SAVED DRAFTS
From: [email protected]
Saved: Thursday, June 13 2013 11:27 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Graham,
I’m really sorry.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Sunday, June 16 2013 3:02 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Graham,
From: [email protected]
Saved: Sunday, June 16 2013 3:05 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Quinn,
I’m so sorry. I wish I could explain.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Tuesday, June 18 2013 5:15 PM
Subject: (no subject)
G—
From: [email protected]
Saved: Wednesday, June 19 2013 8:07 AM
Subject: (no subject)
Q—can we please talk?
From: [email protected]
Saved: Thursday, June 20 2013 9:29 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Ms. Bodine,
I wanted to let you know that I will no longer be able to attend the poetry course in August. Unfortunately, I don’t have the funds necessary to
From: [email protected]
Saved: Thursday, June 20 2013 9:38 PM
Subject: (no subject)
From: [email protected]
Saved: Friday, June 21, 2013 7:18 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey Graham,
From: [email protected]
Saved: Sunday, June 23, 2013 10:10 AM
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Ms. Bodine,
I’m so sorry that I won’t be able to come to Harvard for the poetry course after all. Unfortunately, my plans have changed, and my parents and I will be on a family vacation then.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Monday, June 24, 2013 4:51 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Quinn,
This is crazy. We really need to talk. Can we meet up sometime?
Love,
Ellie
From: [email protected]
Saved: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:34 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Graham,
I hope everything is going well with the movie…
From: [email protected]
Saved: Thursday, June 27, 2013 3:40 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hi.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Friday, June 28, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hello.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Sunday, June 30, 2013 7:31 AM
Subject: (no subject)
Good morning.
From: [email protected]
Saved: Monday, July 1, 2013 8:24 AM
Subject: (no subject)
I miss you.
It was nearly impossible to avoid someone in a town like Henley. There were only so many places to go, so many intersections and stoplights and restaurants. There were only so many trees with trunks big enough to duck behind.
So after nearly three successful weeks of dodging Graham, Ellie was feeling pretty proud of herself. She’d seen him just twice from afar, and he was always flanked by enough of an entourage—paparazzi, film crew, and fans—to act as a warning signal.
Quinn, on the other hand, seemed to be everywhere. Although that didn’t mean they’d spoken—they hadn’t. In fact, they’d hardly said a word to each other in weeks.
“How’s Quinn?” Mom would ask, completely oblivious, whenever Ellie returned after a shift at Sprinkles, and there was nothing to do but plaster a smile on her face.
“She’s great,” she’d say, fighting back the words underneath those, which were too depressing to admit: I have absolutely no idea.
It wasn’t entirely her fault, this thing between them, and if Quinn weren’t so stubborn, it would have blown over weeks ago. Still, Ellie was the one who’d started it, and she wished desperately she could find a way to apologize. But she’d drafted e-mails without managing to send them and prepared speeches without managing to say them.
At work, Quinn had taken to bringing Devon as a kind of shield against any real discussion, and the two of them would sit at one end of the counter, talking and joking, while Ellie stood awkwardly at the other end, as far away as was possible in such a small space. Every now and then, Quinn would ask Ellie for a cup or a spoon using the kind of polite but icy tone you might adopt when speaking to a complete stranger you’d heard nothing but awful things about—but that was it. Even on the hottest days, when the sun bore down on the town with a spiteful intensity, she never bothered to ask whether Ellie had put on sunscreen anymore.
About a week ago, just as Ellie started to wonder if she’d actually managed to become invisible, she overheard them talking about a party at the beach.
“Big plans tonight?” she asked as casually as she could manage, but this was only met with a lengthy silence. When it became obvious that Quinn wasn’t going to respond, Devon cleared his throat.
“Just a barbeque,” he said. “Should be pretty low-key.”
“Which means no celebrities,” Quinn said without looking up.
Ellie swallowed hard. There was no way for Quinn to know what had happened between her and Graham. And it would have been so easy, right then, to let the whole story come spilling out, to watch it register across Quinn’s face: first as guilt for ignoring her at a time like this, then as regret for not being there, then as sympathy for what she was going through.
But Ellie wasn’t looking for pity. She was looking for her friend.
Besides, telling her would mean having to answer that most difficult of questions—why had she walked away from him in the first place?—which would only bring them back to the place where this had all started: a secret that couldn’t be told.
“Which beach is it?” Ellie asked, and Quinn glanced over at her for the first time, her eyes flashing.
“It’s a secret,” she said pointedly.
After that, Ellie decided it wasn’t even worth trying. Instead, she set about ignoring Quinn in the same way that Quinn was ignoring her, which only served to create a wall between them so much thicker than if it had been built by only one of them.