Landon’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he clicked the side button without looking. That would be his sister, Jess, calling for what had to be the hundredth time in a seven-day span, hoping to get him to talk long enough to unravel so she could begin the work of piecing him back together. He wouldn’t take the bait, well-meaning as it was. Not when he’d descended to even further lows since they last spoke.
Conor leaned back in his chair. “Can I tell you what I really think?” he asked. “Or have you not had enough to drink yet?”
Landon waved at the bartender, who nodded at his nearly empty glass. “If I say no, will that stop you?”
“Not in the long run.”
“Then shoot.”
“This could be a good thing.”
“Jesus,” Landon said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Next you’re going to tell me this was all preordained and there’s nothing I could have done to stop it.”
“Thereisnothing you could have done to stop it,” said Conor. “I’ll tell you that as many times as you need to hear it.” When Landon didn’t push back like he must have assumed he would, Conor pressed forward. “This could be a fresh start for you. If she hadn’t taken that pill, you always would have wondered. Now you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s over—that you two are done. There are some things you just can’t work through, Landon. Some things you don’t come back from.”
“A fresh start,” Landon repeated, not having heard a thing since. The more he turned it over, the more enticing it became. Landon looked down at the full glass the bartender slid in front of him and suddenly had no interest in it.
“You’ve been through so much, and you never, never ask for help. And I know you can hold your own, but I worry. This could be just what you need to get back out there and start living again. You could turn it all around. Don’t you feel like you’ve just been holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop? Well, here it is!” Conor slapped his hand on the bar. “Here’s the shoe. Now that it’s dropped, we can work with it.”
Landon closed his eyes and reached for the image that steadied and tortured him on the nights when everything felt like it was coming apart: Rose in that absurd and beautiful black dress, inwhite Keds, with red lipstick on her teeth. Their romance had been improbable from the start—everybody said so. She was the girl you admired from a safe distance. But he’d done it. He had won the heart of the beautiful girl in the black dress. She’d picked him, once.
“A blank slate,” Conor said, but Landon was only half listening. “That’s what this is. I’ll help you.”
“I’ve got to go,” Landon said, nearly tripping over himself to pull his jacket off the back of the barstool. “Tell Bill thanks for the drinks.”
“Landon!” Conor yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”
Landon didn’t hear him through the pounding of blood in his ears, his pulse fast as a drummer in the punk rock bands he and Rose had listened to through shared headphones in Rose’s twin bed all those years ago, before the world had chewed them up and spat them out. For the first time in a long time, Landon felt the telltale stirrings of hope. It was as good as any drug he’d ever tried. Because if Landon could win her heart once, he could win it again. He was sure of it.
Chapter Four
Freshmen were generally discouraged from declaring a major too soon, but it didn’t feel like a choice to Rose. The Christmas she turned twelve, she unwrapped a thick Folger’s edition ofKing Lear, the spine cracked just enough she knew someone in the bookstore had at least considered it before her father plucked it from the shelves. “This was the first work of literature I fell in love with,” her dad said, eyes reflecting the white lights that circled the Douglas fir he’d felled in the acres of woods around their house. “You know, I almost named you Cordelia. You’ll see why. But in the end, I didn’t want to burden you with it. You’ll see why, too.” She’d devoured it in two feverish days, whispering Cordelia’s lines, wishing there were more of them. It was beautiful, if still something of a mystery to her, her life not yet measured from tragedy to tragedy. When the time came to declare a major, Rose knew she would not hesitate. English, like her dad. So, when Poppy invited her to a mixer for those brave souls thinking of a major in theater, of all things, the easyyessurprised her. It wasn’t that Rose thought she would be swayed—at least, not consciously. But she did think that the woman she was working to become was the type to say yes when opportunity presented itself.
A thin fog settled over the grass as they walked, the lingering warmth of the day colliding with the edge of a Vermont night. “Don’t be surprised if this gets weird,” Poppy warned her. Rose nearly lost her footing on a patch of uneven ground.
“Defineweird.”
“You didn’t do any theater in high school? Like, not even stage crew or pit orchestra?”
Rose smiled to herself. After she’d plowed through most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, a chunk of his comedies, and a handful of his histories, she’d thought seriously about auditioning for her middle school’s production ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream. She stood in the kitchen with her dad, clutching the script like she might die if it fell out of her hands, trying to force the words out. Her dad laid a hand on her shoulder that stopped her lip from quivering. “You don’t have to do it all, kid,” he said. “Be with these characters the way that feels best to you.”
“No,” Rose said. “Not even crew or orchestra.”
“Theater kids are fundamentally out of control,” said Poppy, adjusting the straps of the green shirt under her fleece so the silk cascaded artfully down her front like a waterfall. “There’s a lot of repression and parent issues that a certain kind of person wants to express by becoming someone else. And a lot of ego, obviously. They’ll be trying to feel us out, see if we’ll mesh with the group they’ve got—they can’t stop you from majoring, but they can make your life hell. I would be shocked if there wasn’t some short-lived nudity, just for shock value.”
Rose laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Don’t tell me you’re a prude.”
She’d never really been in the position to decide whether she was or not. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Poppy stopped walking and grabbed both of Rose’s arms in her dainty, manicured hands. “Just promise me one thing,” she said. “Promise you’ll make them believe that you’re actually considering this. If I can help with the turnout, that gives me a leg up. I’m going to steal lead roles right out from under these seniors’ noses, and I really want to make the right first impression.”
“Sure,” said Rose, surprised that Poppy cared enough that she would show such deference, even if it was all an act. “Of course.”
Poppy took a long breath in and twirled Rose around. They stood in front of a tall brick building, green vines growing out of cracks in the stone that raised questions for Rose about just how recently the place had been deemed up to code.
“Is this…” Rose trailed off, confused by the dilapidated building at a school that exuded such wealth.
