Shuffle, Repeat(70)

“Nothing can ever live up to your expectations, because what you think this year is supposed to be, it’s too much! None of it is real.” It’s an eruption now. All flame and smoke and heat. I’m furious and I’m letting all that fury blaze through me, right out at Oliver. “You’re going to get your diploma and throw your hat in the air, and it’ll all just be done. I don’t want to be a part of that!”

“You don’t want to be a part of anything!” Oliver yells back.

Miss Emily is now fluttering nearby. She is young and sweet and I think she has a toddler at home. Judging by the terrified look on her face, she has never dealt with two teenagers in an all-out verbal war.

“You have no idea,” I tell Oliver. “You literally know nothing about me.”

“I know that you’re a coward. I know you’re so terrified of every pothole that you don’t ever take the ride. Actually”—he stops, mouth open, palms facing upward—“you don’t even learn to drive the car!” Oliver laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that rings out among the books. I part my lips to speak, to tell him what an ass he’s being, or maybe to find a reset button so everything can go back to how it was, but Oliver is on a roll. An enraged roll. “When? When, June?”

“When what?” I spit out. “When will you shut up and go away?”

“In your superior estimation, when does it start to matter? College? Do you start giving a shit in college? Do you have any idea how many people don’t use their college degree as adults? Tell you what, I’ll look that up. I’ll get an extra effing Aerosmith song because some percentage of the global population doesn’t use their degree!”

Miss Emily makes a clucking noise and we both ignore her.

“You need to calm down,” I tell Oliver, but he’s not even close to listening.

“Look at my parents, June! They didn’t start dating in high school. They got together in college. And now here they are, two kids later, and they’re splitting up, making your opinion crap. You don’t have a philosophy. You have a permission slip! It’s your lame way of getting yourself off the hook for anything you do. It’s license to be an *.” He pauses, and it’s like he’s suddenly been doused with a giant, sobering wave. All his fire and heat cools down at once. “But, June, you’re not an *, are you? Say it. Please say it.” His eyes are killing me. “Say that you’re not an *.”

But I can’t say that. I can’t say it because I have to do something that is so much harder, so much more painful. I can’t say it because my ashes are already blowing away, down the street and out into the world. Instead, I say something else. I say the thing that finally puts an end to it all.

“The night of the prank, when you had to drive your mom home, do you know what our moms were drinking?” The next words fly out of my mouth like arrows. “Several bottles of your dad’s best wine.”

There’s no waiting. The realization breaks hard and ugly across Oliver’s face. “You knew,” he breathes. “You knew about my parents.”

“I knew way before that.” The nail slides into the coffin of us like it’s going home. “Remember the morning you came to get me and you were eating something out of a napkin because your mother slept in and didn’t make you breakfast, even though she always makes you breakfast, and you thought she was upstairs with a headache?”

“No,” says Oliver, not because he can’t remember it, but because he can and he doesn’t want it to be true.

“She was at my house. That’s the night she found out your dad was cheating on her. That’s how long it’s been. That’s how long I’ve known. So I guess you’re right, Oliver. You win, like you always win. I’m an *.”

I watch as the debris of his rage washes out to sea, and the waves of what is left crash over him, one by mind-numbing one.

Disbelief. Realization. Acceptance.

Betrayal.

“I’m sorry.” It’s Miss Emily. She’s stepped closer, and now she’s cracking her slender knuckles and speaking in a voice just over a whisper. “You seem to be in the middle of something, but I have to ask you to take it outside.”

“I’m going,” Oliver tells her. “Sorry we disturbed the library.” He turns back to me, and for just a second, I wonder if maybe someone did find that reset button, and maybe this can become a bad dream, a nightmare that never happened. But then Oliver’s face twists with a new emotion, one I’ve never seen before when he’s looked at me.

Disgust.

“You used the word ‘literally’ wrong,” he spits out, and then he whirls and stalks away.

This time, I know it’s for good.

It’s for the best.





Another rural intersection. Another student trudging up the bus steps, glancing around for an empty seat, dropping onto the hard vinyl, and staring out the window as the bus lumbers back onto the street in a cloud of exhaust. Same as it’s been for the past forty-five minutes and will be for the next forty-five.

Same as it was yesterday.

Same as it will be tomorrow.

? ? ?

Just like I have for the past two weeks, I wait to go into the physics room until the very last second of break. If the bell is about to ring, there’s no time for conversation with Ainsley.