The awards portions nears its end, and the server who found me earlier returns to usher me backstage again.
“Good luck,” Andi whispers as I leave.
I kiss her cheek. “I don’t need luck.”
I arrive in the back just in time to see Crick coming off the stage, fresh from his win as the basketball team’s Most Improved Player. I hover off to the side as he chats with Ivanka, holding up his little trophy and smiling for the cameras like that’s not the only thing he’s going to win tonight.
I do my best to ignore their conversation and listen through the stage door to the presenter currently speaking, skimming my cue card and preparing not to make a fool of myself.
“Thanks for chatting with me,” Ivanka says, shaking Crick’s hand.
“Pleasure’s mine,” he replies.
Ivanka flashes me a quick smile before hopping off her chair and hurrying down the hall toward the bathrooms. Then it’s just me and Crick and his trophy and his awful white suit. He stays seated on his stool like she might come back to continue the conversation.
“Congrats,” I make myself say. “The trophy’s very...shiny.”
He smoothes his hand over the top of the bronze player’s tiny skull. “Maybe you’ll win something one day.”
I’m about to retort when the stage door swings open. I shuffle back next to Crick so I don’t get hit, and the assistant peers out. “Good,” she says when she spots me. “A minute for the thank-you speech, another thirty seconds for Dean Ripley to introduce you, then you’re up. Any questions?”
“Why does Dean Ripley have to introduce him?” Crick interjects.
The assistant darts a confused glance his way. I’m pretty sure the questions were supposed to come from me. “To explain why Coach Lungull isn’t presenting.”
“Oh. Not because he’s like, good, or anything?”
Her brow furrows. “Right. Okay. Bye.”
The door closes and she disappears.
I turn on Crick. “Really? You just won an award. You’re bitter that I’m presenting?”
“No, I’m bitter you stole my girl.”
I scoff. “Andi was never yours. Plus you’re here with someone else. It looks like you’ve moved on.”
“And you? How long until you get tired of her and start another list?”
“I’m not keeping any lists.”
“Why not? You think you’re in love with her?”
“What?” I’m definitely not going to tell Crick I’m love with Andi before I tell her. “Of course I’m not in love with her. We’re friends. I mean, we’re not just friends, it’s complicated because—”
The stage door opens again. This time it’s not only the assistant that comes through, but the soul-sucking sound of a hundred people inhaling at the same time.
I glance around. “What?”
The assistant sighs. “You’re up.”
“And you’re out.” Crick winks at me.
“What are you...”
He strides back out into the hall, leaving me looking helplessly at the assistant. “What am I missing?”
Her gaze is pitying. “Everything. Come on.”
I trail after her into the stage wings, passing the newest winner as she descends. Dean Ripley is at the microphone, finishing his explanation about Coach Lungull’s illness, and behind him the screen is frozen on a shot of Ivanka’s interview area. She’s already back on her stool, smiling at the new winner.
Dean Ripley steps aside and it’s my cue to take the mic. His smile is strained and I try to look past the blinding lights into the crowd, searching for a familiar face, some glimmer of understanding. But I can’t see Andi or Crosbie or Dane or Choo. I can’t even see Crick or his stupid white suit.
I blink and study the cue card in my hand, forcing myself to read the introduction. “Graham Walmsley led the cross country team to two national titles,” I begin, feeling sweat beneath my arms and in the small of my back. “He did this while maintaining a 3.9 GPA and volunteering...” I’m too hot and my hands are shaking but I somehow finish the speech and join in the applause as Graham takes the stage to accept his award. I’m supposed to stand off to the side and wait for the speech to finish, but instead I inch my way to the exit.
The assistant snags my arm as I reach the stairs. “You need to wait.”
“What’s going on?” I demand. “What did I do? What did I miss?”
She sighs. “The cameras were rolling.”
“What?” Behind me I’m all too aware of the giant screen silently broadcasting Ivanka’s interviews.
“Your conversation with Julian Crick,” she adds. “The sound’s on between award presentations.” Suddenly his slimy wink suddenly makes sense. The baiting questions I was all too quick to snap up. Informing him—and the world—that I don’t love Andi.
“Oh, shit. No. No!” I shove past her and out the door, banging through into the banquet hall just as Graham finishes his speech. People are torn between cheering for Graham and gawking at me, and it’s an uncomfortable mixture of pity, anger, and applause that greets me.
I know even before I see the empty chair that Andi’s gone. Her untouched dessert sits on her plate and I stare at it like it’s a ransom note.
“Where did she go?” I whisper. The room is now divided between watching Ivanka and her producer take the stage and eying the drama unfolding at my table.
“I don’t know,” Crosbie whispers back. “She just took off.”
“I didn’t mean what I—”
“Twelve hundred auditions,” Ivanka begins, her cultured voice ringing through the room. “The best of the best from colleges across the state. In our quest to honor the greatest young athletes in the Pacific Northwest, we met the cream of the crop. Your passion, your creativity, and your charisma put four Burnham students into the top ten spots for the coveted, once-in-a-lifetime chance to win an on-air segment host position sitting next to me. But only one person...”
