That’s how it started.
Soon, he was over once a week to read and do worksheets with Jared. And then hang out with me after. Fridays usually. Sometimes on Wednesdays when Mom taught evening classes and Dad had late nights. Never Saturdays. Those were Player nights.
At first, I told no one. I wanted to keep my time with Adam secret. I was greedy for more of it. At school, I watched him flit between classes and occupy his place at the senior Players’ Table. He wasn’t Toastmaster but he anchored their unit. Everyone turned to him for approval, to make sure he laughed at their jokes, to hear his wild, winding stories.
We had an unspoken understanding. My house was safe. School was not. Instead, we exchanged secret smiles in the halls only once in a while. Then, one Thursday, when I walked by him in between second and third period, he changed the rules. Adam stuck out his index finger and pressed it to the back of my shoulder just for a moment. His touch traveled through my veins, zapping me into an alternative reality.
That’s how Shaila found out. “What was that?” she said, gnawing at her cuticle, a gross habit she was always trying to kick. I picked it up too after she died. “Why does Adam Miller know who you are?”
I tried not to smile. “He’s been tutoring Jared. I think our moms are friends.”
“Huh,” Shaila said, her eyes trained on Adam, who was gliding down the hall, turning into the math wing. A wake of students rippled behind him. “He’s dating Rachel, you know,” she whispered. “Rachel Calloway.” My heart sparked and cracked. Rachel was Graham’s stunning older sister. Captain of the field hockey team. President of their class. She was a towering goddess. A senior. A Player. That made it all so much worse.
“I know,” I lied.
“I saw him over the summer once or twice,” she said. “With Graham.”
I stayed silent, seething that Shaila had yet another thing to show me up. First a boyfriend, then Adam’s attention.
But perhaps she picked up on this because she quickly ceded the power. “He never really wanted us around, though,” she said.
I had always been jealous of Shaila, of the way her clothes smelled like summer and were super soft when you rubbed them through your fingers, and how she seemed so comfortable with her long legs and her growing chest. She never had oily little pimples on her back or weird fine fuzz growing above her lip. Even her hair stayed in place, unbothered by the Gold Coast mist.
I was jealous that things were so easy for her. That she could be the number one student in our class, run miles, star in plays, and dazzle anyone without much effort at all. She claimed to have only one real fear. A totally benign, normal one. Heights.
“Nope. No way,” she said back in seventh grade when I begged her to join me on the Ferris wheel at the annual Oyster Fest. It was always set up right at the mouth of Ocean Cliff, so when you reached the top you felt like you were falling into the abyss. “You know I don’t do heights.” She grimaced as her eyes scaled the metal monstrosity.
Otherwise, Shaila could make everything seem glamorous, mysterious, an adventure. Like if you stuck with her, you’d never be bored again.
She even looked special. Her eyes were a grassy shade of green that grew brighter when she was excited. Shaila was the first one in our class to wear a bra. Mrs. Arnold even bought her the ones with extra padding that pushed everything up and out. Her body always looked like it was morphing into itself at conflicting speeds. I was still terrified of myself and the power I did or didn’t have. But I must have had something Adam liked, something that kept him hanging around, even if he did have a girlfriend. My ability to listen, maybe. My willingness to say yes. For forever, I’d wanted to have something Shaila didn’t. Now I had access to Adam. It was a weird imbalance, one I could milk.
“Maybe I can come over one time,” she said quietly. “When he’s at the house?”
“Would that be weird with Rachel?” I said, trying not to let my annoyance show.
Shaila shrugged. “Nah. Rachel’s like my big sister. She’d be psyched. Plus, it could help us get into the Players. Rachel said she couldn’t guarantee anything.”
She knew I couldn’t fight her on that one but I made her promise not to tell Nikki. Three would feel like an ambush, I argued. We didn’t want to seem like we were fishing for invitations to parties. She agreed.
That Friday, when Shaila came home with me after school, I was anxious. Concerned he would like her more than he liked me. Worried there was only room for one of us in his freshman-girls-who-I’m-friends-with crew. I spent the nights he was here on stilts, trying not to fall over, to misstep. Adding another whole person to the event felt like narrowing the platform.
The doorbell rang and Shaila bolted for the stairs. I was a few steps behind her but she opened the door, pushing her body into the frame, between Adam and me.
“Shaila,” he said. A surprised smirk took over his face.
“I’m spending the night,” she said.
“Fun.” His eyebrows shot up at me, amused. “Graham out of town, too?” he asked.
She nodded. “One last weekend out east.”
“Rachel was pissed,” Adam said.
“Graham, too.” Shaila wrinkled her nose.
I tried to follow their chatter but it sounded like a different language. One spoken by people intimately in the know about a certain family’s quirks, the things they keep behind closed doors. But as my unease came to a boil, Adam moved past Shaila and brought me in for a bear hug, resting his head on top of mine.
“Hey, Newman,” he murmured into my hair. I wrapped my arms around him, feeling his heat. That was the first night I knew for sure that Adam and I were friends. And Shaila saw it firsthand.
For the next hour, Shaila and I watched YouTube until Adam emerged from the kitchen and Jared rushed down to the basement to play video games.
“Deck?” Adam asked us. He didn’t wait for a response and instead headed for the door. By then he knew which wooden board was creaky, where to step to avoid the sticky patch of sap. He took his seat, the one under the apple tree that had never produced a single piece of fruit, and fumbled in his pocket.
Shaila and I sat on either side of him. She nibbled her fingers and tore her skin with her teeth.
“I’ve got a surprise,” Adam said, setting his hands on the table.
“Bourbon?” I said, trying to find the line between knowledgeable and desperate, hoping not to step over it.
He shook his head. “Better.” Opening his hands like a magician, he revealed something small and oblong, rolled up like a messy straw wrapper and pinched at one end.
Shaila giggled. “Yes!”
“You blaze before?” he asked her. I shot her a look. It was a line we hadn’t yet crossed.