Chapter 24

CHAPTER

24

TEN YEARS AGO

It had been a mild May, but the day of commencement was warm, and despite the ceremony being held inside the massive indoor arena, I was sweating beneath my black gown as we all waited for the speeches to wrap up. I was surrounded by strangers, passing acquaintances in caps and gowns. It was bittersweet, in a way. I was closing this chapter, but it also felt as though I’d barely cracked it open, maybe scanned the first few lines.

As soon as the ceremony was over, I shouldered my way through the crowd, searching for my parents. They weren’t all that hard to spot—Mom and Reagan had taken paint markers and glitter glue to a poster board that said WE ? YOU CLARA , which Mom held above her head like she was picking me up from the airport gate all over again.

“I guess the apple falls pretty far from the tree,” Dad said as soon as I was close enough to hear him over the chatter. Leaning on his cane, he drew me into a hug, his whiskers scratchy against my cheek. “Congratulations, Clare Bear.”

Mom was already teary-eyed. She forgot all about the poster board and hugged me tight, whispering, “I hope you know I’m not trying to take credit when I say that I’m so proud of you.”

“I think you deserve a little bit of credit,” I said. “You did sort of teach me for most of my life.” She released me and I smoothed my red stole and straightened my honors medal, maybe calling attention to it a little, but today was supposed to be a day for celebrating achievements, after all.

She gave me a grateful smile and squeezed my arm. “You taught yourself.”

Reagan hung back, toeing the ground with a sneaker and looking bored. “Thank you for the poster. And the awesome cap,” I said. She was in a crafting phase, and Mom had suggested I ask her to decorate my graduation cap for me. Considering I didn’t really have the time to decorate it myself, nor did I have any ideas, I was more than willing to give my eleven-year-old sister free rein. She’d lined the edges with red and gold stick-on gems and used scrapbooking letters to spell out AND I DIDN’T EVEN NEED A TUDOR! I didn’t know when she’d gotten so witty, but then again, we hadn’t seen a lot of each other the past few years.

“You’re welcome,” she mumbled with a surly expression that suggested she’d rather be anywhere else.

“How about we get some food?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Mom said. “Aren’t there some friends hanging around that you want to take pictures with?”

With a twinge of embarrassment, I glanced over my shoulder, pretended like I was searching for someone in the crowd. In truth, I hadn’t made many friends in college. “Not sure where they’ve gotten to. They’re probably busy with their families.” I shrugged and turned back to face my parents. “But it’s fine. I have their phone numbers, we’ll keep in touch.”

“Will you?” a familiar voice said in my ear.

I spun around, my stole whirling. Teddy was standing there. His hair was cropped short and he looked a bit tired, but he was smiling. “Oh my god!” I squealed, so surprised that I threw my arms around his neck, the past momentarily forgotten.

He crushed me against him, so tight I thought my ribs might crack. “Hi, stranger.” His voice hummed in his chest, our bodies flush. “It’s good to see you.”

It had been months since the last time we met up for coffee. We’d never quite gone back to normal—the chemical makeup of our friendship had been irrevocably altered—but he was still the closest thing to a best friend that I had. And he had shown up here. For me. There were a million things I wanted to tell him, but for some reason the first thing out of my mouth was, “You cut your hair.”

“Figured I was due for a change.”

After what felt like an eternity, we drew back, and it was like the world suddenly remembered to keep spinning. People milled around us in a sea of black and red. Reagan watched us with a kind of reluctant curiosity and Dad had tucked the poster board under an arm, like he was ready to leave. “Teddy wanted to surprise you,” Mom explained. “Found our number in the white pages, believe it or not.”

Teddy laughed under his breath, his gaze fixed on my face. “She means the website. I haven’t seen an actual phone book since I was sixteen.”

I grinned. “My family mostly just used them as doorstops.”

We briefly discussed where we all wanted to eat dinner, which sparked a joke from my dad about how we could use the yellow pages right about now. After a couple suggestions, we settled on a restaurant and navigated the crowd toward the nearest exit. I led the way, sidestepping families and stopping for a crowd of classmates so that we didn’t get in the way of their picture, but I was a little lost in thought—wondering what Teddy was doing here, whether he had some ulterior motive in showing up like this unannounced. Distracted, I shouldered my way past a group blocking the aisle, accidentally knocking a bouquet of daisies out of someone’s arms.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I said, stooping to collect the flowers. The bouquet was thankfully still in one piece, protected by the cellophane wrapping.

