“The answer to your other question is no,” I say. I hope he gets the message that Levi and I are serious, and I’m no longer this dumb schoolgirl who laughs when she’s getting kissed.
“Which one?” Strand asks. His breath is warm in my ear.
“When Levi kisses me,” I say. “I don’t laugh anymore.”
It sounds sad when I say it out loud.
Chapter Forty-Three
“DEATH OF COMMUNICATION”
—COMPANY OF THIEVES
It’s the day after the quince and Levi hasn’t called me. I know he’s back from the band trip by now because I saw their schedule in the school newsletter. At first I decide to wait it out and play it cool, but then I turn irrationally angry.
Why didn’t he call me as soon as he returned? Why should I play a stupid little game and wait for him to call? Why can’t I call him without worry of being labeled clingy or needy?
So I pick up the phone and dial his number, because I’m his girlfriend and girlfriends like to talk to their boyfriends after an absence, and this isn’t something I should be ashamed of. After two rings, my call goes straight to his voice mail. I try again, three more times, each with the same result.
Okay, Levi. If that’s how you want to play it. I find his home number in the school directory and let my righteous fury take over as I stab at the numbers on my phone.
Shira answers. I can hear Princess barking in the background.
“Victoria, how are you?” she chirps.
“I’m good, Mrs. Schuster,” I reply. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know . . . same as ever.”
I think of the sameness in Shira’s life. How all of her days must consist of her sitting alone in the beige living room, with only Princess to keep her company. Steven Schuster at work, Levi consumed with school and the band. It might be the only connection between the two of us, but it suddenly feels profound.
“Is Levi back from his band trip?” I ask.
“Yes, he got back a couple of hours ago. Let me go grab him for you.”
I wait on the line for a couple of minutes, entertaining myself by performing the quince choreography in front of the mirror.
“Victoria?” It’s Shira’s voice again.
“Yes?”
“Levi is taking a nap. Poor thing is exhausted from the trip. Should I have him call you back?”
“Um . . . no thanks, it’s okay. I’ll talk to him in school tomorrow.”
“Okay, dear. Talk to you soon.”
I hang up the phone and sink into my bed. So Levi’s been back from the trip, probably for hours, and he didn’t call, even though we haven’t spoken for days. I try not to read too much into it, but when I stop and think about it, it could really mean a lot.
* * *
Levi’s nowhere to be found the next day at school. He wasn’t at his locker early this morning and he’s missing from the cafeteria at lunch. That’s when I know something is wrong.
I bolt to his locker as soon as my last class ends, ducking past opening doors and streams of students exiting their classrooms. I spot him bent over his backpack, hurriedly stuffing books inside.
“Levi!” I call, breaking into a jog.
He looks up and smiles a lukewarm smile when he sees me. I slow down and stop in front of him. After hunting him down all day, I’ve found him and now I’m at a loss for words.
“Hi,” I say idiotically.
He stands up and slings his backpack over his shoulder. “Hey.”
I kiss him, aiming for the lips but getting his cheek instead. “I was hoping you would call me when you were back.”
“Yeah. Sorry. My mom told me you called.” He shuts his locker and grips his backpack strap with two hands. “How did the quince go?”
The quince feels like years ago. “It went well. Strand and I had a lot of fun.”
He nods, shifting his gaze to the floor.
“Of course, I still wish you could have been my partner,” I add quickly, because it seems like the right thing to say.
“Do you?” He drags his eyes back to me.
“Yes!” I say. “You’re my boyfriend. I would have loved it if you’d been there.”
Then he gives this little sigh, one I can’t interpret. I remember my vow that I wouldn’t play any games.
“Is everything okay?” I ask him.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re acting . . . different . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m imagining it.”
I’m not imagining it. I know I’m not. His eyes are darting around like they’re tracking a fly.
“How was the band trip?” I ask.
“It was good. Phenomenal, actually.” There’s a fondness in his voice that makes me feel betrayed.
That’s ridiculous, though. Why should I feel betrayed? I had fun at the quince without him. There’s no dating rule that says you can only have fun with your boyfriend.
“Phenomenal, wow. That’s a strong word,” I say.
“We had a lot of fun,” Levi replies with a shrug. “I was sad to leave.”
I’ve been so proud of myself for keeping my cool, but at that statement, the floodgates open and my rage rushes through, wanting to drown him.
“Sad to leave? Are you kidding me?” I start. “I would think you’d be glad to come home and, oh, I don’t know, see your girlfriend.”
Levi’s mouth flops open, and I realize that this is the first time he’s ever seen me angry. Throughout our whole relationship, I’ve tried to be a lighter version of myself, a version without any bitterness, sarcasm, or negativity. And less flavor, I now realize. Like Diet Victoria.
“You know what else?” I go on, embracing the emotions rising to the surface. “It would have been nice to get a phone call so I knew you made it home alive.”
“Vi . . .” He stares at me. “I told you I was sorry.”
“That’s not the point,” I sigh.
“Okay . . . what is the point, then?”
