Chapter 14 : Upstairs, Downstairs

Chapter 14: Chapter 14 : Upstairs, Downstairs

If you don’t want in, tell me now and I’ll go find somebody else.

The words were still in Maya’s head when she came out of the computer science building. Not the words exactly. The way he’d said them. Not loud. Not angry. Flat and level, a man stating a fact.

She hitched her canvas bag up on her shoulder and took the path along the edge of the lawn back toward Brennan Hall. It was almost dark. The streetlights were coming on one at a time.

He wasn’t wrong. That was the irritating part.

She went back through the afternoon line by line. It was how she hunted bugs. He’d come to her with an agreement. He’d opened the books first and read every number out loud. Ten percent. The same vesting he’d put on himself. Every question she asked, he’d answered. He hadn’t dodged one.

There wasn’t a bad line in it anywhere. The bug was hers.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. Who he talked to on the steps of her dorm, who fixed his collar, none of it was any of her business. She knew that. She’d known it since Thursday night. And today she’d still sat there and said upstairs, downstairs, in a voice so sour even she could hear it.

She didn’t know why she’d done it.

The next thing that came back was last Sunday night. The library steps, two coffees, him leaning back on the stone and looking out at the streetlights.

In a few years, everybody’s going to have a screen in their pocket.

I want you to see that future. Not hear me talk about it. See it.

Nobody had ever talked to her like that.

She’d grown up in Tacoma, Washington. In fourth grade the teacher had the whole class write an essay called When I Grow Up. The other kids wrote vet, or pet store, or the NBA.

Maya wrote: I am going to make something a hundred million people use every day.

The teacher wrote underneath in red pen: Great imagination! Let’s also think about what’s realistic.

She still had that essay. It was tucked inside a C programming textbook.

The dream had come from her father. He was an engineer at Boeing. On weekends he’d pull her up onto his knee and teach her to write BASIC on the old family computer. When HELLO MAYA scrolled across the screen, he’d said, "See that? That’s how engineers change the world." She was nine. She believed every word.

The year she turned twelve, her mother found out about him and a younger woman from his office. Six months later they were divorced. He moved to California, took a job at a tech company in Silicon Valley, and never came back to Tacoma to see them again. A check came every month. Exactly the amount the court ordered. Not a cent more.

Her mother was a dental hygienist, and after the divorce she picked up weekend shifts too. She never cried in front of her daughter, and she never said one bad word about him. But at the end of every month, when Maya got up in the night for a glass of water, the kitchen light would be on, and her mother would be at the table counting bills, one at a time.

The more she saw, the more it hurt. That kitchen light taught her two things. One: love changes, and when it does, it doesn’t warn you first. Two: the only person you can count on is yourself. That was when she’d stopped spending other people’s money.

She didn’t give up the dream. She just changed what it meant. It used to mean growing up to be like her father. Now it meant making him watch her do it without him.

So she never spent time on that kind of thing.

Junior year, a boy from the basketball team stood in front of her locker for five full minutes before he worked up the nerve to ask her to homecoming. She told him she had a program to debug that night.

The president of the robotics club asked her out twice. Twice she said she was busy.

She didn’t dislike them. She’d just seen where that kind of thing ended up. A kitchen light at midnight, and a stack of bills that never finished getting counted.

Then came last Sunday.

A freshman, the same age she was, had sat on the library steps and told her what the world would look like in ten years. Not bragging. He’d said it with so much certainty that, for once, she couldn’t find anything to push back on. When she sketched that sliding curve, he’d stared at it for a long time and then said he should have bought her the large.

For the first time in her life, someone was looking in the same direction she was.

She’d thought she’d found one of her own kind.

Which was why on Thursday night, when she’d pulled open the door of Brennan Hall and seen a girl in an oversized sweatshirt with her hand resting on his collar, the first word that came into her head had been traitor.

Ridiculous. He’d never promised her anything. They hadn’t been on the same team, not then. But the word had shown up anyway, and it had sat in her chest all weekend, right up until this afternoon.

Traitor. Maya turned the word over and over in her head, chewing on it.

?

Outside the dining hall, a knot of people were laughing over a printout taped to the window. She glanced at it. Mac frozen in midair, DIGNITY: INTACT underneath.

All week long, Mac had been signing burger wrappers, Tyler’s church had watched his strike three times, and people pantomimed water bottles at Dylan wherever he went. She’d won. In the comments, the only thing anyone said about her was is the girl who never moves a robot lol. Three thumbs up.

