A second later he regains his composure, murmuring something to the crowd of students surrounding him: Kids whose parents live too far, or couldn’t make it. Kids who feel more comfortable with him than with their families. Whatever he said, they all look calmer for having heard it. I should’ve stood with them.
I shove my flameless candle into Jake’s hand while he’s still too stunned to question it, and then I’m gone.
He’s two steps behind, silent the entire walk past the dorms. I grab my vape from my coat pocket and take a long vanilla-flavored drag. All the happy-making chemicals hit my bloodstream in a dizzying swirl of relief, muddying my thoughts for a few blessed seconds.
At least until Jake says, “Are you vaping?”
“Clearly. But it’s embarrassing enough to watch myself do it, so please pretend you don’t see me.”
“Then why —”
“Cigarette smoke smells.”
“No, why do it at all?”
Self-destructive tendencies, my therapist says.
I extend my arm, letting the vape dangle from my outstretched fingers. “Why did you follow me?”
Weight lifts from my fingertips as Jake grabs the vape and narrows his eyes, like a single inhale will lead to his rapid descent into rampant addiction and a lifetime of broken dreams. “You seemed upset.”
There’s nothing Jake Monaghan can do to fix all the things making me that way, so I say nothing, leading him past the chapel and around the back of Pearson Hall before he thinks to ask where we’re going.
I say, “I am going to see Dr. Hern. I don’t know where you’re going.”
“Why are you going to see Dr. Hern?”
When I don’t answer, he slides in front of me so I have to stop, raking grooves through his mussed blond hair. “We’re friends, right?”
The question hangs in the air as the wind sends leaves skittering across the cobblestone walk between us.
We are friends. Have been from the moment I broke away from Headmaster Havens’s exceptionally condescending speech at freshman orientation. Jake found me on the soccer field and challenged me to score on him. When I said no, he assumed I sucked, so he promised he wouldn’t even move from his spot in the middle of the goal.
He didn’t think I’d aim for his nuts any more than I believed he’d actually refuse to move. It was a good lesson for both of us, to never underestimate the other.
We are friends. But we’re not friends who fill each other’s weaknesses, because we have the same strengths. And the one time mine faltered, my weaknesses on display, he never looked at me the same again.
So now we’re friends who are the other’s biggest fans on the field and biggest opponents in the classroom, constantly knocking each other out of valedictorian contention.
We’re the kind of friends who have had plenty of conversations but none of them the right kind of honest.
We are not the kind of friends who talk to the school’s head counselor together.
My gaze drops to the e-cig in his hand and I tell myself I’m not daring him to prove he’s more than his Snapchat photos and lacrosse trophies, to say the words he always holds in when we talk. But when he tilts the vape onto its side and focuses on the amber liquid as it levels itself, I know I’m a liar.
He brings it to his lips and his eyes flare as he wheezes, cheeks puffing. He makes two hard coughs, his voice strained as he says, “Why does it taste like I’m smoking a cupcake?”
I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. “It’s vanilla, you asshole, now give it —”
He smacks away my reaching hand. “Wait your turn. I’ll do it better next time.”
If I had a gold star I’d stick it to his forehead.
I pull my coat tighter, but my tights do nothing to stop a rash of goose bumps over my legs. Because maybe I’ve been too afraid to be honest too. With everyone. And now Madison isn’t here to listen to all the things I should’ve said. “I’m going to see Dr. Hern because we have an agreement. She understands it causes me ‘undue hardship’ to have my mother on campus, so she sort of … makes her go away.”
Behind him, the green and yellow ribbons hugging every tree and lamppost flicker in the force of the wind, a few already reduced to a knot instead of a bow. No one could find a final answer on which color represents missing children, and everyone pointed out that Madison hates the color yellow, but no one listened until the grounds crew had already tied half the campus.
We’re not allowed to participate in the searches. St. Francis Preparatory Academy released an official statement. Our foremost concern is the safety of our students, and with the high concentration of boarders, we’re unable to guarantee that safety outside of school grounds. We have the utmost faith in the ability of law enforcement to bring Madison home safely.
Jake takes another hit, and true to his word, he does better. “It could be worse.”
“Doubt it.”
I’ve barely finished speaking before I want to take it all back. Jake’s mom died when he was barely old enough to remember her. “Shit. I’m —”
He shrugs a single broad shoulder. “It’s okay. I went to boarding school for elementary too. I had to with how much my dad travels. Then I was just like everyone else — no one in boarding school has parents.” He gives me a crooked smile, and it’s obvious I’m not the first idiot he’s had to deflect comments from.
We’re nearly to the door when he hands me back the vape, but when I reach for it, he doesn’t let go. “Did you really use taking your vitamin as an excuse to bail?”
This will be impossible to explain. “It’s a code word.”
My hand curls around the frigid handle as I swing open the door to Henson Hall, the brass placard beside it proclaiming the famous Maryland explorer it was named for.
I step inside, the soft hiss of radiators carrying musty heat, its warmth battling against the chill.
“Are you gonna tell me what for?”
I drop my voice to avoid the echo, my wet saddle shoes squeaking on the polished floors. “I take meds for anxiety.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t — I mean, you don’t seem like you have anxiety.”
I raise an eyebrow that I hope translates to “do you not see a correlation there?” so I don’t have to say it and sound like a bitch.
“Is that why …”
He waits for me to fill in the blanks from the night we don’t talk about — when I led my team to nationals and scored the winning goal, when they carried me off the field and Jake ran on to help. There are pictures of that moment — pictures taken by Madison — that, years later, still hang in St. Francis’s halls. Me, smiling, radiating all the joy that propelled me to tell my mom the things I’d been holding back.