Page 24

The question hit like a chime, like the opening note of a song I knew by heart and had belted out a thousand times. Across the table, Ros’s eyes caught mine.

“Well,” said Touchstone slowly, carefully, like any wrong step would set off a bomb. “It’s my uncle’s.”

I wasn’t going to say my line. I really wasn’t. It didn’t matter, the particulars of the arrangement. What mattered was that we were here, eating (or not eating, as stuffed as we were with artichoke dip), all together, and frankly it was sort of a pain—and maybe even kind of rude—to get all mired in the details of property just for our own amusement.

But then Ros smiled at me, and I remembered our old game, and I couldn’t resist.

“Technically,” I said, “he’s not your uncle.”

“Technically,” Ros said, that wry smile spreading across their face, “he’s Touchstone’s cousin.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Touchstone said, putting his face in his hands. “Do we really have to do this now?”

“Wait, what? What’s going on? He’s not actually your uncle?” said Phoebe.

“For all intents and purposes, he’s my uncle,” said Touch.

“Isn’t it intensive purposes?” 22 Audrey said.

“Okay,” said Ros. “Let us explain it. The cabin belongs to Henry .”

“Henry is the one who Touchstone calls uncle,” I said.

“Good start,” said Touch.

“ What is happening? ” said Oliver.

“Henry is married to Vish, but he used to be married to a guy named Freddie.”

“We don’t like Freddie,” said Ros.

“Freddie’s a dick,” I agreed. “But he is Touchstone’s… cousin …?”

“Stepcousin!” said Ros.

“Yes! Freddie’s mom was married to Touchstone’s uncle. But that was her second marriage. So Freddie is Touchstone’s uncle’s stepkid, and he was married to Henry, but then they got divorced.”

“Right, because Freddie is a dick. But Touchstone’s family hung out with Henry a lot.”

“Henry is the best!”

“And so now they just call him uncle because it’s easier.”

We turned to Touchstone, holding one shared breath. Touchstone thundered out a drumroll that shook the glasses on the table, sent the liquid sloshing inside. The pheasant—Angelo! I’d just remembered his name—on the wall gazed down at us. No one spoke. Had we done it? Had we gotten all the particulars in the right order?

“Ding, ding, ding,” said Touchstone.

There was an eruption that shook Angelo on his perch. I shrieked with joy. Ros leaped to their feet and bowed theatrically, sweeping nearly to the floor with a flourish of their wrists. We’d done it. We’d done it. We were magicians who had pulled rabbits out of a joint hat. We were trapeze artists in sparkling leotards soaring through the air, making the catch at the last second, our bodies spangled and bejeweled beneath the lights.

“I honestly followed none of that,” said Audrey.

“Same,” said Phoebe.

“Welcome to my world,” said Touchstone.

“Okay, what was that?” said Oliver.

Touchstone sighed heavily. “That,” he said, “was Ros and Celia.”

The conversation continued. Touchstone walked them through the lineage again, everyone getting more confused with each subsequent step. All those little details, all those little particulars—there were so many places to get tripped up. What did it matter, whether the house belonged to Touchstone’s uncle or Touchstone’s tangential relative or the Frog Prince? What were we trying to prove, by remembering all these stupid facts? Because that’s what the question had come to feel like: like a proof on a test. If together, Ros and I could remember them, all the totally arbitrary, nonsensical ways Touchstone was related to the owners of the house, it would mean something.

What mattered was that Ros and I had remembered together, had worked through it together, had paid enough attention to each other and our history that we were able, at that dinner table, to build something shared. What mattered was that we’d seen the vision together: the rabbits and the sparkling crystals on our leotards and the flips on the trapeze. We’d glimpsed our friendship, and it was beautiful.

We did it , Ros mouthed to me, and I knew they meant more than explain about Touchstone’s uncle. They meant the whole summer—we’d done it, we’d made it to Lovesick Falls, this place that had existed only in our dreams, and now we were having the summer we could never have imagined.

We’re stars , I mouthed back.

After that—it felt like we were us.

I drag Celia by the hand and pull her down to the river.

I could keep up with Ros in my overalls. I yelled at Touch to follow us.

The moon is big and full and deserves to be howled at.

“Are you seriously howling?” Touch said, right in step alongside us.

I bark at my friends: Join in, join in, join in.

We howled together, our pack of three.

“Yo!” cried Phoebe. “What are y’all doing down here?”

It was cooler down by the water. The sun had long since set. Back up the hill, the Lily Pad was glowing like a golden ball against the black woods; everyone’s voices carried down toward the bank.

“Thank you so much for all your help getting dinner ready,” I said.

