“Well,” Mr. B said, “I wanted to preface myself because your final grade-point averages were so close, only two-tenths of a point apart…”
Travis let out this throaty groan.
“But I guess I’ll cut to the chase.” Mr. B pinned one of his thumbs down with the other. “Mara got it. Mara came in ahead. She’s our valedictorian.”
“Goddamn!” Travis said, punching his fist into the armrest.
Mr. B’s smile slid off his face. “Travis, you are still our salutatorian. You’ll still be making the thirty-second—”
“Concession speech.”
“We like to call it the salutatory address.”
“Whatever,” Travis said, standing up. “Can I get out of here?”
But Travis didn’t even wait for a response. He took off, leaving Mr. B and me staring at the empty doorway.
“I’ve never seen Travis Hart behave like that,” Mr. B said, shaking his head.
I have, I thought. That’s exactly how Travis used to act when we were together. When I told him that my jeans were remaining zipped, he’d say things like, “Sucks for me.” Back then, I thought it was my fault, that I had a major character defect. But since I’ve been with James and discovered how good things can be, I’ve realized that Travis is a temper-tantrum-throwing bully. I don’t even find him attractive anymore. His shaved head looks too puny for his body and his “charming” smile seems fake and his “easygoing” strut seems forced.
Mr. B crunched on a few M&M’s and told me how my valedictory address should run three to four minutes and that he had sample speeches in his files, if I wanted to peruse them.
As he walked me to the door, he shook my hand. “So … how do you feel?”
I shrugged.
“Too happy for words?”
“I guess,” I said.
But what I was really thinking was that, strangely, I didn’t feel anything.
My parents were definitely feeling something. That night, they made a huge celebratory dinner. Pasta primavera, French bread, salad with marinated artichokes on top. They even opened the bottle of champagne that’s been in our fridge since New Year’s Eve and let V and me have a little glass. All through the meal, they kept saying “Congratulations!” and “To our valedictorian!” Or one of them would ask, “Can you believe it?” and the other would nod and say, “Yes, of course I can!”
V didn’t say much. She sipped her champagne and picked the pasta out of the primavera and, every once in a while, touched her hands to her hair. Yesterday my mom took her to a salon in Rochester. The stylist brought up the back and blended in her bangs with the sides, so her haircut looks really striking, especially with her high forehead and long neck. My mom offered to take me, too, but I opted out. My hair is finally long enough that it’ll all stay in a ponytail, which means I don’t have to blow-dry it every day if I don’t want to.
I didn’t say much during dinner either. Partially, my head was woozy from the champagne. But it was more that I wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole valedictorian thing. For all of high school, I’d been looking at it as this end-all-be-all Final Chapter of the Book of My Life. But now that I’ve flipped to the last page, there’s no music swelling, no credits rolling, no tingly happiness. To be perfectly honest, it still didn’t feel like much of anything.
After dinner, my parents insisted on doing the dishes. I carried my plate into the kitchen and said, “I’m going to take a walk.”
“Want company?” V asked.
“Sure.”
It was a warm May night, so we slipped our feet into flip-flops and headed out the back door. I was wearing a tank top and khaki shorts. V had on her mutilated jeans and a lavender T-shirt.
V and I walked down the driveway, crossed the street, and took a left. We headed to the end of the block, our flip-flops slapping against the sidewalk. There were no cars at the intersection, so we crossed diagonally to the path that runs along the periphery of the school district.
“Are you excited?” V asked as she picked up a long stick from the side of the path.
“About getting valedictorian?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know… It still feels kind of weird.”
V was trailing the stick behind her, like she was pulling a wheelie suitcase. “Well, I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s funny… My whole life, I’ve always heard all these great things about you. Like whenever I screwed up, Aimee would hold you up as this example of what I should be. Mara is a straight-A student. Mara got honor roll. Mara got into Yale. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you weren’t exactly easy to like.”
“No … it’s okay,” I said. And I meant it. It’s not like I’ve been her lifelong fan either.
“I’m just saying that I used to be so jealous of everything you had. Your grades and your parents and how you seemed like this perfect person. But ever since I was in Damn Yankees, I just feel like I have my thing and you have yours.”
We were nearing the Barclay School, where I went to second and third grade. We crossed the street and headed over to the huge playground that spans the lawns between the elementary schools. V was now clutching her stick in her fist, like a wizard’s staff.
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve been meaning to thank you,” she said.
“Thank me?”
“For not telling your parents about my smoking habits.”
“You mean the noncigarette variety?”
V nodded. “It’s something I got into in San Diego, but I’ve been cutting back a lot recently. I haven’t touched it since before the play. I’m just glad G-ma and G-pa never found out. Sometimes you need to have people who only see the good in you.”
We walked by an empty row of teeter-totters, half teetering, half tottering.
“Well, thank you, too, then,” I said.
“Me? Why?”
