“What if he asked you?” The question comes out of nowhere. Like a slap to the face. Owen’s tone has an unexpected edge to it.
“What?”
“What if he asked you to ride the Ferris wheel with him? You’d do it, wouldn’t you? Without a moment’s hesitation. You’d suck it up and you’d get on the stupid ride.”
“Objection,” I complain. “Argumentative.”
“Oh, stop it, Ellie. You know I’m right.” Now he sounds downright angry. Where did this come from? What happened to the kind, funny, normal Owen I was waiting in line with a few seconds ago? How many faces does he have?
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m saying with him, you’re different. You lose yourself around him. You’re not you. You’re someone else. Someone you think he wants to hang out with. It’s like you play dead around him.”
My skin feels itchy. I scratch at my arms. “That’s not true.”
Owen barks out a sharp, cynical laugh. “Oh no? What are you wearing?” He gestures to my skirt. “What is this? It’s certainly not you.”
“It’s the new me,” I argue, but the rationale feels weak and thin on my lips.
He turns his back to me. I’m so mad now, I’m about to leave. He can ride the stupid ride himself. I’m going home.
But before I can take a single step, Owen spins around again, his face all flushed, his eyes narrowed. “You just don’t get it, do you? You don’t have to do this. Any of this. You don’t have to be someone else. He should like you for who you already are. You are one of the most unique, crazy, quirky, passionate people I know. You fight. You argue for things. You speak your mind. You get jealous.”
An invisible rock forms in my throat. I try to swallow it down but it lodges itself somewhere in my windpipe.
“But around him,” he goes on, “it’s like you’re on Mute. You shut it all down. You pretend to be this quiet, demure, agreeable, boring person.”
“I resent that,” I spit back irritably. “I am not boring.”
“Exactly!” Owen waves his hands. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You’re the least boring person I know.” He bites his lower lip before adding, “As long as you’re not around Tristan.”
There it is. He said his name. I didn’t realize how strange and misshapen it sounds on Owen’s lips until now. Maybe that’s because in the past five months, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard Owen say it.
How can seven lousy letters suddenly sound so different?
How can a single name—a name that normally makes me feel like I’m flying—suddenly make me feel like I’m falling from a telephone pole and there’s no net to catch me?
“Fine,” I snarl, pulling up the rope and ducking under it. “If I’m so boring, then I’ll save you the burden of having to hang out with me.”
I storm off, tears springing to my eyes with every step. Part of me wants Owen to chase after me. Part of me hopes he doesn’t. Because then he’d see me crying. Then he’d see what kind of effect his words have on me.
“I still won,” I murmur to myself as I stalk to my car and plop down behind the wheel. I wipe at my wet cheeks. “I still won.”
But the victory doesn’t just feel empty anymore. It feels pointless.
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
10:02 p.m.
“You seem distracted,” Hadley says as I sit on the edge of her bed, watching the last ten minutes of The Breakfast Club. I missed most of it tonight due to Owen’s and my impromptu carnival date.
Date?
Why did I say that? I meant hang-out. Chum session. Friendly jaunt.
Not a date. Obviously not a date.
But it kind of felt like a date, didn’t it? Until we got into that huge fight and I stormed off.
Why did it feel like a date? Because we were alone?
But I’ve hung out alone with Owen a million times. He’s been my best friend since forever. I know Owen almost as well as I know myself. Maybe even better. And yet, tonight, I felt like I was hanging out with him for the first time.
“Yo, Ells!” My sister’s voice breaks through my reverie and I look over at her. She’s paused the movie and is staring at me.
“Sorry. What?”
She laughs. “I said you seem distracted.”
I focus back on the screen. “I’m not. I’m totally, one hundred percent, focused.”
“Is this about Tristan?”
My head whips back to her. “What? No. Sort of. No.”
“No?” she says.
“No,” I resolve. “It’s not about Tristan.”
She nods to the stuffed poodle that I’d set on the floor next to her bed when I came in. “So did he win you that at the carnival?”
My chest squeezes. “No, Owen did.”
“Owen?” Hadley asks in disbelief. “Owen has hand-eye coordination?”
This makes me laugh. I think about how ungraceful he always is when he climbs through my window. Will he ever climb through my window again after the things we said to each other tonight?
“Why were you hanging out with Owen?” she asks. “Did you and Tristan get into another fight?”
I shake my head. “No. Actually Owen and I did.”
She waves this away. “You and Owen always fight.”
She’s right. We do. But never about anything serious. Never about anything real. Tonight it felt different. Tonight it felt … final.
“You’re lucky you weren’t here,” Hadley says. “Mom and Dad had a huge fight. I heard them yelling. It was bad.”
I think about the past four mornings, my mom banging pots around the kitchen, my father sleeping in the guest room. “Do you know what it was about?”
“He forgot their anniversary.”
I cringe. “Yikes. Mom is big on anniversaries.”
“I know. But it gets worse. Not only did he forget, he made plans with his work friends so he didn’t get home until late. She thought maybe he was surprising her with some big fancy night out, so she got all dressed up and waited in the living room for him to come home.”
