Anna comes over. At first she is inconsolable. But then she calms down, and we’re able to spend the day eating Mexican food (lunch), Chinese food (dinner), and ice cream (dessert and midnight snacks).
I text Penn. He doesn’t text me back.
I text him again, saying I don’t care if he doesn’t want to talk, but to at least let me know he’s okay. He texts back I’m okay and that’s it.
Here is what happens the rest of the weekend:
I work on my audition piece for Ballard, trying to lose myself in the music and the dance. But it doesn’t help. I can’t stop thinking about Penn. For once I’m actually looking forward to school, because it means I’m going to see him.
But on Monday morning he doesn’t come to pick me up. I stand at the window, looking for his car, my stomach rolling with anxiety. I tell myself he’s not blowing me off, that he could be sick or maybe having car trouble. I pull my phone out of my pocket, wondering if I should text him. I don’t want to seem like a crazy stalker.
Plus, my heart is telling me what I already know. He’s not hurt. He’s not having car trouble. He just doesn’t want to see me. He started to open up, and then he freaked out, and so now he’s shutting down. It’s classic Penn.
But still, I send him the text anyway.
I hold my breath. But he never replies.
And when it’s too late to wait any longer, my mom drives me to school.
* * *
In world history Penn walks by my desk without a glance.
“What’s up with him?” Anna asks.
I roll my eyes and pretend it doesn’t bother me. I know it’s stupid after the way he’s been treating me, but I still don’t want to betray Penn’s trust and tell Anna about what happened. I also don’t want to have to say the truth out loud, that things might be over between us, that every time Penn gets even remotely close to me, he immediately pulls back.
I shrug. “You know boys,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Anna sighs. “I know boys.” She’s calmed down a lot after what happened with her and Nico, but she’s still crying herself to sleep at night. Which makes sense. I mean, it’s only been a couple of days. I haven’t seen Nico at all this morning, which is a good thing. In the mood I’m in, I definitely don’t trust myself not to go off and tell him exactly what I think of what he did.
I can’t concentrate during class, and when the bell rings, I run out of there, not wanting to give Penn another chance to pass by me.
I hear him calling after me when I’m halfway down the hall.
“Harper!”
I know I shouldn’t turn around. But I do. “Yeah?”
“Hi.” He grins at me.
“You didn’t pick me up this morning,” I accuse. I’d planned on trying to play it cool, but apparently that isn’t going to happen.
“This morning? Yeah, sorry. I was running late.”
“Okay.” I know he’s lying, but I don’t have the energy to push him on it. We just stand there, staring at each other. He doesn’t reach for my hand, he doesn’t apologize for taking off the other day at the doctor’s office, he doesn’t even tell me anything more about what happened.
“Is that all?” I ask finally.
“Is what all?”
“Well, you called my name. I wasn’t sure if there was something you wanted to talk to me about.” My words come out more biting than I planned, but I kind of don’t care.
The hall is crowded, and we’re starting to get jostled around, so we take a few steps closer to the wall. “Look, do you want to get out of here?” Penn asks.
I stare at him incredulously. “No, I don’t want to get out of here.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Because every time something comes up that we should talk about, you can’t just decide that we need to cut school!”
He sighs, then moves closer to me and tries to brush his lips against mine.
But I’m pissed. “Seriously, Penn. Are we going to talk about this?”
His eyes get all dark and stormy and broody. “Talk about what?”
“About what happened with the doctor. About Jackson, about your shoulder, about any of it!”
“I told you,” he says. “The doctor couldn’t help me. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We’ve talked about it enough.”
“Fine.” I know I should let it go, but for some reason I can’t. There shouldn’t be things we’re not allowed to talk about. I don’t want to not know things about him. Tears are poking at the backs of my eyes, and I blink hard, not wanting to cry here in the hallway, in front of everyone.
“I don’t want to talk about baseball,” Penn says. “So come on, Harper. Let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you lunch. Anywhere you want.”
I can feel my anger intensifying. It’s like the more he tries to calm me down and pretend nothing’s wrong, the madder I get. “Penn, how come we never go to your house?” I demand.
“What?”
“You said you don’t want to talk about the baseball stuff, or about your shoulder, or Jackson. Okay, fine, I get it. But how come we never go to your house? How come I know nothing about your family, or where you live?”
“Jesus, Harper,” he says. “What is your problem?”
“What’s my problem?”
“Yes! You’re freaking out over absolutely nothing. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up this morning, but you’re acting crazy.”
I shake my head. “No, Penn, I’m not. It’s not crazy to want to know things about the person you’re with. You shut down every time you let me get even a little close, and I’m sick of it.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m sick of you always pushing me.” He shakes his head. “Look, maybe this just isn’t working.”
The words hang there in the air. This is the part where one of us is supposed to take them back, to say something that’s going to change the situation, to stop what it is that’s happening. But both of us just stand there.
It needs to be him. He needs to be the one to take it back.
