2

The sun streams in through my car’s open windows. I love the feeling of a good day that’s also gorgeous outside. I’ve run through Grant’s birthday plans about fifty times, but I want it to be perfect.

As I drive down the highway, I can’t help but see little memories of all the amazing times we’ve had at every mile marker.

That’s the McDonald’s where we scared the little kids by jumping out of the ball pit. There’s that gas station where we sat on the curb and tried to smoke a cigarette without throwing up. And the grocery store down that road always has the best selection of cookies in the bakery. We can’t settle in for an all-day Mythbusters marathon without our favorite cookies.

And if I were to take that exit there and take the first left and then the second right, I’d be at the cemetery where my mom is buried. And where little Grant stood by little me and held my hand while my dad cried into the ground.

I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. I can see the signs of a few good months in the absence of dark circles under my light grey eyes. I don’t like wearing makeup—other than gobs of black eyeliner. So even during bad times, when the bags under my eyes look like bruises, I never cover them up. I wear them like a warning. They’re declaring the State of Imogen before I even open my mouth.

Beside me, my phone rings in the seat, and I put it on speakerphone. “Hey, I’m almost there,” I say as I roll up my window with my incredibly advanced hand crank.

“Happy-No-Carmella-Saturday!” Grant shouts into the receiver.

“Wait. You can’t say that—I have to say happy birthday first!”

“Too late, I win.” He laughs.

“Fine. Are you ready for your day of fun? I was thinking we’d start with a movie and then a late lunch/ early dinner, whatever—my treat of course—and then I was thinking we could catch the musical at Edgehill?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Brice has been trying to schedule a time for us to hang out with him and Jonathan. I could ask them to come?” I hear my voice go all nervous as I speak.

“Jonathan’s cool. I don’t know why you’re so weird about him.”

“I’m not weird about him. He just never talks to me. When Brice told me the Jonathan who’s always folding paper and ignoring people in English class was his Jonathan, I did not believe him.”

“It’s not a crime to be quiet,” Grant says. I can hear the smirk in his voice.

“Well, thank God.” My heart flutters in my chest.

I hear his electric toothbrush buzz to life and it’s probably the most precious thing ever when he mumbles, “Whassashows?”

I smile so hard I’m afraid he’ll hear my blushing cheeks right through the phone. “I was thinking we could go see whatever old horror movie is playing at the dollar theatre, and then tonight, the Edgehill show is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It’s supposed to be really funny.”

He spits.

How is that cute?

“Sounds perfect,” he says. “When will you be here?”

“I should pull up in five minutes.”

“Perfect, see you soon.”

I press the button to end the call, and just as I do, my phone rings again. I answer it and tap the speakerphone button without even looking at the screen. “What did you forget, weirdo?”

“Immy?”

My dad’s voice squeaks out of my tiny phone speaker.

I wish he hadn’t called and I’m so glad he did all at once.

“Hey, Dad. I guess you landed?”

“I did. Evelyn told me you wouldn’t be there for Carmella’s arrival tomorrow. Something about theatre?”

I roll my eyes at the sound of Evelyn’s name and grind my teeth at the sound of Carmella’s. I’m instantly defensive.

“Yeah, Dad. It’s required for all techies to be there on Sunday workday. And it’s been on the calendar since school started six weeks ago.”

The phone goes quiet for a few seconds, and I wonder if I’ve dropped his call.

“Be nice to her, okay, kiddo?”

Right, because I’m a horrible bully and she’s going to just skip around being precious. I reach into my purse and pull out a fun-size candy bar and pop it in my mouth.

“I’ve gotta go, Dad.”

“And, Immy, promise you’ll call if something happens, okay?”

I pull up to a stoplight and wait for him to say something. I don’t want to acknowledge that he thinks I’m going to fall apart at the first sign of anything.

He clears his throat. “Up or down, you call me. Promise.”

I pause as long as I can. “I promise, Dad. I’ve gotta go. Be safe.”

“You, too, baby girl.”

Before he has the chance to clarify what “safe” means for an overweight, clinically depressed seventeen-year-old girl with an anxiety disorder, I reach down and hang up the call.

I pull up to Grant’s house, and he’s waiting for me on the curb. He springs to life before I come to a complete stop.

