Davis caught Kelsey’s eye, flashed a smile. “And then I walked out of there with a free shelf. Hello.”
He bent to Kelsey, all other conversations now over.
“Hello, handsome,” she replied. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. His skin smelled like he’d been partying. “When did you get here?”
Davis lifted her up and pulled her into a piggyback. “Just now. All the frat row parties were, like, if you don’t have a girl, you can’t come in. So.”
“Lucky for me!”
“Lucky for you.” Davis advanced, causing her to accidentally kick a cheerleader or two.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Beer Land!” Davis called.
Hannah T. stood swaying near the keg, sipping water. She looked at Kelsey on Davis’s back, to her arms around his solid chest, and back to Kelsey. “Who is that?”
Kelsey laughed and took on a late-night radio DJ voice. “My lover.”
Hannah T. shrugged, half of her mouth lifting in a lazy, incredulous smile. “Why do you have, like, the best life in the world?”
“She bought it on sale at Sears,” Davis said.
“Please don’t tell people I shop at Sears.” Kelsey slid down to the floor, winked at Hannah, and gave Davis her Solo cup. “Refill me, please? I have to go do damage control.”
The sisters’ rooms were a recent addition to the Maxfield house, after Michelle had given Kelsey a bruised rib, fighting over the remote when they were fourteen. As soon as their parents were sure Melody was tenured and Rob’s second restaurant was going to survive, they had knocked off the back upstairs wall and built the girls adjacent dwellings, complete with locks on the doors and a back porch. Kelsey used her side of the deck to tan; Michelle, for drying the hyperreal paintings she did of their neighborhood, perfect replicas except for the colors: Everything was neon or reversed or slightly out of focus. Kelsey didn’t get it, and she liked it that way.
Once at Michelle’s room, she would have to lock her sister’s door from the inside, exit through her balcony door, and climb through a barrier of small trees that acted as a “fence” between the two sides.
But when she got to Michelle’s door, it was already locked.
“Yo!” Kelsey called, banging on the still-unfinished wood.
No answer. Movement. Laughter. It sounded as though someone was using Michelle’s room as a temporary brothel.
Kelsey banged on the door again. “Hello! It’s Kelsey.”
More laughter. Still, the door remained shut.
“Hey!” Kelsey called. She jiggled the handle.
Lost cause. This would have to be a rescue mission. She stepped through her own dark room, over piles of discarded leggings and sports bras, and opened the screen door to her side of the deck.
Light poured onto the wood on Michelle’s side of the porch. Slipping between the trees, Kelsey looked through the glass to see her sister stretched out on the bed. A sandy-haired dude in jeans sat in her desk chair, bent over a book. He was reading aloud.
Kelsey yanked open the screen. “Oh,” she said loudly. “Interesting.”
Michelle turned her head, brushing the same lumber-colored hair out of her eyes. “Oh,” she said, echoing Kelsey. “Hey.”
Michelle’s new boyfriend closed the book and smiled at her. “Wow, you guys really are identical.”
“Yeah,” Kelsey said, still looking at Michelle. It was probably better she didn’t see his face up close, as she was going to have to forget it anyway. “Come out in the hall for a sec, please.”
“Okay.” Michelle was doing that thing where she talked and moved slower than necessary just to piss Kelsey off.
When Michelle emerged, Kelsey closed her sister’s bedroom door with a bang.
“Is he sleeping over?”
“Yeah, he has to. He’s on his way to ship out from Fort Riley. Can you believe it?”
“I don’t know! Why didn’t you respond to my texts?”
“I was busy.”
“You could have at least come down and said hi. Some of your townie friends are here—”
“Hi!” Michelle said, giving Kelsey a double wave. Her dark eyes lit up with fake enthusiasm. Something was different about her sister. She was wearing mascara. Kelsey’s mascara. “Can I go now?”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
“I’m not. Thank you. I’m sorry. Whatever you want to hear. I haven’t seen Peter for two months, and he’s about to be halfway across the world.”
“So? You’ll just find another, like, film school student or something.”
Or a Brazilian on KU’s soccer team, Kelsey thought. Or a theater major who looked exactly like a brunette version of Woody Allen, or a record-store employee who had to wear prescription yellow-tinted glasses.
Kelsey was there for all of them. She knew how to listen politely to Michelle over the dinners their father cooked, as she went on about how each one was “love at first sight,” and to watch her get in their cars after school, sit on their motorcycles, balance on their handlebars. Then, to watch for the silent signals that her sister had stopped caring—the drifting eyes, the legs crossed and recrossed. Last, she would stand on the deck with Michelle, composing the breakup texts for her, because Michelle was terrible at typing anything less than a novel. And then they would walk back to Massachusetts Street, where it would start all over again.
But none of that had happened with this one. Kelsey shot him a quick glance through the door, his toned, pale arms resting on his knees as he flipped the pages of an Andy Warhol coffee-table book.
Michelle sighed. “Peter is different. You haven’t been paying attention at all, have you?”
Gillian came up the stairs and yanked at Kelsey’s arm. “Time to get back. Who’s that?” she said as she glanced through Michelle’s cracked door.
“Don’t know,” Kelsey said, letting out a snort. “It’s kind of hard to keep track.”
Suddenly, Michelle’s fist shot out. Right to the solar plexus. Kelsey seized up in pain as Michelle went back into her room. “A soldier, huh? Don’t get syphilis,” Kelsey choked out.
Kelsey straightened, rubbed her stomach, and made her way back to the party with Gillian.
“He’s cute,” Gillian said.
“Whatever.”
Michelle hadn’t even introduced them.
On the stairs, Kelsey stopped to survey the crowd congregating around the beer, the coupling off, hands in the air bouncing to the music. Ingrid was doing a handstand against the wall. Davis was surrounded by girls in UGGs. He found her gaze and beckoned.
Kelsey took another step down. “Hey!” she yelled. Heads turned to behold her tanned arms lifted, her legs silhouetted in tight jeans. The world’s eyes were on her. Well, her world’s eyes, at least.
“Who wants to see me break my own record?”
CHAPTER TWO
The party had emptied in the wee hours of the morning, leaving a silence that throbbed through the house, the rooms dotted with red cups. Kelsey woke up next to an openmouthed Davis snoring like the revving of a Vespa, with memories of her drinking beer out of a boot. Shifting his weight, Kelsey kicked past their clothes scattered on the floor. Something smelled like bacon.
She made her way to the doorway of the kitchen and rubbed her eyes, about to warn Michelle not to burn it like she always did.
“Bacon” was all she could get out.
“For you,” a voice said. “Hope that’s okay.”
Kelsey lifted her head with a start.
Peter was standing at the stove, eating a bowl of Life cereal. The mysterious Peter. And without a shirt. He was very pale, wasn’t he? But not in a bad way. Kelsey found she was running her fingers through her hair. She stopped, opening the fridge for the orange juice.