We all have a friend who brings us out of our comfort zone, who you irrevocably trust, and can’t see your life without. That’s who Hattie is to Reid, but Hattie is no longer here. In her YA debut, The Stepping Off Place, Cameron Kelly Rosenblum draws from her own childhood friendship in a story about a girl who must process her friend’s death and ultimately learn how to stand in her own light.
The Stepping Off Place is about Reid, who’s in the thick of her high school’s in-crowd thanks to her best friend Hattie. While Hattie is at her family’s summer home, Reid enters into a pact with their friend Sam to live it up, one part at a time. But days before Hattie returns, Reid finds out that Hattie has died by suicide. Driven by a desperate need to understand what went wrong, Reid searches for answers.
This is a book about friendship, love, grief, mental health, and that sometimes the truth forces you to reexamine what you thought you knew. Feel the connection between these two friends in the first few chapters of The Stepping Off Place.
Chapter One
August 27 ~ Now
The day I stopped breathing, it was rush hour in my hometown of Scofield, Connecticut, and I was heading home from my matinee hostess shift at the dinner theater. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten my running clothes and still wore my compulsory hostess uniform: A polyester “girl tux” with a skirt instead of pants, and skin-tone hose. Whose skin tone I don’t know, but God help her. I just hoped nobody spotted me. I crept along with the other cars jammed along the Post Road. It was the kind of traffic where you should pay attention so you don’t rear end someone, but the sky was so captivating I couldn’t take my eyes from it.
The clouds were equal-sized puffs arranged as though a pastry chef had carefully decorated the endless sweep of peacock feather blue. It was so impossible and so much like this Georgia O’Keeffe print Hattie had hanging in her bedroom called Above the Clouds IV, it bordered on freaky. Hattie and I texted each other when we spotted one or two O’Keeffe clouds— perfectly oval ones— but this was like Georgia herself had stopped in Scofield and painted the sky. I wanted to FaceTime Hattie. She would love it.
That this would be illegal while driving wasn’t the reason I didn’t. I didn’t FaceTime Hattie because it was August, which meant she was still at her summerhouse on The Thimble, an island off the Maine coast. The Thimble, by the way, is a six-hour drive from southern Connecticut.
Six.
Hours.
Cell service ranges from patchy to nonexistent, and Mr. Darrow won’t get Wi-Fi up there. He prefers his islands rustic. So, not only does Hattie desert me every summer for eight solid weeks, but we can only communicate via snail mail. And she sucks at writing letters. Care packages? She rocks them. But no letters. No words. It was the Hattie Way to arrive the night before school started each year. This was our last spin on the Scofield High merry-go-round. We were finally seniors.
It’s hard to pinpoint when Hattie Darrow became my social oxygen. It didn’t start out that way, and I don’t think she meant it to happen any more than I did. We’d been best friends for five-and-a-half years, and it must have been gradual, like how our bones grew longer and our faces lost their baby-plump. We didn’t notice that, either.
Right now, I couldn’t drag my eyes from these clouds. They seemed alive, the way they moved as one. A driver behind me beeped and I jerked my attention back to the road. That’s when I saw, four cars ahead, Hattie driving her ’85 VW Rabbit convertible. The top was down and she had her blonde hair in a ponytail. Her shoulders were tan and I recognized the white straps of the shirt we picked out the day before she left in June.
“Snowcap!” I cried shamelessly. Her car is black with a white top, like the movie candy. “You’re home!” I nosed up on the SUV ahead of me, but nobody was moving.
I watched Hattie’s head dip to a beat, so I knew she had music on, which meant she was singing. Badly. I turned up the radio to see if her beat matched whatever songs played on our stations, but there were only commercials. Why was she back already?
We rolled past Mighty Bean, the cafe that may as well be part of Scofield High School.
Normally, I would hunker down so nobody could recognize me, but I reached for my phone instead, thinking I could at least call. I saw a cop car in my rearview mirror and practically heard Hattie say, “Watch it. Johnny Law’s on the case.” A laugh bubbled out of me.
My need to be out of the stupid skin-tone hose became unbearable. Hattie wouldn’t have been caught dead in it. They were a crime against the natural world, those hose. I wondered if I could slip out of them while driving, but the used Ford Fiesta I shared with my older brother Scott was stick shift, requiring a foot on the clutch. Besides, the knot of cars scuttled forward. This was my chance.
Hattie zipped ahead, under the commuter rail bridge. I lost her. Johnny Law hooked a right toward the train station, so I buzzed around a pick-up and under the bridge. I passed The Sport Shop. A mannequin clad in pastel golf clothes pointed his club toward Snowcap, cheering me on in the kind of Scofield style Hattie would have found hilarious.
I gained on her. Only a silver Jaguar separated us, driven by a coiffed Scofield matriarch I vaguely recognized as a friend of my parents. She wasn’t my concern, but I tapped the horn, hoping to get Hattie’s attention without seeming obnoxious.
Hattie’s head remained stubbornly focused on the road ahead. The light turned green, and we were off again, down the big hill beside the graveyard. We passed the library, then the police station. At the next light, I leaned my head out the window.
“Hattie!”
The lady cast an uneasy glance in her rearview. I smiled weakly. Hattie remained oblivious, engaged in pulling the elastic from her hair, smoothing a new ponytail, and re-twisting the elastic, a habit she claimed was unconscious. Though I couldn’t see her face, I knew she held the elastic in her teeth.
“Hattie!” I yelled, louder. Nothing.
“Hey, Harriet!” I bellowed. Jaguar lady’s eyebrows disappeared under her puffy gray bangs. Hattie’s head maintained its metronomic dance. Is she ignoring me? a pathetic part of me wondered for a breath. I recognized the familiar anxiety swooping over me like a huge bird ready to land. All it needed was the opportunity, and it would roost. No, I told myself. Hattie wouldn’t ignore me. Of course not.
