ME: Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, they suck.
RYDER: Ha.
RYDER: They don’t, really. That’s the worst part. I get it. It’s easy to drift apart. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I’d actually managed to make friends here. If I’d moved on, too.
ME: Not to harp on this, but if you’d just ease up on the constant Hamilton bashing, you might be surprised how many friends you’d make.
RYDER: I know. I really am trying.
RYDER: But even if I stopped, I don’t know how simple it would be to make friends. Hamilton’s a small school. You all have known each other forever. I’m an outsider here.
ME: Maybe, but it wouldn’t be too difficult for you. If you’d be cool, people at Hamilton would love you. Especially the girls. You’re fresh meat, a boy we’ve never seen throw up on the school bus or go through the worst parts of puberty. Plus, you’re not a bad-looking guy, you know.
I could not believe I’d just typed that. Mortified doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was true, of course. He was hot, and if he wasn’t such a dick about our hometown, girls probably would have thrown themselves at him. No, not probably. Most definitely.
But I didn’t have to tell him that.
Ryder sent back a smiley face emoji. I sent back one rolling its eyes. And eventually this devolved into an oh-so-sophisticated emoji war. The battle was long and there were many casualties, but eventually, with the peace offering of emoji sushi, a cease-fire was called.
If only it were so easy in real life.
* * *
The next day, though, Ryder was back to being unbearable.
“Mr. Buckley,” he said, raising his hand. “When are we going to start practicing DBQs?”
“Excuse me?”
“DBQs,” Ryder repeated. “It stands for data-based questions. They’ll be on the AP test in the spring.”
“I’m aware what a DBQ is, Mr. Cross. I am the teacher here, after all.”
I expected Ryder to make a snide comment about this, but he managed to restrain himself and instead asked, “So when will we start practicing them?”
“After Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t you think that’s awfully late?”
“Oh dear,” I said. I was less able to restrain myself. “That’s far too late. Did you know that in DC, students start preparing for AP tests just out of utero?”
Ryder turned to face me, mid-eye-roll. “While your hyperbole is ridiculous, we do start preparing way in advance. And our AP test results reflect it.”
“If only you’d spent as much time working on your social skills.”
“You are going to lecture me on social skills?”
“I’m sorry. Do us ignorant country folk here in Hamilton not communicate to your liking?”
“It’s not a problem with everyone in Hamilton.”
“Enough,” Mr. Buckley said. I was actually amazed at how long he’d let this go on. I suspected he got as much entertainment out of the sparring as the rest of the class did.
And … I think I kind of enjoyed it, too.
Honestly, though, it was amazing how funny and pleasant Ryder could be over IM, only to turn around and be a pompous jerk in real life. I was getting some serious whiplash.
Which was why I couldn’t respond to his IMs anymore. No más. I was done. It was already weird enough since, both times, I’d been on Amy’s account. She didn’t know about the second conversation, and I’d had to lie when she asked me if I knew why Ryder had given her a mixtape (seriously? Who has tapes anymore?) of some weird, poorly recorded band and asked if she’d sit with him at lunch.
“No idea,” I’d said. “I mean, we know he likes you…. What did you say?”
“Thank you, but that I always sit with you,” she’d replied.
Well, that was easy enough. Ryder would never sit at a lunch table with me. So I just shrugged.
Lying was easy. What was worse was that these conversations had totally confused my once unwavering disdain for Ryder Cross.
It had been easier when I hated him.
I would. Not. Respond.
Once again, insomnia had me sitting in the Rushes’ rec room well after midnight, only this time I didn’t have any homework left to do. Instead, I was torturing myself by looking up how far all of the colleges Amy was applying to were from Hamilton.
Answer: Really freaking far.
What the hell was I going to do? I hadn’t heard back from any of the jobs I’d applied for, I had no money, and when Amy left for college, I’d essentially be homeless. It wasn’t as if I could keep sneaking into her parents’ house.
Needless to say, I was already feeling a bit depressed and a little lonely when I heard the ping.
“Not falling for it this time, Ryder,” I mumbled.
Ping.
Nope.
Ping.
“Damn it.”
I told myself I was just going to log out of Amy’s e-mail. I told myself I wasn’t going to look at the message. But, as we’ve established, I am a liar, even when I’m talking to myself.
RYDER: Hey, Amy, are you there?
RYDER: I’m sorry. It’s late, and you’re probably not even near your computer. But I just found something out and I need to talk to someone. You were the only person I could think of.
RYDER: Sorry. Never mind.
As much as I wanted to ignore him, I couldn’t. There was something sort of desperate in those messages that I couldn’t just walk away from.
To my surprise, I was … concerned. About Ryder Cross.
ME: Hey, I’m here. What’s going on? Are you okay?
RYDER: Not really.
RYDER: Do you have a few minutes?
I should’ve said no. I should’ve logged off.
But my own loneliness — mixed with my concern and curiosity — got the better of me.
ME: I’ve got all night.
I closed out the other Internet tabs, almost glad for the distraction. I couldn’t keep thinking about Amy leaving me for college. I wanted to go back to covering my ears and pretending it wasn’t happening. And if my only distraction was Ryder, so be it.
