Meant to Be (12 page)

This whole day has turned into a fractured web of ridiculousness, and all I want to do is go to sleep. As I crawl into bed, my cell blinks again. I contemplate ignoring it, not wanting to know what snarky comment Sarah crafted this time, but I know I won’t be able to sleep unless I read it. I flip open the cell and my heart skips a beat.

Chris.

Absence makes the <3 grow fonder …
Can I see u? —C

W
ell, that’s it. I definitely can’t sleep now. There’s only one thing I can do to calm myself down: I pull on my Kelly green Newton North—issued team Speedo and head to the roof to hit the indoor lap pool. I saw in the hotel welcome binder (which I’ve already read cover to cover … twice) that it’s open until midnight every night, and it’s only nine o’clock now. That gives me a full hour to get back to my room before Mrs. Tennison does her final check to ensure all the keys have been turned in. I still have the spare key tucked in my wallet, but I am
done
with Jason-style shenanigans.

No matter what side of the ocean you’re on, the chemical smell of a pool remains the same, and I find comfort in the chlorine and the burn of my muscles as I pull myself through the water. When I’m underwater, the world is literally muted, and I’m left only to my own head.

I start out with a simple freestyle. Years of early-morning swim practices and weekend meets have built definition in my shoulders, arms, and thighs. My body is built like a little compressed spring, compact and
strong. It looks like at any moment I could release my coils and take off into the air. On dry land this means my jeans are always too long, never big enough in the thigh. Tank tops can make me look slightly mannish. But in the pool, my body is perfect. It does exactly what I tell it to do, releasing its coils at exactly the right moment to power me through for win after win, record after record.

Unfortunately, tonight my head is muddled with boys. Chris, my mysterious text messenger. Mark, my one and only (if only he knew it). And now Jason, whose goal in life seems to be to throw me off balance and humiliate me in as many ways as possible. If harassing me doesn’t work, he’ll simply flirt with me. That must have been what that song was all about.

Because he was flirting with me. I know it. I felt it.

Didn’t I?

Chris. Mark. Jason.

Chris. Mark. Jason.

They’re beating a rhythm through my brain with every stroke. Freestyle isn’t working. I need something harder, so I jump out of the pool, turn, and dive straight back in, attempting a fresh start with the butterfly, the hardest stroke, but also my favorite. This time, as I slice into the water with a perfect shallow dive, my mind goes straight to Dad. The summer I was five, he’d spent weeks teaching me the perfect technique for diving. Dad was always a great teacher. Tough, but patient. While most kids were getting a round of applause for a clumsy belly flop, Dad was standing next to me on the deck, demonstrating how I should bend my knees, how to tuck my head between my arms. He taught me to swim, too, when I was even younger than that. Sure, he let me flail for a second, but I never doubted that his firm hand would reach down and pluck me out of the water by my swimsuit as I gasped and spit. Dad would never let anything bad happen to me.

Instead, something bad happened to
him
.

My muscles burn as I pull myself through the lap lane, thinking about how fast he got sick. In my memory he was strong and healthy until the moment he wasn’t. I remember visiting him in the hospital exactly one time. And even unshaven and pale, he still looked like a force. Like he could reach in and pull me out of whatever trouble I might find myself in. I don’t remember much of the funeral—I was only seven—just the American flag draped over the casket, men in their dress uniforms everywhere, and the twenty-one-gun salute.

I count out twenty-one strokes down the lane, then pull myself straight onto the deck of the pool. Drops of water shake off my face, so no one would be able to tell that I’m crying. If I don’t calm down now, it’ll be only moments before I’m gasping for breath, my muscled shoulders shaking with tears. Most of the time the pool is my oasis, but sometimes when the memories creep in, it crushes me.

I clearly need help, and I only know one person with all the information to counsel me.

