After the dance ended, it was the student council’s job to make sure the decorations were taken down and the leftover food was cleaned up. Most of the students were already gone. Just a few people stuck around, and I was the only one really working. Coach Fallon led me around, pointing out all the stepped-on candy corns and sticky spots on his gym floor. I wanted so badly to tell him that it was his beloved athletes who had decided to throw candy at each other, whose bumping and grinding had sloshed the soda out of their cans. Not me. Not the girl who had to clean up everyone else’s good time, like Cinderella.
Autumn sat in the bleachers, talking to Marci and a few other girls. I was pissed that she wasn’t helping clean up. The longer I had to stay here, the longer it would take before we could get back to my house. I was exhausted, and I could only imagine how tired Autumn felt. Once she’d left me to go dance with Marci, she hadn’t stopped until the last song. She’d ignored me practically the whole night.
After Connor left the dance, I kept touching the piece of paper in my pocket. Like I needed to make sure I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing up. Because he walked right past me on his way out the door, without a second look. I guessed I really did embarrass him.
“Hey,” Autumn said, coming up behind me. “A bunch of people are going out to Bobby Doyle’s house.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So?”
“So…I’m going to stop by there for a little while. Do you want to come?”
“I thought you were sleeping over.” I could hear the hurt in my voice. I hated it.
“I still am. I’m just taking a slight detour first. For an hour, tops.”
It wasn’t even an invitation. It was an ultimatum.
I looked over her shoulder at Marci and the other girls. They watched the two of us, somewhat impatiently. I was obviously holding up their evening, only I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to make this easy for Autumn. So I turned and started walking away from her, toward the supply closet. Autumn followed, but slowly, like a child being dragged through a department store.
“I don’t get it,” I said, once we were out of view of everyone else. “Marci Cooperstein was a complete bitch to you, and now you’re ditching me for her to go to some party full of jerks who’ve made fun of you.” Even if a part of me wanted to go, I couldn’t. Connor was in all likelihood going to be there. I didn’t want to make it seem like I was suddenly chasing after him, or whatever it was that Autumn was chasing after.
“God, Natalie! It’s just a party. And I’m not ditching you. I want you to come.” Autumn dropped her head back. “Marci apologized, and I forgave her. It’s over.”
I pulled open the supply closet and chucked the broom inside. “I’m going home,” I told her. “You can do what you want.”
And that’s exactly what Autumn did. Without even saying good-bye.
An hour later, I pulled into our driveway. As I walked toward the house, I crammed my cardboard airplane into one of the trash cans. Amelia Earhart had crashed and burned.
Mom and Dad were in the living room. Dad was asleep, Mom curled up in his arms. “How was the dance?” she whispered. And then, glancing behind me with a bit of surprise, she asked, “Where’s Autumn?”
“She felt sick,” I lied, and headed upstairs.
Cardboard scraps and art supplies were all over my room. I didn’t want to bother cleaning them up, so I threw everything in a pile on the floor, shut off the lights, and climbed into my bed.
I lay awake, picturing Autumn at the party. I wondered if she was having fun. She probably was. I bet Marci was making sure of that. She wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by. She was probably talking about me, telling Autumn she’d done the right thing by leaving me behind.
As mad as I was at Autumn, I still worried about her. Despite the fact that she’d basically broken my heart, I hoped that Autumn wouldn’t get made fun of by anyone. Lord knows that Marci wouldn’t stand up for her. I put my cell phone next to my pillow, just in case I got a teary phone call from her. So I could be there for Autumn, like I always was.
I closed my eyes. I tried to sleep.
But I couldn’t. Especially knowing that I’d have to lie there all night, alone, thinking about Autumn at that party, without me.
I found Connor’s number crumpled in the pocket of my pants. Midnight had come and gone, but it didn’t matter. I flipped open my phone and pounded out a text.
