Page 20 of The Night We Lost Him

“Like… unfortunately you went to Immaculate Heart? Or unfortunately you’re stuck at Midwood now?”

Cory tilted her head. “What’s wrong with Midwood?”

“How long do you have?”

“Not long actually. I was on my way out.”

Liam cleared his throat. “Is Cory short for something?” he said. “That’s a guy’s name, isn’t it?”

“Wow, you’re the first person to ever point that out,” she said. Sarcastic, but not angry. “It’s short for Cordelia. Which I like less.”

“Cordelia. Like King Lear?”

She nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “My mother’s a lit professor at Brooklyn College.”

This surprised him. “What does your father do?”

“Most days? Drink.”

But she smiled. She smiled that smile again, Liam working hard to hold her gaze. Like she could disappear if he didn’t. Cory was taking her hand back, pulling her hair off her face. What a feeling this was, standing this close to her. Brand-new, for him. He wanted to be exactly where he was.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“At the library. After school.”

It didn’t seem possible that she’d been in his vicinity and he’d missed her. But the way he’d been studying, he guessed it was possible. What did the guidance counselor say about Liam? That, in her thirty years at the school, she had never seen a student as driven as Liam was. She meant it as a compliment, but she also meant it as the opposite.

As if hearing Liam’s thoughts, Cory leaned toward him.

“You were extremely focused.”

“I wasn’t that focused.”

“Never apologize for focusing,” she said. “Joe says you’re going to Yale next year?”

That’s when they looked up and realized Joe had left. He’d gone downstairs or back inside the room. He’d gone somewhere away from them.

“How about you?”

“I’m a sophomore so… I have a little time.”

“But you’re going with Joe?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

He nodded. Joe was good-looking. Too good-looking, really. He was already six foot two with shaggy hair and a strong jaw and chiseled muscles and all the rest of it. That’s part of the reason why he got in trouble. That’s part of the reason he didn’t think he needed to try hard. Liam wasn’t bad looking, either. Maybe not as tall or as broad, but he had Joe’s jaw and he had really nice eyes, kind eyes. And he had a couple of years on him, so there was that. But he wasn’t Joe.

“You should know,” Liam said, “Joe’s got a lot of girlfriends.”

“You have at least one yourself.”

He looked at her confused. “How do you know that?”

“She was at the library with you,” Cory said. “She was trying to get you to stop focusing.”

Liam felt his skin heat up, his cheeks turning red. He and Christina had been dating for the better part of two years. She was planning on working at her father’s dress shop after graduation. She was putting pressure on him to think about getting engaged. But that was the last thing he wanted. He had one foot out the door of this house, of this street lined with its identical homes, of this provincial slice of Brooklyn a world away from New York City. Everything about being here made him feel trapped. The broken television his parents couldn’t afford to fix, the moveable tub his father soaked his frozen shoulder in, his classmates seemingly all too happy to raise kids on these same streets where they grew up. Rinse and repeat.

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