From The Start

Mary was the reason that we went to Arizona in the first place.

She was the reason for a lot of the things that I did that ended up turning sour, like my stint on the cheerleading squad, the basketball team, and countless others. Her ideas—that always seemed so good, so well thought out—always fizzled, going down the drain almost as soon as they were thought up. Either she lost interest or I did something horribly embarrassing; whatever it was, we always quit together. Our leaving the squad, the club, or the team had always been a unanimous decision. I figured that, because we had graduated from high school and it had been a long, long while since one of her ideas had been announced, this one would work, she wouldn’t drop it like she had all the others. I was wrong.

My suitcase was a mess of shorts, t-shirts and hoodies when Garrett knocked on the door, not bothering to wait for my response before he came in. In the time that I had spent in Arizona, he and I had become good friends, though, initially, it had only been because Mary had ditched me for Nick. “You know,” Garrett said, and pulled a few pairs of shorts out of my suitcase and placed them back in the drawer, “this is not a productive use of time.”

I rolled my eyes. “Garrett, I’m leaving. Don’t do this, okay?” I picked up the shorts, folded them once again, and placed them back in my suitcase.

My decision hadn’t been immediate, the result of an hour or so of pacing back and forth and thinking things through. We had been invited by Pat’s mom—Mary’s aunt—to stay for a few of the summer months, but the invitation had only reached me because Mary had asked if she could bring a friend along. Without her there, the invitation, I assumed, would be taken back. I wasn’t related to the Kirch family, or anyone in Arizona for that matter, in anyway aside from the friendship that I had developed with them. And, to me, that felt weird, like I was barging in on their family, on their life, and that meant one thing: leave. It hadn’t occurred to me that Garrett wouldn’t want me to go until that moment, when I saw him looking at me, his eyes incredulous.

“Liv, come on. Everyone wants you to stay! Jesus, the summer has barely begun!” He sat down on the edge of my bed and looked back at my suitcase, where almost all of my clothes were folded.

“I don’t care if everyone wants me to stay!” I muttered, and reached behind him for my pillow. “Mary was my invitation down here. Without her, the invitation has been revoked. See what I’m saying?”

“No, I don’t, but whatever,” he sighed, and pushed hair out of his face. “How long have you been packing? An hour?”

I gave him a look and said, “two. Why do you care?”

“Two hours? Just folding clothes? You have the longest attention span in the entire freaking world, you know that?” He got up and pulled the shirt out of my hands. “Take a break. Even if you are leaving, you can’t catch a flight until tomorrow. The guys are going over to Jared’s for a cookout. You should come.”

“Maybe I don’t want to come.”

“That’s really too bad. Go.” He pointed toward the door and then looked back at me, raising his eyebrows. “You can’t say no to an offer as good as hot dogs and hamburgers at Jared’s.”

“Actually, I can—”

Garrett marched me up the stairs with his hands on my shoulders, muttering something under his breath that I couldn’t understand, and he waved goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Kirch for me. “We’re just going to Jared’s,” he explained, and pushed me through the halfway open front door, “I’ll have her in by midnight.”

That, to me, sounded like a lie—nothing that went on between him and his band mates broke up that early—though I didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to explain it to them, either, because they had stopped wondering after Mary and I had come in much later than anticipated for the third time. His hands left my shoulders as soon as we stepped onto the front, when I sped up and moved to the passenger side door, thinking about who would get drunk at the “cookout.” John would, because he seemed to do that at just about every gathering I had gone to with them. If Mary had been there, she would have, too; the only reason I knew that was because, at every party she had dragged me to in Vermont, she had gotten more than wasted. But Mary wasn’t there, probably snuggled down in her bed at her parent’s house by then, with some bull shit excuse.

I just sighed and pulled my seatbelt on, letting Garrett fiddle with the radio as we pulled out of the driveway and down the road.