“I’m just saying, since I’ve never done it, but you’ve done it a lot, is that, like, a void in your life? Do you maybe feel like . . . like you’re missing out? Is it, like, if I never had an ice cream sundae, so I don’t know how good it is, but then I finally try one and I’m craving it all the time?” I chew on my bottom lip. “Are you . . . craving it all the time?”
“No!”
“Be honest!”
“Do I wish we were having sex? I mean, okay, yes. But it’s not like I’m trying to pressure you. I’ve never even brought it up! And it’s not like guys don’t have other ways of . . .” He goes red. “Of release.”
“So . . . do you look at porn, then?”
“Lara Jean!”
“I have a naturally inquisitive personality! You know that about me. You used to answer all my questions.”
“That was before. Now it’s different.”
Sometimes Peter can say the most insightful thing and not even realize he’s said it. Things are different. They were easier before. Before sex was ever up for discussion.
Haltingly I say, “In the contract we said we’d always tell the truth.”
“Fine, but I’m not talking to you about porn.” I start to ask another question and Peter adds, “All I’ll say about it is, any guy that says he never looks at porn is a liar.”
“So you do.” I nod to myself. Okay. Good to know. “You know those statistics people are always spouting off, about teenage boys thinking about sex every seven seconds? Is that really true?”
“Nope. And I just want to point out that you’re the one who keeps bringing up sex. I think teenage girls might be more obsessed than boys.”
“Maybe,” I say, and his eyes widen, all excited. Hastily I add, “I mean, I’m definitely curious about it. It’s definitely a thought. But I don’t see myself doing it anytime soon. With anybody. Including you.”
I can tell Peter is embarrassed, the way he rushes to say, “Okay, okay, I got it. Let’s just change the subject.” Under his breath he mutters, “I didn’t even want to talk about it in the first place.”
It’s sweet that he’s embarrassed. I didn’t think he would be, with all his experience. I tug on his sweater sleeve. “At some point, when I’m ready, if I’m ready, I’ll let you know.” And then I pull him toward me and press my lips against his softly. His mouth opens, and so does mine, and I think, I could kiss this boy for hours.
Mid-kiss, he says, “Wait, so we’re never having sex? Like ever?”
“I didn’t say never. But not now. I mean, not until I’m really, really sure. Okay?”
He lets out a laugh. “Sure. You’re the one driving this bus. You have been from the start. I’m still catching up.” He snuggles closer and sniffs my hair. “What’s this new shampoo you’re wearing?”
“I stole it from Margot. It’s juicy pear. Nice, right?”
“It’s all right, I guess. But can you go back to the one you used to wear? The coconut one? I love the smell of that one.” A dreamy look crosses his face, like evening fog settling over a city.
“If I feel like it,” I say, which makes him pout. I’m already thinking I should buy a bottle of the coconut hair mask, too, but I like to keep him on his toes. Like he said, I’m the one driving this bus. Peter pulls me against him so he’s curved around my back like shelter. I let my head rest on his shoulder, rest my arms on his kneecaps. This is nice. This is cozy. Just me and him, just for a while, apart from the rest of the world.
We’re sitting there like that when suddenly I remember something, an important something. The time capsule. John Ambrose McClaren’s grandmother gave it to him for his birthday in seventh grade. He’d asked for a video game, but the time capsule was what he got. He said he was going to throw it away, but then he thought one of us girls might want it. I said I wanted it, and then Genevieve said she wanted it, so of course Chris chimed in too. And then I had the idea to bury it right there in the Pearces’ backyard under the tree house. I got really excited and said everybody needed to put in something that they had on them at that very moment. I said we should come back the day we graduate from high school and open it up and reminisce.
“Do you remember that time capsule we buried?” I ask him.
“Oh, yeah! McClaren’s. Let’s dig it up!”
“We can’t open it without everybody else,” I say. “Remember, we were going to do it after high school graduation?” This was when I still thought we’d all be friends. “You, me, John, Trevor, Chris, Allie.” I don’t say Genevieve’s name.