A guy by the door let his eyes rest on her face for a second. She thought he’d recognized her. He just stepped aside to let her through.

She was used to it. Her whole life she’d been the kid whose name the teacher could never remember, the one with the top score on every test. It was just that today, for no reason she could name, she wanted to know whether Ethan saw her that way too.

"Maya!"

She didn’t turn around. There were a dozen people in the dorms who could have been calling any name.

"Maya, hang on!"

Footsteps caught up behind her. A ponytail swung into the corner of her eye, and Chloe fell into step beside her, a little out of breath, in running shorts with a sheen of sweat on her calves, probably straight from the gym.

"You’re Maya, right? The winner!" Chloe grinned at her. "I thought the way you just stood there was so cool. Two hours, not even a twitch. Hey, so how’s Ethan doing?"

Maya didn’t break stride.

"Aren’t you two together?" she said. "Why don’t you ask him yourself."

Chloe’s eyes went wide. "He said I’m his girlfriend?"

Maya opened her mouth. He hadn’t. He hadn’t said anything at all.

Chloe was already laughing, not the least bit embarrassed.

"Not yet. If he wants to chase me, I’ll think about it."

She flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. "But tell him something for me. He owes me one coffee, one memory card, and four days’ interest. If he doesn’t pay up soon, his name’s going on our hall’s complaint board. Right under the broken dryer."

She gave Maya a little wave, jogged backward a couple of steps, then turned and ran into Brennan Hall.

Maya stood under the streetlight for a long while.

Not yet. He wasn’t chasing her. He’d forgotten the coffee.

This afternoon she’d given him the full freeze, and he’d sat there and taken it, with an agreement and a ledger and a one-dollar bill. Her face went hot.

She took the twice-folded dollar out of her shirt pocket, unfolded it, folded it back up, and put it away again.

?

The next day, when Intro to Communication let out, Ethan drifted out of the lecture hall with everyone else and passed the coffee cart on the plaza. One of the girls in line had her hair in a ponytail.

He stopped short.

The memory card. Still in his desk drawer. He’d said first thing Friday morning, with a large coffee. It was Tuesday.

Back in his old life, he could keep thirty meetings a month straight in his head and never once remember a girlfriend’s birthday. Some habits, apparently, survived even dying.

But a coffee four days late wasn’t a coffee anymore. It was an excuse. He turned around, went into the library, found an open computer on the first floor, and logged into Facebook.

Chloe Daniels, Brennan Hall. Sophomore, Public Relations. Under Favorite Movies: High School Musical (don’t judge). Under Interests, just one name: Zac Efron.

In 2006, Facebook was still for college students only, and it hadn’t occurred to anybody to lock anything down. The three newest posts on her Wall:

Saturday, from Chloe herself: dropped my phone in the fountain. RIP my slider.

Sunday, from a roommate: r u still mad about coffee guy lol

Last night, from Chloe: whoever brings me Pinkberry right now, I will marry them.

Ethan stared at the second one. Coffee guy. That was him.

Pinkberry was the hottest thing in Los Angeles that summer. The frozen yogurt shop in West Hollywood had a line out the door every single day, all the way to the corner, and the papers had started calling it Crackberry. From campus, it was two buses each way.

He sat on a bus on Santa Monica Boulevard for forty minutes, then stood in line outside the shop for fifty more. When he got to the front, the girl at the register stared at him for two seconds and then yelped, "You’re the pelican guy!" She threw in an insulated bag for free and tucked two extra ice packs inside.

Back outside Brennan Hall, he texted Chloe one line. That thing on your Wall. Still stand?

Ten seconds later his phone buzzed. ?? what are you up to

Ethan sent back one word. Downstairs.

From a second-floor window he heard a short shriek, followed by a lot of cabinet doors banging.

Three minutes later, Chloe came down. Her hair was loose, the ends dyed a pale rose gold that week. She clearly hadn’t had time for makeup. She’d just straightened the strap of her camisole and thrown a clean white cardigan over it. Barefaced, with a faint scatter of freckles across her nose, she looked younger than she had the other night, and somehow brighter.

She stopped on the last step.

Ethan was standing by the door in a red hoodie borrowed from Noah, half a can of styling wax in his hair, swept off to one side in a big swoop. One hand in his pocket. The other holding a white cup with pink lettering.

Chloe’s eyes lit up.

Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. It didn’t work. The laugh leaked out between her fingers, her shoulders shaking, until she had to bend over and grab the railing with her other hand.

"What... what are you dressed as?"

Ethan switched the cup to his left hand, dribbled an invisible basketball twice on the tile, went up for a jump shot at the trash can by the door, and held his follow-through for a full second. Then he turned around and put on the earnest voice of a Disney Channel leading man. "Chloe. I know I messed up. But I’m not giving up on us. Not now. Not ever."

Chloe laughed even harder. She waved a hand at him, struggling to catch her breath.

"You’re so out of date!" She pulled a brand-new Sidekick 3 out of her cardigan pocket, swiveled the screen open with a click, tapped a few times, and held it under his nose. "I switched. An hour ago."

On the screen was her Wall. The top post read: JT’s new album comes out next week. As of today I am emotionally unavailable to all other men. Justin call me <3

Ethan was embarrassed for about one second.

Then he shoved the hood back, raked his hair into a mess, rolled one shoulder forward, slid half a step sideways on the tile, and jumped up into a falsetto. "I’m bringin’ yogurt cup~"

...

Chloe completely lost it. She sat down hard on the step, laughing until tears came, slapping her knee with the hand holding the phone. Two girls crossing the lobby stopped to watch, and one of them started laughing too.

It took her a good while to recover. She wiped the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, got up off the step, and only then got a proper look at what was in his hand.

"You read my Facebook."

"You put it on your Wall. That’s the same as posting it for the whole school." Ethan held out the cup. "Original, strawberries and mochi on top. The girl at the register said nine out of ten girls who order this one come back for more."

Chloe took it, dug out a spoonful, and the line between her eyebrows disappeared.

"For the record," Ethan said, "this isn’t a proposal. If I ever come to marry you, I won’t show up with just a cup of yogurt. This one’s an apology. Four days. I owe you those."

"Two buses and an hour and a half in line, just to say sorry?"

"To see your face on the first bite. The sorry was a bonus."

Chloe’s cheeks went a little pink. She ducked her head, shoveled in another big spoonful, and with the spoon still between her lips she stole a look at him from under her lashes. Then she held the cup out to him, the spoon she’d just had in her mouth stuck back in it.

"Here. You stood in line for it. You get a bite."

Ethan looked at the spoon, then at her. She just kept holding it out, laughing with her eyes, waiting to see if he’d take it.

He took it, had a bite, and handed it back. It really was good.

He dug the memory card out of his pocket. "And this. Also four days late."

Chloe didn’t take it. "Keep it. My slider went in the fountain, and the new phone came with its own card." She arched an eyebrow at him. "Just email me my pictures off it. Every single one. If one goes missing, I’ll know."

When she said that last part, she kept her eyes right on his, waiting to see if he’d dare.

"Then I’ll count them twice." Ethan put the card back in his pocket.

Chloe burst out laughing. "You still owe me a proper dinner."

"When I can afford the place you’d pick. Right now I’m a guy with a company, two partners, and seventy fewer dollars in the bank than last week."

"So how long do I have to wait?"

"Not long." Ethan held her eyes, his voice level. "I’m not taking you anywhere else. When the time comes, all you have to look at is the hardest tables in LA to get."

Chloe’s face went red all the way to her ears. She couldn’t look at Ethan anymore. She stared down into the cup and jabbed at the yogurt with her spoon a few times. After a moment, something seemed to occur to her.

"Oh, by the way. Your friend who writes code. Maya." She pointed the spoon at him. "I ran into her on the path last night. All I did was ask how you were doing, and right away she goes, aren’t you two together? In this voice. You’d think I stole something from her."

She dug out another spoonful of yogurt and shrugged, like it was nothing to her.

Ethan’s brow drew together.

Thursday night. Maya in the doorway, looking first at Chloe’s hand on his collar, then at him. First week of college. That was fast. The dollar crossed out with one stroke. And yesterday afternoon. Upstairs, downstairs, whoever.

Every loose line connected at once.

So Maya had gotten the wrong idea. But honestly, he didn’t believe a girl like Maya would fall for somebody she’d known for one week, just like that, for no reason at all. There was something else mixed into the temper she’d thrown at him. He just couldn’t see yet what it was.

"What’s with you?" Chloe tilted her head at him.

"Nothing." Ethan’s brow smoothed out. "I just figured something out."

"Important?"

Ethan thought about it. In his head he saw the dollar folded twice, and a back held very, very straight.

"Might be," he said.