Since You've Been Gone (17 page)

“Hey,” I whispered. I nudged her ankle with my foot. “Did Sam—” I was about to ask her when I realized that she
was breathing slow and regular, her mascaraed eyes firmly closed. Sloane could always drop off to sleep immediately, something she attributed to Milly and Anderson never giving her a set bedtime when she was little. “So you learn to sleep when you can,” she’d explained to me. “None of this story-reading, glass-of-water nonsense. I was always the one falling asleep on the pile of coats at a party.”

I waited to see if she was out for good, giving her one more gentle nudge. But she didn’t stir, so I figured I’d just ask her in the morning. I closed my eyes, and felt myself drift off, somehow comforted by the knowledge that when I woke up in the morning, Sloane would be there.

I woke up with a start. I looked around, trying to figure out why I wasn’t still sleeping. It wasn’t that the cat had fallen asleep on my head again, or that either of my parents were yelling at me to wake up. Pieces of the night before came back—delivering pizza with Dawn, Jamie Roarke, hugging mini-mart James—and I realized, with some surprise, these weren’t dream fragments. They had actually happened. I was about to try and go back to sleep, when the phone on my nightstand lit up.

A text.

I grabbed it and saw I had two—the first one must have been what woke me up. But despite the fact it wasn’t even eight yet, as I looked down at the phone, I was wide awake. Both texts
were from a number I didn’t recognize. And as I held the phone in my hand, it buzzed with a third.

Emily. You awake?

I’m outside.

Let’s go.

It was like my brain short-circuited for a moment, then started working again, double-time. It was Sloane.

She was back.

I was out my door and down the stairs in a flash, not putting anything on over the T-shirt I’d been sleeping in, not trying to be quiet, not caring if I woke the whole house as my bare feet pounded down the stairs. Sloane was here, she was waiting for me, and she could tell me what had happened, where she’d gone—actually, I realized as I jumped down the last two steps to the first floor landing and launched myself into the mudroom, I didn’t even care about that. All that mattered was that she was here, and things could go back to how they’d been.

I pulled open the front door and stopped short. Frank was sitting on the steps, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, iPod strapped to his arm, and he stood and smiled when he saw me. “Hey,” he said. “Ready to go for a run?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it when I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I just stared at him as I felt my heart rate start to slow, my hopes fall. It wasn’t Sloane. She hadn’t come back.

She was still gone.

“Uh,” Frank said, and I noticed for the first time that he looked confused and a little uncomfortable.

I looked down at myself and suddenly realized that I had bigger problems. I was standing in front of Frank Porter—
Frank Porter
—in my nightshirt. Though it was slightly longer than a regular T-shirt, it wasn’t by much, and I quickly tugged it down. I was barefoot, and—oh god—I still had on some of the zit cream I’d put on my face the night before. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I quickly crossed my arms over my chest, then regretted this, as it caused the T-shirt to ride up higher.

“Sorry,” Frank said, and while I had a feeling he was trying to sound contrite, this was undercut slightly by the fact that he also looked like he was on the verge of cracking up. “I got your cell number and address from the school directory. I didn’t mean to wake you up—I guess I figured that if you weren’t awake, you wouldn’t . . . you know, come outside.”

I nodded, like this was a normal conversation. But part of me was still reeling at the fact that this was happening at all. I honestly couldn’t understand how I had gone, in the course of a week, from not speaking to Frank Porter, to knowing he had a sneaky hot body, to standing half naked in front of him.

“So,” he said, glancing down at my feet with a smile, “is this the barefoot running trend I keep reading about?”

“Oh,” I said. My face felt hot, like it was on fire, and I had a feeling it was bright red, which probably looked just fantastic with the white zit cream. “Um, no. Ha ha. I just . . .”

“Emily?” I turned and saw my dad standing behind me, wearing his robe and slippers and carrying his laptop, his glasses perched on top of his head. I truly hadn’t thought this could get any worse. But apparently Frank Porter was going to see the entire Hughes family in their pajamas this morning.

“Dad,” I said, hearing how strangled my voice sounded.

“Have you seen my glasses?” he asked, not, apparently, thinking anything was strange about the fact that his daughter was awake at eight a.m. and standing in the doorway in her pajamas, talking to a boy he’d never met.

“They’re on your head, sir,” Frank supplied from the porch.

My father reached up and patted his head, then nodded and put them on. Then he squinted out at Frank. “Do I know you?”

“That’s Frank,” I managed. It was possible to die of embarrassment, right? The expression had to have come from somewhere. “We were just, um, going running.”

“Oh,” my dad said. He stared at Frank a moment longer, then looked at me and frowned. “Well, be sure to put some shoes on.” Then he continued on inside, no doubt heading to the dining room to start working.

“Okay,” I managed. “I’ll just go upstairs and put on something to run in. And then I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here,” Frank said, and it looked like he was trying—though not very hard—to suppress a grin.

I nodded but, not wanting to turn around, backed up until I reached the doorway, then took a big step backward and shut
the door. I leaned against it, closing my eyes, wondering for just a moment if I was actually in a nightmare. Surely this qualified.

Ten minutes later, I’d washed my face and put on a long-sleeved T-shirt and long leggings with my running shoes. It was already getting hot outside, but I felt that I needed to balance out the accidental half-nudity that had started my morning. “Ready to go?” I asked as I joined Frank outside, iPod in hand. I was hoping that if I was brusque and businesslike, he’d forget all about the state I’d shown up in.

“Sure,” he said, walking to the end of the driveway with me. I could tell that he was trying to catch my eye, but I busied myself with selecting my new playlist and adjusting the volume, not putting in my earbuds yet or pressing play, since I still wasn’t sure what the etiquette with that was.

