The Way Back to You Read online

  Usually, the cosmetics section is always the first stop in Target, a tradition that began when Ashlyn and I both got our driver’s licenses and could be here on a whim. Makeup, then magazines, then kitchen appliances, where we’d screw around with the coffeemakers. That’s the way we worked through this place, no matter what—except for some quieter nights, when Ashlyn would dare me to do full twisting layouts in the patio furniture department. She’d always ask me in the same way, her eyes lighting with a challenge, as if she didn’t already know I’d take the dare.

  The makeup section never comes first anymore, if I go there at all.

  Zoë stands by while I grab the essentials: a bag of sour gummy worms for my personal stash and some Dum Dums for the gift basket I’m making for tomorrow’s cheer event. Zoë eschews empty calories and preservatives, and is obviously of alien stock, so she ignores the candy.

  Then she follows me to the home decor department, where I pick a stalk of fake daffodils that I’ll cut up and drop into the basket for extra flair. If it were warmer, I’d pluck real ones from our garden, but these will do. Afterward, Zoë leads me to the DVD section. She is the last human being under thirty who still visits it, and five bucks says she leaves with something black and white and boring all over.

  I’m elbow-deep in the comedies when Zoë comes up behind me and shoves a DVD case under my nose. I’m surprised it was made this century; on the other hand, it looks like it has enough slash and gore to trigger a fit.

  “Come on, Zoë.” I raise an eyebrow. “A scary movie?”

  Bunching her lips to one side, she says, “So what?”

  I peer over her shoulder at the other racks. “No new docudrama snoozefest out this week?”

  “I’m allowed to like different things, you know.”

  She passes the case over, and I take it, reluctant. I barely read the story synopsis on the back cover, focusing instead on the snapshots of attractive, desperate-looking actors, their eyes and mouths open wide. A creepy, bloody movie is so un-Zoë—oh, but there’s the magic word: subtitled.

  “It’s a foreign film.”

  “Korean,” she clarifies.

  “How did you even hear about it?”

  “This boy Owen told me. It’s one of his favorites.”

  My fingers freeze. A month ago, Zoë came home from school jabbering nonstop. Owen had recommended a thriller about a guy who’d had a brain transplant; afterward he started having visions of his donor’s life, and isn’t that just so metaphysical. Zoë speculated, out loud, to me, about whether it could actually happen, but I shut her down. It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t worth wondering.

  “Sounds like This Boy Owen needs a rom-com weekend,” I say, tossing the DVD back at her.

  She blinks at me. “He has exceptionally eclectic taste.”

  I force an interested smile, steering the topic elsewhere. “So what’s up with you and This Boy Owen?”

  Zoë’s cheeks redden and her eyes go round. She’s fallen for it. “We have some of the same classes. That’s it.”

  “If he’s trying to woo you with the slaughter of innocents, I feel like I should know more about him. Like, okay: How many decapitated dolls does he keep in his locker?”

  She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Enjoying well-made horror films does not make someone a psychopath, Cloudy.”

  “De-fensive.” I waggle my eyebrows.

  “It’s not like that,” she says, a little breathless, so it’s obvious that it’s exactly like that. “He has a girlfriend, anyway.”

  I watch her for a moment more, a familiar slump in her shoulders. He has a girlfriend, anyway must be the Marlowe sister motto. “Well. Plenty of other single doll decapitators out there for you, I promise.”

  And if anyone knows that feeling something for a guy who’s into someone else is a black hole, so willing to suck you in and twist you up, it’s me. Better to cut the heartstrings now while they’re not so tangled.

  I HEAD TOWARD the toy section so I can pick up more things for the gift basket. The squad is raffling them off at tomorrow’s fund-raiser for the public library. On my way across the store, my phone buzzes in my bag.

  Cheer Insider is obsessed with you! Slight exaggeration, but let’s talk, please?

  A text from my friend Jade, with a screenshot of Cheer Insider announcing our interview—including my solo profile—on their Twitter. Super.

  Jade lived in town and cheered with us until two years ago, when her family moved to California. We keep in touch and meet up every summer at cheer camp—ideally, we’d also meet up at Nationals every year, but the Bend squad didn’t get past Regionals last season, and Santa Monica’s didn’t get there this time.

