by Cameron Lund
Luckily, Jordan seems to think I’m kidding, because he laughs. “They seem to know what they’re talking about.” He pauses, fiddling with the top of his cup. “But rebounds aren’t the real thing usually, right?”
“No, they’re not.” Is he talking about me and Kai right now? Or himself and Olivia?
I feel weird about where this is headed. Kai and I put on a show at the lake—we told everyone we loved each other—and now it’s all unraveling in a second with the word rebound. It feels dirty, like this conversation is a betrayal. But that’s stupid. Getting Jordan back was the whole point.
“Listen, Penny,” he says, and the seriousness of it makes my breath catch. “I don’t know, I saw those pictures you guys took and it just got me thinking.” He chews his lip. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be in those pictures.”
It’s all wrong. I know these words are supposed to make me happy, that they’re words I’ve been waiting all summer to hear, but instead I feel a lurching pain in my stomach: guilt.
“What about Olivia?” I ask.
“Olivia means nothing,” Jordan says.
“But—”
“Just let me say this.” He takes a deep breath. “The way everyone’s been, like . . . celebrating you and Kai getting together has been really fucking hard for me—all those dumbass comments our friends made about you and Kai while we were together, like I was just some placeholder till you two figured out your shit? And then it actually happened. They were right. You and Kai were in love.”
The pain in my stomach gets worse at each word. I feel horrible for what I did, for twisting the knife in deeper after my first mistake. Why did I want to make Jordan jealous when I had already broken his heart? Because I thought he wanted Olivia? Am I really that selfish?
“That’s not what happened,” I say.
“Come on, Pen—”
“It’s not,” I insist. And then the words are out in a rush. “Kai and I aren’t together.”
Jordan rubs a hand down his face. “So it is a rebound, then?”
“No, I mean . . . this whole thing is fake. Kai and I were just pretending.” I thought I would feel better after telling Jordan the truth, that suddenly I’d be absolved of all my sins, but I feel so much worse.
“What the hell, Harris?” Jordan is laughing, but it sounds forced.
“It was stupid. Myriah made some comment about how she knew I wasn’t a bad person and said I must have kissed Kai because I loved him. And then you and Olivia were kissing and we thought maybe you’d understand what you were missing out on if you saw us together.” The more I say, the more ridiculous it sounds. How on earth did Kai and I ever think this would work? But then I realize—maybe it actually did. Jordan is here with me now, next to me at this plastic table, and he’s hearing me out. That’s more than I could say a few weeks ago.
And the worst part is that I don’t know if I even want him back anymore.
“That’s idiotic,” he says. “This is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. Did you guys even think this through at all?” He’s still laughing, and I can’t tell if he’s mad. “My best friend steals my girl and then says he’s in love with her. I mean, even though he took you from me, I’m not gonna step on his toes and take you back. Not if he loves you.”
I don’t like what Jordan’s implying here. You’re supposed to fight for the people you love. You’re not supposed to worry about stepping on anyone’s toes.
“Kai doesn’t love me.”
“This is so twisted, Penny.” Jordan stands up, and the plastic chair falls back behind him, hitting the floor. “I’m gonna go. My break is over anyway.”
He scoops the chair up, flipping it back to its legs. Then he grabs the coffee and dunks it into the trash and walks out the door, the little bell jingling as he leaves.
All of a sudden, I feel like I’m going to cry, the reality of what I just said crashing down on me. I messed with Jordan’s feelings, and Olivia’s. And maybe Jordan was coming here to forgive me, but I messed that up too. Worst of all, I confessed about the plan, which means things with Kai will be probably be over once he finds out.
But that’s what I wanted, right? I needed a way to get out of this mess with Kai—to make a clean break—and now I’m free.
“Holy shit.” Sarah’s voice startles me, and I flip around to face her. I completely forgot she was there this whole time, watching us. “Wow, Penny, there’s a whole lot to unpack here.”
* * *
• • • • • •
We close up shop at four p.m., and then twenty minutes later I’m in the passenger seat of Sarah’s Honda, headed toward McDonald’s.
“A McFlurry always fixes everything,” Sarah had said as she’d locked the Scoops door behind us. “You’re coming with me. I am abducting you.”
“We literally work at an ice-cream shop,” I’d said, trying to walk to my own car. “Real local ice cream made from real local cows. Instead of mysterious lab-grown chemicals.”
But she’d grabbed my arm. “People like chemicals, Harris. At least I’m not pushing LSD on you or something.”
And so I’d gone with her, thoroughly abducted, to get a McFlurry. The truth is that having someone to talk things over with sounds nice. And Sarah Kozlowski seems like she’d be a good listener.
Her car is filthy—there are crumbs ground into the seat cushion, fast-food boxes scattered all over the floor, and it reeks of cigarettes. I have to step on a backpack when I climb in, and I wince as something cracks under my foot.
“It’s not that bad,” Sarah says. “Stop being dramatic.”
“Do you live in here?” I mean it as a joke, but I realize when I look around at all the items strewn everywhere that it might be true.
