“I’m homely and awkward and odd and old, and you’d be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel.”
—Little Women
To me, New York was one big city. When Hudson talked about this neighborhood or that borough, it washed over me like noise. Especially now that my brain had gone numb around the edges.
We were going to visit some of his friends. My faint hope of spotting a few landmarks along the way vanished as we descended into the subway. That was a new experience, at least, even if it felt like being trapped inside my phone with the running playlist going.
The buildings were taller when we emerged, with wider streets and traffic whizzing past. I would have paused to take it all in, but Hudson wasn’t giving off let me be your tour guide vibes, so I didn’t stop to gawk. There were too many people to stand still anyway. I had no idea what I was hurrying past, but if you threw in a few giant floating cartoon characters and a marching band, it could totally have been the backdrop for the Thanksgiving Day parade, so that was cool.
Hudson’s friend lived in a building with a uniformed doorman: another entry on my very short list of city experiences. Inside the apartment, the scene was more familiar. Yes, the furniture was flatter, and the light fixtures looked like they could double as weapons, but the teenagers draped across the low white sofas were hipper versions of what I would have seen at home. It wasn’t quite a party, but it had the potential to go in that direction if another ten or twenty people showed up. And if someone turned up the music.
There were a few heys and a couple of nods, but the mood (like the background music) was extremely low-key. Nobody yelled or bumped any part of their body against anyone else. Meg would have fit right in.
I waited for Hudson to explain the strange girl he’d shown up with, but no one seemed particularly curious. Maybe that would have required too much energy. We drifted toward the living room, across the shaggy white area rugs. I sat down at one end of a long sectional occupied by a trio of guys, leaving a space for Hudson.
Instead of sitting, he smiled at someone in the next room before taking off in that direction. It would have been rude to get up again, on top of which I didn’t exactly get the feeling Hudson wanted me to follow. He probably would have looked at me if I was supposed to tag along. Or used his words.
“I’m Jo,” I told the other occupants of the couch. They looked up from the phone they were staring at long enough to introduce themselves as Jeremy, Paolo, and Lachlan.
“Are you a cousin or something?” asked the one with owlish round glasses. I thought he was Lachlan but wouldn’t have sworn to it.
“I was going to say exchange student.” This was from Probably Paolo, the roundest member of the trio.
The third boy rolled his eyes. “From where? She doesn’t have an accent.”
It wasn’t surprising none of them guessed “girlfriend,” since I wouldn’t have been ditched sixty seconds after walking through the door if that were true. I wasn’t sure how to explain myself without sounding like a lab rat. I’m one of Andrea’s subjects. Maybe if she were a painter, that would be glamorous, but it wasn’t like I’d been sitting for a portrait. Hudson was the one who’d taken all the pictures of me—though not since my arrival in New York.
“We met when he was on assignment,” I finally said. “With his—Andrea.”
That got their attention.
“You know Andrea?” Paolo (probably) asked.
“Yeah. She was doing a story about us—my family.”
“Ohhh.” Lachlan exchanged a look with the other two. “With the animals or . . . ?”
“The other one.” I waited for one of them to say the word Little or Women.
Jeremy (most likely) coughed into his hand. “Hudson said he had a real good time out there.” Lachlan kicked him.
“So Andrea’s cool.” Paolo adjusted the stubby ponytail that was almost as underdeveloped as his facial scruff. “She knows a lot of writers.”
“Paolo thinks he’s the next N. K. Jemisin,” Jeremy explained, cementing my impression of him as the douchiest member of the group.
“What kind of stuff do you write?” I asked Paolo, feeling I would be on fairly solid ground talking about author life. Or at least the life of one particular author from a long time ago.
“I’m still gathering material.” Paolo circled both arms. It looked like he was doggy-paddling on dry land. “Getting in touch with my muse.”
Lachlan nodded agreement. “Same. I don’t want to be derivative. I have to find my own voice.”
“You’re a writer too?”
“Music.” He sounded peeved I hadn’t been able to tell by looking at him.
Probably I should have guessed Hudson’s friends would be artsy types. Maybe one of these guys was Hudson’s gallery connection. “Like—a singer?” I asked politely.
“I don’t just stand in front of a microphone,” Lachlan scoffed, like I’d suggested he was slinging fries at McDonald’s. “I want to be a producer.”
“You don’t have the hair to be a front man.” Jeremy swept his bangs back from his forehead with one hand, apparently mocking his friend’s hairline.
“We can’t all work in banking like our daddy,” Lachlan countered. I tried to imagine Jeremy as one of the friendly tellers at our credit union, though I had a dim sense they meant something else by “banking.”
Jeremy popped his collar. “At least one of us will have a steady paycheck.”
“Great,” said Paolo. “You can pay for Hudson’s share of the gas. Since he bailed on us,” he added, seeing my look of confusion.
“Bailed on what?” I asked.
“Our road trip.” Lachlan seemed surprised I didn’t know about an event of such global significance.
Paolo shook his head. “I still can’t believe Andrea said no. It’s not like she was sitting at home when she was Hudson’s age.”
“Yeah, and she has the T-shirts to prove it.” Lachlan leaned toward me. “Andrea saw everyone who was anyone in concert.”
“If my mom gave me her old clothes, I’d be wearing a cashmere twin set right now,” Paolo reported sadly.
It took me a few seconds to catch up. “All those shirts Hudson wears are his mother’s?” No wonder he’d kept that detail to himself. Sharing a closet with his mommy kind of killed the cool factor.
“That’s what this summer is about,” Lachlan told me. “Building our own collection of shirts.”
Paolo seemed to realize this might not sound all that impressive. “Not in the literal sense. It’s about more than the souvenirs.”