  I tap out a quick reply to her last message—HUGE exaggeration. Talk later?

  I might miss her more than ever these days, but I’m not as eager to discuss the interview as she is.

  I’ve just pressed send when I see him.

  Kyle.

  Even with his back to me, I can tell.

  I really hate that I can tell.

  And I hate the emotional lightning storm that immediately charges up in my body. Zap! Excitement. Zing! Dread. Sizzle! Full-body tingles. Singe! All-consuming guilt.

  He’s standing in front of a display at the end of an aisle, his hands in his pockets, the hood of his black coat coming up to meet the straight line of his short blond hair.

  I can’t help it: I flash back to him at the hospital, and there’s a heaviness in my limbs. It was the day after the accident, and Ashlyn was still in a coma. All I wanted was to be there when she woke up. But my car had stalled on the ride over, and I was beyond stressed because it was time wasted, less time for me to be with her. Kyle was already there, though, near the waiting room. His stance was exactly the same as it is now, with his hands in his pockets, except then he was staring at a vending machine. He stood there longer than the hospital’s snack selection was worthy of: old, crappy chips versus older, crappier candy bars. So part of me wondered if he was even hungry. There were a lot of blank stares all around then. I ended up blowing past Kyle and heading for the ICU. I doubt he even noticed.

  I’m about to do the same now—pass behind him and go straight for what I’m really here for—but I stop when I see what has him so preoccupied. An entire wall full of bright, plushy cushions shaped like animals. Why the hell is Kyle shopping for a Pillow Pet?

  At the pep rally, Matty was certain that Kyle wasn’t backsliding. That he’s okay. But a seventeen-year-old guy with no younger siblings, shopping in the stuffed animal department, seems definitively not okay. So the same part of me that needed to ask Matty about him two days ago needs to get closer—just to make sure he’s not about to rip the heads off those pillows and wear them as hats.

  He picks up a koala in one hand and a panda in the other. He’s deliberating.

  Holy shit.

  “Kyle.” His name slips out before I can wrangle it back.

  He startles, straightening up as he whips around to face me. I’m instantly aware of my messy hair and salt-caked snow boots. “Cloudy. Hey.” His fingers tighten on the koala, his voice a low, thundery rumble. “What’s going on?”

  Crack! Heat.

  “Here with my sister. How about you?” I peek at the shelf behind him. “Redecorating?”

  “Um,” he says, following my glance. “Not exactly. Just looking, I guess.”

  Then his eyebrows do the Thing. The Thing where they kind of slope up in a slant, like he’s contemplating something too big, and it makes me want to smooth them flat. The Thing has done bad things to my insides since he walked into my biology class sophomore year.

  I used to wonder if being attracted to Kyle felt like a weather event to Ashlyn, too. Or maybe it was more serene for her, because her feelings weren’t constantly battling. The first time she told me about him, her eyes were as lit up as sparklers.

  “Kyle. Ocie.”

  She’d steered me into an alcove under the stairs.
Her grin was so giddy and nervous, I giggled before I knew what was going on. At the time, Kyle felt like my little secret, although he was hardly a secret at all. “The guy who stole my bio notes all last semester?”

  Ashlyn had put her palms to her cheeks, endearingly shy. “I like him,” she whispered. “A lot. I think I like him a lot.”

  My smile was so big and stiff; I must have looked like a wax figure. “Since when?”

  “Seven thirty-three. This morning.”

  “Ashlyn, what? He’s been here for months—”

  “I know! I mean, I’ve seen him around Matty’s house before and I’ve always thought he was cute. But he walked me inside the main entrance and held the door open for me, and all of a sudden I have cartoon hearts in my eyes. For Kyle.”

  I pressed my spine into the wall. “Does he like you, too?”

  “Maybe?”

  A tornado rioted through me. I could have told her the truth, and she would have dropped it. But then what? That weirdness would be a constant wedge between us. And in that moment, I believed that giving Kyle up could be simple, but I’d never forgive myself for ruining this for Ashlyn. I wouldn’t carve that line into our friendship. What I didn’t anticipate was that keeping the secret could be just as damaging. And that I wouldn’t get over Kyle the way I wanted to. “What are you going to do?”

