For a couple weeks after the New Year, I watched Elise carefully, wondering if she’d bring up that night or snap at me like that again, but she didn’t. It was easy to think the Elise I’d glimpsed on New Year’s Eve was a weird, one-time thing. That wasn’t the Elise I knew.
She began to spend more time at my house. Even though she never said why, I knew she wanted to be there for me, shield me from my parents’ battles. I’d never had that before, someone who cared about me like that. And while Elise still had other friends, I was her best friend.
A few faces had changed, but Julie Adichie and Jae Park were always at Elise’s lunch table, along with newcomers Madison Laurent, who was Julie’s girlfriend, and Ben Torres, who was a midyear transfer from Florida.
Some nights, Elise would drag me out with them, and we’d go to McDonald’s or Waffle House for breakfast at midnight, or go for an aimless drive. On our first nighttime adventure, we all went to the football field at school and sat on the Astroturf, smoking and talking. At some point, Jae took out his phone to play music and Julie took Madison’s hand, the two of them dancing in the dark.
“Come on,” Elise said, pulling me up too. She twirled me and I laughed, feeling exhilarated, the winter air sharp against my skin. Eventually we all collapsed onto the ground, breathless.
Melody would never approve, I thought. It wasn’t a school night, but it was still late and we were technically trespassing on our own school property. Then again, Melody and I weren’t talking much by that point.
The last time we spoke had been over two weeks ago. She’d cornered me after school one day. “I’m worried about you,” she began, and I could already feel my defenses coming up.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I’m sure she really thought she was worried about me, but I couldn’t help but think that she was just jealous.
“You seem different. It’s like you just moved on from obsessing over Cameron to obsessing over Elise,” she said with a frown.
I shrugged it off. “What do you want, Mel?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking hurt. “You’re my oldest friend. My best friend.”
I stayed quiet but felt bad. “You say that like we’re not friends anymore.”
“Are we?” Melody asked. “I never see you and you don’t even bother to text me back most of the time.”
“I’m sorry.” I meant it, but both of us knew I wasn’t going to come back to the fold. I never felt like I fit in with Mel and her friends, and now I had Elise, someone who knew and loved the real me.
“Elise—I don’t know,” she said, and my guard was up again.
“What about Elise?” I said, immediately ready to defend her.
“She seems kind of selfish?” Melody said, sounding uncertain. “Wait—maybe that’s not the right word.”
“Elise is one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met,” I said, remembering our first night together. How she caught me when I was reeling and patched me up. She always knew what I needed, she was always looking out for me.
“That’s not what I meant,” Melody tried again, but I was already walking away from her.
Elise said Melody and I had simply outgrown each other. “But don’t worry,” she told me. “We will never outgrow each other.” And I believed her.
Lying on the Astroturf, we were all still laughing, Elise’s hand loosely on top of my wrist. Our eyes met and even in the dark I could see that undercurrent of electricity behind hers. She gave my hand a short squeeze and let go.
“I’m bored,” Jae announced when the laughter died down.
“Well, we can’t have that. What do you want to do?” Elise asked.
“I don’t know. But something. Anything.”
“I have an idea,” Julie said. “We could go trash Mr. Dawkins’s classroom.”
“What? Why?” Ben said.
“Ugh, he is gross,” Elise said. Dawkins, one of the AP Lit teachers, had a certain reputation for being a creep. He never said anything reportable but I’d heard girls complain about the way he’d look at them, staring a little too long, or the way he kept asking some of the students to come by his room after school for a chat—almost always his female students. I stayed clear of him and his classroom. Had he done something awful to Julie?
“I don’t know how or why, but he found out about me and Madi,” Julie said. “And he pulled her aside to ask her about us.”
We all sat up and looked at Madison expectantly. “Well, I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but yeah, not exactly great either. He was just ‘curious,’ ” she said, using air quotes. “He wanted to know why I broke up with my boyfriend for Julie, which isn’t even what happened!” I couldn’t believe he took it upon himself to target them like that.
“He said he was concerned about her,” Julie said, rolling her eyes. “He wanted to make sure she was making good life choices.”
“What the hell?” Ben said, leaning forward, elbows against his knees.
“Actually, he didn’t even say Julie’s name, just ‘that girl,’ ” Madison added before reaching for Julie’s hand.
“Wonderful,” Elise said.
“Let’s do it,” Jae said. “Let’s go trash his room.”
“No,” Madison said. “Let’s just forget about it. I mean, he’s a jerk but he’s harmless, you know? More annoying than anything else. And I’m graduating in a few months, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Elise said. “I feel like we should do something.” It was moments like this that I was extra grateful for Elise. She could be counted on to take action, fix things.
Madison shook her head. “That was a couple weeks ago and he hasn’t said anything since. Honestly, I feel sorry for him. He’s just sad and pathetic and lonely.”
“You’re way too nice,” Julie said, but ultimately she sided with Madison, and we dropped it.
“How do you even end up like that?” Ben asked, reaching for another cigarette.
“Like Dawkins. Pathetic and creepy.”
“Maybe he was always pathetic and creepy,” Julie said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. Everyone turned to stare at me, surprised that I’d interjected. With Elise and her friends, I’d always felt a little out of my depth and liked to stay under the radar.
“What do you mean?” Elise asked.
“Just—” I thought of my parents. They couldn’t have always been what they were now. They had to have loved each other at some point. There were photographs around the house with genuine smiles, with affection in their eyes. “People change,” I said. “They change and get weird and bitter, and I guess, creepy.”
