Forever for a Year(64)

“She will.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I hope you’re right. Everything would be better if I knew she was okay and not dead.” Then Carolina hugged me, dug her face into my chest. It was a Saturday night. A month since Shannon disappeared. We were in my basement. I really wanted to kiss, make out, hook up, get naked, have her kiss me down there, but Carolina didn’t want to. I could tell. She hadn’t been very excited about doing sexual stuff the last two weeks. I started to feel like I was the second most important person in her mind and the first most important person was probably dead.





51

Carolina talks to Alexander Taylor

My birthday was on January 9. On November 20 I made a decision. I was going to have sex on my birthday. I know I said I would wait until college, and then I said I would wait until I was a junior, but then Shannon Shunton disappeared and everything was different. It wasn’t ruined. I didn’t even think that anymore. I’d never think that again. I know I say things and then I don’t always do the things I say, but this time it really was the case. So nothing was ruined. It was just changed. I was changed.

Club soccer season was over. So I didn’t see Peggy at all anymore. Obviously I saw her in class, but we didn’t sit next to each other and never said anything about anything. Kendra and I talked a lot. Mostly about school. We didn’t even talk about Trevor that much. What was there to talk about? Trevor was amazing, I loved him, he loved me, we were going to get married someday. It was all decided. I didn’t even think about it that much anymore. It just was what it was and it was going to be what it was going to be.

We went to movies with his sophomore friends, and I supposed they were my friends too, but I never felt like I really belonged. Apart from movies, we just had dinner alone, either at a restaurant in Riverbend or ordered in to his house, then went to his basement, got naked, and hooked up. It was great. I still loved kissing him. And I liked that I could make him feel good, but what he did to me only felt good once in a while and, I don’t know, I wanted to do stuff besides hook up in his basement. I wanted to go to parties and see people. I wanted to go to new places, like downtown Chicago, or at least outside Riverbend. I definitely wanted to marry Trevor someday, but I wanted to marry him in ten years, not right then. I still wanted to be a teenager. I’m rambling. I was just upset about Shannon. Trevor was perfect. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was so lucky he was my boyfriend.

*

Remember that boy that talked to me, like, on the first day of school? The junior. The weird junior that dressed in ties and acted mysterious? His name was Alexander Taylor. It still is. I just sort of forgot he existed when Trevor and I fell in love. I would see him once in a while, and he would stare at me. But I didn’t think about it. He never said anything to me, and I certainly never said anything to him.

But then, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, I went to the bathroom during study hall. I had gone every day since Shannon disappeared. Don’t know why. Yes, I do. I kept thinking she’d be hiding there, waiting for me. But … obviously … she was never there.

Anyway, on my walk to the bathroom, through the empty alien planet that school seems when you walk around the halls alone, Alexander Taylor was waiting there, standing in front of the girls’ bathroom door. Weird, like the first time.

“Hi, freshman,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. And he had that same look he’d had when he first approached me. Like he wanted to do stuff to me. Sex stuff. But I understood it better now. It didn’t scare me as much. It didn’t scare me at all. Okay, maybe a little. But maybe I liked being scared. Maybe everything with Trevor was so perfect and safe, I wanted to be scared right this second. I don’t mean that. I don’t know what I mean. Forget it.

“How’s puppy love?”

“My boyfriend is amazing.”

“Don’t become boring or I’ll lose interest in you,” he said.

“I’m not boring,” I said, even though I wanted to say, I’ll never be interested in you, which was true, obviously, because I was only interested in Trevor. But for some reason I didn’t say anything else.

Then Alexander Taylor said, “We’ll see,” and lifted up my chin with his two fingers, looked so far into my eyes I felt embarrassed, and then he walked away. I ran into the bathroom and kept telling myself what a freak he was, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his face and his eyes. Trevor was sooo much better-looking. Trevor was sooo much better … in every way. Gosh. But, and I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS EVEN ENTERED MY HEAD, I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Kiss Alexander. Would his lips feel the same as Trevor’s? Would he move his tongue the same way? Would he taste different?

*

Oh. My. Gosh. I took out my phone and texted Trevor how much I loved him. How I loved him more than ever. Then I texted him that we should see each other that night, but he said he had basketball practice. Why did Trevor even try out for the basketball team? We could see each other almost every day if he hadn’t made the stupid basketball team. Because now, when I needed to see him most, he was busy. It was his fault I was thinking about Alexander Taylor. Then Trevor texted:





TREVOR


But I’m super excited to see you

(and your beautiful naked body)