But the light turned green and she sped off, alpha wolf of the traffic pack. The gap between her and the Jaguar widened. I pressed the gas and passed the Jaguar, thankful for the lack of Johnny Law. She topped Three Church Hill and was out of sight again. I smiled when I crested it and saw the red light at the next intersection. “Gotcha,” I whispered.
But when I got to the line at the light, Snowcap was nowhere. I lifted my sunglasses, squinting into the horizon and its endless field of confection clouds. No Hattie.
On three of the four corners were churches. On the fourth was Pickle Barrel Deli. The choice was obvious, given her obsession with Pickle Barrel deviled eggs. They grossed me out, but I always brought her a half dozen packed on ice for my annual July Thimble visit.
I turned into the deli driveway and rolled behind the building to its small parking area. No Snowcap. I turned off the car. My lips tingled, like I’d had a shot of novocaine. I got out and stood on the concrete. My thighs were sweating under the asphyxiating hose. I tried to ignore a ripple of lightheadedness.
I peeked in the deli’s screen door and when she wasn’t inside, I checked behind the big smelly dumpster, like maybe she’d hidden, which was stupid and of course she hadn’t.
I stood motionless, between the dumpster and my car. Hattie had achieved the truly impossible. She’d vanished.
I glanced at the sky. The clouds were marching into the distance, like a passing parade. Like they ushered her off.
***
I spent the ride home trying to humor myself out of it. I must have been mistaken. I called her, Johnny be damned, but it went straight to voicemail. I imagined telling the story to Hammy. “Maybe I’d had a premonition,” I pictured myself saying to him,” and she was coming home early.” And Hammy would laugh, because a.) he’d be as psyched as me if that were true and b.) we both knew I was way too practical for premonitions.
But here’s the thing. When you have to reconcile something that doesn’t make sense with something your emotions say is true, your emotions win. Humor yourself all you want; deep down you’ll know you’re lying. Hattie was there. Then she wasn’t. It happened.
I made my way home and tried calling her again from our driveway. Straight to voicemail again. Instead of leaving a message, which I’d long ago learned she wouldn’t listen to, I texted her. What happened to you? I saw you, then you disappeared! wtf, are you now magic? I waited a few seconds. Nothing. I tried to shake it off. My after-work run would uncoil me, I thought. It always did. Hattie had convinced me to join the cross-country team last year, and this year we were co-captains. I totally did not deserve this honor, but Hattie and I were the only seniors, and I think Coach Smitty didn’t want me to feel like a total loser, so she made us both captains. I’d spent all summer trying to get my 5k faster than the younger girls, and I’d become kind of accidentally addicted.
Our house was dark and quiet when I got inside, the hum of the refrigerator the only sound. Boomer, our fat black Lab mix, lifted one eyelid and rearranged himself on his bed before sighing. My little brother Spencer, age ten and deep on the autism spectrum, is never quiet, so he must have been out with his caregiver, Linda. It’s against MacGregory code to discuss it, but the only time our house is like this is when Spencer is out of it. We all love him so much. But when he’s gone, we can stop checking to see if he’s okay. We can let five minutes in a row pass without looking up from our books or our show or our absolutely anything.
So, yes, he was gone, and Dad of course wasn’t home from NYC yet. Scott was painting houses on Martha’s Vineyard with his fraternity brothers this summer and planned to go straight back to Colgate from there. Mom was probably upstairs in the office planning for her big autism fundraiser in October. She had been honored by the American Autism Coalition three years in a row for her massive fundraising success. She’s a classic overachiever, and had met her match in raising money for autism research; there is no end of need, and Laura MacGregory has no end of energy to devote to it. Autism and Mom make a symbiotic, perpetual motion machine. At the moment, I did not want to get recruited to stuff more envelopes. That sounds lame, but I’d stuffed in sets of fifty for weeks. I crept to the kitchen.
I stood in the light of the refrigerator, staring at milk and mayonnaise and whatnot and wondered again if I was so desperate I dreamed Hattie up. God, that was needy. I thought I’d made some strides this summer with Hammy, I really did.
I poured an iced tea and leaned on the kitchen table, sliding out of the loafers and peeling off the offending hose at last. They kept the shape of my feet and calves and looked something like a decomposing body on the floor tiles. I rustled them with my foot and rechecked my phone.
The stairs squeaked. My mom appeared, in her robe. It was nearly dinner. She’s the kind of person who comes to breakfast dressed. More alarming, her eyes were red and puffy. “Sit down, honey,” she said softly.
I had seen her cry once in my life, when our cat Leopold died. I was seven. That’s it. Either she cried in private or she was superhuman. I had yet to figure out which. My neck pulsed. “Will you sit?” she repeated. “Please?” I obeyed.
“What?” My lips tingled again. “Where’s Spencer?” In a flash of sickening clarity I saw our family without him, floundering like fish on a hot dock. Who would we even be? My breathing sped up.
Mom shook her head. “Spencer’s fine.” Her voice was strangled. She covered my hands with her cool ones. “It’s Hattie,” she whispered. “Something terrible has happened.”
Her words bounced off my face. “I just saw her.”
My mom squared her shoulders. The room vibrated with the fridge. She closed her eyes and kept them closed. I watched tears travel the newly chartered path on her cheeks. It was chaos. Blackness leaked over my peripheral vision. “I’m so sorry, Reid,” she was saying, “but Hattie drowned last night in Maine.”
“No she didn’t,” my voice said, but a hole started to tear open deep inside me. I saw her in my mind, passing the Jaguar just a few minutes ago. Didn’t I?
