Page 42 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
I swallow. Suck in a breath. Turn in my stupid, shiny shoes. Miller’s there: a wall of tuxedo behind me. “I’ve got to go,” I say, stepping around him.
“Where?” Maren calls, hurrying after me. “Ro, what’s going on?”
“She—” I look at her, then break off. Her face is like the hugging: too dangerous. If I keep looking at her, I’ll never make it. “I can’t say it.”
“Okay,” Maren says. She puts her hands on my shoulders, and I realize I’m shaking. “I know, that’s okay. Are you going to the hospital?”
I nod, and somewhere far away, there’s Miller’s voice. “The hospital?”
“I’m going to call an Uber,” I say, breaking from her grasp. “I’ve got to—”
“No, we’ll all go,” Maren says. She looks behind her and I know she’s motioning to Autumn, somewhere out of sight. “We’re going with you.”
“No,” I tell her, and I mean it. “You stay. And have fun. I don’t want—” I grasp at words, typing the hospital name into the Uber app.I don’t want to share this.I don’t know how to be in this at all, not to mention be in it with anyone else. I look up at Maren. “Please. Just stay.”
“Ro,” she says, her face falling. “You can’t do this alone.”
“I can,” I tell her, not believing it. “I’ve got to go.”
“No, we’re coming,” Maren says. “Let me just run back inside, Autumn and I left our jackets, it’ll just take—”
“I have to gonow,” I say, louder than I mean to.
“I’ll take you.” Miller comes out of nowhere, sliding the phone from my grip and putting it back in my bag. I’m moving too slow to stop him.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, but he’s already taking my hand, already turning me toward his car.
“I know,” he says. The wind picks up, blows open the jacket of his tuxedo. “Maren, you guys can meet us there.”
Maren calls after us in the dark, but I can’t hear her. We’re halfway across the parking lot when someone shouts our names, and when I turn Felix’s head is sticking through the passenger window of a nearby car.
“Are you twoleaving?” he cries, incredulous. There’s someone in the driver’s seat but I can’t make them out through the windshield. The engine’s running, like they were about to drive off. “You can’t leave yet, you need to pretend for at least an hour—”
“We’re leaving,” Miller says. His hand’s still in mine and when I keep moving toward his car, he comes with me.
“Stop, stop, stop.” Felix’s voice gets gulped up by the wind, and I barely hear his car door close behind us. We reach Miller’s wagon and I pull open the door. I don’t care about Felix; I don’t care about anything—I just need to get where I’m going. “Guys,wait.”
I duck into the car and Miller shuts the door behind me, his and Felix’s voices going muffled. It’s freezing inside and I fold over onto myself, my whole body trembling.
“The dance has barely started,” Felix says. “I swear, you two are going to give me an aneurysm. Is it so hard to stay put foroneevening, it’s not even—”
“We can’t do the Mo thing right now,” Miller says. He opens the driver’s-side door and frigid air gusts over me. “I need to get Ro to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Felix’s voice rises a couple of octaves. “Is she okay?”
“It’s her—” He hesitates, and I know he’s searching for the word. It’s my neighbor, my family, my ally in everything. My Vera.
In the end, Miller doesn’t explain. He just says, “I’m sorry, we’ve got to go.”
“Oh my god.” I don’t look at Felix, but I don’t need to—I can perfectly picture his exasperated face. “Okay, well. I’m coming, too.”
24
“The trick,” Vera said, “is to get a firm seal on the tape, so nothing leaks through.” She leaned over Miller’s shoulder, watching him press an Xof masking tape onto an egg’s thin shell. His tongue poked between his lips, trapped there in concentration. We were nine, and it was April.
“When you dip into the dye, the tape protects the shell.” Vera brushed a hand through Miller’s hair as she moved toward me. “Once it’s dry, you peel it off to reveal a pattern.”
I was trying to make a smiley face, connecting little strips of tape to form a mouth, frustrated at their unsmooth edges. Vera leaned close. “It’s not about perfection, Rosie.”
