We drool over the enormous living room, the balcony, the high ceilings. My house is nothing compared to this. This is ridiculous.
“Did you see the flat-screen TV?” James pants. “It’s gotta be a fifty-inch. I’d never leave the house.”
“Sign me up.”
The music is so loud my bones are shaking with the beat.
“So,” James says.
“So,” I say.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Maybe after, we’ll do Magnolia?”
The Magnolia Bakery is this place in our neighborhood that has the most amazing cupcakes ever. The thing about these cupcakes is they have icing in all these sweet pastel colors and old-school sprinkles. My favorite combination is pink icing with blue flower sprinkles. Serendipity determines if you’ll get the icing-sprinkle combo you want.
“I think this party is enough excitement for one night,” I tell him. Another thing about Magnolia is that it’s open really late on weekends. The line at midnight is outrageous. “How about tomorrow?”
“You’re on.”
“You guys having a good time?” Keith butts in. He holds out a beer for me. As if I’m interested in drinking something that tastes like Drano.
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh.” Keith nods, acting all serious. “And doesn’t that make you thirsty?” Then he laughs like that was the funniest thing anyone’s ever said in the entire history of the world.
“I mean I don’t ingest toxic substances.”
“Well, then I guess I didn’t have to hide the rat poison after all.” Keith laughs hysterically again. “Yo!” he gasps. “I crack myself up!”
We stare at him.
“Anyway,” Keith continues smoothly, as if we all have a sense of humor in common. “That sucks about you and Steve, but . . . if you ever feel like hanging out . . .”
“Um.” I can’t believe he’s actually asking me out like this. I glance at James.
“Oh,” Keith goes. “Are you two . . . ?”
“No!” I say. “We’re just friends.”
“That’s what I thought.” Keith inspects me. He actually does that sleazy guy thing where they slowly rake their eyes up and down your body.
Gross.
Then Keith’s like, “Well . . . you know where to find me.” And he slithers away like the snake that he is.
James mumbles something.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He looks bothered. “I’m getting a Coke.”
Standing there with the party swirling all around me, I get this really intense alone feeling. Even with James here and Nicole coming later, being at a party with friends instead of a boyfriend is always sort of sad. Especially when you thought you’d have a boyfriend to do couple things with for the rest of junior year. And maybe even longer if Steve came back from college to take me to the prom and stuff. Before The Incident, this year felt like it was going by really fast. Now it’s taking forever, even though we only have four more weeks left.
I’m itching to check my voice mail, but James made me leave my cell at home. He knew that if I brought it with me, I’d be checking to see if Steve called like every three seconds.
“Hey, Ree,” Nicole says, suddenly here. She hugs me.
I hug her back, clinging to her like Velcro. Nicole is the type of person that’s great in a crisis. She can figure out your problem before you’re even done explaining it. And she always knows exactly what to say to make you feel better.
“Are you okay?” Nicole is worried about me. She knows it’s too soon to be over it. She knows I think about him all the time.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean . . . no. You know.”
She knows. She’s been here.
Nicole bites her lip. “If it makes you feel better, we can go over it again.”
That’s another thing about Nicole. She comes off all wild like with how she dresses, but she’s not really like that. She’s actually super sensitive and sweet.
But still. It must take an enormous amount of strength for her to say that. We’ve analyzed the whole thing to the point of exhaustion, until there’s nothing left to say. But why he dumped me is the most annoying unsolved mystery ever.So of course I want to go over everything he said for the millionth time.
I’m like, “Only if it’s truly okay with you and you’re not just saying that because you feel sorry for me because—”
“It’s okay.”
“So . . . well, at first he seemed the same as always . . .”
The whole thing was so strange. The entire four months we were going out, I thought we had this amazing connection, right from the start. No, I knew we did.
But then.
“I, um . . . I don’t think we should go out anymore.”
“What?” He couldn’t be serious. There was no way. “What are you talking about?”
“I just don’t feel it anymore,” Steve said. All casual. As if he was saying, “I don’t feel like going to the park.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” I kept expecting the joke to be over.
Steve just shook his head, looking at the floor.
“What happened?” I said. My eyes filled with tears.
“Nothing. I just . . . I’m leaving for college anyway, so—”
“But that’s not until August!”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“So that’s why?” I wiped my cheek. “I thought you said you wanted to try a long-distance relationship.”
“Look. I know this is hard to hear, but . . . I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
I watched Steve. He didn’t even look sad. How was that possible? This is a boy who said he loved me. Who stayed in my room all day when I was sick, playing cards and making me smoothies in the blender, even though he didn’t know how and the blender got jammed. The same boy who put his hands all over my body, kissed me for hours . . .
And then suddenly it was over. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
I cried harder.
Steve got up.
“Where are you going?” You could hear how scared I was. I was like, This is it. He’s leaving already. He can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. I’m that repulsive.
