As the sun rose in the sky, Anne sat up in bed. She was due to spend the day assisting Emma with decorating the ballroom for prom, and she took care to choose her outfit. She rifled through her drawers in the dark while Lizzie slept, discarding one shirt for the next. There was the crisp white collarless shirt from her mother’s fall line. The floral print. The nautical stripes. Nothing was quite right. Everything was something her mother had chosen for her.
Then a memory cut through her in the dimness.
During freshman year, she’d gone to the spring intramural sports decathlon. Anne didn’t participate in any sports, but Rick did, and his school was also competing. She convinced her mother to let her attend as an ambassador. At the opening ceremonies she wore dark-blue trainers and a blue Jane Austen Academy sweatshirt like the rest of her classmates.
She and her classmates stood in a line, just like every other school’s students. They walked toward each other and shook hands, muttering, “Good luck, good luck, good luck” with each passing shake.
A thrill went through her when Rick’s gaze went straight to her. He didn’t seem to notice the other girls who were smiling at him and trying to be flirtatious. He’d held her hand longer than he needed to, drawn his finger over her wrist as their palms slid part.
Afterward, he cornered her beneath the bleachers. “A sweatshirt,” he said. His hands pressed along her sides. “That’s new. I can’t decide if I want you to keep it on or take it off.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled down at the hem, playfully slapping away his fingers. But she’d wanted him to try.
Anne found the sweatshirt shoved in the back of her bottom drawer as if she hadn’t worn it since that day, even though that couldn’t possibly be the case. It had a crew neck and long sleeves—utterly boring in every way. But as she pulled it over her head, it was as though she could feel his hands running up and down her sides.
She felt hopeful. Did she deserve to? To put so much importance in such a small moment, a small gesture, the small words that Rick had spoken to her last night? Was it even worth anticipating anything given the inevitable parting that would soon take place? Probably not, but she felt hopeful nonetheless.
Lizzie had made Anne swear not to wake her and that she’d join them after breakfast, so after a quick stop for a bite, Anne found Emma in the ballroom.
Emma’s bountiful blond hair was uncharacteristically pinned to the top of her head. She wore a black minidress and lemon-yellow gladiator heels that still barely brought her level with Knight’s chest. Her boyfriend, dressed casually in jeans, trailed behind her.
He seemed to know what she wanted even before she asked for it. Emma would reach for a basket of string lights and he would scoop it up and set it on the long table of decorations.
Emma glanced over to Anne as she approached the center of the ballroom. “It’s just the three of us for now, but I think more people will come after breakfast. I’m going to put each of you in charge of different stations.” She waved across the room to the tables, each with a different pile of decorations. “The theme for prom is End of the World, so I want a whole apocalypse feel to everything. Do you like it?”
Anne nodded. She used to be the one who arranged the school dances, but she could admit that Emma was much better suited to party planning than Anne had ever been.
“Knight?” Emma asked, glancing over her shoulder.
“Awesome idea,” Knight said.
“I know,” Emma said. “Can you wire and calibrate the sound system? Tran said he’d be by to help, too. I also want the lighting to be blood-red and dark. I’m going to handle the table setup and foliage.”
Knight silently mouthed foliage? to Anne over Emma’s head.
“Anne, can you take the lead on the wall decorations? I have decals of crumbling buildings that need to be pressed up. The ladder is over there. Once more muscle arrives, we have to arrange the couch seating. While I want it to be comfortable, I also want it to look like the end of the world, so maybe you could rough up a few cushions.”
With a few simple words from Emma, they were off. Anne decided where to put the dozen decals, each with the scene of a crumbling building or an overturned car on fire. She marked off the outlines with wall chalk.
Within the hour, there were two dozen other volunteers helping her and Knight and Emma with various aspects of the decorating. Short bursts of music pulsed through the room as Tran and Knight tested speaker placement and the crowd conversation turned to playlists and costumes and whether they should all dress up as zombies or smear the walls with blood.
“No,” Emma said. “It’s the End of the World, not the Zombie Apocalypse. Have some respect for the theme.”
And that was the last word on the subject of blood packets.
* * *
Lucy and Rick arrived at the auditorium together. Lucy appeared to have miraculously injured her other ankle in the interim, since Rick was helping her balance from the other side of her body.
“Anne!” Lucy waved at her from across the auditorium.
Anne threw a tufted cushion on a couch and reluctantly waved back.
