Leah on the Offbeat(13)

My cheeks burn. “It’s fine. I’ll give her space.”

Anna taps her toe against mine. “I know you’re worried about her. I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

I shrug. “Do whatever you want.”

So, now everything’s off-kilter. I feel heartless, not texting Morgan—though Anna made it pretty clear that I shouldn’t. But all through class, I can’t stop picturing Morgan holed up in her house, surrounded by pictures of bulldogs. Red and black everywhere. She must be losing her mind. I think I know how she’s feeling. I mean, I’ve never been rejected from a school. But I know what it’s like to not be good enough, in some bone-deep fundamental way.

Not that I’m making this about me. For example, I haven’t given a shred of attention to the upcoming campus tour and whether Abby might still want to go with me.

“Leah,” Simon hisses, poking me.

I snap back to earth. Ms. Livingstone is giving me a Look. “I assume you’re deep in thought about the French Revolution, Ms. Burke. Care to weigh in?”

My cheeks burn. “Yes. I’m. Um.”

Oh God. Ms. Livingstone can smell the bullshit. Why yes, I’d like to weigh in. About the French Revolution. Not about road tripping to Athens with Abby Suso. Not that I’m considering road tripping to Athens with Abby Suso.

“Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette draft a declaration,” Simon blurts.

“Mr. Spier, memorizing the Hamilton soundtrack is not going to save you on the AP Euro exam.”

A bunch of people snicker. Ms. Livingstone shakes her head and calls on someone else. So, I kick Simon’s foot, and when he looks up, I smile. “Thanks.”

“No prob.” He smiles back.





6


“SO, LET’S TALK LOVE ACTUALLY,” Bram says, leaning toward me. Garrett’s finally out of earshot, scoping out the dessert counter. Which is actually the only counter, because we’re at Henri’s, and Henri’s is a bakery. Sorry, but cupcakes are a dinner food—fight me.

I glance back to make sure Garrett’s fully absorbed in pastries and iced doughnuts before turning back to Bram. “Okay, so, Simon may kill me for telling you this.”

“Of course. He’s very secretive,” Bram says, and we grin at each other. Simon Spier may be the least secretive person on the planet.

“Anyway, I didn’t know about this until last year, but apparently—” I pause to bite into my cupcake. “Apparently, our very own Simon Spier has written a single work of Love Actually fanfiction.”

Bram’s eyes light up. “Okay.”

“And I have reason to believe it’s on fanfiction.net.”

“Are you serious?” He presses his fist to his mouth.

“But he won’t tell us his pen name.”

“I bet we can figure it out.” Bram’s already pulling his phone out. “Fanfiction dot org?”

“Dot net.”

“Okay.” He’s quiet for a moment, scrolling.

“I think there are like a hundred stories in the whole fandom. Abby and I were able to narrow it down to fifteen possibilities.”

“Oh, so you’ve already been working on this.”

“I tried for weeks, Bram. Weeks.”

Junior year, right after Abby moved here.

We were all spending the night at Morgan’s, and her mom had exiled the boys to the guest room after an illuminating game of Truth or Dare. Morgan and Anna fell asleep pretty quickly, but Abby scooted all her blankets next to mine on the floor—on our stomachs, side by side. “Leah, we have to find it,” she whispered. She was still a little tipsy from Truth or Dare, and I was somehow tipsy by association. I had the full list of Love Actually stories pulled up on my phone.

“Do we start at the top?”

“Or we could start with the Keira Knightley self-insert sex erotica,” said Abby.

I giggled. “Sex erotica?”

“Yes.”

“As opposed to sex-free erotica?”

“I mean, I’d read that, too,” she said. “Okay, this one.”

And so we started. Right away, we could rule out a few grammatical shitstorms, along with anything that seemed too technically knowledgeable about sex. “There’s no way,” I’d insisted. “I guarantee you—I would literally bet you a million dollars that Simon Spier has never heard of the perineum.”

“I concur,” Abby said, tapping the back arrow. I’ve always thought that was such an intimate thing to do: touching the screen of another person’s phone. She opened the next story. It was weird. Once we knew Simon had written one of them, it started to feel like he could have written any of them. Or all of them. Under ninety different pen names. Maybe all those times he said he was checking his email, he was actually writing sex erotica.

Then she shifted slightly under her blankets, and her whole body pressed against mine. My right side to her left. And I forgot how to speak.

“It’s this one,” Bram says, jolting me back to the present. He slides his phone toward me on the table.

“No, you did not just find Simon Spier’s secret fanfiction in five minutes.”

“I did.” He smiles. “I’m a hundred percent sure.”