Steve sat back down on the couch with the tissue box. He held one out.
“Here,” he said.
I wiped my nose. “Do you still love me?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“It’s not you. It’s me. I’m . . .”
“You’re what?”
“I just have to do this, is all.”
“But I still love you.”
Steve cracked his knuckles. I always hated when he did that, but now I would give anything to be back together with him. If he would just take it all back, he could crack his knuckles all he wanted and I wouldn’t care.
I sniffed.
“I was wondering,” he said, “if . . . we could maybe . . . like, be friends?”
Was he serious? In what twisted universe would a girl who’s just been dumped still want to be friends with the boy who dumped her?
“I don’t get this,” I said. “I thought you were happy with me.”
“I was.”
“So why are you doing this?”
Steve got up.
“Don’t go!” I yelled. I was crying so hard.
“I’m sorry. . . .”
“Please don’t go!” I wanted him to sit next to me and hug me and say that he was still mine. That I’m the only girl in the world who could make him happy. That we belong together.
But Steve just walked away. He walked right out of my house. And then I was completely alone.
“I want him back,” I reveal to Nicole.
“Huh?”
“I’m getting him back.”
“How?”
“I was hoping you’d know.??
?
Nicole stares.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m not this strong. I still think about him all the time. It’s driving me insane.”
“You’ll get through this. And I know it’s impossible to believe right now, but it gets better. Trust me.”
It’s so weird how Nicole and I always go through the same things at the same time. So of course both of our relationships just ended. Nicole and Danny broke up three weeks ago. And Steve dumped me last week. Or seven days, nine hours, and twenty-three minutes ago. Not that I’m counting.
Before Danny, she was seeing this guy Jared. And Jared dumped her so hard she wouldn’t get out of bed. So I would go over to her place after school with all her favorite snacks. Butterscotch Krimpets (which you can only get at this one deli nowhere near either of our neighborhoods). Lemonheads (candy section, middle shelf, Rite Aid). Entenmann’s Ultimate Crumb Cake (available everywhere). Chocolate-covered cherries (strictly Godiva, no discount type allowed). Nicole was totally destroyed. And then one day she decided that she was completely over Jared. And she started dating Danny the next day.
Nicole thinks the same thing will happen to me. That once I start liking someone else, this will all go away. But I’m still in love with Steve. And I’ll never feel this way about anyone else. He just needs me to remind him of what he had.
Has.
“Don’t you think I can get him back?” I panic.
“No, it’s just . . . why would you want to after what he did?”
“Because I still love him. You can’t just turn love off. You still feel it.”
“But that’ll go away and—”
“But I don’t want it to go away,” I interrupt. “I want to be with him.”
“Hello, sexy ladies,” Sheila says.
“Hey,” I go.
Nicole’s like, “Where’s Brad?”
“He’s coming later. I’m going up to see the pool. Want to come with?”
“Sure,” I tell her. I assume Nicole will also come, but then I notice her watching Danny. Who’s walking over here. “Let’s go.”
Sheila’s talking about Brad and this problem they’re having, but I’m not being a good friend. I manage to steer the conversation back to me and Steve by doing one of those sorry-ass moves where you take something the other person just said and go, “Oh, yeah! That’s just like what happened with me when . . .” When, really, the two things aren’t even related. You’re just using it as an excuse to talk about yourself more.
I want to get Sheila’s advice. So I’m about to tell her about the whole Steve dilemma when I notice Joni. She’s standing really close to our lounge chairs. Too close. All pretending not to listen. When it’s totally obvious that she’s majorly listening.
The conversation shifts back to Sheila’s stuff. I don’t say anything else about Steve. I don’t really need the whole school knowing my business.
The first thing I do when I get home is zoom to my room to check my messages and e-mail. Snick-Snick follows me in. I close my door and peek at the answering machine. The red light stares back at me defiantly. Not blinking. There’s nothing on my cell, either.
I press the start button on my iBook and go to the closet. I take out a soft white tank top and pink pajama bottoms from my dresser. I watch my screen saver of Topher Grace come on while I change. James always teases me about it whenever he comes over. He’s all like, “Where’s the screen saver of me?”
I click my Gmail widget and see that I have five new messages. I get this adrenaline rush of anticipation.
But none of them are from Steve.
I can’t wait anymore. If I wait around for him to realize how lame he’s being, I’ll probably be waiting forever.
I click on “Compose Mail.” Here’s what I write:To: steve
Subject: us
Steve,
I just have to tell you that I don’t know how to do this. I still have feelings for you and I think
I click the DISCARD button.
I start again.
Steve,
I’ve written this e-mail a thousand times in my head, all different versions, trying to think of the right words that will make you come back to me. I never stopped loving you
I click DISCARD.
I start again.
Steve,
How’s it going? I thought I would see you at Keith’s party tonight, but no. Were you there? It was fun times, as usual. So, I was wondering if
DISCARD.