RYDER: My friend Aaron called me tonight. I knew something was up when I saw his name on my phone. He hasn’t called me in over a month.
ME: This is the one who’s dating your ex-girlfriend, right? The girl with the terrible name?
RYDER: Right, but it wasn’t about that.
RYDER: He was calling because he saw my dad, and he wanted to warn me.
ME: Warn you about what?
RYDER: He saw my dad leaving our house (Aaron lives next door) with this woman.
RYDER: This model.
He sent a link to a Google Images page, and I clicked it. My screen filled with dozens of shots of a beautiful brunette — Annalise Stone. She was a runway model from New York and only a few years older than Ryder and me.
ME: Wow. She’s pretty.
ME: Wait. Do you think he’s seeing her?
RYDER: Why else would she be leaving our house?
I wanted to make some sort of joke in response to this question, but I got the sense that this wasn’t the appropriate time.
ME: I don’t understand. I thought he didn’t want to divorce your mom.
RYDER: That’s what I thought, too. So I asked her.
RYDER: She didn’t want to tell me, but apparently that’s why she left. Because he’s been seeing this woman for a while.
ME: He’s been cheating?
RYDER: Yeah.
RYDER: But he refuses to give Mom a divorce because he thinks it’ll hurt his chances in the election in a couple of weeks.
ME: Well, so will sneaking around with a model half his age.
RYDER: I’m guessing he’s trying to keep that secret. But if Aaron could find out, the other candidates could, too.
ME: I’m sorry, Ryder.
And I was. I knew just how fraught with disappointment parental relationships could be. And how fucking much
it could hurt when the people who raised you let you down.
RYDER: I feel like an idiot.
ME: Why???
RYDER: This whole time I’ve been blaming my mom. I’ve thought of her as selfish and cold. In reality, she was trying to keep me from hating Dad. No matter how much he hurt her.
ME: That doesn’t make you an idiot.
RYDER: Maybe not, but worshipping Dad does. I’ve been thinking he was this saint. Even when I couldn’t get him on the phone, I made excuses for him.
ME: He’s your dad. No one blames you for loving him.
RYDER: Maybe they should.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I hadn’t spoken to my own father in years, and my mom … well, I was hardly the person to give advice on the subject.
Luckily, Ryder saved me from having to come up with a reply.
RYDER: Sorry. This conversation got incredibly emo incredibly fast. Quick, say something funny.
ME: Something funny.
RYDER: Ha.
RYDER: You’re such a riot.
ME: I know. I should really do stand-up.
RYDER: I’d pay to see that.
ME: I bet you would. Getting tickets to my shows will be nearly impossible. The critics will love me. I’ll be known as the funniest comedian to ever come out of Hamilton.
RYDER: Do you really have any competition in that regard?
ME: Probably not.
RYDER: I didn’t think so.
ME: … You’re not an idiot, Ryder. You don’t have anything to feel bad about. Your dad does.
RYDER: Thank you.
RYDER: For listening, I mean. Or reading? Anyway, I mean it. When I found out, you were the only person I actually wanted to talk to.
RYDER: That probably sounds ridiculous.
ME: No, it doesn’t. I’m flattered, actually.
ME: And the feeling’s mutual.
I hated admitting it, but I’d been thinking about our other IM conversations a lot, too. When I noticed The Parent Trap was on TV, I’d wanted to message him. When I got an old Nirvana song stuck in my head, I’d wanted to send him the link to the video.
It was absurd, especially considering the fact that I’d wanted little more than to strangle him less than a week ago. But I couldn’t deny it. Something about Ryder Cross had gotten to me, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling of not hating him.
Of maybe sort of liking him.
RYDER: I’m glad to hear that, Amy.
Amy.
Damn it. I’d done it again. I’d actually let myself forget. He thought I was Amy. He wasn’t opening up to me but to her. Because while I maybe sort of liked Ryder, he maybe sort of hated me.
I should have told him the truth right then. I know I should have. I should’ve typed out something like, Yeah, about that. This is actually Sonny. Sorry for the confusion. But I didn’t want to make him feel weird or embarrassed after opening up about his parents.
So I decided to wait.
RYDER: By the way, I watched The Parent Trap.
ME: YOU DID?!?!
RYDER: Don’t start with the shouting again. Ha-ha.
RYDER: It was on TV on Saturday, and since I have yet to develop a social life here …
ME: And?
ME: AND???
RYDER: It was okay.
ME: Just okay?
RYDER: Just okay.
ME: Our friendship is over. Done. Kaput. I can’t associate with anyone who doesn’t love The Parent Trap.
RYDER: So we’re friends, then?
I chewed on my lower lip, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Were we friends? No. No, we couldn’t be. Not when we’d only really had two pleasant conversations before tonight. Not when he thought I was someone else.
But it felt like we were.
ME: Well, we were until you expressed your incorrect opinion of a film classic.
RYDER: It was the Lindsay Lohan version.
ME: Still a classic!
RYDER: I take it back, then. The film was brilliant.
RYDER: So we can be friends now?
I hesitated before replying. Because what I was about to say wasn’t the right answer.
ME: Yes.