She looked up at me from her chair. Her lips vanished she squeezed them so tight. She nodded and nodded, her nostrils red and trembling.
“Stop doing that!” I wanted to slap her away, this weird version of my mother. “She did not!”
My mother was a crumbling statue, dropping her head. Her shoulders convulsed. Twice. She inhaled and leveled her eyes with mine. “Reid, it’s true. Her uncle Baxter called an hour ago. I spoke to him myself. She . . . Hattie . . .” Her tears ran in rivulets, but her eyes had mine in a choke hold. “They’re investigating it as a suicide.”
I heard myself laugh through a sob. “That’s fucking ridiculous.” I couldn’t look at her and took my glass to the sink. The air had dissolved into buzzing molecules swimming around me.
“It’s still unclear,” she whispered. “But—”
“Shut up!” I threw the glass down. I never talked to her like this, and it was empowering and disgusting. The glass didn’t break and I whirled to yell more at her, but her face was red and twisted in a silent cry.
“Oh, God,” I croaked, nauseous. Rubber legs carried me to the back door. Boomer heard the screen slide open and rushed to my side. We bumped into each other and I stumbled onto the flagstone patio to the edge of the pool, searching the sky. No more evenly spaced confections. The clouds had dissolved into tatters, ripped sails that betrayed me.
Our O’Keeffe sky was gone.
I couldn’t breathe. I never would again.
Chapter Two
June 18
Two Months Earlier
Hattie and I drifted around the pool on our floats like lily pads. We hadn’t said or moved much in the last hour, soaking in the end of a long afternoon of sun. We officially became Scofield Seniors today at 12:35 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, after the last exam. It was Hattie’s last night in Scofield, and thank God, because a kinda bitchy senior named Sonia Jaffe was having a huge summer send-off party and I would never go alone. Tomorrow, Hattie would leave for The Thimble.
When I first heard of the summerhouse on an island named The Thimble, I pictured a quaint cottage with brightly painted lobster buoys hanging on the front door. Wrong. The Thimble was a private island the Darrows owned for three generations, by my count. The house had six bedrooms and was part of a family compound, complete with a stable, a dock and boathouse. Mr. Darrow loved sailing.
I was gazing at a group of clouds that resembled a school of fish, debating whether they were worth mentioning, when Hattie said, “I’m going to lose it tonight at Jaffe’s.” Hattie’s the kind of person who calls a junior-snubbing senior like Sonia by her last name— to her face— which is so brazen it impresses the senior and earns Hattie acceptance. Fondness, even.
“Huh?” I responded lazily. My fingers played across the top of the warm water trapped in the raft with me.
“I just decided.” Hattie’s voice is sort of low and a little raspy, which can make it seem like she’s letting you in on a joke. Which a lot of times she is. Now, she lay on her belly, eyes closed, which we both knew was her way of prompting me to question her.
Always game, I said, “Care to elaborate?”
“I’m getting this whole virginity thing over with,” she replied. “Tonight.”
I rose to my elbows. Cold water spilled into the raft. “What?”
She still didn’t move. “I don’t want to be a virgin anymore. Think about it. It’s a burden.”
“A burden?”
“Yeah. You keep waiting for the right guy, and all that is just bullshit. There is no right guy in Scofield. Which means I go through senior year a virgin, and the next thing you know I’m in college, and nobody in college wants to sleep with a virgin.”
“Seriously?” I cocked one eyebrow.
“Yeah. Nobody worth sleeping with, anyway. I’m not going to be the inexperienced one. You can spot inexperience a mile away.”
I couldn’t suppress my laughter. “Oh my God. You think you can tell who’s a virgin by looking at them?”
“Can’t you? Compare Fiona Mejos to Emma Rose.”
“You’re ridiculous.” But picturing Fiona’s clear eyes and uncomplicated smile, I had to admit Hattie may be right. As for Emma Rose, she’d probably hit on my dad if she had the chance. What did my eyes give away? I held my breath and rolled into the water.
“You should consider doing it too, Redi-Whip,” she said when I surfaced next to her float. During a seventh-grade ice cream sundae-making session, she contorted my name Reid into Redi-Whip when she discovered you only had to flip two letters. “That’s you, Redi for Action!” she’d said. It used to be ironic. As far as she knew, it still was.
I felt my cheeks flush and quickly splashed water on my face in what I hoped was a nonchalant way. Hattie didn’t know I lost my virginity already, with Jay Seavers at the Junior-Senior Prom about a month earlier. I felt guilty not telling her all this time. We both knew he was an ass. How could I explain it to her? I couldn’t even explain it to myself. When Jay looked at me with his way-too-hot-for-me eyes, I threw caution and my awesome green prom dress to the wind. And we did it. On the sixteenth hole of Howebrook Country Club golf course. He wasn’t even my date.
It was reckless, and I was never reckless—of my own accord, that is. Admittedly, this was a pretty big exception. And I was surprised by how exhilarating it was. Not the sex itself. I mean being so un-me. The sex was, well, uncomfortable if not painful. But the kissing part? The gateway drug to my fast, hard fall.
At first, I couldn’t wait to tell Hattie. But she slept all Sunday after the prom and bagged school on Monday and Tuesday—which she had done a lot this year. I don’t know how she talked her mom into so many excused days. Twelve times since September. That’s three more than Ferris Bueller, and he’s from a movie about skipping school. As it turned out, I was glad she wasn’t with me in the cafeteria that Monday, for what I now know was the most humiliating moment of my life thus far. Here’s the thing: when Captain Dickhead saw me smiling at him from my lunch table, he averted his gaze and walked right past me. Like I didn’t exist. I feel sick even recounting it in my head. It was so mean, and made him an even bigger asshole than I already knew him to be, yet clearly I was the one feeling like a loser. How had I done this to myself? I tried not to think about it, let alone talk about it. But it snuck up on me at weird moments and gutted me anew, this feeling that I was an embarrassment. With Hattie, I could get my bearings again and know it was him, not me. Most of the time.
