“Let’s go upstairs,” Rielle says, and grabs my hand. Whenever my family comes over here for dinner, Rielle and I go upstairs and leave the adults downstairs. Sometimes we’ll snag some of the appetizers her mom makes and munch on them while we hang out and gossip about boys. Rielle hates these dinners as much as I do, mostly because it keeps her from doing the two things she loves the most—talking on her phone and listening to music.
As soon as we get upstairs, Rielle heads to her computer.
“I have the best song for you to listen to,” she says. “I met the drummer the other night at The Stage.” Rielle is a bit of a groupie. And not just for one particular band or group. She finds these little local bands and stalks them down at different shows. Then she finagles her way backstage to meet the singers or drummers and dates them for a few weeks until she gets bored. Never the guitar players, though—Rielle thinks guitar players are too full of themselves.
The first bars of an alternative rock song start to filter through Rielle’s superexpensive speakers, the kind of speakers that can make almost any song sound good. Maybe that’s why she’s always falling in love with these guys.
“Good song,” I say honestly. I’m sprawled out on her bed, trying not to think about the fact that she lied to me about being at her grandma’s house for the weekend. I wonder what Isaac is doing right now. I want to pull my phone out and send him another text, but I’m afraid Rielle will ask me who I’m texting. And then I’ll have to tell her, and then she’ll be all up in my business.
I guess that’s one of the good things about not having many close friends right now. I don’t have to listen to anyone else’s opinion of what I’m doing with my life. Although, my dad obviously felt free to make it perfectly clear what he thinks about me and Isaac.
“I haven’t hooked up with him yet,” Rielle says. She pulls up the band’s website and shows me a picture. The guy in question looks the same as every other band guy she falls in love with. Spiky, highlighted hair that flops over one eye. Tight jeans. A wrist cuff. And eyes that look like they may or may not have eyeliner on them.
“He’s cute,” I say.
“Don’t sound so excited,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“No, seriously,” I say. “He’s cute.” I pull a book down from her bookshelf and start reading the back cover.
“Have you read that?” she asks. “You can borrow it if you want.”
Rielle and I share a love of romance books. It’s actually how we met. It was seventh grade, and I’d just transferred to Concordia Prep. I was feeling sorry for myself in the library, looking through the shelves for something to read, when I spotted Rielle. She was sitting with her math book propped up, but I could see the cover of one of my favorite books, Match Me If You Can, peeking out from underneath.
I asked her if it was any good. She said it was amazing. I’d already read it, but I wanted to start a dialogue with her and see if she’d offer to let me borrow it. She did, and from that day on, whenever I reread that book, it reminds me of Rielle.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling the book off the shelf and putting it in my purse. I lie back on her bed and stare up at the ceiling, willing her mom to call us downstairs. Not that I’m looking forward to dinner. But the sooner we eat, the sooner I can get out of here.
“What’s with you?” Rielle asks, still at her desk, still clicking away at her computer.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re being weird.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” She swivels her chair around and faces me, raising her eyebrows. “Out with it. Does it have something to do with Rex?”
I sit up and look at her. “Rex? Are you kidding?”
“Well, I don’t know!” She reaches over and turns off the song that’s playing. “What else could it be? Is it that guy Ira?”
“Isaac,” I correct. God. She can’t even remember the name of the guy I like? “And no, it’s not him.”
“Then what is it?”
“I saw you at the mall.”
She frowns. “Then why didn’t you come over and say hi?”
She doesn’t remember. I can’t believe this. It’s been bothering me for two weeks, and she doesn’t even remember. “You told me you were at your grandma’s for the weekend.”
She laughs, shaking her head like it’s some kind of crazy misunderstanding. “I did?”
“Yes.” I take a deep breath. “You told me you were away, and then I saw you there. With Anna and Michelle.”
She’s still laughing, trying to play it off like it’s nothing. “I probably just got confused,” she says. “When you called, I was probably getting ready to go to my grandma’s.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You didn’t get confused, Rielle.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you didn’t. You said your grandma needed help with her arthritis medicine.”
She sighs, then stands up and comes and sits next to me on the bed. “Okay, look, the thing is . . . Michelle and Anna feel weird being around you.”
“Why?” I’ve never been particularly close with Michelle and Anna, two girls from Concordia Prep who we hung out with sometimes. They were always best friends, and Rielle and I were always best friends. Our twosomes were already made up. But I guess things have changed. Our twosomes have somehow now become a threesome.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “They just felt like maybe you were going to be different or something. They don’t know what to say.”
“They don’t have to say anything.” I’m starting to feel anger bubble up inside me. It’s different from the anger I felt that day with Rex. This is more of a real anger, one that I’m more in touch with. “Or they could ask me how things are going, or if there’s anything they can do, or how I’m feeling.”
Rielle shrugs. “You know how they are.” She rolls her eyes. “Not the sharpest pencils in the box. And kind of self-absorbed.” She laughs like this is the funniest thing ever. But I don’t feel much like laughing.
