Love and Other Theories (4 page)

True and specific to high school boys:

       
1. Don’t expect anyone to fall in love with you, because even if they do, it doesn’t matter. They’re just going to leave you. You have to leave them first, or treat them so casually that there’s nothing for them to leave at all.

       
2. Sex is only for fun, and only for the moment. You can demand a good time, but you can’t demand anything afterward. If you don’t expect anything, you won’t be disappointed.

       
3. High school guys are not capable of commitment,
so don’t assume there’s something you can do to make them commit to you. You can’t. But it’s actually better and more fun this way because then you don’t have to give anything in return. Being a female free agent in high school is pretty much the best thing you can be. Embrace it.

       
4. Boys will do whatever they want, no matter what you say to them and no matter what they tell you. You should never believe them.

       
5. Don’t ask for an apology from a boy, because you absolutely will not get a sincere one.

       
6. It’s only a matter of weeks (two weeks is the average dating cycle at Lincoln High) before he’ll get distracted by someone else. So it really doesn’t matter who the guy in question hooks up with, be it one of your friends or any other girl at Lincoln—it’s just a blip of your time and his. Nothing to waste more time fighting over. It’s definitely not worth it to fight with girls over boys—especially not your best friends—because boys really do come and go, and they definitely go.

Trip’s arms were around me, his eyes fixed on me. I let myself smile. He was beyond good-looking, and a notorious serial dater, but none of that mattered now. It didn’t matter that I didn’t go to as many parties as he did. I didn’t have to worry about whether he’d ditch me for
the girls who did. I was in no position to be left. I was already gone. I didn’t have to be nervous. I didn’t have to be scared. It was a relief.

Shelby was right.

Even losing Chiffon as a best friend in the process of discovering the theories was worth it.

SHELBY WOULD APPROVE of what happened next with Nathan, of me leaving class early on the first day back from winter break. Of me climbing into Nathan’s car, because he insisted he drive. Of me telling him to hurry but acting like I didn’t really mean it.

Nathan and I are driving down the road and I picture what Shelby will do when I tell her—her mouth falling open wide in a shocked smile, her hands poking me, trying to get the story out of me as fast as possible, shrieking the way she does sometimes that makes Celine McGillicutty call her an attention whore but makes the rest of us laugh. I can’t wait to tell her. I almost want Nathan to turn around and go back so I can tell her right now, how much I’m being like her and Melissa and Danica. We always say that the four of us belong together, and it’s so, so true.

“Where to?” Nathan says. He keeps both hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. But he smiles, this boy who doesn’t know I was never like this before, and it makes my insides pulse. There will be no going back to school now.

I
walk into my house around midnight. On school nights I’m supposed to be in bed by now. My mom looks up at me from the kitchen stool she’s sitting on, a place that allows her a perfect view past the living room and the staircase, of the front door. She’s got a cooking magazine out, like maybe she’s been just been casually reading with a cup of tea. But I know better.

She squints at me and bites her lip. Waiting. Under normal circumstances she would yell, tell me that coming home this late on a school night is completely unacceptable and that I’ve probably woken up the entire household,
i.e., my dad and two younger brothers. But this is my last semester of high school. I’ve already received my early decision acceptance letter from Barron. Circumstances have changed.

I still have a full schedule, but instead of taking all AP classes, I’ve got a few breezy, minimal-study courses on my schedule as well. Exhibit A: Senior Drama. I’m still student council committee chairperson, but by now most of the committees are assembled and self-sufficient. Swim season is over, I didn’t sign up for debate team this semester, and my volunteer work for Key Club ended with the holiday toy drive. Even my work schedule has slimmed. The French Roll, a bakery owned by one of my mother’s college sorority sisters, is where I’ve worked every weekend since I was old enough. Five a.m. to two p.m. is my shift. I only ever took time off for family vacations, swim meets, or volunteer work. After I got my Barron acceptance letter, I asked my mom if I could ease up on my schedule. She hesitated. I could tell she didn’t like the idea, but my dad piped up right away. He thought I could use the rest. I’d earned it, after all. Ms. Michel, the owner of the French Roll, was fine with me changing my schedule to every
other
weekend. She even gave me the entire month of January off, claiming it was a slow month anyway. I can’t remember the last time I had this much free time.

