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(i)
“You know, my mom was the one who bought me my first skateboard.”
Gina can see that being true, if only because Mr. Bowen doesn’t seem like a skater. Nor does he seem like someone who would impress skaterism upon his child. She doesn’t know much about Ricky’s mom; she might be a skater, like she might be a singer, or a lawyer, or an evil sea-witch. She’s whatever Ricky says she is.
All Gina knows of Mrs. Bowen is the chalk outline of her absence. She recognizes the mom-shaped hole in Ricky’s life. It’s like looking in a mirror sometimes.
“How old were you?”
“Seven.” Ricky makes a noise. “I fell, like, right away. You think I’m clumsy now, you should’ve seen my two left feet the first time I took it for a spin.”
“Oh, I can imagine.”
“Scraped my hands and knees. Mom had to patch me up, and there were, like, Cars Band-Aids with Lightning McQueen on them and everything. So cliché.”
“And yet.” And yet you still skateboard, but she doesn’t need to fill in the blanks for him to get her meaning. She likes that about him.
“Yeah. I don’t know. She wasn’t a skater or anything, she just thought I’d like it. And she was right.”
Gina doesn’t look at Ricky. She’s afraid of seeing herself in his expression. Haunted or lost or some other kind of emotion that can’t be un-seen.
“Was she a theater kid, too?”
Ricky breathes a laugh. “Ha. Not exactly.”
Yeah. Neither is Gina’s.
(ii)
He always wondered about the shoes, although he didn’t want to say anything. Seemed rude to point out that pink sparkly dance shoes are kinda middle-school. She’s allowed, she even makes them seem cool, but— he wondered.
He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t have to, in the end.
“Fuck, sorry.” Gina sniffles, looking away from Ricky when he comes into the rehearsal room. She has one foot propped up on the set block and she’s re-lacing one of the shoes. “I’m leaving soon if you want the room, I’ll be out of your hair—”
“It’s all good, I can go. Um. Is everything…okay?”
Gina’s fingers stutter to a stop. So dextrous, so unlike him. She should laugh at him way more often than she does.
“It’s nothing,” she says, but then, “They were my mom’s. She did dance in high school, if you can believe it. I mean— I just, I dunno, it’s kind of stupid but—”
“It’s not stupid.”
He’d be a hypocrite to call anyone stupid for clinging to their mom’s stuff.
“I like to take care of my things,” Gina says, her voice quieter. She goes back to re-lacing the shoes. “I tripped and tore the laces, but they’re old. Just need new ones.”
He can hear in her voice that she must have been crying. But he can’t fault her for that. Just yesterday he cried over his mom’s favorite cereal going stale in the pantry.
“Need help?” he asks instead, holding out a hand. “I can do the other one while you finish that.”
Gina looks up. Ricky doesn’t comment on her red-rimmed eyes, and he doesn’t comment on her smile when it appears like a ray of sunlight breaking through rain clouds.
“Thank you,” she says, handing him the other shoe.
(iii)
She probably shouldn’t be here. It was stupid to come.
But she already knocked, and she can hear footsteps, and now someone is opening the front door, and it’s too late to leave.
Ricky is in a threadbare Notre Dame hoodie and sweatpants. He wears a knit blanket like a crumpled cape around his shoulders. It’s not a good sign that his surprise at her presence only dimly registers in his expression.
“Gina,” he says, confused.
“Hey.”
“What, uh—” He rubs his face. “What are you doing here?”
Gina fidgets. This whole idea was stupid.
“Big Red mentioned that it’s your mom’s birthday,” she blurts out.
Ricky’s face falls, or maybe sinks is more accurate.
“Sorry,” Gina says. “I just… I thought maybe you could use a friend. Someone who, uh. Who gets it. A little.”
Ricky’s face going on a carousel of half-baked expressions. He steps back, and she steps in. The door shuts with her inside.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
Surprised, Gina nods. But he doesn’t ask anything until they’re at the rectangle of square footage laid out like a living room, and Ricky has curled himself into his afghan in the corner of the sofa. Gina sits on the other corner, her legs criss-crossed.
