Page 16 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
“So.” Vera eyes me once he’s out of earshot. “Alistair Miller.”
I look at Esther, rubbing a hand down her back and earning an irritated snarl in return. I tuck my hand under my thigh instead. “Yes,” I say.
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Our eyes meet and for a moment she just holds my gaze, a standoff. Vera’s a little trickster, five foot two and frailer by the day. Still strong enough to steer me.
“What you’re feeling,” she says, finally. She coughs, then reaches for her water glass and takes a sip. “It looks big.”
What I’m feeling: devastated. That my dream is right at my fingertips, and Miller could ruin it. That I achieved something so purely good and now it’s tarnished. That I’m scared, under all of it, of every way I’ve convinced myself not to miss Miller, and that I don’t know how I’ll keep it up when he’s close to me again.
What I tell her: “How can this be right?”
“Whichthis?”
“How can it be Miller?” My voice cracks, a hairline fracture on the last syllable of his name. Vera loved Miller once, too: he was my shadow, the two of us always at her house, tumbling through her yard. She’d asked, of course, what happened between us back then. But after so much shrugging her off, she finally stopped asking. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be Miller. Did we get the algorithm wrong?”
Vera looks at me for a long time. Finally she says, “Does it not make sense?”
Suddenly, stupidly, I feel like I might cry. “Of course not.”
She reaches out a hand, and I scoot to the edge of the couch to take it. Her fingers are cool in mine, surprisingly strong when she squeezes my palm.
“Was your fight so insurmountable?” she asks. The same question I’ve had since freshman year, the one I’ve held against my heart like shrapnel.
“I think so,” I whisper.
Vera’s thumb brushes over my knuckles, and her eyes meet mine. “Maybe it’s not the algorithm,” she says, “that got this wrong.”
We’re having trouble making contact with Alistair.
The text comes less than twenty-four hours later, early Saturday afternoon. I’ve spent the morning in bed, reading through old texts with Miller like an idiot with a sunburn lying out at the lake. Just worsening the problem, adding to my pain.
I’d forgotten the shorthand I always fell into with him, no full sentences anywhere, sending Miller a smattering of disconnected words that he always, somehow, understood. He’d respond in complete paragraphs with proper punctuation. Our last texts are the hardest to look at—I should say,mylast texts. From the morning after the party, and the days after that.
Pick up
Please i want to talk to you
I am an ass, just please call me back
Miller
Miller
Really?
The glaring absence of the wordsI’m sorrymakes me want to fling myself from a cliff. Surely I said it in a voice mail, in the rambly, pleading messages I left him for days after we left Declan’s house.
Now, my phone pings again.This is Evelyn Cross. We’ve left him several voice mails. Ideally, we need to meet tomorrow to capitalize on your first appearance together at school. Could you initiate contact?
To be honest, I’m riding the fence about Evelyn. She’s smart, clearly, the kind of woman I’m hardwired to admire. Midthirties but leading a whole office on her own. Commanding, sure of herself, great haircut. But she also loves to call herselfEvelyn Crosseven though we know each other now, which is weird. And I do not want to initiate contact.
I’m halfway mad at her for even asking before I realize that assertive Evelyn can’t be my intermediary forever. If all goes well, she won’t even be my intermediary for another forty-eight hours. At some point, very soon, it’ll be just Miller and me. I smash my pillow across my face, empty my lungs into it, and send Miller a text message.
Did you get a voice mail from XLR8?