“God, I hope that doesn’t happen to me,” Madison said, flopping onto her back, pulling Julie down next to her.
“I wonder about that sometimes,” Jae said softly, staring at the ground. “Do you like any of the adults you know? I mean, do you want to be like them—your parents, your teachers? Sometimes I think about that and I just want nothing to do with them.”
“Yeah,” Elise answered, voice quiet. “I know what you mean.”
“My mom’s okay,” Julie said. “But I don’t want her life. She just seems trapped. Stuck.” Madison took her hand and squeezed it.
“Like, my parents thought it was a waste of time when I started doing magic,” Jae said. “But when I started getting all this attention, they got excited and made me work at it constantly until I hated it. They still show people that stupid clip of me on Good Morning America even though I quit pretty much right after I went on the show.” He also stretched back down onto the ground, closing his eyes. “Maybe that’s what happens to people.”
“What?” Madison asked.
“The universe takes the things they love and turns them into the things they hate,” he said. I thought of my parents then, what they let the universe take from them. How they ended up trapped and unhappy, their misery compounded by their efforts to hide it.
“That’s just your parents being assholes,” Elise said. “There’s no way I’m going to be anything like mine.”
“How do you know?” Jae asked.
Elise simply smiled and said: “The universe only takes things from you if you let it. So don’t.”
• • •
Later that night, when it was just the two of us, we went to the Pink Mansion, where we could be alone, her father gone for the night. Out on the balcony, Elise sat on the bannister even though it made me nervous. The drop to the river below was steep, and in the dark it was hard to see anything and that made it seem even farther away.
“Get down,” I told her.
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling down at me. “I’m not going to fall.”
“Elise,” I said. “Please.”
“Trust me,” she said. “I’m not going to fall. Join me, it feels good.”
I shook my head and she shrugged.
“You know what we should do?” she said, her voice excited.
“What?”
“We should prank Dawkins,” she said, eyes bright. “He’s a predator. Come on, it’ll be like a present for Julie and Madi.”
“But Madison said she didn’t want to prank him.”
“She did,” Elise insisted. “She was just too scared to admit it.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We won’t do anything big.” She hopped down. “No mice or slashed tires. We’ll just find out where he lives and set off fireworks outside his house, like we did with Cameron.”
It took me a moment before I caved. “Okay, I guess,” I said, following her into the house and up to the attic. We rifled through box after box, starting with the ones near where we’d found fireworks the first time, but there were no more to be found.
Instead, we found a gun.
A small revolver with bullets beside it, all nestled in a leather case. Elise pulled it out, the attic light hitting the metal barrel like a spark.
I instinctively backed away. “Oh my God, put that down!”
She fiddled with it, checking to see if it was loaded. “Don’t worry. There aren’t any bullets.” Elise pointed it away from us and pulled the trigger. Click. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh my God.” Alarmed, I recoiled from her, scrambling away.
“What? It was unloaded!” she said, like it was no big deal.
It took a few breaths before I could speak again. “Still. And why was there a gun here anyway? Did you know?”
“I had no idea,” she said. “It must’ve belonged to my grandparents.”
“Let’s put the gun down,” I said, both hands raised.
Elise ignored me and got up, posing with it pointed up close to her chest like she was an action hero about to kick down a door, a spy with a license to kill. Her dark hair looked coppery, almost golden under the light, and when she swept it back to one side, she shot me a quick wink.
“Put the gun down,” I said, slowly getting up. I couldn’t believe how cavalier she was being. “Please.”
Elise sighed. “Fine, fine. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t like guns,” I said. “I just really don’t like them.”
“Okay.” She put it back into the case and snapped it shut. “There, all gone. Feel better?”
I nodded.
“Let’s go to your place, watch a movie.” She dusted herself off. “I’m tired. Dawkins can wait.”
“I’m tired too,” I said, secretly relieved that the prank had been abandoned. “Let’s just stay here.”
She paused. For a moment I wondered again about all the time Elise spent over at my house. I’d thought she wanted to be there for me, protect me from the havoc my parents wrought, but wouldn’t I be safer here at the Pink Mansion, away from all of them?
“The thing is,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “my dad might come back tomorrow morning.”
So that was it. Her father.
Elise took a deep breath. “Things are a little weird between us right now.” She sounded pained, like she didn’t want to have to admit that there was something wrong.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. Finally, I thought. Maybe she’d tell me what was going on with her dad.
“Yeah, of course,” she said, a little too quickly. “Everything’s fine. He’s just being kind of an asshole.” I wasn’t convinced. When she saw the concern on my face, she added, “It’s nothing I can’t handle.” She attempted a smile that ended up looking more like a grimace. She wasn’t willing to talk, but I knew if I pushed now she’d only dig in harder. I was frustrated that she was still shutting me out but I tried to let it go.
“What are you in the mood for?” I asked once we were in my basement trying to pick a movie.
She took a moment to think about it. “Christian Bale?”
I laughed. “Okay.”
We fell asleep on the couch in the early hours of the morning, The Dark Knight Rises still playing in front of us.
That was the night I realized Elise loved superheroes, because superheroes were powerful and the one thing she could never tolerate was feeling powerless. That was partly why she loved playing pranks, why she was always looking out for her friends—she didn’t want anyone else to feel powerless either.