Brandy Colbert: Pointe

“Thank you, Mrs. Crumbaugh.” Detz smiles like she’s the most gracious being on the planet before they tag-team a series of stranger danger warnings better suited for a kindergarten class.

Sara-Kate says my name, and when I look up she’s standing, holding out her hand to help me up. The assembly is over and I feel worse than when it began.

Talking about Donovan won’t make me forget how I’d step out my front door and hear his voice for months, even years after he’d been gone—teasing me about the way I stand in first position when I’m not in ballet class: heels together, toes pointed to opposite corners. Or inviting me over for dessert because the Pratts had pie or cake or ice cream every night and not just for holidays and special occasions.

A sit-down with Crumbaugh may help other students, the ones who don’t have the memories or connection I do. The ones who haven’t logged years of sleepovers and countless carpools with Donovan, who don’t know that he completely understood me without even trying.

But talking about Donovan won’t make me forget the last day I saw him. It won’t make me forget how the last minutes between us were so filled with tension and secrets that for the first time in my life, I questioned whether we were still best friends.

THE THING ABOUT KLEIN ANDERSON’S PARTIES IS THAT THEY REally are the best.

Most families in Ashland Hills do pretty well for themselves, but the Andersons are Old Money, which sets them apart. It also means Klein has access to any kind of liquor and drugs he wants. Girls, too, if Trisha Dove weren’t around to keep him in check.

I eat dinner with my parents, change out of my school clothes, and wait for Phil. Sara-Kate is coming, too, but he swings by to get me first since I live three blocks over. My parents are parked at the dining room table, involved in a hot and heavy game of Scrabble. When I walk in wearing my jacket, they take a break to issue the standard weekend warnings: be careful, home by midnight, don’t get in the car with anyone who’s been drinking, and I stop listening after that.

I look over at Donovan’s house as I walk out to Phil’s car. Déjà vu. Just like four years before, the porch and front steps are covered in signs. Only this time, instead of hopeful, almost pleading messages, they are happy! And grateful! And heavily punctuated! WELCOME HOME, DONOVAN!, and GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME, and WE MISSED YOU!!!! Stuffed animals are everywhere, like plush dolphins will make up for all the time he didn’t get to be a kid. And the candles—they’re propped up on every available flat surface. Tea lights and pillars and scented. I know the people who left all this stuff mean well, but they’ve only succeeded in making the Pratts’ lawn look like a shrine . . . or a junkyard.

Phil is staring at it, too, when I slide into the passenger seat.

“So, I guess you haven’t seen him?” he asks, chewing on his bottom lip as he turns to me.

“We’ve called a few times but they’re not answering.” I take a deep breath, thinking of how hopeful I was this afternoon when my mother and I sat next to each other on the couch, the phone between our ears. “I think they unplugged their answering machine. And my mom says we can’t go over without talking to someone first.”

“What do you think he’s doing? Besides feeling really fucking happy that he’s back?”

“Maybe that’s all.” I strap my seat belt across my chest, click it into place. “Maybe being happy is enough.”

I look along our street as Phil reverses down my driveway. Our neighborhood looks like any other neighborhood in Midwest, suburban America. The same brick houses, the same long, wide driveways, the same tastefully landscaped yards and seasonal porch decorations. This time of year, it’s colorful gourds displayed in groups of three and four, and harvest wreaths hung on front doors.

“Phil, where do you think he was?” I ask, glancing at Donovan’s house once more before we head in the opposite direction. “I know the cops found him in Vegas, but where do you think he was actually living ?”

“I don’t know.” Phil looks both ways before he continues through a four-way stop. “I didn’t really think about it. I mean, I did, but it felt wrong. Like, here I am living this normal life in a normal house and he’s out there being forced to do God knows—”

I put my hand on his arm when he doesn’t continue, gently squeeze right above his elbow. “Yeah. Me too.” Then, “Do you think he’s the same at all? I mean . . . what will we talk about when we finally see him? I can’t picture it. I can’t . . . I won’t know what to say.”

Phil is quiet for a few moments as we coast through town on the way to Sara-Kate’s, and I wonder what Ashland Hills would look like to Donovan now— will look like, once he leaves his house. It’s changed some since he’s been gone. Not a ton but enough to notice if you haven’t been around for four years. Like the big-name coffee chains that have cropped up, trying to put Coffee & Jam out of business. Or the new barbecue place down the street from Casablanca’s where every day around noon it smells like someone’s shooting off a pulled-pork cannon. There’s Ashland Hills Elementary and the organic foods/hippie store that’s always empty, and we don’t think about what it would be like to suddenly stop seeing them every day.

“Do you remember that time we went to Great America?” Phil rolls to a stop at a yellow light instead of cruising right through like I would. He drives like a model in a student driving handbook—hands at ten and two, never more than two miles above the speed limit.

“Oh. With all our parents?” I haven’t thought about that day in years.

“Yeah.” When I look over, Phil grins. “We were eight, right?”

“Nine. And Glenn was with us and started crying because he was too short for that roller coaster we rode over and over again until you puked.”

“Weak stomach. It’s genetic.” His grin widens, showing his perfect white teeth. They should be, considering they were caged under braces for three and a half years. “I wasn’t the only one. Remember my dare?”

“God.” I groan, clutching my stomach at the memory. “How could I forget? I still can’t touch hot dogs.”

Great America food patio. Phil dared Donovan to eat three foot-long dogs in one sitting. Paid for them with his allowance and everything. Donovan did it, but ended up vomiting his accomplishment at the edge of the patio five minutes later. Phil sympathy-puked shortly after that and needless to say, the park employees and our parents were not amused.

“Ma wants to have Donovan’s family and you guys over for dinner,” Phil says. “We haven’t even talked to them and she’s already planning the menu. She’d probably feed me to death if we were separated as long as Donovan and his mom.”

“Your mom would try to feed the entire neighborhood to death.” I pull out my phone to text Sara-Kate, let her know we’re only a few blocks away.

She’s waiting outside, smoking on the front porch of her darkened house. She strides toward us in a body-hugging tunic, leggings, and knee-high suede boots and I can’t imagine what it would be like to have curves like that and not want to hide them.

She’d kill me if I ever said this out loud, but Sara-Kate is kind of a cartoon character. Her features are just so exaggeratedly perfect that if you stare at her too long it looks as if someone drew her. Bow-shaped lips and brown eyes so big and sincere you could drown in them. She knows her way around a makeup bag, but I’d never put anything on my face if I was her. She’s just as pretty without it.

“Hey, doll.” She kisses my cheek, wipes away the lipstick print with her thumb, then crawls behind me to sit in back.