I STAY HOME FROM SCHOOL the rest of the week. I lie. I tell Dani I’m still sick. She asks if I need anything. She offers to make me soup. She wants to bring me my missed assignments, share her notes. But I tell her no. No thank you. That’s okay.
On Friday she texts again: r u sure? I don’t mind . . .
I’m fine, really. Thank u tho <3
*sighs* well . . . i’m sitting outside of your building right now
“Shit,” I whisper. I look around. It’s not too crowded at Jackie’s today. “Hey, Owen?” I call into the kitchen.
“Wassup?” he answers, not looking up from the counter where he’s dividing a pie into eight perfect slices.
“Could you cover for me? Five minutes. I need to make a quick phone call.”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbles, still not looking up from his work.
I grab my coat and go outside into the cold to call Dani.
She picks up on the first ring. “Hey.”
“Hi, so listen . . . I’m not actually at home. I’m at work.”
“I know, your brother told me.”
“My brother?”
“Yeah. I just met him. We ran into each other. He was coming in. I was looking at the names on the mailboxes, trying to figure out which apartment was yours.”
I feel my heart pounding, the sensation in my fingers retreating, a tiny panic attack coming on. I can’t speak. I can’t hide. I’m caught. She’s going to know everything about everything. What did Aaron say to her?
“I thought you were sick?” she asks.
“I—I am. I mean, I’m not. I was. But I’m not now. It’s just—it’s been a weird week.”
“Why are you lying to me?” she asks, except she doesn’t sound mad. She sounds like she’s asking a rational question, but it’s not one that I’m prepared to answer. Thankfully, she keeps talking. “You don’t have to do that. I would always rather know the truth. If you’re having a weird week and you need some space, just say that. Don’t lie to me. Don’t push me away like that. Not when we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“Okay,” I whisper, unable to understand how she always makes honesty look so easy. “I am having a weird week,” I tell her. “But I don’t need space. Not from you, anyway. I couldn’t really bring myself to go to school. It’s complicated family stuff. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Hey, go back to work. We’ll see each other later, all right?”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
I almost hang up. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear, that I hung up before she said it. Silence.
“Fuck,” she finally says. “Okay . . . that was totally idiotic.”
“No, it’s—it’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have blurted it out over the phone like that.”
“No, it’s okay,” I repeat.
“I mean, I do. It’s just—I wanted to say it differently.”
It’s like I’m incapable of saying anything else: “It’s okay.”
“Um. All right. Look, do you mind if I hang around here until you get out of work?”
“No. It’s—”
“Okay?” she finishes for me.
I laugh, or try to, anyway. “Yes.”
As I walk home from work, there’s this stillness in the air, like a breath being held. Snow is coming. I can taste it, can smell it, can feel it all around me. I see Dani’s car outside but no Dani. I call her from the street, but she doesn’t answer. I walk down around the corner. Not there, either. My thoughts jumble up and my heart leaps into my throat as a fresh wave of panic settles in my bones. There’s no sign of her. I start imagining something bad happening. She’s way too friendly, too open, too honest—someone could easily lure her into something shady. And then I start to think maybe this means I must love her, too. I call her one last time, then I go inside. I run up the stairs, preparing to enlist Aaron in a manhunt. I hear whispers coming from underneath the door. It’s dark inside as I push it open. My hand glides along the wall, feeling for the light switch, when all the lights are suddenly flipped on at once, accompanied by a chorus of “Surprise!”
I jump back and drop my bag on the floor. Standing at the kitchen table are Aaron, Callie, Jackie, Ray . . . and Dani. I’m so relieved I want to run to her and throw my arms around her. But then I start to panic all over again, because here she is in my apartment, the place I keep all my secrets, too close to everything I want to keep away from her.
They’re all staring at me, smiling hugely, and wearing these pointed paper-cone hats, and there’s a banner made of shiny metallic letters strung across the ceiling that reads: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKE.
“Oh my God, what is this?” I finally say as the shock dissipates.
“Surprise!” Jackie repeats, throwing her arms wide open as she steps aside and reveals this gigantic square cake sitting on the table behind them, lit with what appears to be a hundred candles that flash and pop like Fourth of July sparklers. “I know, I know, we’re a few days early—but hey, that’s the surprise, right?”
