Page 82 of Across His Line

We eat at four.

My grandma says grace. Dylan has more friends that come over, and they don’t close their eyes. The table is crowded, and I end up on the corner, on the folding chair from the hall closet, with my knees against the table leg. The turkey breast is dry. The green beans are from a can. The sweet potatoes are perfect, browned in even rows, and I can’t eat them.

The girl from the couch takes a second helping of them. “These are good,” she says, to nobody, not looking at me.

“What, you’re too good to eat now?” Dylan says, pointing his fork at my plate. “They teach you that up there too? Rich girl diet?”

“I’m just not hungry.”

“She’s not hungry,” he says in the voice, and his friends laugh.

I sit there on the folding chair at the corner of my grandma’s table, and I feel like somebody who got invited at the last minute because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. Nobody asks me anything. Nobody looks at me. They eat the food I spent all day making and talk about the football game over my head.

My phone buzzes in my pocket at four-thirty. Kylie.

I said I’d answer. I get up and go out on the porch and shut the door behind me, and the cold is so sharp and clean after the house that it makes my eyes water.

“Tess,” Kylie yells. There’s noise behind her. People laughing. A dog barking. Somebody yelling at a football game, a different football game, in a different house. “Happy Thanksgiving! Are you eating the stuffing that slaps? Is it slapping?”

I laugh. It comes out wrong. I answer, “It’s slapping.” Even though, it’s not true. I’m not even at Woodbury, but I don’t explain it.

“You sound weird.”

“Bad reception.”

She tells me Happy Thanksgiving and all about the food that stuffed her so full. Nash says hi in the frame, and when they start kissing, I look the other way. Then she gets off the phone, and I look down at my contacts.

I FaceTime Elsie.

She answers, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

Payton comes into view. “Are you home?”

I show them the house behind me.

“What?” Payton scoffs. “If I’d known, I would’ve come back!”

I blink. “It was a last-minute thing,” I say.

She says, “My mom would love to see you if you’re up for it.”

Elsie comes into view. “Mine, too! Oh my God, take pictures with Payton’s mom and dad. She’s going to be so pissed.”

Payton rolls her eyes. “I would’ve come back. I thought we were doing Christmas.”

I want to say we are, but now I’m not sure I will. I don’t want to come here ever again, actually.

Elsie and Payton are at some party on campus, and they rush me off the phone. I end the call and wonder if I should welcome myself at their parents’ houses. It takes one second to imagine what that would be like, and I decide against it.

My grandma goes to lie down at eight. She’s been on her feet since six, and her hip’s bothering her, so she kisses my forehead at the kitchen doorway and says the sweet potatoes were the best she’s ever had, better than hers, and not to tell anybody she said so. Then she goes down the hall to her room at the end, shuts the door, and turns her TV on, loud, the way she does now because her hearing’s going.

The football game is still on in the living room. Somebody’s opened another beer.

I start the dishes. It’s something to do, and it keeps me out of the living room. The water runs hot. I scrape the plates. I stack them. I scrub the roasting pan with steel wool, and for a little while, it’s almost peaceful.

Then the TV gets turned down. And Dylan comes into the kitchen behind me.

I know it’s him without turning around. I know his footsteps. He doesn’t say anything at first. He leans against the counter next to the fridge, closer than he needs to be in a kitchen this size, and he watches me scrub the pan.