|photo by Michael from Unsplash|

My phone sucks. I can Google but when I get to the website, the screen freezes and the page won't...dammit. I drop my stupid phone in the console. I'm probably too late anyway. I should've looked up Faircrest's visiting hours before I drove my ass all the way up here.

"Noah?"

Ally.

I roll down my window and she smiles. Like this totally unguarded display of happiness. It's the way I used to feel every time she walked into French class but I kept it on lockdown. I was afraid to let anyone see how much I liked her.

"What are you doing out here?" I ask.

"I was walking Grace's friend to the parking lot and I saw your car. I had to say your name three times to get your attention."

Stupid phone. "Is it okay that I'm here?" I ask. "It's after 10:00."

"I think so," she says, looking at the front entrance. I've never been here at night before but I like it. The mansion is lit up like a grand hotel: spotlights on the red brick exterior and all those glowing windows. It looks like every single light is on. My dad would shit his pants if he had to pay this electric bill.

"Grace still has a visitor," Ally says. "She and her um, boyfriend are down by the lake."

Oh, right. "How was the party?"

"Short," she says. "It ended when I got there because Grace is mad at me. For some reason." Ally crosses her arms over her stomach. "Her friend tried to explain—that's why I walked out to her car but..." She shakes her head. "People are complicated."

"Yeah." Understatement.

Her eyebrows pull together and she glances at the mansion again, then back to me. "Do you want to come inside?"

"Uh...no, not really. Do you mind if we stay out here? Sit in my car for a minute?"

"I don't think I'm allowed to leave the grounds," she says, quick and sort of nervous.

"No, I mean we'll just sit here. In the parking lot." I take my keys out of the ignition and lay them on the dashboard.

"Okay," she says, slow. Like now I'm confusing her.

"I want to talk to you in private. And I think it would help me to say what I came to say if we could just stay out here?"

She nods and speed walks around the front of my car. It's all I can do to get the five boxes of Raisinets out of the passenger seat so she doesn't crush them.

"Did you come because of the message I sent?" she asks, inspecting the dashboard like she's never seen the inside of a car.

My heart thumps and the ache resonates. Like an echo I can feel instead of hear. Ally's never been inside my car. We weren't friends when I got my drivers license. Or when she got hers. We spent all that time talking about the places we'd go together when we finally got our freedom. But Ally doesn't drive anymore. I took that away from her.

"You can read what Allyson wrote about you if you'd like," she says, holding up her phone. "I have the Facebook app right here."

I have to repeat that sentence in my head a couple of times to make sure I heard what I think I heard. "Really? You'd let me read your private messages?"

"Um...yes," she says, less certain now. "It would be easier. Than trying to tell you everything I read." She blinks her eyes and lowers her hand to her lap. "Only if you want to."

I'd kill to read what she wrote about me. But that's not why I'm here. "The thing is, I came up here to ask you not to read anymore of it—not until I get a chance to tell you my side of the story."

"Oh," she says. "Um...I kind of already did—that's why I was late to Grace's party. I was planning to go right after I sent you the message but I was nervous—about meeting her friends—so I stayed in and kept reading. And the information was so interesting that I lost track of time."

It was interesting?

She should be furious with me. Ready to rip my head off.

"But I'd still like to hear your side of the story," she says, sincere and pleasant. Not a trace of animosity.

So maybe it's not there. Maybe the bad parts have been deleted.

Only one way to find out. "I guess I would like to read what you wrote about me," I say. "If the offer's still on the table."

She tilts her head to the side. Her smile is small and curious. Then she pokes at her phone a couple of times and hands it right over. Like it's nothing. The old Ally would've died before she surrendered her phone.

The old Ally. Shit. Now I'm doing it.

I skim through her private messages, trying to ignore the massive guilt knot throbbing in my chest. I know this is wrong—I'm taking advantage of Ally's condition—but now that I'm in, I can't stop myself.

