Page 16 of On His Mind

I turn and walk out. Outside, the air is cooler than an August evening has any business being. I get in my car and set the folder face down on the passenger seat. I don’t open it again, and then I sit with both hands on the wheel and don’t start the engine. This is everything I’m supposed to want. Prestigious, competitive, connected, and finished before I walked through the door. It should feel like winning.

My phone lights up in the console.

Ivory: Get your ass to Hawthorne!

I look at the folder on the seat.

Then I look down at the dress my mother picked, that fits me perfectly, that I’m still wearing.

Me: On my way.

Chapter 3

Percy

Myfirsthousepartyturns out to be an endurance event.

Movies make it look like something you attend — you show up, you hold a cup, things happen to you in a pleasant order. Nobody mentions that it’s four hours of standing in a room where the air has been used too many times, watching each exit door.

By nine, Hawthorne House doesn’t look like the place Josh dropped me off at a week ago.

The front door won’t stay shut. Somebody’s shoe got wedged under it around eight, so now it just breathes, open and closed, letting the noise out onto the porch in bursts. Every surface has collected something — red cups, half a beer, somebody’s keys, a phone facedown that’s been buzzing against the counter for twenty minutes. There’s a paper plate on the arm of the couch with a slice of pizza folded in half on it that nobody is going to eatand nobody is going to throw away. The house smells like beer gone warm, too many bodies, and a mix of men and women’s cologne.

I’m standing at the edge of the kitchen with my back to the wall and a cup of something I haven’t drunk from, running the exits. The front door is blocked. Two guys are in the frame having a conversation that keeps folding both of them in half laughing. The stairs are worse. There’s a couple on the fourth step and a girl sitting on the seventh with her phone. The back door, through the kitchen, past the sink is in the clear. That’s the one. That’s the route. But a room full of people rearranges itself every forty seconds, so I keep my eye on it.

I breathe in for four, hold for four, and out for six.I’m fine.

Stanley steers me into the living room and announces to a group of girls.

“This is the freshman goalie, and he has emotional depth.”

I swallow the lump in my throat.

One of the girls tilts her head and says, “Does he?”

Stanley feeds into it. “Enormous depth. Fathoms.”

I stand there and don’t say a word. Stanley goes on for four minutes, talking for the both of us. The girls listen and laugh way too loud. The brunette keeps looking at me, and I don’t look back.

Then Benson walks over and says, “Stop using the freshman as a prop.”

Stanley argues, “I’m involving him.” He pulls me closer. “He’s doing fine.”

I remove myself from Stanley’s hold while Benson takes my cup out of my hand, looks in it, and gives it back. He knows I haven’t taken a sip of it, but he doesn’t say anything. Someone calls his name, and he peels off after patting my back. I catch Blue across the room against the wall by himself. I’m about to join him when the brunette with the green top walks over to me.

“Hi,” she says, smiling up at me.

Her arm is linked with her friend. They’re both looking at me.

“We’re freshmen, too,” she says.

Her friend says, “You play hockey?”

“Yeah,” I say, but it comes out quiet. I think it’s the first word I’ve said all night.

“What position?”

“Stanley said he’s a goalie,” the brunette says. Then, to me, “I’m Margo. This is Delaney.”