“Everything was so good,” Ros said. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry all the work fell to you.”

“Yeah,” said Touchstone. “You really did an amazing job.”

“Oh yeah. It’s no problem at all,” Phoebe said. “I really like to cook, actually. I had fun.”

“Well… thanks anyway,” Ros said. They looked back up to the hill. “I should go make sure Jess hasn’t left me for Oliver Teller.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Touchstone.

The two of them loped back up the hill, and I watched the backs of my friends recede, my heart filled with love, even if they did drive me nuts half the time. It was just me and Phoebe then, looking out at the darkness of the water.

“Hey,” I said, remembering our dinner conversation. “I didn’t realize you were so stressed about the yeti costume.”

“It’s not very helpful to show up in the costume shop and be pulling my hair out. It doesn’t really contribute to a positive work environment, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “You bend over backward to help other people. Like, you were so nice to me in the shop, my first week. You taught me how to sew, how not to get my face bitten off by Jacques, how to find cell service—I mean, Phoebe, you basically cooked this whole dinner. But you don’t ever let people think about helping you.”

“Mmmm,” said Phoebe. “Celia with the insight.”

“Don’t be a dweeb,” I said. “You act so tough. You are tough; I get that. Like, you literally sewed through your finger and didn’t lose your cool. That’s fucking metal.”

“Thank you.”

“But, like… even metal people need help, too.”

I waited for her to brush me off or tell me that I was being overly sentimental. But then she said something I didn’t know I was thinking, too, until she said it.

“I wish we lived in the same place.”

“Me too,” I said. “I mean—who knows. Maybe we will one day.”

The voices were growing louder, carried down toward us where we stood.

“You want to hear something funny?” said Phoebe.

“Definitely.”

“You know the wine they’ve all been drinking?”

“Yeah… I stopped drinking it. It tasted weird.”

“Me too. That’s because it’s not really wine,” Phoebe said.

“It’s not?”

“It’s cooking sherry.”

“Wait, for real?”

We erupted into laughter. I cried harder than I’d cried over the onions. The stress of the dinner party fell off my shoulders. Ros was my friend again, and all that was left was to serve the pie. We were home free.

“Phoebe,” I said. “I just want to make crystal clear—like, whatever you need—like, someone to model the yeti costume for you, someone to drive you to the hospital when you sew through your finger, someone to bring you an emergency case of LaCroix—I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, Celia,” she said. “You’re a good friend.”

“Okay, okay, they’re back,” yelled Touchstone as soon as we climbed the steps. Everyone had arranged themselves on the porch: Touchstone was perched on the edge of the couch, not so much sitting as hovering, like he might have to jump up at any moment. Audrey looked exhausted; Oliver, annoyed. Ros and Jess were curled up together on the couch.

“Important question,” said Touch.

“I’m actually not sure how important it is,” said Oliver.

“Who do you think would win in a fight? Me or Oliver?” His face was red from cooking sherry.

“Oh, Jesus,” Phoebe said.

“I’ll get the pie,” I said.

The pie, in spite of its dubious beginnings, had actually turned out beautifully. Phoebe had dutifully scraped off the charred edges of the crust so that it resembled something more properly baked. I’d whipped the cream on top and shaped it artfully, transforming it into churning whitecaps. With a cheese grater, I’d zested one of the runty limes, tiny curls of green settling over the choppy whipped-cream waves.

It was, if I do say so myself, a work of art.

A work of art that might also finally force Ros to see what they were missing out on. Jess might be able to win in a fight, but could she bake? Ros would never get a girlfriend who baked such delicious key lime pie.

I stepped onto the porch balancing the dish on one hand—it was surprisingly heavy—and silence fell. All eyes were on me. I wondered if this was what Touchstone or Oliver or Audrey felt like when they stepped out onstage, if this was what Phoebe felt when she saw her costumes on the stage.

“And here we have Mr. Oliver Teller’s favorite dessert,” I said, placing the pie in the center of the table.

“Wow,” said Oliver.

“It’s gorgeous ,” said Phoebe.

“You made that in our oven?” said Touch. “How?”

I looked around. I was dimly aware of the praise that people were heaping on the pie. It was what I’d wanted, sort of—it was all just coming from the wrong people.

“Where’s Ros?” I said. My voice was thin. I hated how badly I wanted them to see this pie that I had labored over, that I had worked so hard for. I hated that they handed me weak coffee and I told them it tasted delicious. I hated that I tried so hard, that all I did was try, that I was standing here with a pie I’d baked for Oliver, not them, and they were nowhere to be found. Sure, I might be better than luck, but I would never be magic, and if I wanted Ros to see me, to love me, to choose me, what I really needed was to be magic. Because of course that was what I wanted, even more than to make them jealous: I wanted them to realize they’d been in love with me this whole time.

