Nash snorts.
“Don’t you?” I ask.
“Do you really think that’s possible?”
“Why not? I mean, it’ll probably be weird for a while, but—”
“It would be more than weird for me. I’m the one who likes you.”
“So . . . what are you saying?”
Nash shakes his head. He still won’t look at me. “I don’t know yet.”
This is so unfair. Why did he have to go and ruin everything? How could he think that I liked him? Did I give him any indication that I did? No, I couldn’t have. Because I don’t like him. I still want to be friends with him, though. We have to still be friends.
Only . . . what if we can’t?
November-January
15
Here’s the bad news: It’s been two weeks since the non-kiss incident and Nash and I haven’t seen each other outside of school at all. He said it would be better if I didn’t go over to his house the way I usually did for our lab reports. So now we’re doing the parts of our lab reports separately and putting them together to hand them in, the way everyone else does.
Here’s the good news: Dad almost finished building my darkroom. He converted a closet that we never use in the basement, and now it’s all mine. I’m totally psyched to start using it, but the sink needs a new part or something. So I have to wait a few more days.
Unlike Mom, I’m not into the empty house thing. If I want to get away from everyone, I just go to my room and sequester myself in the fortress. But when no one else is home, it just feels lonely. Like now. It’s like the lack of people in other parts of the house makes my own space feel empty. And I can’t concentrate on homework because my brain keeps insisting on being noisy.
I go downstairs, trying to decide what to do. I don’t feel like reading or going online or watching anything.
We have thick photo albums on the living room bookshelf. When Sandra and I were little, my mom was obsessive about taking pictures of us. But she doesn’t really do that anymore. I’m not sure why. So when you look at the albums, there’s tons of pictures of us until we’re about twelve and ten, and then only a few after that.
I pull out one of the middle albums from when I was about seven. We had a dog named Buttons. I loved him so much. When he died, I cried for weeks. I thought I’d never feel better again. My dad kept saying things like “time heals all wounds,” but I didn’t believe him.
Flipping through the pages, I remember that my mom has this whole box of old pictures she never put into albums. The albums are supposed to be for the best pictures, but she has a lot more pictures she thought weren’t good enough for other people to see. Those are the ones I always thought were way more interesting. I think that box is in her closet.
My parents’ room always feels so decadent. Of course it’s the biggest bedroom in our house, since they were here first and all. They have this awesome walk-in closet. I go in and search the shelves for the box, but I can’t find it anywhere. I check my dad’s side. I know my mom stores random stuff there because she has way more clothes and there’s no room on her side. I still can’t find it.
Something feels strange about Dad’s side of the closet. It’s just . . . off. Emptier, somehow. Every two years, my mom makes everyone clean out their closet and put things in piles to donate. Maybe she just cleaned out Dad’s stuff. But her side of the closet looks the same. Plus, she would have told me to do mine because she always donates everyone’s things at the same time.
I check again. Something just feels wrong.
And, suddenly, I remember something Sandra told me a few weeks ago. Supposedly, she saw Dad leaving with a box of stuff when he thought no one was home. I told her it was probably just some work stuff he was taking to the studio, but Sandra didn’t think so. Maybe Dad did his own cleaning this time.
I eventually find the box of photos on Mom’s side of the closet. I lift it off the shelf and sit down with it on the floor. Sifting through photos of family picnics and trips to Vermont and all of us hiking and my parents looking like kids swimming in the river, all of these memories come rushing back at me in one big wave. This intense emotion washes over me, but I don’t know what it’s called.
I’m not sure how much time passes. Minutes or hours, it’s all a blur. I just know that by the time I’m finished looking through all of the photos in the box, I can’t believe how lucky I am. I have parents who love each other and love me. I have a nice house and enough money for things I want. I have everything I need.
So I don’t get why I was all depressed before. My psychologist said how my body can’t help feeling bad because of genetics and environmental factors, but I disagree. I think you can decide how to feel and then make yourself feel that way, if you’re determined enough. I probably just didn’t try hard enough to be happy. But it doesn’t mean that I can’t try harder now.
16
All I can think about is Derek. I can’t sleep. I think about him for hours, lying in bed at night. I can’t sleep. I think about him for hours, lying in bed
I can’t eat. Even eating two crackers is an accomplishment.
The ability to pay attention in school is a distant memory. I take notes, but I don’t know what I’m writing. Teachers talk, but I don’t hear them.
My noisy brain has mushed into Jell-O brain.
It’s always like this when I’m crushing on a boy. I can’t even read before I go to sleep anymore, which has always been my thing. I open my book, I read one or two sentences, and then it’s like . . . my mind just wanders off and I think about Derek and I can’t stop. And if I’m trying to read at school, all I can do is stare at the page because I can’t concentrate enough to read the words. No matter how hard I try.
I’m falling in love with a boy who already has a girlfriend.
