Page 135 of Across His Line

“Yeah,” she says.

We go up the three flights. She goes first. I stay a step behind. The hallway on three is half empty already, doors propped open on stripped beds and bare mattresses, a garbage bag of hangers outside somebody’s room.

She stops at hers. I stop at mine.

“Night,” she says.

“Night.”

She goes in. I hear the chain.

I go in. My door sticks. I yank it. It slams.

Kennebeck’s bed is stripped. His duffels are packed and lined up by the door, in order, because Kennebeck packed two days ago and labeled everything. He’s at Theta, or at Kylie’s, or somewhere. The room is dark and cold and smells like his deodorant and the radiator.

I sit on the edge of my bed with my coat still on.

I take out my phone and the map automatically opens. I look at the dots for a half second, and then I open our messages. I type.

You can come home with me.

I stare at it. It sounds like I’m asking her out. It sounds like Thanksgiving all over again, my car, my house, my mother’s clothes, her owing me one more thing she can’t pay back.

I delete it.

If you need somewhere to go for Christmas...

I look at that, too. It’s worse.

I delete it.

Do you have somewhere to go?

I already know the answer. She told me on the sidewalk. Asking her to say it again would just be making her say it.

I delete that one, too.

I sit there with the empty box and the cursor blinking, and I don’t know what to put in it. I don’t know what she’d want. I don’t know what we are, or what I’m allowed to offer, or whether offering anything at all is just another way of deciding for her.

I don’t send anything.

Her dot stays three doors down.

I leave mine on.

21

Is That a Question?

Tessa

I put the chain on, and then I stand in the middle of my room with my coat still zipped to my chin, and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Kylie’s side is a disaster. Three duffels are open on her bed, clothes spilling out of all of them, her hair straightener plugged into the outlet with nobody using it. I unplug it and stand there holding the cord.

My phone is still off in my pocket. I don’t turn it back on.

I take the coat off. I hang it on the hook on the back of the door. He brought it to me. He dug through a pile of coats on somebody’s bed and found it and walked three blocks in the snow with it over his arm.