11. Caplan

I know as soon as they walk off that it was a mistake, abandoning Mina to Quinn when she was still so shaky. I also know it would be wrong to walk Mina home just to avoid facing Hollis. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and head back up the driveway. My head swims. A few of the girls stand at the gate, not even pretending they aren't talking about me. In the backyard, there are still some people left, smoking around the fire. I see Hollis moving around in her house through the kitchen windows.

She doesn't look up when I come in the back door. She stacks sticky Solo cups, pouring extra beer down the sink.

"Want help?"

"It's okay, I'm almost done."

"Hollis." I slide down against the cabinets, rubbing my head again. "I'm really sorry."

"It's okay."

"Mina needed me. It's hard to explain."

"You don't have to explain."

"Please don't be mad," I say. "Or if you are, just yell and get it over with. This is worse."

"Caplan. What kind of person do you think I am?"

"What?"

"Of course I'm not mad."

"You're not?"

"No. I've seen a panic attack before, you know."

"Oh."

"Will she be okay?"

"Yeah," I say. "Quinn's walking her home now."

"That's nice of him." She sits down next to me on the floor. "Cap, why didn't you tell me you got into Michigan?"

"I don't even know. I forgot. I'm sorry."

"Is that where you went when you left the car? To tell Mina?"

"Um, no, I went to open the email with her."

Hollis shakes her head. She smiles, but she looks so sad, too. I open my mouth to say I don't even know what, when she says—

"Do you want to stay?"

"Really, can I?"

She stands and pulls me to my feet. With her head against my chest, she says, "Can you kick everyone out now so we can just go to bed?"

I nod again, my chin hitting the top of her head. "You're really not mad?"

"No, I'm not mad."

"Then why are you being so quiet?" I ask.

"I'm just tired," she says.

After the dance of thanking her parents, saying good-bye, leaving through the front, and coming in again around back, we lie together in her room. She's tucked into my side, so I can't see her.

"Thanks again for understanding. And thanks for including Mina."

"I'm sorry it was such a disaster," she says. "Hopefully, it'll be better next time."

"Next time?"

"I've decided if she's your friend, she's mine, too."

"Really? That's—that's so great—"

"And I've decided not to compete with her anymore."

I don't know what to say to that. "I can't believe you told everyone your wish."

"Oh, I don't need it to come true."

"What do you mean?"

She rolls over to face me, thinking, her hands pressed together under her cheek. "I felt that way looking at everyone, just for a second. That I want senior spring to last forever. But it was just a second. I don't actually want that at all."

"You don't?"

"No, of course not. I want to get the fuck out of here. We're outgrowing it."

"You think?"

"Yeah. Don't you?"

"I don't know. I hadn't thought about it."

"That's you," she says. "You'll sail right along like nothing's ending and then forget to say good-bye."

"Good-bye, Holly," I mumble, my eyes closing.

"I can't wait to be in New York City. I'm gonna be the least cool person there."

"Why would you want that?"

"I can adapt. Just think how cool I'll end up."

"You'll want nothing to do with me," I say.

"It's for the best."

"Hey," I say.

"What, you want me to end up Mrs. Hollis Lewis?"

"God, that sounds bad. We can't do that. That's terrible. What are we gonna do?"

She's quiet for a second, but I can tell she's smiling into her hands.

"I think about it a lot, actually. I love my name. I don't want to change it, but I also want to have the same name as my whole family someday."

"Hollis Cunningham," I say. "It's a good name."

"Maybe I'll do what your mom did. Name my son Cunningham, and take my husband's last name."

"As long as it sounds good," I say, pulling her closer. "You can marry someone else, as long as they have a better last name."

"Okay, deal," she says.

"Hey, Hollis," I whisper.

"Hi, Cap."

"Happy birthday."

I wake up at 5:00 a.m., a little hungover, with a bad hollow feeling in my gut. Hollis is still asleep next to me. I remind myself that she isn't angry. Everything is fine. I kiss her quickly and climb over her. As I walk home, I text Mina. She's awake. An awesome thing about Mina is that she is always awake.

She answers the door in an old blue oxford of her dad's that she's worn through at the elbows. It's misbuttoned. I follow her to the kitchen, and she paces around the big marbled island while I stand in front of her pantry, looking at the cereals. Mina's house is bigger and nicer than ours, but it looks like no one lives here. It's spare, and echoey, and freakishly clean. There's no entryway in my house. You just open the door straight into our crap, sneakers and backpacks, stacks of mail, the big bowl of keys. When you open Mina's door, there are two pillars, the same dark wood as the rest of the floors and banisters, with a panel of stained glass above them. When I was little, I wasn't sure if this meant Mina's house was fancy or haunted.

"What book were you reading?" I ask.

"What?"

"You have that look you get when you're in the middle of an intense part of a book."

"Oh." She stops pacing. "No, just thinking." She gets a bowl down for me and pulls the Honey Nut Cheerios out, which I do usually end up choosing.

"Thanks."

She sits down and takes a handful for herself.

"So, how are you feeling?"

"Hm?"

"About what happened last night?"

She looks at me all sharp. "What do you mean?"

"Your, you know, your moment? And what you told me? About Yale?"

"Oh, right."

"Did you sleep okay and everything?"

"Yes, of course. I've calmed down, totally." She stands up and leaves her handful of Cheerios right there on the table. She's pacing again.

"Come on," I say. "Talk to me. How are you?"

"I kissed Quinn?"

I freeze with my spoon halfway to my mouth. "You—what?"

