“I feel stupid.”
“You look cute.” Luella stopped in her tracks, but Will kept walking on ahead. “Come on, Keebler! Time waits for no man. Or elf.” She felt her cheeks turn pink, and hoped the sunglasses were big enough to hide it. She hurried to catch up, muttering under her breath.
“You know,” said Will, “maybe if you got more vitamin D, you wouldn’t be so mean.”
“If I were being mean, you’d know it.”
“Fine, then maybe you’d have a boyfriend.”
“Ew, that is a totally sexist thing to say. Like having a boyfriend is the pinnacle of accomplishment? The bar to which we all must strive? Listen, Kingfield. I’m going to win an Oscar one day. And a Golden Globe. And the goddamn Nobel Prize for drama. And you”—Luella paused to breathe—“will be begging to accompany me down the red carpet.” Will held up his hands in surrender and kept walking.
They took the bus across the park at Sixty-Sixth Street, and then walked up Central Park West. Luella had to admit that it helped to have the sunglasses, but she wasn’t about to say anything. Will was wearing cargo shorts and a baggy T-shirt with a linocut of some guy’s face on the front.
“Weird shirt,” said Luella. “Who is that?”
“Who is that? Do you seriously not know who Bill Murray is?” Will looked aghast.
Luella shrugged. “No.”
“Oh my god,” Will said, slapping his forehead. “Oh my god. Saturday Night Live? Groundhog Day? Ghostbusters?” Luella shook her head. “Just . . . watch Caddyshack, please. Please just watch it. It is one of the greatest films of all time.”
“Wait,” Luella said. “Was he the old guy in Lost in Translation? I love that movie.”
“I’m going to cry,” said Will. “You are such a girl.” Luella stopped and stared at him, her mouth gaping.
“That’s not an insult, Will!”
“Catch up, Keebler,” he said, smiling. “We’re here.”
Luella looked up and realized they were standing in front of the Museum of Natural History.
“The museum?” Luella asked.
“It’s my secret study place. Come on.”
They sat in a corner of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. Growing up, Luella had always been secretly afraid of this room. There was a humongous to-scale model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling, and she was always afraid that if she walked under it, the giant thing would fall and crush her. Usually, she had never gotten farther than the fake firefly display outside. It was a favorite spot for her and her dad, but even her dad knew never to try to force Luella into the whale room.
But she didn’t mention any of this to Will. He looked so sure of himself as he breezed past the fireflies and into the massive hall. She closed her eyes when she saw the whale, but she didn’t want Will to think she was some kind of wimp. She insisted they walk about the edges of the room instead, so that they didn’t have to walk directly underneath it.
They made their way past the life-size dioramas of dolphins and sea lions, manatees and jellyfish and octopi, suspended in fake time in the fake ocean, until they found a dark corner of the room where the whale probably wouldn’t fall on them. They sat down.
“This should appeal to your vampire nature,” said Will. “Nice and dark. You can give the glasses back now.”
“Shut up.” But she handed them over.
They sat in silence, except for the sounds of Will typing away on his calculator, and Luella muttering words out loud every now and then.
Will looked up.
“Is there even a cat in that play at all?”
Luella rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of a metaphor?”
“I think they should call it something else. That title is so misleading.”
“I’ll e-mail Tennessee Williams and tell him you think so.”
“What kind of a name is Tennessee?”
“What is your obsession with names?”
Will seemed to consider this. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe because Will is so boring?”
Luella reached into her bag. “Here,” she said, shoving something into his chest. “You need to read more books. Broaden your mind. Try this one.”
“Hedda Gabler? What the hell kind of a—”
Luella clamped her hand over his mouth.
“No,” she said. “Do not make fun of Hedda. Hedda is a brilliant feminist play that was way ahead of its time.”
“Yay,” said Will. “Sounds fun.”
“Just read it.”
He read the back cover, then looked at her. “I think I’ll just get back to my problem set.”