RYDER: Good.
ME: Good.
But the closer Ryder and I got online, the more we seemed to argue in real life. Every day, he said something entirely asshole-ish, which, of course, I had to call him out on. It was so commonplace now that Mr. Buckley seemed resigned to letting us fight it out.
But whenever anyone else said something rude to or about Ryder, I felt a little defensive on his behalf. Like, it was okay for me to mock him, but no one else. Because unlike them, I knew the other side of Ryder.
Even if he didn’t realize it.
Not that I hadn’t tried to tell the truth. Twice I’d attempted to IM him from my account to explain, and both times he’d logged off immediately. So that was a bust.
But pretty much any time I was on Amy’s account, he’d message me. And a couple of times, I was the one who started the conversation.
ME: Do you watch the local news?
RYDER: Huh??
ME: The six o’clock news. Do you watch it?
RYDER: Um, no. No one under the age of fifty watches the local news.
ME: Well, give me a walker and call me Granny. Because I do. Every night.
RYDER: I can’t decide if that’s pathetic or adorable.
ME: So one of the anchors, Greg Johnson, lives in Hamilton.
RYDER: And?
ME: And I ran into him today. I was pumping gas when he and his stepdaughter pulled up. She goes to school with us, but she’s a few years younger. A sophomore, I think.
RYDER: Uh-huh.
ME: Anyway, I told him what a fan of his I was, and when we went in to pay for our gas, he was like, “Don’t worry, I got this. Anything for a fan.”
RYDER: That’s nice of him.
ME: HE PAID FOR MY GAS!
RYDER: WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING?
ME: BECAUSE IT’S A BIG DEAL!
RYDER: Is it, though?
ME: Excuse me, Mr. Big City, but around here Greg Johnson is practically famous. He’s the closest thing we have to a celebrity in Hamilton.
RYDER: Again, not sure if this is sad or adorable.
ME: He’s also very handsome, so there’s that, too.
RYDER: Is it weird that I’m a little jealous of this guy now?
I felt a smile spread across my face. I knew it was wrong. I knew he thought he was flirting with my best friend, not me. But I couldn’t help it.
ME: If you pay for my gas, I’ll call you handsome, too.
RYDER: Duly noted.
By the end of October, there was no way around it. Somehow, I’d developed a big, stinking crush on Ryder Cross.
And he had one on my best friend.
But somehow, I thought I could fix that. I could turn this around and make Ryder see that I, not Amy, was the girl he should be with. It would just take some planning, a lot of lying …
And a little help from my best friend.
“You want me to do what?” Amy’s eyes were wide and totally freaked out.
I glanced around our table to make sure no one was listening. It was Monday, and I’d spent the weekend piecing together my plan before springing it on her over lunch.
Satisfied that we weren’t being spied on — and that Ryder was nowhere near us — I explained.
“Not just you. I’m in on this, too.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“Fair point.” I popped a soggy french fry into my mouth. Once again, I’d lied to the cafeteria lady so I could get a free lunch. Now that I was unemployed, this would likely become an all-too-regular occurrence.
Amy had asked that morning if I needed lunch money, but I’d said no. She was already doing so much for me, letting me stay in her room, and I wouldn’t take money from her, too. I told her I had a little cash saved. And, of course, she believed me. r />
“Trust me, though,” I said. “This will work.”
“I’m not sure what this is.”
“Right. Okay.” I pushed my empty tray aside and leaned forward with my elbows on the table. “So Ryder likes me, but he thinks I’m you. And he hates the me he thinks I am. Following?”
“Barely. But I’m confused. You chatted with him again after the first time?”
“Just … once,” I said, cringing a little.
It had been more like half a dozen times.
“Oh,” Amy said, clearly made a little uncomfortable by this. “That might have been nice to know. It would’ve explained why he kept waving to me in the hallway, if he thought we’d been chatting online. I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“I know,” I said. “But it just sort of happened. I didn’t mean to do it again.”
And again … and again …
“Well, I’m still not sure why you can’t just tell him it’s you he’s been talking to.”
“We’ve been over this,” I said with a groan. “I’ve tried. He won’t let me get a word out in person, and when I try over IM, he just logs off. And I’m scared if I tell him now or write it in an e-mail, he’ll think I’ve just been screwing with him.”
“So the alternative is … lying to him more?”
“Precisely. But for a good cause.”
“A good cause,” Amy repeated, dubious.
“My love life,” I said. “It’s in desperate need of some charity. Helping me would really just be doing a good deed.”
“I don’t know …”
“What’s there not to know?” I asked. “It won’t be hard and it won’t take long. Basically, we just have to convince Ryder that it’s me, not you, he’s interested in. Really, it’ll be beneficial to both of us.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’m glad you asked, my dearest, bestest friend. It’s simple. We start by making him warm up to me. I’ll act like I’m just playing nice for your sake, and he’ll agree because he’s into you. But then, we convince him that you aren’t at all the kind of girl he wants to be with, make him think he was wrong about you. By then he’s gotten closer to me, realized just how charming I actually am, and bam! Ryder and I are making out in Gert’s backseat while Boyz II Men plays on the stereo.”