Nothing Like You (16 page)

He shook his head. He said, “The thing is, it’s not that you were with someone else, even though that kills me. Because it’s not like we had a title. It’s not like we were committed or anything.” He laughed but it sounded so sad, his laugh. “The thing that makes it bad is that you brought him
here
. And this is
our
place. And you
promised
.”

I wanted to die. He was right. What’s worse than a broken promise?

“Who was it?” he asked, biting his thumb. “Not that it matters. But I’d kind of like to know. Is it that same guy you just ended stuff with?” He glanced over at me. I nodded.

“So? Who is he? Do I know him?”

I nodded again and bit the insides of my cheeks. “Paul Bennett,” I said, looking down at my lap.

Nils exhaled. “You’re really something, Holly.”

“I know,” I said, tears burning my cheeks.

“Paul Bennett.”

“Yeah.”

“
Paul Bennett?
Holly, I hate that guy.”

“I know.”

“That guy’s a total asshole—”

“He is.”

“And he has a girlfriend.”

“I know …”

“She’s your
friend
, right? Ever since Stein’s class, you guys have been, like,
madly
in love, right?”

“Sort of. Yes,” I said softly.

His face was red. He looked at me and I made myself hold his gaze. “Where’s your
heart
? How could you do that to someone you care about?”

“I don’t know. I’m horrible. I told you, I’m awful, remember?” I clutched his arm. “But you promised you’d always be my friend. You swore it.”

He looked at my hand on his arm. “Please, don’t touch me.”

I let out a cry and pulled back. I dropped my head to my lap and shook. Tears soaking the knees of my jeans.

Nils stood up. “I feel sorry for you.”

I continued to cry.

“Really, you’re just … pathetic,” he said, pushing past me.

I heard the door swing shut and felt my heart split in two.

Sunday night I finally checked my voice mail. Three messages from Saskia, each of them hang ups. One was from Paul: “Hi. She knows. For the record, it wasn’t me who told her. Sarah Wehle saw us leave together Friday night.” Click. Sarah
Wehle
, of course. I could never remember that girl’s last name.

I thought about staying home Monday, but I figured eventually I’d have to go back and face everyone. I hadn’t spoken to Nils since Saturday night in The Shack. I hadn’t called Saskia or Paul back. So this was my shining debut. My big day back.

I got up that morning and put on a clean shirt and a pair of jeans I hadn’t washed in three weeks. I put kibble in Harry’s bowl and scratched behind his ears like I did every morning before I left for school. I got in my car and didn’t turn on the radio. I drove and I drove and then I parked in my usual spot and just sat there, my car idle. I stared at the soccer field. It was seven forty. Time to face the execution squad.

At first, everything seemed pretty status quo. Same kids, same corridor, just another miserable Monday morning,
everyone sleepy-eyed and slurping out of enormous paper coffee cups. Then I spotted Paul dumping a pile of books into his locker. Then Saskia down at the end of the hall, surrounded by a group of blondes in peasant blouses with designer stitching on the butts of their jeans. They didn’t notice me at first, I skated past their group and nobody seemed to see me until I reached my locker. There, in pretty purple cursive, the word “whore” marked my door. Perfect penmanship. Someone had really taken the time to make that awful word look gorgeous.

Here’s the weird thing. I didn’t feel anything. Not sad, not guilty really, I felt as if I were hovering outside my own body, watching the whole sorry scene unfold in slow-mo on prime-time TV. I can only liken the feeling to my mother’s memorial, where I felt like the lead character in a Lifetime movie about motherless daughters. I’d drifted down that auditorium aisle toward the life-size ugly poster board picture of Mom at the beach, and there was Jeff, at my side. Dozens of grief-washed faces watching us walk.
Poor little girl,
I heard them thinking,
poor motherless Holly
. Me, though, I hadn’t felt a thing. This was the same, only different. This was no pity party.
Persecution
party, maybe. Which sounds so dramatic, because really, I’m no victim. I’m the villain here.

I undid the combo lock on my locker and unloaded the contents of my book bag, leaving only my World History text and a spiral notebook for next class. That’s when I heard a soft, raspy echoing. A singsongy chorus. “Holly Whore,” they sang, over
and over. I spun the lock on my locker and started back down the hall toward class. I hummed a few bars from “Holly Holy” softly to myself, trying to drown out their voices. Then the chanting died down. I heard a couple of kids laugh. Someone threw something at my head. A balled-up piece of paper, maybe? It was light, I don’t know. I didn’t turn around to look.

Saskia wasn’t in World History even though I’d seen her in the hallway that morning. I went through all four periods before lunch feeling perfectly, contentedly numb. Then, on my walk out to the back patio with my brown bag at lunch, Nils came careening around the side of the building. We collided, knocking heads. Then quickly, without warning, I was weeping. Hysterical. My body folded over. I clutched my stomach, trying to catch my breath. Nils took me by the arm and led me around the bend to a private little grassy patch by the science wing.

“Holly, stop it.” He held me at arm’s length by my shoulders. “Seriously, stop crying. You have to stop. You’re making a scene.”

I stood up a little, nodded, and held my breath. “I was fine all morning,” I huffed. “I couldn’t feel a thing.”

Nils sat down on the ground and pulled me down next to him. “I saw your locker.”

I nodded.

“Holly …
why
?”

I bit my lip. “I don’t know. I liked him. It sounds so stupid, but I actually thought he cared about me. And then I met
her
and I ended things. And he got so mad. And then stuff started happening with you, and I don’t know. I don’t know why I did what I did.” I looked at him. “I really don’t.”