Dani croons, “Surprise,” her voice smooth and gorgeous. She pulls me in for a hug and whispers in my ear: “Happy birthday, liar.” When she lets go of me, she’s smirking.
“I can’t believe you guys did this.” I figured we’d all made a silent agreement that we were going to skip my birthday this year, considering the circumstances. I barely remembered it myself.
“We all need something to celebrate right now, and what’s better to celebrate than you, my dear?” Jackie pulls me by the hands closer to where the cake waits, awash in the glow of frantic sparkling light. “Now, hurry—hurry before the wax drips!”
As if that’s their cue, they all begin singing at the same time.
I really have no choice but to step forward and blow out the candles. Make a wish. It comes to me, not even a thought, a flash of a thought, a feeling. I wish for more of this—this—what’s happening right now, whatever this is. I blow as hard as I can to make sure I extinguish all seventeen candles in one shot. Otherwise my wish won’t come true—at least, that’s what Aaron told me when we were little. That last candle flickers, fighting it off, but then finally it forfeits. And they all begin clapping. I look up at their faces, each of them watching me, smiling like they’re truly happy, like they’re all having fun somehow.
Jackie makes Ray take about twenty million pictures of the cake, and of me and Aaron and Callie standing there with our arms draped over one another’s shoulders. Then one of me and Dani—our first picture together.
Jackie made the cake. I’ve only ever had birthday cakes that came out of a box, where all you need to do is add a few ingredients and top it with a can of frosting. This one is special—it is flawlessly decorated with ribbon-like ornamentation along the edges, billowing flower shapes, and red cursive that spells out HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKE! surrounded by little birthday balloons and frosting roses.
“Happy birthday,” Aaron says, smiling at me as if we’ve never had a fight in our lives.
“Surprise,” Callie whispers in my ear as she hugs me.
“I hope everyone likes cream cheese frosting,” Jackie says as she plunges a knife into the cake, dividing it into perfectly symmetrical squares. “And there’s a layer of ganache in the center. I hope you like it.”
I’m not sure I even know what ganache is, completely, but I tell her, “It’s my favorite,” and I mean it. I can smell the sugar, taste it in my mouth before I even take the first bite.
Never having had anyone around—no aunts or uncles, no cousins, no grandparents—I always felt like the Winters began and ended with us. Something about that made the world feel small. Too small sometimes. For a moment I wish Caroline were here too. I wonder if this is what it feels like when people talk about family. Is it like this? How it almost feels like things will work out, like things will somehow be all right after all, in spite of everything?
As we eat our cake, I look out the living room windows. We all see it at the same time. The snow. I kneel on the sofa to get a better look, and Dani scoots right next to me, her fingers grazing mine, a volt of electricity flowing between us, our breath fogging up the window as if it were one breath we were sharing. Everyone watches for a moment as the snowflakes fall slowly, weightlessly, like tiny white feathers from the sky.
“Sure is pretty,” Jackie says with a sigh.
“Beautiful,” Dani whispers.
“Yeah,” I agree, but then I catch Dani looking at me, not the snow. As I look at her, something inside my chest does this crazy little flip. I look around to see if anyone else noticed. Aaron watches me, this amused smirk contorting his face.
There are even a few presents. I keep telling everyone, “You didn’t have to do this.” Jackie and Ray give me this really pretty, long, expensive, designer-looking sweater—a plum color, soft, with a hood and a belt—the kind of thing I imagine, once you put it on, you never want to take off because it’s so warm and cozy and perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything this nice before—most of my clothes come off the clearance racks at discount stores. “I love it, thank you,” I tell Jackie. “It’s too much, but I really do love it.”
Next it’s Aaron’s. He slides a big gift bag across the table. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” I tell him. I look at the folded paper tag, hoping it’s going to say something like From Aaron & Carmen, but it doesn’t. It makes me nervous that she’s not here, just like she wasn’t at the courthouse.
“Just open it,” he groans, pretending to be impatient.
I dig into the tissue paper until my hands pull out a messenger bag. It’s soft and smooth to the touch and smells like real leather, not that plastic, rubbery scent of faux leather that I’m used to. There’s no way he could afford this—I’m about to tell him so, but when I look up at him, he looks so proud of it, so happy. I shake my head at him, pretending to disapprove, but I think it’s obvious how much I love it.