Otherwise it doesn’t count.
He’s the one who said the words.
He’s the one who needs to take them away.
But he doesn’t.
“I just . . . maybe we just both need a break,” he says.
I stare at him, not sure what to say.
I don’t need a break. I don’t want a break. In fact, I want the opposite of a break. I want to be close to him, I want us to tell each other everything, I want him to stop holding me at arm’s length.
I’m scared to say all that. But I take a deep breath and say it anyway. “I don’t want a break,” I say. “I want . . . I just want to be together.”
His shoulders sort of slump, and I see his face fall and relax. I take a step toward him, and he puts his arms around me, and we stand there in the hallway, just holding each other for a long moment.
“Penn,” I whisper into his ear. “Penn, please, you have to let me in.”
But then he pulls back and I feel his body stiffen.
He pulls my arms from around him.
He holds my wrists by my sides for a second.
And then he turns around and walks away.
Penn
I walk away.
It’s the easy way out, the worst thing I could possibly do to her, but I do it anyway.
I leave school.
I go home.
I don’t look back.
I don’t think that we’re really going to be taking a break. I mean, people have fights. They say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean, and then they move on. I expect that Harper’s going to call me or that maybe she’ll write me a funny text later, one that makes light of our fight.
But she doesn’t.
I go to the dance studio that night, fully intending to apologize to her. I watch her through the window as she helps her mom with a lesson, demonstrating dance steps and moving gracefully across the studio. I marvel at how beautiful she
is, and wonder why she likes me—why when she could have any guy she wants, she somehow wants to be with me.
I sit there, transfixed as she effortlessly twirls across the floor. Even though I know this isn’t the kind of dance she wants to be doing, she looks gorgeous doing it. That’s how good she is.
My fists clench in frustration. I want to storm in there, like some kind of crazy last scene of a romantic movie, where the hero comes in and sweeps the heroine off her feet and carries her out the door in front of everyone, finally proving himself.
But how can I? She wants something from me that I can’t give her.
She wants me to open up to her, but how can I when I’ve kept things buried for so long? She wants more than I can give her, more of me than I’ve ever given to anyone else, even before I got hurt.
I sit there in the parking lot, still resisting the urge to go in.
I will her to look up, to see me sitting out here, to catch my eye and then come outside and demand to know what I’m doing here. And then I could tell her. I could tell her I’m here because I don’t want to lose her, that I can’t promise everything’s going to be okay right away, but that I’ll work on it.
But I don’t.
I sit there until it gets dark, until Harper leaves the studio and walks right by my car, not even knowing I’m there.
I sit there long after she’s gone, telling myself I should call her. I even pull my phone out and pull up her number on my contacts screen.
But I don’t call her. Not because I don’t want to. But because I’m a coward.
And finally, when all the lights in the plaza have gone off, and I’m the very last car in the parking lot, I pull out and drive home.
Harper
This is how my breakup happens:
Penn doesn’t call.
He doesn’t text.
He’s not in school for the rest of the week, and when he turns up on Monday, he breezes by me in history class like I’m just a girl he’s never known, like we didn’t spend hours and hours kissing on the chaise lounge on my patio, like we didn’t get close, like we didn’t spend every moment together.
He acts like he doesn’t know me.
“Are you going to tell me what happened finally?” Anna asks on our way out of class.
“I told you,” I say. “He couldn’t commit. He’s a normal guy.”
“That’s not the whole story,” she says.
“It is.” Maybe someday I’ll tell her about Penn’s shoulder, about taking him to the doctor, about all the reasons he shut down. But right now, for some inexplicable reason, I’m still protecting him. Or maybe it’s myself I’m protecting, I don’t know.
“Well, misery loves company,” Anna says, sighing as she looks down the hall to where Nico is standing at his locker.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Anna and Nico are somehow back to being friends. They still hang out and text all the time. She still has lunch with him, she still gets to call him anytime she wants and do her homework with him and ask him what he thinks about whatever’s on her mind.
I’ve lost all of those things with Penn. Nothing with Anna and Nico has even changed. It’s gone back to exactly the way it was. They still hang out, and she still pretends she’s fine with them just being friends.
I want to scream at her, to tell her that it’s totally different, her misery and mine. I want to yell at her that she’s being just as fake as Penn, that she’s not letting her feelings out, and that if you hold everything inside, you end up with broken hearts and misunderstandings.
But I can’t. My broken heart is not her fault.
So instead I tell her that I’ll see her later, and then I do what I always do after I see Penn in world history.
I go into the bathroom and cry.
* * *
The next two weeks pass by in a blur, and I throw myself into my audition piece for Ballard. I practice and practice and practice. My shoulders get sore and my feet ache, but I don’t feel any of it. I just keep going, choreographing dance after dance after dance. Not just my audition piece, but other dances as well—hip-hop, freestyle, samba. I even help my mom work with her students Kaitlyn and Jeremy on their wedding dance.
