What We Left Behind

“What’s up?” I sit on the edge of the bed to watch Gretchen pack.

“Well, it’s just that—”

Gretchen’s phone buzzes. That’s the third time in the past five minutes.

“Who keeps texting you?” I ask.

“Uh.” Gretchen glances down at the screen. “Well. If I tell you something, will you promise not to get mad?”

I laugh. “You know that’s never a good way to start, babe.”

Gretchen puts on a mock-innocent expression I’ve seen many times before. There’s no way not to smile at it.

“It’s possible,” Gretchen says, “that I told Chris and Audrey they could come over and help us pack tonight.”

“Why?” I can hear the whine in my voice. It’s our last night together.

“They were asking when they could say goodbye,” Gretchen tells me. “This was the last chance. I said they can’t stay long. Chris tried to make a stink about it, but I told him he’d just have to deal.”

I roll my eyes, but I can’t really complain. Chris is my best friend, and Audrey is my little sister. I’ll see Gretchen every week once we leave for school, but I’m not going to see Chris or Audrey until Thanksgiving. If I come home for Thanksgiving.

“It’ll be fun,” Gretchen says. “We can hang out on our own after. Don’t worry.”

I cross the room, loop my arms around Gretchen’s waist and kiss the back of Gretchen’s neck, provoking a round of giggles.

“I never worry about anything when you’re around,” I say. “How long until they get here?”

“Half an hour, maybe?”

We both smile. Then we start making out.

It’ll be a while before we get another chance, after all. At least a week. The last time I went a week without seeing Gretchen was when my family went to a resort in the Dominican Republic. I was so lonely. Plus I kept feeling guilty about the exploited workers who handed me fresh towels every morning. For the first two days I texted Gretchen every other minute. Then my sister told me to put the phone down already because I was embarrassingly whipped.

I guess we lose track of time, because we’re still kissing when the front door slams.

“Crap.” Gretchen scampers off the bed. I go over to the mirror to check my hair. It’s all mussed. I try to smooth it back, but it’s a lost cause.

Gretchen’s mom opens the bedroom door without knocking, coming in with a bright smile and a long glance around the room. The rule in Gretchen’s house, which we tend to break a lot, is that we can hang out as much as we want but we’re supposed to leave the door open. Gretchen’s parents are keeping up the pretense that all we do is hold hands. It’s kind of cute, actually. My parents prefer to believe Gretchen and I don’t even do that much.

“How’s the packing going, girls?” Gretchen’s mom asks. I bristle at the “girls” thing, but I try not to let them see.

“It’s going great!” Gretchen smiles.

My annoyance slides away. Gretchen’s smile beams out so much happiness, so much warmth, that sometimes I can barely stand it. I gaze at Gretchen’s bright, open face and wonder for the trillionth time how I ever got this lucky.

Gretchen’s mom steps aside, and Audrey and Chris poke their heads into the room. Chris is grinning big, but my sister looks pouty. Audrey just turned sixteen and doesn’t have a driver’s license yet, so Chris must’ve stopped by our house to play chauffeur.

“Hiiii!” Gretchen sweeps forward and grabs them both into a three-way hug. I’m not a hugger, so I stay where I am.

I’m going to miss them, though. My friends. My sister. Even Gretchen’s parents, who have always been really nice to me.

It’s not that I won’t ever see any of them again. They’ll be around when I come back for breaks. Except that coming home for breaks also means seeing my mother again.

My mother, who still calls me Antonia, no matter how many times I say I hate that stupid girlie name.

My mother, who hasn’t allowed me to get a yearbook photo taken since I turned twelve and finally cut my hair supershort, the way I’d always wanted to.

My mother, who’d pretended the whole threatening-to-sue-the-school thing wasn’t happening junior year, except to walk around the house muttering about how no daughter of hers should want to go to school looking like a freak show.

Maybe I should find some excuse to stay on campus for every break over the next four years. After all, it’s not like I need to come back to Maryland to see Gretchen.

Audrey, though... I’d hate to leave my sister in that house alone for good.

“Hey, T.” Chris fist-bumps me. Chris has gotten really muscly over the past couple of soccer and basketball seasons. Whenever we fist-bump now, I’m afraid this is going to be the time Chris forgets to exercise self-restraint and I wind up with a dislocated shoulder. “You ready? Starting tomorrow we’re mortal enemies.”

“I’m so ready,” I say. “When’s the game?”

“Right before Thanksgiving. Remember, we have to hate each other on game day. It’s the rules.”

“Are you guys seriously going to the Harvard-Yale football game?” Audrey asks. “That’s got to be the nerdiest event of all time.”

“Actually I think it’s less about nerdiness and more about drinking cheap alcohol in a field with your buddies,” Chris says.

“Gross,” Audrey says.

“Oh, because you’ve never done that,” Gretchen says. Audrey laughs.

“How are you holding out after yesterday?” I ask Chris.

“Oh, I’m great. We got back together this morning, actually.” Chris grins big. I sigh.

Last night I got an epic series of texts about Chris’s latest breakup with Steven. They were on and off for pretty much our whole senior year. They kept saying they were going to break up for good before the end of the summer—they still believe that old wives’ tale about how you shouldn’t start college in a long-distance relationship—but they could never stay apart for long.

Chris says it’s because their love is pure and true. I say it’s because they’re hormonal teenagers who don’t know how to keep it in their pants. Not that I’m one to talk.

My friends are always fighting with their boyfriends or girlfriends about the littlest things. My friend Renee, who was my date for Homecoming junior year, realized she was bi and got together with this girl named Liz soon after the dance. Then they spent the entire year fighting about what movie to see that weekend, or whose music to plug into the car stereo, or which of the guys on the lacrosse team was the most obnoxious. Then they broke up. Now Renee’s going out with the lacrosse guy they rated third on their list.

Gretchen and I, though—we never fight. We take turns listening to each other’s music. We only like dramas or highbrow comedies that don’t have any Saturday Night Live stars in them. I think all the guys on the lacrosse team are obnoxious, but Gretchen thinks that’s only because I never took the time to get to know them. I think Gretchen only thinks that because Gretchen’s too nice to think anything bad about anyone.

The thing is, who cares what music you listen to on a random Tuesday afternoon? The stuff that really matters runs way deeper than any of that.

And when it comes to the deep stuff—the really deep stuff, the things we can only tell each other, the things no one else could understand—Gretchen and I are golden.

“Well, good luck,” I tell Chris with a shrug.

Audrey pokes me in the side. “Chris, please ignore my sister’s indifferent tone. She’s still learning how to function in our normal human society.”

“Hey.” I flick Audrey on the shoulder. “Don’t call me an abnormal human.”