Editor’s Note: Perfect? OMG, why did I ever break up with this kid?
COCO: When I walked into the party, I looked behind me and Avery was gone. She’d already gone to find Robby!
ROBBY: I knew who Avery was, of course. She was so confident, so self-assured. She breezed through the hallways like she just couldn’t be bothered, like she was somehow immune to middle school. And I couldn’t believe she was walking toward me.
AVERY: I was so nervous I was legit shaking. But I guess he had no idea, so go, me.
COCO: I moved toward the foosball table, trying not to be obvious, but completely staring at what I knew was about to happen. Conner Plechaty tried to talk to me, but I totally shushed him. I needed to see what was happening.
Editor’s Note: Conner Plechaty kissed Coco like twenty minutes later. I tell you, that basement was magical!
ROBBY: She held out her hand. Her glittery nail polish glinted in the basement light.
Editor’s Note: He is like a poet. WHY DID I BREAK UP WITH HIM
AVERY: I said, “Wanna go outside?” and tossed my hair back and forth a few times for good measure.
ROBBY: I would have followed her anywhere. Avery Dennis saved me, man. She saved me from my middle school awkward self.
HUTCH: I was seriously concerned that this whole interview was going to give AD some kind of hero-savior complex.
Editor’s Note: When Hutch saved that irregular species of Northern California bee, I was happy for him. You’d think he’d at least extend me and Robby Monroe the same courtesy.
COCO: Avery led Robby through the sliding glass doors and into the backyard. I couldn’t believe she had just grabbed his hand and now their fingers were totally intertwined! It was so boss. Conner Plechaty still would not shut up. I stepped on his foot.
Editor’s Note: I guess he liked it, because later on, they tooootally kissed. Hahahaha!
ROBBY: There was an old swing set in Cressida’s backyard. Avery dropped my hand and sat on one of the swings.
Editor’s Note: What is with me and Robby Monroe and swing sets? Is this, like, a leitmotif ?
CRESSIDA: A leitmotif is a recurrent theme usually associated with a particular person, place, or idea. Why do you ask?
Editor’s Note: So the swing set was totally a leitmotif. The leitmotif representing me and Robby Monroe, the one that got away.
HUTCH: Real life doesn’t have leitmotifs. They only exist in works of fiction. Why?
Editor’s Note: Sheesh, can’t a girl just ask a few casual questions about leitmotifs?
ROBBY: I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down on the swing next to her. I still had that stupid can of Sprite. The condensation on the outside was sweating, or maybe I was sweating. Yeah, I was probably so scared I was sweating.
AVERY: We swung back and forth quietly. I was desperate for him to make a move. I was so scared he wouldn’t make a move, and then I’d just be an idiot on a swing set. I said I would kiss Robby Monroe, and I knew I wanted to.
ROBBY: I knew I had to say something, but I had no idea what I should say.
AVERY: The silence was killing me. The pressure! The romantic tension! So I just blurted out, “Are you gonna kiss me, or what?”
HUTCH: If you had bet me fifty dollars that I couldn’t tell you the story of Avery’s first kiss, I would have won. Because that is exactly what I would have guessed.
ROBBY: Now I really didn’t know what to say. Did I want to kiss her? Are you kidding? Avery Dennis was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in real life.
Editor’s Note: Ha! See, Hutch? He totally liked me.
AVERY: He started leaning. Which I felt like meant he was going to kiss me. So I closed my eyes and leaned in.
ROBBY: I was sweating so much. I was terrified I had lip sweat.
AVERY: Robby Monroe absolutely did not have lip sweat.
ROBBY: As first kisses go, it wasn’t too bad. At least, I didn’t think so.
Editor’s Note: It absolutely wasn’t too bad at all. Seriously, why did I break up with this guy?
COCO: I saw the whole thing through the glass doors! It was so cute. An old swing set?! It was totally romantic.
CRESSIDA: No, I didn’t know that Avery and Robby kissed at my birthday party. But I’m not surprised. No one is safe from the lips of Avery Dennis.
Editor’s Note: Guess she was still kind of upset about that thing with her brother … but that was a whole different boyfriend altogether. We will deal with Ben when the time comes.
