Sneaking out the Back Door

Change of Plans
February 13th
Mika's
Tennessee, Sevierville, USA

The glacial snap of the previous week was over; the sun was shining brightly as Marli hurried across Mika's front yard, the hood of her jacket up to keep her hair from blowing across her face. The weather might have warmed up, but the wind off Lake Douglas could still be brutish.

Chayton was waiting for her on the front porch, sprawled in a falling apart swing set. He had his phone balanced on his blue-jeaned knees and was poking away at it industriously with his thumbs. "Eat me," he said as she came up the steps. "I'm kicking your ass on Minion Rush."

Marli pushed her hood back, shaking bangs out of her eyes, and rummaged in her pocket for her keys. "Man," she breathed out, and Chayton was expecting something about how the stress of beginning her gap year had affected her gaming skills. Instead, she hissed, "Where the hell have you been? I called you about twenty times."

Chayton got to his feet, shoving his blinking phone into his pocket. "I was at Em's. LSATs."

Marli stopped jiggling the key in the lock---it always stuck--long enough to pout at him. "LSATs? You mean you're still---"

"Trying to get into law school? Why wouldn't I be?" He reaches around her. "Move. Let me do it."

Marli stood still while Chayton expertly twisted the key with just the right amount of pressure, making the decade old lock spring open. His hand brushed hers; his skin cooler than the temperature of the air outside. She shivered a little. After two years of friendship, she still felt muddled whenever she was reminded how cold-blooded Chayton ran.

"Thanks," she hummed. Marli took the key back without looking at him.

It was hot in Mika's living room. Marli hung her jacket up on the hook inside the parlor and headed to Mika's bedroom, Chayton trailing like a baby duck. Marli frowned as soon as she pushed the door open.

Mika's suitcase was open like a clamshell on the bed, her clothes and journals strewn everywhere. The hot pink plastic binder Marli had gotten her was the pearl, glimmering in the middle of Mika's open suitcase 'TOUR' etched onto it in familiar block letters.

"I thought you were going to Dublin next week," Chayton said, taking in the mess with a look of faint dismay.

"We are, but it looks like Mika thinks she's packing for a trip to PCB," Marli sighed, holding up two strapless bikini tops with her index finger.

"Why wouldn't she? You're going to be gone for months. You know Mika likes---"

"Not having tan lines," Marli finished, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow. "I just figured she would be packed by now since I literally told her to---" Marli broke off and huffed. "It's nothing. I'm just projecting all my anxiety about touring into Mika being packed. Let's talk about something else. How is it going with Emmy? Still not dating yet?"

"I was going to say, you know Mika likes waiting until the last minute, but thank you, for interrupting me. Em and I are fine." Chayton hopped onto the corner of Mika's small desktop, shoving her laptop further into the corner, his legs dangling over the side. "I'm considering asking her out after I pass. With something ironic, like 'I rocked the LSATs and now it's time to rock you.'"

"Don't do that. Have you told her that---"

"That I'm planning on going to Stanford? No. It isn't the sort of thing you just spring into casual conversation with the girl you're in love with."

"Maybe not, but I sprung going on tour to David in casual conversation."

"But you're not in love with David, I'm in love with Emmy. Stanford could make or break us."

"What do you mean I'm not in love with David?" Marli scoffed. "We're engaged. Nevermind. Emmy is one of your best friends. She should know. And besides, she'll just like you more once she finds out Stanford accepted you."

"Marli," Chayton drawled. "You've--- never mind. Anyway, I don't see you running to tell all your friends that you're touring with One Direction."

"What friends? You, Mika, and Emmy are the only friends I have." She threw herself down onto Mika's bed and looked up at Chayton. "I told y'all, didn't I?"

"Because you had no choice," Chayton put his head to the side, studying her; the bedside light reflected off his eyes, turning them gray. "Emmy and I will miss y'all when you're gone."

"I'll miss you too," Marli said, although her skin was prickling all over with a nervous anticipation that made it hard to concentrate. I'm going to England! Her mind sang, I'll be with Harry. And I won't be with David. For the first time since sophomore year I won't be within twenty miles of him.

Chayton's eyes flashed as if he could hear her thoughts, but his voice was soft. "Tell me again---why do you have to go on tour? If it's the family business, why can't Allese take care of it without you?"

"Well, I suppose if she could take care of it without me I wouldn't have been asked. I'm just terrified it will all go to shit. Especially since..." Marli trailed off but Chayton nodded, guessing what she was going to say.

"But you'll have three months with Harry. Harry does know you're coming, doesn't he?"

"I'm pretty sure he knows I'm coming."

"You're going to be on tour, working in close quarters with him, for three months. And your not sure if your best friend, who you just randomly stopped communicating with regularly, doesn't mind you coming along? On his world tour?"

"It's not going to be close quarters," Marli defended. "And of course he won't mind. As soon as I explain everything to him, which is something I want to do in person, he's going to be fine with it."

But that, Marli suspected, was a lie.

The last time Marli had seen her best friend it had ended horribly. The last time they actually had a conversation it had ended in an epic disaster she still hasn't come to terms with.

"Because you're my favorite girl..."

"Earth to Marli." Chayton waved his hands at her. "You awake?"

"I'm sorry, I'm awake." She sat up, shaking her head to clear it of cobwebs.

"Because you're my favorite girl. But I'll always be the boy you accidentally became friends with."

