Between the Notes (12 page)

M
y swelling heart dropped into my stomach when I saw Reesa’s face after class. She was glowing. “He touched me, right there,” she said dreamily, rubbing a knuckle on her right hand. “I’ll never wash it.”

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” I mumbled.

She ignored me. “And he said ‘thank you.’” She mimicked James’s deep whisper. “And his eyes . . . oh, man. His eyes are like . . . like . . . I don’t know, like pools of liquid heat. But icy. Icy heat, like . . .”

“Bengay?”

“No. Like a hot angel boy. Or something.” Reesa giggled and nudged me down the hall. Any hopes I’d had that she’d lose interest in James were officially dashed. She’d seen into his eyes. Hello, mesmerized.

The illustrated note in my pocket suddenly weighed as much as a brick and was just as bulky.

“Cute hat,” I said in a feeble attempt at diversion. “Where’d you get it?”

Reesa’s hand went up to the pink ribbed-knit beret that tipped back on her head. “Bloomie’s.”

“Nice.” I almost asked what it cost but knew the answer would only depress me.

“Are you jealous or something?” she said.

I reached into my bag for a roll of mints and slipped one into my mouth. “Of your hat?”

“No.” She grabbed my mints and took one for herself. “Of James and me. Because you keep changing the subject whenever I mention him.”

I almost choked. “Uhh . . . no. I’m . . . uh . . .”

“I mean, I’d understand,” she said. “With him being a super gajillionaire and everything, and your financial situation being what it is. You won’t be jealous, will you, if he asks me out?”

“N-no. Of course not.” I fingered the paper in my pocket. “You think he, uh . . . likes you?”

She nodded and smiled knowingly. “The way he dropped his pencil right under my desk?”

Though I knew otherwise, her confidence gave me doubts. Reesa was gorgeous, after all. And if James was as wealthy as she said, he’d quite possibly want nothing to do with me when he found out where I lived.

I heard myself say, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,” and it was like tearing my own heart in half. I wanted James for myself but I wanted to keep my promise to Reesa, too. I stopped in the middle of the hallway and just stood there. For a few
seconds I couldn’t seem to move forward or backward. Literally.

“What’s wrong?” said Reesa.

“Nothing, I . . . uh . . . I forgot something.” I spun on my heel before she could question me further and went straight for the supply room. Maybe he’d be there. I’d seen him go in there after English that one time a few days ago. We could escape again to the cemetery or even just lock the door to that tiny room and shut out the world.

I was a horrible friend and Reesa would never forgive me but he’d drawn me as Juliet to his Romeo and I had
wings
and I wanted to fly away with him. I turned the knob and cracked open the door enough to slip inside and . . . it was completely, absolutely, totally dark. Nobody was there.

I don’t know if it was pent-up anticipation or emotion or the lies on top of secrets, but I felt tears prick at my eyes. I stumbled through the dark to the tiny room. I switched on the lamp and quickly checked the bookshelf. Everyone was there:
Gatsby.
Shakespeare. Beeblebrox.
Eyre. Hobbes.
But they were now joined by none other than Ponyboy.

He’d left
The Outsiders.
I smiled and wiped the lone tear off my cheek. If only he knew exactly how appropriate that book was. I was a refugee from the world of the Socials—the Socs—now hiding smack-dab in the middle of greaser territory.

I flipped open the cover to see what he’d written. Like his other notes (though unlike his crazy beautiful drawing), it was brief:

I loved that I never knew what to expect from James. He was this amazing surprise. The cemetery, the snippet of sonnet, and these cryptic little secret notes. I loved it all.

So I sat in the orange, duct-taped library chair with
The Outsiders
and contemplated my own brief response. If this book was about our school, my friends and I would be the Socs. Lazarski’s gang would be greasers. But everyone hated the Socs in that book. They were all bullies, except Cherry. She was the only one who crossed sides. I pulled a pencil out of my backpack and scribbled a single word. Not Soc. Not Greaser.

Reesa caught me leaving the supply closet after second period, when I should’ve been in chemistry. I had stayed in there until I heard the bell ring so I wouldn’t have to walk into class halfway through.

“Is that where you disappeared to? What’s in there?” she said, trying to peer around me through the door before I pushed it shut. “And why is your face so red?”

“It is?” I put a hand to my cheek and a guilty lie stammered out.
“I was, uh . . . just looking for a place to practice for that country club audition.” It was the first stupid lie that came to mind, and the second those words spilled out of my mouth, I wanted to swallow them back down.