“You might surprise yourself,” Hattie was saying, “and find you’re a real tiger in the sack.” She added a growl.
We laughed and I tried to flip over her raft, but she paddled water at me.
I pulled myself to sit on the pool edge. “Meanwhile, let me push your thinking here.”
“Go ahead, but my mind’s made up.” She rolled over and looked into the sky. “Hey, a school of fish,” she said.
“Focus!” I said, hiding my awe at our synchronized imaginations. “First off, there’s trouble with your reasoning. I completely agree that there are no Mr. Rights in Scofield—besides Gib Soule maybe—but, this party is in Scofield, and is, therefore, bound to be populated by only Scofield guys.”
“And your point?”
I didn’t know what my point was, so I changed tack. “Why don’t you wait ’til you’re in Maine and fulfill your destiny with Santi?”
“That’s incestuous.”
Lie. The Family Herrera shared The Thimble with the Family Darrow. The Darrows came from Boston. The Herreras came from Valparaiso, Chile. Mr. Herrera and Mr. Darrow rowed crew together at Princeton or prep school or maybe both. Santiago was our age and definitely not a relative of Hattie’s.
“I call BS.”
“Gross,” she said flatly.
It was pointless to argue—she’d never cave—so I said, “Wait, you’re just going to pick up someone random?”
“Probably,” she said, as if not having all the kinks worked out of her scheme was perfectly okay. “I leave tomorrow, so it’s not like I have to face him any time soon.” She paused. “I’ll aim for someone I kind of like.”
“Someone like who?” I asked.
Just then my brother Scott came out from the house. Scott played lacrosse at Colgate. He got the lion’s share of MacGregory athletic genes.
“Reid, where’d you put the keys?” he said, then noticed Hattie. “Hey, Darrow. Where’s it at, puddy tat?”
“On the fly, porkie pie.”
“Don’t I know it, GI Joe-it.”
They laughed. They’d done variations of this routine since forever.
“GI Joe-it?” I repeated.
“Some day you’ll be a hep cat, too, Reid,” Scott said.
“She’s a closet hep cat. It’s in there somewhere, right, Redi-Whip?” Hattie said, climbing the pool ladder. Scott was unable to resist a full visual sweep of her body. She was getting really beautiful in a way that made me feel happy and left behind at the same time.
I squinted at Scott. “Busted,” I whispered.
In middle school, Hattie and I had been the last girls to hit puberty. Boys noticed her for her hijinks and because she won every damn sport she played, but they didn’t crush on her. We did eventually catch up, sort of, but it was this year that Hattie emerged from the pasty winter months like one of those iridescent blue rainforest butterflies. Suddenly, we were included at all the parties, and not because of me. I was jealous at first, but I hated that shallow part of me and willed it away.
Scott rolled his eyes. “Keys?” he said too loudly.
“Dining room table.”
“Catch ya on the flip side,” he called, disappearing into the house.
“Jim jam in the double-wide,” Hattie replied. She wrapped the towel under her armpits, grinning.
I stared at her.
“What?” Sometimes she laughs while she’s talking, like her words and her laughter are competing for air time. It’s contagious. Usually.
“You were going to tell me who the lucky guy is tonight.” My voice was sharp, for me, and I wasn’t sure why her plan irritated me so much. Because I had blown my chance to lose my virginity in a such a power move? Or because I’d never have the guts?
“I’ll decide at the party,” she said.
“What if people find out?” I said. I’d worried the same about me. A lot. My pulse thudded in my neck and I brought my hand up to smooth the skin.
She made a “duh” face.
I stared again.
She shook her head. “Reid, you can choose not to give a shit.”
I didn’t know how to respond. How was that a choice?
She patted my shoulder on her way to the screen door. “You want to go on a run before dinner?”
***
It was eight o’clock when we left for Sonia Jaffe’s, and the June sky had only just begun to turn pearly. Besides the Post Road, Scofield’s roads are residential, winding and thick with trees— all-around intoxicating to drive with the windows down to the first party of summer, even in a bomber like the Fiesta. “How about Shunsuke, your crew buddy? He seems uncomplicated,” I added. Since I couldn’t conjure a good reason, any reason, why Hattie’s little operation was a flawed plan— and I tried during our run and then again while we got ready for tonight— I jumped on board. It was fun, actually, since it was ridiculous and I risked nothing. In her mind, neither did she.
“Shunsuke, yes. I do like his shoulders,” she said, just as that obnoxious Cake Pops song came on the radio. “Oh my God!” she squawked, cranking the volume. She rocked out from the waist up. “I can have it!” A raspy voice is pure gold for many singers—from Etta James to Adele. Not so much for Hattie. She sounds like a bagpiper’s warm-up: off-key and desperate. In middle school chorus, the music teacher’s aide privately asked her to lip sync during the concert. It’s the only time I’ve seen Hattie wounded by someone’s opinion. Probably because it’s the only thing she truly sucks at. Now she considers it hilarious and uses her singing to torture me.
“My ears are bleeding,” I said.
She chuckled and turned it down, still humming. Even that was off-tune.
“So Shunsuke’s an option,” I said. “Or, you could pick a guy who just graduated. Then he’d be gone next year.” It was like shopping for a new outfit, one that would look better on Hattie than on me, which was more or less every outfit.
“Good idea.”