Ricky says: “Do you know your dad at all?”
Gina winces, but not as much as she expected to, hearing the subject of her dad come up for the first time since arriving in Salt Lake. People always ask eventually. She’s gotten good at shutting it down.
“Sorry if it’s a sensitive subject. You don’t have to answer, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Ricky, it’s okay.” And it is okay. When he asks, it’s like he’s an astronomer looking through a telescope at a starry night sky. Not searching for something, just wondering what he’ll find. No right or wrong answers. “But no, never. He was already out of the picture by the time I was born.” She doesn’t mean to laugh so bitterly at herself, but she can’t help it. “Didn’t want a daughter, I guess.”
Ricky burrows deeper into his hoodie and blanket. “He’s an idiot.”
“Trust me,” Gina says, “I know.”
She looks at him. He’s looking at nothing, into the folds of the blanket.
“Have you talked to her today? Your mom.”
Ricky shakes his head. She wonders when they last spoke, and she’s not going to ask, but he answers it without her needing to.
“We haven’t talked a lot since…HSM. You know.”
“Todd.”
“Yeah.”
“I still can’t believe she did that,” Gina says. “It’s really not okay.”
“Right?” Some amount of energy returns to Ricky’s voice as frustration.
“To miss the first half of the show only to show up with some new guy without any warning?” Gina tries to imagine her mom doing that, but she can’t. Back when her mom was still dating a little, she kept it firmly separate from Gina. It was a principle and a kindness Gina never fully appreciated before now. “Yeah, it’s messed up.”
“Yes! Exactly! And my dad just keeps telling me to call her, and it’s—” He buries his face. His voice comes back muffled. “This is so, God, this is so fucking dumb! Why do I always have to call her? People keep saying that. Call her, call your mom, reach out. She wants to hear from you, Ricky, you have to reach out. Why?” He throws his head back, looking angrily at the ceiling. “Why do I have to be the one? She should call me for a change. I mean I get it, it’s her birthday, but she could at least act like she still cares about me.” He breathes out and deflates like an air mattress. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. I get it.”
Ricky’s answering laugh is hollow, but not, Gina thinks, because of her. “Yeah, you always do.”
You always do, too, she thinks of saying. Remembers what he told her before. I think we do that for each other.
“Well, I can sit here and tell you you should call your mom and you’ll regret it if you don’t, or some bullshit like that,” Gina says, watching his lips barely twitch at the sound of bullshit, “or…we could watch a dumb show and not think about it.”
It’s barely there, but even the small smile on his face is grateful. He looks over at her, wrapping himself tighter in the blanket. He would fit in her arms in this state, but that’s a dangerous thought to have.
“That one, please,” he says. He drops his head. “I just… I wish I didn’t always have to be the grown-up, with my parents.”
Gina raised herself on YouTube, on her own. She was doing laundry by age six and dishes by age nine. As much as she loves her mom—and she loves her mom, really—the things she learned from her were all tools for self-sufficiency.
Honestly, she’d give anything for her mom to gift her a skateboard. She might even learn to ride it.
“I know what you mean,” she says. He meets her eyes. An unspoken understanding passes between them. “So where’s the remote, and what terrible show are we watching tonight?”
(iv)
“I kinda think we’re nailing this,” Ricky says. Ashlyn grins. As much as he would have loved to be playing opposite Nini, he has to admit Ash is the perfect co-star. Belle is the role she was born to play.
“I kinda think we nailed it, actually,” she laughs, closing the sheet music.
They high-five. Ricky says, “I should probably go, my window to talk to Nini is very small and I don’t want to miss it.”
“Go get your girl,” Ashlyn says, grinning. She powers off her keyboard. “Say hi from me.”
Ricky nods and steps out, pulling his phone out, poised to text Nini. He hears talking from Gina’s room and slows his pace.
“Mom, it’s not like— you’re not listening to me!” Garbled sounds. “My grades are great, the show is great, Ashlyn’s a great host, okay? I’m not asking you to come back to Salt Lake, I just…”
Ricky hesitates like never before.
