Three months later…
What’s your address?
The text sat on my screen. It’d scared the shit out of me when I’d first received it. The strangest feelings of anticipation, fear, nausea, elation, and anxiety flipped through my body like a folding Rolodex. I didn’t really like it. It felt stupid. Liking Ezra from afar was one thing, but my reaction to him when he was real, tangible to me, knowing we’d be spending weeks in close confinement was another, and it made it feel too real. I had to abandon the fantasy and embrace the reality, and I wasn’t sure I was prepared for that.
I’d spent the summer working at a retirement home, giving yoga camps to all the residents there. I’d earned enough to pitch in for gas for the cross-country trip as well as purchase a few things for my dorm when we finally got to UW. The rest I had plans to save for those unpredictable things that life threw at you and since I’d know no one in Seattle, save for Ezra, I wanted a contingency plan, a cushion of sorts.
I opened a checking account at a bank I knew was also in Seattle, which felt so foreign, such an adult thing to do. Basically, butterflies had taken up permanent residence in my stomach.
I glanced down at the text and those butterflies fluttered and flew, reaching into my throat.
I don’t think you even need my address, I texted back.
why, was his simple reply.
because everyone knows my house they just don’t know who lives in it, I wrote.
lol okay hit me with it
Ezra writing “lol” felt odd to me. It added a human element to him I’d never really lent to him before.
promise not to laugh? I texted.
scout’s honor, he wrote.
I took a deep breath. I live in the UFO house
There was a pause. I assumed he was laughing, and that did something funny to my insides. It hurt he could be laughing at me, at my family’s home, unusual as it truly was.
seriously? he texted. I love that house. always wanted to know who lived there
His answer took me by surprise. well it’s me haha I live in that house
and I guess I did always know who lived there, he texted.
yeah
Just reminding you that my cousin is coming to help with the drive
ok cool
Name’s Kai. We’ll be staying with his family in Chicago for a few days
that’s cool with me
B there at 7am K?
7 got it, I replied.
I set my phone on my desk then threw myself over the side of the bed. My hands went to my face.
“Oh my God!” I screamed, but it was muffled by my hands.
“Oh my God, what?” Frankie asked, prancing into my room with a bowl of granola. Frankie was always eating.
She set her bowl on my desk then threw the suitcase I’d been packing onto the floor and laid next to me.
“Ezra Brandon will be here at seven a.m. tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, baby,” she teased.
I laughed. “Shut up.”
“No, you shut up.”
“No, you shut up.”
“Why don’t you both shut up?” Mercury said, leaning against the jamb of my bedroom door.
She walked into the room, grabbed a few pieces of my mom’s homemade granola from Frankie’s bowl, and sat at the desk.
I stood up, grabbed my suitcase, and laid it back on the bed. I started gathering all my stuff and carefully grouping what I would actually need and what I wanted in two separate piles. I piled everything I needed in my small suitcase and gauged what else I could fit.
“What are you doing?” Mercury asked.
“Trying to decide what I should leave and what I should take.”
“Just get another suitcase,” Frankie said, swinging a dangling leg back and forth.
“This is the only suitcase I’m bringing,” I said.
Frankie sat up and Mercury looked at me like I was crazy.
“Why?” they asked in unison.
“Because there’s three of us traveling in Ezra’s GTO and I want to take up the least amount of room possible.”
“You can’t be serious?” Frankie observed before adding, “And who is this third person?” She was annoyed I hadn’t told her.
I laughed. “Ezra’s cousin Kai. He’s from Chicago. He came down to help with the drive. We’re going to be spending a few days at his parents’ house to break the trip up, too.”
Frankie looked at me as if I’d sprouted another head. “Why in the hell wouldn’t you tell me there was a third person going with you?”
“Because it’s not relevant?”
Mercury shook her head at me.
“It is too relevant, dinkus!” Frankie burst out.
“Okay, well, maybe I didn’t say anything because I know you.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that you are a voodoo priestess or something and can make weird things happen, and I didn’t want you to meddle.”
