Sleeping with Friends (Friends and Enemies) by Emily Schultz

Author:Emily Schultz [Schultz, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

SELECTIONS FROM THE GRILL

Agnes paced the pool area, eating pistachios from a bag she’d found in her coat pocket and uncertain what she was meant to do there. She was grateful that it was brightening into a warm morning, an arching blue sky above the woods that the property gave way to at the back. The whole lot could be gone over, she supposed, but Steph had specifically said to look for the source of the ash. Steph stayed back to make sure Mia didn’t go to the garage, and Agnes hoped her half-assed evidence search wasn’t being watched. It was Zoey’s job to come out here to the guesthouse and tell Ethan what had happened, but somehow she remained in the house still.

As Agnes wandered around the pool and outdoor furniture, she marveled again that her friend could have such a perfect house, the kind of dollhouse made life-size that anyone would imagine for themselves as a child. Agnes had thought about her future and where she might live, but she’d never fantasized about getting married, like other little girls. She remembered making up those details as easily as reading a story when asked in the seventh grade by a friend what she imagined her future would be. “My husband, David Hyde Pierce, will take me out to dinner, and I’ll have three different kinds of potato, and I’ll make the funniest jokes about Susan Sontag.” The trick to blending in with the other girls had been storytelling; she’d never considered it lying, not then. It was imagining—it wasn’t meant to be real. No matter, her constructed fantasies were off kilter enough that the girls just knew and gave her the nickname “Fagnes.”

The swimming pool was empty, and Agnes flicked several pistachio shells into the mulch of leaves at the bottom.

It wasn’t right for Zoey to tell Mia her past so insensitively. As Agnes stood there, more early nicknames came back to her. She’d learned to camouflage her heart better in high school by reading a lot and saying much less. In tenth grade she’d realized track was the perfect sport for her because she could take buses with other girls in short shorts to faraway events, but there had been no pressure to strike up any friendships, no need to participate in team rituals or talk about boyfriends and makeouts. The kids who ran track had been largely introverted, but being on a sports team had kept them from getting beat up or singled out. Zoey had been poking at all that hurt by bringing up the near relationship between her and Mia, but Agnes knew that Zoey hadn’t any clue of the things she’d been through to arrive at herself. Zoey was so desperate to be cool, but her understanding had all the depth of a rainbow filter on a Facebook profile.

Over the years, Agnes had learned what clothes suited her frame, and she knew how to cook well and pack a lunch, things that had eluded her in her twenties.

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