Page 3 of Darling

Eleanor laughed. “Aww, that’s cute.”

“It’s not cute, it’s annoying,” Wendy griped as she tucked in her sheets.

“It’s cute,” Eleanor insisted. “She’ll probably calm down when the adoption goes through. Then she can focus all her mom-energy on momming someone else to death, and maybe we can finally see each other face-to-face.”

“You wanna see my face, sweetheart?” Wendy pushed her face up close to the camera so it was nothing but a big brown blur.

Eleanor cackled. “Go finish setting up your room. I’m just a distraction at this point.” She grinned at Wendy fondly.

“No, no! Give me five more minutes,” Wendy said. She opened the box that held all her books and dumped them out onto the floor.

“So needy,” Eleanor scoffed. “Okay, five more. What was the school like?”

“Bland. The guys there were actually hot, though.”

“I’m going to stop you right there and let you know that prep school boys aren’t ‘hot.’ You’re just confused because there were, like, eight boys at your old school and all of them had faces like a loaf of bread.”

Wendy scrunched up her nose. “You don’t even like boys.”

“Not again. Don’t say it—”

“How do you even know which ones are cute?” Wendy continued, louder.

“Ugh. I’m just gay; I still have eyes. Please, Wendy, love yourself. Do you want to end up with some boy with a bowl cut named Chet who takes you to dinner with his parents while wearing khakis and sweating a lot, or do you want to get fingered in the back of a club you’re technically too young to be in by a gorgeous fucker named Montana who has a dirt bike, plays bass, and had to retake algebra? These! Are not! Hard choices!”

Wendy covered her face with both hands.

“You want dumb hot Montana, don’t you?” Eleanor asked.

“I want dumb hot Montana,” Wendy groaned through her fingers.

“Exactly. So hold off on whatever options are in your native area, and when your parents finally let you out of prison, I’ll introduce you to Montana.”

“You’ll WHAT?”

“Introduce you to Montana. He’s single. And pretty okay.”

“I THOUGHT THAT WAS A HYPOTHETICAL.”

“It was both. Two birds, one six-foot-two stone named Montana.”

“I can’t. Why are you so good at making me feel embarrassed? I’m gonna finish unpacking.” Wendy crossed her room to get to her phone.

“He failed algebra and US history,” Eleanor said quickly, trying to cram in more about Montana. “But his arms are great, he can blow smoke rings, and he has a buzz cu—”

Wendy turned the video chat off.

She flung herself backward on her bed and laughed semi-hysterically while she waited for her heart to stop racing.

Eleanor was the only online friend she’d managed to keep for long. Wendy was pretty good at making friends in real life, so relying on an online community for close friendships never really appealed to her. Eleanor just happened to like all the same weirdo stuff that she did back in sophomore year, and even though they lived in completely different cities, they were online around the same time every day.

When her parents announced they were moving to Chicago, it was purely coincidental that Eleanor lived there. Wendy and Eleanor were both super excited to randomly be placed in each other’s paths like that, and it seemed perfect right up until Mr. Darling firmly put his foot in the way of their in-person introduction.

Wendy pulled up her maps app and figured out how far her new school was from Eleanor’s. It wasn’t that bad. She could probably figure out some way to meet Eleanor halfway between their schools after class was over and manage to get back home before anyone knew she’d been missing.

Wendy did things like this back in their hometown, so it wasn’t nearly as stressful to imagine doing it here. Of course, the city was bigger, but that just meant there’s better public transportation and more emergency services in case anything went wrong. Back home if something happened, you had to wait half an hour or more for an ambulance. Here, she could probably just look up an urgent care center and take a cab.

Some of the books she’d dumped on the floor fluttered their pages angrily as a huge gust of wind blew into her room through the window.