ROBBY: And then, because I was not smooth at all, I immediately asked her to be my girlfriend. Thank God she said yes. We walked back into the party holding hands, and I finally felt like I belonged at San Anselmo Prep.
HUTCH: So Robby asked Avery out. Interesting. But I still think Avery was the major instigator of this relationship. And I bet she instigated ending it, too.
COCO: You know what? I have no idea why Robby and Avery broke up. I can’t remember! That is so weird.
Editor’s Note: Probably because she was busy eating Conner Plechaty’s face, like she was for most of sixth grade.
ROBBY: Yeah, Avery dumped me. We’d been going out for almost the whole year, which is pretty much an eternity in middle school. She said she couldn’t be tied down over the summer.
Editor’s Note: What. An. Idiot. But who amongst us is wise in middle school?
COCO: She was convinced she was going to meet a hot boy at camp. Well, she wasn’t wrong.
HUTCH: Maybe this is the inciting incident in all of Avery’s breakups—the eternal search for the better boyfriend? We’re going to need more research. This is far too small of a sample size to produce any kind of conclusive finding.
ROBBY: Oh, God, no, no hard feelings. I was crushed for like two minutes and then Tamsin Brewer asked me out.
Editor’s Note: Tamsin Brewer is Bizzy Stanhope’s best friend. Questionable taste, Robby.
BIZZY: It was totally Tamsin who made Robby. Seriously, no one cared who he was while he was dating Avery. But as soon as he started dating Tamsin, he was hot.
Editor’s Note: Tamsin Brewer couldn’t “make” a person. I doubted she could make a Popsicle-stick picture frame.
ROBBY: I will forever be grateful to Avery. She put me on the map at San Anselmo, man. She made me feel like I belonged.
COCO: As much as any two awkward sixth graders can be a cute couple, they were totally a cute couple.
ROBBY: I didn’t believe it at first when I heard that Avery was going to the prom alone. That seems like a lonely thing to do.
AVERY: How can you be lonely surrounded by basically all of your best friends, singing and dancing and eating your face off? These prom-date-obsessed people need to get real.
COCO: You know what? After we talked to Robby, I was seriously confused. Not because of anything Robby had said, but because of Avery. Why had she been nervous at all about looking into middle school? Robby was a totally respectable first kiss. Okay, yes, he was a little boring and obsessed with soccer, but he was cute in sixth grade, and he was still cute now. There was even a certain Kennedy-esque quality about the shwoop of his brown hair.
Editor’s Note: Only Coco would think a legitimately ancient hairstyle was a plus.
AVERY: Coco had clearly forgotten what was coming down the road. But at least the summer after sixth grade was anything but a disaster.
AVERY: Camp Kawawa was the closest thing to heaven on earth.
CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN: Camp Kawawa was the lost tenth circle of Dante’s Inferno. Just when I thought I’d finally gotten away from all the nightmare drones I was forced to interact with in school, guess who was the first person I saw at Camp Kawawa, sitting on top of a picnic table like she owned the place. Avery. Freaking. Dennis.
AVERY: I missed Coco terribly, of course. But there were so many new friends to make! And new boys to kiss! And oh, yeah, Cressida was there, too.
CRESSIDA
: I didn’t even want to go to sleepaway camp, okay? I wanted to spend the summer reading in my room! But my mom made me.
COCO: I would have loved to go to Camp Kawawa, believe me. But my mom is convinced sleepaway camps are nothing but expensive breeding grounds for bedbugs and lice.
CRESSIDA: Did I have a camp boyfriend? Hilarious. No. I ate lunch with the counselors every day and faked a horse dander allergy.
HUTCH: I googled Kawawa—it means “pitiful” in Tagalog. Clearly a case of unfortunate cultural appropriation. What kind of camp was this?
Editor’s Note: An awesome camp, Hutch, okay?! We can’t all have gone to Space Camp for nine years in a row. And I really doubt that Space Camp had the same wide variety of paste-based arts and crafts that Camp Kawawa did.
AVERY: I knew talking to my camp boyfriend was going to bring on extreme clarity, because Charlie was basically three boyfriends in one. He’d been my boyfriend every single summer I went to Camp Kawawa—until ninth grade, when my dad declared that summers were for internships or competitions. Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly know Charlie’s last name. But it turned out, I didn’t need to worry—all his contact information was on the Camp Kawawa website. All these years later, he was still going to Camp Kawawa. I mean, he wasn’t a camper anymore, he was a counselor now—but still.