Again.
Steve,
Can you just tell me why you did this?
I don’t send that one, either.
CHAPTER 2
Sunday
AWAKE.
I push the covers down to the bottom of my bed. Snickers meows and leaps away onto the floor with his legs sticking out in all different directions. It’s those negative vibes of desperation I keep giving off. They’re repelling everyone and everything around me.
I go over to my desk to check my e-mail. Still nothing from Steve. And my cell’s been on all night, so I know he didn’t call.
This is torture. It’s just torture.
Question: If you were happy with your boyfriend but he wasn’t happy with you, was that happiness real?
Sundays blow. There’s never anything on. But I have to kill time so I can get to the part where I feel better faster. So I go over to the DVD shelf and pick out 13 Going on 30. I just want to lose myself in a fantasy that I’m still hoping will come true.
When I’m at the part where Jenna and Matt get Razzles, Brooke strides into the living room. She goes, “God!” and flings herself dramatically over the other couch. “New York guys are such . . . children.”
I don’t know what it is with her and interrupting my busy movie schedule. I press PAUSE on the remote. This won’t be short.
“There’s this total manwhore phenomenon happening, where even the geeks are players now. It’s like Manhattan is this giant playground and guys want to keep playing forever.”
I gaze at the TV wistfully.
“They’re all totally neurotic and miserable. Working these eighty-hour weeks to pay for a bunch of stuff they don’t even have time to enjoy.”
The sad thing about all this is that Brooke won’t meet her soul mate in a bar. He’ll probably be standing next to her in Wal-greens, getting toothpaste or something. Or maybe he’s been living next door this whole time. Like when Nicole liked this guy she kept seeing at the Barnes & Noble café? She’d go back to Barnes & Noble around the same time every Saturday and he was there a lot of the times. But after all that stalking, it turned out that he lived in her building right above her.
But it’s hard to find your soul mate when everyone’s so anonymous and living in their own private bubble worlds. It’s not like you can just go up to a boy you like and say, “Are you my soul mate?”
Brooke is oblivious that some of us are trying to watch a movie here. She keeps ranting about how unfair it is.
I pick up the remote, hoping she’ll take a hint.
“Even if you’re pretty, it still doesn’t matter.” Brooke sinks back against the cushions, deflated. “They’ll buy you a drink, but they’ll be looking over your shoulder the whole time they’re talking to you. Looking for something better to come along. Because you know. Angelina Jolie might be just around the corner.”
“And she might actually like them.”
“I just want a boyfriend,” Brooke says miserably.
I press PLAY. If I keep listening to Brooke complain, all that hope I was feeling might start feeling more like desperation.
The thing about New York weather is that lots of times it’s too cold or too hot or too humid or too something. We don’t get a lot of absolutely perfect weather, where you just want to be outside all day. But now it’s the last week of May and gorgeous out.
I’m chilling in the park near my house, waiting for James. This is a really cool park because it’s right on the Hudson Ri
ver. There are piers sticking out over the water and paths to ride your bike and it’s the ultimate place to come at night and do moon observations. I have three whole journals with moon sketches. Or sometimes I just sit and think about stuff, watching the city lights glitter across the river in New Jersey.
There’s still some of my granita left. It’s the best, most refreshing drink in the world, and I get them from my fave coffeehouse, Joe the Art of Coffee. I love being there, just sipping my granita and reading. Everyone thinks it’s named after the owner, but his name is Jonathan. He’s this super friendly guy who comes around and talks to you. This one time we had a really intense conversation about when he started Joe. He said it never occurred to him that he would fail. I wish I felt that confident now.
My iPod is playing a really cool song by the Watchmen, this random Canadian group James told me about. I’m lying on my back on the grass with my eyes closed. I found a spot in the shade, so it feels like the air and my skin are exactly the same temperature. Like I’m completely blended in with the environment. Maybe this is what it feels like to get reincarnated as a flower, the way Nicole wants to.
But I can’t really appreciate how good this should feel. Because every place I go, it’s like I can still feel the energy of being there with Steve. Just like in the movie Serendipity. And I can’t stand it, because every time I think I’m improving, I realize there’s no way to completely get my life back. If I were a flower, none of this would be happening.
The last time Steve and I were here, it was on my birthday. He gave me this huge present. But it actually wasn’t. Because when I opened the box, there was another box inside. And another box inside that one. There were, like, six boxes altogether, and each one was wrapped in a different type of paper. It must have taken him forever.
When I finally opened the last box, there was this superball inside that lights up when you bounce it. And it wasn’t just any old superball, either. It was this special one we saw at the MoMA Design Store when I was bouncing it all around and yelling about how awesome the lights were. Which totally made the security guard come over and guard my area, like I was going to start bouncing the ball against people instead of the floor or something. Anyway, Steve remembered all that, and he went back and got the exact same superball.