“Or, Hammy. He’s always loved you.” I waited. She’d ramped up the dancing for Cake Pop’s final chorus. I realized I was avoiding looking at her, which in general is a good thing while driving, but my motives were more mysterious. I felt strangely protective of Hammy—officially named Sam Stanwich, but dubbed Ham Sandwich, The Sandwich, or Hammy in fourth grade.
“Nah,” she said. “I thought about it at the prom, but Hammy knows me too well.” We rolled to a four-way stop. “Plus, he’s so skinny.”
True, Hammy’d had a recent growth spurt. He was six feet and virtually invisible when he turned sideways. Think Flat Stanley. Still, I’d witnessed the thinly veiled, unrequited crush he had on her, and it kind of made me love him. For her. Not for me. Which is really sad—developing a vicarious crush on someone because you like the way he likes your best friend? I guess I just wished she was nicer to him.
I shook my head, secretly talking to both of us when I said, “This is complicated.”
“Not really,” she said. “I’m just not into him. Pediddle!” She tried to thump me on the arm—protocol when you see a car with one headlight—but I beat her to it.
“Ow.” She rubbed the spot.
“That’s my third win,” I said. “I’m posing a challenge to the Pediddle Queen.”
“Never,” she said.
I snickered. “You are so competitive.”
I slowed when we got to Maywood Road, turning onto the street. The homes, like most in Scofield, were large and very expensive, landscaped to perfection. It’s pretty easy to hide a big party like this here. Cops would either have to be alerted or stumble upon it.
Sonia herself was on the very edge of the ruling clique of seniors who just graduated. She’d been the kind of senior who flirted with the junior boys and made the junior girls, Hattie aside, feel like they owed her a favor for being alive. Word was her parents flew to a wedding in California and left her older sister Eve in charge. Eve was “taking a year off” from Boston University and really shouldn’t have been in charge of anything, let alone a house on two acres and Sonia, but the cluelessness of some parents knows no bounds. In any case, I had to wedge the Fiesta between two willow trees to park.
“Well this is the place to be,” Hattie said as we squeezed out our doors. She started across the moonlit lawn. It stretched around the immense house like a moat. People clustered on the terrace, bathed in yellow light. “What’s that quote about moths and whispers and champagne in The Great Gatsby?” I asked. I was stalling, suddenly overwhelmed by the energy it would require for me to appear like I belonged here.
“I didn’t read it,” she said. She glanced at me standing there and stopped walking. Hattie belonged. Naturally. I only belonged by virtue of her. “It’ll be fun,” she said quietly, coaxing me with her eyes.
“I know,” I lied. The summer ahead already felt like an eternity. Ever since the ill-fated golf course sex romp with Jay Dickhead Seavers, I’d been having waves of the kind of social anxiety I had back in fourth and fifth grade, pre-Hattie. The humiliation had a life of its own in my imagination sometimes. Like now.
“You sell yourself short, Redi MacGregory,” she said, reading my mind without knowing it. “P.S., I’m not going in without you.” She linked her arm in mine, humming the Disney movie Brave theme song. This was a longstanding joke based on the fact that I do resemble the main character more than a little—especially if I got struck by lightning so my hair frizzed out. Hattie broke into the lyrics with an attempted Scottish brogue as she twirled me around by the elbow.
I laughed. “Your voice is so bad!” But she got me over the hump, and we ran to the hedge shadows to spy.
“Damn,” she marveled.
Holding the keg nozzle: Gib Soule. I could actually see his perfect white teeth from here. Dark hair swept across his forehead as if to say, “Behold! The masterpiece of Gibson Soule’s blue eyes.” Smoking hot, this boy. He could have had any girl at SHS, probably repeatedly, but he kept one girlfriend at a time for months on end, loyal as my dog Boomer. This made hearts everywhere stir all the more fervently, of course.
Until his dad died in fifth grade, Gib lived in my neighborhood, and we’d played in the same games of flashlight tag. In those days I full on loved him, in spite of the fact I never raised the nerve to say more than, “Not it!” to him. Eventually I recognized my futility and moved on. Now he lived downtown with his mom and her new wife. Next to Gib stood Max Silverman and Hammy. The usual suspects populated the rest of the patio, mixed with older friends of Sonia’s sister, Eve, the supposed babysitter here.
“What about Max?” I whispered with fake innocence. As if on cue, Max punctuated some story he was telling by commencing a weird hip-thrusting dance. Gib and Hammy cracked up.
She laugh-said, “No, thanks! The arm hair—he’s like Chewbacca.”
“It’s settled then,” I said. “Gib’s your man.”
“Yep,” she said. “I guess I have no choice.”
“I’ll tell him,” I rushed ahead, but she passed me and broke into the pool of light as if stepping into her scene on stage. I watched all the faces turn, then followed.
“Hey, look.” Max nodded to us. “Batman and Robin.” He threw his head back, laughing at his own joke.
“Shut up,” Hattie said, slugging his arm.
“And it’s Gumby and Pokey,” I said, meaning Max and Hammy, but there were three of them standing there and it didn’t really make sense and I felt myself blush. Thankfully, everyone chuckled.
“Hi, Gib,” Hattie said. I echoed her, sounding stupid.
“Ladies,” he said, casually flashing the smile that stopped a thousand hearts. Deep down, he must have known he was hot, but he never let on.
Max held up two cups, showcasing the Chewie arms. “Beer?” Hattie and I laughed with our eyes. I had to look at my sandals.
“Sure,” Hattie said. “How much do we owe?”
“Gratis for you, Harriet,” he said, grinning.
I shifted my weight.
“And you, too, Reid,” Hammy added. Sweet Hammy. “Max keeps telling the girls their beer is free, like he’s all generous, but Eva’s frat boy friends donated it.”
