Authors: Rachel Vail
You, Maybe (13 page)
“YOU HAVE TO
stop stalking him,” Zandra said to me Friday morning. She slammed my locker shut. “Come down to lunch with me. We’ll annoy Tru while she tries to read.”
“I’m not stalking him,” I said.
She stared at me. “Josie.”
“Okay, maybe I’m stalking him, but what else am I going to do?”
“Nothing,” she said, looping her arm through mine. “Do nothing. He doesn’t exist. Let’s go.”
“It’s not that easy.” I pulled my arm away. “You have no idea what Carson and I . . .”
“It’s not a marriage, Josie,” she said. “The whole relationship crashed and burned so fast I’ve only changed my hair color once since it started.”
I smiled a little, but it turned into a sigh. “It’s been a rough week,” I explained.
“That’s why we’re cutting you a lot of extra slack. But now your mom is home and on the mend and it’s time for you to suck it up and move on.”
“This is a lot of extra slack?”
Zandra nodded. “Yeah. But enough already. It’s time to take out the stupid ponytail and put your own clothes back on. Come sleep over my house tonight with Tru. We’ll watch sappy movies and mock what’s-his-name while we eat junk food and paint our nails black.”
“I don’t want to.” I spun the combination only Carson and I knew, and yanked open my lock. “He likes to see me, really see me. He thinks I’m beautiful. Crazy, huh? But for the first time in my life I don’t feel ugly if my face shows. He did that for me. What you don’t get is that I don’t want to go back to how I was.”
I opened my locker and bent down to get my stuff. Tru’s sneakers were rounding the corner to stand beside Zandra’s. Great. They were ganging up on me. I blotted my damp eyes with my sleeve and didn’t look up at them.
“What
you
don’t get,” Zandra said, “is that your real friends don’t actually care what you wear or do to your hair. That’s not the point. We just love you, me and Tru. Right?”
“Right,” Tru said. “And Michael, too.”
“The jerk,” Zandra said. “He’s totally in love with you. We know you, and we love you, no matter what. So we deserve you. And the Golden Egg? Well, screw him. He blew it, his loss. It’s time to move on. Say good-bye.”
“Hey!” Tru pointed at my Wiffle bat as if it were infectious. “What the heck is
that
?”
I looked at it and said, as innocently as possible, “It’s a Wiffle bat.”
“Is there a Wiffle ball team you have joined,” Zandra asked, “to complete your personality transplant?”
“Sometimes we like to play ball at lunch,” I muttered.
“They,” Zandra said. “Not ‘we,’ Josie. They play ball at lunch. You argue about philosophy. You don’t play ball. You listen to cool music and help your friends and organize peace rallies, and you laugh. Loud. Remember you? You don’t have to be a poor imitation of
them
. You are a fabulous, weird, original, smart, kind, strong person.”
“I’m not weird.” I stood up and faced them.
“Well, you’re pretending not to be,” Tru said. “And the effort is making you miserable, Josie. Look at yourself. You have dark circles under your eyes and what do you weigh now? Nothing? You really want to dull yourself down like this? For what? For a guy?”
“He’s not just a guy.” I rested my head against the cold metal of the locker next to mine.
“No,” Zandra said, her hand on my shoulder. “He’s a guy who, after maybe a week of being into you, has now clearly dumped you.”
“He did not dump me!” I shouted. I grabbed the bat and swung it up in the air, to take aim at their heads.
Tru took a step back but Zandra didn’t flinch. She stared at me, hard and cold, her lips tight.
“I’m his girlfriend!” I yelled.
Zandra shook her head.
My arms were shaking. “I love him.”
“I know you do, Josie,” Zandra said slowly. “But he doesn’t love you.”
“How can you say that to me?” I felt the tears well up in my eyes. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“I am your friend. That’s why I’m telling you this,” Zandra whispered, reaching up to take the bat from my tight fists. She placed it gently back inside my locker. “You have to try to stop loving him, because he doesn’t love you.”
Tru touched my shoulder. “Asymmetry sucks.”
I pulled away.
“You know where we’ll be,” Zandra said.
