We used to drink shitty vodka in the basement, Maddie and I, the cheap kind we could convince my sister Mary to get for us. She’d threaten to tell our parents, but she’d always take our crumpled bills and return from the corner grocery with a bottle shoved in her bag. Sometimes we’d steal cans of soda for mixers from the garage, but more often than not, we would just take turns swigging from the bottle, cringing at the taste. The first time we did it, when we found Mary’s stash under her bed, I spit it back out and we spent the afternoon scrubbing the floor until the alcoholic smell came from the peroxide and not the Smirnoff. 

I used to lay there next to Maddie when the bottle was empty. We would pass the cap back and forth between us, some token of the secret we kept. She’d ask me some question that I couldn’t answer sober, and I’d knock her shoulder with mine and toss her a “Fuck, I don’t know.” And she’d laugh, this shimmering thing that would pull at something in my stomach. And I’d pretend it was just the vodka, I’d sit up and get us both water, and we’d hold the plastic cups with both hands, spilling on our t-shirts anyway. 

It rained all summer. We’d hide out in the basement except for the time it flooded in June and we had to spend the day wading through muddy water, trying to help my parents decide what to throw out. We dragged the old couch to the curb and threw ourselves over it, our legs over the couch’s arms, heads knocking together over the middle cushion. The rain made the heat worse than usual, a haze that lifted off the asphalt until you could see it. 

If we got caught outside when the downpour started, she’d give me that look, the one I could never say no to, the one thatmeant she had some plan. She’d grab my hands and pull me into the street at the end of my cul-de-sac and we’d stand there, faces upturned to the dark clouds moving overhead. We’d let ourselves get drenched and sit on the sidewalk after because my mom would yell if we dared step on the carpet with rain water dripping off our arms. So we’d sit there to dry, me cross legged and her with arms wrapped around her bent knees. 

It was easy to pretend we were getting away with things, that twisted hazy summer. Like we weren’t just two girls in a basement, hiding from the changing weather. It was easy to pretend I invited Maddie over just to drink, not so that she had some refuge from the storm that had torn through her house, leaving her mama drowning in his wake. It was easy to forget that we would see each other for the last time in a few months, that I would go four hours away and move in with someone no more concrete than a name in black letters on some piece of university mail, that Maddie would stay here, in the eye of the storm. 

Maddie made it easy to forget. 

— 

It was on one of those liquored nights that I kissed her for the first time. We were sitting cross-legged facing each other, the bottle half empty between us. Everything in the room hazed as I listened to her ramble on about her new job and how the manager must hate her. I was just drunk enough to use it as an excuse. After I pulled back, I couldn’t even feel the buzz anymore. She blinked at me and I swore everything was in slow motion. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I tugged at my bracelet, spinning it around my wrist. She giggled, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the alcohol. I apologized again, and she wrapped her hand around my wrist, her fingers stopping my rotation. She leaned forward and kissed me. It was soaked in vodka and missed the mark, but it made my head spin.

We just sat there after, foreheads leaned together, breathing in the same breath of air, passing it back and forth between us, building a heady cloud of oh-god-did-that-really-happen and what-do-we-do-next. There were a few more stolen kisses that night, most of them landing more securely than the first one. Maddie spent the night, both of us shoved into my bed, tossing and turning from either the residual buzz or the heat. 

I woke up first the next morning and stumbled down the stairs in search of something to settle my stomach. I brought glasses of water back to my room, setting them down on the table for her and sitting, waiting for the inevitable ‘so about last night’ talk that I could feel on the horizon when she stirred. But when she woke up, she just gulped down the water like a drowning woman and gathered her stuff like all was normal. 

She left, and that was that. We’d exchange kisses when we drank, cuddle each other through the hangover afternoon the next day. Never more than kisses, never a whisper sober. It became this circling cloud over my head. 

—

We used to play outside Maddie’s house as little girls, back when her daddy was still more man than storm, back when her mama could manage to stay afloat long enough to make us peanut butter and jellies, Maddie’s with the crusts cut off and mine cut in triangles. We’d go running outside, collecting lightning bugs until our legs were covered in mosquito bites. 

After a few summers colored with nothing more than grape jelly and lightning bugs trapped in jars, Maddie’s mama stopped making us sandwiches. Sometimes we’d get slices of bread laid out on paper plates, but her jelly-colored bruises kept her in her room. And it was her room by then. Maddie’s daddy would sleep on the couch, or the floor, those mismatched bottles and jars we used to keep bugs in scattered around him. 

