Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender

by Lisa Greenwald

  My phone was ringing in my bag across the room, but I was too scared to get up. I didn’t want to reveal the sweat puddle that was underneath me.

  So I just sat there. We both heard the phone ringing. That only made the situation more awkward.

  “I’m gonna get us something to drink,” he said finally. “Do you drink wine?”

  I tried not to laugh at that. “Do you?”

  I didn’t drink wine. Right then, I didn’t want to drink at all. I mean, a root beer or maybe a Sprite would have been good. But more than anything, I wanted Dennis off that couch. I needed to dry myself off.

  When he went into the kitchen, I mopped up the sweat droplets on the couch as quickly as I could. I was grateful they didn’t leave a mark on the leather. I tried to air out my armpits near the air-conditioning vent. I scurried over to my bag to check my phone.

  I had a missed call and a text from Justine.

  Justine: Where are you? Seth just messaged Katie FROM LONDON about hanging out when he’s back. He said he was thinking about her…We need to plan this out ASAP.

  Shit. Okay. I couldn’t get into a long back-and-forth with her while Dennis was in the next room.

  I wrote back to Justine:

  Mia: Call you later. Don’t write back yet.

  And then Dennis came back to the couch with two glasses of white wine in these fancy champagne glasses. They looked like something adults would use if they were having the dean of a college over for dinner or something.

  “This is way fancy, Dennis,” I said, laughing a little behind my hand.

  “It’s all I could find.” He shrugged.

  We both sipped our wine and then put the glasses down.

  “I have to admit something,” he said. “I don’t really like wine.”

  “Me neither.” I cracked up. “Why are we doing this?”

  I waited for him to say something—an inspirational quote, a fact about a losing vice-presidential candidate. But he just sat there. This wasn’t the Dennis I knew in the shop. This was like some completely different Dennis who was about to have a panic attack.

  “Hey, Dennis. I have a crazy idea. Ready?”

  He scratched his head. “Yeah?”

  “Let’s bake cookies!” I said. “Do you have ingredients? We can always go get some. Come on. It’ll be fun!”

  I always avoided suggesting sweets or French fries or going out for meals and stuff like that with Seth. I didn’t want him to think Should you really be eating that? But it wasn’t like that with Dennis. I wasn’t sure why; I just didn’t worry about it in the same way.

  Dennis opened his mouth to speak and then hesitated. “I’ve never baked cookies before,” he admitted.

  “What?” I gasped. “Never?”

  How can you have gone your entire life, all seventeen years of it, without ever baking cookies?

  He shook his head. “Nope. Let’s do it. I’ll get my keys.”

  As soon as we were outside in the driveway, things felt easier between us. Maybe the fresh air helped. A change of scenery. We were talking again, and laughing. And when we got in the car, Dennis turned up the radio.

  It was already on, set to Lite FM.

  “I think we’re alone now,” I sang along, using a flashlight I found in the cup holder as a microphone.

  He grabbed it away from me and started singing too. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone arou-ound.”

  I loved that he didn’t even try to pretend he liked hippie jam bands or hard metal or rap. He listened to Lite FM and didn’t even try to hide it.

  He knew all the words, too.

  JUSTINE

  Seth was back from London and I knew it was go time. It was already the middle of August and summer was winding down. Things were quiet at the truck. Little Leagues were over, camps had ended, and so many Bridgefield families were away on vacation.

  I sat at my desk, trying to map out a plan in my head. I had ideas about where we should meet—the ice cream place that had just opened up. He’d mentioned once that he was eating rocky road out of the container, so it was safe to assume that he liked ice cream. I mean, everyone liked ice cream.

  Or we could meet at the diner, because people always went to the diner, and it was the most obvious and common place to meet. It would seem like a normal suggestion, and not like we were trying too hard to be creative.

  I’d ask Mia when she got here.

  Every time I thought about the actual meeting, it felt like someone was scraping out the insides of my stomach with a dentist’s pick.