“Ready?” I asked. Frank nodded, and we started running, me on the outside like before. I kept the pace slower, knowing that I certainly needed a warm-up, as my muscles were cold.

“So I guess I surprised you this morning?” Frank asked after a few minutes of silent running, and I got the feeling that he hadn’t been able to keep this to himself any longer.

“A little bit,” I said, realizing now that I was surprised—I hadn’t expected him to want to keep running.

“I said we should do it again, and you said anytime,” he said. “I remember you did.”

“I thought you were kidding,” I replied. “It didn’t look like you’d really had a good time.”

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Frank said. “Especially not in the beginning. But I’m not about to give up.”

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. We ran in silence for a few steps, just the sound of our sneakers hitting the pavement, occasionally finding the same rhythm and landing in sequence, then falling out of it once more.

“Wow what?” Frank asked, a defensive note I hadn’t heard before creeping into his voice.

“No,” I said quickly, wishing I’d never said anything. “Nothing. Never mind.” Frank nodded and looked straight ahead, his mouth set in a thin line and a dull flush of color in his cheeks. Oh god. Had I just insulted him? If Sloane were here, I could have asked her this question with my eyes, and she would have been able to answer me in the same way. But of course, if Sloane were here, I wouldn’t be running with Frank Porter at all. “I didn’t mean anything bad,” I started, wondering even as I spoke if I should have just let this go. “I just meant that it makes sense.”

There was a low-hanging branch in front of us, and we both ducked in unison to avoid it. “What does?”

“Just that you’d have that attitude,” I said, trying to articulate what had been an instantaneous reaction. “It’s understandable. I mean, because of who you are.” Frank looked over at me, and from his expression, I hadn’t cleared anything up, but had just made things worse.

“Who I am?” he repeated, his voice quiet.

“Yeah,” I said, now really wishing I’d let things go and not tried to explain anything. I didn’t even know Frank Porter; why was I attempting to tell him who he was? I had the distinct feeling like I was not awake enough to handle this conversation. “You’re Frank Porter. You’re good at everything.”

“Not at running,” he pointed out. “I’m
terrible
at that.”

“But you’re not giving up, like you said. So you probably will be soon.”

Frank looked straight ahead, and we didn’t speak for a few minutes, and I wondered if I’d overstepped, made things worse when I was trying to make them better. I was on the verge of trying to figure out how to apologize when Frank asked, “So how’s the list coming?”

“You got my e-mail?” I asked, and he nodded. Even though I told myself it was a long shot, I could feel my hopes start to rise. Maybe there had been something in the list I’d just been overlooking, and the answer was right there, had been there all along. “Did you find anything?”

Frank shook his head, and I felt my hopes deflate. “But I’ve just started to look,” he said, shooting me a quick smile. “And in the meantime, I had some ideas.”

I looked over at him, then had to do an awkward skipping movement over a rock that had shown up in my path. But I was glad for the distraction; it allowed me to try and process how strange it was to hear Frank talking about my list like it was just ordinary, when it had been my secret, something I’d been
turning over and over in my head but not ever talking about. “What do you mean, ideas?”

“For finishing your list,” he said, like this should have been obvious. “I can help you, if you want.” I looked back at the road ahead, trying to sort through how I felt about this. It was one thing to go running twice with Frank Porter. This would be something else. “I’m seriously in need of a project,” he went on. “I mean, even Collins has a summer project.”

“He does?”

“He decided he’s going to have a girlfriend by the end of the summer. Or, as he insists on putting it, a steady hang.”

“And how’s that going?”

Frank laughed. “About as well as you’d imagine. And I get to hear about it every day at work.”

We ran in silence for a while then, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable, and when I looked back at Frank, he held up his iPod, like asking if it was okay if we turned them on. I nodded and slipped my own earbuds in, listening to the same mix I had run to before. It was actually nice, running next to Frank but not feeling the pressure to say the right thing or keep the conversation going. It looked like he was occasionally laughing as he ran, which I didn’t get, unless he was listening to someone like They Might Be Giants, which was about as far into the nineties as I ventured. We had gone farther this time, and we were almost at the entrance to the town beach. I pointed ahead at it, and Frank nodded, and maybe it was because we’d raced to the
end before, but we both started sprinting. My muscles weren’t protesting quite as loudly this time, but it was still a struggle to pick up my pace. I reached the carved wooden sign indicating the beach entrance before Frank did, but not by much. We both just gasped for breath for a few seconds, then Frank took his earbuds out and smiled at me. “Nicely done.”

“You too,” I said, as I pulled out my own earphones, bending over slightly, trying to take long, deep breaths and slow down my heart rate. I straightened up and we started to walk back, both of us grimacing, and I knew I’d be feeling this run tomorrow morning.

“Hey, what are you listening to?” Frank asked, and before I could stop him or even realize what was happening, he’d taken the iPod from my hands and was scrolling through my playlist.

“No, that’s not—” I started. “I was just, um . . .”

Frank looked at me, and he was smiling now as he looked down at it. “You know there’s a loop function, right?” he asked. “So you don’t have to keep repeating the playlist?”

“I know,” I muttered. “Mine’s just broken because I left it in my car when it was raining. My roof doesn’t work.”

“I’ve never even heard of these songs,” he said, frowning at it. “What’s the Downeaster ‘Alexa’?”

“It’s Billy Joel,” I said, and I could hear myself getting defensive, which was surprising, because I hadn’t known I felt that strongly about him. “It’s . . . about the plight of fishermen on Long Island.” I had meant for that to bolster my argument that
it was a good song, but as soon as I’d said it, I started to rethink this, especially when Frank started laughing.

“I honestly don’t recognize half these artists,” Frank said, shaking his head. “And why aren’t there any
g
’s in any of these song titles?”