Adelaide

by Genevieve Wheeler

It seemed so intentional—the way their lives had been woven together. Like some deity had spent centuries writing their story, meticulously planning the details and paving their paths.

You know, he said, I think your eyes are my favorite kind. Big and beaming and hazel—they’re dreamboat eyes.

He didn’t even realize he was quoting A Wrinkle in Time, that Adelaide had read that line as a little girl (“Well, you know what, you’ve got dreamboat eyes”) and thought, I hope a boy says that to me someday. Rory was striking every chord, playing her heart like a fucking harp.

In the months, sometimes even years that followed, Adelaide’s mind would return to this night. She would picture Rory quoting Calvin O’Keefe, and stroking her hair, and kissing her in the rain. She’d remember talking to Eloise with her hand on her heart, feeling it thump in her chest, thinking, This. This is what you’ve been waiting for. This is the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Were she to slip into a Groundhog Day dream state, this is the day she would choose to live over and over and over again. These were the memories—painful though they were—that she never, ever wanted to forget. She was always going to jump into this lake, no matter how dark or dangerous it might turn out to be; she was too intrigued by its shimmering surface to even consider turning away. There was no world in which she wouldn’t dive headfirst in love with Rory Hughes. This was the only way.

Where have you been all this time? Rory asked again. I can’t believe you ever thought I might disappear. How could I go anywhere after that?

Let me know how the move goes? I hope the sun stays out for you guys.

Still promise not to disappear? she asked.

I could never, he said.

She never did hear how that move went.

She was bright and curious, eager to participate in class discussions and bake cupcakes for peers’ birthdays (her cream cheese frosting was always homemade and often dyed pink). But she was also unafraid to call bullshit.

Then, in April of 2009, she met Emory Evans. He had a silly name and a crooked smile and a ukulele he’d play, barefoot and cross-legged, in his friends’ front yards. That was how they first met: Emory was strumming a Say Anything song at a birthday party and caught Adelaide’s eye, singing the words “I’d walk through hell for you” straight into her goddamned soul. It was funny—ironic, almost—because he was hell. He was fire and brimstone and pitchforks, a collection of demons in the shape of a redheaded, gangly teenager—demons that would chase her for so much of her life. But all that mattered, in that moment, at that birthday party, was that he was the first boy to ever really see Adelaide. To give her a second glance.

Emory whispered that, Even if I’m not the one who gets to marry you someday, I hope I can shake the hand of the man who does.

For now, though, Adelaide was young and in love, and so what if her boyfriend was kind of an asshole sometimes?

At the start of their junior year, Emory befriended a new girl from San Francisco. Her name was Brianna, and she sat behind him in physics, and Fuck, girls who know quantum mechanics are so hot, he tweeted that afternoon.

What the heck? she texted him. (Adelaide used much less colorful language at sixteen.) Happy first day of school! My boyfriend is posting about how hot other girls are online!

It’s a joke, Adelaide, he replied. Don’t be so uptight. It’s not attractive.

Soon, Adelaide learned to nod and smile. She brought fresh-baked cupcakes to Brianna’s house when Emory and his friends were invited over for a movie night. She bit her tongue so hard it bled when Brianna—Bri, he called her—greeted Emory by jumping into his arms. Brianna wrapped her legs around his waist as Adelaide stood a yard away, tasting bloo...

On the drive home that night, Emory pulled off into a grassy expanse and suggested they lie in the bed of his pickup truck To look at the stars. He said this with one arm around Adelaide’s shoulder, h...

Please stop, Adelaide said. She grabbed his wrist with her free hand. You know I’m not re...

I swear, Adelaide, he said. He was silent for a minute, shifted the truck back into drive. I’m trying to be nice and romantic. And you just … Are you, like, asex...

Brianna moved back to San Francisco a few weeks later, and Emory returned to the spare room on weekends, and Adelaide started to wake up with his hands in her und...

Then, one Sunday morning—as her mom left to pick up doughnuts—Adelaide stepped out of the shower and was suddenly pinned to the floor. Emory was on top of her, and his hands wer...

It would be years before that shame evaporated.

Adelaide, as usual, was silent. (She’d never known how to placate Izzy, only how to avoid taking up space.)

Later, Adelaide would remember what happened that night. How she’d been crying, reaching to hug him. How he’d shushed her and called her “baby” before undoing his pants, slipping her hand past the zipper, forcing her tiny palm to move up and down his skin. There, in her driveway, while her sister howled inside.

I’m fine, she said. Don’t worry about me. (But really? Really, she wasn’t fine at all.)

Emory told Adelaide he loved her on AOL Instant Messenger, then again each night before she went to bed.

Called her a cunt at a football game because she hadn’t grabbed k...

He got her Sea-Monkeys for her birthday and a big bouquet of yellow flowe...

Felt her up one afternoon as she lay there, silent, then said she had the tits o...

He gave her T-shirts that he and his little sister had tie-dye...

Told his friends he wished she’d wax, lik...

He invited her to his stepbrother’s wedding at Clearwater Beach, where they snuck off from the reception and stretched out on the sand, tracing constellati...

Dumped a milkshake over her head while she was driving one...

He helped her mom repaint the front door and plant hydrangea b...

Held her head down as she gave him a blow job—after months of pleading, of telling her, I’d do anything to make you feel good, and you won’t do t...

He took Adelaide to prom, to Cumberland Island at sunrise, to meet his grandparents and the litter of baby kittens ...

And one night on Adelaide’s couch—a pint of Ben & Jerry’s melting on the coffee table—he pulled her pajama shorts to the side and slipped inside of her, without a condom or a...

She hated herself for doing it, for almost enjoying how it felt. How was this even possible? she wondered. How had he taken her virginity—this bizarre piece of her identity that, at seventeen years old, she thought defined her virtue, her goodness, her purity—so quickly? So carelessly?

She cried the next day when it happened again on her bedroom floor, and the day after that in her pool in broad daylight.

She cried with her cheek on the toilet seat, forcing herself to vomit, hoping she could purge all of this—the panic, the impurity, the self-hatred—from her body. She cried each night in bed, eyes open and swollen, wo...

Adelaide tried to convince herself that love involved compromise, and that was all this really was, right? Not ra...

They met at a café downtown, and there was no easy way to say this, the girl explained, but she’d gone to pick up her schedule from school last week and seen Emory in the parking lot with Misha Stojanovic.

Oh, Adelaide said. Oh yeah, of course. We’re all good friends. I actually met Emory at Misha’s birthday party last year.

No, she said. I don’t think … They weren’t just hanging out, Adelaide. What do you mean? Adelaide asked. They were. Um. I don’t know if they were having sex ...

It was the last day she’d call herself his girlfriend, but Emory Evans would haunt her for years to come.

It had been five days (five! days!) since Adelaide and Rory had sex. Five days since she’d woken up in his bed and he’d made her toast and kissed her forehead and asked where she’d been all this time, insisting he would never—Could never—disappear. And yet, somehow, he did. Adelaide had not heard a word since.

How the hell did I mess this up? she wondered.

He didn’t respond.