Hey
Then I waited for what seemed like an hour, feeling dizzy and pathetic. Maybe he was at the party. Maybe he’d hold up his phone and show it to everyone. A trophy of my utter humiliation.
My phone vibrated.
Come over
And the next thing I knew, I was sneaking out of my room.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I drove up the long, private road that led to the Hughes Christmas Tree Farm. My headlights flashed across a bunch of cheerful hand-painted signs, nailed to wooden posts and placed every hundred feet along the drainage ditch. VISIT US IN SPRING. HAYRIDES. TRY OUR PUMPKIN BUTTER! They looked weirdly foreboding in the middle of the night.
I ignored the turn for visitors parking, because there was no way I was walking alone in the dark. Instead, I kept driving until I reached the top of his driveway. I killed the engine and cut the lights.
Connor’s house sat at the foot of a hill—a huge hunter green Victorian with white wooden shutters on every window and a wraparound front porch. The front door had one of those screens that always slam with a thunderclap. Humongous pumpkins with gnarled stems were set out on every step, along with neatly tied bales of hay. The windows were dark, except for a soft kitchen light casting down on a stove and shiny red tea-kettle. The whole place looked fake, like a house in a painting.
I flipped open my phone to text Connor—and then snapped it shut. Because it occurred to me that Connor might have fallen asleep, even though I’d rushed right over. Or maybe he’d passed out, since he’d obviously been drinking before the dance. A deep embarrassment burned so hot that I opened my window a crack. I would die if Connor saw my text the next morning. He’d know that I’d come here only to drive back home when he hadn’t woken up. Those are the kinds of stories people laugh about forever. It would ruin the rest of my senior year. So I came up with a new plan—if I didn’t text him, I could say that I was the one who’d decided against coming. That I had stood him up.
Then I saw him come out from around the side of the house. He’d changed out of his prisoner costume and into a navy hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a gray wool hat. He walked slowly, confidently. He pulled a hand out of his pocket to wave.
I sucked in a big breath. Okay. This was happening. I was here, he was here, and, in all likelihood, we were going to hook up. As straightforward as that seemed, the moment still felt completely surreal. But I swallowed those feelings down, because I wanted to look relaxed. Like this wasn’t a big deal. Because it wasn’t. He wasn’t. Maybe to some other girls at school, to girls like Spencer, but not to me.
As soon as Spencer crossed my mind, I started thinking about the things she’d said at girls’ night. Maybe she did know what she was talking about. I knew what I wanted from Connor tonight. I wanted to forget about Autumn. I wanted company. So long as I wasn’t looking for anything more than a distraction, what was wrong with coming here? I wasn’t some hopeless romantic, praying that Connor might fall in love with me. In fact, I wanted nothing even close to that. The key was having the power. Using it to get what I wanted. So I got out of the car and casually leaned against my door. I waited for him to come to me.
“Hey,” he whispered. “You made it.”
“Yeah,” I said, and stared off into the dark. “I thought you might be at Bobby’s party.”
“I was. But I left when I got your text.” He smiled and my entire body tensed up. “So…do you want to come inside?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going inside. What if your parents wake up?”
He spread his feet apart and rocked his we
ight from side to side. “They’re not going to wake up,” he assured me.
I couldn’t help but think of all the other girls he’d probably done this with.
I shook my head. “No way.”
He glanced in my backseat. “We could hang out in your car.”
“Ew. Come on.”
“All right, all right,” he said, suddenly sounding tired. We were at an impasse. The thing was, I didn’t want to go home.
Something in the distance caught his attention. He turned back, excited. “Look, I’ve got an idea. Stay here.”
“Okay…,” I said, but it came out like a question. Probably because I had no idea what he had in mind.
He jogged off back to his house, and I was left there, standing alone.
Three mini forests stretched out beyond Connor’s house—one to the left, one to the right, and one up the hill. Pine trees were planted in neat rows, like corn. Behind me, there was a gift store made to look like a shed. I saw Christmas ornaments hanging inside, homemade jellies and pantry stuff, and scented candles in tiny mason jars. Planted next to the store was a sizable vegetable garden.