I look desperately toward the heavy wooden doors at the far end of the hall. I want to run out of the building, chase after Andi, wherever she is, and apologize. Tell her what I should have told her two hours ago and two months and two years ago.
“Sit down!” someone hisses, and I sink into my seat. She’s not going to leave campus, I tell myself. We have exams. No matter how mad she is, no matter how hurt, she’s too smart to run away. I can find her after the announcement—
My stomach seizes. Oh God. The announcement. If they call my name after what just happened there’s no way I can go up there. The whole room would boo me. Fuck, I would boo me. I run clammy hands over my face, trying to calm down.
“And with no further ado...” Ivanka is saying, holding a dramatic red envelope in her hand and unsealing the flap with a fingernail. “We are thrilled and excited to announce that the person joining me for a minute-long segment on She Shoots, She Scores is none other than Burnham’s own...Gary Zhang!”
There’s an excruciating moment of confused silence. It feels like everyone’s looking at me, waiting for me to stand up and announce that my name is Gary Zhang.
“Hell yeah!” Choo hollers from the far side of the room, yanking the focus away from me. Even in the dim lighting I can see the exuberance on his face, his hands thrust into the air, fully willing to celebrate his victory even if everyone else is about fifteen seconds behind. He runs up to the stage as murmurs of “Who’s Gary Zhang?” ripple through the crowd.
Ivanka’s smile flickers uncertainly as Choo barrels up the steps with an unlit torch in his hand. I have no idea how he got it in here.
“Light it up!” he shouts into the microphone, eliciting laughter and belated but enthusiastic applause from the crowd. He fumbles in his pocket for a lighter, the flame sparking as Dean Ripley rushes out from the wings.
“Gary!” he snaps, the microphone picking up his words. “What are you doing? We’re indoors. You can’t start a fire!”
“It’s my thing!”
“
No, it’s not!” Dean Ripley confiscates the torch and lighter and stands by like a sentry in case Choo produces another one.
“Oh man,” Choo says, grinning at the crowd. “I can’t believe this. I mean, I can believe it, but I also can’t believe it. I wanted this so bad...” His genuine ebullience is sufficiently moving and distracting, and most people’s attention fully shifts from me to someone who truly deserves it. I try my best to listen and be happy for my friend, but my heart is crumbling inside my chest and it feels almost as impossible to stay in this chair as it does to imagine myself somehow convincing Andi to forgive me. Because I’ve done this before. At Petco Stadium I convinced 42,000 strangers that I didn’t love her. Worst, I convinced Andi. And just as I’d started to convince her to take a chance on me—again—I did it—again. A smaller crowd, but a more personal one. A more painful one.
The room gets to its feet as Choo wraps up his speech and I stand on shaky legs and make myself clap, plastering a smile on my face even as it feels like my cheeks will crack from the effort. Eventually we retake our seats as Dean Ripley approaches the microphone for the wrap up. I stare miserably at my still-full wine glass, counting down the seconds until I can leave.
“Dude!” a voice whispers from over my shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
I jerk in my seat and find Choo crouched behind me. “Wha... Don’t you have to talk to Ivanka?”
“Why are you still here?” he demands, ignoring my question and nodding at Andi’s empty seat. “Why didn’t you go after her?”
“You won. I didn’t want it to look like I was bitter so I stayed...”
He heaves an exaggerated sigh. “Kellan, when are you going to stop worrying about what everybody else thinks and worry about the people that matter?”
“I—”
Nora leans across the table. “He’s right. For once.”
“For always,” Choo corrects her. To me he adds, “Get out of here, you idiot. Go find her.”
“Yeah,” Dane chips in from the next table over. “Get lost. And for fuck’s sake, say something when you find her.”
Something soft and heavy hits me and I find my coat thrown in my lap, Marcela glaring down at me, having fetched it from the coat check. “What are you waiting for?”
I look at Crosbie. “You heard them,” he says. “There’s nothing for you here.”
And finally I look at my friends—at Crosbie and Nora, Dane and Choo, and, reluctantly, Marcela—and see not the life I thought I wanted, but the one I have. The one I need. Everyone else is white noise. Background, middle ground. This is the foreground, the stuff that should have been in focus all along. And a huge part of it’s missing.
“Okay.” I shove to my feet and pull on my coat. “I’m going.”
“Don’t screw up,” Marcela suggests.
“Your kindness is touching.”
She shrugs and looks at Choo. “Is your name really Gary?”
“Congrats,” I tell him. “I’m happy for you.”
“I know,” he says. “Now go be happy somewhere else.”
Every face I pass on the way out is a blur. I shoulder through the wooden doors, the freezing night air a slap in the face that’s a little too late in coming. The parking lot is a nest of cars so I run across campus instead, covering the distance to McKinley in record time. The light is on in Andi’s window so I know she’s home, and I catch the door as another student leaves. They should really work on the security at these places.
I run into the stairwell and emerge on Andi’s floor breathing hard. I take a second to catch my breath, then knock on her door. I expect her to pretend not to hear me, or maybe shout through it to tell me to fuck off, but to my surprise the door swings open immediately. She’s still in her dress, her cheeks pink with rage or cold or probably both. Her hair is tousled like she’d run here the same way I did, but all I can really see is the banked fury in her eyes. I’ve been on the receiving end of this look many times, but there’s something different about it this time. Something resigned. Something resolved.
