"Qui-iiiin! Doc-tor!" Lydia's voice bellowing up the stairs pulled Quinn awake. "Qui-iiiin! Qui-iiiiiin!"
"Coming! Jeez," she muttered, standing. Covered in sweat and vaguely nauseous, she reached out and steadied herself on her desk chair, then checked her phone. She'd been asleep for two hours. After Jesse left, she'd only meant to lie down for a moment, but the sun had draped itself all over her and bam, she was out. They had been happening a lot lately, these accidental naps, even when she got a good night's sleep.
She gave her face a spray of now-lukewarm water and headed downstairs.
"What took you so long?" Lydia demanded when Quinn reached the parlor floor of the row house. She was wearing a polka-dot bathing suit, plaid shorts, and high-tops Quinn had grown out of not that long ago. Ten years old, and she was almost as tall as her sixteen-year-old sister. Not that that was saying much. Lydia and Ben, their twenty-year-old brother, were built like their mother's family, which included a great-aunt who was six-two. Quinn took after her father's side, supposedly, though there were no living relatives aside from her dad as evidence.
"Why do you care?" Quinn said, retrieving her flip-flops from under the hall bench.
"I had to call you forever. And where's Jesse? I grew some mold I want to show him."
"He already left."
Lydia pouted. "I never see him anymore. Ever since he started being your boooyyyfriend you guys are all hidey-hidey in your room and stuff."
"That doesn't usually stop you."
The sound of quick footsteps came from the stairs that led up from the garden-level kitchen to the front hall. The narrow house had four modestly sized stories, with two main rooms on each, which made for a lot of up and down. "I lost track of time," their mother, Katherine, said, hurrying toward her daughters. "We're running late." She grabbed her bag from a hook next to the mirror, pressed a hand on Quinn's back, and steered her toward the door.
The minute Quinn stepped outside, the heat tried to push her back in. She paused for a moment at the top of the stoop, waiting for her mother to find her sunglasses in her large, overstuffed purse, which contained everything from pruning shears to three issues of the New Yorker and five tubes of the same shade of lipstick. (Quinn had counted in amazement during a recent search for gum.)
"You'll only be alone for an hour or so," Katherine said to Lydia, finally pulling out her glasses. "I'm going to see clients after I drop off Quinn. Ben will be here soon, though. You'll be okay?" She kissed her on both cheeks then wiped off the Rose Aglow smudges with her thumbs.
"Duh," Lydia said. "Except I'm starving. Is there food? And don't say 'kale muffins.' Those things are nasty."
"I shopped after my co-op shift last night," Katherine said, as she and Quinn walked down the steps. "There should be plenty in the fridge." She waved. "Be sure to lock the door when you go inside, sweetie."
The low, wrought-iron gate clanged shut behind Quinn and her mother. They started up the block, past the old brownstones, toward Prospect Park West.
"About the groceries," Quinn said. "You never unpacked them. They were sitting out all night."
Her mother glanced at her. "Seriously?"
"There were casualties."
"Crap." Katherine took out her phone and typed a quick note. "I can't wait for the election to be over so I can have my brain back. And our regular life."
Quinn's new doctor's office was near Grand Army Plaza; she and her mother only had to walk up PPW to get there. Normally, it would have been a nice walk—the trees and bushes of Brooklyn's equivalent to Central Park gathered on one side, elegant brick and limestone townhouses and apartment buildings lining the other. But the air was so boggy with humidity, Quinn had to shove it out of the way with every step, like she was forcing herself through a crowd of overheated, hostile bodies on the subway. That's what heat was like in the city: it made you feel like there wasn't enough room for you. (Although, it wasn't just the heat; in Quinn's opinion, the city landscape never allowed enough room for certain things—like thinking and breathing.)
While they crossed over to the shadier park side of the street, Quinn pictured the melted butter and ice cream she'd thrown out this morning, and wondered if her mom really thought they'd go back to regular life after the election. Quinn's father was running for Congress. He was a professor and had written books, two of which, Urbanomics and ElastiCity, were bestsellers that made him kind of famous—in an always-on-NPR kind of way. But even though he was already high profile in certain circles, life would be totally different if he won. (Which he had a good chance of doing; he'd already won the Democratic primary in June.) He'd live in DC for a lot of the year and would be even busier and more public than he was now. He'd be a friggin' United States congressman! What was regular about that?
Quinn wanted him to win, but she also knew that things wouldn't go back to normal. You couldn't go back. Like with Jesse. They'd been platonic best friends for years before becoming an official couple last spring. Now that they were "together," they could never go back to the way it had been before. Quinn didn't want to go back—not at all—but it made her sick down to her toenails to think that if the romance didn't work, she might lose the friendship, too.
She kicked a pebble. "I loaned Jesse my sleeping bag for the Adirondacks trip," she said. "His sucks."
"I feel bad you couldn't go. Are all the Dubs going?"
"Not Caroline—she's at an art thing on Long Island. Just Sadie and Isa." Caroline Williams, Sadie Weston-Hoyt, and Isa Weiss were Quinn's closest girlfriends.
"And the usual guys?"
"Adrian. And Oliver, obviously. Matt has soccer."
"You know how much Dad and I appreciate that you're coming tonight, right?"
"Yup."
"You've been great during this whole thing." Katherine ran her hand over Quinn's head as they waited for a troop of nannies pushing strollers to pass in front of them at the park entrance. "You make me proud, know that?"
"Don't be a dork, Mom."
"Were you sleeping again?"
Quinn followed her mother's hand with her own and felt a poufy rat's nest above her hair elastic. "Yeah, a little."
Katherine studied her face for a moment. "You're not depressed, are you, sweetie?"
"Depressed? No, Mom. God." It had been the best summer of her life.
They started walking again. "I didn't think so. But all this sleeping ... I don't want to be the kind of mother who's oblivious."
"You're, like, the opposite of oblivious." Her mother loved to know what was going on with friends and guys and all of that—more than Quinn liked to talk about it. Quinn wasn't a big sharer with anyone except Jesse. The Dubs joked that she should join the CIA, if she wasn't in it already.
"I hope so," her mother said. "Anyway, I was serious about being proud of you. You're a good girl, Quinn."
"Ugh, Mom."
As Quinn said it, Katherine's phone rang, and she began talking to a client of her urban gardening business about replacing some diseased boxwood. Quinn spent the rest of the walk texting with Jesse and Sadie.
When they reached the large, sand-colored brick building where the doctor's office was, Katherine said, "I'm just going to come in to take care of the insurance stuff. Be sure to ask her to check your thyroid. Okay?"
"I'm fine," Quinn said, tucking her phone in her pocket. "It's the heat."
"And ask if you should try cutting out gluten."
"Mom. Stop worrying. I'm fine."
The door slid open, releasing a blast of icy air. Quinn shivered and stepped inside.