My family had never gotten a Christmas tree from here because they were way too expensive. And after a big long debate on whether we could justify the ecological repercussions of getting a tree, we went to Home Depot, where they set up a little chain-link pen in the parking lot. Those trees were all twenty bucks. Here, you paid for the experience.
Connor came back out of his house. He had a blanket slung over his shoulder and a tin lantern. “Come on, Sterling,” he said, and pointed to the woods off to his left. “Let’s go for a walk.”
I followed him up a narrow path through the evergreen trees. We didn’t talk, probably because I stayed a few steps behind him. I couldn’t stop looking around. Most of the trees were really tall, but some were the same height as me. I reached out and touched the needles, and they varied as much as the sizes. Sharp, soft, waxy. Little piles of hay had been piled around each tree trunk—to keep them warm, I guessed. It was pretty cold out. I could see my breath. And it was quiet. Freakishly quiet. The night sky was pricked by a million more stars than I could ever see from my house, stars so small they looked like dust.
At the very back edge of the property, we reached a shed with wooden shingles and a pitched roof. It looked like it could be a little kid’s playhouse.
Connor fiddled with a padlock, the light from his lantern swishing across the knotted, rough shed walls and brightening the first few fir trees around us.
“We don’t use this shed much, except in December,” he explained as he jiggled the key. He gave the door a hard tug, but it wouldn’t open. Then, when he tried to pull the key out, it got stuck inside the lock. He cursed under his breath.
I waited behind him, hands pushed down deep into the front pockets of my jeans. “It’s getting late,” I told him, sounding impatient because it was the middle of the night and I was finding it harder with every passing second not to turn around and race back to my car.
Click.
Connor unlatched the padlock and opened the door. The metal hinges squeaked like out-of-tune violin strings. I followed him inside.
The shed smelled like we had climbed up into one of the pine trees—sweet and syrupy green. It was so intense, it made me woozy. I felt my way through the darkness and caught my knee on something. A clatter interrupted the stillness.
Connor held the lantern in my direction. “You okay?” A rack of old metal handsaws appeared next to me, piled high and haphazardly. I’d knocked a few on the floor.
As I assured Connor that I was fine, I reminded myself that we were deep in the woods, so no one would have heard the noise, no one would find us here. But I still felt exposed, vulnerable, with his light trained on me. So I ducked down to the shadows to pick up what had fallen.
Connor hung the lantern from a nail over the door. It cast a dull light on the crowded space. I saw more equipment—bundles of holiday lights, some vintage sleds, a wheelbarrow. He moved some things around, restacking bags of seed and rolls of burlap, and spread the wool blanket down on the small space he’d cleared. He sat down, Indian style, and held out his hand for me.
I hated that I was breathing so hard, panting white clouds of hot breath into the cold air. I knew Connor could tell I was nervous. He didn’t know what to do or say. I could see him going over it all in his head. He gave me his number, and I called him and came here. I should know what’s next. Except I hesitated, and his hand dropped.
I finally sat next to him, and stretched my legs out. Immediately, they started to quiver, but before he could notice, I leaned in and kissed him fast. I pressed my lips against his, my hair falling around our faces.
He pulled away before I had a chance to open my mouth.
Doubt crept through me. My thoughts shouted inside my head. Get up, Natalie! Go back to the car!
Then Connor pushed some the hair out of my face and threaded it behind my ear. His movements were softer and slower than mine. He leaned in close to my face, his eyes dark but glittering, like two lakes in wintertime.
And then he kissed me. This time with lips parted, as if he was whispering into my mouth. I closed my eyes and tried to catch the beat and the rhythm of how this all went. His hands moved up to my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. He was warm—hot, even. I wrapped my arms around his neck, tucked my fingers down into the back of his collar. My whole body folded into his warmth, and then we both lay down. Connor stopped kissing me and grabbed the corners of the blanket, wrapping it around us. We baked inside. It was so hot, and we were moving and pressing and shifting all over each other. My mind completely shut off, and we became the working parts of a motor, circular and precise and perfect.