  “Invite him to Winter Formal. They’re announcing it at the assembly later, and I could ask him right away.” She bounced up on her toes, and her expression was so hopeful it made my stomach hurt. “You’re a bold, self-sufficient woman. Tell me: Should I just do it?”

  It was as if poisonous gas had leaked from the heating system. I knew Kyle would say yes—he’d be a total cretin not to. Ashlyn was a star. She was warm, and fierce, and the prettiest person I’d ever seen. She was happiest when she was making other people happy. So I told her yes. Ask him.

  “Ashlyn loved pandas,” I blurt out now, motioning to the pillow in Kyle’s right hand. I brace myself to melt from embarrassment. As if he doesn’t know that Ashlyn loved pandas. As if he didn’t adopt the symbolic kind for her on one of their monthiversaries, only to have her agonize over what to name it (Pandy Warhol). As if that’s not the reason he picked up that pillow in the first place.

  “I remember,” he mumbles, putting both pillows back on the shelf.

  “I’m sure.” It comes out snappy and I peek over my own shoulder, reflexively checking for the exits.

  We stand opposite each other, shifting and silent. A woman pushing a shopping cart filled with paper towel rolls sashays between us. It’s like she can’t tell we’re even in the middle of a conversation. I guess we aren’t, really.

  “Hey, do you want to . . .” I trail off, gesturing behind me. “I need to buy something for a gift basket. You could help. If you’re not busy.”

  And maybe if we’re walking, and he’s not looking at me, I won’t be such a disaster.

  Kyle’s mouth opens a bit, and he hesitates before letting out a strangled “Okay.” Then he scoops up the shopping basket at his feet and follows my lead until we get to the action figure aisle. We’re completely uneasy around each other, and it sucks, but it’s all my doing, anyway.

  Talking to him used to come easy, too easy, for me. I was actually impatient for first-period bio and dissecting virtual animals—after all the animal-rights speeches from Ashlyn, I refused to slice into the real ones. It meant sharing a computer with him, one focal point for a few minutes. But outside of class, there was always Matty, and his other friends, and eventually, Ashlyn. After she asked him to Formal, they started getting closer, and I purposely forgot how to talk to Kyle.

  So shopping with him will be new.

  “What are you looking for?” he asks. We’re alone, and it seems darker in here, not as starkly bright and exposed as the center aisles.

  “Basically anything that’ll make a six-year-old’s day.”

  He laughs softly and it sounds right, like something I’ve heard before, and maybe if he sounds like familiar Kyle, he really is okay. “Is this a cheer thing?”

  “What else?” I say, wandering farther away. “It’s for the library—we’re raffling off some gift baskets to raise money for the youth literacy program. And from past experience, kids like you better when you throw presents at them. They’re like bridge trolls that way.” I pull a dinosaur—that also launches tiny rockets—off the wall. “Or the really bad kings in the Bible.”

  What.

  I hope Kyle’s had an embolism and missed all of that.

  Nope. He’s looking back at me. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says.

  Fueled by desperation, I hone in on these crayon-slash-robot toys from a cartoon—everything’s a hybrid these days; can a crayon not just be a crayon anymore? The green robot is hooked on the top-shelf rung, and I put the toe of my boot on the lower shelf to hoist myself up. Before I can, Kyle’s behind me, his chest brushing my shoulder as he snatches the package for me. He’s such a frigging oak tree, he doesn’t even need to stretch much to get it.

  Once he does, he steps away quickly. I hold my breath so I don’t inhale the minty Kyle smell that clings to him. It happened all the time in bio—we’d be sitting at our table, bent over our lab workbooks, and he’d move in a way that set off these mini wintergreen explosions. Ashlyn once told me he used this tea tree mint shampoo, and she always mooned over how his kisses tasted like all the Junior Mints he ate. I filed the info away with the other things I shouldn’t remember about Kyle.

  “I could’ve gotten it,” I say instead of thanking him.