Nils stuck his thumbnail in his mouth and bit down. “Just … why’d you have to go and wreck everything?”

I shrugged. “This is, like, my worst nightmare. You know that, right? The whole world could hate me, I wouldn’t care … but you? I can’t handle you hating me, Nils.”

He looked down at the ground and pulled at a patch of grass. “Did it mean anything to you? The other night? With me, in The Shack?”

I leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “It meant
everything
to me.”

He snapped his hand back and stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry about your locker, Holly. I feel bad for you, I do. But I can’t see you for a while, okay?”

I nodded, my chest tightening.

“You should talk to Saskia,” he said, readjusting his backpack. “You should tell her you’re sorry.”

I shook my head. “I can’t even look at her. I can’t even be in the same room as her.”

“I saw her on the lawn by the auditorium before I saw you. She’s alone down there, Holly. You should go.”

So I went. I went because Nils told me to go.

She was lying on her back in the grass in the sun. I was about to ruin everything.

“Hi,” I croaked. I was standing over her now.

She blinked her eyes at me. She said, “I called you three times this weekend.” I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Hysterics? A beating? I’m not sure what. I just didn’t expect her to seem so cool and together.

“I know.”

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me. “Are you going to sit down or no?”

I dropped down on my knees next to her. She looked at me and I looked down at the ground. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Oh yeah? For what?”

“For …” I took a breath. She was going to make me say it.

“What’s wrong, Holly? What’re you sorry for?” She was staring into me. Her expression was blank.

I looked to my right, at a cluster of her friends watching us from the patio. “I’m so sorry … for what happened between Paul and me.”

“Right.” She shrugged. “So, like, what specifically happened that you’re so sorry for?”

My stomach lurched. I deserved this. I did what I did. I should be able to say it out loud to Saskia’s face. “For being with him,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

“Could you look at me, please?”

My eyes fluttered open. I looked at her.

“So … you’re sorry for screwing my boyfriend? That’s what you’re saying?”

I thought I might hurl. I nodded.

She got up on her knees and picked up her book bag. “Well, I don’t accept your apology.”

I felt the familiar sting of tears, then watched as she walked across the lawn and back toward her friends. One of them flipped me off.

Paul was waiting for me outside by my car after school. He was leaning against my driver side door, smoking a cigarette.

I scowled. “Move, please? I wanna go home.”

“Exhausting day, huh?”

I mashed my lips together and stared at him. He was still leaning against my car door. “Move. Please.”

He took a drag and slowly stepped away. I stuck my key in the lock.

“For the record,” he said, “I wasn’t planning on telling her. I mean, had she not asked …”

I turned around to face him. “You said—I mean you basically told me flat out last week you were gonna tell her if I didn’t keep having sex with you.”

“I was drunk. I didn’t mean it.” He softened a little. “She asked me what was going on. I couldn’t lie.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure, you could’ve. You’ve been doing it all year long.”

“Well, look at it this way: It’s all out there now. No guilt.” He touched my waist. “Nothing to feel bad about anymore …”

“You wrecked my life.”

He grimaced. “
You
wrecked your life. I didn’t hold a gun to your head. I didn’t make you
do
anything.”

“You took advantage.”

“Take. Responsibility
.
Holly.”
He leaned into me. “I didn’t. Have sex. With myself.” His arms were resting against the hood of the car, locking me in on both sides of my body. I heard the door handle pop. He pulled open my car door, bumping my butt forward. I jumped.

“How’re things between you and your little boyfriend? By the way.”

I threw my book bag across the seat and got into my car. I kept one foot on the pavement. “You feel good about yourself when you go to sleep at night?”

Paul shrugged.

“Yeah. Me neither.” I slammed my car door shut.

Nils had gone
to Hawaii with his family for the holidays. I spent my break watching the wall. Hiking with Harry. Watching TV. Doing macramé.

Sometime around day nine I was sprawled out on the carpet of my bedroom floor, listening to Mom’s Neil Diamond CDs, searching for something to occupy my mind, when I saw something white-ish and square underneath the bed. I pinched it between my fingertips. It was Frank Gellar’s card
.

I have nothing,
I thought.
No friends. No mom. I have this, though.
I grabbed my cell out of my bag and dialed.

He picked up. “Hello?”

“Is this Frank?”

“Yes.”

“This is Holly Hirsh.”

“I remember you. You’re the girl who cancelled on me. Twice.”

I winced. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me. You’re finally ready to reschedule.”

“I promise to show up.”

“It’s ninety for the half hour. You don’t give me a twenty-four-hour head’s up before canceling this time, I have to charge you, anyway.”

“I understand. And I won’t cancel this time. I swear it.”

Frank Gellar’s place was small and brown. Lots of dark wood, lots of furniture. The tabletops were cluttered with trinkets and crystals and the shelves were stacked with books on spiritual this and metaphysical that. I waited in the living room while he puttered around his office, arranging things. “Holly, you want to tape the session?” He held up an ancient recorder. “Okay.” I nodded, standing up.

“Come on in,” he said, waving me forward with both hands.

I took a seat on the dingy cream-colored couch in the corner. Frank sat down in an overstuffed green chair a few feet away. He was a big man, middle-aged, with a white beard and a bland, friendly face. He looked a lot like how I thought god might look to a kid. Minus the ponytail and the green khaki shorts.