Frankie fell over laughing before sitting back up. “I would have too,” she said. “I would have made sure this Kai guy wouldn’t be there.”
“See?”
“Still should have told me,” Frankie complained.
“If she had told you, she’d have been more miserable than she is now,” Mercury chimed in.
“You think she’s miserable about sharing close quarters with Ezra Brandon?” Frankie asked, leaning toward Mercury.
Mercury, in all her innocence, replied emphatically, “Yes! She probably wouldn’t have even gone if you hadn’t stuck your big nose into things.”
Frankie had the decency to appear sorry. “Mercury,” she said softly, “Jupiter would have made it there one way or another.”
Mercury started tearing up, so I went over to her and kissed the top of her head before hugging her shoulders. “No worries, Mercury. It’ll all be okay.”
“No, it won’t,” she cried. “You’re going across the country!”
Mercury’s pain made me tear up as well. “I’ll call you,” I told her. “Often.”
“You lie,” she said, pulling her legs up and sniffling into her knees.
“I’m serious, Mercury. I’ll call, like, every day. You’ll be so sick of me. Promise.”
She looked up at me with Precious Moment eyes. “Promise?”
“Double promise,” I said.
She took a deep breath and composed herself before getting up and heading toward the door. “Every day,” she insisted one more time as she whipped back around.
“Every single day, Mercury.”
Mercury left my room and before long, I heard her door shut.
“Poor kid,” Frankie admitted quietly. “I don’t blame her. I’d be beside myself too at the possibility of being here all alone here for the next four years with those two nutters downstairs with their homemade granola and astronomy readers.”
I smiled. “You are an idiot, Frankenstein.”
“I know,” she acquiesced.
I narrowed my frivolities and shoved them into my case, shut the lid, and zipped it closed.
“There,” I said. “Done.”
“Wait,” Frankie said. “I have a parting gift for you.”
She bolted out of my room before I could even acknowledge her. I could hear her leave the front door open for a moment before returning and shoving it closed. She climbed the winding staircase and reemerged in my bedroom carrying a large box.
“Oh, Frankie,” I said, my eyes tearing up. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“Please,” she said, shoving the box into my hands with an ungraceful push and avoiding eye contact.
“What did you do?” I asked, reading her body language.
“It’s nothing, okay? My parents got me a new one and I asked if I could give this one to you and they said yes, so just take it already and shut up.”
I bit my lip to keep from smiling and set the box on my bed before prying the lid open. I gasped. “Frank!” I exclaimed. “I can’t take this!” I insisted, staring down at the laptop she’d only gotten eight months before.
“You can and you will, you annoying minx.”
“This is practically brand new!”
“So what? My parents got me a new one for when I start college in the fall and this would have been wasted on my brother since he has his own gaming station and all that.”
Big fat tears fell down my face, landing on top of the smooth silver metal surface of the computer she’d handed me.
“You’re such a liar,” I told her.
Her mouth gaped open as she tried to fight her knowing smile.
“Listen, I wasn’t about to let you go to your first class with a freaking notepad and pen like a first grader. We have a reputation to uphold.”
I threw my arms around her before pulling back, a watery smile plastered across my face. “No one knows you in Seattle, Franks.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, straightening her clothes. She looked at her feet, avoiding my eyes. “Well, anyway. Uh, let’s go get some ice cream or something.” She turned around and headed for the door.
“Are you crying?” I teased.
“No,” she lied.
“You’re crying!”
“I am not, idiot, now come on.”
“Fine, let’s go,” I said, grabbing my purse, heading down the staircase, and following her outside. When our feet hit sand, I threw my arm around her neck as we walked to her car. “Thank you, doofus. Love you.”
“Love you too, dumb ass,” she said, squeezing me around the waist.
We hopped into her jeep and peeled out onto my street toward the strip near our houses with little shops. Frank turned BØRNS on and we sang at the top of our lungs the entire way, reveling in our last day together.