Max grinned. “Cheers.”
We clacked cups. I wasn’t a big drinker, but I appreciated the social lubricant a beer provided in moments like these. I wiped foam from my lip. “Where’s Charlie?” I asked. Charlie Bishop had been my own platonic prom date. I should’ve stuck with him instead of Captain Dickhead.
“He’s here somewhere, with—” Hammy waved his hands like fanfare— “Alesha.”
“Ohhhhhh!” Hattie and I said at the same time. “Aleeeeeesha!”
“They’re back together and the world is right again,” Gib said.
We laughed. Charlie obsessed about Alesha, and everyone gave him crap about it. I found it kind of endearing.
Just then, Gib’s recent ex-girlfriend Priya Patel-Smith came through the French doors from the kitchen. Priya had sleek, black hair and moved like the world was her personal catwalk. She’d edited the school paper for three years and was off to Yale in the fall. It was unusual for a girl of her caliber to date a junior, but who wouldn’t break the rules for Gib Soule? So nobody was surprised when she dumped him, but for the Braeburn hockey goalie? It was excessively cruel, since Braeburn is Scofield’s biggest rival in all sports, especially hockey, and Gib was the star junior this year. Plus she had apparently been flinging with the guy for weeks, but waited until the day after prom to break up with Gib, just so she could go.
Gib turned toward her before he possibly could have seen her, as if he sensed her presence intuitively. His face softened immediately and for a flash, all Gib’s vulnerabilities passed across his eyes. He demi-smiled. Priya nodded. Gib’s face tightened and he turned back toward us just in time to catch me watching him.
Crap! Such a voyeur! I glued my sightline on Max and took an extra-long pull off my beer, hiding behind the cup.
Max finished whatever story he was telling now and the three boys burst out laughing, Gib heartiest of all. That’s the spirit, Gib.
A bunch of kids approached the keg, putting Max and the Sandwich to work. Hattie pointed over my shoulder. A small crowd gathered around a pool table in the family room, including Shunsuke. She looked at me slyly. “Reid, may I challenge you to a game of billiards?”
“You may,” I replied. We left the boys by the keg.
On the way through the French doors, Sonia collided with me, then muttered something like, “Whoamph.” Looking at me in a bleary-eyed, vaguely Quasimodo way, she straightened her jade miniskirt, flashing us a pretty sizable boob in the process.
“Sor-ry, Reid.” Then she spotted Hattie. “Hey! Haaaattie!” She threw her arms around Hattie’s neck. “You’re here! That’s so. . . happy! You shoulda come early. Beer pong started at ten o’clock . . . or one. Whatever!” She kept hugging Hattie, or maybe using her for balance.
I glanced around, hoping nobody saw the way Sonia blew me off. She’d pretty much illustrated the Scofield pecking order right there in living color. And this feeling? This was what me without Hattie felt like. I crossed my arms in front of my chest, surprised by the sting of tears.
Hattie smiled at me, and I forced a grin back. She patted Sonia’s back. “Great,” she said. “Beer pong.”
Sonia straightened, a thick strand of brown hair stuck to her lip gloss. “I told’m you’d be heeere.”
Hattie tilted her head. “What?”
But Sonia moved on.
Hattie didn’t mention Sonia’s complete dis of me, though of course she saw it. To mention it would be to validate it, and Hattie wouldn’t grant Sonia Jaffe’s opinions of me (or lack thereof) any power. She had my back that way; it was our unspoken code. She was silently coaching me in the Art of Cool. We also let Sonia’s comment, “I told’m you’d be here,” slide. Did she mean them? Him? Hattie was becoming the It girl right before my eyes. The fact that nobody at SHS had less interest in being It than her exemplified a kind of irony that would bring tears of joy to our English teacher, Mrs. Langhouser.
Once in the family room, we played a cutthroat round of pool with a couple of the football guys. While I’m no match for Hattie, I can get surprisingly competitive in these situations. Nonetheless, my focus remained on assessing our opponents’ virginity-taking worthiness. Mostly, my intentions were uncomplicated, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit a small part of me wanted Hattie to lose it so I wasn’t alone. Maybe it would make it easier for me to confess the truth.
I scanned her prospects. Shunsuke, poor guy, unknowingly squandered his chance and left the room. Sean Wolcott was cute, in a Neanderthal kind of way. We were each other’s designated spin-the-bottle kiss at Max’s bar mitzvah in seventh grade. I looked at his beefy hands on the pool cue. He just wasn’t right for Hattie, even for this sort of thing. Especially for this sort of thing?
I was halfway through my third beer (my limit before I’d slide into the Sonia zone). Hattie had nearly five. Before I could process how out of character that was for her, Captain Dickhead strolled through the family room door. Panic flitted through my chest. We hadn’t been this close since the prom.
“I play winner,” he announced, assuming full command of the room while still managing to ignore me.
Oh, how I loathe you, Jay Fucking Seavers.
Hattie sidled next to me and gave me a nudge. She cast a side glance at him and then back at me. A slurry smile spread across her face. “Whoop, there it is,” she whispered.
God no.
“You don’t like him,” I said, almost too quickly, pulse popping in my wrists, sober as the eight ball. She shrugged. Her eyes weren’t quite connecting with mine. “Crap,” I muttered. “You’re drunk.”
Her laugh was throaty. “He’s such a man-whore he’s probably not bad,” she said, adding, “I stole a condom from my brother’s room.”
I shuddered at the invading memory of his hands everywhere at once and spun toward the wall, pretending to fiddle with one of those blue chalky cubes used on pool cues. I couldn’t bear it if he slept with her and me. It was gross. He was gross. And not gross. There were so many objections colliding in my head, I couldn’t make sense of a single one.