“They didn’t leave , did they?”

“No—no—I think they just went off with Jess somewhere for a second,” said Touch. “They’re coming back. At least—I think they’re coming back.”

We all stared at the pie.

“Can we eat it, or…”

“We’re waiting,” I said. “For Ros and Jess.”

I was making everyone feel awkward; I knew that. I’d brought the conversation to a screeching halt.

“It looks gorgeous, Celia,” said Oliver. “Truly spectacular.”

“ This guy,” said Touchstone.

It wasn’t the worst thing that Touchstone had said to Oliver that night. It was barely audible—an exhalation, a mutter, an aside. But it was ultimately the one that set Oliver off.

“Okay,” Oliver said, and he popped to his feet. “Celia, thank you so much for the very nice time. Phoebe, thank you for all your cooking. Audrey, it was lovely to see you again. I’ll see some of you on Monday.”

“ Wait , what?” I said. “You’re leaving ?”

He was leaving—in fact, he was already halfway around the house, and I was following him as best I could. Oliver was quite quick.

“Oliver,” I called. “Wait.”

He paused outside his car and folded his arms. He looked at me expectantly. I didn’t quite know what to say.

“You can’t go ,” I said.

“Look—it’s not a big deal, all right? It’s just… it’s not fun for me, being here.”

“He’s just drunk and being an asshole.…”

“ I’ll say,” said Oliver.

“It turns out he was drinking cooking sherry the whole time, which I don’t know if it makes a difference, but maybe there’s, like, an increased level of belligerence.…”

“He tried to get me to fight him.”

“I know, I know—I’m so sorry—I know he’s not a fan of Power Jam , but I really didn’t expect him to be such a dick to you just because he doesn’t like your show.”

“ Power Jam ,” Oliver repeated, looking at me with an expression that was caught somewhere between disdain and pity. “Celia. Come on. Do you really think he’s acting this way because of Power Jam ?”

It hit me like a punch, but one that seemed to be coming from the inside. Like a million little people were drumming on the backs of my eyes. All the heavy food we’d eaten was roiling in my stomach.

Of course Touchstone wasn’t acting this way because of Power Jam .

Pining sucks , Touchstone had said. It suuuuucks.

We’re competing for girls , he had claimed.

“I mean—look, yeah, we should all be nice to each other, but I can take a certain amount of abuse. Do you know how many guys thought I shouldn’t have been with Ronnie? They had no problem telling me that, to my face. His behavior is fine. What makes me really upset…” He paused, and his voice got very small, a cautious little mouse squeezing itself through a teeny, tiny hole. “Is that I sort of thought there was something happening between us?”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I had swallowed a frog. Of course there had been something happening between us—all that horsing around in the costume shop, our date to the spring, the sunglasses, the lunches at the Dropped Acorn. But I had been too in love with Ros to really give us a chance, and I saw that now, fully.

Oliver was still talking. “Now it just seems like… well, it seems like tonight you were mostly interested in making me your prop.”

“Please just stay,” I said, and my voice was suddenly hoarse. “We haven’t even had pie yet—it’s good, you’ll like it—it’s nowhere near as good as the stuff at the Dropped Acorn, but—”

“It’s better for me to go,” he said. “I just—I want you to know something. I should have told you this earlier. But you looked incredible in that dress.”

I was shaking when I stepped back onto the patio.

“You are such an asshole,” I said.

I don’t think I’d ever been so angry—at Touchstone, at Ros, at myself. How had I not seen any of this sooner? How had I let things get this far? Ros and Jess were back from wherever they’d gone, cuddled up on the couch.

“ Me , the asshole?” said Touchstone.

“Guys,” said Phoebe. “Guys.”

“ I’m not the one who left in the middle of dinner!” said Touch. “I’m not the one who showed up two hours late reeking of sex !”

“Whoa,” said Jess. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“Leave Ros out of this,” I said.

“Leave Ros out of this!? Leave Ros out of this?! When have we ever left Ros out of this? You want to start leaving Ros out of this now, right this second, after years and years and years of being so obsessed with them that you can’t even see straight?”

“Shut up, Touchstone.”

“I think everyone should chill!” said Audrey.

“Do you honestly think they don’t know? That you’re subtle ? News flash, Celia, you’ve never been subtle in your whole entire life, least of all when you’re offering to lick Ros’s boots and peel them a grape and tend to their every waking need!”

“Shut up ,” I said.