Peter doesn’t appear to notice. “All right, then we’ll wait. Whatever my girl wants.”
30
Dear Lara Jean,
I will give you your letter back on one condition. You have to make a solemn unbreakable vow that you will return it to me after you’re done reading it. I need physical proof that a girl liked me in middle school, otherwise who would ever believe it?
And for what it’s worth, that peanut butter chocolate cake you baked was the best I ever ate. I never had another cake quite like that one, with my name written in Reese’s Pieces. I still think about it sometimes. A guy doesn’t forget a cake like that.
I have one question for you. How many letters did you write? Just wondering how special I should feel.
John
Dear John,
I, Lara Jean, hereby make a solemn vow—nay, an unbreakable vow—to return my letter to you, intact and unchanged. Now give me my letter back!
Also you’re such a liar. You know very well that plenty of girls liked you in middle school. At sleepovers, girls would be like, are you Team Peter or Team John? Don’t pretend like you didn’t know that, Johnny!
And to answer your question—there were five letters. Five meaningful boys in my whole life history. Though, now that I’m writing it down, five sounds like a lot, considering the fact that I’m only sixteen. I wonder how many there’ll have been by the time I’m twenty! There’s this lady at the nursing home I volunteer at, and she’s had so many husbands and lived so many lives. I look at her and I think, she must not have even one regret, because she’s done and seen it all.
Did I tell you my older sister Margot’s all the way in Scotland, at St. Andrews? It’s where Prince William and Kate Middleton met. Maybe she’ll meet a prince, too, haha! Where do you want to go to college? Do you know what you want to study? I think I want to stay in state. Virginia has great public schools and it’ll be much cheaper, but I guess the main reason is I’m very close to my family and I don’t want to be too-too far away. I used to think I might want to go to UVA and live at home, but now I’m thinking dorms are the way to go for a true college experience.
Don’t forget to send back my letter, Lara Jean
Daddy’s at the hospital, but he’s made a big pot of oatmeal, a vat of it like you see in a soup kitchen. By this time it’s gummy and I have to put half a bottle of maple syrup and dried cherries on mine to make it palatable, and even then I’m not sure if I like oatmeal. I make a bowl for me with some chopped-up pecans on top, and a bowl with just honey on top for Kitty. “Have some gruel,” I call out. She’s in front of the TV, of course.
We sit on stools at the breakfast bar and eat our gruel. I will say there is something satisfying about it, the way it sticks to your insides like paste. As I eat, I keep my eyes toward the window.
Kitty snaps her fingers in my face. “Hello! I asked you a question.”
“Has the mail come yet?” I ask.
“The mailman doesn’t come until after twelve on Saturdays,” Kitty says, licking honey off her spoon. Eyeing me she says, “Why have you been so excited about the mail all week?”
“I’m waiting for a letter,” I say.
“From who?”
“Just . . . no one important.” A rookie mistake. I should’ve made up a name, because Kitty’s eyes narrow, and now she’s really interested.
“If it wasn’t someone important, you wouldn’t be so gaga looking out the
window for it. Who’s it from?”
“If you must know, it’s actually a letter from me. One of those love letters of mine you sent out.” I reach across the table and pinch her arm. “It’s coming back my way.”
“From the boy with the funny name. Ambrose. What kind of name is Ambrose?”
“Do you remember him at all? He used to live on our street.”
“He had yellow hair,” Kitty says. “He had a skateboard. He let me play with it once.”
“That sounds like him,” I say, remembering. Of all the boys, he had the most patience with Kitty, even though she was a pain.
“Stop smiling,” Kitty commands. “You already have a boyfriend. You don’t need two.”
My smile slips. “We’re just writing letters, Kitty. Also don’t snap at me.” I lean in to give her another pinch, and she jumps up before I can. “What are you going to do today?”
“Ms. Rothschild said she’d take me and Jamie to the dog park,” Kitty says, putting her dirty bowl in the sink. “I’m gonna go over and remind her.”
