He Must Like You

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  Thank God my dad is anti-Facebook, otherwise he’d be infamous on there by now.

  It takes me a minute to open the app, during which time Emma texts, DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS.

  I’m not that stupid, I text back.

  The video is right at the top of the feed. It captures the just-soaked Perry perfectly, and the back of me as I wave the empty pitcher around wildly, shouting the entire time. For my second viewing I grab earphones and put the sound on. The audio only catches every fifth word, most of them curses. Then you see me whipping the pitcher onto the floor so hard the plastic cracks (I don’t even remember doing that—yikes!) and then I turn, pause long enough to be clearly identifiable (as a lunatic), and storm out.

  Watching the video does not make me feel better. Shocker. But I can’t stop. I spend the entire period watching and re-watching, feeling worse and worse.

  And then, even though Emma warned me not to, and even though you should NEVER READ THE COMMENTS, and even though I would be better off drinking water from the toilet or jabbing my thumbs into my eyes, and even though I told Emma that I’m not that stupid, it turns out that I am exactly that stupid.

  I’m still scrolling through, almost at the end, when Emma calls.

  “Hi,” I whisper, though I don’t think anyone else is in the bathroom. “You done already?”

  “You read the comments.”

  “I’ve said, like, three words—how can you tell?”

  “I just can. Why did you do that?”

  “I figured someone might have stood up for me, or that what I was imagining people saying was worse than what they were actually saying.”

  “And was it?”

  “No.”

  “Comments sections are where people’s best selves go to die, Libby. Where are you?”

  “South end bathroom.”

  Two minutes later I see her red converse high-tops under the door, and then she’s hissing, “Let me in!”

  I open the door and she crams herself into the stall with me.

  “You look like hell,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s your eyes. You have screen-time eyes. Comments-section-I-didn’t-listen-to-my-best-friend eyes.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I say, my voice admittedly shaky. “I’ve been through this type of thing before—no big deal.”

  “Listen to me,” she says, so intense it’s almost comical. “Remember how when I’m having a panic attack you tell me it’s going to be okay, and that it will be over soon, and there is no emergency?”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  “And you know how our deal is that I agree to believe you no matter what every time, and how this has basically saved my life?”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  “I’m invoking that.”

  “Oh, it can be invoked?”

  “It can and it is. I need you to trust me now. Do you trust me?”

  “I guess.”

  “A little more certainty, please.”

  “Fine, I trust you.”

  “Okay. So. Of course you can handle the people who’re going to start acting like idiots here at school. But this online stuff will make you lose your mind. Seriously. If nothing else, it’s a time suck, but at worst it’s an abyss. So. If you trust me, which you have stated legally that you do—”

  I snort, but she keeps going.

  “—then you will turn off the Wi-Fi on your phone and on your laptop, and block texts from anyone but your close circle, and make a solemn promise to me that you won’t go back to the video, or to any social media, for at least forty-eight hours. Get an app to lock yourself off if you have to. Or give me your phone and I’ll do it.”

  “I see your point. But if I’m being attacked, don’t I need to know?”

  “If you’re being attacked and you don’t know about it, are you actually being attacked?” Emma responds.

  “Uh, yes. And the tree also falls in the forest and the glass is half empty.”

  “Well, since we’re getting philosophical, if someone says something about you and you don’t learn about it, then for you that’s the same as it not existing. It’s like that person took a swing and their punch landed on air. And then they’re just a crazy person punching the air, and you don’t even feel it. If you don’t read or hear the words, they can’t hurt you.”

  “That’s not true—my reputation—”

  “Okay, Taylor Swift . . .”

  “Seriously, it matters. Especially because I need to get another job, like, today.”

  “One thing at a time. Not commenting, at least for a couple of days, will not make things worse in that regard.”

  “But I have to defend myself.”

  “Just promise me two days. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do anything, I’m just saying hold off, see what happens. Somebody else from the Goat might come forward, or someone might say they saw Perry grabbing your butt, and that does the defending for you. Even if no one else comes forward to support you or accuse Perry, something totally unrelated might happen—some other scandal—and everyone will just move on.”

  “Except me.”

  “Especially you.”

  “All right, but—”

  The lunch bell rings, which means the bathroom is going to be filled with people in a minute.

  “Okay,” Emma says as we start hearing lockers banging in the hallway. “Just to relieve your anxiety, how about I monitor everything for a couple of days—all the online stuff—and if there’s anything you need to know, I’ll tell you. I’ll be like a filter, or a shield.”

  My throat tightens and my eyes start to mist up.

  “No, no,” Emma hisses, “no crying.”

  “Okay. But you’re amazing.”

  “Well,” she says with a grin, “between this and the naked boy eviction you really are giving me opportunities to build up my friendship karma.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say with an eye roll as I reach out to unlock the stall door, “obviously that’s why I did it.”

