by Jenny Han
I’ve gotten my fair share of tokens of romance. Like my sophomore year, when Vincent Upton drew a heart on a pack of cigarettes and cut off my padlock with a hacksaw he’d stolen from the shop room so he could put the pack in my locker.
So whatever.
All throughout homeroom everyone’s eyes are on the door, waiting for the flower delivery person to come by with their cart. And when ours comes with a big white box, I pull my hood up over my head.
A few minutes later there’s a tap on my shoulder. I lift my head up, and there is the flower girl with a pair of cardboard angel wings on her back and an arm full of roses. I tug out my headphones. “Yeah?”
“Can you move back a little?”
I rock back in my chair, and she sets twelve yellow roses on my desk along with a card.
I look around. A few other girls have gotten a red rose or maybe two. But no one has a bouquet in any color.
I feel my cheeks heat up as I pick up the card. The delivery girl is standing expectantly, like I’m going to read it out loud or something. I give her a bitchy look and she leaves.
The bell rings, and then I gather up the flowers and the card and head to my locker. I stick them inside because I’m not parading that shit around for everyone to see. And later, once the next period starts, I discreetly open my card.
Dear Kat,
It was hard to hear, but you were right—my Lillia Cho oeuvre was definitely junior high material. If not for your musical kick in the ass, I don’t know if I would have ever found the guts to quit writing songs about Lillia and just tell her how I really feel.
Here’s to having “No Regrets.” (See what I did there?)
Rock on,
Your friend,
Alex
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Chapter Seventeen
LILLIA
BECAUSE IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY, I’M wearing a salmon-pink sweater and tomato-red cigarette pants. My mom says I look like something out of a 1960s Italian Vogue, and she insists that I wear my hair pinned up on the side with her pearl pin. I’ve always liked to dress up special for Valentine’s Day, but now everyone does it and it’s slightly annoying.
The student council starts delivering roses during homeroom. It’s part of it—you get your flowers in the morning, and then you carry them around all day for everyone to see. Red for love, yellow for friendship, pink if you have a crush on someone. Rennie and Ash and I always send each other two yellow ones and one pink.
Last year I set the record for most roses ever received by a girl at Jar High. Twenty-four! A dozen from my dad, Rennie’s three, Ash’s three, one from Alex, one from PJ, one from my chem lab partner, Tyler, and three from a group of freshman guys I gave a ride home to once after school because they missed the bus.
I already know I won’t be getting a rose from Reeve, and it’s not just because we’re keeping things on the down low. It’s a point of pride for him—that he wouldn’t ever waste his money on something so cheesy and meaningless. I’ve heard him give the speech every year, how Valentine’s Day is complete bullshit. Also, in the past he’s always had more than one girl he was flirting with at a time, and it would have been drama if he’d sent a rose to just one girl or to all the girls. So his policy is to send none. Junior year, Rennie begged him to send her a rose, and he still refused “on the principle of it,” and she wouldn’t speak to him for days.
Jamie Cochran, a junior girl from the squad, comes into our homeroom with an armful of red roses.
Jamie stops at my desk first. She drops a dozen onto my desk and keeps moving. I open the card, and it reads, Happy Valentine’s Day to my darling. Love, Daddy.
Jamie goes back to her pushcart in the doorway and comes back with a big armful, all different colors. She walks around the room, plucking out stems and handing them to the other students. And then she heads back to my desk.
Jamie hands me the last bouquet in her arms, three roses—two yellow and one pink—which I know are from Ash. She walks back to her cart and picks up an enormous bouquet of roses, all red. It’s so big, she has trouble carrying it. She stops in front of my desk and hands them to me, all of them. “Fifty red roses,” she announces loudly, and I hear people in the room gasp. “Looks like you win most roses again, Lillia!”
What!
As soon as Jamie walks away, I tear open the card.
I’ve wanted to say this for a long time, only I didn’t have the guts. But life is too short. So here goes. I’m in love with you, Lillia. Always have been, always will be.