“You’ve been hanging out with her a lot lately.” Kitty shrugs and gently I say, “Just don’t become a nuisance, all right? I mean, she’s like, forty; she might have other things she wants to be doing with her Saturday. Like go to a winery or a spa. She doesn’t need you harassing her about dating our dad.”
“Ms. Rothschild loves hanging out with me, so keep your little opinions to yourself.”
I frown at her. “Seriously, you have such bad manners, Kitty.”
“Blame my manners on you and Margot and Daddy, then. You’re the ones who raised me this way.”
“Then I guess nothing will ever be your fault in life because of the shoddy way you were raised.”
“I guess not.”
I let out a scream of frustration, and Kitty skips off, humming to herself, pleased as punch to have annoyed me.
Dear Lara Jean,
For the record, the only reason girls ever paid me any attention was because I was Peter’s best friend. It’s why Sabrina Fox asked me to be her date to the eighth grade formal! She even tried to sit next to Peter at Red Lobster before the dance.
As for college, my dad went to UNC, so he’s really pushing for that. He says I have tar in my blood. My mom wants me to stay in state. I haven’t told anyone this, but I really want to go to Georgetown. Knock on wood. Studying for the SATs as we speak.
Anyway . . . here’s your letter back. Don’t forget your promise. I’m really enjoying writing letters back and forth, but can I also have your phone number? You’re pretty hard to find online.
My very first thought is: He hasn’t seen the video. He can’t possibly have! Not if he’s saying I’m so hard to find online. I suppose deep down I must have been worrying about it, because I feel so relieved to know for certain. What a comfort, to know that he can still have a certain idea of me in his head, the same as I have of him. And truly, John Ambrose McClaren isn’t the type of boy to look at Anonybitch. Not the John Ambrose McClaren I remember.
I look back down at the letter, and there, at the bottom, is his phone number.
I blink. Letters were harmless enough, but if John and I started talking on the phone, would that be a betrayal of sorts? Is there even a difference between texting and letter writing? One is more immediate. But the act of writing a letter, of selecting paper and pen, addressing the envelope, finding a stamp, let alone putting pen to paper . . . it’s far more deliberate. My cheeks heat up. It’s more . . . romantic. A letter is something to keep.
Speaking of which . . . I unfold the second piece of paper in the envelope. It’s creased, a stationery I recognize well. Thick creamy paper with LJSC engraved in navy at the top. A birthday gift from my dad because of my delight in anything monogrammed.
Dear John Ambrose McClaren,
I know the exact day it all started. Fall, eighth grade. We got caught in the rain when we had to put all the softball bats away after gym. We started to run back to the building, and I couldn’t run as fast as you, so you stopped and grabbed my bag too. It was even better than if you’d grabbed my hand. I still remember the way you looked—your T-shirt was stuck to your back, your hair wet like you just came out of the shower. When it started to pour, you whooped and hollered like a little kid. There was this moment—you looked back at me, and your grin was as wide as your face. You said, “Come on, LJ!”
It was right then. That’s when I knew, all the way down to my soaking-wet Keds. I love you, John Ambrose McClaren. I really love you. I might have loved you for all of high school. I think you might have loved me back. If only you weren’t moving away, John! It’s so unfair when people move away. It’s like their parents just decide something and no one else gets a say in it. Not that I even deserve a say—I’m not your girlfriend or anything. But you at least deserve a say.
I was really hoping that one day I would get to call you Johnny. Your mom came to get you after school once, and a bunch of us were hanging out on the front steps. And you didn’t see her car, so she honked and called out, “Johnny!” I loved the sound of that. Johnny. One day, I bet your girlfriend will call you Johnny. She’s really lucky. Maybe you already have a girlfriend right now. If you do, know this—once upon a time in Virginia, a girl loved you.
I’m going to say it just this once, since you’ll never hear it anyway. Good-bye, Johnny.
Love,
Lara Jean
I let out a scream, so loud and so piercing that Jamie barks in alarm. “Sorry,” I whisper, falling back against my pillows.