“No, obviously. We’re going for the music.” Lachlan sketched a zigzagging line across the coffee table with one hand. “We have the whole route planned. From festival to festival, all over the country. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip.”
“Although you probably get a lot of concerts here,” I pointed out. “Like, pretty much every band ever plays New York.”
“It’s not the same,” Paolo assured me. “This is about the freedom of the open road. Little towns and diners with pie.”
“Girls in bikini tops and cutoffs.” That was Jeremy’s unsurprising contribution.
A curl of embarrassment wormed its way from my stomach to my throat. Geographically, it was the reverse of what I’d told my family about needing to leave home, and yet the message was uncomfortably similar. Had I sounded like this much of a tool? I fought the urge to slap myself.
“Sucks to be Hudson.” Jeremy glanced at his phone.
“I still think he’ll talk her into it.” Paolo looked up as Hudson approached, beer in hand. (I’m fine, thanks for asking!) “Hey, man. Any progress?”
“Not a good time to ask.” His eyes slid to me.
I frowned at him. “I thought you wanted to do an internship. At a gallery.”
“Eventually, yeah.” He huffed a little, like he was being attacked. “I think I’m allowed to take a vacation. I just graduated.”
That seemed to be the group mantra: I’m totally passionate about my art/music/writing, but not quite yet. From what I’d heard about Hudson’s virtual “academy,” which catered to kids whose parents were too important to stay in one place, it hadn’t exactly been four years of hard labor. One of his assignments had been a photo essay on regional variations in Starbucks franchises, for a class on “urban planning.” Poor Hudson, slumming with the norms.
“Just repeating what you told me.” I added several spoonfuls of fake sweetness to my voice.
His three amigos glanced between us, clearly picking up on the tension.
“Jo’s not really about the creative life.” Hudson’s tone was jokey, like we were all having a good time, but I could tell he was in a snit. He looked down at my feet—or, rather, my shoes. “She really likes running, though. In case you couldn’t tell.” His lip curled.
After a prickly silence, Jeremy said, “Dude.” Even he was uncomfortable with that level of rudeness.
If Hudson were Amy, we could have settled this with a fistfight. Since that wasn’t an option, I stood up, dorky shoes and all. “I’m going to go pretend to use the bathroom.”
“Down that hall.” Paolo pointed. “Second door on the right.”
“Thanks.” I had no idea whether he lived here or was just being helpful.
I did some deep breathing in front of the bathroom mirror. At least I didn’t look like I was about to lose it. That was one benefit to the slow-motion disaster that had been unfolding since I stepped off the plane: it wasn’t all hitting me now, in this stranger’s apartment. Very soon decisions would have to be made, but I wanted to be alone for that, so I kept my brain from straying any farther ahead than the next few minutes. As I washed my hands, I studied the soap dispenser. It was heavy and marble, but the contents smelled like the generic white soap we used at home. Different lives, same suds.
A girl was waiting in the hall when I emerged, one of the few in this gang of lost boys. She had a pierced lip and a mustard-colored cardigan that looked like she’d knitted it herself.
“Avoid the hand towel,” I told her, wiping the wetness I hadn’t managed to shake off on the front of my jeans. I’d found it on the floor, a little too close to the toilet for comfort with this many teenage guys around.
She looked me in the eyes, and at least there was one person at this party who didn’t default to a sneer. “Thanks.”
I wandered down the hall, pretending to study the framed photographs. Laughter rose from the other end of the apartment, where all the people I didn’t know had congregated. It reminded me of the party I’d taken Hudson to back home, when he’d gotten plastered while I hid in the yard. Except that I hadn’t been alone that time, because David had been there.
The thought of David stopped me cold. I would have given a kidney to have him here with me now. Or however many organs I could spare and still be alive. I knew he would be right here, not wandering off in search of someone better. And we would make each other laugh, and he would be himself, not rude show-offy Party David.
What am I doing here? I asked myself again, before replacing it with a better question. Why don’t you leave?
Following the sound of Hudson’s voice, I approached the kitchen, planning to tell him I was taking off. The words were too low to make out, but his tone was teasing and playful, the way he’d been with me when we first met.
“Didn’t you come with someone?” asked a second voice.
“Not like that. Please.” Hudson snorted as if the girl had said something absurd. “She followed me here.”
I stopped moving.
“Off the street?” She sounded skeptical.
“No, it’s way worse than that. I told you how Andrea dragged me out to that shithole town in the middle of nowhere.” There was a pause, the glug of liquid in a bottle. “It was Freak Show Central. And then this girl showed up at our apartment.”
“She just randomly appeared—the one with the cool haircut?”
Freaking finally.
Hudson sighed. “We hooked up one time. There’s literally nothing else to do out there.”
If I hadn’t been so busy dying on the inside, I would have stuck my head through the doorway and said, Correction! We did not “hook up” in the technical sense! He’s exaggerating!
“Sucks to be you,” she said.
“You have no idea. It was like being in a time warp.”
Pretty much the whole point, asshole! Imagining Hudson’s pouty expression made me want to puke. Or slap him. One of those.
“You want to zhuvuh wa jubuluh?” The second half of the question was unintelligible, probably because Hudson was whispering in her ear.
“Mmmm, no thanks. Sounds like your life is messy enough.”
The girl with the lip ring stepped into the hall. I waited for her to alert Hudson to my presence. Maybe she’d think I really was a stalker.
“What a dick,” she said, not whispering but also not trying to make a scene.
I nodded. My gaze strayed to the front door.
“You okay to get home?” she asked.
The word home lodged in my chest. The distance between here and there felt infinite, like I was shipwrecked on a speck of rock in the middle of the ocean, a million miles from everything and everyone I knew.
“Yeah.”
Even though it was going to take a lot more than a map to get there.