“By being judgy. You’re always so judgy.”
“I’m not…” I didn’t finish, because Iwasjudging her right then and instantly felt guilty for it. “Let me find our ride back to the dorms. I made brownies.”
“Magic?”
“No. Caramel.”
She pumped her fist and murmured approvingly.
Just then, Ethan appeared on the trampled lawn.
“I don’t know what a ‘frat emergency’ is,” he said, jumping up the front steps two at a time and sidling up next to me with a gentle cup of my elbow, “but I didn’t like the sound of it. I broke at least four traffic laws to get here. Also, I’m parked in a fire lane, so we gotta move.”
“Of course she called you,” my sister mumbled. “She always calls you. God forbid she be alone with me for two minutes.”
I pressed my eyes shut. “Laurel, you’re drunk.”
“Let me get my bag,Mom. Then you can ground me for as long as you want.” She ambled back into the debauchery while the base of my skull buzzed with irritation and dread.
“My god,” I moaned.
Ethan’s elbow knocked mine. “Hey, can we talk?”
“Uh, sure.” I nodded, not sure what to make of a surprisecan we talk?“Let’s get Laurel home. Then maybe we can go somewhere?”
“Good. Yeah.” His eyebrows curled into this worried-Labrador-retriever expression.
We waited on the porch as coeds spilled in and out of the door with the sounds of a booming bass line. Ethan wasn’t saying anything. He looked nervous. Was he nervous?
I pulled out my phone, a reflex to feeling any social discomfort. Mixed in with the H&M promotional emails and unopened daily digests from theNew York TimesI’d resolved to start reading at the beginning of 2015 was an email notification from a name I saw biannually.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Norway album
Charley girl—
Surprise! We moved to Norway! We’re with a research team following humpback whales. Absolutely incredible. Album attached. Can you ask your sister if it would kill her to respond to a message now and again?
—Mom and Dad
I typed up a quick response, sidestepping all talk of Laurel in favor of a school update she didn’t ask for. Before I hit send,I opened the attachments. There were a handful of stills my dad clearly had taken—action shots of whales flopping into the dark ocean, spraying water all around them like an explosion of stars—but the rest were photos from my mom’s iPhone.
Derek laughing with some man in coveralls, one hand clapping the man’s shoulder and the other clutching a tall glass of beer.
Derek wearing a camera on his shoulder, balancing over the edge of a fishing boat, his eyes slits as he concentrated on his mammoth subject.
Derek with his crew, pointing into the middle distance with an expression so self-important he gave candids of James Cameron a run for their money.
My mom wasn’t in the pictures, and I couldn’t help but pick apart the way she’d disappeared into my dad’s life after he’d failed to be a part of ours. It was the only way for them to be together: someone had to recede.
I pressed send and closed out the window, feeling that particular brand of anxiety that swirled in my gut when I tugged on that thin piece of thread that still connected me to them, despite the way our entirely separate lives hardly ever crossed anymore. With my parents, I’d always be loose change at the bottom of their pockets: valuable enough to keep carrying but never prized enough to account for.
“You good?” Ethan asked.
I nodded without registering the question as I leaned my head through the front door in search of my sister. My eyes snagged on her chatting up some random dude who was lying on a stained sectional with two missing cushions. “One sec,” I told Ethan before torpedoing down the hall.