“No,” she says. “Jesus. I just cart stuff to gigs a lot. Most of this is music shit. And my boyfriend keeps a lot of his stuff in here too.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“I thought we’d established by now that I’m not the social pariah you think I am.”
I remember the text Olivia sent her last year pretending to be Kai; how Sarah had responded saying she had a boyfriend and we’d all laughed like it was preposterous.
“Sorry,” I say. “Um, actually, wait—I need to tell you something.” My heart is in my throat, my hands shaking. But I can’t be here in Sarah’s car letting her drive me around and trying to cheer me up without coming clean. I owe her that much.
“What now?” she asks. The lake passes us by on the left.
“Okay, so you know how Kai texted you last year? He said he thought you were hot.” I take a deep breath. “That was us. I mean, it was Olivia. But it was my fault too.”
“Wow,” she says. And then she starts to laugh. “Wow, I’m actually so fucking surprised you just admitted that. Kudos, Harris.”
“Wait, you’re not mad? You can be mad.”
“Thank you for your permission, dude. I know I can be mad. I already knew about it, though.”
“You did? And you’ve been talking to me?”
“I know Olivia’s handiwork,” she says. “I’m not fucking stupid. I just think it’s hilarious you guys thought you fooled me. That’s so good.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what we were thinking. I mean, there’s no reason—”
“It’s chill,” she says. “Just don’t fuck me over again.”
“You have full permission to poison me with bananas.” I grin.
“Noted.”
“So tell me about your boyfriend. Who is he?”
“His name is Brian—I know, the most boring white guy name ever, right?—but he’s cool. He lives over in Wentworth. I met him at band camp last summer.”
“Isn’t that what people say when they’re making up a significant other? Oh, she lives in Canada. He’s from band camp.”<
br />
“You think I’m making this up?” Sarah turns to me, and then her face softens when she sees I’m laughing. “Oh, you’re joking.”
“I can make jokes, you know. People think I’m funny.”
“Oh yeah, what people?”
The answer is Kai. I think back to the way we were laughing in his bedroom—all those stupid whale puns. Kai thinks I’m funny. But I don’t want to tell her that.
“That’s what I thought,” she says when I don’t answer. “Your friends aren’t especially known for their humor.”
“That’s not fair.” I’m suddenly defensive. “Just because you don’t hang out with us doesn’t mean we don’t have fun.”
“What kind of fun is that?” she asks, flat and sarcastic. “Throwing awesome parties and taking selfies and drinking so much you black out? Cheating on your boyfriend and waking up on the lawn? That’s fun?”
Her words are like a slap in the face, and I feel like I’m going to cry again. If this car trip was supposed to be making me feel better, it’s not working. “Pull over,” I say. “I don’t have to put up with this shit.” I reach for the door handle like I might try to jump out of the moving vehicle.
“Hey,” Sarah says. “No, sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
The MCDONALD’S sign comes into view up ahead and Sarah pulls into the lot, parking the car instead of heading toward the drive-through. She switches off the ignition and turns to me. “I mean it, I’m sorry.”
“How do you know all about that?” I press my palms hard into my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to keep my emotions under control. My first day at Scoops, Sarah alluded to knowing a bit about what had happened with Kai, but I didn’t think she’d heard the whole story—thought maybe she was the one person who didn’t know everything about my horrible mistake.
“I have Instagram. I know how to use the internet. Olivia was posting about it everywhere.”
“I don’t know why I did it. I had everything I’ve always wanted. I was the perfect girlfriend. I was perfect.”
“Perfect is boring,” Sarah says. “And honestly, what happened happened. What’s the big fucking deal?”
“What?” Her words are so absurd that I actually start laughing.
“People are assholes. Cheating is a dick move, but it’s not the end of the world. You can’t change what you did. Either people will get over it or they won’t.”
“The only reason my friends kept talking to me is because I got together with Kai,” I say. “We just wanted everyone to forgive us. It was like you said: everyone forgives a good love story.”
“Fuck them. You spent the night on the lawn and instead of asking whether or not you were okay, your friends posted shit about you. You could have, like, been assaulted or died or something. Why are you trying to get back together with them? They fucking suck.”
“You don’t know them like I do, okay? You’ve only seen one side of them.” I think about the time Olivia yelled at Gabe Pinkerton when he insulted my ass, the way she’s always hyped me up and called me beautiful and tried to support me; And sweet, lovely Myriah, who always somehow gifts the best, most personalized birthday presents, who knows what you want better than you do; Katie, who is always the last one to get a joke but then laughs the hardest when she does; Romina, who makes the most badass playlists and is amazing on the cello, always quick with the most hilarious dirty jokes. Maybe, collectively, we’ve done bad things. But they’re not bad people.
“Yeah,” Sarah says. “The side of them that sends me mean text messages and pretends to pick their noses when I walk by. The side of Olivia that told me I was going to tip the school bus over because I was too fat. The side that called you Pukey Penelope for like two years before you mysteriously decided to forgive her.”
“All I want is for everything to go back to normal. I just want everyone to like me, okay? Is that so horrible?”