More sounds inside are followed by Gina’s voice, quieter and defeated, saying, “Never mind. Forget it. I have homework. Bye, Mom.”
The next sounds are abruptly cut off, and the silence is stark.
Ricky continues to hesitate. He looks at his phone. A text from Nini: ready in 5! still good to call? He looks at Gina’s door.
Then he knocks before he can hesitate himself to an early grave.
After a beat, Gina calls, “Yeah, Ash?”
Ricky grimaces. “Uh, it’s Ricky, actually.”
Another beat. Footsteps. The door opens on Gina’s frown. “Ricky, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, I was… Ash and I were just rehearsing a little— um, I heard—” He shakes his head to clear it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have been listening, I wasn’t, really, I just, I was kinda walking past and I heard…some of that. With your mom.”
The mask on Gina’s face melts away. The defeat wasn’t just in her voice, clearly.
“Great,” she says, turning away, but she leaves the door open, so Ricky enters. It must have been a guest room before Gina moved in, and it still looks like one. No decorations. No personality. Very little to indicate that Gina lives here.
Ricky shoves his hands in his pockets, also shoving his phone in his pocket. He puts Nini’s text out of his mind. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He wouldn’t, if anyone else asked, but it’s different, when it’s her. Maybe she thinks so too.
Gina sits on the edge of her bed. She studies her hands. “No. Yes. Maybe.”
“Is this a multiple-choice quiz, or…?”
She doesn’t laugh, just presses her thumbnail into her palm.
“My mom doesn’t like to rely on anyone,” she mumbles. “Guess she wants me to be the same way.”
“I…I’m not sure that’s what she wants for you.”
“Even if not, it’s the way things are. We always moved around so much I didn’t have a choice.” She exhales. “It used to be just me and her against the world. But since she left it’s like…”
“Like you lost your teammate.”
Gina nods. She sniffs, looks up at him.
“I get it,” Ricky says, although it’s redundant at this point.
“I got a little homesick. It’s stupid, I know. I don’t even have a home to be homesick for.”
“Hey, that’s not stupid.” Ricky sits next to her on the edge of the bed, leaving a healthy few inches.
“I thought hearing her voice would help.” Gina wipes her eyes. “But she just wanted to make sure I was still on top of everything. Classes and stuff. Like I haven’t been basically raising myself since I was, like, seven. It was like she couldn’t even imagine that I would call her just—” Her voice catches. “Just ‘cause I miss her.”
He wants to reach out somehow, but there’s a barrier there. He has a girlfriend, and then he has this— this thing with Gina, which isn’t a thing, except he doesn’t know if Nini would agree, and she definitely wouldn’t agree if he reaches for her right now, if he puts his arm around Gina instead of going home to call Nini. God, why does everything have to be so complicated?
“Anyway, like I said. Stupid.”
“Stop saying that. If you call yourself stupid for missing your mom, that’s like calling me stupid. Which…I am. So this isn’t a great argument.” Gina laughs a little. Score. “But still. I mean it. You’re allowed to, you know, miss her. Even if she doesn’t get it exactly, I bet she misses you too.”
“Pot, meet kettle,” Gina says quietly.
It doesn’t seem like a real dig, so Ricky doesn’t take it personally, although she’s right.
“I’m just saying. She loves you, G.” It’s a risk, but he quirks his lips and says, “I mean, I’m the one who spent hard-earned money on those chocolates for you on V-day, but…”
“Shut up,” Gina says, and score again: she smiles a little. There’s a watery quality to it, but she’s not crying exactly when she looks over at him. “You’re probably right.”
“I always am, except when I’m not.”
Third score’s the charm. Gina’s smile gets a little less watery. She touches his shoulder and says, “Thanks, Ricky. You’re a…good friend.”
There’s an unread text on his phone right now that would say otherwise. A good friend, maybe, but a pretty bad boyfriend.
He tilts his head at her. “Anytime.”
(v)
She can’t deal with the choreography drama with Carlos, but a storm? A power outage? This, she can handle. Growing up with a FEMA mom has its perks. One specific and uniquely applicable one.