“Wuss.”
“Unless you want to switch?”
“What’s wrong with the name Will?” Luella said suddenly. “Don’t you like it?”
“Is it a big deal if I don’t?”
“Well, yeah,” Luella said. “It’s yours.”
“So? Do you like your name?”
“Luella? I don’t know. It doesn’t feel very me. I think I sound like a debutante.”
“It’s unique. Let’s look up what it means.” Will pulled up a name meanings website on his phone. “Oh. No. Way.”
“What?” Luella cried. “Let me see!”
“No.” Will held the phone away from her.
“Why not? Let me see!”
“I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Luella pounced on him and tickled him.
“Stop. That’s not nice.”
“Let me see what my name means!”
“Fine. Fine. Stop tickling me!”
Luella grabbed the phone from him. She smiled.
“Renowned warrior.”
“I told you.” Will snatched his phone back.
“That is the most badass name ever!” Luella put her hands on her hips. “Renowned warrior.”
“I had a feeling you would like it,” Will said, rolling his eyes.
Luella was floored. She always thought Luella was some family name she didn’t really feel any connection to. Her grandma was Luella—not her. But renowned warrior. Luella liked the sound of that.
She was. She would be. She’d get through this stuff with her parents. She had to.
“Will,” she said, “there are maybe a handful of things in this world that are truly yours, and your name is one of them. You have to, like, own it. Besides, you should feel comfortable being yourself.”
“Do you feel comfortable being yourself?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, I think that’s bullshit advice,” Will said, picking Hedda Gabler back up and paging through it. “Who wants to be themselves? No one I know.”
* * *
Luella was smiling just thinking about it.
On the west side of the park, she passed two kids, a guy and a girl who were both kind of hipster and did theater at her school, as they performed a scene on the street from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On her corner, she stopped to get a dark roast French press from her favorite coffee shop. (She’d gotten into dark roast French press last year, and loved how mature and sophisticated it made her feel to drink coffee out of a white paper to-go cup while walking down the street in sunglasses, like an actress in Us Weekly.)
The moving van was just pulling away when she made it to the front of her building, a five-floor brick walk-up with a front door that was painted a crisp white.
Inside, their apartment looked like it had been robbed. Half their stuff was gone. Everything that was left belonged to either Luella or her mom. It was a lot of plants and floor poufs. Her dad’s stuff was gone. Vanished, like some sick magic trick.
On the coffee table there was a note. Luella wasn’t in the mood to read it.
She texted Will, and went to meet up with him instead.
NOW
9:00 P.M.
(11 HOURS LEFT)
THE INTRICATE PARABOLIC EQUATION OF LIFE
TINY
The wind whipped fiercely as she and Lu mad
e their way across Park Avenue toward Will Kingfield’s brownstone.
Tiny was wearing high-rise cut-offs and a black crop top, neither of which was hers. She kept pulling down the hem of the top, which was starting to drive Lu crazy.
“Leave it!” Lu yelled. “If you got it, flaunt it, Tiny. At least you have boobs. I’m basically, like, a stick insect.” As Tiny was still vaguely uncomfortable with the boobs that had popped up, seemingly overnight, this was not a fair comparison.
Tiny had come over wearing a navy blue T-shirt dress and floral Vans, but Lu said you could hardly see her awesome bod under it, which was kind of the point. Lu had found the cuts-offs and crop top in her closet and decided that Tiny had to wear them to the party, and if she even thought for a minute about wearing something else, it would have been the greatest tragedy known to man, and the universe as they knew it would disintegrate into gazillions of miniscule dust particles and get sucked into, like, a black hole, or something.
“You can kind of see my butt cheeks though,” Tiny had said, inspecting her reflection from the rear.