“Don’t spend so much energy trying to get people to like you that you forget how to like yourself.” She turns the car back on and pulls up to the drive-through. “I used to think you were funny,” she says. “Just FYI. Back when we hung out. Before Olivia ruined you. You were hilarious.”
“Olivia didn’t ruin me.” Olivia was the one who rescued me—who asked me to sit with her at lunch that day after I’d loaned her my sweatshirt, who started Pukey Penelope—I don’t know how I ever let myself forget that. “It’s all Kai’s fault,” I tell her, my usual line.
“So now you’re dating him,” Sarah says. “Sorry, fake dating him. Or were you just bullshitting Jordan back there? I’d bullshit Jordan Parker too if I could get away with it.”
“I wasn’t bullshitting anyone,” I say. “I thought you were supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Sarah says. “It’s not my job to make you feel better for your own problems. You can’t just use me for emotional labor.”
“Fine,” I say again. “Forget the McDonald’s. I wouldn’t want anyone to see us together in public anyway.”
Sarah looks at me for a long time and then reaches across me and pushes open the passenger-side door. “Get out.”
“Fine,” I say, stepping out of the car and slamming the door. She drives away, leaving me in the McDonald’s parking lot. I feel like I’m going to cry again. Sarah has no reason to be nice to me—not after I blew off her band’s shows the other day. Not after the way I’ve ignored her since elementary school. Not after what I just said.
And the truth is, Sarah is probably right. These are my own problems to solve. But right now, I don’t know what I can possibly do to make things better.
THEN
JUNIOR YEAR—MAY
I GO OVER TO OLIVIA’S house to study for finals. We’ve raided the bin candy aisle at the local grocery store so we’re fully stocked with sugar for the miserable long hours ahead. There are mountains of Twizzlers on her dining room table, bags of Sour Patch Kids, sugar granules pressed into the pages of my biology textbook.
These finals are the most important yet. They’ll impact my financial aid for college, whether I can apply to UCLA with Olivia. They’re the last tests standing in the way of an entire beautiful summer—and then finally we’re seniors and it will be the best year of our lives. It’s so hard to focus on the cell cycle and mitosis when all I want to think about is Jordan and what will finally happen between us once this stupid bio final is done.
Because I’ve decided something. Jordan’s parents are going out of town next weekend for some giant dental conference in Las Vegas and they’re leaving him home alone. None of us can believe it, honestly. It’s the first night of summer and we’ll have so much to celebrate.
I’ve been thinking about maybe sleeping with Jordan for months, but I haven’t been sure until this moment. But now with his parents leaving, everything is aligning perfectly. I can’t wait to sleep over his house, wake up next to him in his bed, just like we’re two regular people—no rules, no parents, just us.
I haven’t told Olivia yet, and now that I’ve officially decided, it’s killing me to keep it inside. I just want to shout it from the rooftops, make some cheesy proclamation on Twitter, text it to everybody I know. Jordan and I are having sex!
Olivia glances up from her textbook and looks at me, chewing on the end of her pen. “Why do you have that look on your face?”
“What look?”
“You’re, like . . . drooling. Does the life cycle of the cell make you horny?” She laughs.
“Oh my god, no. It’s Jordan. I mean, not that he makes me . . . I’m just thinking about him.”
She sets down her pen. “Obviously.”
I close my textbook, giving her my full attention. “Actually, I’ve decided something.”
“You guys are going to get married and make beautiful babies together and move to his Christmas tree farm in Vermont?” Sh
e picks her pen back up and leans over her stack of flash cards again, writing something in her big loopy handwriting.
“Well . . . I mean, hopefully not the babies. Or the farm. But I’m going to sleep with him.”
She doesn’t look at me at first, just keeps working on her flash card. I watch as she finishes her sentence with a heavy exclamation point. Then she looks up, a smile stretched across her face. “Really? My little Penny is all grown-up.”
“I mean . . . do you think I should?” I’m unsure now, even though I was so positive a few seconds ago. Maybe it’s because she didn’t answer me right away. The long moment she took to finish writing her sentence has made me hesitate.
Olivia grabs a Twizzler out of the bag and bites into it. “It’s a big decision.”
“Yeah, but we’ve been dating for almost six months. I don’t know. I think I’m ready?”
She chews the Twizzler. Swallows. “Just remember. Once you have sex with him, you can’t take it back.”
I grab a Twizzler too, tapping it against my palm. “Okay. But . . . I don’t think I’d want to take it back. I love him.”
“Then you should totally have sex with him.” She smiles. “But just because you love someone doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.” She grabs a handful of Sour Patch Kids and pops one into her mouth. “Actually, the people you love are the ones who can hurt you the most.”
“Jordan wouldn’t do that.” What Jordan and I have is perfect. We’re the couple all the other couples want to be.
“Of course he wouldn’t.” She sighs. “You guys are different. Jordan treats you like you’re special.”
NOW
IT TAKES TWO HOURS to walk back to my car from McDonald’s, but I know I probably deserve it. My legs are aching by the time I get to Scoops, sweat dripping off me, but I barely even notice, because all I can focus on is everything that just went wrong.
Telling Jordan the truth felt like the right thing to do at the time, but now I’m not so sure.