Landline

“God, not me,” Heather said. “But everybody. The thugs at school all wear ‘This sucks’ T-shirts. Like, not the intimidating, cool thugs—the depressing, homely thugs who listen to Insane Clown Posse.”

“It’s not ‘This sucks,’” Kendrick said helpfully. “It’s more like ‘This suuuuuuucks.’”

Heather laughed. “Oh my God, Dad, you sound just like him.”

“This suuuuuucks,” Kendrick said again.

“This sucks” was Trev’s catchphrase. Georgie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

Her mom shook her head and set a plate of tuna mac on the table, then took the dog back from Kendrick, rubbing her face into its damp gray muzzle. “Did you think I forgot about you?” she cooed. “I didn’t forget about you, little mama.”

“Thanks,” Georgie said, sitting down at the table and pulling the plate of tuna mac toward her.

Kendrick patted her shoulder. “I like Trev. Is your new show going to be more like that?”

“Not exactly,” she said, frowning.

It still made her uncomfortable when Kendrick tried to be fatherly with her. He was only three years older. “You’re not my dad,” she sometimes wanted to say. Like she was twelve years old. (When Georgie was twelve, Kendrick was fifteen. She might have flirted with him at the mall.)

“Passing Time,” Heather said in a smooth voice, pulling a pizza box out of the refrigerator, “is an hour-long dramedy. It’s something plus something plus something else.”

Georgie threw her sister an appreciative smile. At least someone listened to her.

“It’s Square Pegs,” Georgie said, “plus My So-Called Life, plus Arrested Development.”

If Seth were here, he’d add, “Plus some show that people actually watched.”

And then Scotty would say, “Plus The Cosby Show!”

And then Georgie would say, “Minus the Cosbys,” and feel bad that their pilot didn’t have more diversity. (She’d bring that up with Seth tomorrow. . . . )

Passing Time was a show that captured all the angst of high school life—all the highs and lows, all the absurdities—and then made them higher and lower and more absurd.

That’s how they’d pitched it, anyway. That’s how Georgie had pitched it to Maher Jafari last month. She’d been on fire in that meeting. She’d hit every note.

She and Seth had gone straight from Jafari’s office to the bar across the street, and Seth had stood on his barstool to toast Georgie, flicking Canadian Club down on her head like holy water.

“You are f**king magic, Georgie McCool. That was a Streisandic performance in there. You had him laughing through his f**king tears, did you see that?”

Then Seth had started stomping his feet on the barstool, and Georgie’d grabbed on to his bare ankles—“Stop, you’ll fall.”

“You,” he’d said, craning his head down and holding his drink up, “are my secret weapon.”

Heather leaned against Georgie’s chair now, gesturing with a piece of cold pizza. “Passing Time is already my favorite show,” she said, “and I’m part of a very desirable demographic.”

Georgie swallowed the bite of tuna mac that was sitting at the back of her throat. “Thanks, kid.”

“Have you talked to the girls today?” her mom asked. She was holding the pug right up against her face, scratching between its ears with her chin. The pug’s watery eyes bulged with every pull.

Georgie grimaced and looked away. “No,” she said. “I was just about to call.”

“What’s the time difference?” Kendrick asked. “Isn’t it almost midnight there?”

“Oh God.” Georgie dropped her fork. “You’re right.” Her cell phone was dead, so she walked over to the brown Trimline that was still stuck to the kitchen wall.

Heather and Kendrick and her mom and the dog were all watching her. Another dog shuffled into the kitchen, its toenails clicking against the tile, and looked up.

“Is there still a phone in my room?” Georgie asked.

“I think so,” her mom said. “Check the closet.”

“Great. I’ll just . . .” Georgie rushed out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Her mom had turned Georgie’s childhood bedroom into the pug trophy room as soon as she graduated from high school—which was irritating because Georgie didn’t actually move out of the house until she graduated from college.

“Where else am I supposed to display their ribbons?” her mom had said when Georgie objected. “They’re award-winning dogs. You’ve got one foot out the door anyway.”

“Not currently. Currently, I have both feet on my bed.”

“Take off your shoes, Georgie. This isn’t a barn.”

Georgie’s old bed was still in the room. So was her night table, a lamp, and some books she’d never gotten around to packing up. She opened the closet and dug through a pile of leftover junk until she found an antique, yellow rotary phone; she’d bought it herself at a garage sale back in high school—because she’d been exactly that kind of pretentious.

Christ, it was heavy. She untangled the cord and crawled halfway under the bed to plug it in. (She’d forgotten the way that felt—the way the outlet bit down on the end of the cord with a click.) Then she climbed up on the bed and settled the phone in her lap, taking a deep breath before she picked up the receiver.

She tried Neal’s cell phone first, but the call didn’t go through—their network sucked in Omaha. So she dialed his mom’s home number from memory. . . .

Georgie and Neal had spent one summer apart—junior year, right after they started dating. She’d called him in Omaha every night that summer. From this room, actually, on this yellow telephone.

There were fewer dog portraits on the walls back then, but still enough to make Georgie feel like she needed to hide under the blankets when she stayed up late talking dirty to Neal. (You wouldn’t expect Neal to be filthy on the phone; normally he didn’t even swear. But it’d been a long summer.)

His mom answered after four rings. “Hello?”

“Hey, Margaret, hi. I know it’s late, sorry, I always forget about time zones—is Neal still up?”

“Georgie?”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, it’s me—Georgie.”

Neal’s mom paused. “Just a minute, I’ll see.”