Forever for a Year(19)

Except, you know what? When I signed on and looked for his friend request, it was gone.

Like it never even existed.

Don’t cry, Carolina.

Please don’t cry.





12

Trevor wakes up burning

My chest burned when I woke up Tuesday morning. All my muscles felt wrenched an inch closer to my bones. What was strange is I liked it. Liked the ache. Liked the pain. I must be screwed up in the head to like pain.

Dad didn’t have to wake me up. Whether it was my body or my brain that did it, I don’t know, but I was up at 5:40 a.m. First thing I did was check Facebook. Hated that’s what I did, but I can’t lie and say I didn’t do it.

Carolina still hadn’t accepted my friend request. Not a big deal. But … never mind. Just not a big deal. But then I started looking at her pictures. Didn’t do it yesterday because, well, it’s a stupid thing to do, but now it was so early and she hadn’t become my friend and, I don’t know, I just wanted to look at her pictures.

The truth was she didn’t look that great. She dressed mostly like a boy, never stood up straight, and always smiled like taking photographs was torture. This might be another reason she wasn’t popular. Because of stupid Facebook and iPhones, how good you looked in pictures mattered as much as how pretty you were in real life.

But then there was this one photo of her playing soccer. Carolina was concentrating so intensely on the game, she couldn’t tell anyone was taking the picture, so she didn’t know to be uncomfortable. Instead she looked like an Olympic athlete that would be in commercials because she was beautiful and amazing at sports. She was striding across the grass, two opposing players behind her, anguished they couldn’t catch her. Her eyes were so sharp you had the feeling she could see right through you and the ground and into whole other worlds. The muscles in her arms and legs were tight, reminded me of how I felt right this second, and for that second I thought again we were soul mates. You know, like the one person that would make me feel not so f*cking alone.

Then I stopped thinking that because I don’t believe in that crap. But maybe I didn’t stop thinking it as much as I wanted to.

*

Carolina acted strange as I walked toward biology. She looked at me, so did her friend and some older girl, but then she looked away. Suddenly I felt like she was annoyed I had sent her that friend request. So I sat in the back of class, far away from where we sat yesterday. I did it to punish her, but it probably only punished me.

At lunch, the older girl who was with Carolina before biology marched over to our table, pointed at me, and said, “You, come here,” like she was a teacher disciplining me. I wasn’t going to move. I didn’t know this chick, and I certainly didn’t like being told what to do.

But then my cousin Henry said, “Dude, that’s Katherine Darry. She’s, like, the hottest girl in the school. Go, go.”

“Thanks for telling the new kid here what’s up,” Katherine said, winking at Henry like he was her best friend, only to turn her gaze cold as it descended back on me.

Screw it. I got up, followed her out of the cafeteria into the hall. Not sure why Henry thought Katherine was that attractive. Yeah, she knew how to walk so that her butt moved back and forth and she knew how to wear makeup like girls on reality TV, but there was nothing pretty about her at all. Her face was puffy and angry, her eyes small and panicked.

“Do you like my sister?” Katherine asked after she stopped, spun, and shoved her head six inches from mine.

“Who’s your sister?”

“Oh. My. God. You retarded or are you just retarded? My sister is Peggy. She looks like me, but not as, you know, mature, except her boobs are huge, which is why you like her, don’t lie!”

“She’s Carolina’s friend?”

Katherine opened her mouth but didn’t say anything while her brain tried to catch up. “Listen, new kid. I know how stuff works. You’re super hot, but nobody realizes it yet because you’re new. Not even you, apparently. So you can’t like Carolina. It just won’t work. So you can like Peggy maybe, because I don’t want her dating any of my friends. So you think about it, and I’ll talk to Peggy. But leave Carolina alone. She’s not your type.” Then she tapped my ear with her hand two times. “Okay?”

But I didn’t say anything. I sure as hell wasn’t going to agree with her, but I didn’t have the balls to tell her off either. Then she left and I just stood there, not quite sure what this really meant. When I turned around, Henry was standing there, Licker and baby-faced Jake behind him. They stepped fast into my space before I could do anything about it.

“What did she say? What did she want?” Henry asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie! Just tell us!” Jake whined.

“Something about her sister, Peggy. Wanted to know if I liked her.”

Licker said, “Katherine must think you’re going to be cool, which means you probably will be.”

Henry’s face scrunched up when Licker said this. Then my cousin said, “You can’t go out with Peggy because I was going to go out with her. Sorry, Trev.” Then he walked away, Jake and Licker following after him.

This. School. Sucks. For the next minute, all I could think about is how much I hated my mom for making us leave California and come to this crap-hole place because she’s so malfunctioning in the head. Then, I don’t even know why, I decided to take out my phone and take back my friend request to Carolina. It wasn’t until after I did it that I realized why: For at least a few minutes this morning I thought she was my soul mate. I thought she was different and I was different and we could be different together, but then with all this Katherine and Henry BS, it was clear that she was a part of their game. She wasn’t different like me. She was the same like them.