“You could have just told me that,” I say. “Instead of lying. I would have understood.”
“Would you?” she asks. “Would you have really?” She’s raising her eyebrows at me like it’s a rhetorical question.
“I would have been mad,” I say, “but you didn’t have to lie to me.”
“I’m sorry.” She reaches over and pulls me closer to her. “Forgive me?”
“Yeah,” I say. But it’s not true. I don’t forgive her.
Before
Isaac
This night has been a fucking disaster. First, there was that whole weird thing with Kelsey’s dad. What the hell is that dude’s problem, anyway? I’m a nice guy. Okay, maybe I’m not exactly a nice guy, but he doesn’t know that. He hasn’t even given me a chance. Shouldn’t he invite me over for dinner or take me out golfing or some shit and let me be a real screwup before he just decides that I am one? Something is going on with that dude. Something with him and Kelsey. I want to ask her about it, but she’s at some dumb dinner with her parents.
And I’m holed up in my room avoiding my dad. He’s pissed at me because he saw the scratch on my car that Kelsey put there. He started yelling and freaking out as soon as I got home, which is completely ridiculous. Who cares? It’s just a scratch. It can be fixed. No one got hurt, no one’s dead, no one even—
My phone beeps. A text from Kelsey.
“Finally done,” it says. “U want to meet up?”
I race down the hallway and out the door before anyone can say anything to me. My dad took my keys away, but I have spare copies all over the place. My dad is always trying to take my car away.
I drive to Kelsey’s house and pick her up, and we end up in the parking lot of the bowling alley.
“Should we go in?” Kelsey asks. She’s looking toward the front of the alley doubtfully. There are a bunch of guys standing around the doorway smoking cigarettes and laughing.
“Do you
think we should go in?” I ask.
“I’m not sure.” She bites her lip. “We can’t just sit out here.”
“Why not?”
“Because what will we do?”
“I can think of lots of things,” I say, raising my eyebrows at her. I mean it as a joke, but suddenly she looks really sad. Like, her-eyes-are-filling-up-with-tears kind of sad.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously,” I say, “you can tell me.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing? You want to hear embarrassing? How about the time in eighth grade when Derek Miller pulled my pants down in front of the whole gym class?”
“That’s not embarrassing,” she says.
“He pulled my boxers down too,” I say. “And everyone saw my . . . uh, my junk.”
“Your junk?” She looks at me and then bursts out laughing.
“What’s wrong with ‘junk’?” I ask defensively. “And I would have said ‘dick,’ but I didn’t want to insult your delicate sensibilities.”
“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I think I lost my delicate sensibilities a while ago.” This seems to make her a little sad again, and she looks back out the window. “Why did you get kicked out of all your old schools?” she asks.
“Why didn’t I get kicked out sooner is the better question.” I shift on my seat. From outside, I can hear the sound of the music in the bar, a loud bass line that reverberates in my chest and through the front seat of my car.
“You did a lot of bad things?”
“Bad? Depends on what you mean by ‘bad.’ I like to think of them as mischievous.”
“Like, what did you do?”
“I told you. It was mostly just pranks and stuff. Stupid shit. Spray painting our graduation year on the side of a building, writing ‘seniors suck’ across their lockers when I was a freshman, stealing chickens and letting them loose in the hallway, that kind of thing.”
“Why did you do all that?”
I think about it. “I dunno.” I shrug. “Bored, I guess. Trying to get attention.”
“Don’t you get enough attention being the son of a senator?”
“This is getting way too psychobabble for me,” I say. I’m getting a little uncomfortable. Mostly because Kelsey’s right. I do get a lot of attention just for being a senator’s son. So why did I feel the need to do all that stuff?
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she says.
“No, it’s fine.” I shrug again. “I don’t know. Maybe I wanted attention from my dad. Or maybe I just wanted to show him that he couldn’t control me. Who knows? I’m probably totally fucked up.”
“Not as fucked up as me,” she whispers.
“I doubt that,” I say. “You’re, like, the least fucked-up person I know.”
“How can you say that?” she asks. “You hardly even know me.”
“I know you enough,” I say. I’m tracing little circles on her hand now. I have no idea how she has this effect on me, but she does. I just want to pull her close and hold her against me.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I did to get kicked out of school?” she asks.
“Is that what you were thinking about before?”
She hesitates. “Yes.”
“What did you do to get kicked out of school?”
“How come you’ve never asked me that before?”
I think about it. “I don’t know. I guess I just figured that if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes my hand tight. And then I start to get a little scared. Not that I think she’s really dangerous or anything, but who knows? Maybe she is. Maybe she killed a dude or something. Maybe her dad is, like, some kind of controlling, sadistic bastard, not just your run-of-the-mill pain-in-the-ass dad, and so one day she just snapped and—
“I’ll tell you,” she says. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Okay.” I shrug like I could care less. I wonder if she thinks killing someone is a big deal.
“I wrecked my ex-boyfriend’s car.”