Everyone disperses under her instructions. Water, flashlights, food, warmth. She finds a couple lighters in the science lab in case they need a makeshift torch or to build a fire later. There’s no way of knowing how severe the storm will be. They need to be prepared for any eventuality.
Last she saw, Ricky had gone off with Big Red, so she’s surprised to find him at his locker, alone.
“Ricky,” she says. “You shouldn’t be alone, you’re supposed to…”
Ricky turns quickly, slamming his locker shut. “Gina. Hey. Sorry. Yep. Buddy system. Totally forgot! Ha. I’ll just go find Big Red.”
“Wait, Ricky.”
Ricky sighs. His silhouette slouches in the beam of Gina’s flashlight. “I don’t want to talk about Nini, okay?”
“What?” Gina frowns. Her light dips to the floor. “What makes you think I want to talk about Nini?”
She winces. That came out a lot harsher than she intended.
“Oh,” Ricky says. “Right. Sorry. It’s just people keep asking me if I’m okay. I’m getting a little sick of it, to be honest.”
“Well, I was going to ask if you’re okay,” Gina hedges. “But not because of Nini. You just seem…jumpy, I guess? Is something wrong? Something not Nini-related?”
“No.” Ricky’s forehead makes contact with his locker. “Yes. No, I mean. Nothing’s wrong. Wow. I was wrong. This is stupid.”
“What is?”
He gestures with his phone. “I texted my dad about the storm. But I didn’t text my mom. Why should I, right? Not like she can mount a rescue mission if the roof caves in or whatever.”
“It’s unlikely the roof will cave in. If anything, we would starve or freeze to death well before any kind of structural damage would occur.”
Ricky shoots her a look.
“Right. Not helpful. The opposite of helpful. Sorry.”
“No, it’s…”
“I know what you mean.” Gina lowers her head. “I haven’t texted my mom either.”
“What?” Ricky straightens. “Gina, you— you should really…I mean, that’s…”
“It’s like you said. Not like she can do anything about it. Plus, if I tell her, she’ll just worry, and she’ll tell me everything I already know, all the stuff I told you guys, and I just, I don’t need that right now.”
“Yeah, but if something does happen…”
“I know. I’m a huge hypocrite.”
Ricky sighs. “Well, at least you’re not a pathetic hypocrite like me.”
“What?” She doesn’t want to mention Nini, but this does feel at least partially Nini-motivated.
Ricky looks at her. He spins the dial to open his locker, and pulls out a blanket. The same one he wore like a protective cloak on his mom’s birthday, while they watched old episodes of The Office on his couch and Didn’t Talk About It.
“So…yeah.” Ricky turns to Gina, chunky yarn spilling over his fingers. “My mom knit this blanket for me when I was younger. Don’t ask me why it’s at school. I don’t know either. I brought it here after…” His eyes dart to the left and right. He must mean the same day. “I thought it would be comforting, maybe? But really it’s just a dumb reminder. That she’s not here.”
Gina doesn’t know what to say.
“You said layers for warmth, right?” Ricky smiles the way he does when he’s kicking himself for something. Since when does she know his expressions that well? She’s not sure. “I should donate this to the collection. But I just…can’t.”
“So don’t.”
“You said we might freeze to death.”
“Okay, in a worst-case scenario, we might freeze. But I mean, realistically? This will blow over sooner than later, and we’ll all be out of here before you know it. You don’t need to…you just.” Gina clenches her jaw. So many things she wants to say, and most of them don’t make it past the “Hey Gina, Don’t Say That” filter in her brain that keeps her from saying the vast majority of things that would implode her few tenuous personal relationships.
“I just?”
“You don’t always have to be the solution,” Gina tells him. “You can’t fix everything, and you don’t have to. You’re not a Lightning McQueen Band-Aid, you’re a person.” He breathes out, a half-laugh. “Look, you want to be useful. You want to help. Trust me, I get the impulse. I’m just saying, you still matter even if you’re not the perfect solution to every problem.”