  11

  AN ART TO IT

  The rest of school on Monday is, admittedly, a bit of a trial. There’s the usual snickering and staring that comes with being part of/adjacent to a scandal, but I have at least one friend in each of my afternoon classes, and it’s high time I practice my withering glare—it’s been getting rusty.

  Plus this Perry thing has done me the favor of driving the other things that were bothering me (e.g., my little trash heap of nonconsensual sexual situations) almost all the way out of my mind.

  Yay.

  And, Monday is Art Club with Noah, who, astonishingly enough, has not been driven out of my mind even a little bit. This is the only one of my extracurriculars that I didn’t quit when I started working back in January, for obvious reasons.

  The art teacher has left a selection of supplies out on a big table. I grab a bunch of random pieces of fabric and a pot of glue, and then head to our usual spot by the window where we can watch the more sportily inclined students run around on the still-muddy back field. Noah is already there, working on something in his sketchbook.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says, with something distinctly downtrodden in his tone.

  “Uh, you okay?” I ask him.

  “Me? You’re the one having the crap day.”

  “A bit crap,” I concede, and then start sorting through the pile of stuff I grabbed, settling on a large piece of burlap. “But it could be worse.”

  “True,” he says, then focuses back on his work.

  Okay, so he doesn’t feel like talking.

  And I don’t feel like doing art.

  Which means I find myself sitting there pulling the fabric apart, thread by thread, while either staring out the window or at him.

  He’s holding his charcoal
pencil way too tightly and he looks gloomy.

  “What’s that going to be?” I ask finally, trying unsuccessfully to get a peek at what he’s drawing.

  “The Death of Hope,” he says, and I can’t tell whether he’s joking.

  “Hello, melodrama,” I say, and this gets me a tiny smile from him. “You’re calling a building ‘The Death of Hope’?” Lately Noah spends Art Club working on architectural drawings—some very brass tacks and mathematical, others more conceptual.

  “This one isn’t a building,” he says, then looks over at the mess I’m making. “And, uh, what’s that supposed to be?”

  “The Death of All Ideas of What to Do in Art Club?” I say, and he laughs, but it’s a pained laugh. “Okay, Noah, what’s with you?”

  He studies me, then shakes his head. “You don’t need to hear my problems today. You got your own.”

  “Maybe hearing your problems will help take my mind off mine.”

  “Oh, so my problems are what—a cheap distraction?”

  “Cheap? I would have said free.”

  He laughs.

  “Start talking,” I say.

  “Ava and I are going back and forth about something, and I just got a text from her.”

  Ugh, it’s about Ava. Still, I did ask.

  “She doesn’t want to do the gap year thing with me,” he adds.

  “Was she going to?”

  “Yeah, we were planning on it.”

  I get four nearly simultaneous, conflicting feelings about this: 1. a stabbed-in-the-gut feeling re the two of them planning a romantic year traveling together; 2. a wash of entirely selfish joy/relief that it’s not happening; 3. another stabby sensation of guilt over my feeling happy about something that’s making him miserable; and 4. plain old empathetic pain over his being in pain, because, of course, I want him to be happy.

  “Wow,” I say, my fingers working harder than ever to destruct the burlap. “What . . . uh . . . changed?”

  “She was into it and then her parents convinced her to apply to college anyway. Now all of a sudden she’s gotten accepted to some programs, and she doesn’t want to travel anymore, and I’m pissed off that she caved to her parents and hurt that she just . . . changed her mind like that.”

  “She has the right to change her mind.”

  “Sure. But now she’s saying I should stay, too. For her.”

  “But you’ve been saving and planning for this forever!”

  “I know. It’s just the long-distance thing sucks. We’re doing it already, and this would be so much worse. It would’ve been good to just be together, you know? And then after, if we were at different schools it would have been okay because we’d be solid. Or the trip would show us we weren’t solid, and then we’d both be free. But to be apart next year? It’ll just make us both less committed to where we are, to be constantly trying to stay connected to someone so far away.”

  “I see the problem.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Uh, if I were you, or if I were her?”

  “I meant me, but . . .” He’s been waving his pencil and tapping his foot and looking all over the place talking about this, but all of a sudden he’s dialed in on me in a way that makes it hard to breathe. “But yeah, what would you do if you were her?”

  “If I were her I’d go with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and then lift one shoulder like I feel totally casual about it. “I mean, you get a chance like that once. If you’re lucky. To travel, see the world with someone you’re madly in love with? Absolutely.”

  “But aren’t you dying to go to college?”

  “Oh, are we talking about actual me in this hypothetical situation?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “uh, if you had someone like that. Would you go to college, or would you go with him?”

  “Actual me probably can’t do either of those things,” I say. “Actual me will probably be stuck in Pine Ridge next year working and trying to save money, and I guess if actual me scraped together enough money to go to college, actual me should probably go, and not spend it on travel because then at the end of the traveling, actual me would be right back where I started. But if the money wasn’t a problem? Hypothetical me would seriously consider the gap year with the actual you.”