“All those damn books you’re always carrying around, I figured you could use a new bag, right?”
I reach over to give him a hug, and all I can say is “Thank you.”
Callie hands me a big, rectangular object wrapped in Christmas paper with a big blue bow on top. It has all the telltale signs of a book. “Callie . . . ,” I begin, but stop because I can tell she’s also proud of her gift.
I peel the bow off the top and stick it on my shirt, like a pin. I carefully tear the paper off to reveal a shiny hardcover world atlas, an image of the earth suspended in black space on the cover. It’s thick and heavy. The scent of ink and paper—that new-book smell. There’s no way she could’ve bought this for me either. Jackie must’ve given her the money. It’s one of those gifts you never realized you wanted until you have it. I want to believe this means there’s still something to salvage with Callie, because if she remembers the days when I would dream of other places, then maybe she also remembers the days when things were better between us.
“It’s perfect,” I tell her. “Thank you.” I wrap my arms around her, and she lets one hand rest on my back for a second.
“Well, since I’m a surprise guest to the surprise party, I don’t have anything for you today . . . except for homework,” Dani announces. “But that’s not really a gift. So you’ll just have to wait for mine.”
“I’m glad I happened to run into you, Dani,” Aaron says. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”
“Let me guess, all bad?” she jokes.
“All good, I promise.” Except he’s looking at me while answering her. He can be perceptive when he wants to be.
After presents I take Dani to my room. As soon as I adjust the door behind us, leaving it open a crack so we’re not being too suspicious, she starts talking right away. “Don’t be mad, okay?” she whispers. “I swear, your brother twisted my arm. He came downstairs and practically pulled me out of my car. I really had no choice but to stay.”
“It’s weird to have you here. But I’m glad you are. I really am, but there’s something I should explain—” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“You don’t have to explain anything. Your family is so awesome. Aaron, Callie, your uncle Ray. I love it here, I love them. And . . . hello? You guys call your mom by her first name? I mean, come on—that’s so badass. This explains so much about you.”
“No, it’s not that . . .” I stop midsentence. Because if she thinks Jackie’s my mom and Ray’s an uncle and we have some kind of hippie, twenty-first-century family dynamic where we all treat one another like we’re individuals worthy of some kind of sophisticated system of respect, then maybe I should let her go ahead and think that. It’s not like I’ve told her some big lie; I’m simply letting her believe something that isn’t quite true.
“What?” she asks when I don’t finish.
I want to keep Dani out of it. Not for her sake, but for mine. She’s my one last uncontaminated thing, this single remaining fragment of my life that can belong to me alone, that doesn’t have to be tainted by my family. I’m willing to lie a little to keep it that way.
“Nothing,” I finally answer. “I just wanted to tell you that they don’t, like, know about us—about me.”
“Oh totally, I got that. Don’t worry.”
We gaze into each other’s eyes for a moment. “All right,” I say with a sigh, forcing my eyes to look anywhere else. “So this is me. . . .”
She takes a turn around the room, her fingertips grazing the cover of the snowflake book that sits on the corner of my desk. “Not at all what I expected. But then again,” she says, turning to face me, “you’re not at all what I expected either.”
“Is that a good thing?”
She smiles and nods enthusiastically. She takes a step toward me, and because it feels like she’s going to either kiss me or tell me “I love you” again, I back away, a reflex, and swing my door open wide. “Let’s get back out there, okay?”
“Oh. Sure,” she says, looking down at her feet instead of at me. I should apologize, I should explain, I know I should tell her the truth.
Dani’s a big hit with everyone. No one mentions Mom or Dad, and I’m thankful for that. After everyone leaves, Aaron comes to my room and knocks twice on my open bedroom door.
“Come in,” I tell him.
He does. Then he sits down on my bed next to me, my presents between us. He looks at me as if he’s waiting for an answer to a question he hasn’t asked.
“What?” I ask.
“So that was her, huh? Your girlfriend, right?” When I don’t answer, he laughs, giving me a light punch in the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “You seem happy.”
I can’t help but smile. But it’s immediately coupled with guilt. “Is that bad?” I ask him. “It feels like I don’t have a right to be happy, with everything that’s happening.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not bad. Not at all.”