Past Perfect (25 page)

“You can go home if you want,” I told him. “If you’re not going to sled at all, you should just go home.” But he shook his head and said, “No. You said I had to be here. So I’m here.”

This was in January, when Fiona was in the middle of her two-week relationship with Reginald Ellis, who was at our school only for the second half of his senior year because his father had been transferred from London. Fiona and
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Reginald went flying past us on her sled, her giggling, him hollering “Bollocks!” as they hit a bump.

I remembered this made me feel so desperate, that Fiona should be having this romantic interlude with a guy whom she’d first met literally one week ago, whereas my boyfriend and I couldn’t muster up one single romantic moment, not even in this incredibly romantic winter wonderland.

“Please,” I pleaded with Ezra, almost in tears. “Please let’s just sled down the hill together once. Then we can leave.” So we sat down together on the sled, and that was when one of my friends snapped the photograph that I now, nearly seven months later, held in my hands. If I looked hard, I could see my eyes in this photo sparkling, though I couldn’t say whether it was with happiness or snow or tears.

After the camera shutter clicked, we were off, down the hill.

And it was perfect, for a moment. For a moment, we were perfect. I hadn’t made up any of that memory. His arms really had wrapped around me, I really was pressed back against his chest, the wind really did feel so clean and pure.

When we hit the bump at the bottom of the hill, we fell off the sled together and tumbled into the snow, landing softly with his body on top of mine, pinning me down. I was laughing and gasping for air, and he said, “That is possibly the shittiest sled a person could own.” Maybe he meant it as a joke or maybe he meant it as a criticism, but, either way, the smile cracked off my face like
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an icicle. I said, “I would have been able to get a better sled if I hadn’t had to spend all morning on the phone with you.”

“You wouldn’t have had to spend all morning on the phone with me if you hadn’t made such a big deal out of us going sledding together,” he replied.

And then it wasn’t perfect anymore. We were happy for a few minutes, we really, honestly were. And then we stopped being happy.

Now, I set the sledding photo carefully to one side, to uncover the next item in the Ezra file: ticket stubs from a midnight showing of
Bottle Rocket
at the Plainville Cinema.

Somehow I had gotten permission from my parents to stay out extra late, just to see the movie. It was early March but it already felt like springtime; for the first time in months I was wearing ballet flats and a skirt without tights underneath.

I had straightened my hair and stuck a new headband in it.

I remembered Ezra acting kind of flustered as he drove us to the movie theater. The whole car smelled like him, like aftershave or cologne or one of those other boy things.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, after he trailed off in the middle of a sentence for the third time.

“Yeah, fine. I just . . .” He shook his head and said in a quiet voice, “You’re just really pretty.” This was one of my favorite Ezra moments, out of all of them. I never tired of replaying that moment.

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We got to the cinema and he bought Sno-Caps for me and Sour Patch Kids for himself. The movie was laugh-out-loud funny, and then after it was over, but before he dropped me off at home, Ezra pulled his car onto a side street and we just went at it, our hands and mouths all over each other, fogging up the windows of his car. It was 3:00 a.m. by the time I walked in my front door, and I was prepared to tell my parents that the movie really was that long, if they asked, which they never did.

For someone who’s supposed to be an expert at history, you just
suck at remembering what’s real
, Fiona said.

Although things actually happen, we don’t remember them the way
they actually were
, Dad said.

The way things actually were. The way things actually were is that all of that was true. Also true was that, when we got to the movie theater, we ran into a girl named Kimberly, who was on the school paper with Ezra. She was out with a group of her girl friends. When Ezra bought me Sno-Caps, he also bought a box of Junior Mints for Kimberly. He wanted to sit right behind her, so they could spend the time before the movie gossiping about other editors at the paper. I barely knew the people they were talking about, so there was nothing I could say. Kimberly tried to include me in their conversation, a little. Ezra didn’t try at all.

During the movie, I put my hand on Ezra’s knee, and he didn’t pull away, but he didn’t respond, either. He just sat
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there, staring at the screen, like we were two strangers who happened to be sitting next to each other, and for some reason one stranger decided it was socially acceptable to rest her hand on the other stranger’s knee. During the scene where the characters rob a cold storage facility, Ezra leaned forward and whispered a comment in Kimberly’s ear, and she laughed and laughed. After the movie was over, he insisted that we walk Kimberly to her car before we left.

I didn’t say anything to Ezra about any of this, because what could I have said? He had told me I was pretty, he had taken me to the movies, he wanted to make out with me, and yet for some reason I was jealous of Kimberly. I couldn’t tell him that. It wouldn’t have made any sense.

That’s what really happened. It was all true, the good and the bad, both at once. All of time happens in one moment: 1774 and 1863 and last winter and this summer. And all of a relationship is true in one moment, too. All these things exist and coexist and re-exist.

I closed the Ezra file and set it down on the floor. I climbed into bed with my clothes still on, crawled under the sheet, and remembered April 17th, the day Ezra officially broke up with me. What really happened.

I wouldn’t say I was surprised when he ended things. In fact, I was the opposite of surprised. Within the course of a few weeks, we went from talking on the phone every day to almost never. He stopped texting me every time something
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reminded him of me, and when I texted him, he wouldn’t respond for hours, or sometimes not at all. He stopped making plans with me; on Friday, I would corner him in Latin class and ask about his weekend, and he would rattle off a series of activities, none of which included me. He chatted with me online still, but less and less, and he kissed me still, but distractedly, as if he was doing me a favor. But still he didn’t break up with me.

I was miserable. I checked my phone and e-mail frantically, reasoning that any communication from him would mean he still cared about me. Fiona was horrified, though I couldn’t tell whether she was more bothered by the way Ezra was treating me, or by the way I was reacting. “In what way, exactly, are you two still together?” she asked me.

