Page 71 of Kitten

“You got back together with Lou?”

“Yes, you were right about everything. We’re…back together now.” I felt strange yet stylish using Isabelle’s turns of phrase. “You’ve seen James, then?”

She had.

“And he’s okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Hard to tell with him, though. He never really tells you how he’s feeling.”

“Did you happen to go into his bedroom?”

“What?”

“I’m just curious.” I rushed to explain. “He got me this stuffed shark from IKEA and I’m curious about where he keeps it now.”

“Oh, BLÅHAJ,” said Isabelle, like BLÅHAJ was an old friend. “Yeah, he’s in the living room.”

The living room! I blushed, unsure how to interpret this. BLÅHAJ banished from the bedroom, or BLÅHAJ promoted to the public sphere. It was possible I had assigned too deep a connection between me and BLÅHAJ.

We discussed Isabelle’s decision to move out. It was an easy one, she said, seeded that night we did shrooms. “I wasn’t supposed to do that. You know, drink.” She stuck out her tongue. “Do drugs.”

“Oh, I’m sorry if I—”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t know. I practically poured the bottle down your throat.”

“It was really yummy.”

“It made me kind of crazy,” she said. “I spent the rest of that evening taking down all the photos on my wall, just wondering, like, who even was I, at what point did I turn into myself? And when I was done with the photos, I just scrolled through all my social media, all the way back to the year I made Facebook. Reading the comments. Deleting everything. Every picture and status update.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah. It was kind of scary at first, but then it was weirdly soothing. I got to the point where I didn’t even recognize the girl in the photos. I had braces back then, and I totally forgot what they felt like. Have you ever had braces?”

“No.”

“Well, with braces, you’re always running your tongue over your teeth. Because food’s always getting stuck, and you don’t want anyone to notice. I remembered I did that so much. I was always trying to be subtle about it. And I realized I still do that now. When other people are talking, I run my tongue over my teeth, even though I don’t have braces anymore. It was weird to pinpoint exactly when I started doing something I assumed I’d always done.”

I thought of my mother, the way she was always massaging her own hands. The habit originated from her cold cream routine, which she practiced religiously because age, she said, showed in your fingers. Eventually, it became a tic. Whenever she was bored, or angry, or stressed, she’d twist her fingers until they whitened. I always worried she wouldwrinkle them even more without the cream softening her grip.

“Sorry to ramble,” Isabelle said. “It just hit really hard, this realization. That everything I do now is probably connected to something I did back then. I guess it’s not that deep, but I was high, and it was a lot.”

“Your actions had consequences,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Like, I saw that my present was the consequence of my past. And once I realized that, I thought, fuck, the future is the consequence of my present. And that really scared me.”

This seemed like a shroomy revelation, but also a true one. I’d experienced something similar, on the beach with Isabelle and Bruno. Without Silver. “You make your life happen, whether or not you mean to.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I’m not totally there yet. It’s hard to accept that I actually have some control over my life—I mean, take it away from me, please—but it’s gotten me to move out. And I haven’t touched a drink since.” Isabelle smiled at me from across the table, and then we both started to giggle.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just really happy for you.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.” Then, in a low voice: “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

I laughed again, amused that I was ever intimidated by Isabelle. She just had really nice skin.

We chatted about my job and apartment hunt. Isabelle listened with a seriousness that betrayed a total unfamiliarity with the subject, but I didn’t hold it against her. WhileIsabelle went to the bathroom, I checked my bank account. There was still some money left from my mother. I waved for the bill and put down my debit card. James would’ve tucked my card into his pocket and replaced it with his, but when Isabelle returned, she only stacked hers on top of mine. The waitress left us a postcard bearing a line drawing of the street. Isabelle insisted I keep it.