The blanket starts to droop onto the linoleum. Gina steps forward and gathers it up, placing it back in Ricky’s outstretched arms. She gently pushes it into his chest while he stands there, watching her, saying nothing.
Whatever, right? He already knows how she feels. Cat’s out of the bag.
“Take the blanket with if it’ll make you feel better, but not if it will make you feel worse,” she says. She waits a second before letting go of it, releasing the cool fabric with a flex of her fingers. “If we need layers, there’s a costume shop full of ridiculous coats just waiting to be raided. We’ll be fine.”
Ricky says, “You too. I mean, you matter too, and even if you didn’t know exactly how to survive a snowstorm, you still would.”
She’ll believe that when she hears it from her mom, but she can’t get into that right now. She just presses her lips together, trying to cup her hands around the flickering candle of comfort his words provide.
“Come on,” she says. “I’m starting to worry that Big Red has been taken by the storm gods.”
“If anyone was going to offer himself up as a sacrifice,” Ricky says, twisting his lips into a semi-believable smile. “It’d definitely be him.”
He leaves the blanket. But she catches him after, typing out a text to Mom.
(vi)
It doesn’t make sense, that the world just ended and he still has to go to school. But the world only ended for him. So he goes to school.
He makes it as far as first period before he sees Nini at her usual desk and has to duck into the nearest stairwell to cry into his hoodie.
One more day. Then spring break is here, and Ricky is, for once, grateful that his mom put so much space between herself and Salt Lake City. He’ll have to deal with her, but at least he won’t have to worry about running into Nini. Not that he’s planning to leave the house. Ever again.
He should just go home. This day is a wash. Fuck, what is he doing here? Don’t they give grief days for breakups?
His hoodie is a wet, disgusting mess. He hugs his backpack to his chest, buries his face in the rough fabric, and stops giving the passage of time the privilege of his attention.
It’s over. Ricky-and-Nini is dead. Seeing the kill shot coming didn’t make it hurt any less when it landed. He can’t stop crying, and if he’s still crying in this stairwell when the bell rings for second period, he’s going to get trampled or laughed at or both.
The only person he wants to talk to about Nini is Nini, which is the universe’s idea of a cruel, fucked-up joke. But before they were together, there was another person Ricky used to talk to, about girls and Nini and life in general. He used to have a confidante, before she moved to Chicago and decided that giving up on her marriage also meant giving up motherhood, apparently.
But it’s like his heart doesn’t know all the things his brain knows, because he wants to talk to his mom right now so bad it hurts.
He pulls out his phone, wiping his eyes fruitlessly (they just keep dripping tears down his face). He could. He’ll have to pull the trigger eventually. He can’t lie to her about Nini for a whole week.
“Fuck!” He almost throws his phone, stops himself just in time. He wants to talk to his mom, but he can’t talk to her anymore. She left him. She's done with his bullshit. A pattern Ricky’s noticing in his life.
Nobody will understand, is the thing. Nobody except—
Sorry, there’s some things that I tell you that I don’t really tell anyone else.
Yeah, no, I think we do that for each other.
He hits dial before common sense can get the better of him.
It goes to voicemail, and he hears her chirp: This is Gina’s phone. Leave a message, or just text me.
He hangs up.
He opens their text conversation.
His phone rings.
Gina (EHS Drama)
He sniffles as he answers. “Gina, hey. Hey, uh. What’s up?”
On the other end, Gina pauses. “What’s up? You called me.”
“Right. Yes. I did.” He thuds his head against his backpack. “Um, this is gonna sound crazy, but are you anywhere near the history hallway right now?”
“I’m…in class,” Gina says slowly. “Well, I mean, I stepped out to call you back. Is everything okay?”
Ricky lets out a breath. “No,” he says. “No, everything is not okay. To be honest, I could use a friend, and…I think…I don’t know if anyone else will get it. Not like you.”
Gina replies, “Where are you?”
Four minutes later, she’s standing in front of him. Then quickly kneeling. “God, Ricky, what happened? Are you— I mean I know you’re not okay, but— what happened?”