“I don’t even know what makes me more angry, the fact that you are so obsessed with them or that they let you be obsessed with them! Oh, look who’s back, just waltzing in here whenever they fucking please,” said Touchstone. “How convenient. Oh, you know what’d be a good idea—why don’t you tell Celia your plan, Ros?”

“What plan?” I said.

“Oh, it’s a really great plan,” said Touchstone. “I heard them talking about it earlier. I warned you both a thousand times how thin the walls were, did I not?”

A pit was forming in my stomach.

This was not how the night was supposed to end. This was not how the story was supposed to go.

“Tell me,” I said. My voice had developed a steely edge.

They knew. They knew how I felt. And they did not care.

“I’m not coming back home with you in the fall,” said Ros. “I’m staying here with Jess.”

They explained. They explained, and they explained, and they explained. And I was honestly so angry I had trouble listening. They were still explaining when I lifted the untouched pie—the dessert that, in concert with the dress, in concert with the whole evening, was meant to change their mind—and hurled it at their head.

To this day, my father maintains that I could’ve been a great tennis player.

Here’s the thing: I’m not sure he’s wrong .

Sure, my serve needed a ton of work, and okay, my forehands frequently sailed into the next court, but I wasn’t actually that bad. It wasn’t like I was destined for Wimbledon or anything like that, but I could hit a good shot. Like with anything, I would have had to practice if I wanted to get better. But it felt really good to be able to hit a good shot—full-body good, like everything was aligned, everything was attuned. The swing of the racket, the pop of the ball against the strings. The sound of the tennis court: the rounded pop-pop-pop, the silence, the squeaking shoes. I loved it so much. More than I loved the sound itself, I loved the sense that you were the one creating that sound. The sound couldn’t happen without you.

Still—I quit. According to my father, my problem was mental.

Again, he’s not wrong. But it might be more accurate to say that tennis made me really, really angry.

It was one thing when it was going well. Yeah, yeah, the sound of the court, inhabiting your body, being in tune with the universe—how fucking magical. But most of the time? Most of the time tennis was a fucking drag. Most of the time, tennis made me want to kill someone.

Shots skewed left. Shots skewed right. Shots went straight into the net even when I knew exactly how to hit them. Serves went out. Double fault. Serves went into the net. Double fault again. Lose, lose, lose, even though you knew exactly how to hit the ball, and even though you were playing someone worse than you, someone named Camille in a visor who just kept hitting these stupid fucking dinky shots—no quality to them or beauty in them at all, just relentless, obnoxious, dink, dink, dink, these pathetic little shots over the net. Camille won. I lost. I threw my racket and got a talking-to from the coach.

“Just don’t get so angry,” Ros had said with a shrug, like emotions were something totally within my control, and theirs. Like one day they wouldn’t pour acid on someone’s baseball cap. Like one day they wouldn’t fall in love with someone because they threw a perfect punch. “Try deep breathing,” my mom had said, like she didn’t yell fuckhead at someone who didn’t use their blinker.

Since getting less angry didn’t seem like a reasonable option to me, I did the next best thing: I quit tennis. No tennis, no anger. Problem solved.

I learned two things on the porch that night.

The first thing, granted, was something that I probably already knew but wasn’t fully ready to admit—the way you hang on to old sweaters you’ve outgrown, or the way you ignore certain lingering glances from certain friends. The fact of the matter was I could still get plenty angry, even if I never picked up another tennis racket in my life.

The second thing was a bit of a surprise. I was an okay swimmer, and I might’ve been a great tennis player, but I would have been an ASTONISHING baseball player. A pitcher, to be specific. I’d need to work on my aim, that was true—but not everyone can throw a key lime pie at their best friend with enough force to shatter an entire picture window.

Footnotes

20 Regular limes, it turns out, are actually known in the biz as Persian limes or Tahiti limes and are actually a cross between key limes and lemons—that is to say, the lime we most commonly think of as a lime is actually a hybrid, a triploid cross, to be specific, being that key limes and lemons are both citrus crosses as well. They’re sweeter than key limes, tend to be seedless, and grow on bushes without thorns. I found this to be fascinating; indeed, when I returned home, I wasted about twenty minutes reading all about them when I could have been cleaning the Lily Pad or prepping food or doing any number of tasks that would have helped the party not be a disaster.

21 I’d never actually eaten paté, but this seemed like a good time to start.

22 In fact, no , it was not intensive purposes , though plenty of people believe that to be true. Intensive purposes is an example of an eggcorn—a word or phrase that sounds like and is mistakenly used in a seemingly logical way for another word or phrase, e.g., expresso instead of espresso . Nip it in the butt instead of nip it in the bud . But—I digress, lost again in the details of language.