Which confirms that the sad rumor about Steve and Gloria is a lie. It’s so obvious that Joni’s trying to instigate this whole big thing where I tell Ree what I heard, so that Ree ends up mad at me for not telling her when I first heard or for being the one to tell her or whatever other twisted plan Joni is cooking up. There’s some reason Joni wants me to be the one to tell Ree, and I’m not falling for it. If it’s true, and Joni wants Ree to know so badly, why hasn’t she told her by now? And why would she care if Ree knows or not?
Or it’s probably that Gloria’s doing this to get back at Ree and Joni is one of the few girls who are actually friends with Gloria (out of fear, I’m sure) so if I tell Ree, it’ll be exactly what Gloria wants me to do all according to her evil plan. And I’m nobody’s puppet.
I’m not going to let her get to me. And I’m not texting her back. I have better things to do with my time, thank you very much.
I grab my laptop and take it over to my bed. There’s something I want to check. Because I still feel jealous about last night and Danny strategizing to ask Marion out. So I get into Gmail and click on my Danny archive and look through all the subjects until I find it.
I love you
Danny Trager to me
Beautiful Nicole.
I was going to write you an e-mail explaining all the reasons why I love you, but that would take forever. So I just want you to know that I will never stop loving you.
—Your D
I remember when he sent me this back in January and how it was the best e-mail ever. Because around everyone else, he’s always all fired up about something and joking around and no one ever gets to see the sensitive side of Danny. Not the way I did.
But if what he wrote is true, which I totally think it is, then that means he still loves me. And if he still loves me . . . then how can he want someone else?
I’m in the backyard on this really hot August night, watching the fireflies. It’s so hot that my tank top is sticking to me, and the back of my neck is all sweaty. I listen to the stream, water moving around stones.
He comes outside, letting the porch screen door slap shut behind him. Maybe he’s just checking that I’m out here. Or maybe he came out to smoke. But then I hear him walking toward me, across the dark grass.
He sits down next to me. “Hot, huh?” he says.
I agree that it is hot.
For a while we sit like that, watching the fireflies.
But then he touches my leg, slides his finger under the fringe of my cutoffs. And I know it’s only the beginning, right when I am so desperately wishing for the end.
CHAPTER 7
Monday
THERE’S SOME CHALK dust on his left sock and I can’t stop staring at it. That chalk dust is so cute. All I want to do is go over and wipe that chalk dust off and be like, “You had some chalk dust on your sock.”
But of course I can’t do that. Then everyone would know.
Mr. Farrell is asking if anyone wants to put number thirty-two on the board. I look down at my homework to avoid eye contact so he won’t call on me, but I know he’s going to call on me. I can feel it.
And then he goes, “Nicole? Thanks.” As if I had volunteered or something.
So I take my homework pages up to the board and when I pass by Mr. Farrell sitting on top of his desk (which I think is so cute, by the way) my heart flutters around and it gets hard to breathe. Which is the same reaction I have every single time I get within ten feet of him.
I pick up the chalk and write “32.)” on the board and look at what I did for it on my homework and I have no idea how to do this problem. Over on the other side of the board, Jackson already has half his problem done. I wonder why his brain works differently from mine. Like, what is it about his brain that lets him get math?
I scratch the chalk over the board to create what I really hope even remotely resembles what this is supposed to look like.
He’s staring at me. I can feel it. But if I turn around to check, then he’ll know that I know. So I do a few more lines of the problem. But there’s no way I can fake my way through it, so I give up the charade that I’ll ever get this and put the chalk down.
And Mr. Farrell’s like, “Not so fast, Nicole.” And I love it when he says my name, because every time I hear it my heart does this little flip-flopping thing. I wish I were mad smart and he’d be all impressed and I could get the highest grade in the class and he’d fall in love with me and have to marry me, but I’m not that girl. You’re either smart or average or some early childhood trauma prevented you from developing necessary brain cells and I think we all know who we are by now. Not like I don’t have other talents he can easily discover.
So I tell him that I didn’t get this one and there’s no way I can finish it, and he says I need to at least try. Which I think is really interesting, because isn’t that what I’ve been doing this whole time? So I say that I did try and that’s why half the problem is on the board.
But he’s like, “You need to try harder.” Which is pretty much the biggest insult ever, because if he only knew how late I stay up doing his stupid homework every night and how many weekend hours I dedicate to these problems in some coffeehouse instead of doing something fun like spying on people’s conversations.
But apparently there’s something even more humiliating than that. Because right when the room’s all quiet and everyone is staring at me, waiting to see what I’ll do, Gloria goes, “Like she’s ever gonna get it.”
I cannot describe the degree of embarrassment I’m feeling at this second in time. It’s like every cell in my body is completely mortified.
There’s no way she just said that. Because if she just said that, then everyone heard it. Including Mr. Farrell. And now he’s giving her this harsh look and I can’t turn around and face everybody and I can’t do the problem but I can’t sit down. All I want to do is run out of the room. But I can’t do that either.