“Stop being nice to her and she’ll leave you alone,” Emma said between gritted teeth. She stabbed at a cushion with a pair of scissors and pulled out some cotton tufts. “It’s worked for the rest of us. She only bothers you and Ellie because you’re both still dumb enough to be nice to her.”
“It’s good practice to be nice, period.”
“Not when the person on the other end of it has no sense of social cues,” Emma said. “She’s hurting you by putting these ridiculous moves on Rick, just like she did with Tran and with Edward. Three strikes and she’s out.”
“To be fair, Edward was her boyfriend at the time.”
Emma brushed aside her logic. “If you’re not going to blame her for being a twit, then blame yourself for letting this happen.”
Anne reeled back from the sting of that comment.
“Anne!” Lucy cupped her hands around her mouth. “We came, Anne.”
With a heavy sigh, Anne turned away from Emma and walked toward Lucy. While she did think Lucy was using her recent injury in an attempt to get closer to Rick, she also knew the girl had legitimately hurt herself. She smiled at Lucy and managed somehow not to look at Rick, who was close by her side. “How’s the wrist?”
“Better,” Lucy said. “Good enough that I think I can help.”
“That’s okay.” Anne glanced across the ballroom. “We’re almost done. We just need to hang the red streamers off the ceiling.”
Rick finally spoke up. “I’ll take care of the streamers.”
“How can I help?” Lucy asked him. She rested a hand on his chest and tilted her chin up to smile adoringly at him.
Anne could think of a million ways that Lucy could be helpful, and they all involved her taking a jump in a lake.
“Just stay at the bottom of the ladder,” Rick said. “Make sure it’s steady.”
They walked away from her without another word, and all the hope Anne had felt that morning shrank into a cold pellet in the pit of her stomach. She watched them and fisted her sweatshirt hem so tightly she thought it would tear. He hadn’t glanced at it. Hadn’t given it a second thought. Had just moved on with his life, like she should.
Lucy took one end of the streamers in her hand and Rick took the other and climbed to the very top of the ladder. As he progressed, Lucy fed him more and more streamer length.
Emma was right.
She couldn’t really blame or hate Lucy. She was torturing herself by watching it happen. Lucy didn’t know about her feelings for Rick. Rick didn’t even know about her feelings. Did she even know her own feelings?
Lucy held on to the ladder with one hand, her head tilted back in an expression of utter adoration. Her eyes lit up as she watched Rick. She seemed to have no problem at all putting her feelings on display for anyone to see. Lucy had always fallen hard and fallen openly, even though she’d been rejected time and time again.
In some ways, Lucy was the bravest of all the girls. She was never afraid to declare herself even if she would be hurt. Anne had spent the better part of the year feeling sorry for the girl, when really, Lucy should have been the one pitying Anne. Anne was the pathetic one who couldn’t stand up for herself or her feelings.
Lucy took a step up the ladder, as if drawn by Rick.
And another step and another.
Anne shook her head to stop her pity party as she realized what Lucy was doing. “Lucy, be careful,” Anne yelled across the room. She reached out as though she could put a stilling hand on Lucy’s shoulder, even though she was far away.
Lucy took another step, stealthily. As if she wanted to creep up on Rick and surprise him. Was she stupid or insane?
Anne placed both hands by the sides of her mouth. “Rick!”
When he didn’t turn or even glance down—couldn’t he feel the ladder shaking?—she jogged across the auditorium. She leaped over a bulky pile of lights and skirted around the punch bowl that Emma had placed on a table dead center in the dance floor.
Lucy had made it more than halfway up the ladder, but she only had the use of one hand and the steps narrowed as she climbed higher and higher. Rick had also nearly reached the end of his streamer pile. He gave a tug on the last bit, which yanked it out of Lucy’s grasp.
The tug upset her balance. Her foot slipped. Anne watched in growing horror as Lucy gasped and her arms windmilled. She arched away from the ladder and back—into space.
Rick glanced down, finally noticing her, a look of shock registering on his face.
Anne sprang into action. She grabbed the cushions from the nearest sofa and dumped them on the ground beneath Lucy just as she dropped with a hard thud to the floor.
Despite the softer landing, Anne grimaced at the crunching sound that was soon followed by Lucy’s wail. Lucy curled in on herself, her mouth open in a high-pitched whine. Rick leaped from the ladder and landed by Lucy’s feet.
“Is she okay?” he asked, his eyes roving wildly over Lucy.
Anne got down on her knees. “Someone get the nurse,” she said before turning to Lucy and rubbing her back. “I’m going to feel around your shoulder, okay?”
Lucy shook her head, sobbing.