But Reesa’s face split into a huge smile and she squeezed my arm. “This is going to be so great! I’ll help you. We’ll meet in the band room after school. There’s a piano. It’s no Dr. Steinway, but it’s a piano! And I’ll help you pick a song. . . .”

She went on like that for a while, suggesting songs and ways to spend the money I would earn, never once questioning why I’d consider practicing in a supply closet. At least it took her mind off James for a while, and I didn’t have to listen to her describe his eyes or fantasize about the same lips I was fantasizing about. Off-limit lips.

Maybe that’s why my face was so red.

“Okay. After school,” she said.

I nodded, but it must not have been the most convincing nod. She held me by my shoulders and made me face her squarely. “Promise?” she said.

I nodded again. “I promise.”

“C
ostume shopping this weekend, girls!” Willow squealed.

It wasn’t even October yet, but that hadn’t stopped her from flitting around all day handing out save-the-date cards for her Halloween party. Mrs. Goodwin had succeeded in hiring the jazz band from Lincoln Center and the “Roaring Twenties” theme was official. Wynn was Googling flapper dresses on her phone and kept holding them out for us to see. Their giddy enthusiasm was actually one of the reasons Reesa and I were friends with them. It was easy to get swept up in that kind of excitement—the anticipation of something big.

And if the Halloween bash wasn’t enough to push them over the top, Willow and Wynn were still basking in the glow of their ascension to the “fairest of them all” potato club.

I went to my lunch period in the cafeteria at 11:45, though my mind was on James in the library at noon. There was some discussion as to where on earth Lazarski “came from” that had this unusual tradition. Poland? Lithuania, perhaps? Reesa babbled on
about how she read somewhere that peasants would bring baskets of crops as a gift to female royalty during medieval times. The fairest of them all received the most.

“That’s how sweet potatoes got their name,” she said.

I gave her a warning look. If she laid it on much thicker, even the
W
’s would realize she was bullshitting them.

“I never knew that,” said Wynn, happy to accept any version of history that ended with her being singled out as pretty or sweet. She had conveniently forgotten that it was Lennie Lazarski who’d given her the stupid potato.

I glanced around the cafeteria, wondering what Lennie thought of the whole thing . . . but he wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen him since I’d walked away from his Jeep that morning. And whenever his bruised eye surfaced in my mind, I pushed it away. That kiss . . . that was just a peck, the kind you might give a friend to say hello or good-bye.
It was nothing.

I glanced at the clock on the cafeteria wall. It was exactly noon. I clutched my seat to resist the magnetic pull coming from the library. I couldn’t do that to Reesa, not after the way she’d saved me with the whole potato thing. But then I imagined James standing there amid the books, checking his watch. Waiting for me. Thinking I didn’t like him.

Reesa nudged me under the table with her foot. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I . . . uh . . . have to use the bathroom.” Scrambling to my feet, I hurried for the door. Five minutes past twelve. Heel-toe-heel-toe, I fast-walked down the hall. The library wasn’t far.
If he was still there, I would simply explain that it wasn’t going to work out. I turned the corner and came to a sliding halt outside the library, took a deep breath, and pulled open the door.

I didn’t see him at first. He hadn’t mentioned exactly where to meet, so I strolled past the computer workstations and along the shelves, glancing left and right. I finally reached the “quiet study” section. No James. There was one more place I hadn’t checked, a little nook where periodicals were kept. I turned the corner and nearly bumped into him.

“I was looking for you,” he whispered. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

I bit my lip. “Neither did I.”

James pulled me farther into the nook and frowned. “You didn’t like the drawing?”

“I loved the drawing. It isn’t that. It’s just . . .”

“What?”

“I . . . don’t know.” I couldn’t tell him that Reesa liked him, or that I wasn’t who he thought I was. I just stood there, silent. It felt like someone had taken a novel, torn out all the pages, and thrown them back together in the wrong order. I couldn’t make sense of anything or anybody. It was all turned upside down. “I could really use that yellow portal right about now. Step into a different world where nobody knows who I am, nobody expects me to be something I’m not.”

James tilted his head back, looked up at the ceiling, and laughed. “I know exactly how you feel,” he said.

He moved away from me and motioned drawing a big rectangular shape. Then he reached through the imaginary space and held out his hand to me. “Brand-new world,” he said. “Come on over.”

I took his hand and pretended to step through the window. I glanced around at the periodical room. “Funny, it looks exactly like the library.”

