At the end of the block, I turn to wave goodbye.
But when I look back, she’s no longer there.
* * *
——
I ride for two blocks before realizing that I’m heading east instead of west, toward home. How did I get so turned around? I pull off to the side of the road and check my phone. It’s already after three. I’ve been meandering for four hours. My stomach growls, like it too just realized how late it is.
I take the nonscenic route home, pedaling fast while still being careful. LA drivers sometimes act as if bicyclists don’t exist. I lock away my bike and turn the corner to my apartment. Danica and Ben are on the stoop. They’re so busy staring into each other’s eyes, they don’t realize I’m only a few feet away.
There are some things you don’t need to see in your life. Your little sister making out is one of those somethings. I’m about to clear my throat and spare us both the trauma. But before I can, she leans in and kisses him.
My vision goes black, like the moment just before a movie begins.
And I see.
CHAPTER 4
Danica and Ben
DANICA IN OUR school cafeteria. She’s sitting at her usual table, surrounded by her friends. The cafeteria is bustling in the usual ways. Some kids are talking, eating, laughing. Some kids—the always-alone kids—are not talking, not laughing. Danica’s ultrabright today in a fuchsia outfit that was probably once someone’s prom dress.
From the right, a tray slides over and bumps into hers. Ben is on the other side of the tray, smiling.
“I was thinking about asking you out,” he says.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” Danica asks.
“Not anymore,” he says, and leans in. “If I did ask you out, what would you say?”
She leans in too. “You actually have to ask to find out.”
“Want to go out with me?”
“Sure,” she says. “Why not?”
* * *
—
This moment right now, the two of them kissing on the stoop like no one can see them.
* * *
—
Danica on a beach at night surrounded by firepits, and the firepits themselves surrounded by her friends, who are partying or warming their hands and faces or just watching sparks fly up and away. She stumbles through the sand, away from all that. Her eyes are restless, searching. She walks past lifeguard station twenty-three and then twenty-four. At station twenty-seven, she finds Ben, but he’s not alone. He’s kissing his ex-girlfriend who, it turns out, isn’t an ex after all.
* * *
—
Danica lying in bed in her room, alone. She scrolls through her social media, deleting photos and posts and comments. She changes her relationship status to Single. She unlikes and unfollows until there’s no evidence to be found anywhere that she and Ben were ever together.
CHAPTER 5
The Bonfire
THE VISION ENDS and the real world comes back into focus. I’m back where I was, standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment.
Danica and Ben are still on the stoop, but they’re no longer kissing. They’re both gaping at me.
Ben looks confused.
Danica looks outraged. “What the hell, Evie?” she demands, and stomps down from the stairs. “Why are you staring at us like a creeper?”
She’s right there in front of me, real enough to touch. Not a hallucination. But I can’t shake the image of her in the cafeteria and at the beach bonfire and alone in her room erasing her history with Ben.
“I—what?” I say, feeling slightly dizzy.
I must sway or something, because she comes closer. Her expression changes from annoyed to worried. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just…I don’t know. That was the weirdest thing—”
“We should go inside,” she says.
“I forgot to eat lunch,” I say as she guides me into the apartment. “And then I rode really fast to get home.”
She helps me over to the couch. “Maybe I should call Mom,” she says.
That snaps me out of my daze. “No, don’t,” I say. “I don’t want her to get worried. I just got a little woozy for a second.”
She sits next to me and takes my hand. “Let me see your eyes,” she says, sounding a little like Mom when she’s in nurse mode.
I can’t remember the last time we were this close physically. Looking at her face is a lot like looking at mine. We have the same warm brown complexion, the same high round cheeks, and the same full pink lips. Somehow, though, those features come together more dramatically on her. She looks like a supermodel. I look like the supermodel’s pretty-but-less-attractive sister.
She turns my face from side to side. I have no idea what she’s looking for.
We’ve never been the best-friends-forever kind of sisters, but we used to be closer than we are now. She honed most of her makeup skills by practicing on my face. I used to supply her with new romances to read (she loves them almost as much as I did) and bands to listen to. Back when I was still dating Dwayne—my first and only boyfriend—we even went on a couple of double dates.
She squeezes my hand and looks like she’s about to say something, but Ben interrupts. “Yo, D, I gotta go. I have that thing.”
Is that thing cheating on my sister with your ex-girlfriend? I want to ask. Which is a ridiculous thing to want to ask, because he hasn’t cheated on her. At least, I don’t know if he has.
I pull my hand from Danica’s and stand up. “I’m really fine.”
She skips over to him and they slip out the door together.
I lean back into the couch cushions and rub my temples, still freaked out. Was it a hallucination? Can you get those from being too hungry and too tired and too emotional? Or maybe it was one of those vivid dreams you get sometimes just as you’re waking up?
I’ve always had a good imagination, but that was more than good. It was cinematic.
My stomach reminds me that I’m hungry.
Danica comes into the kitchen just as I’m about to eat one of the brownies.
“If you want, some of us are going to the beach tonight for a bonfire,” she says.
I almost drop the brownie. “You’re going to the beach tonight?” The image of her stumbling through the sand looking for Ben and then finding him with someone else flashes through my mind. “Is Ben going with you?” I ask.