“It’s okay, Lucy. Shhh, I just need to check your shoulder. You landed on the same side as your sprained wrist, so let’s sit up. You can do it.” She squared off Lucy’s shoulder, but her left side protruded at the socket.
“What is it?” Rick asked. He knelt by her side. “It looks bad. What do you need me to do?”
Lucy’s eyes were wide with fear, and she was shivering.
Anne spoke in a soothing voice. “Lucy, you’ve dislocated your shoulder. I can get it back in now if you want, or you can wait for the nurse.”
“Now, now, now,” Lucy said, the words coming out from between chattering teeth.
“Lie down, okay?”
A crowd had formed around them and several people had their cameras up, filming, but Anne didn’t let that distract her.
“Rick, I need her flat. Can you remove the pillows from beneath her?”
Rick did as she asked, and she gently placed Lucy flat on her back.
“I’m going to rotate your elbow outward. You’re going to feel the muscles in your shoulder spasm for the next few minutes but don’t worry, your shoulder is going to relocate.” At least, that’s what the video she’d watched on chimp shoulder dislocations had seemed to imply. She only hoped this worked the same way. “It’s going to hurt a lot, but you have nothing to worry about. Nothing is wrong. It’s just your body trying to make itself right again.”
“I’m scared,” Lucy said, gripping her hand.
“Rick, can you hold her hand?” Anne asked. “I need both of mine.”
Rick leaned over and took Lucy’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have been paying attention.”
“Lucy, listen,” Anne said, her voice soothing, “if it hurts, you just squeeze Rick’s hand, okay? As hard as you need to. He can take it. Here we go.” Anne pinched Lucy’s elbow between two fingers and pulled her arm away from her body. Lucy’s muscles tensed and spasmed beneath her fingers just as Lucy screamed.
Then—pop—the shoulder slid back into place as Lucy let out another shrill howl. Lucy sat up and threw her other arm around Anne.
“It’s okay,” Anne said soothingly. “You’re going to be okay. But you’ve definitely earned a painkiller drip. How about we get that for you?” She pulled away and glanced around for the nurse, but it seemed everyone had been so intent on being bystanders that no one had actually gone for her. “Rick, maybe you can carry Lucy to the nursing station?”
Rick scooped up Lucy against his chest.
“Anne, don’t leave me. Please,” Lucy said.
“I won’t leave you.” Anne followed them out as Emma tried to contain the chaos they’d left behind. They ran into the nurse on the way back into the building, and Anne filled her in on what had happened.
“Where did you learn how to do a Hennepin maneuver?” the nurse asked Anne.
“Online videos,” Anne admitted. She left out the on animals part.
“Maybe I’ll make you my personal assistant.” The nurse directed Rick to lay Lucy on the mattress in the nurse’s unit. This time, the nurse didn’t ask Anne to leave, so she watched as the nurse ran Lucy through a series of diagnostic tests and then medicated her.
Once Lucy was dozing, the nurse led Anne and Rick to the waiting room. “She’s probably going to sleep for a few hours. I need to call her parents. It would be better if you went on with your day.”
Anne began walking back to the dorm when she realized Rick had followed her in a daze. She slowed to a stop in the empty hall and looked at him with questions in her eyes.
“It’s my fault,” he said finally.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Anne said. “If anything, Lucy should have known not to climb that ladder.”
“But I should have noticed,” Rick said. “If I hadn’t been so busy trying not to notice, if I hadn’t been so busy blocking out y—everything around me…”
Anne knew there was no point in trying to change Rick’s mind. He took responsibility seriously. He’d quit the military academy and moved across the country to be with his mother when she first got sick. If he’d got it in his head that it was his fault, then nothing anyone said would change his mind.
“She’s going to be fine,” she said instead. “You heard the nurse.”
“If you hadn’t been there… If you hadn’t acted so quickly…” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled sadly. “Have you thought about becoming an emergency room doctor when you’re on break from being a veterinarian?”
“Assuming it doesn’t take away from my time serving as president.”
He assumed a somber expression. “Of course not.”
She breathed in the moment of normality. Silly conversations used to be their norm.
“I’m going to stay here with her,” Rick said.
“But the nurse said—”
“In case she wakes up. I don’t want her to be alone. It’s the least I can do.” Rick rested a hand on Anne’s shoulder and squeezed. Was it her imagination, or did he let his palm linger against her sweatshirt? He leaned forward and kissed her above the ear. “You were amazing today.”
Then he turned around and walked back toward the nurse’s room.
Toward Lucy.