“Oh, God. That’s bad.”
“Yeah.” She looks at me and bites her lip. “So did you and Tristan make up or was it just a reconfusiliation?”
“A what?”
“You know, when you try to reconcile with someone but they have no idea why you’re even mad.”
I shake my head. “Uh. No. It wasn’t a reconfus—it wasn’t that.”
“So everything’s good between you two again?”
I glance at the TV. Hadley has it paused right on the part where Ally Sheedy emerges from her makeover and Emilio Estevez is staring at her all openmouthed and googly-eyed. Suddenly it occurs to me that this movie is incomplete.
What happens after this?
Do they stay together forever?
Do they break up?
Do they eventually get married and have lots of babies?
The movie never tells us what happens after they all go home as their new and improved selves. Sure, Emilio ends up with Ally and Molly Ringwald ends up with Judd Nelson. But that’s like one afternoon. What happens the next day? Or the day after that? Do they fall back into their old ways? Regress to their old personas? Or do they wear those new personalities forever?
The question Owen asked me earlier tonight in the parking lot is screaming in my mind.
Does that mean you have to dress like that every day?
I didn’t have an answer then and I still don’t have an answer now.
What will tomorrow look like?
“Yeah,” I tell her, pushing out a smile. “Everything’s great between us.”
This seems to satisfy her taste for gossip. She unpauses the movie and hugs the pillow to her chest as the final scenes play out. Molly Ringwald gives Judd Nelson one of her diamond earrings. Emilio Estevez kisses Ally Sheedy goodbye.
I peer over at Hadley. She looks about as giddy and bouncy as Ally does after tha
t kiss.
Of course things are going to work out for them, I tell myself. Otherwise, there’d be no point to the movie. Otherwise, the story wouldn’t affect as many people as it does. People like my sister.
That gives me hope.
Tristan and I are fine. More than fine. We’re great. Today, I reminded him of what he’d be missing if we were to break up. Today, I reminded him of why we got together in the first place. We have chemistry. I don’t have to dress like this every day. I’ve proven my point and that’s all that matters.
The final scene of the movie comes to a close as the voice-over talks about how the Breakfast Club members are a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.
Beside me, Hadley lets out a deep sigh, and I notice her wiping at her eyes.
“You really like this movie, don’t you?” I say.
She nods. “It’s so true to life. It’s so real.”
I want to argue that she actually knows nothing about high school so how could she possibly be so sure? But I keep my mouth shut. After the events of today, something tells me that my sister needs this moment to comfort her.
“It’s like you, you know?” she adds.
This takes me by surprise. “What’s like me?”
Hadley nods at the credits rolling over a frozen image of Judd Nelson punching the air. “You’re a brain and an athlete and a basket case, and even a princess, ever since you started dating Tristan.” She pauses to think about her analogy. “You’re kind of all of those things. Except the criminal.”
I choose not to mention my various run-ins with the “law” over the past few Mondays.
“You’re all over the place!” she jokes, and I playfully punch her in the arm.
Although I admit she’s kind of right. I have been all over the place lately, but it’s only because I’ve been trying to figure out how to get myself out of this crazy black hole of a day.
Now everything can finally return to normal.
I say good night to Hadley, scoop up my stuffed poodle, and retreat to my room. I strip off my thigh-high boots and miniskirt and scrub the heavy black makeup from my eyes. As I climb into bed, I send Tristan a quick text. Just to check.
Me: Good night.
A few seconds later, his response comes.
Tristan: Good night, sexy. See you tomorrow.
See, I think to myself as I plug in my phone and set it on my nightstand.
All fixed.
The Way We Were (Part 4)
Five months ago …
“I thought we were going to get pizza,” I said as Tristan led me up the stairs of his house and into his bedroom.
“We are, but there’s something I need to do first.”
With his hand firmly clasped around mine, sending tingles up the length of my arm, he sat me down on his bed and closed the bedroom door.
“Uh,” I said, glancing around—bedroom? closed door? bed?—“this is our first date.”
He laughed that beautiful ballad of a laugh. “Not that. Jeez, Ellie, what kind of guy do you think I am?”
The sound of my name on his lips made me grateful I was sitting down.
“The kind that hits on girls at parties and then takes them into the shower.”
He walked over to his desk, opening a drawer and riffling around inside. “May I remind you that I did not touch you in that shower.” He turned and flashed me a devilish grin. “As much as I wanted to.”
My cheeks burst into flames.
It had been four days since the party. Three days and twelve hours since Tristan texted and asked me out, and I still couldn’t bring myself to believe it was actually happening. I glanced around the room, taking in the posters on the wall (all bands I’d never heard of before) the navy blue color of the carpet, and the collection of real records in place of books on his shelf. That’s when it finally hit me.
I was in Tristan Wheeler’s bedroom! The whole thing was so surreal, I might as well have been on Jupiter.
“But I am a man of honor,” Tristan went on, pulling a pair of giant black headphones from the desk drawer and detangling the cord from a gnarled knot of other unidentified wires.