Every time I slow down, all I can think of is Penn. I’ve gotten good at coming into world history late, keeping my head down as I take my seat, and forcing myself not to look to the back of the room. As soon as the bell rings, I rush out. If I happen to see Penn in the hall, I put my head down and keep going. Out of sight, out of mind.
The morning of my audition is the first time in a long time that I wake up and Penn isn’t the first thing I think about. For one amazing second when I open my eyes, I forget that we’re broken up. And then it all comes rushing back.
I force myself out of bed.
“Hi,” my mom says when I get downstairs. She’s holding a bagel smeared with peanut butter on a plate, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee.
“Hi.” I shake my head at the food. “I’m too nervous to eat.”
“You have to eat something.” She puts the food down on the counter. “You’ll have no energy.”
“I have a ton of energy.”
“You need fuel. Come on, humor me.”
I sigh and take the plate, nibbling at the bagel.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?” my mom asks. “I’m happy to do it.”
“I’m positive. You know I need to get into a zone.” I don’t like anyone around me when I’m doing something I know is going to be high stress. I like to get hyper-focused and tune everything out. I don’t like any distractions, especially not people trying to talk to me.
“Okay.” She pauses, and I can tell she’s worried about me. She knows that Penn and I broke up, but she doesn’t know the reasons why. She didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer. It’s another reason I hate him—he has infected every part of my life, to the point where he’s now even affecting my relationship with my mom.
My mom reaches over and smoothes my hair down. “You’re going to do great,” she says. “You’re going to be amazing. And if they don’t see that, you’ll find a place that will.”
“Thanks.” I know she’s just saying that because she has to. For me there’s never been anything but this. I need to get into the choreography program. If I don’t, I don’t want to even go to Ballard. I’ll have to take a year off and try again, or maybe go to community college and hope my credits will transfer. I have my first flash of what Penn might be going through when it comes to figuring out college, but I push him out of my mind.
He’s not going to get into my head today.
He’s not going to ruin this for me.
I won’t let him.
Penn
It’s been three weeks since I talked to Harper, three weeks since I kissed her, or touched her, or heard her voice. Every day I watch her come into world history, her head down, making sure not to look at me. It’s obvious what she’s doing. She used to be one of the first ones to come into class, and now she’s one of the last. Initially I hated that she wouldn’t look at me. But now I like it. It’s the one moment of my day when I can see her and not have to feel bad about it.
It’s excruciating not to talk to her.
I want to, but with every day that goes by, it gets harder and harder.
So on Wednesday, when she doesn’t come into world history, I have a slight moment of panic. Why isn’t she in class? Is she sick? Is she okay?
I look at Anna, who’s texting on her phone, holding it under her textbook so the teacher won’t notice. She doesn’t look too concerned, so I let out the breath I’ve been holding. If something were wrong with Harper, Anna wouldn’t be acting like nothing was wrong.
And then I spot the date on the board.
The fourteenth.
Today’s Harper’s audition, the one for the choreography program.
My heart speeds up, and I pull out my phone, wondering if I should send her a text and wish her good luck, le
t her know I’m thinking of her. But what if she doesn’t text me back? This is definitely one of those rare times when a phone call is better than a text. I raise my hand and ask for the bathroom pass.
On the way out of the room, I swear Anna gives me a suspicious look, like she knows I’m going to call Harper. She glares at me, almost like she’s telling me not to ruin this for Harper. But there’s no way she could possibly know what I’m up to, and she’s probably just giving me the normal look that girls give guys who’ve totally fucked over their best friends.
But still.
It’s enough to make me pause when I get out of the classroom and into the hallway. What if I screw her up? What if Harper’s just about to go into her audition and I call her and she gets all distracted and flubs the whole thing? I stare down at my phone, trying to remember if there was a specific time she was supposed to start. She might not be dancing yet.
I’m just standing there, staring down at my phone like an idiot, when it rings in my hand.
Harper.
It’s my first thought.
But it can’t be.
The number is one I don’t recognize, and if it were her, her name would have come up on my caller ID. But what if she’s calling from someone else’s phone? What if her phone died and she had to borrow one? It’s a ludicrous story that I’ve totally fabricated in my head like some kind of psycho, but I’ve almost convinced myself it’s true.
“Hello?” I say when I answer, half expecting to hear her voice.
“Hello. Can I speak with Penn Mattingly, please?” a female voice asks. But it’s not Harper.
“This is Penn,” I say, before realizing that you should always ask who it is before you admit to who you are.
“Hi, Penn. This is Diana from Dr. Marzetti’s office,” she says. “I’m calling because Dr. Tamblin referred you to us. Dr. Marzetti has a cancellation, and I’m wondering if you’d like to take the appointment?”
I’m about to tell her no, that I’m not in the market for a doctor right now and she can take me off her list. But something stops me. “When is the appointment?”
“At noon.”
“What date?”