Maddie seemed to be in deeper than her mama by the end of that summer before I left. I’d catch her walking back from the corner grocery, an overflowing paper bag in her arms, a cardboard case of beer dangling from her fingers. On good days, I could get her to stop and say hi. I’d ask what was in the bag and it was always the same: a case of beer for her daddy, cans of SpaghettiOs and green beans so her mama didn’t have to think about dinner, and a gallon of milk if she’d been paid that week. On bad days, she just curled her arms, splattered with the same jelly coloring I’d grown all too familiar with seeing on her mama, around the bag tighter, as if everything might slip if she spoke to me. 

On good days, I’d finish the walk to my house in silence. On bad days, I’d follow her home. At first, I tried to give her some tomatoes from my mom’s garden or some leftover Tupperware from dinner, but I would just find them deposited, untouched, on my porch. After that, I just gave her the courtesy of a few blocks before trailing behind her to make sure her daddy was passed out when she got home. He was a storm, but one that fizzled out all too quickly. 

—

I used to lay awake at night sometimes, in the hot summer that would stick me to my sheets. The glow in the dark stars on my ceiling, a remnant from some childhood obsession with things out of reach, winked at me. They hardly glowed anymore, corners peeling and revealing their grimy backs. The wind through my open window taunted them, a warm breeze that threatened to pull them down completely. 

I would just lay there, looking up at them. Some nights, they would seem to whisper things. Whisper about me five, ten years ago, that little dreamer girl trying to catch lightning bugs in jars because she thought they were stars on earth. I would roll over and shut my eyes, but they were stamped on the back of my eyelids in that sickly gray green. 

My phone ringer jolted me out of my star-induced haze one night in mid-July. I could hear Maddie’s sobs over the line when I picked up. I pictured her curled over the phone, trying to muffle the sound so her parents wouldn’t hear. I was halfway to the car by the time she asked me if I could come over. 

I cursed at every red light I ran into on the drive to her house, my back smacking into the seat from how hard I slammed on the brakes each time. The stoplights seemed to be taunting me, their flickering red eyes telling me I couldn’t possibly get there fast enough. The silence enveloped me, drawing a kind of clarity into the air. If I listened just right, I could still hear her heaving breaths shuddering over my phone speaker. 

She was sitting outside on the porch steps when I got there, the chipping white paint illuminated in the soft summer moonlight. Her bare feet were perched on the step below her and she held her knees close to her chest. I flipped my headlights off and killed the engine a couple houses down, not wanting to alert her parents. She barely looked up when I settled onto the step next to her. 

“Hey.” It’s all I could manage to get out. I watched her turn over to me and her tear tracks glistened in the faint light. I held my hand out to her and she intertwined our fingers together.

She leaned her head on my shoulder and we sat there for a moment. My vision started to haze over as I tried to make out the numbers on the house across the street. 

I felt the weight of her head lift off my shoulder and I caught her eye. “Can we go sit in your car?” she asked. 

I nodded and stood, our linked hands pulling her with me. She cast a look at the dark window behind her before stepping off the porch and following me down the sidewalk. We walked to my car in near silence, listening to the soft sound of each other’s footsteps, her bare feet slapping the concrete after the dull pad of my shoes. 

She didn’t offer what happened, and I didn’t pry. I knew the story well enough by now. Maddie’s mama cooked dinner the wrong way or forgot to iron a shirt or breathed too close to her daddy, and the storm whipped into a frenzy. Sometimes, Maddie was too close to its path. 

So when we got to the car, I just unlocked the doors and we climbed in. We sat there in silence for a moment, and I listened to her breaths. I could almost feel those clouds that had been circling around us for weeks, thickening the air between us. It was stifling. 

“I think,” I started, then stopped. I looked at her face, now upturned toward me. “I’m in love with you.” 

“What?” It was barely a question, floating on those darkened clouds I had just attempted to disperse. 

“It hasn’t been a long time. Well, it kind of has. But I’ve only known for a while. You remember when we were little, when we’d play together. I think I’ve always known I’d love you.” Once I started, the words just flooded out. 

“Caroline, stop,” she cut me off. “Just stop.”

She opened her mouth again, but nothing came out. She just turned and opened the door and I watched her walk back to the darkened house. 

— 

Mary got into dental school in July, an achievement that Mom deemed a cause for celebration. Celebrations in the Davis household meant burgers at Joe’s. 

When Maddie first started working at Joe’s sophomore year, I would go every Thursday after school for their milkshake happy hour. I always tried to snag the corner booth, and I always made sure to tip Maddie with whatever change I had on me and the cherry from the top of my shake. By the end of the year, I’d tried every flavor twice, except for mint chocolate chip, which I couldn’t stand. 