I scream “Happy Birthday!” at the top of my lungs as he throws himself into the car, leans over, and tries to smother my squeals.

“You crazy girl! My neighbors are going to think I’m kidnapping you.”

I laugh. “If they haven’t ratted us out to the police after a dozen years of our shenanigans, they probably won’t start now. Now stop distracting me. I got you a present.”

I lift up my elbow and open the armrest compartment, and his face shifts from silliness to sincerity almost instantly.

“What? Why? It’s not the anniversary of the first time I made you sit and watch eighteen hours of Mythbusters with me, is it? ’Cause if it were, I would have been obligated to bring flowers—which I didn’t, and you’d surely never forgive me.” He puts his hand over his heart, and even though we’re both being silly, the gesture makes my throat close tightly.

“Ha. You’d never forget a day that important.” I give him a thumbs up and a big exaggerated nod of my head. “Anyway, not sure if you remember my screaming a few seconds ago, but…” I drop my voice to a loud whisper. “It’s your birthday.”

He grins. “If you say so.”

I hand him the small bit of black-on-black embroidered fabric, and he turns it over in his fingers.

“It’s a patch,” I say. “Sorry, I didn’t wrap it.”

“It looks like a Superman thingy! Kinda. Sorta. I mean there’s an ‘M,’ too, which is problematic ’cause Superman is one word, but I forgive you!”

“Oh, shut up, I know that Superman is one word.” I laugh with him as he puts it against his forehead and then on his palm and then in the middle of his chest. “It’s for Stage Manager, but I was also thinking about how it could be for Science Man, or Silly Muggle or—”

“Or Stud Muffin!” he says with the patch held against his cheek. “Or Sexy Mastermind.” He waggles his eyebrows at me, and I laugh as I waggle mine back.

“I thought you could iron it onto your stage blacks,”

I say.

Some girls like a guy in uniform, but I am a sucker for a techie in his blacks.

“This is awesome, Gen. I love it. So much.” He reaches over and puts his hand on my shoulder. In the moment without laughing and joking, the weight of his hand there presses in on me and keeps me from lifting right out of my seat. Like gravity. “Thank you,” he says.

I swallow away the warmth of his hand, tucking it deep inside to remember whenever I need it.

“It’s nothing major, I know.”

He pauses. “Come here, you.” He jerks his head, gesturing outside, and gets out of the car, closing his door behind him.

As I stand in the space of my open car door, he walks up to me. The sunlight is breaking through the tree in his front yard and streaming across his face. He squints his hazel eyes—more green than brown, but definitely both. The skin around his mouth folds into familiar creases as he smiles.

“Come on,” he says as he opens his arms wide and pulls me against him.

I press my cheek to his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

We stand there, my arms wrapped neatly around his narrow waist and his arms crossing gently over my shoulders. All that exists is the smell of his hair. I could never describe what it is exactly, but the smell of him and his drugstore hair product does me in every single time. I could live in that smell.

“Thank you for my present,” he whispers over my head.

When Grant, Brice, Jonathan, and I step out of the Edgehill Community Theatre at half-past ten, the entire sky is bright with stars. I turn around and look up at the beautiful theatre marquees, glowing with colorful neon lights.

“That was so good!” Brice skips to the edge of the sidewalk and starts balancing on the curb. His grin is a mile wide as Jonathan, hands shoved deep in his pockets, comes to his side. Brice’s bright voice fills the cool evening air. “When the Jackal was revealed, I was like ‘whaaaaat?!’ ’cause I did not see that coming. Did you see that coming, babe?”

Brice holds out his hand for Jonathan, who pauses for a moment before taking it.

I recognize insecurity. One might call it my specialty. It only lasts a second, but that hesitation sticks out at me and I make a mental note to pay closer attention and listen for clues the next time Brice is talking about his boy.

“Definitely not.” Jonathan gives him a twirl, which causes Brice to giggle adorably.

While Brice skips over to me, I watch as Jonathan shoves his hand back in his pocket before turning to Grant and mouthing, “Yes, I did.” They laugh as they walk down the sidewalk in front of Brice and me.

We follow them closely. Brice’s face and wide, round eyes are bright as he chatters.

“And did you see those costumes? The ensemble had to wear at least four different looks, maybe five. That is impressive.”

