Chapter 259: [4.77] A Girl-Shaped Absence
The Uber driver kept glancing at us in his rearview mirror like we were a wildlife documentary he couldn’t look away from. Fair enough. Two teenagers climbing into a Honda Civic outside a Long Island mansion at noon on a Saturday, one of them carrying a stuffed unicorn the size of a golden retriever and the other sporting a bite mark on his neck and lipstick residue he apparently missed despite two separate warnings, probably warranted some visual investigation.
Iris hugged the unicorn to her chest and named it Gerald before we hit the expressway.
"You have lipstick on your chin now too," she said without looking up from her phone.
I flipped the visor down and checked the mirror. She was right. A faint smear of Cassidy’s whatever-brand-that-was trailed from the corner of my mouth to my jaw like evidence at a crime scene. I scrubbed it with my thumb.
"You could just stop kissing people," Iris offered.
"I could also stop breathing."
"That’s dramatic even for you."
"I learned from the best."
"That’s not the compliment you think it is, Zay."
The Civic merged onto the LIE and the Valentine estate disappeared behind a wall of October trees turning orange and red, leaves peeling from branches and scattering across the road like confetti at a parade nobody asked for. The mansion shrank in the side mirror until it was just a white smudge behind iron gates, and then it was gone, and we were two kids from Kensington riding in a stranger’s car because the four richest girls on the eastern seaboard had confiscated my borrowed Lexus keys and I’d been too busy getting my face eaten in an alcove to negotiate their return.
Vivienne texted me fourteen minutes into the ride. The car will be delivered to your residence by Monday morning. Please confirm the parking situation.
I typed back: Street parking. Don’t send anyone with a suit.
She responded: I make no promises.
Sabrina’s message arrived thirty seconds later. A single rose emoji followed by: The alcove footage has been deleted. You’re welcome.
Then, five seconds after that: I kept one screenshot. For leverage.
Harlow sent a voice note that I played on low volume while Iris pretended not to listen. Harlow’s voice came through bright and fast, the way it always did when she was excited about something, which was always. "HI ASSISTANT-KUN I miss you already and it’s been like twelve minutes which is crazy right? Anyway Vivi is being weird about the Christmas thing, she keeps reorganizing her closet which is what she does when she’s upset, and Brina is reading on the engawa again, and Cass went to hit tennis balls which means she’s either happy or about to commit a felony, I can never tell. ALSO I started your butler vest alterations and I need your shoulder measurement again because I think the one Mr. Bellamy gave me was for the suit jacket not the vest and those are different things Isaiah they are COMPLETELY different things. Okay bye love you tell Iris I said hi and also that I found the volume nine of Spy Family she wanted and I’m holding it hostage until she comes back. BYE."
Iris reached over and replayed the voice note twice.
"She said love you," Iris observed.
"She says that to everyone."
"She says it to you like she means it though."
"She means it with everyone."
"Zay." Iris turned Gerald the unicorn to face me. Its single spiral horn pointed at my chest like an accusation. "You’re an idiot."
"I’m aware."
Cassidy hadn’t texted. Her silence sat in my pocket heavier than any message could have, a girl-shaped absence in my notification bar that meant she was either thinking very hard about something or not thinking at all, and both options were equally terrifying when the girl in question had spent the morning biting my lip and promising twenty-four hours of unspecified activities with the confidence of someone who had already drawn up the battle plan.
The Uber driver took the exit toward the Midtown tunnel and we sat in traffic for twenty minutes while Iris showed me a manga panel she’d drawn on the ride over, a sketch of a boy with messy two-toned hair surrounded by four identical girls with hearts for eyes. She’d labeled each girl with a card suit: Club, Diamond, Heart, Spade.
"You drew this when."
"During breakfast. Harlow saw it and asked for a copy."
"You’re not helping."
"I’m documenting. There’s a difference."
The rest of the ride blurred into highway noise and the steady vibration of messages I didn’t open. We reached Penn Station at two-fifteen and caught the Amtrak with three minutes to spare, Iris clutching Gerald to her chest as we sprinted through the terminal. The train smelled like recycled air and old coffee, familiar in a way that settled something in my ribs.
Home. We were going home.
The apartment building looked the same. Mrs. Delgado’s cigarette smoke drifted from the fourth floor window. The hallway light on three still flickered. The stairs still creaked on the same steps they’d been creaking on since I was twelve years old. Iris unlocked the door and Gerald barely fit through the frame, his horn catching on the doorjamb until she tilted him sideways and shoved.
"Gerald lives here now," she announced.
"Gerald costs more than our couch."
"Gerald doesn’t judge."
She was right. Gerald didn’t judge. Gerald sat on the couch with his glassy eyes and his stupid unicorn smile and made our living room look like a collision between a thrift store and a carnival prize booth, and somehow that was the most normal thing that had happened to me in forty-eight hours.
I collapsed onto the couch next to Gerald and let the silence of the apartment fill the spaces that the Valentine manor had been occupying in my head. No grandfather clocks. No ancestral portraits. No kitchen that could seat thirty people. Just water stains on the ceiling and the distant sound of Mrs. Delgado’s telenovela through the wall and the specific creak of Iris’s bedroom door that meant she was settling in for the night despite it being three in the afternoon.
My phone rang.
Not a text. An actual phone call. The number wasn’t saved but I recognized it.
Diana.