“For not telling my parents about … about how I’ve been falling in love.”
V stopped walking and turned to me. “So I was right?”
I smiled. “Yeah … you were right.”
“Who is it? I’m assuming it’s not Bethany because she’s together with Keith … hold on!” V stabbed her stick into the grass. “It’s the guy from Common Grounds! James, right?”
I stared at her. “How did you know?”
“Remember how you didn’t want me to work at Common Grounds because you said it was your place?”
I nodded.
“And remember that time when you were sick and he called and you didn’t want to talk to him?”
I nodded again.
“Being Aimee’s daughter,” V said, “you get pretty good at detecting when there’s something going on.”
As we started walking again, V asked, “Is it serious?”
“Yeah,” I said warily.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to ask if you’ve done it yet.”
I had to laugh.
We reached the tall swings. I sat down on one and pushed with my feet. V flopped onto the one next to me and scratched her stick into the gravel. As I swung past her, I glanced down to see what she was writing. I was surprised to see the words RIP Stonah Babe.
“Hey! That’s just like…”
“Just like what?” V asked.
“Never mind,” I said.
“You mean the graffiti on the bathroom walls at school?”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Of course I’ve seen it,” V said. “I wrote it.”
I scuffed my flip-flops into the gravel until my swing came to a stop. “You what?”
“That’s what some kids in San Diego called me. Stonah babe.”
“What about skanky ho?”
V laughed as she tossed her stick into the grass. “Nope … never been called that. But you have to admit, it’s pretty funny.”
“Okay, I’m totally confused. You wrote all that graffiti?”
V twisted ar
ound in her swing several times and then let go, spinning and spinning and spinning. Finally, when she stopped, she said, “You’re probably going to think this is totally fucked up, but I’ve done that whenever I’ve started at a new school.”
“You write things about yourself on bathroom walls?”
V nodded.
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never been the new kid. I have … almost twenty times. And I’ve learned that if you just go with the flow, everyone ignores you and life sucks. But if you make yourself known, even for bad stuff, at least things get interesting and guys flirt with you and stoners invite you to hang out with them. Sometimes it backfires and people give you hell, but you won’t be there forever, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“How did it work out here?”
“At first, it was fine. Same as usual. But then I got into the play and things started changing. And then someone went around and scribbled out all the graffiti.”
“That would be me.”
V gaped at me. “You were the one? Why?”
I shook my head. We started swinging slowly, kicking our heels into the gravel.
“Sometimes it’s scary,” V said after a moment.
“What?”
“Having a good reputation. Like once you start doing things well, everyone expects more from you.”
I nodded, thinking basically about my whole life.
“But I guess it’s better than no one expecting anything at all,” V said.
Actually, I thought, that sounds very tempting.
After a minute I asked, “Do you ever think about Baxter?”
“Baxter Valentine?”
“Yeah … how he makes all those animal noises, like he doesn’t even care that everyone thinks he’s a freak. It just seems kind of liberating.”
V laughed. “I can honestly say I’ve never envied Baxter.”
She started pumping her legs, getting some serious elevation. It took me several kicks to catch up with her, but soon we were knee and knee, elbow and elbow. V looked over at me, this maniacal grin on her face, and went, “Woof!”
I laughed so hard I had to clutch the chains to keep from falling off my swing. But when I caught back up with her, I went, “Moooooo!”
“Cock-a-doodle-doooooooo!” she screamed.
“Meeoooooooooooow!”
“Hee-haaaaw! Hee-haaaaw!”
As we heaved our bodies forward and bellowed a barnyard of noises, I never once looked around to see if anyone else was in the playground. It was wildly fun, not to mention the most insane thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Chapter Nineteen
The following Saturday, V took the SATs and I dropped out of the Johns Hopkins precollege summer program. It had been building up for a while. First of all, I could never seem to pick my classes. And then, once the weather warmed up, all the seniors began counting down until graduation. But I was having a converse reaction. For me, time couldn’t go slowly enough. Every day that passed was a day closer to when I had to say goodbye to James.
The previous week, I’d e-mailed the director of the summer program, asking if I could have a few extra days to send in my course selections. An hour later, I got an e-mail from her assistant, Thomas, saying I could have another week. Before I could stop myself, I wrote back to him and asked what would happen if I dropped out. Two minutes later, a message popped into my box, saying that if I let them know by June fifth, I’d get a 90 percent refund on my tuition.
So there it was. My get-out-of-jail-almost-free card.
I drove V over to the high school for the SATs. It was a sunny morning and she had said she wanted to walk, so my parents plied her with a hearty breakfast, wished her luck, and headed up to Wegmans to do a big shop. But as soon as they were gone, V ran into the bathroom, clutching her stomach.
“Are you okay?” I said, standing outside the closed door.
“I feel nauseous,” she said in this small voice.
“Want some water?”
“No … I’ll be okay.”
