Page 61 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
When he wakes up, it’s because Dad’s leaving for work. The front door closes at four forty-five and Miller’s eyes snap open, breath filling his lungs on a gasp. He swallows, blinking as he props himself up on his good arm. He looks confused for half a moment, taking in the room before he looks up at me.
“Hey,” he says, his voice croaky. I want him to go back to sleep. I want us both to sleep forever, to get stuck someplace where all this isn’t true. “What time is it?”
“Almost five.”
He groans as he sits up, maneuvering his sling carefully in my twin-sized bed. “I should get home before my parents wake up.” Outside, the morning frost has glazed my windowpanes. It won’t be light for another two hours.
“Hey,” Miller says again, and I look at him. “Did you sleep? Your eyes are all bloodshot.”
They feel twitchy and sharp—dried out from staring at my computer all night long. I’ve read every forum I could find. I’ve scrolled through the Instagram accounts of kids I don’t know, who live states away, whose lives have gone dark since they signed up for something I made. Something I’ve been proud of, all the way up until now.
“I want to shut it down,” I whisper. It feels terrible and right,both at the exact same time.
Miller is quiet. He moves away so we aren’t side by side, so it’s easier for him to look me in the eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. I feel like my entire body’s caving in on itself. It takes all my strength to hold his gaze. “About your tuition money. It’s completely my fault.”
Miller’s eyebrows ruck together, like for a split second he has no idea what I’m talking about. “Ro, forget about the money.” There’s a pillow crease on his cheek. “It’s not important right now.”
“It is important,” I whisper. “And I wish I could give it to you; I’ll understand if you hate me but I can’t keep this up, I can’t—” My voice breaks, hoarse and unfamiliar. “Vera knew this would happen. She warned me, and I didn’t listen. She knew XLR8 would pitch MASH as foolproof and she was right, and I let them; I wanted this so bad that I never pushed back, but now I can’t keep this going when it’s hurting all these people—I can’t believe I even did it in the first place, of course something bad would happen, I should’ve listened to Vera, I should’ve just—”
“Okay,” Miller says. My words are all running into each other, a hamster wheel of panic. He moves closer and reaches for me gently, like I might spook. When he puts his hand on the back of my neck and tips my forehead against his shoulder, I close my eyes for the first time in hours. “I could never hate you, Ro. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” I whisper.
“It will be,” he says. “Tell me what you want to do.”
“Call a meeting,” I say into his sweatshirt, “and end it.”
“Okay.” His thumb brushes over my shoulder blade, drawing a line and repeating it. “Then let’s call a meeting.”
“It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
“Come on,” Miller says, and when he pulls back he actually manages a smile. “There’s no way Evelyn Cross isn’t awake.”
He’s right, of course. When I text Evelyn that we need to meet today, she responds in eight minutes.
Agreed, she says.But it’ll need to be this afternoon. The head of the board wants to fly in.
I walk Miller downstairs and when he steps out into the cold morning, I think:All this gave him back to me. As he presses a kiss to my cheekbone, pulls out his car keys, disappears down my driveway into the dark. This mistake gave me Miller, sneaking out of my house before dawn.
Would you undo it?my brain demands, intrusive and impossible to ignore. Would I give Miller back to thebefore? Return to that space I lived in without him, to undo all the pain I’ve caused? If it were even possible, I know I could never trade him now.
Selfish, I think. I feel ruined and beyond redemption, like nothing could make me forgivable.
I can’t sit with myself, alone in my house. So I take my truck keys off their hook and drive across town to Maren’s instead.
35
Maren lives in one of the newer developments up the hill from the lake, houses with the same floor plans in different colors that blend into the mountain: peat brown and pine green and lake-bed beige. Her bedroom’s on the first floor, around the back next to the laundry. In most of the houses it’s a den, but Maren’s brothers wanted rooms of their own and so their parents converted it, stuck on a closet and closed off the wall. There’s a door to outside, a remnant of the original floor plan. They keep the key under a ceramic moose in the yard.
Maren’s asleep when I step inside, just a lump under the covers with a spray of red hair over her pillow. Through the open crack of her door I can see the living room, where a Christmas tree glows with multicolored string lights. Inside Maren’s room the walls are just turning blue, the first few licks of sunrise through the windows.
When I slide into bed next to her, she stirs. There’s a pause, and then she jolts upright.
“It’s just me,” I whisper. “Ro.”
“JesusChrist,” she hisses down at me, one hand over her heart. She’s wearing an enormousSwitchback Ridge Art Dept.T-shirt and has zit cream on her chin. “Do you want me to die of a heart attack? What are you doing?”