So I pick up the chalk again and stare at the board, and I wish we were in the country somewhere sitting on a back porch drinking lemonade and watching clouds wisp across the sky instead of being here in complete and total agony. Just the two of us, where we could finally be together for real.
Mr. Farrell comes over to see how it’s going, which is of course nowhere. I’m all nervous and sweaty with him standing so close. I get the same way when he leans over my desk to look at something on my paper and I feel his breath on my cheek.
Jackson is all impatient and wants to explain his problem even though everybody knows you can’t explain yours until everyone else at the board is done. Mr. Farrell tells him to chill.
So I’m standing here like a big fat dork while everyone watches me being humiliated and there’s no way I can even come close to finishing this problem and I want to cry. And I guess Mr. Farrell finally gets a clue, because suddenly he says he’ll help me with the problem.
He’ll help me with the problem? He never helps anyone with their problems.
I swear, he’s so obvious.
So I’m floating to my locker and playing my favorite fantasy through my head again for the millionth time. In this one, Mr. Farrell and I live together and everyone knows it and all the girls are jealous because everyone says how he looks so much like Jude Law except younger. So we walk into school together in the morning and I don’t have to use my locker because I get to keep all my stuff in his room behind his desk next to his bag and jacket, and we’re walking down the hall holding hands and I’m laughing at something he told me and everyone’s looking at us and—
I stop thinking. I stop walking. There’s no way what I’m seeing is real.
Down the hall, right in front of Steve’s locker for the whole world to see, Steve and Gloria are kissing.
Right in front of his locker.
Next to Rhiannon’s locker.
Where she’s going to be any second.
I jump the stairs two at a time and bolt to her eighth-period class. I look in but she already left and
I hope she’s not there yet please god. I run down the hall to the stairs Ree always takes but she’s not there either. And there’s only one other way she could have gone, and she has to be there she has to be there please let her be there, because she so cannot see this. So I run like a maniac the other way and cut down the side stairs and fly around a corner and I smack right into Rhiannon.
She’s like, “What’s wrong?”
And I didn’t really have time to think about what to say during all the running, so I blurt out the first lie I can think of, which is that I have a surprise for her. And Ree smiles because she loves surprises. So of course she wants to know what the surprise is and I really wish I knew. Then there’s this whole complicated thing about books and lockers and finally I get her out of there.
So I zip down the hall and try to give off a convincing vibe as I run-walk to our lockers. But now I have to actually go to our lockers which means I have to go to her locker which means there’s no way I can avoid Steve. Kissing Gloria.
I slow down and approach the lockers and they’re still there, majorly sucking face. In fact they’re so into it, there’s a possibility that they won’t even notice me. So I sneak up to Ree’s locker and turn the dial on her lock.
Please don’t look over at me please don’t look don’t look.
So of course Steve looks and I have to look back and now Steve knows that I know. But the whole rest of the school will know by first period tomorrow, so I guess he doesn’t consider this to be a problem. Especially because all he does is look away like I’m not even here. Like it doesn’t even matter to him that I’m going to tell Rhiannon.
There’s no way I can tell Rhiannon.
I mean, yeah, okay. I know I have to tell her. Even though there’s a chance she’ll hate me for being the one to tell her. But she’s my best friend and I have to take that chance and hope that if she does end up being mad at me, she’ll eventually get over it. Plus if I was her and she saw what I saw, I’d definitely want to know. I’d probably be mad at her for not telling me. So I risk her being mad either way.
But I’m too nervous and dreading it so I go, “So what’s up with the roses?”
And Ree lifts them out of her bag and sniffs them and she’s like, “They’re from Steve.”
And I swear I almost spit lemonade all over the table.
I’m all, “Wait. They’re from Steve?”
“Yeah.”
“He gave them to you?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you say?”
“No, he left them in my locker. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him yet.”
Okay, this is like . . . I can’t with this. Why would he give her flowers and then be all hooking up with another girl? Who does that?
When our food comes, I try to force myself to tell her. Especially since Ree’s talking about getting Steve back. But here’s the thing. She actually looks happy for the first time since forever and she’s laughing at some of my jokes, and there’s no way I can tell her but I have to tell her.
I’m like, “Hey, Ree?”
And poor Ree who has no idea what’s coming, who never did anything to hurt anybody, goes, “Yeah?”
“Um.” I pick up a fry and then put it back down, because if I eat anything now I’m going to hurl. “I have to tell you something.”
And Ree’s just like, “What?”
I’m mentally fast-forwarding to visions of what this conversation will look like five minutes from now, with Ree’s face all smeared from crying and her nose running in front of the whole diner and people sneaking looks over at her and wondering what’s wrong. It’s just not right. It’s not the kind of thing you do in public.
But Ree’s waiting for me to tell her, so I go, “It’s just . . . I really think you should know that . . .”
She sniffs her roses again.
“. . . they have cupcake cake.”