I giggled. “A man of honor?”
He feigned offense. “Yes. Honor. A gentleman. And a gentleman always asks first.” He approached the bed and gestured toward the empty space next to me. “May I sit?”
I nodded.
“See?” He lowered himself to the bed, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and plugged the end of the headphones into the jack.
“So what is it you absolutely needed to do before we could get pizza? Because I’m starving.”
He held up the headphones. “I need you to listen to my music.”
I leaned away, like the idea repulsed me. “No way. Not that noise.”
He closed his eyes for a brief second, pretending to gather his patience. “That’s the thing. I fear you were introduced to my music in the wrong setting. You were under duress. You had just stolen priceless gems from Daphne Gray’s house—”
“Allegedly,” I corrected him. “You still haven’t proven anything.”
“Fine. Allegedly stolen priceless gems from Daphne Gray’s house. You were desperate to leave. The speaker system there was crap. The party was loud. The circumstances were inadequate to say the least.”
“Inadequate?” I repeated, trying and failing to hide my grin.
He nodded. “Yes. Inadequate. Therefore, I feel that you need to give my music a second chance. Under better circumstances.”
I gesture around me. “In your bedroom? On your bed?”
He held up the headphones. “With these.”
“Those are going to make your music sound better? Are they magic?”
He nudged me with his shoulder. “You said my music was noise. These are noise-canceling headphones.”
I laughed. “I see.”
“But seriously. Songs are meant to be listened to on good-quality speakers. The kind that bring out the mix and the flavor and the nuances of the music.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. Nuance me.”
He arched an eyebrow.
I slugged him. “With the music, perv.”
He blinked. “Right.”
I held my breath as his hands reached toward me, as he pulled the headphones apart and gently placed them on my head.
As his fingers brushed against my hair.
“I’m going to play you one of our newer songs. I wrote it just this week. We recorded it yesterday in Jackson’s garage.”
My heart fluttered in my chest.
This week?
Meaning, he wrote it after he met me?
“It’s called ‘Mind of the Girl,’” he went on. “It’s about that feeling you get when you meet someone new and you can’t stop thinking about them and you desperately want to know everything about them. Everything that’s going on in their head. The good and the bad. What makes them smile and what makes them fall apart.”
There went my lungs again. Back on strike.
“It’s not finalized yet.” He thumbed through his phone, finding the song. “The mix is still really rough. So don’t fault it for that.” Then he looked at me, his finger hovering over the Play button. “Ready?”
For this?
No.
Never.
I forced myself to nod.
He pressed Play. A fast and peppy drum line blasted into my ears. It was so loud but I didn’t want to insult him by pulling the headphones away or asking him to lower the volume so I just focused on the music and tried to move my head to the beat.
He propped his knee up on the bed so he could turn his body toward me. So that he could watch me. The guitars came in. Eager and electric, followed by the full band. I tried to concentrate, but it was difficult with Tristan sitting there so close to me. All I could see were his hands on the bed, inches from my leg, his eyes intense and anticipating, studying my face for a hint of emotion.
The music cut out and the
n it was just a simple drumbeat, single keyboard chords, and Tristan’s voice.
Oh holy cannoli, it was sexy.
Deep and throaty with just the right amount of angst.
“She.
She laughs in riddles I can’t understand.
She.
She talks in music I can’t live without.”
Only one word flitted through my head.
Wow.
I don’t know if it was the lyrics, the edgy guitar riffs that played between stanzas, or the way Tristan bowed his head and looked up at me from under the veil of his lashes as I listened, but it was the most amazing song I’d ever heard.
His lips started to move. I couldn’t hear what he was saying because the music was turned up too loud. I reached for the headphones, pulling them off my head, but he stopped me. His hands landed atop mine, the warmth of his soft skin sinking in.
“Don’t take them off.”
He gingerly guided my hands until the headphones were securely back in place.
He glanced around and then suddenly he was scrambling over to his desk and grabbing a notebook and a pen. He scribbled something on a blank page and then sat down next to me and held it up.
Do you like it?
I nodded vigorously. “It’s incredible!” I yelled over the music, before realizing I didn’t have to shout. “Sorry,” I whispered.
He bent his head over the notebook and began scribbling again.
Keep listening.
I closed my eyes, letting the song pour into me. Tristan was right. It wasn’t noise. It was beautiful. Soulful and gritty. Hard and soft at the same time. The music started to ramp up. I felt every instrument in every part of my body. I held my breath in anticipation of Tristan’s voice again.
“Tell me where to go.
To know the things you know.
Kiss me in the street.
Where everyone can see.”
When I opened my eyes, Tristan had scrawled another message on a blank page of the notebook and was holding it in front of his chest.
You look adorable in my headphones.
“Adorable?” I asked, pretending to be offended. I had to fight off the silly grin that threatened to blow my cover.
Tristan flipped the notebook back over, his hand moving furiously. A moment later, he revealed his amendment to the message.
A Week of Mondays Page 22