I cannot believe that John Ambrose McClaren read that letter. I didn’t remember it to be so . . . naked. With so much . . . yearning. God, why do I have to be a person who yearns so much? How horrible. How perfectly horrible. I’ve never been naked in front of a boy before, but now I feel like I have. I can’t bear to look at it again, to even think about it. I scramble up and stuff it back inside the envelope and push it under my bed so it no longer exists. Out of sight, out of mind.
Obviously John won’t be getting this letter back. In fact I don’t know if I should write him back at all. Things feel . . . altered, somehow.
I’d forgotten that letter, how ardently I longed for him. How certain I was, how absolutely certain I believed we were meant to be, if only. The memory of that belief shakes me up; it leaves me feeling unsettled and even uncertain. Unmoored. What was it about him, I wonder, that made me so sure?
Strangely, there’s no mention of Peter in my letter. In the letter I say I started liking him in the fall of eighth grade. I liked Peter in eighth grade too, so there was a definite crossover. When did one begin and the other end?
The one person who would know is the one person I could never ask.
She is the one who foretold that I would like John.
Genevieve slept over at my house most nights that summer. Allie was only allowed to sleep over on special occasions, so it was usually just the two of us. We’d go over what happened that day with the boys, every detail. “This is going to be our crew,” she said to me one night, her lips barely moving. We were doing Korean face masks my grandma had sent, the kind that look like ski masks, and drip with “essence” and vitamins and spa-like things. “This is what high school is going to be like. It’ll be me and Peter and you and McClaren, and Chrissy and Allie can share Trevor. We’ll all be power couples.”
“But John and I don’t like each other like that,” I said, teeth clenched to keep my face mask from shifting.
“You will,” she said. She said it like it was a preordained fact, and I believed her. I always believed her.
But none of it came to be, except for the Gen and Peter part.
31
LUCAS AND I ARE SITTING cross-legged in the hallway, sharing a strawberry-shortcake ice cream bar. “Stick to your side,” he reminds me as I lower my head for another bite.
“I’m the one who bought it!” I remind him. “Lucas . . . do you think it’s cheating to write letters to someone?
Not me, I’m asking for a friend.”
“No,” Lucas says. He raises both eyebrows. “Wait, are they sexy letters?”
“No!”
“Are they the kind of letter you wrote me?”
A meek little “no” from me. He gives me a look like he isn’t buying whatever I’m selling. “Then you’re fine. Technically you’re in the clear. So who are you writing to?”
I hesitate. “Do you remember John Ambrose McClaren?”
He rolls his eyes. “Of course I remember John Ambrose McClaren. I had a crush on him in seventh grade.”
“I had a crush on him in eighth!”
“Of course you did. We all did. In middle school you either liked John or you liked Peter. Those were the two main choices. Like Betty and Veronica. Obviously John is Betty and Peter’s Veronica.” He pauses. “Remember how John used to have that really endearing stutter?”
“Yes! I mourned it a little when it went away. It was so sweet. So boyish. And do you remember how his hair was the color of pale butter? Like, the way I bet freshly churned butter looks.”
“I thought it was more like moonlit corn silk, but yeah. So how did he turn out?”
“I don’t know. . . . It’s strange because there’s the him I remember from middle school, and that’s just my memory of him, but then there’s the him now.”
“Did you guys ever go out back then?”
“Oh no! Never.”
“So that’s probably why you’re curious about him now.”
“I didn’t say I was curious.”
Lucas gives me a look. “You basically did. I don’t blame you. I’d be curious too.”
“It’s just fun to think about.”
“You’re lucky,” he says.
“Lucky how?”
“Lucky that you have . . . options. I mean, I’m not officially ‘out,’ but even if I was, there are, like, two gay guys at our school. Mark Weinberger, who’s a pizza face, and Leon Butler.” Lucas shudders.
“What’s wrong with Leon?”
“Don’t patronize me by asking. I just wish our school was bigger. There’s nobody for me here.” He stares off into space moodily. Sometimes I look at Lucas and for a second I forget he’s gay and I want to like him all over again.