“Well, you could do just as well,” I say as I look up at the stars.

Brice smiles. “Probably, yeah.”

In front of us, Grant suddenly turns around and runs up to me with a grin on his face.

“HA! Gen, you thought I’d forget? You sneak!”

I laugh because I already know what he’s going to say. Grant turns toward the boys and explains.

“Gen and I have a standing ice cream bet for every theatre production we see. She thinks it will be lame. I think it will be awesome. Optimism wins again!” He turns back to me. “You lose. You buy the ice cream.”

I scoff and cross my arms. “It’s your birthday! I would have bought the ice cream anyway.”

He bends down so we’re at the same eye level.

“I think you’re trying to keep me from my ice cream.”

I stand up straight and put my hand over my heart. “I’d never, ever keep a person from their ice cream. I thought you knew me so well.”

He winks, and I stick out my tongue before we step onto the crosswalk arm-in-arm.

“So,” Brice chimes in, “I don’t know much about how you and Grant got together.”

He raises his eyebrow a little bit, and my rebuttal gets caught in my throat.

“Not together together,” Grant says with an easy smile that seems to mean nothing. His words echo off the walls of my chest, banging around between each rib before settling in my stomach.

“Yeah, we’re not together. But you know that,” I say to Brice with a slim smile as the warmth of Grant’s arm radiates into mine.

Brice stops and puts a hand on his hip. “Oh, excuse me for misinterpreting.” He gestures to our intertwined limbs.

“We’ve been best friends since kindergarten,” Grant says.

“Yeah, it’s true,” I say as I watch Brice snake his hand through the gap between Jonathan’s body and where his hand’s still shoved to the bottom of his pocket.

“Gen?”

I shake away my curiosity at Jonathan’s hidey hand and pick up where Grant left off. “We really got close right after my mom died in fourth grade.” I say the words, but with Grant’s body close to mine, I barely feel the sting.

“I remember the day Gen and I became inseparable. I’d crawled under the fence to sit in her living room and play video games—”

“And on this random day, I answered the phone instead of my dad. It was a telemarketer who asked if my mom was home, and I totally freaked out. I panicked and almost hyperventilated. I ran upstairs and crawled under my bed to hide.”

Grant turns to me and says, “I went upstairs and crawled right under there with her. And I told her that no matter what, no matter how bad things got, I’d stay.”

Brice stops dead in his tracks. “That. Is. The. Cutest. Story. Ever.” He sniffles and then turns to Jonathan and starts playfully smacking him on the shoulder. “Can we have a romantic story like that? You need to crawl under my bed real freaking quick, you got it?”

Romantic. The heat returns to my cheeks.

And Grant lets go of my arm.

No, Brice, it’s not romantic ’cause we were ten. And even if it happened tonight, we’re just friends. Period. Been there, ruined that.

Jonathan smiles at Brice and softly says, “Give us time. We’ll get a story.” His voice is warm and has a gentle twang. Brice turns and stretches onto his tiptoes to wrap his arms all the way around Jonathan’s neck. Brice is a whole head shorter, but other than that, they’re a matched set. Twin puffs of honey-colored hair, swept up into fashionable pompadours; square jawlines; and bright blue eyes. As Brice pulls back, Jonathan kisses his forehead before we cross the next block.

As I walk past the glow of a green stoplight, envy swells in my belly. Romantic might be their story, but it won’t be mine. Not with Grant. It just won’t.

And I shouldn’t take our relationship for granted by wishing it was something else.

We finally arrive at our favorite ice cream shop, and I make good on my promise and order Grant a double chocolate chip. He doesn’t have to tell me his order. I just know.

I usually get a double scoop of butter pecan in a waffle cone, but after Brice orders lemon ice and Jonathan gets frozen yogurt, I come to the table with a kid’s scoop of vanilla. In a cup.

“Where’s your butter pecan?” Grant asks.

“They were out,” I lie. “But that’s not important.” I clear my throat with a flourish. I hold up my cup and say, “Here’s to Grant. Happy Birthday.”

We bump our scoops together. As we dive into our first tastes, Grant leans over to whisper in my ear. “You made it great.”

I grin as I dig the tiny plastic spoon in my little paper cup. This boring, old vanilla has never tasted so sweet.