A sob worked its way up from the bottom of her empty stomach, throbbing in her chest. It mocked her for believing that she might ever be able to get over Easy. He was the love of her short, sorrowful life. The sob erupted in her throat and she wailed into the wind, straining her vocal cords, the image of complete sadness and longing, her heart full of poetry for What Might've Been and What Would Never Be.
32
WHEN A BUDDY IS DOWN, A GOOD OWL RAISES HIM BACK UP.
The only time Brandon had been in the activities room in the basement of Maxwell Hall was last spring. He'd joined Waverly s French club in order to spend a little more time with Eloise Michaud, the gamine-looking exchange student from Paris. His Francophile phase had been brief: it had taken a mere five minutes of sitting next to Eloise on one of the dilapidated sofas to realize that deodorant really was a prerequisite for a relationship. Luckily, on Monday night, all BoW members came wearing deodorant—or at least, close enough.
Brandon surveyed the landscape. Alan St. Girard and Easy Walsh were lounging on a green polyester sofa, staring at the ceiling and looking stoned. Ryan Reynolds and Lon Baruzza traded insults over the massive pool table in the corner. The room was used mostly for various club meetings in the afternoons, where girls could argue about decorations for the dances and boys could try and sneak closer to them on the sofa. Heath sat in a faded blue polyester armchair off to the side, wearing a filthy Dartmouth sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. He looked like a despondent homeless person.
Heath tilted his head back to empty his third can of Bud while simultaneously opening a fourth.
“Dude, slow it down a little,” Brandon couldn't help saying. Crushed tin cans were littered around Heath's feet. He'd hoped, in desperation, that hanging out with the other guys would help lift Heath's mood—discussing the most “do-able,” to use a Ferro word, underclassmen always cheered Heath up—but he was beyond help tonight.
“This stuff is shit, anyway.” Heath abandoned his beer can and instead pulled a flask from his green Patagonia backpack. He discreetly wiped his face against the shoulder of his sweatshirt. Brandon hoped none of the other guys had noticed. It was one thing for Heath Ferro to tear up in the bedroom—but in front of a bunch of dudes? No one wanted to see that.
“Cheer up, man.” Ryan, who'd never had a girlfriend for more than half an hour, stared at Heath from the pool table like he was an alien. Ryan fingered the platinum stud in his nose, which looked like an infected zit, and twirled his pool cue. “Another bus comes along every twenty minutes.”
“That's right,” Lon agreed, dropping his pool stick onto the green felt of the table and slumping onto an empty sofa. He lifted his muddy boots onto the already dirty coffee table. “I mean, Benny and I break up all the time, and it's not a huge deal.” He grabbed a beer can from the gym bag on the floor and flicked the pull tab into a garbage can across the room. He grinned slyly. “If you've got good stuff, she'll come back for it.”
Brandon glanced in Heath's direction to gauge his reaction. Heath just stared over everyone's head at the giant bulletin board against the wall, cluttered with flyers about dance recitals and play tryouts. “We just had so much fun together.” He glanced at Brandon, pleading with him to back him up. “Didn't we?”
Brandon nodded sagely, taking a sip of Budweiser. The sofas looked like things might be growing in them, so he leaned against the pool table instead.
“I dated Emily Jenkins freshman year,” Ryan spoke up suddenly, replacing his cue in the rack on the wall. “And she dumped me on my birthday.” He looked around to see if the room shared his incredulity at such a cruel, cruel act. “It was my birthday and she was supposed to take me out for a milk shake, and she breaks up with me. And”—he held up his hands for emphasis—”she did it in a text message.”
“Dude, that sucks.” Lon patted the sofa next to him, like he wanted Ryan to come over for a hug or something. “But I dated this girl for all of eighth grade, and we were planning on going to Waverly together—it was, like, all we could talk about. You know, hooking up in our dorm rooms, et cetera.” He glanced around sheepishly. “And then when I hear I got in, she tells me she didn't even apply.”