Alex
Whoa. I can’t believe it. I put my hands on my cheeks, and they are warm. I always knew Alex had feelings for me, but never in a million years did I think he’d put himself out there like this. It’s just . . . beyond.
And I’m going to have to let him down.
As soon as the bell rings, I scoop up all my bouquets and race to my locker. I have to hide Alex’s roses before Reeve sees. I stuff them all inside as quick as I can. Some of the stems break, and a few petals fall out onto the floor. I stoop down and pick them up and put them in my purse.
* * *
PJ, Derek, and Alex are already at the lunch table when I get to the cafeteria. I spot Reeve in the lunch line.
I slide into the seat next to Alex. “Hi,” he says.
“Hey,” I whisper back. I mouth, Thank you.
He mouths back, You’re welcome.
I glance over at Reeve again. He’s picking out a Jell-O at the counter.
Alex leans in and touches my arm. In a low voice he asks, “Did you read the card?”
I nod and make myself smile. “Can we talk later?” I want to do this so carefully, and in private.
He nods, and I can feel my heart break a little bit.
Ashlin comes running up to the table just as Reeve sits down with his lunch. She throws down her lunch bag and shrieks, “I heard someone sent you fifty roses, Lil!” My mouth goes dry. “You lucky bitch! Who was it?” She sits down and reaches around PJ to whack Derek on the shoulder with her bag. “Derek only sent me five! Cheap bastard.”
“Um . . .” What do I say? My dad?
Ash giggles and swivels in her seat. “Was it you, Lindy?”
Alex is just smiling. I can’t even look at Reeve.
That’s when Jamie comes running up to the table with a single red rose in her hand. “Lillia, I forgot to give this one to you in all the craziness this morning.” She hands me the rose and a card and walks away.
“Open up the card!” Ash demands.
Everybody’s looking at me now. Slowly I open the little red envelope. The card says, First time I bought a rose for anyone other than my mom. Congratulations, Cho. I can feel my cheeks heat up. “It’s from my dad,” I say at last.
“Oh my God, you’re a horrible liar, Lil,” Ash says with a laugh. She reaches across the table and snatches the card out of my hands.
Desperately I say, “Give it back, Ash.”
The smile on her face fades as she reads. She puts two and two together immediately, her eyes moving from Reeve to me and back again. “Is this a joke?”
Beside me Alex has gone rigid in his seat. He looks from Reeve to me. “So you guys are together.”
I’m such a coward. I can’t even answer him. All I can do is look down at the table.
Then I hear Ash whisper, “Oh. My. God.” I look up at her, and she’s staring at me with round disbelieving eyes. “Lil?”
I open and close my mouth. I don’t know what to say to her.
Rubbing his hands through his hair, Reeve says, “Um . . . yeah. We are. We didn’t want it to come out like this, but, yeah.”
Alex quickly gathers up his lunch tray and stands up. “Feel free to throw those roses away if you haven’t already.”
Reeve reaches out to him. “Hey, dude, listen—”
Alex doesn’t let him finish. He gets up and leaves and doesn’t spare me a second look.
The entire cafeteria has gone qui
et. Everyone is staring at us.
“Tell me this isn’t happening,” Ash says. She’s talking only to me. “Tell me you and Reeve are not a thing.” When I don’t say anything, when seconds pass of me still not saying anything, she hisses, “Ren’s body isn’t even cold!”
I feel all the blood drain from my face.
Sharply Reeve says, “What’d you say, Ash?”
Ashlin shrugs a defiant kind of shrug, and Reeve narrows his eyes at Derek in warning. “You need to put a muzzle on your girl.”
Derek brushes him off and keeps on eating his sandwich. “Chill out, Tabatsky.”
Ash is shooting daggers at me, and PJ just looks dumbfounded. I feel sick to my stomach. I want to explain, but what can I even say?
“Anybody else have shit they want to say?” Reeve says. “If so, say it now to my face, because I’m not dealing with any whisper-behind-the-back bullshit.”
“This is sickening,” Ash spits out. Then she bolts up and leaves our table. Derek follows her. PJ shakes his head sadly, and he gets up too. Now it’s just Reeve and me at our end of the table. Reeve blinks. I know he wasn’t expecting that.