I was nervous that Connor might try to take things further than I wanted to go, but he didn’t.
We only stopped kissing to catch our breath.
This was my least favorite part, when Connor and I were forced to make small talk to fill the awkward pauses.
He asked me seven different times if I wanted some water. I finally said sure, but when I realized that he’d have to go back to the house to get it, I told him to forget it. At some point I asked him if he had any siblings, because it seemed like the kind of basic information you should know about someone you’re making out with. I learned he had three older sisters, and forgot their names immediately, although I was pretty sure they all started with the letter C. Connor was the baby. He seemed proud of this, which I found strange.
A very, very small part of me wanted a miracle to happen, where Connor would pull back from my lips and say something profound or beautifully poetic. Because when he touched me, things felt just shy of perfect. Nothing like that happened, though, so instead I let myself enjoy the way he ran his hands through my hair. I couldn’t believe how amazing a simple gesture like that could make me feel, as if my veins were suddenly pumping electricity and not blood.
After a while, the kissing slowed down, and we just lay together, my head on his chest. I hadn’t thought about my fight with Autumn since I’d gotten in the car to come here. But I was thinking about her now, wondering if she’d gone home after the party, or if she’d slept over at Marci’s house.
I lifted my head and stared down at Connor’s sweatshirt, at the Ross Academy football stitched on the center. Being here was like spending the night tucked away in a dream. I was able to forget all my problems for a while. Except I was starting to wake up.
“I’d better get going,” I said. I started looking around for my coat.
“Here.” He stepped into a dark corner and reappeared with it. It had gotten some sawdust on it, and he brushed it off.
When I took it, I meant to say thank you. But instead I said, “No one can know that I came here to see you. Okay?” He made a strange face, like he didn’t understand. “I don’t want to be your girlfriend or anything like that.” I instantly regretted saying this—not because I didn’t mean it, but because it
was so presumptuous.
He looked like he was trying to see whether or not I was joking. And then he grabbed me and pulled me close. “You’re funny, Sterling.” He leaned to kiss me, and I let him, but it was a last kiss, not the start of anything else.
And then I walked to my car by myself, leaving Connor behind to lock up. I left it all behind in the shed. It belonged there. It was not going to be a part of the rest of my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When I woke up around noon, it was as if I’d been dipped in pine sap. Even with my face buried in my pillow, I could still smell the sharply sweet scent. The sheets felt extraordinarily cool and smooth compared with Connor’s wool blanket. My body ached from rolling around on the unforgiving wood floor of the shed. But it was a good, secret ache.
That feeling lasted pretty much the whole day, distracting me from my fight with Autumn. I rationed my memories with Connor, taking little sips, just enough to quench my thirst. I had to be careful with what I had until I could get more.
I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the weekend, and he didn’t hear from me. I had homework and SAT prep. I had to clean my room and my bathroom; I had to get my life in order. It wasn’t like I had my cell in my hand, waiting for his call.
If anything, I was waiting for Autumn’s.
I figured it was a case of us both needing time to cool down, a little space from each other. I knew we’d work things out soon. After all, we were best friends. We’d never even really gotten into a fight before, not one like this. So I wasn’t scared. If anything, it was preparation for what was to come with college. We’d have to get used to spending time apart.
But my mom and dad were suspicious. They kept coming upstairs to check on me, bringing food and drinks and giving me first crack at the Sunday newspaper. I didn’t want to talk about my fight with Autumn, but I did invite my mom into my room to watch Singin’ in the Rain—the next movie on the AFI list. I didn’t feel bad about watching it without Autumn, either. It seemed a fitting punishment. And the movie was good, too. Corny and romantic. She would have liked it.