Owen couldn’t stop thinking about Angela’s lips on his. Her face caught in the last moments of gold before the sky turned dark, the room burning around them. The sudden coldness when she left.
He’d stood in that room for what felt like hours, but was probably just a few minutes, after she was gone. He’d found Jan’s office and brought the extra bid sheets downstairs. And then he found his friends and they went back to Max’s house like they’d planned.
They kept asking him what was wrong. He couldn’t answer. And eventually, they stopped asking questions, but he saw the way they kept looking at him, wondering.
They watched movies in the living room with all the lights out, settling into the couches and air mattresses. Lucie fell asleep before midnight so Max turned down the volume on the TV, let the soft sounds and colors lull them into sleepiness. But Owen was wide awake.
He stared at the ceiling. Replayed it in his mind over and over. Wondered if telling her everything had been a mistake.
And then she called him.
Max was half asleep but Owen could see Declan’s eyes follow him as he got up and stepped outside onto the porch. The neighborhood was quiet, just the sound of crickets that would go silent any day now, as soon as the first frost sparkled against front lawns, freezing fallen leaves into skeletons, delicately decomposed.
Now it was four in the morning and he still couldn’t sleep. He looked at his phone. Everyone had posted pictures of the gala all over social media. Angela and her friends, gemstones clinquant across their collarbones, faces lit in painted smiles. Classmates in crisp suits and long dresses. An entire town engulfed in extravagance. Vines of diamonds like bloodlines and roadmaps and whispers. There was a picture of Owen with Lucie that he didn’t even remember being taken.
He could hear splattering on the windows and he imagined long lines of raindrops turning the whole town gray. Rain-slick streets and muddy yards. Everything damp and dreary against the evergreens.
Some nights now when everything was almost perfect, when he’d had a good day at school or after he’d tried cooking a new recipe with his family in the warm kitchen or spent hours wandering with his friends, the memories would slip into the edges of his consciousness as he was falling into dreams. Just to remind him that they were still there, that things couldn’t get too perfect. He didn’t know which was worse, when they jolted him wide awake like a scream and kept his heart racing for hours or when they lingered quietly, stirring sleep and reality together so that he couldn’t tell the difference. His father with his angry hands on his mother’s face in bleached sunlight. Time distorted, sirens like heartbeats, everything covered in snow and glass and ice. And that sound he’d never forget.
Freshman year, he’d fallen for Angela like so many people here had, enthralled by the way everything about her life looked so perfect, so effortless compared to his own. What he hadn’t realized then was that she knew that, so she just played along with everyone. Made herself into everything they wanted to be, all those different versions of herself that people like Owen had crafted from what they weren’t.
It seemed like very few people in Westview actually knew Angela Witney. She seemed so afraid of people seeing who she really was, scared of showing any flaws.
Sometimes, though, he watched her forget she was supposed to be perfect and for all her frustrations and contradictions, that was the girl he was falling for now, when she was just Angela, erasing the daydream version he’d drawn in his head.
And now he wondered if that kiss meant something or if it wasn’t real.
Somehow, he managed to fall asleep for a few hours. Max and Declan were still fast asleep when he woke up again, but Lucie was awake, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans.
“Do you want to go on a walk?” she whispered when she noticed he was awake.
“Sure.”
He got changed quickly and walked outside with Lucie into perfect, classic New England fall, savoring the crisp morning air. The sky was clear now, the sun pale gold, but the roads were still dark with last night’s rain and blood-red maple leaves.
They walked a mile to Winthrop Farm, trees on fire with color all around them. In the orchard, plump apples were still blossoming from stout, twisted trees. Tall cornfields stretched out beyond them into the horizon. There were big barrels of gourds in every shape and size, speckled and green-striped and goldenrod-yellow. Pots of neon chrysanthemums. Inside the farm stand were fruits and vegetables in every color, sweet jams and honey and butter and fresh eggs. The brightest candy apples wrapped up in cellophane, stacks of perfectly-browned pies with lattice crusts.
Lucie bought pumpkins to bring back to the house and carve later. Owen bought them apple cider donuts, warm and coated with cinnamon sugar. They ate them at an old picnic table at the edge of the orchard. He loved that he could just sit in silence with Lucie. They were good at keeping each other company. Like when Hanna Cole broke up with her over the summer and they spent a whole afternoon swimming in the reservoir until she wanted to talk about it. And when Owen was stressed about midterm exams last year and she’d insisted that they take a break and spend a few hours wandering around the park in Cherwell, which turned out to be exactly the right decision to help him refocus on studying. Sometimes just knowing that someone was there for you was enough.
Lucie took out a pen and doodled designs for her jack-o’-lantern on a napkin. Owen inhaled the scent of the orchard. His thoughts were still racing. He wondered what Angela was doing right now, what would happen the next time they saw each other. He wished he could tell Lucie everything. He wished he could tell Max or Declan. But sometimes he felt like they were more Lucie’s friends than his because they’d all been friends first.
They sat there in the sun, quiet for a while. And then, when he wanted to talk but couldn’t say what he really should have, he filled the space by talking about things that didn’t matter as much. The homework they were both putting off, a new show he’d been watching that he knew she’d like. Their plans for the rest of the day. He tried to take his mind off Angela, what that kiss meant or didn’t mean.
Max’s younger brothers were out in the front yard when they got back, playing football with some of the neighbors. Inside, the aroma of slow cooker chili filled the rooms. Owen started to feel more content as they carved the pumpkins and put them out on the porch steps. They roasted the seeds in the oven, golden and salty.
They’d invited Theo and his friends to join them when Owen was with Angela last night and they all settled in to watch the horror movie Declan had picked out. As the opening credits started, Owen thought again about all the secrets he was still carrying around. He wondered how long it would take them to break free. To rain all over the safe yet delicate world he’d been rebuilding, shatter all the glass from the inside.