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“Good night, Rafe,” she says.

“Night.”

Neither of us moves.

I watch her eyes go over my face. My eyes. My jaw. They stop somewhere for a half second, I don’t know where, and something goes through her face that I can’t read, and the red starts at her collar again.

I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I don’t breathe, I think.

Then she takes a step back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.

“Yeah.”

And she goes. Across the room, past the bed, to the door. She doesn’t look back. She opens the door, goes through it, and pulls it closed behind her. I hear the guest room door open and close.

I don’t hear the lock.

I stand in the middle of my room. The TV’s still going. Then I sit back down. I don’t turn off the TV. I don’t pick up the tray. I just sit there in the blue light and look at the other end of the couch.

Relief, I said. That’s what I’ve been calling it. All day. When she agreed to come here. On the steps of the old house. When she walked in tonight with her hair wet and sat down like she’d always sat there.

She’s across the hall. She’s safe. She has a room with a lock. But the room feels different with her out of it. Bigger, emptier, and too quiet, like something got turned off.

And relief doesn’t explain that.

25

Everyone Remembers the Nickname

Tessa

Rafe:We’re going to the lake today.

That means I need to dress warm. I dig through my bag and change my shirt twice.

The first one is the black one Kylie lent me for my birthday, which I never gave back. I put it on, look at myself in the guest-room mirror, and take it off because it makes me look like I’m trying too hard. The second one is a long-sleeve gray thermal with a coffee stain on the cuff I’ve never been able to get out. I put it on, look at myself, and take it off because it looks like I’m trying not to try.

I end up in the thermal anyway, with the cuff pushed up so you can’t see the stain, and my jeans, my brown coat, and I stand in front of the mirror with my hat in my hand and feel stupid.

It’s a frozen lake with some guys from high school. They’re going to play hockey. I meet Rafe downstairs for breakfast, and my heart pitter-pats when he looks up at me. I’ve always known his calm green eyes, but he’s really calm, maybe even a little happy. Maybe it’s because he’ll be playing hockey on a lake with his friends.

“Good morning,” I say to him, then his mom, and his dad.

Rafe pulls out the chair next to him, so I sit.

I grab a piece of toast and start to question if I should even go. His text made it seem like a demand, and I’m starting to realize that there is a question in it, and he’s not good at that, but if I didn’t want to go, he’d probably be fine with it.

I can barely eat my food. The thought of seeing people from high school makes me uneasy. Rafe was the worst of the group, but sometimes his friends would follow suit. It’ll be the same people from the cafeteria, the ones who leaned in when Rafe would whisper something to me. I don’t know who’s going to be there, and I almost ask him while we eat. His mother fills the silence about how good of a boy Lucas Palinski is. It seems like she’s friends with his parents, and they keep in touch.

After breakfast, I go upstairs to get my socks. And when I come back down, Rafe’s in the front hall with his skates over his shoulder by the laces and a hockey bag at his feet. He looks at me once, the hat in my hand, the thermal, the face I’m making that I think is a normal face.

“You okay?”

I nod.

He keeps looking at me.