My eyes slow down where I see my name and the word so in all caps, followed by the words, cute and sweet and shy. It hurts but I have to go back and read it again and again, and just sort of wallow in what could've been if I'd known for sure Ally felt this way. If I'd been brave enough to take a chance.

The next phrase that stops me is, I give up, written in all caps plus three exclamation points. It's on Ally's side of the conversation and it's dated early June, the end of our eighth grade year.

Allyson: He rode my bus home this afternoon and Mom took Lindsay to the orthodontist. We were alone for like AN HOUR and I dropped a gazillion hints and NOTHING!!!

I remember that day. I wanted something to happen, too. I wanted to kiss her and I was eighty-five percent sure she wanted me to but I was nervous, too afraid to brave that fifteen percent of uncertainty. So I waited for some kind of sign but I never got it. Mrs. Clark came home and the opportunity was gone and I left Ally's house and walked all the way home, half hoping a car would run over my chicken-shit ass.

Allyson: What if I'm wrong? What if it's not because he's shy? Maybe he just doesn't think of me THAT way.

Samantha: He is shy and he totally thinks of you that way. I told you, you're going to have to make the first move!!!

Ally never got a chance to make a move. School ended and I went to Georgia and when I came back, Lindsay told me about the guy from New Jersey. He was a year older and a head taller—and ironically, another divorce victim, visiting his mom for the summer. Lindsay made it sound like Ally was in love with the guy. Like she cried for days after he left. But Ally never said a word about him. Not to me.

"Are these for me?"

I look up and Ally—the new Ally—rattles a box of Raisinets. "Yeah," I say. "All five boxes."

She tears into one, smiling like crazy. "Sorry to interrupt."

"S'okay. I..." I almost forgot she was sitting right beside me.

"Keep reading," she says. "But maybe, can you turn the music back on first?"

"Yeah, sure."

I put the key in the ignition and show her how to change the station. She's obnoxious about it for a few minutes: a kid with a new toy. Then she settles on a song and fills her palm with chocolate raisins. "Go back to your story," she says, lifting them to her mouth. So I go back. To our story.

Samantha: Not talking about it doesn't mean it never happened.

Allyson: Shut up, I'm not talking about it.

Samantha: I want details. And you owe me. BFF law dictates.

Allyson: Okay, here's a detail. I suck at kissing. And that butt-head from New Jersey wasn't afraid to tell me about it. I'm totally humiliated and I really, REALLY wish it had NEVER happened. End of story. And YOU never breathe a word. BFF law dictates.

My head falls against the seat and I breathe but it doesn't help. The anger builds and it burns and there's no way to stop it. If Lindsay was here right now, I swear to God I'd...

My dad would kick my ass for even thinking that shit. But I can't help it. I want to pound her. I want to wrap my hands around her scrawny little neck.

The car door opens and I'm out and walking. I don't know where I'm going but I have to move—I have to calm the hell down.

You have to breathe, dumbass.

I suck in through my nose, try to focus on slow and steady—try to picture myself on the platform—but the air is thick and hot and my lungs are stone and it's not helping.

"Shit!"

I never meant for the rumor to happen. It was just a moment of rage-induced stupidity that I couldn't take back, no matter how much I tried—and I did. I tried to convince anyone who'd listen that I'd lied about Ally hooking up with that asshole from New Jersey when she was thirteen. But the retraction didn't take because that part of the story didn't come from me.

It came from Lindsay.

I hate that I fell for it. I believed Lindsay when she lied about the kiss all those years ago—and there were definitely moments when I sort of half-believed the lie it grew into. Or at the very least, I wanted to. Because believing made me feel like less of a douche.

Fucking Lindsay. How does she live with this? What kind of lies did she have to tell herself so she could ignore all the name-calling, ass-groping bullshit that happened to a girl whose only experience was one shitty kiss.

"Noah?"