He pulls my chair closer and hugs me to him. I guess he can feel how nervous I am, because he says, “Don’t worry. We aren’t doing anything wrong.”
We both know that isn’t true. If we weren’t doing anything wrong, why were we sneaking around all this time?
“I’d do anything for you, Cho.” Reeve squeezes my hand. “You’re with me, right?” There’s an urgency in his voice, a weakness I’m not used to hearing.
Am I with him? Are we really doing this? I’m scared what people will think, what my sister will think. My parents. Ash. But it’s too late to worry about all that now. There’s no going back. And I do want to be with him. So I let him hold me. But I still can’t get the look on Alex’s face out of my head.
Chapter Eighteen
KAT
I’M HUSTLING OVER TO THE cafeteria when I run right into Alex. He looks like he wants to murder somebody. Uh-oh. “Hey, Alex—” I say.
“I can’t talk right now, Kat,” he says, and steamrolls past me.
So much for no regrets.
In the cafeteria Reeve and Lillia are sitting at their table alone. She’s got one long-stemmed red rose on the table in front of her. I know Alex is gone, but where are the rest of their friends? There’s, like, three trays of uneaten food left behind. I plop down in the seat across from Lil, where there’s a chicken sandwich and fries.
I help myself to a fry and glance over at Reeve. I don’t particularly want to dish about Alex’s feelings in front of him. “Hey, Reeve, can you get me a drink?”
He makes a disgusted face as I eat another fry. “There are five open sodas in front of you. Why don’t you mooch off one of them?”
Ugh. I turn my chair away from him and lower my voice. “Did shit just go down?” Pointing to the single rose, I say, “Is that from Al?” I was expecting something bigger. Though maybe he did a rose and, like, sang one of his songs for her or something.
Lillia shakes her head and hands me the card that came with the rose.
“Oh.” I say. “Wait. I thought you and Reeve were keeping things on the down low?”
Reeve looks from me to Lillia. “Wait a minute—DeBrassio knows about us?” I give him a Cheshire cat smile. “I thought we were keeping this a secret from everyone!”
Defensively Lillia says, “First off, I only told Kat, and I swore her to secrecy. And what right do you have to be mad at that? I’m not the one who sent you a valentine in front of everyone!”
I dip a fry into some ketchup and nod my head in agreement. “She’s got a point.”
Reeve lets out a frustrated sigh. “I thought I could send you a rose and it would get lost in all the other ones you get in homeroom and you’d be the only one who knew. I definitely didn’t expect it to be delivered in the middle of lunch with everyone around.”
“No. I mean . . .” Lillia picks up the rose and puts it to her nose. “I know it was an accident. I just wish you hadn’t been such a jerk to Derek.”
“What else could I do? I’m not going to sit here and not say anything while Ash is a bitch to you.” Reeve glances at me before he says, “It’s none of their business anyway.”
“Ash was a bitch? What did that bobblehead say?”
Lillia’s chin trembles. “Ash said that Rennie’s body isn’t even cold. And then everyone just—they just got up and left.”
I lean forward and drag a fry through Lil’s ketchup. When our eyes meet, I can see how truly upset she is. Poor kid. I do feel bad for her, but, well . . . she had to have known that being with Reeve, in secret or not, came with a whole lotta baggage. I give her arm a squeeze. “They’ll come around,” I say, but I don’t know if that’s true. I just want to make her feel better.
“Kat’s right. They will. They’re just shocked,” Reeve says, and pushes some of Lillia’s hair behind her ear. “And now everyone knows. We don’t have to sneak around anymore. It’s honestly a relief.”
Lillia and I share a look. Almost everyone knows. And that is a relief. Thank God Mary isn’t here to see this.
Reeve pulls Lil’s chair close to him and kisses the top of her head. It makes me feel better that she’s smiling, even for a second. I know it makes Reeve feel better too. You can see it all over his face.
Chapter Nineteen
MARY
WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, I find myself inside the high school. Everyone’s dressed in pinks and reds and whites. They’re carrying roses, sharing kisses in the hallways.