  “Huh,” he says, and I have to look away because I’ve said wayyy too much.

  But he seems not to have noticed, because after a moment he says, “Okay, then, what if you were me?”

  “Easy. I’d go on the trip.”

  “Right. So the only problem with that is that Ava and I sort of agreed that if we’re not in the same place next year, we won’t . . . continue.”

  “Oh. That’s hard. Are you considering staying? Are you tempted?” I ask, wishing I didn’t feel so invested in the answer. “I mean, there’s a purpose for this trip for you. It’s not like you’re planning to just go wander randomly around—”

  “Well, there may be some random wandering.”

  “Right, but don’t you have a list of architectural wonders or whatever that you want to see in person?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “And yet you have this wonderful girl,” I say, trying not to sound bitter on “wonderful.” “I can see how you’d be torn.”

  “That’s what’s really bad, though,” Noah says, looking at me with troubled eyes. “I don’t think I’m torn enough. I think I’m torn about not being torn, if that makes any sense. What does that say about me? That I’m not even tempted to stay? Am I that selfish? Or do I not care about her like I thought I did? Anyway now I have to tell her there’s no way I’m changing my plans for her. And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do we stay together right up to the time I leave in August, and try to spend the summer together, or do we just break up now? We don’t need to break up yet. But if the decision was that easy for me, what am I doing dragging it out? And dragging it out long-distance, no less? And how is it I so badly wanted her to come with me, but then I’m not tempted at all to stay here with her? Did I just want a travel companion?”

  “Well, she wouldn’t have been just a travel companion,” I point out. “She’d have been a travel companion you could snog.”

  “Yeah, that’s a loss for sure,” he says, and then laughs for the first time. “Anyway, nothing you can do about it.”

  Oh yes there is—take me . . . ! I want to shout. Pick me!

  But gap years cost money, unless you spend them at home, working. Plus he is my friend, in pain and confusion, and this is not the time to be imagining myself making out with him in every zillion-year-old cathedral and modern art museum in Europe.

  “What do you think she’ll want to do?” I say, trying to focus.

  “I dunno,” he says. “I need to sort myself out before I talk to her, but I’m not great at hiding my feelings even long-distance, and I know she’s already getting weird vibes from me.”

  “A suggestion?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe don’t lead with the Death of Hope theme,” I say, gesturing toward his sketchbook.

  * * *

  —

  I drop off ten of the updated résumés on my way home—to all the places I applied before plus some stores along Main Street, including the shop with the expensive stick furniture. The only place I can’t bring myself to go back to is Fancy Lattes. Even so, I get a mix of reactions that range from amusement to shock to a lecture on Perry’s wonderfulness to calling me a “hussy” and telling me never to set foot in their establishment again.

  It’s even more exciting than my job search in January.

  Still, it feels good to do something.

  And it occurs to me that I may have inherited one worthwhile character trait from my dad: stubbornness.

 
My last stop is Crawler’s Pub. There are only a few people there and Lyle is behind the bar moving crates of glassware. He stops everything when he sees me, puts the crate he’s holding down on top of the bar, and says, “Well, well, well.”

  “Hi, Lyle,” I say.

  “You here for a drink?”

  “Things are not yet so tragic that I would be belly-up to a bar right after school,” I say, “but stay tuned.”

  He gives a bark of a laugh and I pull my résumé out and hand it to him.

  “Guess what? I have experience now. Lots of experience.”

  “So I hear,” he says, looking at the piece of paper. “You got some balls putting your three months at the Goat on your résumé, given the story I just heard.”

  “Everywhere I apply is going to have heard anyway,” I say. “And I do know how to serve tables now, which I didn’t before, so it shows my experience, and . . . that I’m honest? Plus I am a good server. Even Dev would have to admit that, I think. In fact, he even said the words ‘you’re an excellent server’ on the voicemail message where he fired me! I have it. I could play it for you.”

  “That’s gonna be your strategy?” Lyle says, the corners of his mouth quirking upward. “To play the message in which your boss is firing you?”

  “Only the part where he says I’m excellent,” I say, and start pulling my phone out.

  “No need,” he says, stopping me. “I believe you. And I hate Ackerman’s guts, but I still got nothing for you. Might have a dishwashing position in a few weeks, but nothing right now.”

  “You’d hire me for that, though?” I say.

  “Yeah, I’d hire you,” he says. “You can holler at the dishes. Entertain the staff back there. I don’t mind my people on the salty side.”

  “Would I have the chance to move up?”

  “Never say never,” he says. “Keep in touch.”

  All is quiet when I get home, and I head to my room, flop on the bed, and send up prayers to the universe that my parents have not heard about last night’s fiasco yet, and that I can have a nice, calm evening.