Ally is standing a couple of yards away from me. On a red brick path that looks like it's glowing because it's the only thing this far out from the mansion that has any light on it.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

No. It's a good thing it's too dark for her to see my face. I'm not okay. I'm sweating, and snorting my breaths like an angry bull. My feet are wet. My shoes are muddy. I'm more than a hundred yards from my car and my arms ache from clenching my fists.

"It's easy to get lost out here," she says. "Especially in the dark."

"I don't want to get back in the car."

My voice comes out all croaky and strange like I'm some kind of demented frog. But Ally just says, "Okay," and her pale her hair fans out as she whips around and starts walking, following that red brick path in the opposite direction of the parking lot.

I follow her. Even though it's dark as hell out here and there are some tight places, where the shrubs are close and prickly, and every few yards I lose sight of my leader—who seems unnaturally calm in the face of my insanity.

But then, I remember and it doesn't seem unnatural at all. This isn't the first time I've lost my shit in front of Ally. I knocked on her front door after I visited my grandma in the middle of her first and only round of chemo. By the time they found her tumor there wasn't much that could be done. But they tried and her hair fell out and she lost all the weight but she was still Grandma. She was still elegant and strong.

But not Gramps. He was the reason I knocked on Ally's door, feeling like my chest was caving in. She took one look at me and said, "Come on." She led me to the little lake in her neighborhood. We had to go through the woods and along part of the golf-cart path and we cut through at least four different backyards. I didn't know where I was half the time but I think that was the point. It wasn't seeing the lake that got me right again. It was the crazy path Ally took to get me there.

She turns a sharp corner now and disappears. When I catch up, she's waiting in front of an iron archway and I almost laugh. The expansive maze stretched out behind her is like something out of a fantasy: dozens of hidden lights illuminate a network of foot-high shrubs accented by unnaturally small trees and tiny houses made of bark and moss.

"What is this?" I ask.

"It's a fairy garden. Grace calls it Lilliput—because of a book I can't remember about this normal-sized guy who comes to a land of tiny people?"

"Yeah," I tell her. "I saw the movie."

She steps over the dwarfed hedges to the normal-sized table. "The chairs are dry," she says, sitting in one of them. "This is where Grace had her party." She scrunches up her face for a moment, like she's thinking about the complicated birthday girl. But then she pours herself another handful of Raisinets and I have to smile because she brought them with her.

"Are you finished reading?" she asks.

"No," I say, because her tone—mildly curious, not concerned or pissed off like she should be—reminds me of why I talked myself into reading in the first place.

The phone is still in my hand but the screen is black now. I push the activation button and show her the locked screen. "The code is 1022," she says.

October 22, her birthday. I punch it in and go back to the Facebook app, skipping ahead to the beginning of tenth grade, looking for the part about the rumor.

It's there. Not every detail but it's enough to convict me.

I glance over at Ally and she gives me that sweet smile. I blow out a breath of what-the-hell and read on, looking for the verbal ass-whooping I deserve from the old Ally. But it's not there, either.

First, she defends me: You don't know him like I do. He's in pain.

She's right about the pain. Gramps went a little crazy after Grandma died and I had to spend the entire summer in Georgia so Dad could take care of him without having to worry about me. But that wasn't the reason. Not even close.

Samantha: OMG! That is such bullshit. I was in pain when my grandmother died, but I didn't go around spreading rumors about my friends.

Exactly.

Allyson: I think it was Lindsay. I think she told Noah about the NJ butt-head. She made it sound like we did all that other STUFF and he believed her because I was too embarrassed to say anything about it.

It's a relief to know that Ally suspected Lindsay—even if she was only half right. But I can't say knowing the truth about the kiss would've made a difference. That's not the reason I started the rumor.

I skim through the rest of the conversation. Past the part where Ally stops defending and starts giving me the thrashing I deserve. Past the part where she stops typing my name and starts referring to me as a man-whore. And then I scroll back to the summer before ninth grade but it's not there. She never mentions what happened before the rumor. The part where I called her from Georgia. After I'd finally decided to grow a set and tell her how I felt.