perfect world. The intimacy of that is something Leo will hold for the rest of her life, the ability to share loss without diluting it. She wonders, faintly, if grief is stronger than love, if love is so strong because the loss of it can be so sharp.
They’re still hugging when East’s dad pulls up, but they don’t let go. It takes East’s dad getting out of the car, a frown creased across his face, a frown that Leo vaguely remembers from Nina’s funeral. “Easton?” he says tentatively.
East sniffles and lets go of Leo, then flings himself into his dad’s arms. “Hey,” his dad says, even as he’s embracing him. “Hey, buddy, what’s . . .”
Leo sees the familiar lights of her dad’s car sweep across the parking lot. There are only a few skating stragglers left in the parking lot, all of them too absorbed in their own conversation to see East and his dad rocking back and forth. East is crying now, loud and gulping, and Leo gives a little wave to his dad before walking away so her dad doesn’t have to drive up right between them.
“Is East okay?” her dad asks as soon as she gets in the car. He’s wearing old dad jeans and a UCLA sweatshirt, his alma mater. The clothes are so worn and threadbare (and Leo’s pretty sure there’s a food stain near the collar) that they’d normally exasperate her, but now the familiarity is warm and safe.
“He’s okay,” she replies, then aims the heating vent toward her. “Sometimes it’s just a lot, you know?”
Her dad looks at her then, giving her a sad smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I do,” he whispers, and Leo is about to tell him what she’s remembered, the moment, the happiness, how her heart felt both thrilled and shattered, but then he says, “You want French fries? I told Stephanie I’d get her some,” and the moment is gone.
“That sounds good,” she says instead. “I need some salt.”
“Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” she says, then sends a wicked glance his way. “A bunch of old people skating to old people music, but otherwise it was okay.”
“Hey now!” her dad cries, faux insulted, and she giggles as he starts to muss up her hair. “Those are classics! Did they play Bon Jovi? I used to listen to him all the time in high school.”
“Yeah, thirty years ago!” Leo says. “Like I said, old.”
“You kids with your Tic Tac music or whatever . . .”
“Oh my God. Dad.”
Leo can see East and his father in her dad’s rearview mirror as they leave the parking lot, East getting smaller and smaller until she can’t see him at all. When she turns back, her dad’s hand is on the console and she reaches for it, putting her fingers around his.
“What’s all this?” he asks, glancing down at her.
“Just . . . nothing,” she says, then looks away when her dad raises an eyebrow.
“Okay,” he replies, then tightens his own hand in hers as they drive away.