Pointe (4 page)

Crumbaugh stands next to Detz with her hands clasped, looking like autumn exploded all over her. It's kind of ironic that she's dedicated her life to preparing kids for their future when she still dresses like a child. Her wardrobe coordinates with seasons and holidays: pumpkin sweaters in October and red hearts from head to toe in February.

“This is a happy time,” she says now in her nasal voice. “But I understand that some of you may be confused by the
feelings
brought up by Donovan's return, so I'll be holding extended hours over the next few weeks as we learn more about his story.”

I lean in to Sara-Kate. “Seriously? She's making this about us right now?”

She shakes her head, brings a hand up to touch the tiny silver hoop at the edge of her bottom lip. “Totally clueless.”

Nobody in this room knows what Donovan went through, can even begin to fathom what his life has been like since seventh grade. Even if he wasn't chained to a bed, his day-to-day looked nothing like ours. The more I think about it, the more positive I am he's never seen the inside of a high school. Kidnappers don't care about education or extracurricular activities or well-balanced meals.

“Thank you, Mrs. Crumbaugh.” Detz smiles like she's the most gracious being on the planet before they tag-team a series of stranger danger warnings better suited for a kindergarten class.

Sara-Kate says my name, and when I look up she's standing, holding out her hand to help me up. The assembly is over and I feel worse than when it began.

Talking about Donovan won't make me forget how I'd step out my front door and hear his voice for months, even years after he'd been gone—teasing me about the way I stand in first position when I'm not in ballet class: heels together, toes pointed to opposite corners. Or inviting me over for dessert because the Pratts had pie or cake or ice cream every night and not just for holidays and special occasions.

A sit-down with Crumbaugh may help other students, the ones who don't have the memories or connection I do. The ones who haven't logged years of sleepovers and countless carpools with Donovan, who don't know that he completely understood me without even trying.

But talking about Donovan won't make me forget the last day I saw him. It won't make me forget how the last minutes between us were so filled with tension and secrets that for the first time in my life, I questioned whether we were still best friends.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE
THING ABOUT KLEIN ANDERSON'S PARTIES IS THAT THEY RE
ally
are the best.

Most families in Ashland Hills do pretty well for themselves, but the Andersons are Old Money, which sets them apart. It also means Klein has access to any kind of liquor and drugs he wants. Girls, too, if Trisha Dove weren't around to keep him in check.

I eat dinner with my parents, change out of my school clothes, and wait for Phil. Sara-Kate is coming, too, but he swings by to get me first since I live three blocks over. My parents are parked at the dining room table, involved in a hot and heavy game of Scrabble. When I walk in wearing my jacket, they take a break to issue the standard weekend warnings: be careful, home by midnight, don't get in the car with anyone who's been drinking, and I stop listening after that.

I look over at Donovan's house as I walk out to Phil's car. Déjà vu. Just like four years before, the porch and front steps are covered in signs. Only this time, instead of hopeful, almost pleading messages, they are happy! And grateful! And heavily punctuated!
WELCOME HOME, DONOVAN!,
and
GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME,
and
WE MISSED YOU!!!!
Stuffed animals are everywhere, like plush dolphins will make up for all the time he didn't get to be a kid. And the candles—they're propped up on every available flat surface. Tea lights and pillars and scented. I know the people who left all this stuff mean well, but they've only succeeded in making the Pratts' lawn look like a shrine . . . or a junkyard.

Phil is staring at it, too, when I slide into the passenger seat.

“So, I guess you haven't seen him?” he asks, chewing on his bottom lip as he turns to me.

“We've called a few times but they're not answering.” I take a deep breath, thinking of how hopeful I was this afternoon when my mother and I sat next to each other on the couch, the phone between our ears. “I think they unplugged their answering machine. And my mom says we can't go over without talking to someone first.”

“What do you think he's doing? Besides feeling really fucking happy that he's back?”

“Maybe that's all.” I strap my seat belt across my chest, click it into place. “Maybe being happy is enough.”

I look along our street as Phil reverses down my driveway. Our neighborhood looks like any other neighborhood in Midwest, suburban America. The same brick houses, the same long, wide driveways, the same tastefully landscaped yards and seasonal porch decorations. This time of year, it's colorful gourds displayed in groups of three and four, and harvest wreaths hung on front doors.

“Phil, where do you think he was?” I ask, glancing at Donovan's house once more before we head in the opposite direction. “I know the cops found him in Vegas, but where do you think he was actually
living
?”