Those had been the last words Harry had spoken to her, before she returned home to Tennessee. He had only ever picked up the phone once when she tried to call him afterward, but they still constantly communicated through their social media platforms, e-mail, and texts, brushing their last moments with each other under the liquidated rug that spanned the Atlantic Ocean between them.

That had only lasted until nearly the end of her sophomore year, when One Direction gained world-wide popularity and their conversations slowed from all day to daily. Her and David had begun dating at the beginning of that summer, and David asked her to be his girlfriend that September. A month later when he'd voiced that her then weekly platonic online correspondence with a boy from England made him uncomfortable, her contact with Harry became almost nonexistent.

Now almost four years after leaving Europe, there's even less communication between the two. Harry never fails to contact her, albeit distantly; on her birthday or Christmas, a package arriving from him around the same time, but she's lucky if she gets three replies a month. For awhile, she was sending him a couple paragraphs a week to keep him up to date on her life, but at some point she'd just come to terms that he didn't want to be her best friend anymore and she had given up. Around that time she'd started getting updates from his sister Gemma.

Poor Gemma, stuck between Marli and younger her brother, always trying to do the right thing.

"Did you say something?" Marli asked Chayton.

"Just that I think Mika is home," Chayton informed, and jumped off the desk just as the bedroom door opened.

"I just punched myself in the face picking my phone up from the ground, so that's how my afternoon is going," Mika informed them without preamble, slithering around Chayton as quick as an eel.

"Mika," Marli drawled excitedly, as her cousin kicked off her work boots before landing haphazardly on the bed between Marli, the wall her bed was pushed up against, and the mess that was her barely packed suitcase. "We're supposed to leave on Sunday."

"I know that. I started packing," Mika said, gesturing at the mess behind them. "But-"

"Mika, it literally looks like you put your suitcase on your bed and threw everything that was cluttering your room  into it, and then the notebook on top just to make it look like you tried." Marli paused as Mika clumsily shifted, wedging herself further between her cousin and the wall.

"I knew there was something different in here," Chayton surmised, glancing around the room. "It is cleaner."

After scooting over to avoid being elbowed in the face by Mika and completely ignoring Chayton's late observation, Marli continued, "I can't take you along if you're not going to take this seriously. My mére already---"

Mika swiftly silenced her, "Istas."

Marli reeled back as if she had actually been elbowed in the face.

Marli's full name was already long enough, but it's never uncommon for indigenous people to have more than one name, some tribes give their people up to six. Istas was not a named she was called upon very often, even rarer was it that she heard it off the reservation and outside of her family home.

Istas was the name she was given by her dad's father Enyeto the day she was born, it meant Snow and didn't appear anywhere on her birth certificate which somehow made it even more relevant to her. Enyeto lives on the very outskirts of the Qualla boundary with her grandmother Kaliska, a whole state away.  Enyeto means Walks As A Bear, while Kaliska means Coyote Chasing Deer but to Marli they're just her Enisi's---her paternal grandparents and two of her favorite people. Her Enisi Enyeto is not the only person who calls her Istas--but he is the only one who has never addressed her as anything wlse. Although Enisi Kaliska calls her Istas often, she will occasionally call upon her as Marli and even Dyani, which is the only native name that made it into her long and winding legal name.

So hearing Istas sends several reactions throughout Marli's body; a large unshakeable longing for her Enisi's, a small rush of pride, something she can't quite place, while also making her entire body tense with dread.

Distantly, she heard Chayton muttering something that sounded like "Oh no," as she met the wide copper brown eyes of her cousin. Mika straightened into a sitting position, crossing her legs and pursing her lips. When Mika flipped her braided hair over her shoulder, not only did the dread intensify but Marli thought that Mika meant raccoon.

Marli wanted to tell Mika to shut up, to just not say anything at all. She wanted to remind her that the only reason she even agreed to help Allese and her grandfather was because Mika had promised she would come.

Marli wanted to blurt out that even if Harry hated her, or if he didn't speak to her the entire time, she could bear it if she at least had Mika with her. Marli wanted to say that she couldn't do this without her.

But that, Marli knew was a lie.

Mika inhaled deeply, and exhaled, "I got an internship at Rosegal. It's two months and it's paid and I know I promised you but this is what I've been working for. I can't give this up. It's only for two months and then I can join you on tour, Istas."

There was that name again. Istas. Snow.

Mika resumed rambling, nervously fingering her braid, "I'm so sorry. I already accepted it but I know I promised. I can cancel on them instead. Tell them thanks but no thanks. I'll get other opportunities---"

Marli grabbed Mika's hand, wrapping her smaller calloused fingers around her trembling manicured ones. "No, no. I wanted you to be there. But, but--" Marli  grinned, shoving all her negative feelings out of her mind. She squeezed Mika's hand gently. "I'm so happy for you. You're going to ace this and become a household name, Mika. And Chayton's going to get into Stanford and finally get his girl." Marli glanced at Chayton long enough to give him a wink. "And I'm going to go on tour with One Direction to earn Allese's love and respect… and to hopefully get my best friend back. It will be fine. Everything's still going to be fine."

"Of course it will, Istas," Chayton chimed in. Walking over to the bed he squished himself in between Mika and Marli, shoving Mika into the wall and nearly knocking Marli off the bed. He wrapped his long arms around them, squishing their faces into his armpits.

But that, Marli thought, was most likely just Chayton trying to make her feel better.