Maya wakes refreshed, birds singing in her window. The clock reads 10:42, much later than she usually sleeps. She yawns, turns over, content to sleep a little longer, because why not, it’s summer, but then she spots the wet clothes crumpled on her bedroom floor and remembers last night.
She bolts up. She had planned to tell her mom about the time she lost in the woods with Frank. She gets out of bed, hurries down the hall. The house is quiet, her mom in her room with the door closed.
Just as she’s about to knock, Maya thinks of the overnight shift she worked. Her mom could really use the sleep, and now that she’s paused here a moment, Maya asks herself what it is she will say.
She’s less sure of herself today, and last night is already feeling like a blur, a vague impression, almost as if Frank drugged her, but then—how could he have? It’s not like she ever tried his soup, or anything else at the cabin. Never drank or smoked anything. So she’d spaced out a few minutes here and there—is that really so unusual for her? She has been known, after all, to gaze out of windows rather than listening to her teachers at times and has missed many a bus stop due to daydreaming. She’s been this way since long before she met Frank.
Could someone like her really blame him for lost time?
She returns to her room. Maybe she’ll tell her mom later.
Maya began packing for college weeks ago, then stopped after she met Frank. How strange to consider this now—that she actually thought about deferring. After all the work she poured into earning a full ride at BU.
What the hell was she thinking?
She resumes packing to distract herself from her uneasiness, and it works. Her thoughts turn to her soon-to-be dorm. Warren Towers is home to over 1,800 undergraduates, and in three days, she will be one of them, surrounded by people her age from all over the country and the world. Her new roommate is named Gina, she’s from San Francisco, and Maya can’t wait to meet her.
Each of them will have, on her half of the room, a narrow bed, a desk, a dresser, a shelf, and a slim closet. Not a lot of space, but Maya has plans for her side. She’ll hang her Salvador Dalí poster, the one of elephants on legs like stilts, and her cork bulletin board covered with photos, most of them of Aubrey and her. Maya will only have room for her favorites of everything at the dorms: CDs, clothes, decorations, and books, including, of course, the one her father wrote.
Her father’s book sits on her desk. She hasn’t looked at it much since meeting Frank. As she picks it up, she flashes back to last night, steam rising from their bowls at the table. Her father’s book is the last thing she remembers thinking of before she found herself walking in the rain with Frank.
It used to be that these pages made her think of her father, but now they bring back the smell of Frank’s cabin—his soup, the fire, the cold night air—so she leaves them behind. Tells herself she won’t have time to read the book anyway once classes start.
Moving on to her closet, she takes out a chunky sweater that will be good for fall, and her thoughts turn to fall in Boston. Cool days and crisp, glittering nights. Foliage in the city. Halloween parties. It’s like all the excitement she should have been feeling for the past few weeks is finally upon her, and now she can’t wait. Strange, she thinks, how she has thought of only Frank pretty much since the day they met, yet today it’s like all her outsized feelings for him—the longing, the jealousy—were a house of cards that suddenly collapsed.
Aubrey was right. She’d mistrusted him from the start. Which is probably—Maya suddenly realizes—why she wore the red dress: to bring to the surface what she had sensed in Frank before she even met him. That he was bad for her best friend. Maya can’t explain, much less excuse, the way she’s been acting these past few days, but she can apologize. They’ve argued over small things before, like what DVD to rent at the video store, but never anything like this.
She’ll apologize before the Tender Wallpaper concert tonight. She has her ticket tacked to the corkboard on her wall, and the band sticker that came with it stuck to her nightstand. Around noon, she goes to the kitchen for cereal and a glass of orange juice. The phone in the kitchen blinks red with missed calls—the ringer’s on silent, as it usually is after her mom works a night shift.
She gets a bad feeling even before she sees who the seventeen calls are from.
As she goes to check, the receiver lights up with yet another call.
It’s him.
She recognizes his father’s landline on the caller ID and sets the receiver down as if it were alive. She doesn’t want to answer but knows that if she doesn’t, he’ll keep trying until someone picks up—and Maya doesn’t want that person to be her mom.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey, Maya . . .” He’s always been so confident, so cool, but now he sounds raw and anxious. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
She should’ve thought more about what she was going to say. How she would tell him.
“You seemed pretty upset last night. I was worried.”
She considers explaining why she was upset, but doesn’t, because what good would it do? Frank’s a liar. She just needs to make him stop.
“Maya?”
“I’m here.” She takes the cordless phone to the porch, so she won’t wake her mom.
“What are you up to today?”
“I’m actually pretty busy . . .” she says as gently as she can. “I have a lot to do before I go . . . Listen, I don’t think we should see each other again.” This feels like the easiest way out—quick and to the point. And it’s true she wants to spend what little time she has left with the people she’s going to miss the most: her mom and Aubrey. Maya’s only sorry she didn’t realize this sooner.
Frank is quiet a long time. “Okay,” he says. “Cool. No problem.”
She exhales.
“Oh, so the other reason I was calling,” he adds, “and I hope this isn’t weird, but I was wondering if you could hook me up with Aubrey’s number?”