I take a few deep breaths while toweling off, then head back to my room, where I flip open my laptop and dial up Phoebe on Skype. She clicks in immediately. Her smiling face fills most of the screen, and I see she’s wearing her favorite shirt, a commemorative tee from the release of the long-forgotten ’90s flop
Dick Tracy
. The pumpkin-colored walls of her bedroom, dotted with various artwork purchased from Etsy, appear behind her. The sight of the whole tableau makes me feel the tug of homesickness. I have to concentrate for a moment to keep those tears at bay.

“Cheerio!” she says in a bright Mary Poppins accent, her cheerful mood chirping through my laptop speaker. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you again! Your last text was a little garbled.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, thinking back to my last drunken message to Phoebe. “Texts will be a little few and far between. In a single day Evie apparently racked up a bajillion dollars sending out tweets or whatever,
and Mrs. Tennison went ballistic. She actually screamed at her in the Tate.”

“Oh, I heard. Sarah already put an update on Twitter to say that there wouldn’t be more updates. How meta is that?” We giggle at the ridiculousness of our classmates. “So you’d be totally proud of me. Guess what I’m doing right now, a full twelve hours before my trip?”

“Packing!” I say with a smile. Only Phoebe would get how much organization makes me happy. “Are you using the list?”

“Of course!” Phoebe replies, shaking a crumpled piece of paper containing my patented packing list. “Without this bad boy I’d probably arrive in Chicago with one pair of jeans, six hoodies, and exactly no underwear. How’re things in jolly old England?”

“Ugh” is all I can say, covering my face with my hands.

“That good, huh?” Phoebe leans back in her paint-spattered desk chair, throwing her feet up onto her desk.

“Worse,” I mumble through my fingers.

“Well, I’ve got something to take your mind off whatever the trouble is,” she says. “A little bit of Mark gossip.”

My heart jumps, and I lean in so close to my laptop I practically smack my head against the screen. “Oh my God, I totally forgot!” I say, thinking back to last night’s text. “What is it?”

“Okay, so talk about fate,” she says. “I was at the Polar Pop grabbing dinner for the fam, and
who
should be having dinner there but Mark.”

“And?” I can hardly conceal my impatience. If I could, I would jump through the monitor right now.

“
And
he was with Ian Green, who was all, like, geeking out because apparently Serena Garner asked Mark out last night.”

My stomach plummets. Serena Garner is tall, gorgeous, and graceful. Even worse: she’s a
senior
. I glance at my muscled swimmer’s shoulders in the mirror. I look like a linebacker standing next to Serena. There’s no way I can compete.

Phoebe can see my face fall, so she quickly jumps in. “But he said no! He told Ian that Serena isn’t his type, and he’s not going to waste time on a girl who couldn’t give him what he wants,” she finishes triumphantly.

Not his type?
I quickly catalog Serena’s defining characteristics. She’s beautiful. She looks like she’s constantly on her way to shoot a shampoo commercial. She’s been elected homecoming queen, prom queen, and student council president, and if there were a category in the senior superlatives for Best of Everything Forever the End, she’d probably win.

She’s also dumb as a box of rocks.

Wait. Does that mean he likes smart girls? Smart girls like
me
?

“Oh my God, I love it!” I exclaim, grabbing the sides of my laptop as if I’m going to hug Phoebe through the screen.

“Yeah—pretty good, huh?” Then she wrinkles her nose. “Although I think it’s a little creepy that he said she can’t give him what he wants. What does that even mean?”

“It’s not creepy! He’s talking about MTB,” I say, invoking Phoebe’s and my trademark code for true love. “Meant to be.” I’m thinking back to our backyard wedding, wondering if it’s a sign that he remembers. Maybe he knew Phoebe was listening in on his conversation. Maybe he knew she’d tell me! Who needs texting when the love of your life is sending messages through your best friend? “I mean, you know Serena isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. Remember that time we bought cupcakes from her at the dance team fund-raiser, and she couldn’t remember how much a nickel was worth? He probably just means he couldn’t carry on a conversation with her.”

“Maybe.” Phoebe shrugs, although she doesn’t look convinced.

