Forever for a Year(96)

When I see Katherine now and she is being this crazy bitch (oh, I hate that word, but it’s just who she is), I don’t get scared or even worried. I just laugh in my head. All that stuff I went through with Trevor makes Katherine just the most ridiculous person ever, and you can’t be scared of ridiculous people. You can’t take them seriously at all.

*

I studied super hard for finals. Not stressed about it. You know, not this panic of I have to get good grades or I’m going to explode. I just wanted to do really well. (And I did. I won’t brag, but I got all As. Well, an A-minus in biology.)

Before I found out my grades, on the Friday night after finals and school were over, Trevor and I had a date planned. I felt so good and so calm and I was so excited to spend the summer with Trevor, maybe getting a job together at the movie theater or at Lou Malnati’s or something since we went there so often. There was a party that night. Trevor wanted to go to the party. He never wanted to go to parties, but he wanted to go that Friday night. I should have known something was wrong just by that.





84

Trevor talks to a hurdler

There was this sophomore girl on the track team. She was a hurdler. Her name was Betsy Kwon. She was Korean. She had the longest legs. Like six inches taller than both her parents, she said. She ran so fast and chewed gum at the same time. It was magic.

When we were stretching as a team before every track practice, she would always sit by me. She was really funny. She would always talk to me, laugh at what I said, smile at everything. Then right before we would run, she would say, “This is going to suck,” and wink at me. I’m not sure if she was being sexual. But in my brain, it was sexual. I masturbated to pictures of her in a bathing suit on Facebook. That’s so wrong, but f*ck, I did it, so I have to admit it.

I didn’t flirt with Betsy. I don’t I think I did. But we became friends, and I liked talking to her at every practice. Listen. I loved Carolina. She was my goddamn soul mate. She was. But there was so much crap between us. So heavy. Even though I had forgiven her for kissing Alexander, I had not forgotten. I couldn’t. And even though she had forgiven me for not telling her about our parents, she never quite believed me that I was telling her everything. So we’d have fights about stupid small new stuff even though it was really about big old stuff.

And then there was that day and night when we thought we were pregnant. You can’t go back in time and pretend you almost weren’t going to be a mom and dad together. It’s like we were living this life as teenage kids in love while at the same time living that life as kids having a baby at the same time. It was so much. Too much. We carried both those lives everywhere.

With Betsy, it was only fun. It was only smiles and jokes. There was nothing sad or mad or exhausting about talking to her and hanging with her, ever.

Yeah. Okay. A few weeks before finals, Carolina and I were in my basement and we started having sex and I couldn’t stop closing my eyes and imagining she was Betsy Kwon. Just couldn’t stop. It made me so excited I came super fast.

Crap. So. Yeah. I felt like such a fake. Such a liar. Such a cheat even if I hadn’t actually cheated. I hated myself again. Carolina is my soul mate, right, and I’m picturing another girl when we are having sex?

Maybe … maybe … that means she’s not my soul mate. Does it? Can you imagine another girl during sex and still be in love with your girlfriend? I asked Google. I hated all the answers. Nobody knows anything. Man.

When it happened a second time, you know, me imagining Betsy while I was with Carolina, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep kissing Carolina when I couldn’t stop thinking of another girl. I didn’t mind being miserable or mad or alone … but I couldn’t be a liar. And whenever I thought of Betsy when I was with Carolina, I felt like such a liar I wanted to bash my head against the wall until I passed out.

*

I decided to wait until after finals. It was the nice thing to do. If I broke up with Carolina before finals, she might have cried and been so upset, she would fail her tests. Probably not fail. She’s too smart for that. But maybe get a B again. I wanted her to get straight As. I wanted her to go to Stanford or Harvard and then do these awesome things in life. I just didn’t think I could be with her while she did it. Because even when we are forty years old, wouldn’t I look at her and think: “She kissed Alexander Taylor in his goddamn 4Runner”? I didn’t want to think about that the rest of my life.

I wanted to be a kid again. Just a teenager. I’d been grown-up so long. Even before Carolina. With my mom and her crap and moving and then all the Carolina stuff. Damn. I just wanted to be a kid. Just laugh and smile with Betsy Kwon.

I loved Carolina. I still loved her so much my stomach got cramps. But it was so much work loving her. We were so old together. I wanted to be young with someone else. I wanted to be a kid. And you can’t be a kid with your soul mate, not forever.





85

Carolina can walk alone

“Carolina,” Trevor said after we ordered at a sandwich place called Uncle Josh’s. He had a look on his face. Oh my gosh, he had this look.

“Yeah?”

“I think…” But he couldn’t say any more.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” he said back, “but … I think…”