"Yes, I kissed him." She goes back to her route around and around the kitchen table. "Like a martian with only the most rudimentary sense of how to act like a human teenager, completely out of nowhere, and then I just—I just ran inside? Like?"

"Hey, hey, hey." I make her sit down in her chair. I get her a glass of water. She's got her face in her hands and is making a sort of ongoing pained noise.

"This is the least of our problems!" I say.

"Yes, how true, thank you for the reminder," she says with her face still in her hands. "I cried in front of everyone and ruined Hollis's birthday when everyone was actually being sort of nice to me, and then when Quinn was also being nice to me, I went completely insane and attacked him. With my mouth. And now my life is over. I don't even have a life. I didn't know your life could end if you don't even have one, but apparently it can, because mine has."

"Why is your life over?"

"Were you not listening?" She slams her hands down on the table.

"Drink your water."

"Don't tell me what to do." She takes a sip.

"Well, Hollis isn't upset. I don't know how or why, but she's just not. And as for the others, you'd be surprised … no one really cares about anyone but themselves, especially now. No one will remember by Monday."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Yes," I say. "I really do."

"And Hollis said she wasn't angry? You're not ad-libbing?"

"What she actually said was, Is she gonna be okay?"

"Oh." Mina pushes the Cheerios around, packing them into a neat little mound. "Well, that's nice."

"And as for Quinn—"

She moans and covers her face again.

"Was it a bad kiss?"

"What?" She drops her hands. "Why would you ask that?"

"Just trying to figure out why you're upset about it. Did you not like it? I'll be honest. I was worried he'd try to kiss you and it would be awful because you were all upset. But it sounds like you kissed him?"

"Oh, I definitely kissed him. He was standing there minding his own business, and I kissed him."

"Did it not live up?" I have no idea how it works after something happens to you like what happened to Mina. How you get your firsts back when someone else took them from you. How you keep it from ruining those things forever. I guess you don't. I realize I'm stabbing my spoon into the bowl and making a mess.

"Um," she says, "no, no, I don't think it was bad. It was, uh, it was short?"

"I think it's hard for short kisses to be bad," I say.

"You were worried he was going to kiss me?"

"Yeah, I told you he liked you, didn't I?"

"Well," she says miserably, "he probably doesn't anymore. I acted so strange and like I hated him the entire time we walked home and then I randomly kissed him and then I sprinted away."

"Mina?" I sigh.

"What?"

"It sounds"—I slurp the rest of my honey milk—"like you did something kind of badass."

She takes the bowl from me. "Don't slurp." She gets up and leans against the sink, looking at me. "Stop laughing!"

"I'm not!" I say. I am. "I'm serious, it sounds like you rocked it. I mean, rough night, sure, but you still got some action. That's sick."

"I am going to kill you to death." But she's laughing now, too.

"And it's consequentless—"

"Not a word—"

"Cause it's Quinn. He never acknowledges that he's kissed someone after the fact. So he'll just go on acting normal. I bet you'll even still go to prom. He'll make some jokes, you'll make some jokes, we'll all dance, everything will be fine. No harm done. Nothing will change."

"Okay," she says. "Okay. Maybe you're right."

"Of course I'm right. And hey."

"What?"

"First-kiss vibes!" I raise my hand for a high five.

She stares at it. She stares at me. Then she shrieks, a sort of war cry, and throws herself at me, chasing me around and around the table.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" I gasp, weak from laughing, holding my hands up in surrender and then grabbing both her wrists when she tries to smack me. "Come on, though. Was it?"

"Yeah," she grumbles, "kind of. Not counting, you know. Whatever." She fumes at me with her back against the fridge and her wrists in my hands on either side of her face.

"I'm sorry," I say again, "for real."

Her lips twitch. "It's fine. Just. Watch yourself."

"Or what," I say, "you'll beat me up?"

I mean it as a joke, but it comes out wrong. We're still standing in that odd position, with me pinning her wrists. Out of nowhere, I feel too hot. I can feel my heartbeat in my face, in my temples. I drop her wrists.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Yeah." I turn away. "I'm tired. And hungover."

"Yeah, we need to go back to bed."

"I knew you didn't sleep," I say.

She rolls her eyes.

"Hey, can I sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag?"

"You're too big for it now," she points out.

"Am not!"

"And we're too old for sleepovers."

"It's not a sleepover if the sun's up," I say. "It's just a nap. Come on, we can read Harry Potter."

"Okay," she says, her head cocked, considering me. "But you're reading first. Otherwise, you'll fall asleep." She turns to the stairs.

"You go up," I say. "I'll be right there. I'm gonna wash my bowl."

"You're acting so strange," she says as she walks away.

I rinse out my bowl and set it to dry on the counter. I clean up her little pile of Cheerios and refill the glass of water to bring up to her. Then I go to stand in front of the fridge. There aren't many cards up. One from my family, and one from her cousins, a few others with much younger kids. One picture of Mina as a toddler in small red rain boots, squatting down to point at the pebbles on the shore of Lake Michigan, holding her dad's hand. Her Yale acceptance, printed out. And just below, there it is. They're on a hike—mom, dad, and three boys. The tallest has the youngest on his shoulders. He looks older than I am, but not by much. He's got a broad, good-looking face and is squinting into the sun. He's even wearing a Yale T-shirt. Wishing you peace and joy in the New Year, it says, from Kate and Brian, Josh (16), Liam (17), and Daniel (21). I take the card off the fridge and tear it into tiny pieces. I throw it in the trash, cover it with some paper towel. It doesn't feel like enough, though, so I take the whole trash out, replace the bag, and follow Mina upstairs.