“Wait a minute, weren’t you the one who last week tried to convince me to buy a yellow mini, telling me I could wear it on my first date with Mark?” I ask, eyeing her through our pixilated connection. “Now you’re having doubts?”

“Julia, wake up! I don’t care if you go out with Mark or the starting lineup of the football team or even Joey Benson—”

“Not even!” I cry. Joey wore a cape, a floor-length black velvet cape, to school in the eighth grade with no sense of irony. He’s been undatable ever since.

“I don’t even care if you go out with Jason Lippincott—”

“You shut your mouth!” I shout, leaning straight into the mic, but Phoebe charges on, looking stern.

“All I want, oh dear friend of mine, is for you to go out with
someone
. Do something, even if it’s not the magical, wonderful thing you had in mind. Don’t sit around for one more second pining away for some fantasy that might never come along, because it might not even exist.”

“It will come along,” I insist, “and it does exist. I saw it.”

“Maybe it will,” she sighs, chin in hand, knowing not to challenge me when it comes to Mom and Dad. “Maybe it won’t. But while you’re sitting around pining and waiting and wondering and hoping that this perfect love happens, lots of guys and lots of dates and lots of kisses are passing you by.”

“But that’s it,” I say. “Kisses. Or
The Kiss
. I was staring at it today, live and in person at the Tate.” So, okay, I’m kind of recycling Mrs. Tennison’s weirdo speech from earlier, but maybe she had a point. I mean, teachers have to know
something
, right? “That’s what I want. I want toe-curlingly awesome kisses. One-of-a-kind kisses, from a one-of-a-kind boy.”

“I hate to break it to you, Julia, but Rodin made many casts of
The Kiss
,” Phoebe says, rolling her eyes. “There are dozens of versions of
The Kiss
, in museums all across the world. Oh, and by the way? Those figures in the statue are supposed to be the adulterers from Dante’s
Inferno
. The world’s most romantic cheaters.”

“But Mark—” I start to protest.

“Maybe he’s MTB,” she says, cutting me off, “but maybe not. And
until you figure that out, I’m just saying there are other fish in the sea, Julia. Big fish. Tasty fish. Tuna fish!”

“Maybe I already caught one,” I say, resigning to end the argument and move on to some juicier conversation. I begin telling Phoebe all about the party and Chris and the text messages. “And the last one said, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ And then he asked to see me!”

Phoebe is gaping at me through the monitor. The way she’s leaning in toward the camera makes each of her eyes look approximately the size of a fishbowl. “Jules, that is awesome! Are you going to meet him?”

I pick at my fingernails. I never paint my nails, because the chlorine inevitably causes the polish to chip off. Chipped nails pretty much drive me to distraction; they’re like my own personal kryptonite. “I don’t know. I’ve got Jason shackled to me, making things difficult. I mean, he answered the phone today when Chris called.”

“Which probably just made him jealous and more interested,” Phoebe says. “I mean, he sent you the text about seeing you
after
that, right?”

“Yeah,” I admit.

“See? He’s interested. And you should be, too. Text him back!”

“But what about Jason? And Sarah? She’s watching my every move and practically glued to her phone,” I protest. “I don’t think she’s nearly as afraid of her parents as Evie is. And I don’t want to come back from this trip with a reputation and a permanent Twitter record of my every move.”

Phoebe flaps a hand dismissively. “Just forget them. Everyone knows ninety percent of Sarah’s gossip is bogus, and the other ten percent is only partially true,” she says, affecting the soothing tone she’s honed over years of friendship with me. “So you have to spend these outings with Jason. It’s all business, right? He’s just screwing with you, and Sarah is loco. Don’t let them get to you, okay?”

It only takes another ten minutes of prodding before she has me
convinced. Not that Mark is wrong for me, but that I should be having some fun with some other fish—er, guys. Phoebe also thinks it’s a bad idea to get together with a sort-of stranger in a foreign country before I know a little more about him, so when I sit down to text him back, I enter the message we’ve agreed on.