  He looks at me. “I know.” Then he hesitates before handing over the robot. “It didn’t seem worth breaking an arm for.”

  We turn away from each other at the same time, facing opposite shelves. I can’t believe he’s still helping me look for a dumb toy after I was such an ass.

  I slip over to a pole stacked high with stuffed Yodas. “So are you stuck here over break?”

  Kyle is deeply engrossed in a display of rubber balls. He sticks his hand in and palms a red one. Then he holds it up, and I shake my head, declining. “Yeah,” he says, tossing the ball back with the others. “You too?”

  “Yep.” I stroke one Yoda on the head, tug another one’s ear. “My mom and dad deserted us for Mexico this morning.”

  “They left you two alone for the whole week?”

  “Total abandonment. They’re taking a cruise, so they’ll only be able to contact us once they reach port.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “My mom told me I’m not allowed to use the stove.”

  “Ah.” A small smile lingers on his lips, and this warm-honey feeling spreads in my belly. I want to kick him in the shins for it. “It’s cool your parents get to be away, though. I wish I could’ve gone somewhere, just to . . . get out of here.”

  I hug a toy Yoda to my chest as I meet Kyle in the middle of the row. I don’t want to know if he said that because he’s depressed, or because he’s as restless as all of us are. “Tell me about it.”

  After a few more beats of silence, he bends to pick up his shopping basket again. “I should probably get going,” he says, before I have to say it myself, and my shoulders sag. Being around Kyle is exhausting, but so is examining how I destroy our every interaction once he’s gone.

  We’re back in the glaring fluorescents of the middle aisle, and I take a few steps backward, away from him. Kyle switches the basket to his other arm and everything in it shifts, so I peek in this time. It’s filled with cans of cat food and tiny, fuzzy cat toys.

  “You’ve got a cat?” I ask.

  Suddenly, he finds the cat toys as interesting as I do. “It’s kind of complicated.” Then he raises his head and says, “I’ll see you around, Cloudy.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for your help, Kyle.” I spin on my heel to head back into the aisle—I’m not sure the crayon robot or Yoda will make the cut, and I need to keep searching.

  But I can’t get
my mind off the cat supplies. During the few times I was in Kyle’s house, I never noticed a cat, and Ashlyn never mentioned anything about him having one. Though it’s possible he’s gotten one since she died. People adopt pets when they’re grieving. It’s totally and acceptably normal. The opposite of a downward spiral.

  Right.

  What else could it be?

  All the recycled air in this plane hangar of a store is messing with me.

  But I look back anyway, and pretend not to see Kyle go straight to the panda pillow when I do.

  Kyle

  Dad’s car is already in the garage when I get home from Target. Which means he’s back from his office and the gym already. Which means I might have a problem here.

  Parking my vehicle next to his, I leave the panda Pillow Pet and a bag filled with canned cat food on the passenger seat. (Yesterday, I picked up a litter box and dry kibble. Later, I read it’s better to feed cats both wet and dry food.) A couple of lights are on already when I head inside through the laundry room, but my dad isn’t in the kitchen or on the couch.

  “Dad?” I call out.

  A nonresponse is what I’m hoping for, and the faint sloshing of water through the pipes overhead clinches it: he’s in the shower. I hurry back out to grab the stuff, race upstairs with it, and close myself into my room.

  All day, I imagined coming home to a kitten-shaped hole in my door like a Road Runner cartoon and no other sign of my secret roommate, so it’s a relief to spot the scrawny black kitten curled up in my walk-in closet exactly where I left her this morning.

  “Hey.” I set down the bag and kneel beside her. “How’s it going?”

  She opens her eyes. “Mrrowwww.”

  Her voice is low and scratchy. It doesn’t match up. She sounds like a two-pack-a-day smoker of fifty years instead of a tiny new kitten.

  “Would you say you had a good day or bad day?”

  This time, she yawns in response.

  “My feelings, too.”

  My closet is for sure a warmer and more comfortable place than wherever she was sleeping before. That’s part of why I felt I had to bring her home; Ashlyn would have wanted me to. She was passionate about rescue shelters and adoption.