“Parallel universe,” said James. “Much better than that other one.”

I had landed very close to him when I came through the imaginary window, and his face was now inches from mine. We weren’t touching, but I was definitely within his gravitational force field. I swallowed. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” he said. The joking tone I liked so much was gone and his face got serious, but I liked that, too. His gaze went from my eyes to my mouth. And at that moment, everything else disappeared. He leaned in and I closed my eyes and his lips had just barely grazed mine and I was thinking
he’s kissing me right here in the library
when we heard someone approaching and quickly separated. I grabbed a magazine and plopped down at the nearest table.
Popular Science.
James snagged an old copy of
Seventeen
with Selena Gomez on the cover. The librarian who peered in at us gave him a funny look but moved along. When he realized what he was reading, his face went red.

“Smooth,” he said, shaking his head.

I giggled softly. “I better go.”

His shoulders slumped, but he was still smiling. “Can I drive you home today?”

“No!” I blurted, then lowered my voice. “No. My parents . . .” I left this vaguely open, hoping he’d think my parents were simply overprotective. It didn’t matter if we fantasized a different world—I was still living in the real one. And I didn’t want him to see me there.

“Saturday night, then?”

I nodded. “Sure.”
Wait, did I just say yes to a date?

“Where should I pick you up?”

“I . . . I’ll leave you a note.” I’d figure out somewhere I could get to on my bike. “In our secret place.”

“Which one?” he said.

At first, his question puzzled me . . . it seemed obvious. But now we had two secret places, the supply room and here in the library. Three, actually, if you counted the cemetery. Maybe he was counting the hedge where we first met, where I hid my bicycle.

I gave a playful shrug. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

When the final bell rang that day, I headed to the band room. I didn’t want to break another promise to Reesa, but I also had no idea how I was getting home. The band-room doors were decorated with a giant illustration of a snarling tiger, our school
mascot. As I approached, its jaws opened and Molly burst out, nearly knocking me over. She held her clarinet in one hand, its case in the other, and had a crumpled pile of music tucked under her arm.

“Hey. Hi,” I said.

Her face was red and angry. She brushed past me, dropping sheets of music as she went. I hurried after her, picking them up.

“Molly?”

She stormed off without answering, disappearing around the corner. What the . . . ? I collected her scattered papers and went to find Reesa in the band room.

She was sitting at the piano.

“What happened to Molly? She tore out of here looking supremely pissed off,” I said.

“I asked her to leave,” said Reesa dismissively. “I mean, why can’t she practice in her dad’s fancy recording studio?”

“Oh, my God. You didn’t say that to her, did you?”

She shrugged, which meant she had.

“Reesa! They don’t live there anymore! Remember?”

“Oh. Yeah,” she said.

I groaned. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“Fine. I shouldn’t have asked her to leave, but she was acting like she owns the place.”

“This is the
band
room, Reesa. She’s in the
band.
You’re the one acting like you own the place.”

Reesa rolled her eyes. “Since when do you care so much about Molly Palmer?”

“Since I remembered we used to be really good friends with her, and we treated her like crap,” I shot back.

“Oh, give me a break.” Reesa swiveled to face the piano keys, turning her back to me. “What are you now, like the voice of the little people? Standing up for the downtrodden, the po—”

“Excuse me? Are you serious?”

Reesa clunked her head down on the piano keys. “I’m sorry, Ivy. I didn’t mean that. You said to make sure nobody was in here, so that’s what I did.”

“I didn’t tell you to be a total bitch about it. You’re acting like Willow.”

“Ouch.”

“Well, you are. And the downtrodden?” I said. “News flash! I
am
one of them now.”

“Okay. Sheesh. I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t tell me.” I pointed toward the door. “Tell Molly.”

“What? Right now?”

I plopped down on one of the metal band chairs to wait. “No time like the present.”

Reesa huffed and trudged out, returning about ten minutes later with Molly, who was still seething. I gave her the pile of music I’d gathered up. “Here,” I said. “Sorry about all that.”

She took the music. “Not your fault,” she said, shooting a daggered glance at Reesa.

“She means well,” I whispered.

Molly snorted, but sat and shuffled the sheets of music into a neat pile.

“I invited her to stay, if that’s okay with you,” said Reesa, a slightly evil grin coming to her lips. “You really need to get used to performing in front of an audience. And there’s no time like the present. Is there?”

I stared at her, my mouth open in a surprised O. Only Reesa could turn a shitty moment into an opportunity.