Anxiety tightens my chest, like starting a race I know I’m going to lose. But I have to try. “I’m sorry,” I say before she can slam the door. “I didn’t mean it.”
Her jaw tightens and I can almost hear the wheels turning as she tries to find the right response, eventually settling on, “I want you to go.”
Everything I’d rehearsed on the way over rushes out of my head. I don’t know what I expected her to say—something more than game over. I mean, it’s Andi. I expect her to fight. If not for me, then with me. But she’s already out of the game. “I didn’t know the cameras were on,” I say, even though I know how weak it sounds. “I lied to Crick. It just didn’t seem right to say to him what I’d never said to you. What I’ve never had the balls to say to you.”
Her stony expression doesn’t soften. “Do you know what the definition of insanity is, Kellan? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” She blinks, tears clinging to the ends of her lashes. “I have loved you my whole life and all it’s ever gotten me is a broken heart. A humiliated, broken heart. When you kissed Lacey at that baseball game, I thought for sure that was the worst thing you could ever do to me. And then when you drove off to go to college, I thought for sure I’d never hurt more than that. But it turns out I can.”
“I’m—”
“Leaving me was the kindest thing you could have done. It gave me two years to see my life without you, to figure out how to be myself, how to live outside of your shadow. I finally saw that I didn’t have to be your sidekick.”
“Please—”
“People don’t turn down scholarships to Burnham, Kellan. They’re pretty hard to come by, especially when you haven’t even been in school for two years. But I considered it. Constantly. I thought about giving up everything I wanted because you were here. Because everything I want always comes second to everything you want.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “I never meant—”
“I came here because I thought I could do this. I thought two years was enough time to get over you. And it wasn’t.”
“Let me—”
“I’m not leaving Burnham, Kellan. But apparently no Ivy League education can cure whatever stupidity overcomes me when you’re around.”
“Andi, I’m so sorry,” I say again. “I swear. I should have said it before, but I lo—”
“Don’t you dare say it!” she shouts, planting a hand in the center of my chest and shoving me back so hard I stumble into the opposite wall. “I don’t care if you’re sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve always been so convenient for you. I’ve made this way too easy. And it’s not going to happen again.”
I gape at her. “Convenient? You’re the opposite of convenient. You’re fucking impossible. You’re terrifying. You’re—”
“I’m done,” she interrupts. “I can’t do this with you. If the past fifteen years have been proof of anything, it’s that.”
“Hear me out,” I plead. Of course now I want to tell her I love her, now that she’d never believe me. Now that the words would just be mountains of dirt being shoveled into the new hole I’ve dug for myself, burying me so deep I’ll never find a way out.
“Leave, Kellan.”
“No. I left you once before, I’m not doing it again.”
“Leave. I need you to.” She steps back toward her room, one hand on the knob, and I know if she goes in there, if she closes that door, it’ll be final.
“Andi, I love you,” I say desperately. “I love—”
She slaps me.
Hard.
Holy fuck it hurts.
My eyes water and my cheek burns and I think I tweaked something in my neck. It’s a slap for a lifetime worth of heartbreak. For all the other girls who wanted to do this very thing.
“Stay away from me,” she says quietly.
I look at her through watery eyes. “I mean it. I know you don’t want to hear it
right now, but I—” I don’t dare say the L-word again. “I care about you.”
Her nostrils flare, like she’s either warming up to another slap or talking herself out of one. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I’ve never been more—”
“Then promise to stay away,” she says. A single tear eases from the corner of her eye. She doesn’t wipe it away, just lets it fall, punctuating her plea. “I can’t do it by myself. Help me get over you.”
There are so many things I want to say, but none of them will weaken the resolve in her face. Her words. Her shining eyes. Good or bad, Andi has always been a girl who knows exactly what she wants, and for fifteen years, like it or not, that thing has been me.
And now it’s not.
For too long I’ve given her every reason to believe I didn’t care about her, not the way I should have, the way she wanted, the way she deserves. I didn’t know how to show her, to tell her. And now I do.
So I nod very, very slightly.
Her lower lip quivers, the only sign of emotion, and she twists the knob and backs through the door. I watch her through the narrowing gap, my oldest friend, my best friend, my girlfriend. I watch until the door closes, until the lock turns, until there’s nothing left.
chapter eighteen
There’s a week of class left before final exams. If I weren’t returning to Avilla, back to a home that’s even closer to Andi than this one, I’d be looking forward to the winter break. I’d be looking forward to being anywhere but here.
But I’m not.
I’m not looking forward to anything.
I’m looking back, because I’m a mopey asshole.
To make sure I don’t get too mopey, my friends take shifts babysitting me. They’ve stolen a house key and pass it between themselves so I can’t hide it like I’ve threatened. When I emerge from my room the morning after the break up, Crosbie’s there watching TV. Dane spends the night on the couch, then he and Choo wake me up at ten the next morning and force me to shower.
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