Easy, sprawled on the opposite sofa and nursing his first can of beer, crooked his arm up on his knee and gave Lon a sympathetic look. “A girl dumped me on the top of a Ferris wheel at Six Flags when I was fourteen. The stupid thing went around like eight more times before we could get off.” Easy shook his head, his floppy dark hair completely out of control and badly in need of a cut. “We just had to sit there, not looking at each other.”
“Why'd she dump you?” Brandon didn't really care, but there was something satisfying about knowing that Easy had been dumped before. He took one of the balls still on the table and tried to roll it into one of the corner pouches.
Easy rubbed his hand against the back of his neck and grinned crookedly. “Think she was kind of annoyed that I didn't have a car.” He shrugged. “She was eighteen.”
Brandon suppressed a groan. That was Walsh's most devastating breakup story? The fact that he'd been dating an eighteen-year-old when he had barely hit puberty counted as more of a triumph than a disappointment. Christ, Brandon had been dumped by Callie when she left a party to make out with Easy. That was a breakup story.
“This is a good one,” Heath said suddenly. They'd almost forgotten him, slumped off to the side, resigned to his misery. He held up his iPhone so everyone could see a picture of him and Kara dressed up as coordinated superheroes at the Halloween party. Both of them had completely unself-conscious, tooth-baring, truly happy grins on their faces. They didn't look like they'd be breaking up in a few short days.
Heath cradled the iPhone in his hand, scrolling through a series of pictures. He occasionally took a swig of beer from the can on his lap in the armchair. Brandon anticipated another sob. His body tensed as if he were watching an impending car crash, unable to do anything about it. He wasn't sure what his responsibilities were. His empathy for Heath was still fresh and he wasn't entirely sure that they wouldn't be back on the same footing tomorrow, when Heath sobered up. Likely as not, Heath would probably go out of his way to be all macho and jackass-y, just to prove his sensitivity had been fleeting.
A short knock sounded at the door and everyone except Heath scrambled to hide their beers. The door opened a crack and Jeremiah stuck his head in, his face lighting up with his all-American smile when he saw he had the right place. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Come on in,” Brandon said, kind of enjoying his position as the host of this informal evening. Jeremiah pushed the door open, and everyone's mouths dropped when they saw Brett standing behind him.
“No girls!” Heath bellowed drunkenly, staggering to his feet.
“Lighten up, man,” Jeremiah laughed. “I brought enough for everyone.” He produced a bottle of Absolut from inside his bulky purple-and-yellow St. Lucius letterman's jacket.
“So this is your little clubhouse, eh?” Brett said, surveying the room. She looked completely out of place in her green Nicole Miller turtleneck dress and ultra-pointy black leather boots. All the guys sat up a little straighter the second she entered, and Brandon caught Lon doing a quick breath-check into his cupped palm.
“This is the Boys of Waverly,” Heath stressed, a hint of desperation in his voice. He turned to Brandon. “Tell her, Brandon. No girls allowed.” Brandon looked from Heath to Brett and back again, unsure of what to do.
“Calm down, Heath.” Brett placed her hands on her hips. “I seem to remember you at all the Women of Waverly meetings.” She wanted to keep a note of playfulness in her voice, mostly because she didn't want what had started out as a perfect evening with Jeremiah—dinner at Nocturne and a romantic drive back to campus, Jeremiah parking his car just short of the gates so they could sneak back onto campus, ducking behind the library for a serious make-out session—to be ruined by Heath's belligerent drunkenness. “How come it doesn't work both w
ays?”
“I wish I had never gone to those meetings,” Heath moaned. He stared into his iPhone while the others looked awkwardly on. Brett sensed that she and Jeremiah had walked in right in the middle of something. “Then none of this would've ever happened.”
“None of what?” Jeremiah asked, staring at Heath in confusion. He opened the Absolut bottle and offered it to Brett, but she shook her head.
“Kara,” Heath answered, taking a swig of beer and placing the empty can at his feet.
Brandon looked at Brett as if about to explain what the hell Heath was talking about. Heath added, “The only good thing that came out of those meetings were the pictures.”
Brett felt her stomach drop to the floor. Was he talking about what she thought he was talking about?
“What pictures?” Ryan asked, his gossip-hungry ears immediately perking up. He slid off the pool table and took a step toward Heath.
