Page 60 of On His Mind

Ivory’s suitcase is open on the living room floor on Thursday with half her clothes in it.

“Last minute trip to Cabo,” she says, holding up two identical swimsuits. “Drew’s family has a place. Everyone’s going. Sasha, Rylee, all of them. Which one?”

“The left.”

“You think?”

“Then the right.”

She groans and throws both in. “You’re sure you can’t come?”

“I have Chicago.”

“Over spring break?”

“Yeah, my mom wants me in the city for four days, and there’s a Whitmore thing I can’t get out of.” All true. I’ve been dreading it since February.

“God.” She flops backward onto the couch. “It’ll be so dead here. Everyone’s gone. Total ghost town.”

I go into my room and start folding things into a garment bag, and what Ivory said makes me smile. Because I’ll be back on Sunday. I’ll spend four days in Chicago and then it’ll be me and this empty town. Except it won’t be completely empty, will it? Because in December, when the town emptied, there was a boy with a Christmas tree in a freezing house who made hot chocolate and gave me all of his marshmallows. There was a fake fireplace on a television. There was a morning I woke up on a couch, and it was Christmas, and nothing at all was expected of me. The town will empty. And he’ll be here, and I’ll be here.

I fold a dress into the bag and think about the walk from Bellweather to the coffee place on Ninth, and about the alley off Tenth with the fire escape I’ve been wanting to show him.

I don’t tell him I’m leaving. I’m sure he’ll be working at the Camerie.

Chapter 15

Percy

“MonPetitPercy,”Stanleyannounces to the kitchen, “will you pass me the salt?”

I pass him the salt.

“Merci.” He says it like a man throwing a rock. “That’s it, right? Merci? Did I nail it?”

“You nailed it,” Benson says, without looking up from his phone.

“He didn’t nail it,” Rowan says from the stove.

“He never nails it.”

It’s been a week, and it hasn’t stopped. He won’t stop. Somewhere in the middle of it, it quit being about the book or the language, and now it’s the name he calls me. We’ve stopped explaining it to anybody who asks because everyone knows. It’s my goddamn nickname.

The hall is full of bags. Rowan’s making eggs anyway for a house that’s leaving in two hours, because it’s the last morning, and that’s what he does. I’ve agreed to get the dishes after they leave.

Blue eats. He’s got his hood up, a duffel by his foot, and he’s on his third plate.

“Cabo,” Stanley says, to nobody, to the ceiling. “Fourteen of us. Faulkner’s dad has a condo. I intend to come back a different man. Tan. Unshaven. Taller.”

“You’ll come back with a rash,” Benson says.

Stanley puts his hands in the air like he’s reading it in the sky. “A different man with a rash.”

I almost smile.

Stanley says to anyone who’ll listen, “I can book someone a last-minute flight if any of you change your mind.” He looks at Rowan first.

Rowan slides another egg onto Blue’s plate and says, “The Reeves are making a roast.”