I watched Zandra and Tru walk away from me. I knew they were probably right, but what did that mean for me, about me? That I was nothing? That once he got to know me, he decided, oh, yuck?
I sunk down against my locker, caught my aching head in my hands, and cried. They’re right. He doesn’t love me. I love him so much and he doesn’t love me. Wait, what if they’re wrong? Okay, Carson and I are obviously going through a bad time, but all relationships are work; my own mother said they all have their miseries, or even if she said mysteries—this week of him not talking to me might be a mystery of my relationship with Carson that my friends could never have access to. Just because we’re in a rough patch, does that mean I should give up? It didn’t even make sense: I’m being lousy to Zandra and Tru and they still love me, they were still trying to reach me, right? They weren’t just writing me off, saying good-bye, moving on. No. They were sticking by me, showing me how much they love me. Isn’t that what good friends do? And don’t I love Zandra and Tru for that? Of course I do. So don’t I owe at least that much being a good friend to my boyfriend?
Well, except that Carson and I were never really friends.
He just swept me off my feet, and here I am, on my butt.
I hoisted myself off the floor. He hadn’t given me back my earring. He still had it, which meant he hadn’t given up on us. Maybe he was taking some time to figure out how he felt, and giving me some time. My mother had just gotten out of the hospital, after all. Maybe he was feeling guilty about how badly the weekend had gone and was so embarrassed he wasn’t sure how to approach me. People think he’s smug and confident but they don’t know him the way I do. I wiped my face dry, grabbed my lunch and bat, and headed away from the cafeteria, toward the courtyard.
He once loved how strong and independent and real I was, so that’s what I should definitely pretend to be. Maybe he was testing me, seeing if I could handle the rough times, too; how can you make yourself vulnerable to someone, fall in love with her, until you know if she’ll stick with you no matter what? He gets so much attention for his looks and achievements—but that’s all earned love, in a way. That kind of love could disappear if his grades slipped or he got cut from a team or his face was horribly disfigured somehow. So maybe before he can fully fall in love with me is unconditional love. Isn’t that the highest form of loving somebody? To love him unconditionally?
I had to prove to him that I could take it, that I was strong, that I would love him no matter what. I put down my lunch and Wiffle bat and sat on an icy bench near the gate that led from the courtyard to the parking lot. Even though I didn’t fully believe it, I told myself: this is a test, it is only a test, a test of my love for him. Fine. I’m good at tests. I sat on my fingers to keep them warm, and watched the gangs of seniors heading toward me. Maybe today is the day I’ll finally pass this test. Soon everything will be easy and equal between us at last.
Carson. I could see his walk before I could make out his features, his long strides, so confident and balanced. I sucked in my breath. As he got closer I could see his gorgeous face, and then my eyes were drawn down. His hand was holding Emelina’s.
SIT STILL, I
begged myself.
They came closer and closer. Maybe he will be embarrassed and drop her hand. Maybe he’s just comforting her about something, maybe she bombed a test, or got her finger slammed in a door and he’s just being a good friend. Don’t I want my boyfriend to be a good friend? To his ex-girlfriend?
Well, no. I don’t, actually.
I saw Margo see me, and Frankie. Frankie grabbed Carson’s arm and whispered something, and then Carson glanced toward me. He didn’t slow down, he didn’t smile. He didn’t drop Emelina’s hand.
Stay still, I told myself.
I stood up.
Carson reached into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. He handed them to Emelina. “Why don’t you pull my car around,” he said to her. “I’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” she answered.
“You sure?” Frankie asked him.
“Go ahead,” Carson told them.
Margo tried to catch my eye, but I wouldn’t look at her. I was staring at Carson.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello,” I said.
“How’s your mom?”
“Fine,” I said.
“That’s good.”
“Carson,” I said. “Listen, I know this has been a rough time. I’m sorry I’ve been . . . whatever I’ve been. I’m sorry. Can we just . . .” I smiled at him. “Let’s start over, okay? Hi, I’m Josie.” I held out my hand, to shake his.
He didn’t take my hand. “Don’t do this.”
I kept smiling, determinedly. “Tell me what you want me to do. Anything. I’ll do it, Carson.”
He shook his head. My hand was still sticking out, between us.
