Shuffle, Repeat(33)

I suddenly spring up, nearly knocking my empty mug off the counter. “Let’s go out on the porch.”

“It’s really cold.”

“I know, but at least we’ll be alone.”

The word “alone” motivates him, because five minutes later, we’re zipped and bundled and Itch has me pressed up against one of the wooden supports. My eyes are closed and my head is tilted back so his mouth can reach mine. I know his hands are roaming up and down my sides, but I can barely sense them. Everything is clumsy and muffled, wrapped as we are in all this winter wear.

And there’s no more ignoring the truth: I hate this. I hate everything about it. I don’t hate Itch, but I hate the way I’m feeling. Or rather, the way I’m not feeling what I’m supposed to be feeling.

In fact—and somewhat ironically—kissing Itch is making me feel itchy. Itchy in my soul. Like I’m a little kid waiting for my mother to try on clothing at the mall and I just can’t stand being there anymore. Like breaking out of Itch’s arms and running screaming into the darkness, and then maybe hiding behind a tree or something, like that would be a totally reasonable thing to do.

This is not good.

It seems endless—the kissing—but I don’t know a way to stop it without telling him the truth, without embarking on an interminable discussion that is going to be way more painful than his tongue in my mouth.

So I endure.

I go through the motions until finally—finally—Itch is driving away and I’m waving from the porch with a massive sense of relief washing over me. I know I need to savor it, live in this reprieve, because it’s going to go away and only awful, tremendous, crushing guilt will remain.

But right now, right this second, I couldn’t be happier that my boyfriend is gone.





Mom is on campus, finishing up some paperwork. I have already showered, eaten breakfast (who am I kidding—brunch), and unloaded the dishwasher. I throw a load of laundry into the washing machine and look around for something else to do, but the house is clean, I have no schoolwork, and there’s nothing I want to watch.

I text Lily to see if she wants to go to the mall, but she’s rehearsing for her studio’s winter recital. I try Shaun, but of course he doesn’t text back. I call Darbs, but her mom is making her watch the twins while she goes Christmas shopping. She invites me over, and I politely decline. The last time I helped Darbs with the twins, we took our eyes off them for ten minutes and they pulled all the sheets off her parents’ bed. By the time we realized what was going on, they had tied the bedding into a long rope and one twin was being lowered out the upstairs bedroom window. Those kids stress me out. And it’s not like I have a way to get to their house, anyway.

Crap. The first day of break and I’m already bored.

I know I should take some time to figure out what I’m going to do about Itch, but I have a full two weeks until he’s back. Maybe I’ll feel differently when we’ve been apart for a little while. Maybe I’ll miss him.

My phone buzzes, and I’m basically a ninja, I grab it so fast. My brain reflexes, however, are a little slower. It takes me a moment of staring at it to realize who the text is from.

Oliver.

Apparently he was telling Marley—his mom—about our shared playlist, and there was something he didn’t know how to explain.


what’s the diff between punk & alt?



I flop down across my bed to message him back, but I’m not even halfway through when I realize it’s complicated enough to warrant a phone call. Oliver picks up immediately. “You must miss me.”

“Not even close,” I tell him. “But I’m hardly going to type the history of music to you on a phone. It would devalue the importance of the lesson you so sorely require.”

“You’re impossible,” he says, but his voice sounds like he’s smiling. “What are you doing?”

“Not much,” I admit, and the phone shivers in my hand.

“Click on the link.” He hangs up.

“Wait,” I say into empty air. “I still haven’t educated you.”

And he calls me impossible.

I pull up the new message from Oliver. It’s a link to…

A game?

Oliver has sent me an invite to play a game—a really geeky one—through our phones. When I accept the invitation, I find that it’s a strategy game that is (loosely) based on Greek mythology. It’s peopled by little animated figures who wear winged sandals or carry lyres or wield thunderbolts. They stand around on a battlefield and make moves that the players assign them. Oliver’s opening gambit involves a long-haired demigoddess eating a “Pomegranate of Power” before leaping astride a Pegasus and galloping in the direction of my little huddle of figures.

Despite this possibly being the actual dorkiest thing I’ve ever done, I touch the screen to deploy an “Army of Angry Muses” toward Oliver’s Pegasus. He responds with a “Whirlwind Gorgon Attack” followed by a “Trident to the Face”…

And the battle is on.

? ? ?

“Yes!” I shout with a fist pump. It startles my mother, who drops the scissors she’s using to snip mint leaves. She leans down to pick them up off the floor.

“June,” she says. “I could have taken off a toe.”