Chapter 1
If you want to put me in Hell, plunk me down in the middle of a party where I don’t know anyone. If you want to be really thorough, fill the place with drunken college kids. And make sure every other one manages to spill a drink on me. Don’t tell me about the party in advance, so I show up in sweatpants and ponytails. While you’re at it, put a bubble-gum pink cat carrier under my arm. With a pissed-off mini dachshund inside.
Actually, don’t. Because then you’ll turn into my brother Duncan. And trust me: You don’t want to be Duncan.
Here’s what he did this time. He said he’d watch my dog, Pickle, while I was out of town for three weeks. I reminded him that she was a bit of an ankle-biter and not a huge fan of the human race. Or the canine one. Or living creatures in general. Still, Duncan swore he wanted to with such sincerity that even after knowing him for a lifetime, I said okay. He swore to devote himself to her comfort the whole time I was gone. He even teased me that he’d burn a meat-scented candle to help her feel at home.
We agreed I’d drop Pickle off the night before I left, but by the time it was time, Duncan had forgotten the whole plan as if it had never existed. Instead, he’d decided to host a “small gathering of good friends” with his roommate, Jake, bartending. Jake, for his part, had invented a drink called “the Lambada” mixed with homemade moonshine that he swore would get you laid if you even just sniffed it.
Suddenly a hundred people were crammed into an apartment the size of a refrigerator. And one of them was me.
The worst part wasn’t even that Duncan kept doing this kind of thing. It was that I kept falling for it. And now my emotionally challenged pet had to suffer.
Duncan, as always in these moments, was nowhere to be found.
I pushed my way through to his room, which was empty. Not empty of dirty boxers on the floor, or three-week-old Chinese takeout containers, or posters with girls in bikinis—just empty of Duncan. In the corner, the recliner he’d rescued from the heavy trash was piled taller than me with dirty laundry. A six-month-old tangle of Christmas lights hung from a sad nail, flashing on and off like Vegas.
I picked my way over to the unmade bed, set Pickle’s carrier down, and tilted it up to peer in at her face. Her top lip was caught on the teeth. The ears were drooping. The eyes were all betrayal.
“You don’t want to live here, do you?” I said.
To my surprise, a voice behind me answered back. “I don’t mind.”
It was Jake. Housemate, bartender, and Duncan’s best friend since tenth grade. But it took me a second to register, and not just because he was standing in a corner, somewhat out of sight. He looked different—radically different—than the last time I’d seen him. When had that been? I had no idea. Long enough for him to grow like a foot taller, and to fill out in all those good boy places, like shoulders and arms, and to get a vast improvement of a haircut that spiked up in the front. I knew it was him, of course—but he looked so unlike the person I pictured on the rare occasion that I thought of him, I couldn’t help but confirm: “Jake?”
He raised a hand. “Hi, Helen.”
“Were you hiding back there?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” he said with a frown. “I was in the nook.”
“The nook?”
“Yeah,” he said, turning to gesture behind him. “We turned the closet into a nook. Video games, music. I use it mostly for reading.”
“You and Duncan built a nook?”
“It’s awesome. It’s like a spaceship in there. Want to see?”
I gave him a look: really? I had never liked this kid. Everything that made me crazy about Duncan? Jake made it worse. After Duncan met Jake, he did half the dishes, half the homework, and twice the dope-smoking that he’d done before. I’d hoped they’d lose touch when they went off to college, but, instead, they became housemates. For four years. Now it was the summer after their senior year—though Duncan hadn’t quite graduated—and they were still living like idiots.
Apparently, Duncan didn’t have time to graduate, but he had time to build a spaceship nook. No, I did not want to see it. Nope.
Jake was staring at me in the way he always stared at me when we were in the same room: mouth slightly open, as if he were not just looking at me, but beholding me, somehow. From anyone else, it would have been flattering.
I finally had to say something. “You cut off your ponytail.”
He nodded, remembering. “Yep,” he said. “Yep. Grabbed a big pair of scissors and snipped it right off. Duncan keeps it in a coffee mug on the shelf and calls it our pet.”
There was a pause, while Jake kept nodding.
“Was that for graduation?” I finally asked.
“No,” he said, switching to head-shaking. “That was freshman year.”
Copyright © 2015 by Katherine Center
Copyright © 2004 City Lights Books
