Where It Began(56)

pologuy: r u there?



gabs123: i’m here. i get it. u don’t have to worry about me so much. i can handle it. i vant to be alone, dahlink.



pologuy: yeah but nobody really vants to be alone and i can’t b with u there. r u going to be ok? can u do this?



gabs123: i get it. ur with me now and I’m fine with it. i can totally do this.





Only what if I can’t?

I would so have had a wooden nose all the way out the window and across the street if I were a magic puppet. And I say to myself: Oh Gabriella, you are such a genius relationship strategist, good breather, and all-round desirable girl, he’ll be with you in no time. At which point the Pinocchio nose extends itself further north, up toward Mulholland Drive.





pologuy: oh and u should check outside ur laundry room



gabs123: ?



pologuy: just do it





I go clomping down the stairs so fast and loud that John yells, “Be careful!” from the den, which has to be an all-time first. I plow through the dark laundry room and just outside the back door, at the edge of the redwood landing, there’s a gift bag, the understated ritzy kind with leaves woven into the thick paper of it. Inside the bag, there’s a square, gold box that’s filled with rows and rows of heart-shaped Belgian chocolates, just the dark mocha ones that I like, and not Billy’s usual little box missing the pilfered truffles. This box is entirely full of perfect candies, perfect hearts, completely perfect. And on the gold-striped paper that lines the lid, he’s written, “You’re the one.”

And I think, Okay, maybe I can do this.

I’m the one.





XLIV


THINKING THIS IS MAYBE NOT THE BEST TIME TO offend Lisa or Anita by picking one and not the other to carpool with, I say my parents are going to take me to school, even though my parents are not what you’d call thrilled to get out of bed when it’s still dark out. Amazingly, John shows up in the kitchen looking like he’s dressed for high school circa 1962, in the navy blue blazer and khaki pants, to drive me to Winston.

He keeps saying “Gabs,” so at least he has my name right, but I am already so wigged out, the thought of having to live through another bizarro conversation that involves tears running down his face is more than I can take. So I just stare straight ahead of me and clench my teeth when tempted to answer.

He is using his GPS, which gives you some idea of how often he has driven to Winston since seventh grade, when carpool turned out not to be a business op. Navigating the carpool line is completely beyond him, so he pulls into the student parking lot where the clay-waxed German cars get to hang with their own kind. Where I get to watch everybody else get out of their carpools still drinking their coffee and eating their Starbucks pastries.

And I go, Gabriella, you’re the one. You can totally do this.

But even though Vivian’s hairdresser came to the house and re-streaked my hair and I have three-quarters-of-an-inch-thick makeup from my hairline to my collarbone, I still look like a mutant being.

“You’re going to do fine,” John says, reaching into the backseat to get me my backpack, patting me on the shoulder. Which still hurts. Which makes me wonder, as I climb out of the car and into the open where everyone can see the beige cover-up ooze down my cheeks in the direct sunlight, where they can stare at me as I try to find an unbruised spot where I can put the shoulder strap of the backpack, exactly how horrible this is going to be.

As it turns out, returning to Winston School as a famous screwup is more than slightly horrible in weird ways I never even anticipated. In the first place, there isn’t enough oxygen and I keep having to gulp air to the point that reminding myself to breathe is completely irrelevant, and in the second place, walking around makes my legs shiver as if they were cold, only they aren’t, and I just want to go sit down somewhere far far away, such as the rings of Saturn.

But I can’t sit down because, in the third place, kids I don’t know and don’t want to know keep coming up to me and expecting me to talk to them between gulping deep breaths.

Not only am I no longer Billy’s public girlfriend, which is bad enough, but I’m suddenly approachable.

Back before I was Billy’s girlfriend, unwanted attention wasn’t exactly my big problem. Now, even though “I don’t want to talk about it” is my new mantra, I can’t keep people away from me. Kids I barely know the names of have a strange compulsion to share what screwups they are so we can feel bad together between classes.

Like Jenna Marx, who used to be bulimic. What possibly could have made her want to share this with me? By the candy machine in the gym on her way to tennis?

Like Roy Warner, who smokes pot in the chapel before school on a daily basis, who reeks of it, and is still in Winston School only because he is possibly the richest semi-smart person in the history of the world despite the fact that he’s stoned maybe 100% of the time and because his dad keeps giving Winston large checks. Extremely large checks. So Roy Warner tells me that he understands completely where I’m at, yeah, hey man, he does, oh yeah, he really does, and I just stand there in a state of stupefaction, going, “Thank you, but I just don’t want to talk about it.”

The only people who actually seem to want to get away from me as fast as they can without bumping into something and embarrassing themselves are the decorating committee girls, who grimace ever so slightly and go scuttling off in the other direction. The less civic-minded Muffins just kind of look me over and walk away.