The Romantics(8)

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Gael said.

“Why not?” Sammy leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand.

“Forgive me if I don’t want to tell all my life problems to my little sister and her babysitter,” Gael snapped.

“Hey,” Piper protested, her short light brown hair swinging back and forth as she shook her head. “She’s not my babysitter.” Indignation was written plainly across her eight-and-three-quarters-year-old face. “I told you she’s my French tutor.”

Gael couldn’t help but laugh. Sammy had been babysitting Piper after school since Gael started marching band his sophomore year, but last August, when his parents found out that Sammy would be majoring in French when she started at UNC, they offered to pay her more if French lessons were involved. Now Pipes absolutely abhorred the word babysitter.

Sammy fiddled with a page of her Candide and tipped back in the fancy dining room chair to look him in the eye. “So you’re really not going to tell us why you’re skipping?”

Gael swore that Sammy hadn’t always been this annoying. They’d always been friendly before. When Gael arrived home, Sammy would ask him a few questions about school and friends and the like, then quickly go back to whatever book she was reading, her eyes jutting across the page behind frameless glasses while she waited for his mom to get home with her check.

But since she’d started at UNC, she’d chopped off her hair, dyed it dark chocolaty brown, replaced the mom glasses with those of the nerdy-but-still-very-cool variety, and talked incessantly of annoying things like French writers and the “prison-industrial complex.” His mom ate it up, but Gael found her sudden snobbery a bit . . . fake.

Of course, Sammy had become a lot more annoying now that Gael was coming home earlier. He was forced into daily interactions with an uppity French lit major who thought it was her job to not only take care of his sister but to pry into his life. This hadn’t been a problem until The Ultimate Betrayal. Otherwise known as the Loss of Girlfriend and Best Friend in One. Basically, the end of life as Gael had known it.

(I know, Romantics are such drama queens.)

“You can’t skip something that you quit,” Gael said finally.

“Do your parents know you quit?” Sammy asked. Lately, it seemed like Sammy could go on asking questions forever and ever and ever. It was no wonder she and Piper got along so well.

“Why does it matter to you?”

“They have no idea,” Piper chimed in, closing her book and staring at him accusingly with her wide green eyes. She perched her chin on her hand, imitating Sammy’s gesture.

“Are you okay, though?” Sammy asked, her voice a tad softer. “You don’t seem like the type to just quit things.”

“I’m fine,” he muttered, avoiding Sammy’s eyes. “Now can you just leave me alone?”

Sammy and Piper exchanged identical looks. They made an odd pair—the lanky college hipster and her miniature bespectacled minion. Mercifully, they didn’t say anything more.

True to his new routine, Gael headed for the kitchen pantry and straight to the chocolate stash, which included a trove of fun-size Snickers bars that Anika used to raid. Since the breakup, he’d already discreetly replaced the bag twice. He grabbed three, shoved them into his pockets, and headed to his room without glancing back at Sammy or Piper.

Back in his cave, Gael closed the curtains that his mom opened every morning and popped a movie he’d seen too many times to count into the Blu-ray player. He unwrapped the first Snickers bar, letting himself forget the past week for just a moment; the crinkly coated paper made a strangely comforting sound, even if the taste of the candy reminded him bittersweetly of Anika’s kiss.

Gael was a mess of emotions. Sometimes he felt like Anika was dead, like she’d been replaced by some kind of lookalike robot like in The Stepford Wives—the original one, not the shitty remake. Sometimes he felt like he was dead, like all his insides had been erased, leaving only numbness and emptiness. Sometimes he wanted to call Anika and scream. Sometimes he wanted to beat the shit out of Mason, even though his knuckles were still sore from that band-room punch.

But all the time, no matter what crazy thoughts took over his head, he really just wanted to disappear. To slowly eat his chocolate and melt into the bed. He realized in horror that even his coping method was pathetic, straight out of a girly romantic comedy. He hated romantic comedies.

Gael took another bite of chocolate.

(Another fun fact: Chocolate actually does make you feel better after a breakup, due to the presence of phenylethylamine, the chemical your brain releases when you fall in love.)

The couple of hours before his mom got home was the only time that Gael didn’t have to pretend to be pulled together. He couldn’t bring himself to lose it in front of her. He’d done enough of that last summer, after his parents broke the utterly confounding news. His mom had alternated between breaking down herself and inviting him to her power yoga classes.

Not that weekends at his dad’s were any better. Since the separation, his father had begged Gael to join him on his daily four-mile runs—and a family therapy session or two. If his dad knew that Gael’s own romance had fallen apart, he would almost certainly insist upon it. He’d pass, thanks.

Gael turned down the TV and closed his eyes, hoping against hope to drift quickly to sleep, aka oblivion.