MY FRIEND

I go to school late, after the doctor, after I pick up Pilot. Pilot had made a nest of Luke’s clothes on his bed, and the bed had a layer of sand. They had run, and then maybe Luke slept, pressed into Pilot’s sleek back.

I see Rosa in class. “After school,” she says. “Kilim.” She wants to talk.

“I haven’t used them,” I say, feeling the ring in my pocket. She can guess.“I’m not checking up,” she says. “I miss you.”

I shake my head, distracted. I carry the weight of the morning sadness and put it on my friend. I say, “Let’s go to Kilim.”

- - -

I need her to talk. I need Rosa to tell me about things we have always talked about. I ask, “How are things with the music industry?”

“I’m singing on Thursday night at the Press Room,” Rosa says, her eyes narrowed on me.

“No kidding. You got hired?” I say.

“It’s Beat Night. Anybody can read a poem. Mine’s just to music. Will you come?”

“Sure,” I say.

“You won’t,” she says. “You work on Thursdays. I know your life better than you do.”

“I wish I could,” I say. I miss her. But I’m wound so tight.

“I’m excited,” Rosa says. “It’s my big chance.” She is half mocking herself and half earnest.

Rosa is treating us to hot chocolates. I watch her, attracted to all her colors. She is vibrant with yellow earrings and plaited hair coiled at the base of her neck and a short yellow skirt with black tights.

My Rosa. I feel a longing for her, when she’s here, my friend. And I have moved to the far side of the moon.

A new girl behind the counter slowly spoons whipped cream over the hot chocolate. With the mug warming my hands, I make my way toward our regular spot, the window seat scattered with magazines. In the window seat I soak in the heat of the afternoon sun like a cat.

Rosa comes with her hot chocolate. I’m happy in that second to be with her, and I smile.

“There it is. Your knockout smile,” she says.

From Rosa’s dazzling yellows I look down to the mug. The girl at the counter has drawn the shape of a rabbit in the cream in the round white moon of the cup.

The rabbit’s front legs are running, outstretched, his back legs float upwards, and his long ears fly back, etched in the brown of the chocolate. “Look,” I say. “She made a rabbit.” I show her my cup, but the rabbit is melting. It is dissolving into the moon.

“Cool,” Rosa says. “She made me a bird.”

But she is looking at me, not the bird or the rabbit.

“I’m worried about you.”

I glance up.

“Are you fasting?”

“No,” I say. “But this tastes like I have been. Like it’s the first hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.”

I touch my finger to the cream, put a dot on my tongue. I know things I don’t know how to tell her. I can’t tell her that this morning I wondered if Luke is right, that I need to go, that sometimes we scare each other.

Rosa’s eyes are gleaming. “More news,” she says. “They’re going to interview me at the radio station, me and the other kids doing Beat Night. I am so nervous.”

I laugh. This feels like old times. “Rosa Page on the radio.”

“Should I go by just Page? Is that cooler? Just call me Page.”

“I’m jealous,” I say.

She looks at her phone. “Twenty minutes. I play live. On the radio. Not just in my bedroom.”

“You are perfect,” I say.

And then, “What’s going on with Luke?”

“He’s on a scallop boat. And I’m researching a community supported fishery like that other boat out of Rye. I’m writing a business plan for economics.”

Her eyes narrow on me. I’ve seen her mother’s do that on her. “What aren’t you saying?”

“What do you mean?”

She stares me down with those violet eyes.

“It’s the opposite of what we did.” I focus on the cup. “I’m following all the regs, this time. But it could still be a way for my dad to stay in the business.”

“Sofie! It’s me you’re talking to. You disappeared. What’s going on?”

Something lets go in me. I let my shoulders slide down the wall. I pull my cap over my eyebrows and look up at her. “I’m not sure what I’m doing,” I tell Rosa. “I find him . . . why do I find him so magnetic?” I say.

She scrunches up her lips, thoughtful, as if she’s supposed to have the answer.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I never felt like that about anybody.”

“We listen so closely to each other.”

Rosa watches me, waiting. Is she worried?

“He keeps reliving the war. Terrible nightmares. So he almost never sleeps.”

There’s missing information I still don’t tell.

“Can you get out of this?” Rosa asks.

I let out a huge sigh. I rest the cup that warms my hands on the table.

“We could go out on Saturday night,” she says. “Find somebody who’s not an avalanche.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I say. Both my hands are open to her as if Rosa has a potion, something to take my fear. Do something. “It’s not just about wanting him. I do want him. But when he talks to me, I think, oh god stay, please stay, you help me understand my crazy self. Is that selfish?”

Rosa’s phone goes off. She has to go. She stands. “Keep texting, okay? Tell me what’s happening. There’s help for soldiers. I see community college ads—we are the most soldier-friendly school.”

At the door she says, “Sounds to me like you’re in love.”

I let my hands fall.