mean to?”
“Pen, let it go,” pleaded Cat, getting up and coming to kneel down beside Will. Tenderly, she placed a hand against the lean slope of his cheek, but he flinched, and she took it away.
“You’re right,” he said, looking straight at Pen. She didn’t want to be right.
“Oh, Will,” she said, and silence sprawled out between the three of them after she said it. Except for shivering, nobody moved. Pen could hear laughter and shouting spilling toward them over the edge of the Crater from what felt like a very long distance away.
“I don’t know what to do.” Will’s voice was hollow. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Because Pen didn’t know, either, she unfolded herself and stretched out next to him on the grass. Cat did the same, flaring and settling the gray blanket out and across the three of them. They lay like that, not touching or speaking, in the center of Crater, with the moon like a white balloon and the ground like a cupped hand, holding them, and after a little while, they got up and walked home.
P EN TURNED UP THE MUSIC . I N A CHARACTERISTIC COMBINATION OF thoughtfulness and mockery (and because he was just a guy who liked to make playlists), for the trip, Jamie had made her a playlist of the music she had listened to in college. “The sound track of your youth. Total-body nostalgia immersion,” he’d intoned, dangling the iPod in front of her nose. “You know you want it.”
Because her car didn’t have an iPod hookup, she had taken his Land Cruiser, mammoth, black, and gas-gulping, a ridiculous vehicle for any non-outback dweller, but particularly for a man who walked to work and almost never had cause to take his SUV out of the shockingly expensive garage in which it languished. (In moments, Pen imagined it there, waiting, like a lonely, shiny hippopotamus.) It was Pen’s habit to make relentless fun of Jamie for owning it. “Who do you think you are, Puff Daddy?” she’d asked the first time he’d shown up with it, which had made Jamie shut his eyes and say, “Nobody calls him that. Nobody. For well over a decade, not one person has even considered calling him that.” Even so, Pen loved driving it. She felt like a badass driving it (and she was not someone who got a lot of opportunities to feel like a badass), and the playlist was marvelous, just what the doctor ordered.
Just as Pen came to the place in the highway where the mountains appeared like magic—up and over a hill, around a curve, and there they were in lines and layers, ghostly and blue-gray, more like clouds or billows of smoke along the horizon than like mountains—she remembered how Jason had never followed through on his threats. He hadn’t shown up on Will’s doorstep with a gang of fraternity brothers out for blood or with a lawyer out for damages. He hadn’t confronted Will at all, even though they had expected him to, Cat and Pen, fearfully, Will with a fatalism that, in Pen’s opinion, bordered, disturbingly, on hopefulness.
Instead, a week or so later, Jason did something entirely other: he walked up to Cat as she sat drinking coffee with Pen in a campus café and, with a great, serious sheepishness and a ducking motion that was almost a bow, handed her a letter. They hadn’t known who he was at first, having only seen him at night and dressed as a mummy. He could have been anyone: a big kid in a dark blue sweatshirt and brown cords, clean shaven, his blond hair newly cut, patches of pale skin beneath the sharp line of his short sideburns.
It was only when Pen noticed the partially healed cuts on his upper lip and the faded green half-moon bruises under his eyes and saw a wary expression replace Cat’s initial smile that she understood who he was. Pen and Cat looked at each other, then down at the white envelope in Cat’s hand.
“What’s this?” asked Cat.
“Just something I needed to say to you,” Jason said, shoulders high, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.
Pen
“Pen, let it go,” pleaded Cat, getting up and coming to kneel down beside Will. Tenderly, she placed a hand against the lean slope of his cheek, but he flinched, and she took it away.
“You’re right,” he said, looking straight at Pen. She didn’t want to be right.
“Oh, Will,” she said, and silence sprawled out between the three of them after she said it. Except for shivering, nobody moved. Pen could hear laughter and shouting spilling toward them over the edge of the Crater from what felt like a very long distance away.
“I don’t know what to do.” Will’s voice was hollow. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Because Pen didn’t know, either, she unfolded herself and stretched out next to him on the grass. Cat did the same, flaring and settling the gray blanket out and across the three of them. They lay like that, not touching or speaking, in the center of Crater, with the moon like a white balloon and the ground like a cupped hand, holding them, and after a little while, they got up and walked home.
P EN TURNED UP THE MUSIC . I N A CHARACTERISTIC COMBINATION OF thoughtfulness and mockery (and because he was just a guy who liked to make playlists), for the trip, Jamie had made her a playlist of the music she had listened to in college. “The sound track of your youth. Total-body nostalgia immersion,” he’d intoned, dangling the iPod in front of her nose. “You know you want it.”
Because her car didn’t have an iPod hookup, she had taken his Land Cruiser, mammoth, black, and gas-gulping, a ridiculous vehicle for any non-outback dweller, but particularly for a man who walked to work and almost never had cause to take his SUV out of the shockingly expensive garage in which it languished. (In moments, Pen imagined it there, waiting, like a lonely, shiny hippopotamus.) It was Pen’s habit to make relentless fun of Jamie for owning it. “Who do you think you are, Puff Daddy?” she’d asked the first time he’d shown up with it, which had made Jamie shut his eyes and say, “Nobody calls him that. Nobody. For well over a decade, not one person has even considered calling him that.” Even so, Pen loved driving it. She felt like a badass driving it (and she was not someone who got a lot of opportunities to feel like a badass), and the playlist was marvelous, just what the doctor ordered.
Just as Pen came to the place in the highway where the mountains appeared like magic—up and over a hill, around a curve, and there they were in lines and layers, ghostly and blue-gray, more like clouds or billows of smoke along the horizon than like mountains—she remembered how Jason had never followed through on his threats. He hadn’t shown up on Will’s doorstep with a gang of fraternity brothers out for blood or with a lawyer out for damages. He hadn’t confronted Will at all, even though they had expected him to, Cat and Pen, fearfully, Will with a fatalism that, in Pen’s opinion, bordered, disturbingly, on hopefulness.
Instead, a week or so later, Jason did something entirely other: he walked up to Cat as she sat drinking coffee with Pen in a campus café and, with a great, serious sheepishness and a ducking motion that was almost a bow, handed her a letter. They hadn’t known who he was at first, having only seen him at night and dressed as a mummy. He could have been anyone: a big kid in a dark blue sweatshirt and brown cords, clean shaven, his blond hair newly cut, patches of pale skin beneath the sharp line of his short sideburns.
It was only when Pen noticed the partially healed cuts on his upper lip and the faded green half-moon bruises under his eyes and saw a wary expression replace Cat’s initial smile that she understood who he was. Pen and Cat looked at each other, then down at the white envelope in Cat’s hand.
“What’s this?” asked Cat.
“Just something I needed to say to you,” Jason said, shoulders high, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.
Pen
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