“In the way where he hasn’t broken up with me yet.”

“So why don’t you break up with him? You know you’re allowed to do that. He’s treating you like shit.”

“I don’t
want
to break up with him.” We were having this conversation during lunchtime.

Instead of eating in the cafeteria, I was with Fiona in the filthy first-floor bathroom at school, crying because I had just seen Ezra flirting with Kimberly in the lunch line.

“So you don’t want to break up with him, what, because he makes you so happy?” Fiona asked as I splashed cool water on my eyes.

“Right.”

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“Okay, sure. That makes sense.”

“He’s really busy,” I defended him. “He has a huge math test coming up, and you know he’s bad at math. And he’s writing the lead feature for the paper next week. And—”

“
I’m
really busy,” Fiona exploded. “I have rehearsal for like four hours every day after school, but
I
still have time to see you. And do you know why that is, Chelsea?” I didn’t say anything.

“It’s because I
make
time to see you. Because I actually
want
to see you. Listen to me: nobody is so busy that they can’t make time for the people they really care about. Nobody, and especially not Ezra Gorman.”

The situation probably could have gone on like that for weeks longer if Fiona hadn’t taken matters into her own hands. She told me that she instant messaged Ezra one night and said something along the lines of: “Look, if you don’t want to be Chelsea’s boyfriend anymore, that’s fine—even though I think you’re an idiot because Chelsea is amazing and who wouldn’t want to be her boyfriend? But if you really don’t, then no protest here, but
for the love of God
, will you please actually break up with her so she can start getting over you, because
I cannot go on like this
.” The next day, Ezra was waiting for me when I got out of my last-period class. “Can I walk you home?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, like a cow to slaughter. “Let’s do this.” We spent most of our walk talking about normal things:
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school and the weather and movies and nothing. When we were a block from my house, Ezra said, “Look, Chelsea, I think you’re great and all, but I don’t . . . want to be your boyfriend anymore.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that vibe from you.”

“I was hoping we could just take what we had and tone it down, turn it into a friendship, but, I don’t know, Fiona told me I was supposed to actually break up with you.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m serious about us staying friends, though. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, Chelsea. I still care about you.”

“Clearly,” I said. “Clearly you care about me. And my feelings. And all that stuff.”

We had reached my front stairs. “You’re not mad at me, are you?” he asked. “Just because I don’t think we should date anymore?”

I had a million things I wanted to say, so many that I couldn’t say any of them. I wanted to say,
No, I’m not mad at
you because you don’t think we should date anymore, but I am mad
at you for not asking what
I
think, because it doesn’t matter to you,
or to anyone, what
I
think. I’m mad that you figured you didn’t even
have to tell me this, that you could just start ignoring me and that
I would get the picture. I’m mad that you would tell me all of this
in the same breath as telling me, with a straight face, that you still
care about me. And, actually, I take it back—I
am
mad that you
don’t want to date me anymore. And I’m offended, and I love you
.

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I didn’t say that. I said, “Well, that’s that, then.”

“Give me a hug,” he said, and pulled me in close. I held on to him like I was drowning.

That’s true. That’s what really happened.

History is written by the victors
, Dad said. But who was the victor in Ezra and my story, and who was the victim?

I fell asleep there, still trying to answer this question. I didn’t even wake up to change into pajamas or turn out the light.

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M
aggie’s family turned out to be—and I do not use this term lightly—filthy rich. They lived in an old plantation house set back from the street, with a wide walkway leading up through the field that I guess counted as their front yard. Enormous, lush trees flanked the porch, which was supported by Georgian columns. The steel frame of an old wagon sat outside, as if to suggest that at any moment someone might start carting around tobacco plants.

“This place puts even your old house to shame,” I commented, as Fiona drove us up the driveway for Maggie’s party.

“I know it.” She parked the convertible, then flipped down the rearview mirror so she could apply more LEILA SALES

plum-colored lipstick. “I’d be jealous if I didn’t think big houses were tacky.”

“You think big houses are tacky?”

She puckered her lips at the mirror. “No. But I thought it sounded good when I said it. Like maybe I’m not as materialistic as I seem. Did it work?”

“Oh. No. Maybe try saying it to a stranger, though. I probably know you too well for that.”

Fiona shrugged, then opened her car door and swiveled both her legs around in unison so she could get out without flashing her underwear.

“Fi, did your legs get longer this summer, or did that jean skirt shrink?” I asked.

“Neither. I just went to the mall and bought a shorter skirt.” I rolled my eyes and crouched on my seat, grabbed on to the top of the car door, and vaulted over it to land on the driveway. I stuck my arms in the air, the world’s least talented gymnast.

“You do know that door opens, right?” Fiona asked. “Since it’s a car, and all?”

“What’s the point of arriving at a party in a convertible if you can’t make an entrance?” I countered.

“No one’s watching us make our entrance, though.”

“So?”

“Good point,” Fiona conceded.

We followed the sounds of music and laughter around to
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the back of Maggie’s house. A lot of Essex kids were hanging out on the back patio, as well as a bunch of people who I didn’t recognize. There was an inground pool with big beach balls floating around in it. A hip-hop song was pumping out of speakers shaped like rocks. It was all very atmospheric, and I say this with the authority of a person whose job is to provide atmosphere.

“Hi, girls!” Maggie ran over to give me and Fiona big hugs.

She was wearing—this is true—high-heeled sandals, short-shorts, and a bikini top. This girl did not need a nineteenth-century lady-of-the-night costume. She already
was
a lady of the night.

“The keg’s over there,” she said, pointing. “Ezra and Lenny are grilling burgers, if you’re hungry. Did you bring bathing suits?”

“Where are your parents?” I asked. “Don’t you have parents?”