All my friends work too—short shifts, adding up to about twelve hours a week, that produce at least enough money to pay for stuff our parents wouldn’t approve of. Booze. Cigarettes. Birth control. Brazilian bikini waxes. Shelby waitresses once a week at one of her mother’s boyfriend’s restaurants, and Danica and Melissa work at Target. Mine is the only job that infringes on my social life. I think my mother hooked me up with this job on purpose, to keep me from staying out late with my friends. To keep me from having the kind of fun you’re supposed to be having in high school. If it wasn’t for Barron, I’m not sure it would have been worth it.

Throughout all these easements made on my once-rigid schedule, a school night curfew was never discussed. On the weekends my curfew only changed from eleven to midnight, but I planned to get around it the way Melissa escapes her curfew, the way I, too, had avoided mine before on those few special-occasion nights I’d been out with Danica, Melissa, and Shelby: I stayed the night at Shelby’s, and because she had no curfew, I’d have no curfew.

I can see the wheels turning in my mom’s head. She doesn’t know if my coming home late on a school night should be something she’s “cool” with.

I sent her a text, of course, so she would know I wasn’t bleeding to death in an alley, the place she always seems
to think I am if she doesn’t hear from me. She knew I’d be later than expected. Though I can tell by her tight forehead that she didn’t expect I would ever come in this late during the week.

“Try not to stay out so late on a school night,” she says, giving me a forced smile. But tonight was one of the best nights of my life. “Well, I hope you had fun with your friends,” she says. She lies.

“I did,” I say.

It’s pure assumption on her part that I’ve been with Shelby, Melissa, and Danica, because with my break from extracurriculars and Trip away at college, who else would I be with? If she knew I’d spent the past several hours skipping school to hang out in the backseat of a BMW with a boy I hardly knew, she wouldn’t be smiling at all.

I trudge up to my room and get ready for bed. I pull my long dark brown hair into a ponytail and check for signs that Nathan’s lips haven’t left love prints along my neck. All clear. For some reason this disappoints me. My hair still smells a little bit like his cologne, which is the same Calvin Klein Eternity stuff all the boys wear, but for some reason it smells better on him.

I crawl into bed and turn my iPod on low volume. I am still buzzing. Booze and cigarettes be damned. This Nathan high is my new favorite.

My phone beeps and I read a text message from a number I don’t recognize, but am now destined to remember forever.

YOU’RE INCREDIBLE AUBREY, NATHAN.

It’s the third text I’ve received today. The first was from Shelby, around noon:
DUDE, WHERE ARE YOU?
I could see it, the three of them looking for me in the cafeteria. Melissa getting worried; Danica telling her to knock it off, I was probably fine. Shelby telling them to shut up, she was going to text me. The next two texts were from Ella Benson and Marnie Rickard, informing me of what I’d missed in AP Physics and American Lit. Ella’s message ended with
I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER
. It makes me smile to think Shelby might’ve planted this in Ella’s head, covering for me before I’ve had the chance to cover for myself—looking out for me when I didn’t know I needed looking out for, like in fifth grade when she told me to carry tampons around even though I hadn’t gotten my period yet.

Three seconds later I get another text from Shelby that says,
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? SPILL!

I text back,
IN THE MORNING.

Because what I want right now, more than to talk about it and rehash it out loud, is to let the tingles take over just as they did the second I left the auditorium. And as soon as I tell Shelby, or anyone, what I’ve done, I’ll be opening up the gauntlet.
Aubrey, you’re doing it, you’re
living,
finally!

It does feel like that.
Living
. Nathan followed me out of the auditorium after I told him that if he didn’t leave with me, he’d be sorry, and when he caught up with me he said, “Are you always this threatening?”

I had to suck on my bottom lip to keep from smiling like a moron. No one had ever called me
threatening
before. And I’d never threatened anyone before, especially not with something as daunting and bitter as
regret
.

“My car is this way,” he said, and I was so glad he was talking so I wouldn’t have to. I was sure my voice would shake and give me away. “Where to?”

The theories were in the back of my mind, calming me.
So what
if this was the only time I got to threaten him?
So what
if after today Nathan Diggs moves on to a cheerleader or a sophomore? Today, he was mine. I got him for nearly ten hours.

