You Know Me Well(17)

And now … he’s so excited, he’s practically beaming that we didn’t get caught, and I don’t want him to be happy for me.

I want him to be happy with me.

But I don’t know how to get there. I’ve never known how to get there.

“I swear,” he goes on, “I had no idea how much fun that was going to be. Leave this place behind and try something else on for size. Or someone else, ha ha. You know how I am. More than anyone, you know how I am. So I’m sure you can appreciate it when I tell you that you have one hundred percent won me over.”

“To what?” I ask.

“To adventure! To the city! To pride, ha ha.”

I know I should be asking him more about his night. But the best I can do is, “So you told Taylor you were in college?”

“Nope. I told him the truth. How weird is that? And even weirder? He skipped kindergarten, so he’s only a year older than me. Not that he was looking for someone from high school. Honestly, I think he made his approach partly because he saw me with you and was sure you had to be in college to be on the bar like that. You wild man, you.”

He’s being playful, even appreciative. But it feels just as crummy as snarkiness would.

“You know what?” I tell him. “I almost forgot. I actually have to go to the library. For this report. About Sylvia Plath.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll have a Plathora of material for you,” he says. I get up, but he doesn’t do the same.

“You coming?” I ask. I still want to be with him. I just don’t want to be talking about his weekend right now.

“Nah,” he says, taking out his phone. “I’m going to stay here and chat a little with Taylor. He was texting me during first period, but Ms. Gold’s ruthless when it comes to phones in her class.”

I should leave him to it. It shouldn’t really matter. But it matters. Some pride in me won’t allow me to pretend it doesn’t.

“So are you two, like, together now?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow. “Because we’re texting? Are you with Katie Cleary now because you went to a party together? It is what it is, and I don’t know what it is yet. I’m just trying to get to the point where I see if I can find out. ’Til then, it’s just flirting.”

“And what about us? Do we just stop?”

He looks at me, genuinely mystified, and says, “Stop what?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Never mind.”

I walk away before I can say anything else. I wanted him to be the jealous one. But now I’m the jealous one. The jealous and confused one.

I head to the library because I can’t think of anywhere else to go. I wish I knew where Katie was. I wish there was a way I could text Ryan and have him be as excited by that text as he’d be by one from Taylor.

Dave Hughes, a guy from the team, sees me walk into the library and waves me over. I wonder if he’s going to ask me about the party and the mansion, but it ends up he’s just being friendly. He asks me how my weekend was. I tell him it was fine. He clears off some of his stuff so I can sit down. I put my head down and try to sleep.

“Good ol’ Monday morning,” Dave says.

I nod on the desk.

“It’s gonna get better,” he tells me. Because that’s what people say.

I am already mapping out the rest of the day. Usually lunch would be the next significant part, because that would be the next time I’d see Ryan. But now I’m not sure. I’m thinking I should skip it. I wish Katie had the same lunch period as me. But I’m going to have to wait until sixth period to see her.

I hope she’ll have better news than I do.





6

Kate

When we were little kids, Lehna and I painted a mural in my garage. It’s a fairy-tale scene, a little too Disney for my taste now. There are towers and dragons and a multitude of girls with long hair. There’s a prince, but I swear the prince is really a girl in disguise. I’ve never seen such a delicate boy. In the sky, hovering over a castle, is my name. On the other side, over one of the dragons, is Lehna’s. It’s that simple. No and, no friends forever. Just this:





KATIE LEHNA


Right now—as I stand in front of my locker knowing that Lehna will show up at hers any second and that when she does we’ll have to either look at each other for the first time since I drove away or, even worse, not look at each other—I think of all the tiny details we painted. The rings on the fingers of the princesses. The scales on the bodies of the dragons. So many rays of the sun, and so many blades of grass, and so many tiny pairs of shoes that hover above the ground because we didn’t want the colors to mix or smudge.

I spent most of yesterday in the garage, staring at it. I had to move all these boxes and plastic bins away from the wall so that I had a clear view. My parents had no idea what I was doing. They kept walking past the open garage door and pretending not to look in, maybe hoping I’d taken on an epic task of organization, only to discover that I was sitting on a bin of Christmas decorations, staring at a wall.

I took a break for lunch. Ate a sandwich in the driveway in the sun.

At around three, my mom came in carrying her laptop.

“Aunt Gina just called. Your photo is on The Daily Dish! It’s not of you—don’t get too excited—but you’re in the background.”