I try not to have a complete and total meltdown on the subway ride home. Because not only do I have to deal with when and how to tell Rhiannon, but the Mr. Farrell situation is seriously out of control. I wanted so badly to go up to him after class, but when class ended he was surrounded by a crowd of girls and I can’t stand that so I left.
The subway stops at Times Square, and I have to restrain myself from bursting through the doors and running to the downtown train and going back to school and finding him in his room because I know he’s staying late today and saying, “You have chalk on your sock,” and finally rubbing it off for him. But of course I can’t do any of that.
So I get out at my stop and this impulse to walk really far takes over my entire body. There’s all this energy clanging through me, and I know it’ll be impossible to concentrate on anything else if I go home. Whenever I get all worked up about him, walking is the only thing that saves me. So I walk and walk until I hit water. If the Hudson River wasn’t right here, I swear I’d keep walking straight into New Jersey.
I take this film elective, and every Monday afternoon there’s a seminar that goes with it at NYU. But instead of having the last class today, we’re having a party tonight. Which is sweet, since our professor got us pizza from my fave place and we can just chill and talk with people we didn’t really get to know during the semester. And there are some really interesting people in here.
Like this one guy? Is so super quiet I’m dying to know what his story is. Like, is he just shy? Is it an antisocial thing and he’s always been like this? Or does he just think we’re all pretentious posers so he doesn’t have time for us? For some reason, I really want to know.
So when everybody’s eating their pizza and sitting in pairs or threes except for him, I go over and put my plate down on the desk next to him and say, “Is this seat taken?”
He gives me this exasperated look like, Clearly it’s not, hence the empty area hovering above the chair.
He goes, “No.”
I’m like, “Mind if I sit?” He doesn’t know this yet, but I’m sitting here no matter what he says. I’m not fooled by the prickly-exterior thing. I know all about that stuff from personal experience.
He goes, “No.”
So I sit. I can see this is going to be a challenge, but I knew that before I came over here so it’s all good.
I decide to start with, “I’m Nicole.”
He’s like, “I know. We introduced ourselves the first day.”
“Yeah, um, I remember that? But see, lots of people forget names and then they’re too afraid to ask. And then like all of a sudden it’s the last class and people still don’t know everyone’s name and they’re still too afraid to ask. And by that time it’s way embarrassing, because then you’re admitting you didn’t know their name this whole time, you know?”
Quiet Guy just chews his crust.
“Yeah, so . . . hi, and I’m Nicole, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember your name.”
“Max.”
“Hey, Max.”
And then he chews more crust.
I’m all, “I can’t believe this class is over already. It’s so weird. It went really fast, right?”
But Max just grunts noncommittally. I have no idea why I feel the need to talk to him. I just have this really intuitive feeling that something’s there. So I keep trying. I ramble about what my favorite parts of the class were and stuff about the screenplay I’m writing, and then my favorite directors come up. So then I ramble about movies I love, and that actually gets Max talking. It turns out we have the same taste in film. So I tell him how I passed Todd Solondz on the street a few months ago.
Max goes, “You saw Todd Solondz?” All fixated.
And I’m like, “Yeah. He walked right by me.” All nonchalant.
Max says, “Dude. He’s one of my favorite directors.”
So I’m like, “I know! And I touched his sweater.”
Max goes, “What?”
“Yeah. He was wearing this ratty old sweater with a hole in the shoulder? And so I asked him i
f I could touch his hole.”
“Are you making this up?”
“No!”
“So he just . . . let you touch it?”
“Yeah. He was like, ‘If it pleases you.’ So I put my finger through it.”
“Whoa.”
“Totally.”
“Where?”
“I told you. On his shoulder.”
“No, where was this?”
“Oh. Near my school, up on West Tenth.”
“You go to Eames Academy?”
“Yeah. You know it?”
“My brother goes there.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“Brad Tropper.”
“No way!” That’s so weird! This whole time I’ve been in class with this guy and I didn’t even know he was Brad’s brother.
“You know him?”
“Totally! I mean, I’m not exactly friends with him, but I’m good friends with Sheila.”
And right after I say that, Max shuts down with the barricaded attitude again. It’s like he’s all storm clouds and despair.
He’s like, “You should tell her not to go home with Brad anymore.”
So I ask why, but Max doesn’t say anything. He just starts crumpling up our paper plates and cups.
I touch his arm and he stops crumpling and gives me this strong look. And I go, “Please tell me why you said that.”
And Max says, “I think you know.”
Obviously, he knows that I know what’s happening to Sheila because anyone can see it. But he means something else. Because that look on his face looks like fear.
Max leans closer to me and says, “Look. There’s more to this than you probably know. Just . . . warn Sheila, okay? She could get hurt worse if she keeps going over there. But don’t tell her you talked to me.”
And then he gets up to go, so I grab him and I’m like, “Wait!” But he walks right out the door. I could run after him and find out what he means, but if he wanted to tell me more he would have.
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