“You’ll thank me for doing this,” Lu said now as she dragged Tiny across the street by the elbow, freshly painted Poor Li’l Rich Girl–red nails scratching lightly against Tiny’s goose-bumpy skin. It was October, and even though the weather was still sort of warm enough for them to go jacketless, their wardrobe choices involved some wishful thinking. “You didn’t want to study for the SATs, anyway,” Lu informed her. “You’ve been studying all year—what more could you possibly fit in there?” She poked Tiny’s temple affectionately. “You’ll reach your parents’ target score, easy. I’m the one who has to worry about not bombing.” Lu linked her arm tighter through Tiny’s, and grinned like the devil. “Lucky for me, famous actresses don’t need to go to college. Besides, what if the world ends tonight? We’re going to live a little.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” Tiny said, struggling to keep up with Lu’s manic pace, and leaning into the wind. “It’s just pressure systems colliding.” The wind blew her hair into her face, and she pushed it back. “Just . . . really big ones. How did you convince me to do this again?”
“It wasn’t that hard.” Lu snorted. “I lured you out with the prospect of seeing Josh, like, outside of school property.” She fluttered her eyes and clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, Joshuwaaa, read me The Waste Land again while we talk about fear in a handful of lust!”
“Dust.”
“Whatever.”
“According to the news,” Tiny said, ignoring her, “we should be inside right now with our windows taped up and our bathtubs filled with water, just in case.”
“Tiny.” Lu turned to her. “Do you know what a storm is? Do you? It’s water. Are you going to let a little water stop you from making memories you’ll have forever?”
“I guess when you put it that way . . .”
“Besides, you’re a great swimmer. If I start to drown, you could totally save my life.”
“But what if I drown?” she said under her breath. Lu didn’t seem to hear her.
“I don’t get why I have to convince you to go to a party where you’re going to see the guy we’ve been planning your first kiss with for months,” Lu muttered. “He’s almost definitely going to be there. He’s such a floater.”
It was true. Josh was equally at home with the arty lit mag crew as he was at a party thrown by the soccer team. He was liked and accepted by all. It was part of his alluring mystique.
“Tonight could be the night!” Lu sang. “The night you swap spit with Josh Herrera!”
Tiny’s heart muscles tensed up.
According to Lu, the following truths were held to be self-evident:
1) Tiny had a massive crush on Josh Herrera.
2) Tiny wanted to get Josh Herrera alone and smoosh her lips against his.
And those two truths were built upon a third piece of relevant information Lu believed was true:
3) Tiny had never been kissed.
But Tiny was lying. She had been kissed once. A perfect kiss. Her first and last kiss. The kind of kiss she sometimes wished could be her only kiss, for the rest of her life, because there would never be another one as perfect as that.
She had never told Lu.
And she still wasn’t over it.
The thing was, Josh was cute. If Tiny had a crush on anyone, it would be Josh. He was coeditor of the school lit mag, Calamity, with Malin Kopparberg. He was into books and poetry. He was someone she should like. She wished she had a crush on Josh. But when Lu talked about Josh, Tiny was still thinking about someone else.
And she had to kiss Josh. She had to get him to notice her, somehow. It was the only way to forget that other someone. It was the only way she’d be able to move on.
Part of her felt guilty. But was it really so bad to want someone to see her again, the way she was seen the night of her first kiss?
So she bought the hair dye. She came to the party. She had a plan, and she was going to stick to it.
Lu was reapplying bright-red lipstick, using a car window as a mirror.
“Trust me,” she said with a smack of her lips. “You look hot. Very Lana Del Rey meets Taylor Swift. Josh will love it.” She turned to Tiny and grinned. “Maybe this is what you’ll be wearing when you have your first kiss.”
Tiny sighed and tugged her shirt down again. “I hope so.” Lu batted her hand away.
“You have to stop hoping for things, Tiny.” Lu stopped in the middle of the dark street, and instinctively Tiny looked both ways. To their left, a pair of headlights loomed large and bright.
“Car,” Tiny said, and they stepped out of the way as the dark shape of a car swished past.