A knee-jerk flash of envy is unavoidable—it was only yesterday that this question would have punched a hole right through Maya—but today it is hard not to laugh at Frank’s pitiful attempt to make her jealous. “Sure,” she says with purposeful, pleasant indifference. “I don’t see why not. Do you have a pen?”
“Mm-hmm.” A yes through clenched teeth.
“Four-one-three . . .” she begins. But then it occurs to her that Aubrey probably wouldn’t want Frank to call her.
“Hello?”
“You know,” Maya says, “I should probably ask before giving out her number.”
Frank lets out a dark, sarcastic laugh. “How is it,” he asks, “that you can be jealous of Aubrey at the same time that you so obviously look down on her?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says angrily. “Listen, Frank, I have to—”
“You know what I’m talking about. You don’t want me to call her, do you?”
Maya grips the phone tighter. “I honestly don’t care what you do, Frank.”
“You don’t want me to call her, but at the same time, you don’t want to call her either. I’ve seen the way you treat her, it’s like she doesn’t matter. Like she’s some townie and you’re not. Like you’re smarter, you’re going places, and she’s a loser for staying here.”
“What?! But I—”
“And now you’re doing the same thing to me. Blowing me off because I’m not good enough, just like I’ve seen you blow off your best friend and your own mother whenever you had something better to do.”
Her eyes sting with tears.
“I mean, is there anyone you’re loyal to?”
“Fuck you, Frank. Don’t ever call me again.” She hangs up.
But Frank does call again. And again and again.
Eventually she has to tell her mom, who has taken the day off work and is relieved to hear the relationship is over. “We’ll just leave the ringer off,” her mom says. “I’m sure he’ll get the message. Let’s get out of the house, go do something.”
Maya feels her departure in the air as they hike up Bousquet Mountain that afternoon. She remembers when she was little, and her mom had to carry her part of the way. Now they walk straight up the slope without stopping, in and out of the chairlift’s frozen shadow. Her mom yodels when they reach the top, as usual, something that usually embarrasses Maya, but today it makes her smile, and when she looks out over the hemlock and white pine sea and sees her hometown in the distance, it’s more beautiful to her than the Alps. She can’t explain the tenderness she feels today, not just toward her mom but toward Pittsfield as well. To be from here is to know the Housatonic River, to have walked alongside it, maybe crossed it on the way to school each day, but been unable to swim in it because General Electric had contaminated the river with PCBs. It’s to have grown up either before GE left—back in the days of holiday window displays at England Brothers, the popcorn wagon on Park Square, and cruising North Street on Thursday nights—or to have grown up after. Maya has wanted to leave Pittsfield for so long, but now, even before she has left, she feels as though she is seeing it through the eyes of someone who’s already gone.
Summer is fading, the light tinted orange, and for the first time in a while, it isn’t too hot out as Maya parks on the street in front of Aubrey’s duplex. It’s late enough that most of the birds have gone quiet, but a single mockingbird sings in the hemlock out front.
Aubrey is knitting again on her porch, bare feet kicked up on the wooden railing. She wears cutoff shorts and a D.A.R.E. shirt, not dressed yet for the concert, but then again Maya is early.
“Hey,” she says. The porch creaks as she crosses it and sits in the other plastic patio chair.
“Hey,” Aubrey says. She puts down her knitting. She’s still working on the scarf she began the day they went to Wahconah Falls, the day Maya learned that Aubrey knitted. Now the scarf is almost finished, and its pattern is apparent. Stripes of lime green and viridian.
“Pretty colors,” Maya says.
“Glad you like them.” Aubrey relaxes into a genuine smile. “This is for you. A going-away present.”
And, once again, Maya thinks she might cry. She has carried Frank’s words with her all day, each one a heavy stone she takes as punishment, because the truth is she has been jealous of Aubrey’s beauty, and although she hadn’t realized it, not until Frank pointed it out, a small part of Maya had looked down on her choice to stay in Pittsfield. “Wow,” she breathes. “Thank you. I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole these past two weeks.”
Aubrey is quiet. “I don’t know about asshole, but yeah, you’ve been kind of a jerk.” Her tone is light. She swigs from a can of orange soda on the plastic table, then offers some to Maya, who accepts it gratefully.
I mean, is there anyone you’re loyal to?
“But,” Aubrey says, “it’s not like I’ve been the world’s best friend either.”
It’s true, Maya thinks—but then, a bigger part of her understood from the start that this is just Aubrey’s way. She hasn’t had other long-term friends. And isn’t it easier to say goodbye to someone you can’t wait to get away from?
“So, yeah,” Aubrey says. “Me too. Sorry.”
Their apologies hang between them. Maya doesn’t even consider bringing up the red dress.
Aubrey snorts out a laugh. “We’re such jerks.”
Maya laughs too, and the laughter builds until there isn’t any awkwardness left.
Aubrey’s little brother, Eric, wanders home as the sun sets, clutching a set of cards. “Hey,” he says, dawdling on the porch. He looks up to his teenage sister and knows he could be shooed away at any second. “Guess what?” he says. “I got my Charizard back!”