When she came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, she was still pale. She glanced at the clock. “I’d better get going … I don’t have a lot of time now.”
“Want me to drive you?” I asked.
“Do you mind?”
“No … not at all.”
We didn’t say much on the car ride over. I tried to get V talking about non-SAT-related things, but she just stared out the window. We were trapped behind a slow-moving tractor, so I looked at the red and yellow tulips, thinking how they’ve come later than usual this year. V was massaging her stomach with her right hand. On her left hand, I noticed she’d written relax, relax, relax, relax down each finger, and then on her thumb it said VVV.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said.
She nodded absentmindedly.
“Think how well you did in the practice tests.”
“But this is the real thing.”
“You can always retake the SATs in the fall if you’re not happy with your score.”
“But everything goes on my record, so it’s better if I do well the first time around.”
I looked over at V. She was sounding scarily like me, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.
After I dropped her off, I called James from my cell phone and asked if he wanted to go to Northampton Park. That’s a park outside of Brockport with picnic areas and sledding hills and hiking trails. He said he’d taken the morning off from Common Grounds to do his laundry but was currently standing in front of his window, staring at the cloudless sky. I told him I’d be right over.
It was still early, so Northampton Park was relatively empty. I pulled into a parking lot, locked the car, and we held hands as we walked down this narrow horse trail. After a few minutes, James pointed out a little meadow, almost completely hidden by trees.
“Want to go in?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said, stepping off the trail.
We lay in the poky grass for several minutes, looking up at the infinite sky, my head resting on his shoulder. The sun was getting hot, so I lifted up my shirt and tucked it into the bottom of my bra.
“I feel like we’re camping,” James said.
“I know… It’s so quiet.”
“Wouldn’t it be fun to go camping this summer? Just you and me, somewhere in the Adirondacks.”
“I wish.”
“I know … I keep trying to pretend you’re not leaving.”
“What if I didn’t go?”
James turned his face toward me. “Not go to Johns Hopkins?”
I nodded.
“But haven’t you already matriculated?”
I told James how they could refund most of the tuition and I’d pay my parents the difference with money I’d saved from working at Common Grounds.
“You haven’t talked about this with your parents?”
“Not yet.” Then I laughed and said, “If I dropped out, I’d obviously have to tell them before we packed the car for Baltimore.”
James was quiet for a moment. “What made you change your mind?”
“I just don’t see why I’ve been so hung up on entering college as a second-year student. What’s the rush to skip over my freshman year?” I snuggled closer to him. “And, besides … I want to spend the summer together.”
James leaned down and kissed my stomach, now toasty from the sunshine. “Mara Elizabeth,” he said, “I would love nothing more than that, but you have to do what feels best for you.”
We started kissing. After a few minutes, I rolled over, so I was on top of him. He held on to my hips and we started moving our bodies together and I thought, This is what feels best for me. Not in a year, not in ten years, but right here, right now, right in this moment.
Later that afternoon, I wrote an e-mail to Thomas at Johns Hopkins saying I was sorry but I wasn’t going to be attending summer school after all.
Then I clicked “send” and bought back two mo
nths of my life.
Chapter Twenty
Senior year was winding down. Even though teachers were continually expressing the importance of final-exam preparation, everyone knew that GPAs had already been tallied, so nothing we did now mattered in the slightest. In the hallways and even in classes, there were only five subjects that seniors were concentrating on:
The prom, in the broad sense, like who’s going with whom and where people bought their dresses.
The prom, in the narrow sense, like who’s going with whom but is really hoping to hook up with a different whom.
Partying before the prom.
Partying after the prom.
Graduation parties and other reasons to drink this summer.
Despite the dozens of hours I’d put into planning “End of the Road,” I wasn’t going to go. The only person I wanted to dance with was James, and I couldn’t imagine dragging him to a high-school prom. V actually got two invitations—from Brandon Parker and T.J. Zuckerman—and turned them both down. She later told me that Brandon would just want to get stoned the whole time and T.J. had been trying to find an excuse to sleep with her since Damn Yankees, and, truthfully, she’d rather stay home and watch a movie.
I spent the morning of the prom decorating the ballroom at the college with streamers and balloons and hand-painted road signs, courtesy of the Art Club. Bethany went to the prom with Keith. When I called her the next day to ask how it went, she said the only big news was that Ash and Travis both ditched their dates and made out under the MERGE sign for the entire evening. Bethany said that despite the extreme public display of affection, it was a relief to have Ash doing something other than gossiping about everyone else’s business.
A week after the prom, “Breaking Out” arrived at the high school in a massive shipment of boxes. We had a celebratory pizza party in the yearbook office. I ate two slices, a cheese and a veggie supreme, and savored every single bite. We passed around our yearbooks and a bunch of pens. Everyone wanted me to sign on the “Class Personalities” page where Travis and I were voted “Most Likely to Succeed” because, as they said, my signature might be worth cash someday.
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