It’s not entirely my fault. Derek is making it impossible not to notice him. He always sits with me in art now. Before Halloween he just started sitting at my table, right across from me. So now that we’ve been talking every day and he’s right in front of me every day, he’s all I can think about.
Since I have art first period, I can’t eat breakfast anymore. My stomach is tied up in knots, knowing that not only am I going to see him really soon but he’s actually going to sit with me. And talk to me. Like he actually likes me.
When Derek comes into art in his puffy North Face coat, I pretend I’m busy getting paint. I sneak looks at him. I spill paint on my sleeve.
I’m even more nervous when we start working.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” Derek asks me. We’re doing watercolors for the next two weeks. He’s painting a landscape and I’m working on a sheet music design for my binder.
“Random,” I say.
“Thank you.”
“Um . . .” No one’s ever asked me that before. I don’t really know what to say. I might want to be a professional photographer, but I’m not sure. And I don’t know if I want to live in the country or the city. Growing up in a town like this is so boring it makes you want to leave, so I definitely want to move away. It’s weird because when people come back to visit from college they always say how nice it is here. I guess it’s a better place to visit than it is to live in. At least, if you’re a teenager. “I’m not really sure yet. Not here, though.”
“I feel you.” Derek mixes different colors together to get another kind of green. “This place blows.”
“So where do you see yourself?”
“Away from here, like you. Running my own landscaping busi ness.”
“Get out!”
“I know it’s dorky, but I don’t care.”
“No, my aunt has her own landscaping business!”
“Dude.”
“She’s a topiary designer, and her employees do the landscaping part.”
“Okay, now that is random.”
“I know!” This is a total sign. How random is it that he likes landscaping, which I’ve never heard any other kid say they like as a career cho
ice?
We talk nonstop for the rest of the class. I tell him all about how cool Aunt Katie is.
Derek says, “Sounds like it would be awesome to work for her.”
“You should!”
“I’m not sticking around after graduation—”
“I meant next summer. She sometimes has interns. It’s unpaid, but at least you’d learn a lot.”
“That would rock! Can you ask for me?”
“I can ask if she’s taking interns, but if she is you’ll probably have to apply like everyone else.”
“No special treatment for friends, huh?”
So we’re friends now? I wasn’t sure what Derek was thinking about us, sitting together like this. If he thought of me as more than an acquaintance.
And could he ever think of me as more than a friend?
“Well,” I say, “I can make a recommendation.”
“Sweet.”
Then Derek tells me all about landscaping and the things he loves best about it. The different types of stone used for walkways and walls. Drawing plans and deciding exactly where a pool should go. How to create rock gardens or elaborate fountains. His passion is contagious. Not like I want to bust out and design a labyrinth, but his excitement excites me. It’s awesome to connect with someone who feels passionate about things the way I do. So many kids I know are so blah about everything.
Blah sums up chemistry these days. It’s just not the same anymore. Nash used to pass me notes and whisper stuff and sometimes, when Mrs. Hunter was taking attendance, I’d turn around and draw on his notebook. Now we’re pretending that we were never friends or something. I’m lucky if he says more than two words to me the whole class. And when we have to work together for lab, all Nash wants to talk about is what we’re supposed to be doing. I tried to bring up the non-kiss incident a few days ago, but he wasn’t trying to hear it.
“I just want everything to be the way it was before,” I said.
“We all want things,” Nash went.
“But why can’t we go back to how we were?”
“You can’t go someplace that doesn’t exist anymore.”
I know he’s right. Things have changed. There are implications. But I want Nash to know that just because he likes me, it doesn’t mean we can’t be friends anymore.
Whatev. Now that Derek’s talking to me, maybe I don’t have to miss Nash so much.
17
Every fall, our town has this Harvest Festival where booths are set up with things that people make—stuff to wear or eat or add to a knickknack collection. There are also some booths with games, like the ones we have on the boardwalk, but dinkier. And there are contests, like a pie-eating one (which is gross and therefore I never watch it) and knitting and Sudoku. The festival is always on the river, which I don’t get because it’s the first week of November and getting cold, and some years it’s totally freezing. But it’s traditional to have it there, and there’s not much you can do about tradition.
I told Sterling I’d help set up her booth. She has her famous heart cookies, plus some cakes, pies, and brownies that she’s been baking with her grandma all week. Every year, people tell her that she could run a catering business, her desserts are so tasty.
It’s a sunny day and not too cold. Everyone’s out in their new sweaters. The air smells like red leaves.
All of Sterling’s cookies are individually wrapped in opalescent cellophane, tied with different colored ribbons. Her booth has skinny tree branches crisscrossing over the table, which we’re hanging the cookies on.
Sterling drops a cookie. It cracks into pieces on the table. She kicks the table.
“Damn! That’s like the fourth one.”
“It’s okay,” I go. “You made tons.”
“It’s not okay.”
“I’ll buy that one. I don’t care if it’s broken. It still tastes the same.”
Sterling’s all tense.
“Don’t worry,” I say.
“I’m so stressed-out. My back is killing me.”