It is at this precise moment that Ricky realizes calling Gina to talk about his breakup with Nini was quite possibly the dumbest thing he could have done. But it’s too late. She’s here, her face creased in earnest concern, fingers fluttering like she wants to put them somewhere they’ll make a difference but unsure of where that might be.
“Uh,” Ricky says. He forces himself to laugh, or else he’ll break down crying again. “Nini and I broke up.”
Gina goes on an Oscar-worthy face journey. “Oh. I’m… I’m really sorry, Ricky.”
“But honestly, that’s not why I called you. I know that sounds— I just…” He scrubs his face, trying to shove back the fresh round of tears springing to his eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. You should go to class.”
“Ricky, no. I’m here for you. It’s okay. If you need to talk about it, or…”
“No but that’s the thing. I don’t want to talk about it. I mean, not with you. No offense. Sorry. God, I can’t stop saying the wrong thing. What is the matter with me?” He palms his forehead with force, trying to avoid seeing the confused and slightly hurt look on Gina’s face. “I just, I thought maybe you could understand that…the person I used to talk to about all this, this feelings stuff, was…my mom.”
“Oh,” Gina says, a lot more quietly.
“Yeah.” Ricky stares up at the ceiling. He closes his eyes, like that’ll keep the tears in. “I’m supposed to visit her over break, and I just…don’t know what to do. About any of this.”
Silence, in the stairwell, is uniquely loud. It echoes.
Ricky opens his eyes when he hears movement. Gina sits cross-legged to face him. He can’t read her. Is she happy about this? Genuinely sympathetic? Both? Was some part of her hoping for this outcome?
Does he want her to be happy about it?
He looks away.
“I’m visiting my mom too,” Gina says. “Over break.”
Ricky leaps on the change of subject, faint though the change may be. “How are you feeling about that?”
“Honestly…I’m glad. I know it seems like— well, you know. It’s complicated, but I love her. I really miss her.”
“Good, yeah. Yeah. I’m happy for you, G. That’s really great.”
“What about you?” she asks softly.
What about me? is a question Ricky would like to ask everyone in his life right now.
“My mom and I have been texting a little, but nothing…real. Just, you know. How’s Chicago? It’s good, how’s Salt Lake? Still the same, blah blah blah. Just saying nothing.”
“At least you’re talking. That’s better than not talking.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to talk to her about this. I don’t even know if I want to, if I actually want to, or if it’s just this little kid inside me who never grew up and thinks his mom is still gonna patch up his scraped knees and kiss it all better.”
“Ricky, you still have her,” Gina says, in a voice like it’s a secret she doesn’t want the stairwell to hear. “I get that it’s not the same, and she’s made mistakes, and you know I’m Team Ricky” —he can’t help but crack a smile at that— “but she still loves you. I’m not saying she’ll know what to say to you either. But you won’t know if you don’t try.”
“That’s easy for you to say, your mom didn’t leave you,” Ricky says and immediately regrets saying. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry, that— that wasn’t—”
“No,” Gina says, but he knows her controlled voice, when she’s holding back something worse. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m wrong about everything. I can’t stop being wrong. Gina, I’m sorry. You should just go.”
He doesn’t want to look. To see whatever expression her face will have. Anger, sadness, disappointment. Or nothing at all. Every possibility feels worse than the one before it.
“I’m really sorry,” he says again.
He hears the rustle of clothes, the squeak of her sneakers as she stands.
“You know, sometimes people do leave you,” she says. “But sometimes you run. Maybe your mom left you first, but at some point you started pushing her away.”
Ricky just sits there and takes it.
“Maybe, if you try a little, and she tries a little, you can figure it out together. But that only works if you stop running, Ricky. You have to face it before you can get past it.”
There’s truth in her words; they land on Ricky like arrows digging into his flesh. Can’t un-hear them. Can’t un-feel the pain. Can’t un-hurt Gina.
“Have a nice break,” Gina says in a small voice. “I’ll see you after.”
The door to the stairwell slams shut.
“Have a nice break,” Ricky whispers into the air.