CHARLIE “CAMP KAWAWA” KASPEROWICZ, ex-boyfriend, professional camp counselor: Oh, yeah, Avery Dennis! I remember her. She was my first camp girlfriend.
Editor’s Note: First?! Not only?! There were others?!
CRESSIDA: I only went to Camp Kawawa that one summer. Once was more than enough. You would have thought Avery could have bothered to say hi, or ask me to sit with her, or something. We weren’t friends at San Anselmo Prep, but we were in a strange environment and we knew only each other. That should have counted for something! But no, she was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Cute Charlie all summer to pay any attention to me.
Editor’s Note: OMG, did people call him Cute Charlie?! You go, middle school Avery! Although I did feel bad about not being nicer to Cressida at camp. I thought she liked sitting with the counselors because she appreciated their more mature intellectual ceiling. She was always complaining that there was no one in her cabin who was familiar with Proust.
CHARLIE: I saw Avery sitting on the picnic table on the very first day of camp. That blond hair, it’s hard to miss. I just asked her to be my girlfriend, and we fell into the same pattern every year she was there.
HUTCH: So AD didn’t initiate this relationship? Well. There goes my whole hypothesis.
CRESSIDA: Once I saw them kiss in a canoe, and I threw up. But then I got out of swimming for the whole day, so I guess it was a win.
COCO: All of Avery’s letters home were full of Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. He sounded seriously adorable. Once she tried to draw a portrait. It bore a striking resemblance to the red M&M, but with hair. But when I finally saw a picture, it confirmed my suspicions—he was seriously cute and looked nothing like an M&M.
AVERY: Charlie is so much of my memories of Camp Kawawa, they’re inextricable. Canoeing and archery and bonfires and holding hands and Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Just that total summer feeling of freedom, you know? Maybe I should have tried to make it work. Although what middle schooler could make a long-distance relationship work?
CHARLIE: Do I still have a camp girlfriend? Ha-ha, we don’t really call it that anymore. But if Rowan comes back to work at Kawawa … yeah, I’d be interested.
Editor’s Note: Coco must find this Rowan person on Facebook immediately. And find out if she’s blond. And prettier than me.
CRESSIDA: I remember the last day of camp. You’d have thought Cute Charlie was leaving for the first manned mission to Mars. Avery was weeping into his shirt like he’d abandoned her for the red planet.
CHARLIE: Why’d we break up? Same reason every year. She dumped me because camp was over, but I wasn’t too bummed. Camp relationships are just that—camp relationships. You go into them knowing they’ll end. And in some cases, start up again the next year. Or end forever. It’s all good.
AVERY: Charlie wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t exactly helping me, either. Clearly, Luke Murphy hadn’t … ugh … dumped me because of geographic complications. It’s not like he ended things just because the school year was ending. If that was his reason, he could have waited until after prom like any normal person who goes off to college well aware that long distance is the wrong distance. I was feeling remarkably over the whole Luke Murphy situation, all things considered, but I was still confused about why he’d dumped me. And I hate feeling confused. It’s why I write such clear lab reports.
HUTCH: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: AD’s lab reports are of a professional caliber. You should see her data tables.
AVERY: At the risk of sounding like Hutch, I wondered what we’d learned from Camp Kawawa Charlie, then, if he broke my pattern.
HUTCH: I was pretty sure I knew what the lesson of Camp Kawawa Charlie was—that it’s really easy to be in a relationship when you’re basically on vacation and doing nothing but swimming and eating marshmallows all day. It’s when real life happens that relationships get complicated.
AVERY: Speaking of complicated, it was time to move on to seventh grade.
COCO: If Charlie was the hottest thing at Camp Kawawa since toasted s’mores, why was Avery so embarrassed about her middle school dating history?
AVERY: Coco had clearly blocked my seventh-grade boyfriend out of her generous, kind, self-selecting best-friend memory. But I hadn’t forgotten. I couldn’t forget.
COCO: Avery’s boyfriend in seventh grade … ? Wait. Shut up. Oh my God. Avery dated Liam Padalecki. Liam Padalecki!! I had totally and completely forgotten.