“The pictures,” Heath mumbled again, barely coherent. He put the iPhone up close to his face.
“Heath.” Brett's voice was a little sharper than she'd intended, but Heath didn't hear her. She dropped Jeremiah's hand. “You're drunk.”
“Good idea,” Heath answered, stumbling to his feet with difficulty yet still managing to operate his iPhone with skill.
“What pictures are you talking about?” Lon asked, rubbing his hands together, leaning forward on the sofa. “Let me see.”
Brett trembled as she made her way across the room. She had no idea what she would do—ripping Heath's iPhone out of his hands was a possibility but would certainly cause a scandal in itself and tip off Jeremiah. What she needed was for him to shut the fuck up, right now. She reached out a hand toward him, hoping she could somehow pretend-comfort him and delete the photos with her other hand.
“Here's one.” Heath held up the iPhone, the screen large enough and clear enough for everyone in the room to see the picture of two girls’ lips pressed together. It was a close-up, and a little blurry, but the corner of the picture was filled with an unmistakable lock of flame-red hair.
Brett's skin ignited and she felt a dull thumping in her ears, as if someone far off were practicing the drums. She felt the whole ugly room starting to spin.
The sound of whistling filled the activities room, and a drunken smile spread across Heath's face. “I got more. They're all beautiful.” He set down his beer to focus on his iPhone.
“You asshole,” Brett hissed at Heath, trying to grab the phone from him. She glanced back at Jeremiah. He stood poised in the doorway, mouth open, eyes wide. He looked like he'd just seen his entire family murdered in front of him. He stared at Brett in horror and took a step backward.
“Wait,” she cried, torn between stopping Heath and stopping Jeremiah.
Brandon stepped forward and grabbed the phone from Heath's hand. “Dude, that's not cool.” He pushed down on a stunned Heath's shoulders, sending him back into his chair with a thud of deadweight. Brandon put the phone in his pocket.
Brett barely had time to shoot Brandon a grateful look before scrambling after Jeremiah. “Wait!” she called again, following him into the hallway. Her heels clicked against the linoleum floor. Jeremiah whipped around, a look of total disgust on his face.
“So it was true,” he spit out, pounding a fist against a poster with a frog on it that read KISS ME, I DON'T SMOKE. His blue-green eyes flashed in an anger she'd never seen before. “I can't believe this whole time it was true and you were just a liar. Again.”
Brett's face burned. She felt like he'd just called her a piece of Jersey trash. “I can explain.”
“You always have an explanation.” He pushed a reddish brown lock of hair away from his forehead and zipped up his jacket. “I’m tired of fucking hearing them.”
“That's not fair.” Brett crossed her arms over her chest, her defenses rising. There always was an explanation.
“I can't believe a single word you say anymore.” Jeremiah's voice lowered, and instead of anger, a look of disgust washed over his handsome face. “It's over. For good this time.” He turned and pounded up the basement steps, the sound reverberating in Brett's ears.
Brett pressed her back against the wall, her throat completely dry. She stared at the poster of the frog and let herself slide down the wall until she was sitting on the cold, dirty linoleum floor. Her lips trembled, but she didn't cry. It was over with Jeremiah—really and truly over. There would be no more making up this time, no more blissful games of backgammon, no more Soho Grand, no more Thanksgiving in Sun Valley.
At least now she didn't have to wonder what would happen when Jeremiah found out the truth.
33
WHEN IN DOUBT, A WAVERLY OWL WILL ALWAYS STOP AND ASK DIRECTIONS.
Jenny felt the ground underneath the Mustang shift and she gripped the passenger-side armrest, her fingers slipping from the leather interior. She squinted through the windshield at the road disappearing in tiny increments, flashing again through the snow, and then disappearing again. All the rain they'd had at Waverly over the past few weeks had become snow up here, and the sides of the highway were blurs of white snowbanks.
Tinsley leaned forward in her seat, wiping the inside of the windshield with her hand. “Hit the defrost, please,” she demanded crankily. “I can't see shit.”
Just the fact that Tinsley had actually said “please” let Jenny know how nervous she really was. Jenny fiddled with the controls and a whoosh of air blasted up from the dashboard, blowing hot and dry in their faces.