“The point is that you didn’t want to call me. It wasn’t number one on your priority list.”
Levi takes his glasses off to rub them on his shirt. I want to snatch them and break them in two. “I was tired. I knew I would see you in school today.”
He really truly doesn’t understand.
“Did you miss me?” I ask. I’m not asking in the clingy way. I genuinely want to know.
“Did I miss you?” he repeats. “Sure, I missed you.”
“Levi . . . be honest. Did you miss me while you were gone?”
He looks down at his feet, silent. I already have my answer, but I want to hear it from him. When he looks up at me, his eyes are glazed with tears. This is one of the first times I’ve looked into his eyes, not through the glasses, but really looked into them.
“No,” he says, his voice one notch above a whisper. “I didn’t.”
Now I’m the one who has to look away, because I know I’ll start crying at any moment. I hate crying. Especially over a boy. I’ve become a living cliché.
“Did something happen on this trip?” I ask, staring at the vents in the locker beside me. My vision turns blurry as the tears start to form. “Is there someone else?”
“No,” Levi says firmly. “This isn’t about another girl.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way?”
“You didn’t say anything either,” Levi points out quietly.
“I was committed. I thought things were working between us.”
“Vi, come on . . . we’ve never done anything more than kiss.”
I whip my head around to face him.
“I don’t mean it like that,” he clarifies. “I just mean . . . we had more of a friendship than a romance.”
“I don’t kiss my friends, Levi,” I say icily.
He slides his glasses back on, and my heart inadvertently pangs against my chest. I remember thinking how cute he was in those glasses.
“I think I need some time,” he says
. “Maybe a break or something.”
This can’t be Levi, saying these things to me. He wasn’t supposed to do this.
“A break,” I state. “How long of a break? A break so that you can see other people?”
“Vi, I told you this isn’t about other people.”
“Then what exactly is this break supposed to achieve?”
He exhales through closed lips. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t do breaks,” I say.
When the words come out, they surprise me, too. Sometimes you’re not sure how you feel about something until you say it. There’s a huge part of me that wants to wrap myself around Levi’s leg and hold him down so he can’t walk away. And then there’s a small but strong voice inside that tells me I deserve better. I shouldn’t be with someone who’s willing to risk losing me because he needs a break. Like I’m a chore or an exam. And if I’m going to be honest with myself, didn’t I sometimes feel the same way? Was spending time with Levi ever fun for me, or was it something I felt like I should do?
Levi bites his lower lip. There’s barely a pause before he says, “Then I guess we’re done.”
It’s like he’s taken a pocketknife straight to my gut.
“You realize this is it, right? I’ll never take you back,” I say.
I wish he would take a second to think about things, to make me feel like I was worth some consideration. Surely he values something about me.
“I know,” he says with finality.
There’s something in me that wants to argue with him and plead my case, but somehow I scrounge up the remains of my pride and keep quiet.
He coughs and says, “I hope this won’t affect . . . the band or anything. You know?”
“The band.” My voice is laced with disdain. Not our relationship, or even our friendship. The band. I stare at him, and I realize that for the past four months, I’ve been dating a robot. Is he honestly talking about the welfare of the band right now? After breaking up with me?
“I need to tell you something, Levi, and I want to be very clear,” I say with as much calm as I can muster.
“Okay.” He nods, waits.
“Fuck your band.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“FEEL THE PAIN”
—DINOSAUR JR.
At first, I’m emotionally numb, like I took an ice cube to my feelings. I’m almost convinced that the breakup didn’t happen. Or it happened to me but I’m watching it from a faraway distance.
My family and I are eating another dinner in silence. Without Strand here, we all remember that we currently don’t like each other. Matty plays his 3DS at the table, and my parents let him. I think dealing with me has drained them of all their energy.
“Levi and I broke up,” I say without feeling, midway through my bowl of spaghetti.
Even as I say the words, it still seems made-up, like it couldn’t have actually happened to me.
Before our fight at the hospital, Mom would have reacted to the news by squishing me into a tight hug and calling me mamita. She would have asked me if I was okay and looked into my eyes and known that I wasn’t.
Now she looks at me, but I can see that there’s still something standing between us.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and we all go back to eating in silence.
After saying the news out loud, things begin sinking in. I won’t feel Levi’s glasses against my face when we kiss. I won’t be able to listen to Tchaikovsky without thinking of our first date. What happens to us now that Levi and I as a couple cease to exist? What happens to me now that the band is officially dismantled?
Maybe I was naive, thinking I could do the whole high school boyfriend thing. I was so obsessed with the idea of having someone that I didn’t care who it was. But why? Since when am I the girl who needs a boyfriend? What was I trying to prove?
There’s a pit in my stomach and the few bites of dinner I can eat won’t fill it. Later, when I’m lying in my bed, I’m surprised that I am starting to feel. The numbness is fading, the ice cube has melted. An overwhelming fear grabs hold of me.