BIZZY STANHOPE [evil, maniacal laughter]: Of course I remember when Avery dated Liam Padalecki. The two of them are perfect for each other.
HUTCH: I wasn’t even there, and I’ve never forgotten about the Avery and Liam thing. And Liam’s never let us forget it either.
LIAM PADALECKI, ex-boyfriend/Wizarding Warlock: For about two weeks in seventh grade, I was a straight-up baller.
MICHAEL FEELEY, Wizarding Warlock: For about two weeks in seventh grade, Liam was a straight-up jackass. Correction: more of a jackass than usual.
HUTCH: One of the many blessings in my life was the fact that I didn’t start at San Anselmo Prep until ninth grade—which means that I had the great good fortune of missing Avery and Liam’s “relationship.” It was less fortunate, however, that she insisted I come with her to Liam’s house so she could interrogate me and all of my friends.
Editor’s Note: It was going to be a lot more awkward for me than it was for Hutch, but I figured if I could interview Bizzy, I could handle talking to Liam again.
AVERY: I was confused, okay? It was a weird time. I missed Charlie, and then coming back home from Camp Kawawa was making me miss Robby, and I was just sad about all of it.
COCO: Avery was seriously mopey when she got home. Avery, I love you, but if I had spent the whole summer eating marshmallows with a hottie, I sure wouldn’t be sad about it. You wanna trade places and visit Nana Kim in Scottsdale every year? All she wants to do is talk to me about my figure and grill me about why none of my boyfriends are Korean. And Arizona in the summer is hot.
Editor’s Note: I know Nana Kim’s retirement complex has a pool. So don’t come crying to me, Coco.
HUTCH: Avery had broken up with both Robby and Charlie, yet according to the evidence Coco provided, and Avery’s own testimony, she seemed sad about it afterward. Why break up with them, then? What was this self-sabotaging instinct that drove Avery to end her relationships with no probable cause?
Editor’s Note: I was almost regretting asking Hutch to help out. I mean, I wanted him to analyze the evidence, but I didn’t like the way I felt—like I was just another protozoa under the lens of his microscope.
AVERY: Hutch’s “theory
” that I had any kind of self-sabotaging instinct was patently ridiculous. Sometimes boyfriends can be perfectly lovely people, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right person for you, you know? Hutch probably didn’t understand this because he’d never had a girlfriend. At least, I didn’t think he had.
HUTCH: Wait, what? AD, whether or not I’ve had a girlfriend has nothing to do with the project. We’re talking about you. And Liam. Drop it, okay?
Editor’s Note: I dropped it. But I knew I was right.
ALEX MANEVITZ, final member of Hutch’s Wizarding Warlord Association: No, I don’t think Hutch has ever had a girlfriend. Definitely not.
MICHAEL: Avery was the only girlfriend Liam’s ever had. Maybe he decided to retire at the top of his game.
ALEX: He dated who? Avery Dennis? Sorry. Never heard of her.
Editor’s Note: Patently untrue. You cannot be in a grade of sixty people and never have heard of one of them. He was being deliberately obtuse, and I did not appreciate it. Sources lie, Ms. Segerson! They lie!!
MICHAEL: In order to understand the magnitude of this aberration, you need to understand the social order at San Anselmo Prep.
ALEX: Everyone in the popular group looks the same to me. It’s just a large blond mass.
Editor’s Note: Coco is not blond at all, so I don’t know what this fool was talking about.
MICHAEL: I know people like to think we’re living in a new world order, where it’s cool to be a nerd now, where dorks run the planet, where geeks are chic, etc., etc. But those people are wrong. It’s cool to have a vintage Star Wars T-shirt, or to sport a Dothraki Flash Tattoo because you’re so obsessed with a TV show even though you’ve never even read the original source material. But it’s not cool to spend your weekends immersed in the world of tabletop RPG or waiting at a con for the TOVA auction to start. I’m sorry, but it’s just not. It’s cool to be a casual nerd. It’s not cool to be the real thing. And me, Alex, Liam, and Hutch? We’re the real thing.
HUTCH: Of course high schools have cliques. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to be friends. Every group just does their own thing, and that’s just fine.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 4