Please,
I thought,
take my hand at least.
Touch me. Let me at least once more touch your fingers with my skin.
“Carson, I love you.”
“It’s over, Josie. I gotta go.”
“You have to go to her? To Emelina? You’re back together?”
“Yes.”
I felt my fingers curling into fists. “Did you teach her to drive, too?”
“She taught me, actually,” he said softly. “Come on, Josie. Let’s end as friends.”
“Friends?” I was yelling by now but I didn’t care. “How can we end as friends? We weren’t friends to begin with. My friends are inside, waiting for me. My friends care about me. They love everything about me. You and me—we were just hooking up. We were never friends.”
“Don’t say that,” he murmured.
“We weren’t. We were nothing, and then you twisted me up and made me fall in love with you. You’re my first love, Carson. Don’t I mean anything to you?”
He glanced toward the parking lot.
I shrieked. It was a scary sound. I think I scared both of us. “Look at me! Look at me! I am crazy. About you. I belong to you. You are the only thing that matters to me, not even myself, not my, I gave, I’d give . . .” My head was reeling. “I gave you my great-grandmother’s earring. Don’t you know . . .”
He nodded. “I have it.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
Out in the parking lot, the horn of his car beeped twice.
“Coming,” he called. “One sec!”
He opened his wallet and fished out a tissue with a tiny lump in it. He refolded his wallet, put it back in his pocket, and unwrapped the tissue. There it was, my great-grandmother’s sparkling diamond, in his creased hand.
“No!” I yelled. “It’s yours! I’m yours!”
“No,” he whispered. “It’s yours. You should keep it.”
I picked up the Wiffle bat with both hands and took aim at his horrible gorgeous head.
“What are you doing, Josie?” he asked, smiling kindly. “Come on. I thought you were a pacifist.”
“I’ve changed,” I said.
“You planning to kill me with a Wiffle bat?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” he asked.
The bat was shaking in my tight grip. “Because I don’t have my Minnie Mouse pillow,” I said.
He smiled for real. Oh, man, that smile.
“Carson . . .”
His smile dimmed. He held out the earring to me in his open palm.
I smashed his hand as hard as I could with the Wiffle bat.
“Ow!” he screamed.
My earring went flying.
Carson was rubbing his red palm, inspecting it for damage. “That hurt,” he shrieked. “You really hurt me.”
“Right back at you,” I said. “Good-bye, Carson.”
He frowned, massaging his hand, the big baby. “I just wanted to end this nicely.”
“Yeah?” I cocked the bat back up to hit him again. “Well, this time you don’t get what you want.”
He backed away from me, toward his car. The passenger door flew open. He turned and sprinted the last few feet, flung himself into the passenger seat, and slammed the door shut. They peeled out, racing away from me.
I didn’t lower the bat or get down on my knees to search for my other earring—or cry—until they were gone. It took awhile but I didn’t give up until I found it, under an old brown leaf. I stood up and put my earring back where it belonged. Then I chucked the Wiffle bat into a garbage can, wiped my eyes dry, and headed inside.
1.
You, Maybe: The Profound Asymmetry of Love in High School
by Rachel Vail
It completely reminded me of this thing one of my best friends went through this year; weirdly true to life!
2.
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand
Anybody who stands alone, laughing, naked, on the edge of a cliff is either brilliant or seriously off, and definitely sexy.
3.
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Smart, sexy, and romantic.
4.
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
Powerful story of friendship and sacrifice.
5.
The Princess Diaries
by Meg Cabot
Fast, fun, and funny—and you know you secretly imagine being Mia!
6.
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
Totally romantic and intense, and in Spain, where it’s
hot
!
7.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
by you-know-who
Okay, the histories are boring but the comedies are seriously bawdy and the tragedies, well, it doesn’t get deeper than this.
8.
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
Another great friendship story, with boys but still good anyway, and I have a total crush on Finny.
9.
If We Kiss
by Rachel Vail
If I ever kiss for the first (and second, and . . .) time, I want it to be as romantic and hot as when Charlotte kisses Kevin (or George!).
10.
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
Meant for adults but he totally nailed the voice of the thirteen-year-old.