“I don't know.” Phil looks both ways before he continues through a four-way stop. “I didn't really think about it. I mean, I did, but it felt wrong. Like, here I am living this normal life in a normal house and he's out there being forced to do God knows—”

I put my hand on his arm when he doesn't continue, gently squeeze right above his elbow. “Yeah. Me too.” Then, “Do you think he's the same at all? I mean . . . what will we talk about when we finally see him? I can't picture it. I can't . . . I won't know what to say.”

Phil is quiet for a few moments as we coast through town on the way to Sara-Kate's, and I wonder what Ashland Hills would look like to Donovan now—
will
look like, once he leaves his house. It's changed some since he's been gone. Not a ton but enough to notice if you haven't been around for four years. Like the big-name coffee chains that have cropped up, trying to put Coffee & Jam out of business. Or the new barbecue place down the street from Casablanca's where every day around noon it smells like someone's shooting off a pulled-pork cannon. There's Ashland Hills Elementary and the organic foods/hippie store that's always empty, and we don't think about what it would be like to suddenly stop seeing them every day.

“Do you remember that time we went to Great America?” Phil rolls to a stop at a yellow light instead of cruising right through like I would. He drives like a model in a student driving handbook—hands at ten and two, never more than two miles above the speed limit.

“Oh. With all our parents?” I haven't thought about that day in years.

“Yeah.” When I look over, Phil grins. “We were eight, right?”

“Nine. And Glenn was with us and started crying because he was too short for that roller coaster we rode over and over again until you puked.”

“Weak stomach. It's genetic.” His grin widens, showing his perfect white teeth. They should be, considering they were caged under braces for three and a half years. “I wasn't the only one. Remember my dare?”

“God.” I groan, clutching my stomach at the memory. “How could I forget? I still can't touch hot dogs.”

Great America food patio. Phil dared Donovan to eat three foot-long dogs in one sitting. Paid for them with his allowance and everything. Donovan did it, but ended up vomiting his accomplishment at the edge of the patio five minutes later. Phil sympathy-puked shortly after that and needless to say, the park employees and our parents were not amused.

“Ma wants to have Donovan's family and you guys over for dinner,” Phil says. “We haven't even talked to them and she's already planning the menu. She'd probably feed me to death if we were separated as long as Donovan and his mom.”

“Your mom would try to feed the entire neighborhood to death.” I pull out my phone to text Sara-Kate, let her know we're only a few blocks away.

She's waiting outside, smoking on the front porch of her darkened house. She strides toward us in a body-hugging tunic, leggings, and knee-high suede boots and I can't imagine what it would be like to have curves like that and not want to hide them.

She'd kill me if I ever said this out loud, but Sara-Kate is kind of a cartoon character. Her features are just so exaggeratedly perfect that if you stare at her too long it looks as if someone drew her. Bow-shaped lips and brown eyes so big and sincere you could drown in them. She knows her way around a makeup bag, but I'd never put anything on my face if I was her. She's just as pretty without it.

“Hey, doll.” She kisses my cheek, wipes away the lipstick print with her thumb, then crawls behind me to sit in back.

“Where are your parents?” I ask, looking pointedly at the cigarette dangling between her index and middle fingers. I keep the window cracked.

“My mom has a show in the city tonight.”

“You'd better be careful with that thing,” Phil says in his dad voice as he turns to eye Sara-Kate and her cigarette.

“Have I ever burned or otherwise desecrated your precious car?” she says, holding it just outside the window so the smoke and ash will blow behind us in the wind.

“Just watch where you hold it, okay?” Phil heads toward Klein's, which means the houses grow larger with each street we cross. The yards become more spacious, the cars in the driveways more luxurious.

Sara-Kate blows two perfectly circular smoke rings out the window, then pushes her round face between the seats. “Thanks for driving, Philip.”

“No problem, Sara-Katherine.” He turns his head slightly to give her the side-eye.

“But it's not Katherine.” Her perpetually sunny face twists into a pout.

“And it's not Philip.” He pauses as we drive by my favorite house in Ashland Hills: all white and three stories high with a flat roof, sturdy columns, and a long balcony off the second level. “Not unless you're my mother.”

But he doesn't hide his grin fast enough when I look over.

Klein's parents are always on some type of vacation or business trip, and his parties have become an institution. He hires actual DJs from Chicago and these things generally last all night and the cops never break them up because his family has more money than anyone in Ashland Hills.