“You wrecked his car?” I ask. “No wonder you didn’t want to drive mine. Good thing I didn’t know that, or I never would have let you behind the wheel. But why’d you get kicked out of school for that? Were you drinking or something?” The thought of Kelsey drinking and driving just doesn’t make any sense. She’s the most in-control person I know.
“No,” she says, “it wasn’t the car he drove. It was this car he was making for his senior project. It ran on electricity.”
“Sounds lame.”
“It wasn’t,” she says. “It was kind of a big deal.”
“Why’d you wreck it?”
“Because I found out he was cheating on me with this really ridiculous girl.” She pauses, and I don’t say anything. Because sometimes when someone is telling you something really important, it’s best to just let there be silence, to really think about what they’re saying. A lot of times people think they have to say something all insightful or wise or something to try and make the person feel better. But really, sometimes silence is best.
“And the thing is,” she goes on, “I had a feeling that he liked her, even though he always swore up and down that it wasn’t true. And so a lot of it . . . I mean, I think a lot of the reason I was doing it was because I was mad at myself. Because I believed him. And because I let myself get close enough to him to care.”
I reach across the car and pull her close to me. And then I hold her while she starts to cry.
Before
Kelsey
Okay, so that was pretty humiliating. Crying like that? On Isaac’s shoulder over pretty much nothing? Totally ridiculous. Although, it was pretty nice of him to hold me until I stopped. He didn’t even care when I got his shirt all wet and disgusting. I’m not a good crier. I try to hold it in as long as I can, and then when it happens, it’s like this totally disgusting fountain that I can’t control. So gross and embarrassing. I wish I could be one of those girls who tear up and then pull a tissue out of their purse and delicately dab at the corners of their eyes. But I’m not.
This is what I’m thinking about on Monday morning at school. At least, I am until Chloe comes up to me, slams my locker door shut, and then wedges herself in between me and the locker.
“Hey,” I say, “I wasn’t done in there.”
“It happened,” she says. Her eyes are darting around, scanning the halls behind me, panic-stricken.
I turn around to see what she’s looking at.
“Don’t look!” she screams. And then she grabs my arm and pulls me into the gym closet. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s the gym closet. I’ve never been in here before. It’s a small room, very closetlike, and it’s filled with gym equipment—mats, basketballs, jump ropes—and since my locker is by the gym, it’s a pretty good guess. Chloe pulls the string on the lightbulb that’s hanging from the ceiling, and a dull glow surrounds us.
“What am I not looking at?” I ask.
“Well, nothing,” she says. “I just didn’t want anyone seeing you looking around.” Her eyes are still darting around the room, even though it’s only the two of us.
“Why not?”
“Because then someone might know.”
“Okay,” I say, shaking my head. “We need to start over. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Me and Dave.” She pulls a Jolly Rancher out of her bag, unwraps it, and then starts sucking on it nervously.
“What about you and Dave?”
“We hooked up.”
“Ohmigod!”
“I know.” She’s whispering now, and her eyes are huge.
“Why are you looking so scandalized?” I ask. “This is a good thing, right?” I launch myself up onto the stack of gymnastics mats against the wall
and sit there, my legs dangling over the side.
“I’m not sure,” Chloe says. “And you can’t tell anyone! I don’t want anyone to know about it.”
“Like who?”
“Like any of my friends.” She looks around again, like these alleged friends might be hiding behind the shelves of volleyballs, ready to jump out and catch her in the middle of her Dave story.
“Why not? Won’t they be happy for you?”
“No,” she says. “None of them know that I like him.”
I stare at her, and my mouth drops open. “None of your friends know that you like Dave?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Um, hello,” she says, pulling herself up and sitting next to me on the mats. She pulls out another Jolly Rancher and offers it to me. “Because it’s embarrassing.”
“It is?” I ask, taking the candy and popping it in my mouth. Watermelon. Yum.
“Yeah,” she says. “I mean, think about it. If I told my friends I like Dave, they’d always be asking me about it and giving me sympathetic looks when he hooks up with other people, and just . . . ugh. Annoying.”
This, I understand. When I first started liking Rex, I didn’t want anyone else to know, even Rielle. Actually, especially Rielle. Rielle’s one of those people who’s used to getting whatever guy she wants. She doesn’t understand why you might want to keep your crush a secret. More than likely she would have wanted me to go for it, which I wasn’t ready for. When Rex and I finally did get together, Rielle was shocked, but I played it off like I’d just started liking him.
“Plus I didn’t want him finding out,” Chloe says, “and my friends kind of have big mouths.”
There’s a knock on the door to the gym closet, and Chloe and I freeze. I hold a finger to my lips.
The knock comes again, and then Isaac’s voice. “Kelsey? Open the door. I saw you go in there.”
“Oh,” I say, letting out the breath I’ve been holding. “It’s just Isaac.”
“Come in!” Chloe calls.
Isaac appears in the doorway, followed by Marshall.
“Hey,” Isaac says. It’s the first time I’ve seen him all day, and I smile. He looks gorgeous in a soft-looking navy-blue cashmere sweater and jeans. “What are you guys doing in here?”