“No way!” Aubrey says. “Way to go, dude.”
Eric beams and shows them a Pokémon card, a little orange monster on its front. Maya’s known him since he was six, blue eyes wide with curiosity at whatever his cool big sister and her friend were up to. Maya used to think he was annoying, but now she has an urge to hug him. “Nice!” she says about the card.
“There’s mac ’n’ cheese on the stove,” Aubrey says.
“What are you guys doing?” he asks.
“Just talking, Smalls. Go inside and eat.”
He looks disappointed but does as she says.
Maya’s about to tell her about Frank when Aubrey says, “I decided to apply to LSU. Not this year, obviously, but next.”
“What? Oh my god!”
“I know!”
“Why LSU?”
Aubrey thinks Louisiana is cool, all the bayous and Spanish moss and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. She wants to catch beads at a rowdy parade. The other reason is that she has a scheme to pay in-state tuition. “My mom has a cousin, Justina,” she says, “who lives in Lafayette, and as of today, I get all my mail at her house. Next month I’ll visit so I can register to vote there and sign up for a library card. I’ve also been checking Craigslist for a onetime temp job I can do while I’m there, stuffing envelopes or something, so I can establish a work history.”
“You think that’ll work?”
Aubrey looks hopeful. “Maybe?”
“I bet you’ll get in.”
“They have a high acceptance rate. Seventy-five percent or something. Still have to figure out what I want to study.”
“That’s okay, a lot of people don’t know going in.”
“You do.”
Maya shrugs. She would, of course, be an English major so she could study the magical realists as her father had and go on to become the renowned writer he should have been. “You write poetry,” she says. “Maybe you could do creative writing too?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of psychology. I’ve always been interested in why people do what they do. Then there’s philosophy . . . I honestly don’t know anything about that, but I want to, you know? Feels like something I’d like.”
“Definitely,” Maya says. “You’re so philosophical.”
Aubrey smiles, happier than she’s looked all summer. “And,” she adds offhandedly, “just in case I don’t get into LSU, I’ll also apply to UMass Amherst, UMass Lowell, and, um . . . BU.”
Maya rushes in to prop up her best friend’s pride—Aubrey would hate anyone, even Maya, to think that she was following them. “Good idea—but I’m totally sure you’ll end up at LSU. And it’ll be amazing and I’ll come visit you and—”
“We’ll go to New Orleans!”
“Yes!”
They beam at each other. The sky is getting dark.
“You know,” Aubrey says, “I don’t think I’d do this if not for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .”
“No, really. College always seemed like something other people do. Never thought I wanted to go, but then when you got in, and you went to see the dorms and started talking about classes you were going to take . . . it made me so jealous I didn’t know what do. And it made me realize that—duh—I do want to go to college. And why the hell shouldn’t I?”
Fireflies blink in the yard, a restless constellation that Maya and Aubrey watch for a while before going inside to get ready. When Aubrey asks about Frank, Maya considers telling her everything—about his beautiful yet eerie cabin in the woods and the time she lost there—but with every hour that passes, the more improbable that all seems. The fuzzier her conviction. Not to mention that tonight is supposed to be fun, and she doesn’t want to make this about Frank too. Doesn’t want to revisit what he said to her on the phone. “You were right” is all she tells Aubrey for now. “Long story, but yes—Frank is definitely weird.”
Tender Wallpaper is a trio of sisters who harmonize as only sisters can to the accompaniment of synthesizers and percussion. They and their music are moody and theatrical, appearing onstage draped in sequins and underwater lighting. Their sound is vaguely underwater too, siren-like, a shipwrecked warble to the piano. Maya and Aubrey have seen them in concert once before, and last time the band capitalized upon their sisterhood by dressing as the Three Fates. A giant spool of platinum thread figured into the choreography: one sister unspooled the thread, another measured it, and the third snipped it with a large pair of scissors.
But tonight Maya can’t discern the theme. She and Aubrey have pushed their way up to the front of the medium-sized venue and are standing near the stage, swaying along to the music. The sisters wear long, slinky gowns and capes, one dressed entirely in green, one in red, one in blue.
“Who are they supposed to be?” Maya asks Aubrey between songs.
Aubrey smiles. “Really? You can’t figure it out?”
A new song begins as Maya puzzles over the concert’s theme, but she can’t think of any other famous trios that the sisters might be dressed as and she starts to wonder if Aubrey is messing with her. It would be a very Aubrey thing to do.
Toward the end of the show, the sisters begin fluttering their fingers over the audience as if casting spells, and the lights go crazy, beams of green, red, and blue overlapping into darker hues as the voices build into what sounds less like harmony than the single voice of some enormous, divine, not-quite-human creature.
“Just tell me,” Maya says when the song is over.
Aubrey cups her hands over her friend’s ear and says, “Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.”
Of course! The fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty. Maya hasn’t seen the movie since she was a child, but now it comes back to her, the colorful spells unfurling from magic wands. A magic cake. A magic dress. Of course Aubrey remembered this. She loves fairy tales and magic. And sad songs. The last song of the night is her favorite, and when it comes on, she closes her eyes and disappears into the music.