never both home at the same time,” Ethan was muttering. “You’re hardly ever home, either.”
“I have a lot of work to do. I’m a senior, dude.” Abby tried to sound playful. She’d called him dude when he was a kid, and it always used to make him smile.
“But don’t you think—”
“All right, Ethan, it shouldn’t be much longer.” The principal’s voice boomed above them. “Abby Zimet! So good to see you.”
“Hi, Mr. Geis.” Abby stood up. Mr. Geis had been the assistant principal when she was in middle school. “How are you?”
“Very well, Abby. You must be a senior? I’m sorry, you’re probably missing a meeting or practice this afternoon, aren’t you?”
“I just got back from the health care protest at the White House.”
“Of course you did.” Mr. Geis smiled at her, but from the way his eyes kept darting down, she could tell he wanted to focus on Ethan. “You always were passionate about the causes you believed in. Are you taking Contemporary Politics this semester?”
“No, I’m doing the Women’s and Gender Studies seminar instead.” Come to think of it, didn’t she have a paper due for WGS sometime this week? On that campaign down in Virginia—the transgender candidate who was running against the homophobe?
Abby remembered talking to Vanessa about it, but she couldn’t remember when she was supposed to turn it in. It couldn’t have been due today, could it?
Shit...
“Well, don’t let us keep you, Abby.” Mr. Geis was still smiling at her brightly. “It was good seeing you. Now, young man, come into my office, please.”
Abby watched her brother climb to his feet without lifting his head and follow the no-longer-smiling Mr. Geis into the inner office. He didn’t look back.
“Your dad should be here any minute,” Mr. Geis was telling him as Abby turned to leave.
“What about my mom?” she heard Ethan say.
Mr. Geis paused. “Your father said she was out of town.”
“She isn’t coming?” Suddenly, Ethan sounded frantic. He couldn’t actually be surprised Mom wasn’t coming all the way from Pittsburgh to pick him up from school, could he?
“I’m sure you’ll talk to her when she’s back home.” Mr. Geis had barely gotten the words out before Ethan started moaning. Footsteps squeaked in the hall outside. “Is something wrong, Ethan?”
“I don’t feel good,” Ethan croaked, in the fakest voice imaginable.
“What’s going on?” It was Dad, frowning in the doorway. Of course he’d show up right as Ethan was laying on the drama. “Abby? What are you doing here?”
His suit jacket was rumpled. He’d probably been wearing it since he got up that morning in New York. He would’ve worn it the entire train ride back to Union Station, and the cab ride to his office after that, and then through all his meetings or lunches or whatever it was he did all day. Neither of their parents ever went home until it was absolutely unavoidable.
Behind them, Ethan moaned again.
“Is Ethan sick?” Dad’s face shifted from confusion to worry. For a second, Abby was jealous she’d never thought to try fake moaning. “I thought they said he got in trouble with his teacher.”
“You can go on in, Mr. Zimet,” Ms. Jackson said, emerging from the back room. She didn’t seem particularly worried. She’d probably heard plenty of fake moans in her time. “Your son’s in with Mr. Geis. He was feeling fine before.”
“All right.” Dad turned back to Abby, as though waiting for her to solve this puzzle for him.
“He wants Mom,” she whispered, as patiently as she could manage. “He thinks if he’s sick you’ll both come, the way you did when he had that appendix thing. You should probably get Mom on the phone. If he hears both your voices he might calm down.”
“Abby, it isn’t as simple as...” Dad glanced toward the office. “Wait for us out here and we’ll all go home together, all right?”
“Oh, um...” Her eyes darted up, down, anywhere but at him. As much as she wanted her parents to act like parents again, the thought of actually being alone with her dad and her brother for any amount of time was excruciating. “I’ve gotta go. I have a big project for, uh, French...”
But Abby couldn’t think of anything more to say about her fictional French project, so she darted under Dad’s arm and out of the office.
She was halfway down the hall before she realized she was running. Dad wouldn’t come after her, though, not with Ethan and Mr. Geis waiting.
She swung around a corner into the huge, vacant main stairwell, listening out for footsteps in the hall behind her. Nothing came.
Abby climbed up one floor, and then another. The third floor looked empty. Surely Dad wouldn’t think to look for her up here. When they got out of their meeting he’d assume she’d already gone home, and he’d take Ethan somewhere to give him a talking-to.
She opened her laptop with shaky hands, though she wasn’t sure why—it wasn’t as if she could focus enough to do homework right now.
That was when Abby noticed the ebook sitting on her desktop, staring at her. Women of the Twilight Realm. Without pausing to think, she clicked it open. She was still on the third chapter, and the point of view had switched from Elaine to another character.
The new girl was magnificent.
She was young, certainly—no more than twenty or so. Her hand-stitched clothes marked her as a stranger to New York. She was a stranger to bars like Mitch’s Corner, too, Paula was sure of it. She’d seen enough first-timers to know the mix of apprehension and anticipation they always carried, even when they were doing their best to look tough. Before tonight, the pretty, little blond girl hovering by the jukebox with an unlit cigarette clamped between her fingers had never set foot in a queer bar.
She’d thought about it, though—Paula was certain of that much, too. There was something about the steely set of the new girl’s hips, and the way every so often she cast her eyes from side to side, watching the bar’s patrons as they danced and drank and talked. Yes, the girl might be new, but she wasn’t a total innocent.
Paula ordered a beer and a martini, and then, holding the drinks tight, sauntered over beside the new girl to peer down at the jukebox. The blond didn’t look up.
“The songs in that thing are no good,” Paula said, lifting the martini glass. “Old Max is so stingy he probably hasn’t bought a new record since the Hoover years.”
The blond met Paula’s eyes for a moment, then shifted her gaze back to her own white schoolgirl blouse.
Paula smiled. The new girl’s nerves only made her look prettier.