Oh my gosh, it’s Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day? How can that be? How can a whole month and a half have passed? I don’t think I understand what time feels like anymore. A long time or a short time, it all feels the same to me now.
I do feel something, though. Something magnetic. A pull. A current. A tide.
It takes me to the cafeteria.
And what I see eclipses any pain I’ve ever felt.
They’re together. Lillia, Kat, Reeve. As thick as thieves. Kat’s reaching for food, Reeve’s swatting her hands away, and Lillia is laughing at both of them.
I tear at my hair. Why? Why am I being tortured like this? Forced to watch Reeve move on with his life, watch him get whatever he wants. Watch him take my friends, erase me from the world. He doesn’t deserve to be happy. Not after what he did to me.
The edges of the cafeteria get white, and I begin to lose focus. Which is good, because I don’t want to see this. I was wrong. I was so wrong about everything. We aren’t friends. They don’t miss me; they don’t think about me. If they did, there’s no way in hell this would be happening.
The very last thing that made me feel like I was human, just a little bit human, is gone.
* * *
I don’t know how much time passes, where I go, what happens to me after. I come to on my bedroom floor to the sound of laughter. It’s coming from outside, but strangely, it sounds like their lips are right next to my ears.
Kids laugh in two different kinds of ways. There’s the joyous, silly kind that happens when you’re getting tickled by your mom or chased around the backyard by your dad.
And then there’s the mean, teasing kind. The cruel kind of laughter that isn’t funny at all.
That’s what I hear, and it brings me right back to my Montessori days.
I quickly push up off my stomach and walk to the window. There’s a group of kids down on the street below, right in front of my house. I bet they’re coming from the park up the road. Four of them are closing the gap on one boy who’s by himself. He’s walking backward as best he can, though he almost trips on the curb, because he doesn’t want to turn his back on them.
I close my eyes, and in a flash I’m down on the curb.
The one boy who’s by himself, the unease on his face makes my stomach hurt. He’s ten years old, maybe eleven. I can’t tell exactly because he’s tall for his a
ge. Taller than the other kids who are taunting him, but that doesn’t matter. He’s trying not to look scared, but I know he is. I can feel his heart drumming. His hair is long and shaggy and a bit greasy, and he keeps flipping it out of his eyes by jerking his head. His jeans are dirty and they don’t fit him so great. His cheeks are dotted by a few ripe red pimples.
Poor thing.
The other four kids, three boys and one girl, have the energy of a full-blown mob.
“I know you want to kiss her, Benjamin,” the blond-haired boy says. “I saw you staring at her ass.”
“I was not,” the tall boy, Benjamin, says. And then he realizes that he’s been backed into the bushes that edge my property. The other kids quickly surround him. He wipes away some sweat from his temple with his sleeve.
I step between two of the boys and stand next to Benjamin. Even if he can’t see me, I hope he can feel me next to him. I hope he can tell he’s not alone.
The ringleader boy tips his head back and laughs. “Dude! I saw you do it! Are you calling me a liar?” He glances over at the girl standing next to him. “Betsy, he’s calling me a liar.”
Betsy doesn’t look all that into what’s happening, but she’s not exactly stopping it either. She just shrugs her shoulders.
“I’m not calling you a liar, Seth,” Benjamin says carefully. “I’m just saying that you’re wrong.”
Seth slings an arm over Betsy’s shoulder. “So if Betsy tried to kiss you, you wouldn’t do it?”
“No.”
Betsy rolls her eyes at that, and I feel the pang of hurt inside Benjamin. My hand goes to my chest, where my heart would be beating if I were alive. I can really, truly feel it. His hurt, as if it were my own. I’ve felt this way before. The first day of school when I hid in the bathroom. Kat and Lillia were both so upset, their pain radiating through the stall door.
Seth lowers his head menacingly. “So you’re saying that my girlfriend is ugly?”
“No! I’m not saying that!” Benjamin is clearly getting frustrated, and I don’t blame him. “I wouldn’t kiss her because I know Betsy’s your girlfriend.”