And he doesn’t respond. I guess silence is my answer. Now that my dad knows, Link doesn’t want anything to do with me.
Going Away
Camilla
I text Kelly to pick me up earlier than usual. She hasn’t even gone to sleep yet, since it’s early in the day. I leave the house before my dad wakes up. I leave him a note.
See you at Thanksgiving.
No cute sign offs. I love my dad a lot, but we’re going to have to figure this out. I’m pretty upset, and so is he. It sounds like he’s putting most of the blame at Link’s door, though.
Kelly is at the end of my driveway. I somehow manage to bring my suitcases out without making a ton of noise. When I go back for my last suitcase, I see the curtain in my dad’s room moving.
My heart feels heavy as I roll the last suitcase out. My dad and I have always been a team. This whole thing with Link is the first time that we’ve had a serious disagreement.
“You ready to go, babe?”
“Yeah, Kels.”
She’s chewing gum. I load her car, then I get into her passenger seat. We go roaring off to school. We’re roommates in a suite. Even though her parents are only covering part of college courses, she makes up the extra with a part-time job as a barista.
I cry a little as I leave my house. At least I’ll be far away from all of this.
Kelly knows that I’m sad. She turns on Disney Radio to cheer me up, even though she sort of hates it. She calls it the Kids Bop channel, because I like to sing Disney tunes.
It works just a little bit. It stops me from crying. And she doesn’t even protest when I sing along. That’s why she’s my best friend.
r /> An hour later, we’re at school. She drives into our designated parking spot. We unload and sort of shuffle everything into the elevator, although I stay on the lower level with the extra bags while Kelly goes up to unlock our door and put in the first load of suitcases.
She comes back down. I step into the elevator with the rest of the luggage.
The end of my summer seems like a bad dream now, like it happened to someone else.
When we open our front door, Kelly says, “You should come out with me tonight.”
She’s much more of a party girl than I am. I don’t usually party with her, but I find myself saying, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“I’ll choose your outfit and do your hair and makeup. You need to cheer up. We’ll start at six.”
“Okay.”
I push past her and go into my room. I don’t want to cry, but I curl up in a ball and stare out my window.
Link hasn’t responded to my text, even a day later. I don’t know what else to do. We never had a sex, and I know that my dad would have gone absolutely ballistic if Link had let me fuck him.
I feel like there’s an aching hole in the center of my chest, the hole where Link’s love should be. I hope that the party tonight cheers me up. Maybe I’ll meet someone hot.
Thinking of hooking up with someone just makes me even sadder. I wish he would respond to my text.
Party
Camilla
I wake up when Kelly knocks on my door. “Time to get ready, babe.” She swings it open and sees me curled in the fetal position.
“Babe, it’s going to be okay.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”