Tangled by Carolyn Mackler

up and headed toward me. But then, all of a sudden, she tripped and went flying forward. I started up the stairs, but before I could catch her, she grabbed onto the railing.
    “Damn,” she said, steadying herself.
    “Are you okay?”
    “It’s this stupid board.” She kicked her sandal at a two-by-four protruding from the rest of the deck. “I’ve asked the owners to fix it and they never seem to get out here. I’ve tried nailing it myself but it won’t stay down.”
    “It’s probably rotten,” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead with my hand.
    “Probably.” Shasta pulled her braids into a ponytail. “Want to come up for a while, have something to drink?”
    “Where’s…” I paused. I couldn’t remember her kid’s name.
    “Dewey’s napping. He went down an hour ago.”
    I wrapped my earphones around my iPod and followed her across the deck, past a toy truck and a faded plastic rocking horse. She gestured at the table where she’d been sitting. It had an empty coffee cup, a stack of books, and an ashtray with a scattering of cigarette butts.
    “What do you want to drink?” Shasta asked as I settled into a chair. “Soda? Beer?”
    “You have beer?”
    “How old are you?”
    “Nineteen,” I lied. I hadn’t shaved since Monday, but even so, I doubted I could pass for twenty-one.
    “You won’t tell anyone?”
    I glanced down the empty road. “Who’s there to tell?”
    “Hang on.” Shasta grabbed her mug and slid open the glass door.
    When she returned, she handed me a Budweiser. Then she sat next to me, set some black coffee in front of her, and moved the ashtray over to the railing.
    “I don’t usually smoke,” she said. “I never do it in front of Dewey.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    Shasta sighed. “It was a long night.”
    I checked out her face. She was pretty, but her mouth was drawn and she had circles under her eyes.
    “I had one of those conversations with Dewey’s dad,” Shasta said after a moment. “We were on the phone for three hours.”
    I cracked the beer. “You’re not together anymore?”
    “Not for two years.”
    “How old is Dewey?”
    “He’ll be two in July.”
    “Oh.”
    “Exactly.” Shasta reached into her pocket for her cigarette pack. “Do you mind?”
    “Nah.”
    She moved the ashtray back to the table and held the cigarette between her lips. As she raised the lighter, she said, “So what are you doing here this week?”
    “It’s sort of…it’s complicated.”
    “Isn’t everything?” Shasta said, laughing.
    Shasta smoked her cigarette and I drank my beer and we talked about running and the rain and how the lake is still too cold for swimming. But then Shasta sipped some coffee and said, “You know, it pisses me off. A mother would never leave her child. But a dad feels like he can walk away and never look back. Know what I mean?”
    I nodded, but I was actually thinking the opposite about me. When my parents divorced, my mom said she could only handle one of us. She picked Owen to move into Rochester with her, which meant I wound up with my dad.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” Shasta said. “Mostly I’m fine out here. But sometimes it’s things like that stupidboard.” Shasta swallowed hard. “Whatever. Don’t let me get too deep or anything.”
    “No,” I said. “It’s fine.”
    “Sometimes it just helps to bitch about it.”
    “Yeah, I know,” I said, even though that’s definitely not my style, to spill for the sake of spilling.
    “Where do you go to school?” Shasta asked.
    “Brockport,” I said vaguely. There’s a SUNY in town, after all. I didn’t have to mention I was at the high school. “What about you? Are you in school?”
    “Cornell,” Shasta said. “I’m getting my PhD in statistics. Or at least trying to. It’s impossible to write my dissertation with…you know…” Shasta gestured in the direction of her house. “I think my adviser is about to give up on me and, honestly, I don’t blame