What if this was it? What if Levi was my one shot? He’s the only guy who’s ever shown an interest in me, and I ruined it. Yesterday, I belonged to someone. Today, I have no one. How can you be with someone and then cut them out of your life forever? How can Levi discard me like an old T-shirt? That’s what feels worst of all—that Levi was willing to let me go. Even if, I can admit to myself now, we weren’t right for each other. It’s like he saw nothing in me that was worth staying for. It’s confirmation that I’m not all that special, really.
I only let myself cry because Levi isn’t there to see me, and I don’t think I can stop it now. I stick my face into my pillow and let out every gutted sob. It’s painful, but it’s better than feeling numb. It’s almost a relief, knowing I can feel something this deeply.
I don’t realize Mom’s entered the room until my bed dips under her weight. She sits next to me and strokes my hair like I’m three years old again. She doesn’t say anything for a while, just lets me cry everything out. The silence is different now, less hostile. When I lift my head from my pillow, it’s soaked in tears and a little bit of snot.
“This sucks,” I say finally, sniffling and wiping my nose. And it does. Everything about this sucks right now—the breakup, the dissolution of the band, our fight.
“I know.” She dabs the corner of my nose with a tissue. “But you won’t feel like this forever.”
My brain understands that fact, but my body doesn’t. The pain of losing everything feels like I’ve been sucked into a permanent black hole.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asks, lying down next to me.
I nod and scoot over to make room for her.
“I think,” Mom says, “that one day you’ll find someone who really makes you happy.”
“I think I’m the problem,” I counter. “Levi should have made me happy.”
There are plenty of things that should make me happy, but don’t. All the things in life that are supposed to satisfy me, that satisfy everyone else.
Mom wipes the tears from under my eyes. She looks at me for a long time, in that really unnerving way that moms can. I can’t even meet her eyes. I look down at the crumpled, snotty tissue in my hands.
“I really am sorry,” I say, and I start to cry. Again. Because I’m not just apologizing for that night at the hospital. I’m apologizing for being me, for what I’m sure will be a lifetime full of future disappointment for them.
“I know,” she says. She puts her arm around my shoulders, and I cry until I have nothing left in me.
Later, Dad comes into my room, drags my desk chair over to the bed, and sits down. The chair creaks underneath him.
“This chair sucks,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you get a new one?”
I shrug. He glances around my room, his gaze lingering over the door. I know Mom pressured him to come in and offer me some words of wisdom.
“The guy’s an asshole,” he says finally.
Even though the giant hole in my gut is still there, I laugh. “Levi?”
“There’s something I don’t like about him . . . I never trusted him.”
My instinct is still to defend him, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.
“You know,” Dad says, “I had a bad breakup right before I met your mom.”
“Really? You dated someone before Mom?” I always assumed my parents were each other’s firsts, since they met in high school.
“Her name was Melissa Soto. We dated for a year.”
My jaw drops. “You dated someone who wasn’t Mom for that long? Why didn’t I know about this?”
“I don’t talk about it much,” Dad says. “She broke my heart. Dumped me for another guy.”
“Did you cry?”
“I bawled my eyes out, but that’s not the point. The point is that if I hadn’t gone through that sh—th
at stuff . . . I wouldn’t have met your mom. I wouldn’t have known how much better it could be.”
“Yeah, but . . . what if there isn’t anything better?”
Dad looks down his nose at me. “Are you telling me you don’t think you can do better than this Leo kid? With that stupid hair of his?”
This time when I laugh, I forget all about the hole in my gut.
Chapter Forty-Five
“NO THE END IS NOT NEAR”
—BENNY HESTER
I learned something important. If you are going through a breakup, the people you love will bend over backward to make you feel better. Mom and Dad let me skip school for the day because when I wake up, I’m crying all over again. I’m crying because I’m bound to see Levi around school, and I don’t know how to act when I do. I’m crying because I’ve let someone make me feel worthless, and that’s a dumb thing to do, but the feeling still remains. More than anything, I’m crying because I knew from the start that being with Levi felt wrong. I knew it, and I ignored it, and now I’ve lost myself.
The one good thing that’s come out of all of this is that my breakup with Levi has unexpectedly brought my parents back to life.
Dad actually buys me a pint of ice cream at my request. Real, lactose-filled ice cream.
“This won’t make you feel better,” he warns, but he’s wrong. It helps.
I spend the morning in bed, still wearing my robe, watching Netflix and scarfing down spoonfuls of mint chocolate chip. Then I create a new playlist for my music collection: Breaking Up. I sing Bonnie Tyler at the top of my lungs. I eat more mint chocolate chip ice cream. I watch more TV. I sing and dance to Carly Simon and Pat Benatar.
I take a nap with the TV on, because I don’t like the silence. When I wake up, I’m not sure what time it is, if it’s day or night. I hear the front door slam and Mom shouting, “Victoria! Look who I found!”
“Huh?” I shout back. My voice is sore from my female empowerment songfest.
Annie bursts through my door, still in her Evanston uniform. I don’t know what surprises me more, that she made the long trip up to my apartment, or that she’s putting off her homework to make me feel better.
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