“Where’s El en?” Lauren asked.

Isabel a shrugged. “She didn’t come home. We think she stayed at Louis’s.”

“I can’t believe she went home with him,” Shannon said.

“Who? El en or Margaret Applebee?” Isabel a asked.

“Both, I guess. But I was talking about El en,” Shannon said.

“Can we please not talk about Margaret fucking Applebee?” Lauren said. She could feel Shannon and Isabel a exchange a look behind her back.

El en came home later that afternoon, carrying al of their usual supplies for a Bloody Mary–and–summer sausage picnic. She hummed as she mixed together a pitcher of drinks, and bounced around the kitchen getting glasses and knives.

“You seem happy,” Shannon said.

“I am,” El en said. She smiled. “You guys, I had a real y good night. Louis and I decided to get back together.”

“Oh,” Lauren said. She waited for someone else to be supportive.

“You can’t date him,” Shannon final y said. “He’s awful. He’s awful to you, and he’s awful to us, and he’s just awful.”

“He does seem to make you real y unhappy most of the time,” Isabel a said.

“Do you real y think that?” El en asked. She looked straight at Lauren. “Lauren,” she said. “Do you think that?”

Lauren had no idea why she said what she said next. Sometimes she thinks back to that moment and imagines that she could take it back. She blamed it on being hungover, on the wedding, on Margaret Applebee, but real y she had no excuse. Because what she said was “He’s just so ugly.”

El en was cutting the summer sausage when Lauren said this, and they al watched the knife slice right through her finger. Her hand was completely covered in blood before she even looked down.

“Holy shit,” Shannon screamed. Isabel a ran inside to get a towel, and Shannon cal ed 911. When they answered, she apologized and then spent five minutes on the phone explaining why they didn’t need an ambulance.

“Come on,” Lauren said. “We’l take a cab to the hospital.”

El en’s face was white and she refused to take the towel off to look at her finger. “I think I cut it off,” she kept saying. “I think I cut off my whole finger.”

Lauren assured her that her finger was stil attached. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’l just need a few stitches.”

They had to wait over two hours in the emergency room. A man sat across from them with his head leaning against the wal . When he was cal ed to go in, he left a bloody headprint behind.

Lauren and El en didn’t talk much while they waited. El en looked like she was going to pass out any second, and Lauren didn’t think it seemed like the right time to continue their conversation. Maybe El en hadn’t even heard her when she’d cal ed Louis ugly. It was possible, she thought. They sat in silence until the doctor cal ed them in. Lauren walked back to the examination room even though El en hadn’t asked her to.

The doctor looked at El en’s finger quickly and started numbing it for stitches. “That’s a nasty cut,” she said. “How did this happen?”

“A knife,” El en said. “It was summer sausage.”

“Summer sausage bites back,” Lauren said. El en looked at her with her eyebrows wrinkled together while the doctor stitched up her finger.

Lauren apologized later, but they both knew it was too late. “I don’t know what’s best for you,” Lauren said. “You’re the only one who knows that.”

El en said she understood. “Lauren,” she said. “I get it. You were just being a good friend. Don’t worry. I’l be fine.”

When El en and Louis got engaged, Shannon screamed. “Wel ,” she said, after she stopped screaming, “I guess some people just want to be miserable.” They al went to the wedding and tried not to be somber. After al , she was their friend and they wanted her to be happy.

They lost touch with El en. Not al at once, but little by little, so that they didn’t even notice until it had already happened. Maybe it was hard for El en to be around them, since she knew they didn’t approve of her marriage. Maybe their lives just went different ways—Lauren and Shannon both moved to New York and El en moved to a house in the suburbs. Sometimes they thought that Louis was behind it, that he had forbidden El en to see them. In the end, Lauren thought it was probably a combination of everything, but she knew they would never real y know.

Lauren talks about that summer a lot. It has a point, a moral of some kind, but she’s not quite sure what it is yet. When people tel her that their friend is marrying a guy they hate, she says, “Have I got a story for you.” When she gets a Christmas card from Sal ie and Max with a picture of their two little boys on it, she shows it to people and says, “You’ve got to hear about this wedding.” And whenever she’s at a party and someone serves summer sausage, she says, “Did I ever tel you about my friend El en?” and if the person she’s talking to shakes their head no, she says, “Wel , let me tel you. We had this friend. And our friend El en, wel , El en dated ugly boys.”

I sabela didn’t want to go to the wedding.