“Better safe than sorry,” Antonia agrees. “Wow, your room hasn’t changed one bit,” she adds. “It’s still so dark.”
She’s always teased me about how little sunlight I let inside my room. The walls are painted navy, but I’m not a total vampire. There are twinkle lights under a white canopy over my bed that gives the room this dreamy atmosphere. It helps me sleep.
Besides the framed Frida print, there’s a giant chalkboard leaning on the wall next to my bed where I doodle and write my favorite quotes. The bookshelves are stuffed with diaries, art books and old records. A pale green chair sits next to my easel. Art supplies are scattered on the floor around it. Drawing tools mostly. Some paints. And a big stack of art pads of all sizes.
“Same place?” Sam asks.
I nod. The familiarity of our friendship makes me feel better. Our fights have never lasted long. It feels good to be reunited with both of them. All three of us haven’t hung out together since the beginning of summer. Antonia was traveling. Sam was working. I was helping Mom with her literacy campaign. Though Sam and I have known each other since elementary school, we formed our trifecta with Antonia at the beginning of high school in world history when the three of us were assigned a research project on the Middle Ages. I never thought any of us would have been friends with each other, but I guess we can thank Vlad the Impaler for bringing us together.
As Sam walks into my closet and reaches behind one of my shoeboxes, I notice how tan and muscular he’s gotten over the summer. Maybe he doesn’t need to fill out as much as I thought. He brings out the vodka, twists off the cap and offers the bottle to me.
It’s almost empty.
“Damn, Liv,” Sam says. “How much have you been drinking this summer?”
“Shut up. Just give me the bottle.”
I take the first pull. The alcohol burns its way down.
“I have a confession to make.” Antonia grabs the bottle. “Better give me a drink first.”
“Confession?” I ask. “What’s this about?”
Sam takes a double shot. After all his talk about immorality and swanky boat parties. “Maybe she’s willing to teleport after all,” he says.
I look at Antonia. She looks like she’s about to burst with secrets. Is there something she hasn’t told me about what happened during summer vacation?
“Nothing like that,” she says. “It’s this girl.”
“Girl?” Sam and I say at the same time.
“Yes, a girl. I’ve been talking to this girl from the track team.” Antonia fidgets with her front pocket. “I’m pretty sure we want to hook up with each other.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
We’ve talked about guys before, but Antonia always turned the subject back to me. Though she has a flirtatious personality, I guess I just thought she wasn’t interested in dating people in general. She seemed to always be able to have fun on her own.
“I wanted to make sure I really knew before I told you,” Antonia says.
I hug Antonia tight. “I’m so glad you said something.”
“You guys are the first people I’ve told,” Antonia says, smiling as I let go of the hug. “Except for her, of course. I’ll eventually tell my family, but they’re open-minded. I’m not worried.”
“Dude. From the track team?” Sam says. “You’ve got some serious game.”
“There’s a problem,” Antonia says. “Better give me another drink.”
She takes the bottle from me and sends another shot down her throat.
“What is it?” I ask as she wipes her mouth.
“I think she’s scared,” Antonia says. “She doesn’t want to be labeled. You know? Her parents are pretty old-fashioned. She said her father won’t even watch a TV show with a gay character. At least that’s what she tells me about him. Real loser.”
“Screw that guy,” Sam says, taking the bottle from her. “Do what makes you happy. You should definitely go for it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m so here for this. For you.”
“Thanks, Sam.” Antonia squeezes his bicep and winks at me. “So now that I’ve made my confession...you guys can’t leave me hanging. We’ve barely seen each other in like three months. There must be some new deep dark secret you’re dying to tell us.”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, looking down at my carpet.
“You must have hooked up with some hot surfer chicks over the summer.” I take another swig from the bottle. It’s finally starting to make me feel like the warmth is radiating from my bones. “Come on. You know you want to tell.”
As soon as I say those words, I regret asking about other girls. If there are any or have been any over the summer, I don’t want to know. Thinking of him with other girls creates knots in my stomach. Even though I don’t want Sam to be overprotective, I suddenly feel protective over him. Everything about our relationship feels like a paradox.
“Yeah. Right,” Sam mumbles. He looks up at Antonia. “Let’s talk about something else, please?”
“Come on.” I swing my arm around Sam, leaning my head onto his shoulder. “You can tell us. We always talk about everything.”
“Yeah.” Antonia shakes her index finger. “No secrets.”
“It’s really stupid, but I keep having these dreams about my brother,” Sam says. He absentmindedly tucks his hair behind his ear. “We’ll be surfing, joking around, racing each other to catch a wave, but then he disappears under the water. I can never save him.”
“Sam,” I say, hugging him, remembering how he cried into my chest the day he found out his older brother, James, had died. It broke my heart. It still does. “You okay?”
James died last year from a drug overdose at their house. It was completely unexpected. He was a super nice guy who would stop anything he was doing to help someone else. James had been visiting home from the University of Chicago, where he was on the crew team. We didn’t know until later, but a doctor had prescribed heavy painkillers for a back injury that happened during a rowing competition, which I guess led to James getting involved in doing harder drugs.
I was shocked when I found out. He’d only been back three days for Christmas break when he overdosed. Sam found his body. We’ve only talked about what happened once or twice, but Sam doesn’t say much. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I can help him with. I can’t take away his pain or erase what happened. Whenever I think about what Sam must have had to go through, I get a lump in my throat. I feel helpless.
My problems seem so trivial compared to Sam’s loss. What right do I have to fall apart when there are other people who’ve been dealt a hand much worse than mine?
“Yeah.” Sam pulls away. “It’s just a really weird feeling. I wake up and the only person I want to talk to about James’s death is...James.” We all go silent for a moment until Sam takes the bottle from me. “Anyway. I took my turn. Fair’s fair. Liv?”
“Oh man,” I say nervously. It’s my turn to do some talking about my personal issues. I think about how depressed I was this summer and how much I wanted to tell them that I felt like a ghost haunting the real world, but I couldn’t, because they were living their best lives and I didn’t want to be selfish and ruin their happiness.
Because Sam and Antonia were both gone, I started spending a lot of time online. I started looking up tips about purging and I stumbled onto a pro-bulimia forum. Then