“Hope is how you get yourself into trouble,” Lu continued, standing still in the middle of the street, even though more cars were probably going to come along any second. “When you hope for things, you only get disappointed. But when you know something will happen, you will it to. Come on. Say it with me: I know so.”
Tiny smoothed her hands over her hair. “How could I possibly know when it hasn’t happened yet?”
“Because you can’t know anything until it happens. But you can believe it will. It’s all about attitude.” Lu took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and centered her hands over her heart. Then she cracked one eye open. “Come on. Live a little.”
This was something Lu told her to do at least once a day. If life were a movie, there would literally be a montage of clips set to music, just of Lu telling Tiny to live a little.
They started walking again at the same time, as if they’d planned it.
Sometimes Tiny thought she’d never have the guts to do anything if she didn’t have Lu there by her side. When it was the two of them, they could do anything. They could go to parties to which they weren’t technically invited. They could do the unthinkable and go out on the night before the biggest test of their lives. They could talk about kissing Josh like it was something that might really happen.
It was too bad they didn’t hang out as much as they used to.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tiny snuck a glance at Lu’s outfit again. She was wearing black skinny jeans and a tight T-shirt that said PROSE BEFORE HOES in gold glitter, under an etching of Shakespeare. Her blunt black bangs were flat-ironed stick straight, and thick stripes of black liner extended out at least an inch past the outer corners of her eyes. It was a look Tiny could never pull off, but she couldn’t help admiring Lu’s effortlessness at that kind of thing.
She tucked her own brown hair behind her ears, but the wind whipped it right back.
Stupid wind. Stupid hair.
She wondered if Josh would notice. She wondered if he would say something about the poem she had submitted anonymously to Calamity. The committee had discussed the poem at this afternoon’s meeting. People had taken its anonymous moniker as a free pass to analyze away, tearing it apart, using words like trite and structurally unremarkable, and saying things
like, “I’m pausing on the part where . . .”
Jordan Brewster got all twitchy. “On a technical level, it’s unimpressive.” She stacked and unstacked the silver rings on her fingers, making a silvery clinking noise. Jordan Brewster had written a poem that the committee had voted on the week before. Tiny was pretty sure it had been about sex, but it was hard to tell. She’d used a lot of fruit metaphors, and on top of that, Tiny had never had sex, so she had nothing to compare it to.
Josh was scribbling something in a black moleskin notebook. He didn’t look up when he said, “I dunno. I like it. It feels emotionally authentic.”
“Well, should we vote on it?” Malin didn’t so much suggest as command. Malin was in top form, presiding over the committee as she perched cross-legged on the table. She wore denim cut-off shorts over bee-yellow tights, black Converse high-tops, and a large, white, men’s undershirt cinched at the waist with a black belt. Her multitonal hair (Tiny counted four but was sure there were more: auburn, honey, gold, strawberry-blond . . .) dangled defiantly in her face, perfectly contrasting with her dark brown skin.
There was a flourish of pencils, pens, and people ripping the corners off notebook pages. The results were never announced at the meeting—that would have been too humane. You had to wait agonizingly until the issue came out at the end of the year to see if your piece was accepted.
Malin collected the shreds of paper, marking cryptically in her notebook one tally mark for each vote. When all the votes were in, she looked up and smiled grimly.
“Next,” she said . . .
Josh didn’t look at Tiny once.
Maybe he knew, maybe he could just tell, because they shared some mind connection he hadn’t even realized yet. If Tiny wished it hard enough, maybe she could make him notice her in the way she wanted to be noticed.
It’s just that no one noticed her, not really. Not since that night three years ago.
There wasn’t anything worth noticing, anyway.
Lu
The black lacquered door to Will’s brownstone loomed before them like the gateway to Dante’s Inferno. His family owned all three floors, and the whole school probably could have fit in there if they’d been stalking him on Facebook and knew about the party too. Or maybe they did. Lu had no idea how these things worked, and she didn’t care.