It had just started to rain when we pulled into the parking lot, so my dad dropped us off at the door and went to find a spot. As I scuffed my shoes on the entry rug, I prayed Maddie wasn’t working. We hadn’t spoken in the week since my confession, the longest we’d gone without talking since we were twelve and she was sick. 

The hostess brought us to the corner booth and told us our server would be right with us. We all slid onto the benches, our rain-slick legs sticking to the vinyl. My dad joined us a few minutes later, and we all dutifully grabbed a menu from the stack. 

“Caroline, does Maddie still work here?” my mom asked. “I want to ask how her mama’s doing.” 

“Yeah,” I replied. “I think she does.” 

“Where’s she going in the fall again?” my dad asked.

“She’s not,” I answered. 

My mom set her menu down on the table. “How come? You know, she was always so smart. I remember when she won the spelling bee in fourth grade.” 

“I don’t know,” I lied. 

My mom gave me a look and then returned to the menu, sliding her glasses down her nose to better squint at it. It was a futile attempt at pretending she wasn’t going to get the same thing she got every time we came here. In fact, we all would just get the same thing when the waitress came around. Dad would get a bacon burger and make a goofy joke about how he just couldn’t stop himself. Mom would get a turkey burger to make herself feel better about the chocolate shake she’d talk my dad into sharing. Mary would get a burger with chips, not fries, because she was the one person I’d ever seen eat the kettle chips at Joe’s. And I would get a cheeseburger, extra ketchup, with a shake. 

“Hi, welcome in,” Maddie said. “Can I start y’all with anything to drink?” “Maddie, honey,” my mom said, giving the rest of us a look. “I think we’re ready to order.” 

“Sure thing,” Maddie replied. She dutifully looked at each of us as we ordered the usual. Her perfect customer service smile didn’t falter when she got to me. “And for you?” “I’ll have a cheeseburger with extra ketchup,” I said. “And can I get a mint chocolate chip shake?” 

“Perfect,” she said, writing on her pad, no sign of a cloud across her face at the request. “I’ll go put that in for y’all.”

I watched her as she walked away to put in our order. Dinner passed like it usually did, and when we left, I set my cherry on a napkin next to the $20 bill my dad left on the table for Maddie. 

— 

By the time August came, a pile of brown boxes decorated every corner of my room, the garage, and even graced the bottom of the stairwell. Mary had helped me pack, taking the chance to reminisce on her own freshman year, six years ago. I’d spent the weeks before that listening to her tell me that I wouldn’t need three pillows but to absolutely, definitely bring twice as many socks as I thought. The night before I was supposed to leave, we walked to the grocery store and she told me to pick something a little nicer than Smirnoff for once. 

It had been raining all week, and my parents had been worried that somehow I’d get stuck here, that some monster storm would sweep through and make it impossible to see beyond a few feet. But the morning we were scheduled to roll out was a beautiful, clear thing, the heat shimmering off the pavement. 

My dad helped me load everything into the back of the car, bending cardboard corners so the doors would close. He warned me that everything might pop out when we got to campus, but that we were just lucky it all fit. I was hugging my mom and Mary goodbye when Maddie showed up, standing at the end of the driveway in her beat up work shoes and apron. My dad climbed into the driver’s seat as I walked down to meet her, stopping a safe couple feet away. “Hey, Maddie,” I said.

“Hi.” She opened her mouth again but closed it, and all I could think about was some unfortunate fish out of water. 

“You’re leaving,” she said. It wasn’t a question. 

“I’m leaving,” I told her. 

“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t say this sooner. I love you, Caroline, and I wish you weren’t leaving, and I wish I had done everything different.” 

“But you didn’t,” I said, sharper than I intended. “And I am leaving.” 

I watched something like a cloud cross her face and the downpour of tears that started to fall from her eyes. I wanted to reach my hand out to her, but I couldn’t lift my arm. My breaths came heavy, like I was trying to breathe underwater. 

“Maddie,” I said. “I have to go, Maddie.” 

Her shoulders shuddered. “I know.” 

I didn’t hug her goodbye. I couldn’t. I just got into the car and watched as my dad turned the key into the ignition. I caught her eye one last time as I pulled out of the driveway and for a moment, it wasn’t teenage Maddie standing there. It was six-year-old Maddie standing in the doorway with me, looking at ‘Mommy’s pretty spots.’ It was Maddie’s mama, submerged, holding her breath, waiting for the next lightning strike. And then it was just Maddie. 

I watched her in the rearview mirror until she faded into a purplish smudge of a girl I couldn’t forget.

cover image by eliza tucker