Free Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson

sight of him was enough to make my stomach drop. He was leaning against a picnic table, and there was a girl sitting on top of it, talking to him, smiling wide and gesturing big, telling him some story while Sam nodded occasionally, one eyebrow raised. Why hadn’t I put this together as soon as I’d seen Gideon? He and Sam went places together, especially places like the Orchard. Before I could look away,Sam’s gaze drifted from the girl and landed on me. We just stared at each other for a moment, my heart thudding, before I looked away, down at the ground.
    I could still sense his eyes on me, and I felt myself get closer to panic, wondering if he was going to come over, if I was going to have to talk to him. But when I glanced back, I saw that he was looking away, clearly barely listening to the girl at his side. And I could feel myself relax a little. Of course he wasn’t going to come over here. He had always been a coward.
    “Emily?” I made myself focus back up at Gideon, who was looking at me with his eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard him ask.
    “Sorry,” I said quickly. “What was that?”
    “Nothing,” Gideon said, with a smile that disappeared immediately. He took a breath, and I realized he looked nervous, that he was swallowing hard. “Emily. I—”
    “Sorry,” I said, quickly, needing to cut off whatever he was about to say. I wasn’t even sure what it was, only that he would probably want some explanation for what had happened, and I much preferred to keep that can of worms closed. “I just . . . I have to go,” I said, starting to edge away from him. “I actually—there’s someone I need to talk to.”
    Gideon just looked at me in silence, and I could feel a long-dormant frustration bubbling up to the surface. Half my conversations with Gideon seemed to consist of these long, charged pauses, and after a while I’d just found it exhausting—likebeing a character inside a Pinter play. Like there were all these meanings that I was supposed to understand in his silences, but never quite did. “Okay,” he said slowly.
    “Bye,” I said, then I turned and walked away, toward the guy with the keg, simply because I couldn’t think of any other options. I realized only after it was going to be too late to change direction—without it being super obvious—that I was going to pass Sam. I tried to keep my eyes fixed in front of me, but couldn’t help glancing in his direction just as I passed. The girl next to him was still talking, her gestures bigger than ever, while he just looked on, impassive. It was something that had always really bothered me about him: he rarely laughed at anything, making you feel like you were somehow obligated to entertain him. And even though I didn’t want it to, when you did get him to laugh, it somehow felt like an achievement. I pointedly looked away before our eyes could meet again, keeping my head down until I got to the keg.
    The guy selling the beer was perched on one of the more rickety-looking picnic tables with a girl next to him, sitting close. I didn’t recognize either of them—I was pretty sure they went to Hartfield.
    I waited for a moment, until it became clear that he was not paying attention, then cleared my throat and said, “Um, beer? Please?”
    “Five bucks,” the guy said, not looking away from the girl, even when I pulled a crumpled bill out of my pocket andhanded it to him. He pointed to the remaining red cups, and then toward the keg.
    “Thanks,” I said, taking a cup and walking toward the keg while the girl burst out laughing. Even though I knew it wasn’t about me, I still felt my heart pound as I pressed the spigot. The keg was nearly tapped, and I’d never been great at working them to begin with, so I mostly got a cup of foam. It didn’t really matter to me, though, since I was basically just using it as a prop. I took a tiny sip, wincing at the warm, metallic taste, wondering how much