“What about yoga?” I ask. “Can’t you use some of your relaxation techniques?”
“Yeah, right, like I’m still doing yoga.”
“You’re not?”
“Can you really see me sitting still long enough to concentrate? You’re supposed to empty your head to increase consciousness. So I’d be in this triangle warrior pose or whatever and all these thoughts about stuff I had to do kept interrupting. It’s like the more I tried not to think about them, the more they would keep bothering me.”
I’m not exactly surprised. “Okay,” I go, “but what’s wrong?”
Sterling points in the direction of the ring toss booth. Ricky’s over there, cheering on a player.
I’m like, “Oh.”
“Since when is the ring toss booth set up across from mine?” Sterling has been baking for the Harvest Festival for a few years, and before that her grandma ran the booth. It’s an understood rule that everyone’s booths are always set up in the same places.
“I can cover here if you need a break.”
“That’s okay.”
Ricky is this boy Sterling went out with a few times over the summer. She went on and on for pages about him in the letters she wrote to me at camp. She really liked him, but it didn’t go anywhere. He just stopped calling her. And it’s not like she can confront him at school, because he’s in college. She never knew why he stopped calling her. She tried to find out, but he never responded to her e-mails or messages. I have a theory, but I would never say it to her face.
Here’s another example of how John Mayer explains the answers to all of life’s problems in his songs. Sterling’s life can be explained by “Daughters.” We totally just did this in psychology elective. See, Sterling’s dad is completely out of the picture, so she has no example of what a healthy relationship looks like. We learned how if you have abandonment issues, you can get clingy. And boys don’t like clingy.
This wasn’t really an issue last year, since not that many girls had boyfriends. But now things are changing. You can see it. It’s like the force of boys and girls hooking up is a visible entity.
“When are you going home?” Sandra demands. She totally came out of nowhere. I hate when she sneaks up in my face like that.
“Later,” I go. “Why?”
“Mom wants to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Well, she has to wait. She knows I’m helping Sterling all day.”
Sandra eyes the heart cookies.
“Want a cookie?” Sterling asks her.
“No, thank you. I’m off processed foods.”
“Oh,” Sterling goes. “Why?”
“If you knew what free sugars did to your system, you wouldn’t be asking me that.”
Sterling gives me an amused look. Sandra’s been on this deranged health kick since school started. I seriously doubt it’ll last much longer. I mean, no cookies? How ridiculous is that?
“Just tell Mom I’ll be home later,” I say.
“If I see her,” Sandra goes. “You’re not the only one who’s out.” She huffs off toward the farmers’ market stand.
“What’s with the attitude?” Sterling says.
“Puberty.”
“Oh, right. I remember that.”
At this game a few booths down from Sterling’s, we watch a little girl trying to climb across a twisty rope ladder without falling onto the bubble mat. They have these huge Hello Kitty prizes, so there’s a line.
I look around some more.
“Who are you looking for?” Sterling goes.
“No one.”
“Oh, so you’re not looking for Derek?”
Actually, I was looking for Nash. I was hoping that if I saw him today, things could get back to the way they were between us. If I only see him at school, things will definitely stay weird.
“Yeah,” I say, “because I’m so interested in watching him and Sierra tog
ether. It’s the highlight of my life.”
“You might not have to for much longer.” Sterling turns back to watch the girl, who falls off the ladder and bounces onto the bubble mat.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just that I heard something. But it’s unconfirmed, so . . .”
“What?”
Sterling smirks in her I’ve-got-gossip-and-it’s-extra-juicy way. “Someone in French Club, who shall remain nameless, told someone else that she heard they might break up.”
“Who?”
“Hello! Derek and Sierra!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what I heard.”
What if . . . Are they breaking up because of me? There’s no way. Derek just realized I exist like three seconds ago. I’m sure he only likes me as a friend. Anyway, it’s probably just a rumor.
When I’m walking home later, I see Nash out on the dock. Maybe we can finally talk.
I go out to him. There’s a cold breeze coming from the river, blowing and then fading away. The water is all ripply.
“Hey,” I go. I pull the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands. “Why weren’t you at the Harvest?”
“I have too much work,” Nash says.
“You’re supposed to do something fun on weekends. Like relax a little? Hang out with friends?”
“Yeah, well, I have all this Mathlete prep. Our next competition is in four days.”
I sit down next to Nash. Our feet dangle over the water.
“How’s your Dorkbot project going?” I ask.
“Coming along. Sort of.” Nash goes back to flipping through pages of a massive math textbook.
I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to talk to me. Or see me. But I don’t care. I just care about getting our friendship back. So I sit with him on the dock with the sun getting lower in the sky, just so he knows I’m still here.
18
So the rumors were true. Derek and Sierra broke up. No one knows exactly how it happened. There are like twenty different versions of the story going around. Who broke up with whom and where they did it and why. But none of that matters now. The only thing that matters is that I finally have a real chance to be with Derek.