I fall asleep reliving every second.

I
’m late this morning. I slept in.

But for once, I’m actually glad. I’m a little nervous, a little shaky, and a lot afraid of being seen this way.

Shelby, Danica, and Melissa have been assaulting my phone with text messages all morning, demanding an explanation as to why I defected after fourth period yesterday and was never seen or heard from again. Shelby threatens not to forge me a note excusing me if I don’t tell her what the hell I’ve been doing that I couldn’t be bothered to call and fill her in. It’s just a threat, though.

They text me the rumors floating around about my
drama class skip-out. Almost all of them are true.

I see Nathan’s silver BMW parked in a third-row spot as I walk through the parking lot to school. It makes me smile, imagining Nathan arriving early enough to get the spot. I used to always arrive early enough to get one of the close spots. My friends all park way, way in the back of the lot, where, as Shelby so delicately put it,
Those of us who are normal and have lives, and don’t go to bed before ten, park.

I press my lips together so that anyone who sees me right now won’t catch me smiling and assume that the new boy is the reason.

So
I left with the new guy?

So
we hooked up?

So
what?

I lost my virginity to Trip Chapman.
This
is not a big deal.

The second I sit down in first period, Mr. Johnson hands me a note bidding me to go to the counselor’s office. Ella Benson rolls her eyes at me like she feels my pain. Marnie Rickard starts chewing on her mechanical pencil. Ella and Marnie have been in most of my honors classes since freshman year. Marnie is student council vice president. Ella is the rumored valedictorian. Danica is in a lot of our classes too, and she winks at me from where she’s seated in front of me, because even though I haven’t yet had time to fill her in on what happened with Nathan, she’s heard the
rumors. She probably helped spread them.

Really, the counselor probably just wants to chat about college stuff—classes, my major, work-study programs—the usual crap they always want to discuss. But when I get there, Nathan’s there too, sitting with his hands in his lap on one of the three plastic chairs lining the wall outside Mrs. Harris’s office.

I act casual. “Hey.”

He does not. “Hey, you.” He grins, large and with his teeth showing.

And then, damn it, I’m blushing, and probably smiling, though it’s hard to tell because my face is on fire.

“Hi, kids, how you doing?” Mrs. Harris greets us. It’s the first time I’ve ever been glad to see her.

Nathan and I exchange a look, and I can’t help but let out a laugh. How am I doing? I’m sitting next to Nathan; I’m flying. Nathan’s looking at me like he’s flying too, so it’s all right.

Mrs. Harris tilts her head and her glance shifts between the two of us. “Well. Isn’t that sweet. Come on in.”

“Both of us? Together?” I ask.

“Yes.” Mrs. Harris seems annoyed, but the I’m-your-guidance-counselor-you-can-tell-me-anything smile doesn’t leave her face. “Come on, get in here and we’ll have ourselves a little chat.”

Nathan is no longer the reason my heart is racing—the reason I feel like I need a trash can to vomit in. We’ve
totally been caught. Skip school once and it will ruin your senior year.
Screw
my new mantra.

We sit in the chairs positioned opposite Mrs. Harris’s desk. I can’t stop fidgeting with my sweatshirt drawstrings. Nathan seems nervous too. He’s folded and unfolded his hands at least three times since taking his seat.

“So, I gather you two have met,” Mrs. Harris says, like she’s expecting a response but never gives us a chance to speak. “Which is fantastic, I think. It’s good to know others when you move away from home, and before you got here, Nathan, Aubrey was the only one from Lincoln attending Barron University in the fall.”

I’m shocked. I catch that my mouth is hanging open and slowly shut it. It seems weirdly coincidental that Nathan Diggs—who’s just moved from an entirely different state—will be attending the same college as me next year. And not just any college. Barron.

Mrs. Harris is rambling on about Barron University’s orientation programs, but I’m not listening. The truth is slowly sinking in, and it stings just as badly as when I thought that the fake note Shelby wrote to excuse me from missing school yesterday didn’t work.

The truth: I’ve just skipped school with a guy I hardly knew. I took off his shirt, he peeled away mine, and I let him undo the top button on my jeans. And I was overly impressed by his BMW. But the worst thing is, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since.