“It’s no problem, really, you don’t have to—”

Her voice was familiar and I glanced up. Mindy, my old roommate. “Clara,” she said, recognizing me. Then, seeming like she didn’t know what else to say, she gestured at my graduation garb. “Congratulations.”

I handed her the flowers back. “You, too.” Teddy caught up with me, followed by the others. My mom was giving me a polite but expectant look, her eyebrows raised. “Oh, this is, um—” I stumbled over my words, feeling a little awkward.

“Mindy Schooner,” she said, taking over and reaching to shake my parents’ hands in turn, but she was looking over at Teddy. He had his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, looking as awkward as I felt. I wondered whether he remembered his last run-in with her—in the midst of the argument that pushed us apart.

“We were roommates, freshman year,” I explained to my parents. It felt like I should say more, but we didn’t know each other all that well. After spending my sophomore year abroad, I’d been reassigned to a different dorm, though I’d seen her around campus now and again.

“How about a picture of the two of you?” Mom asked, pulling out her phone.

We looked at each other.

“Oh, um—”

“Sure, why not—”

We scooted in close. Mindy put an arm around my shoulder, but it was feather-light, staged for the camera, like a celebrity posing at a meet-and-greet with a fan. I put on a tight-lipped smile and my mom said something to the effect of big smiles, come on now, say cheese. There was a flash and then we put some distance between ourselves before my mom had even lowered the camera.

Mindy looked at Teddy. “I recognize you,” she said. “Your hair. It’s shorter.”

He ran a hand over the hair in question, looking sheepish. “I wanted to change it up.”

“It looks better this way,” she said decisively. “Cleaner.”

There was an awkward pause, and then I said, “We’re just on our way to dinner, but I’ll see you around, maybe?”

She nodded. “I’ll find you on Facebook.”

Both of us were probably just saying these things to sound polite; there was little chance of us running into each other, and I wasn’t even sure she knew my last name to look me up. I figured that was the last time I’d be seeing Mindy Schooner, and that was all the thought I gave the matter.

After dinner, we drove back to the house, where Teddy had parked his Datsun, but he wasn’t ready to leave. We sat out on the curb catching up, because the walls in the house were paper-thin and my parents were notorious eavesdroppers. As it was, my mom had already poked her head out the front door twice under the guise of telling us she’d put together a vegetable tray and then again to offer us a glass of wine to celebrate. Our street was a dark suburban one with long lawns and few cars, and I had stretched my bare feet out into the road and crossed my ankles, my arches sore from standing for commencement in heels. I lay back on the sidewalk and stared up at the night sky. The concrete was cool and rough against my exposed shoulders.

“You remember when they made us do that astronomy thing at camp?” I asked. “We filled in that whole sheet and Ms. Fischer still marked it as incomplete because—”

“—because we missed Neptune,” Teddy finished, folding an arm behind his head and lying down next to me. “Ms. Fischer. I wonder where she is these days.”

I turned my head to look at him, studying him in profile while he stared up at the stars. The shorter hair made him look older and flattered his bone structure, the hard corner where his jaw met his ear. But I missed the curls, and the desire to run my fingers through them. After allowing me a few seconds to ogle him in peace, he angled his head toward me, eyebrows raised in question.

“I don’t like your hair,” I said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“It doesn’t look bad, I just always like when it’s a little longer, when you get the curlicues right here—” With a finger, I traced behind his ear, trailing down to the nape of his neck.

It was an innocent, feather-light touch, but his eyes fluttered closed for a moment, until I withdrew my hand. “I’ve been thinking a lot, lately,” he said.

“When are you not?” I joked.

He breathed a soft laugh. “About us, I mean.”

I propped myself up on an elbow, somewhat uncomfortable on the unyielding concrete. The word us had my heart running a marathon. I didn’t know where he was going with this, but the possibility of him dredging all that up again sent me into a panic. I was leaving for Manchester in three months. “Us?”

“How little we’ve talked, these past few years,” he said. “I’ve missed talking to you. I miss you. ”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I admitted, and he didn’t ask me for more than that.