“Look at you, Reid, with the Masters chalk,” Neanderthal Sean said, perhaps remembering the smooch we shared in a broom closet those many moons ago. I could not care and smiled tightly at him.
Jay brushed past me to close the space between Hattie and himself, resting his hands on the pool table and leaning in to appraise her best shot. His tiny, muscular ass presented itself like a trophy. I thought about spitting on it. He was posing, but straightened up in time for plausible deniability.
“Six-ball in the left corner pocket,” he said to Hattie with a saucy gaze. Right in front of me. “That’s your shot.”
I set my jaw and glared at him. She knows her shot. And could kick your ass. How ‘bout we shoot your balls in the fucking corner pocket, Dickhead?
It didn’t matter. I was invisible to him in Hattie’s glow. This was the heartbreaking truth of the sidekick: in the big moments, it’s all about the superhero. I wanted to scream. Instead, I yanked her arm.
“Wait!” I pretended to point out another shot but hissed in her ear. “Real friends don’t let friends sleep with dickheads.”
She broke a smile and nodded. “Riiiiiiight,” she whispered, all sly. “Here.” She tossed Jay her cue with perfect accuracy. “You give it a go.” He smiled, but blinked like he’d been stung by a bee.
I swept Hattie outside.
“You’re right,” Hattie said. “He’s a wanker. I lost my focus.”
“You would have regretted that,” I said over the music. “He doesn’t deserve you.” My thoughts swam from the beer and the close call. I couldn’t even figure out where I fit into the scenario. If I’d told her the truth from the beginning, she wouldn’t have entertained the idea at all, drunk or not.
On the patio, it was the point in the party when kids danced, and a compact mob throbbed.
I spied Matt Stedman, band geek turned hipster and drummer for Vanilla Yeti, a rock band comprised high schoolers. Stedman and I had been in the same Spanish class for three years. “I’ve got it! Stedman!” I said. I counted his virtues on my fingers. “Not needy. Cute. Leaving for college…” I struggled. “Two points might be enough.”
She narrowed her eyes, spotting him. “Ooh, very good.”
“Plus, he has rhythm.” I was talking to myself at that point. Hammy had appeared from nowhere and dragged Hattie to dance. Of course he had. I glanced at my phone. 10:42. I supposedly had an 11:30 curfew.
“Hey, Reid,” Emma Rose said, touching my arm. “Love your skirt. Abercrombie?”
I found myself next to the Bobble Heads. Why is it so easy to dislike perfect looking rich girls? Have we been brainwashed by movies? Exhibit A: Emma Rose Burnham. Long, straightened blonde hair. Large, liquid brown eyes. Size two. Dressed like a Polo ad. Greta and Mimi, royal attendants, each imitated Emma Rose in her own way. The hairstyle. Touching people while talking to them. The shallow compliments that flowed like water in a brainless, babbling brook. Maybe it was the other way around: girls like Emma Rose were brainwashed to think this was how you act if you’re born pretty and rich.
“Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to wade into the shopping chatter while scouting, so I said, “No dancing?”
“Meh,” she said. “In a beer or two. These jeans are pretty low cut. Don’t want to get caught flashing my bum.”
“And if you wait two beers?” I asked.
“I won’t mind flashing it.”
Okay, she could be funny, occasionally. I nodded.
“If I had that butt I’d be flashing it all over the damn place,” Mimi said.
I did my best to sigh silently. God, summer was going to suck.
“Where’s Hattie?” Emma Rose asked.
“With the Sandwich,” I said, nodding toward them.
“Oh, yeah,” she said.
The song changed. Hattie danced with Matt Stedman now. I smiled.
Emma Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Look at Priya dancing with that Braeburn hockey player.” We turned simultaneously. Please, God, don’t let me become a Bobble.
“That’s not even the once she dumped Gib for,” Greta said. “Sonia said that guy’s a Rockefeller cousin. Total trust funder.” The guy, clean cut and tan, was grinding with a hand on each of Priya’s hips.
“Ew,” I said.
“God, Priya’s a bitch. Gib has got to move on,” Emma Rose said, like she had been counseling him through the break-up. Like she didn’t want to jump him herself. “Who could blame him if he did beat the crap out of that guy. Or the other hockey player.”
“Right?” chimed Greta.
“Come on, that’s a rumor,” I said. After Priya dumped him, it got around that Gib broke into the Braeburn kid’s car at the ice rink, hid in the back seat, then jumped him and supposedly busted his nose. It was so violent and cowardly and un-Gib that Hattie and I never believed it. Hammy said it was bullshit, too, and he would know. Listening to the goddesses of gossip here take it as truth annoyed me. I mumbled, “Bye,” and stepped into the shadows of the lawn.
The grass felt dewy and cool so I took off my sandals, carrying them in one hand while I ran my free hand along the groomed hedges ringing the house. Accidentally, sort of, I looked in each window I passed. In a den, Eve and her college friends laughed, lounging on leather furniture. In the living room, Charlie and Alesha made out on the couch. I blushed and looked away. Why was I always the observer and never the observed?
“Reid.”
I jumped—a reflex, I guess, since I recognized Hammy’s voice. I squinted toward his lanky figure under a tree. He was like Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz when all his straw is missing.
“What are you doing?” I asked, then noticed the orange glow of his joint. “Ah. Hammy the Stoner tonight, eh?”
“Reid the Peeping Tom tonight, eh?” he said.
“I didn’t mean to peep,” I said, walking to him. “But yay, Charlie!”
“His persistence paid off at last.” He sucked the joint and held his breath, offering me a hit.
I shook my head. “Makes me stupid.”
“Me too,” he said.
“You and Hattie had the moves like Jagger on the dance floor,” I said. His eyebrows folded in on his eyes. So fun to tease, the Sandwich. “You know I know you love her, right?”