Tinsley's hands were clutched around the wheel, her shoulders hunched, her eyes squinting at the road, and she looked exactly like one of those little old ladies who refused to stop driving even though they couldn't see above the steering wheel.
“Should we pull over and wait it out?” Jenny asked tentatively, biting her lower lip. The station wagon they'd been following flicked on its turn signal, the blinking yellow light announcing that it was giving up and pulling off.
Tinsley didn't answer, but continued to concentrate on the road. She wiped the windshield again and then wiped her wet hand on her faded jeans. “I was in a sandstorm on the freeway in L.A. once,” she said distractedly. “It was just like this, except it was brown. You couldn't even see two feet in front of you. It took them like two days to clean all the sand off the freeway. People's cars were fucked, full of sand.”
The story didn't ease Jenny's fear that they were about to crash into a car they couldn't see in front of them, or veer off the road down a steep embankment. She suddenly wondered if maybe Tinsley had a death wish. Had she inadvertently gotten into a car with someone who didn't have anything left to lose? Jenny immediately regretted lording her new It-girl status over Tinsley these last few weeks; it didn't mean as much to her as her own life. Right now popularity seemed as remote as Waverly, somewhere behind them, and Callie, lost somewhere ahead of them.
“Is this even the road?” Jenny asked.
“I think so.” Tinsley wrinkled her perfect nose. “But I can't see the lines anymore.”
A rising panic boiled in Jenny's brain and she was about to scream for Tinsley to pull over right this minute when the car stalled. The engine roared before going totally silent. The car drifted toward the shoulder as Tinsley tapped the accelerator.
“What? What's going on?” Jenny watched helplessly as the car slowed to a halt. “Why are we stopping?”
“The-fucking car is dead.” Tinsley pounded her small fist on the top of the dash. The car made a small oof noise as it wedged into the snowbank. She turned the key a few times, and the engine gave a halfhearted cough before falling silent.
“It can't be dead—the radio still works!” Jenny cried. The last strains of James Blunt's new song filtered through the speakers before disappearing completely. An odd silence enveloped the car.
“Now we can't even listen to music while we freeze to death,” Tinsley said dryly. She put the car in gear and twisted the key out of the ignition, reaching for her Balen
ciaga bag. “Where is it?” she asked herself while fishing in her bag. “Aha.” She pulled out her cell, the orange light casting an eerie glow inside the car. Tinsley stared at the phone, shaking it in a vain attempt to get service. “Damn it.” She opened the car door, letting in a gust of frigid air, and jumped out, the phone out in front of her like a divining rod.
Jenny got out too, her feet sinking into four feet of snow, instantly freezing in their canvas sneakers. She flipped open her cell and saw the battery was flashing, dying in the dark night. Instinct took over and she texted Easy, telling him everything, her thumbs moving as fast as they could against the fading battery. She pressed send as her phone beeped and watched the text icon work before the phone powered down, dead in her hands.
“I can't get service, can you?” Tinsley asked, her teeth chattering.
“My phone just died,” Jenny admitted. “I got a text off to Easy, though.”
“How did you know where to tell him we were?” Tinsley asked sharply, holding her arms out to indicate the vast, silent expanse around them. If it hadn't been the middle of the night, and their car hadn't been broken, and she hadn't been with Tinsley Carmichael, Jenny might have appreciated the sight of the snow-filled dark night. Her brother, Dan, would probably have wanted to write a poem about it.
“I didn't,” Jenny replied, the snow seeping through her socks. Why had she worn Keds? “I told him about Callie.”
Tinsley narrowed her eyes. “Why didn't you call nine-one-one?” she snapped. “Or do you want to die out here?”
Jenny shrugged, more casually than she felt. “I’m getting back inside the car.”
“Fine,” Tinsley said through gritted teeth, annoyed. She followed Jenny's lead, opening the driver's side door. But seriously, was Jenny mentally challenged? If she'd called 911, they could have been rescued. She rattled her useless phone again, trying to pick up service. Even standing outside for just two minutes had chilled her to the bone, and the heat had, of course, disappeared too.