Teardrop

She pulled away to look at him. She studied his face and his freckles and the cowlicks in his brown hair and she saw that he was someone entirely different. She was scared and exhilarated, knowing there was no going back after anything, especially something like this.

“What took you so long?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“To do what?”

“To kiss me.”

“I … well …” Brooks frowned, pulled away.

“Wait.” She tried to pull him back. Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, which felt suddenly stiff. “I didn’t mean to kill the mood.”

“There are reasons I’ve waited so long to kiss you.”

“Such as?” She wanted to sound sunny, but she was already wondering: Was it Diana? Was Eureka so damaged she’d scared Brooks off?

That moment’s hesitation was all it took for Eureka to convince herself that Brooks saw her the way the rest of their school saw her—a freak show, bad luck, the last girl any normal guy should pursue. So she blurted out: “I guess you’ve been busy with Maya Cayce.”

Brooks’s face darkened into a scowl. He rose to stand at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed over his chest. His body language was as distant as the memory of the kiss.

“That is so typical,” he said to the ceiling.

“What?”

“It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with you. It must be someone else’s fault.”

But Eureka knew it had everything to do with her. The knowledge was so painful she’d tried to cover it up with something else. Displacement, any of her last five shrinks would inform her, a dangerous habit.

“You’re right—” she said.

“Don’t patronize me.” Brooks didn’t look like her best friend or the boy she’d kissed. He looked like someone who resented everything about her. “I don’t want to be placated by someone who thinks she’s better than everyone.”

“What?”

“You’re right. The rest of the world is wrong. Isn’t that the way it is?”

“No.”

“You dismiss everything immediately—”

“I do not!” Eureka shouted, realizing she was immediately dismissing his claim. She lowered her voice and closed her bedroom door, not caring about the consequences if Dad walked by. She couldn’t let Brooks think these lies. “I don’t dismiss you.”

“Sure about that?” he asked coldly. “You even dismiss the things your mother left you in her will.”

“That’s not true.” Eureka obsessed over her inheritance night and day—but Brooks wasn’t even listening to her. He paced her room, his anger making him seem possessed.

“You keep Cat around because she doesn’t notice when you tune her out. You can’t stand anyone in your family.” He flung his hand in the direction of the den downstairs, where Rhoda and Dad had been watching the news but were now surely tuning in to the argument above. “You’re certain every therapist you go to is an idiot. You’ve pushed away all of Evangeline because there’s no way anyone could ever understand what you’ve been through.” He stopped pacing and looked straight at her. “Then there’s me.”

Eureka’s chest ached as if he’d punched her in the heart. “What about you?”

“You use me.”

“No.”

“I’m not your friend. I’m a sounding board for your anxiety and depression.”

“You—you’re my best friend,” she stammered. “You’re the reason I’m still here—”

“Here?” he said bitterly. “The last place on earth you want to be? I’m just the prelude to your future, your real life. Your mom raised you to follow your dreams, and that’s all you’ve ever cared about. You have no idea how much other people care for you because you’re too wrapped up in yourself. Who knows? Maybe you’re not even suicidal. Maybe you took those pills for attention.”

Eureka’s breath escaped her chest as if she’d been dropped from an airplane. “I confided in you. I thought you were the only one who didn’t judge me.”

“Right.” Brooks shook his head, disgusted. “You call everyone you know judgmental, but have you ever considered what a total bitch you are to Maya?”

“Of course, let’s not forget about Maya.”

“At least she cares about other people.”

Eureka’s lip trembled. Thunder boomed outside. Was she that bad a kisser?

“Well, if you’ve made up your mind,” she shouted, “call her! Be with her. What are you waiting for? Take my phone and make a date.” She threw the phone at him. It bounced off the pectoral she couldn’t believe she’d just laid her head against.

Brooks eyed the phone as if he were considering the offer. “Maybe I will,” he said slowly, under his breath. “Maybe I don’t need you as much as I thought I did.”

“What are you talking about? Am I being punked or something?”

“The truth hurts, huh?” He knocked her shoulder as he brushed past. He swung open her door, then glanced back at her bed, at the book and the thunderstone in its chest.

“You should go,” she said.

“Say that to a couple more people,” Brooks said, “and you’ll be all alone.”

Eureka listened to him thunder down the stairs and she knew what he’d look like, grabbing his keys and shoes off the entry bench. When the door slammed, she imagined him marching toward his car in the rain. She knew the way his hair would splay, the way his car would smell.

Could he imagine her? Would he even want to see her pressed against the window, staring at the storm, gulping with emotion, and holding back her tears?

12 NEPTUNE’S

Eureka picked up the thunderstone and hurled it at the wall, wanting to smash everything that had happened since she and Brooks had stopped kissing. The stone left a dent in the plaster she’d painted with blue polka dots during some happier lifetime. It landed with a thump next to her closet door.

She knelt to assess the damage, her flea-market Persian rug soft beneath her hands. It wasn’t as deep a dent as the one from two years ago, when she’d punched the wall next to the stove, arguing with Dad over whether she could miss a week of school to go to Peru with Diana. It wasn’t as shocking as the barbell Dad had broken when she was sixteen—screaming at her after she’d bailed on the summer job he’d gotten her at Ruthie’s Dry Cleaners. But the dent was bad enough to scandalize Rhoda, who seemed to think drywall could not be repaired.

“Eureka?” Rhoda shouted from the den. “What did you do?”

“Just an exercise Dr. Landry taught me!” she hollered, making a face she wished Rhoda could see. She was furious. If she were a wave, she’d make continents crumble like stale bread.

She wanted to hurt something the way Brooks had hurt her. She grabbed the book he’d been so interested in, gripped its spread pages, and considered ripping it in two.

Find your way out of a foxhole, girl. Diana’s voice found her again.

Foxholes were small and tight and camouflaged. You didn’t know you were in one until you couldn’t breathe and had to break free. They equaled claustrophobia, which, to Eureka, had always been an enemy. But foxes lived in foxholes; they raised families there. Soldiers shot from inside them, shielded from their enemies. Maybe Eureka didn’t want to find her way out of this one. Maybe she was a soldier fox. Maybe this foxhole of her fury was where she most belonged.