He looked like he might deny it at first, but broke into a smile.
“I knew it!” I said. “Don’t worry, it’s not obvious to everyone. Just me. I have a sixth sense for who likes Hattie.”
“Okay, but, is not obvious a good thing?” He leaned against the tree.
I considered telling him she was on a mission to sleep with someone tonight. My role was Scout, after all, and they’d make a great couple. But I couldn’t bear to think of him rejected. I patted his sinewy shoulder and leaned against the wide tree trunk beside him. “Tomorrow she goes.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” We studied the patterns the leaves made against the night sky for a while.
“You’re not the only person it sucks for,” I said. “I’ve got eight weeks of zero fun girls to hang with. There’s a disturbingly real possibility I will morph into a Bobble Head.”
He abruptly turned toward the tree and banged his fists against it. “She’s so perfect!” he wailed. “Life is not fair, Reid.” He slumped to the ground, sitting crisscross applesauce, like third grade.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I said, sitting beside him. “At least you have friends.”
He popped to his knees, grabbing my shoulders. “I’ve got it!” he said. For a second, I thought he’d go all desperate romantic guy and kiss me, but he didn’t and then I felt stupid for even suspecting it. “Let’s make a pact,” he said. “It will be The Summer of Reid and Sam.”
I chuckled, both at his idea and at him calling himself by his actual name. He was so Hammy anything else seemed ridiculous.
“I’m serious!” he went on. “We’ll force each other to go out so we don’t become hermits.”
“Ummm. I think you’re toasted. A toasted Hammy Sandwich.” It was an awkward joke, but he rallied.
“Yes, I am. But that’s irrelevant. I’m tired of this scene. Hattie’s the only thing that makes these stupid-ass parties worthwhile.”
“Your flattery is stunning.” In truth, I was terrified to come to one of these stupid-ass parties without her. “You know you’ll go out anyway, Hammy. You’re at every party.”
“Not anymore. I’m sick of it. And what then? Are we just going to sit home and play X-Box all summer? We’re seventeen, for chrissakes.”
“I don’t have an X-Box.”
“Come on. You know what I mean! We’re supposed to be living the dream. Groping people on a daily basis.”
“Right,” I said. We watched a couple of fireflies blink over the lawn. “I was planning to work a lot and bank some serious college money.”
Hammy threw his hands up, like he was fending off a smelly dog. “Don’t! You’re killing me. My idea is so much better. The Summer of Sam and Reid.”
“You don’t need me, Hammy.”
“But I do.” He stuck out his hand for a shake.
I forced a laugh. “What are we going to do? Hunt for buried treasure? Build a tree fort?” “Anything but stay home alone,” he said. He grinned his goofy crooked grin. Why was I stalling? His attention, and the promise of it all summer, was a game changer for me. It was also terrifying. Do you want to play it safe or have an actual social life of your own?
“Can we get a groovy van and solve mysteries with Scooby?” I said.
“Abso-fucking-lutely. I’ll be Fred.”
He was a bit more Shaggy, but I couldn’t say that. I mean, obviously I was Velma.
He wagged his hand for the shake. I took it. “You’re on, Stoner Boy. I’ll get you a red cravat like Fred’s.”
“Righteous!” he said. I admit it felt like he’d pulled me into a lifeboat from the Titanic. “I’ll call you tomorrow after work,” he said, getting up and walking backward toward the pulsing crowd on the patio.
“Excellent,” I called. And I smiled for much longer than the Art of Cool dictates.
I made my way back inside through the garage, where beer pong wreckage lay scattered and forlorn. In the kitchen, I slid into my sandals and searched the fridge for something non-alcoholic. Here’s the weird thing about Scofield parties. I barely knew Sonia Jaffe, and yet I somehow felt perfectly comfortable pushing aside a carton of almond milk and a container of wilted greens in her refrigerator to snag a can of sparkling water. I swung the door shut to find myself face to face with Hattie.
“Where’d you come from?” I said.
“We were playing pool.” She smiled.
“We?” I peered over her shoulder. When I saw Gib, I actually had to grab the counter. Wasn’t she just dancing with Stedman? How long had I been with Hammy?
I tried to sound composed. “Who won?”
“Me,” Gib said, patting his chest, all self-satisfied.
“He cheats,” she said. Her eyes twinkled.
“How do you cheat at pool?” he said, flinging his arms wide. Flirting. He was flirting with Hattie. Gib flipping Soule. I scanned the patio for Priya and spotted her with Rockefeller by the keg. He’s moving on!
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Hattie said. She held her Solo cup under the ice maker in the freezer door.
“Hattie, I have to get home. . .” I said.
“I’ll drop her off,” Gib said. “It’s on my way,” he added, as if we didn’t all three know the subtext here.
My eyes snapped to Hattie’s. We had an instant silent conversation.
Me (eyebrows up): Holy shit, are you kidding me?
Hattie: No! I am not! Put down your eyebrows and go!
It took all I had. “Uh, yeah, okay.”
She flicked her eyes to the door. I backed toward it. “Be quiet when you come in. My mom’s, like, CIA.” What was I saying? This wasn’t true. My mom reserved all parental energy for her war on autism.
Hattie gave me a funny look. “Right.”
I waved in an embarrassing tootle-loo action and slipped out the front door, rushing onto the soft grass. “Oh my God,” I whisper-screamed to the stars. Unable to stop smiling, I crossed the soft grass, murmuring a few awe-struck swears, and plunked into the Fiesta.
I looked at her empty seat and sighed.
The post Start Reading ‘The Stepping Off Place’ Now appeared first on Epic Reads.
No comments:
Post a Comment