His street is already lined with cars, so we have to park on the next one over. My parents would flip their shit if it ever got back to them that I'd thrown a party this size. Not that I ever would. Mom and Dad are pretty chill on a day-to-day basis, but when something big goes down, they take action
fast.
Attempting to pull off a party like Klein's would land me at least a monthlong grounding. Probably more.

Ellie Harris is sitting on the front steps as we walk up. She leans her head close to Lark Pearson, looks at us, and throws her head back in laughter. I don't know what Hosea likes about her, because I haven't found much. She's pretty enough, I guess, in a manufactured sort of way. Good highlights and perfectly glossed lips; the kind of girl who's never in public without full makeup. I wonder if Hosea has seen her without makeup.

She takes a delicate sip from a bottle of hard cider. “Hi, Phil.”

“Yeah, hi, Phil,” echoes Lark. Her eyes are rimmed with so much liner, it looks like someone punched her.

Phil pauses for a couple of beats to see if they'll acknowledge me or Sara-Kate. They don't. Lark whispers something to Ellie and this time they both laugh. Ellie giggles as she tips the bottle back for another drink.

“Excuse us,
ladies,
” Phil says, and damn does he know how to make a polite word sound like something he found in a toilet.

He holds the heavy front door open for us and closes it firmly behind him.

We step into the room off the foyer where everyone dumps their coats. It's the maid's sitting room, small and plain but comfortable, with a cream-colored suede couch and matching love seat, a bookshelf of hardcover classics, and a sleek television mounted on the far wall. Phil stows our coats in the closet on wooden hangers instead of draping them over the couches like everyone else. “We don't know where their shit has been,” he mumbles as he hangs his thrifted brown leather jacket.

“You know, Lark was in my study hall last year and she was really nice to me,” Sara-Kate says, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “She'd always tell me about the big makeup sales.”

“Blame Ellie Harris.” I shrug off my black peacoat and hand it to Phil, who's waiting, hanger in hand. “Everything she touches turns to bitch.”

“And the first round goes to Theo,” Phil says, nodding with an eyebrow raised in appreciation.

Klein is one of the first people we see as we walk back out to the foyer. He's standing near the bottom of the spiral staircase with a drink in one hand as he surveys the crowd, practically holding court. Just in case anyone forgets this is his house and all. Phil rolls his eyes.

“I still can't believe you fucked him,” he says as he tugs at his denim vest with the frayed edges.

“I didn't.” I give his vest the once-over. It's actually an old denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, but whatever. “And you're
friends
with him.”

“We're tangential friends.” We step into the living room. Sara-Kate by my side, Phil facing us. “Like, one step beyond acquaintances.”

Leo Watson squeezes by us in his Wranglers and signature brown Stetson, pauses for a second to make a face at Phil's black skinny jeans. I don't think he has much room for judgment, considering he dresses like he works on somebody's ranch.

“I think the number of times you've gotten high with someone directly correlates to your level of friendship,” I say to Phil. “You and Klein are one hit away from buying matching bongs.”

“Bullshit.” But he takes off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt and he only does that when he doesn't know what to say.

I tilt my head to the side as I look at him. “Three words: winter formal afterparty.”

Sara-Kate bursts into giggles and I'm next. We'll use any excuse to bring up what happened.

Winter formal is
the
dance at our school. Few people take homecoming seriously besides the athletes and student council, and prom is so overhyped that I wonder how it ever meets anyone's expectations. But winter formal is smack in the middle of the school year, a couple of weeks after we return from break, when everyone is looking for something to beat the post-holiday slump that falls in the dead of winter. Plainly put, it's the night when the entire school gets dressed up and shitfaced, all under one roof. I've been with a date only once, and that was with Klein, my freshman year. I went stag with Sara-Kate and Phil when we were sophomores, but it would be fun to switch it up this year, if there was actually someone I wanted to ask me. Someone available.

Last year, Phil got wasted on airplane bottles of gin and we found him in the Andersons' game room with Klein: arms around each other, straight-up kumbaya bro-love in front of the Indiana Jones pinball machine, and we couldn't tell how long they'd been in there. Seeing the two of them get along so well would have been disturbing if it hadn't been so funny. I swear I heard the words
best buddy
slurred back and forth a few times. Of course Phil denies it and I honestly don't think Klein remembers any part of that night, let alone the end.