  We were going to do this because I’d said we were going to do this. But I wasn’t sure if that was a good enough reason.

  I twisted my eyebrows, trying to calm down, and then my anxiety made me so tired that I had to get into my bed.

  I crawled under the covers for a quick power nap.

  I heard knocks on my door, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep.

  “Justie?” I heard.

  It was Mia. She was the only one in the world who called me Justie. Alexis sometimes did, but more in a poking-fun kind of way. But Mia had called me Justie since kindergarten, and I loved it. When you had a nickname, it really felt like people cared about you, like they knew you.

  “Come in,” I mumbled.

  “You okay?” she asked. She sat down on the edge of my bed.

  I nodded, rubbing the tired from my eyes.

  “Your mom’s asleep on the couch,” she told me. “But the kitchen door was open. I rang the bell three times but no one answered. I hope it’s okay that I came in.”

  “Mia. Come on.”

  “What?”

  “Of course it’s okay that you came in.”

  She looked at me for a moment like she had more to say, but she stayed quiet. After a second or two, she lay down next to me. Sometimes I wondered if all best friends did this. It wasn’t like I was going to take a survey of every best-friend duo in the universe to find out if cuddling in bed together was something they did. But maybe it was really weird. Or maybe at some point we’d veered off the path of best-friendship and veered onto the path of sisterhood. Sisters probably cuddled in bed together all the time.

  “Tonight’s the night,” I said a few minutes later.

  “Really?” Mia asked.

  I wanted to smack her, even though I was hesitant too. “He’s back from London, right?”

  She nodded. “All right, let’s do it. But let’s wait until later in the conversation to really bring it up, okay?”

  “Well, duh.” I got off the bed and walked over to my desk. “We’re not just gonna say hi and then set up a meeting time. We have to ease into it.”

  We sat down in our usual spots at my desk. He was logged in, but on his phone.

  “He’s out,” Mia said. “Has anyone posted about anything going on tonight? Any parties?”

  I leaned back and put my feet up. “He could be, like, out to dinner with his great-aunt.”

  “She’s dead,” Mia replied matter-of-factly.

  I laughed at that because I wasn’t really referring to a great-aunt specifically.

  “It’s not funny,” Mia said.

  But then I saw her cover her mouth, and she was laughing too. And I’ll admit—it was absurd that we were laughing about a dead great-aunt, but it was kind of funny, too.

  Katie: Hey

  We stared at the computer for a minute or two, waiting to see if Seth was going to write back.

  Seth: Hey. I’m out. Can I catch you later?

  I felt all the energy being pulled out of us. It was good that he took the time to respond, but it meant our meeting wasn’t happening tonight. And if it didn’t happen tonight, what if it never happened? What if we chickened out?

  The closer it got, the more nervous I felt, and the more I realized we were doing something completely mean and unhinged.

  “Don’t respond right away,” Mia said. “It looks too desperate. Like we’re just sitting here waiting for him to write to us.”
>
  “Well, we are,” I said. “But that’s okay. I mean, we know what we’re doing.”

  I wondered what Emmett was doing then. I wondered what it would be like when this was all over and we weren’t spending all our time on it. I imagined it would be the kind of feeling like after you take a really important test. You’re almost a little sad it’s over; you’re tempted to look at your flash cards again. But there’s also that feeling of relief. Like, It’s done. We survived. It’s all in the past now.

  After we had waited a good ten minutes, I leaned over the keyboard and wrote back to Seth.

  Katie: Sure

  “That’s it?” Mia raised her eyebrows.

  “You said not to make it look like we were desperate, just sitting here, yada yada…”

  We were having a heated debate about why trying too hard and making it look like you try too hard is the kiss of death, when the screen flashed and we saw that Seth had written something else.

  Seth: Actually, can I ask you something? Girl’s perspective again…you’re good at that.

  We looked at each other. Maybe the night was picking up.

  Katie: Sure, shoot. And thanks.

  “That was a tiny bit cheesy, but I’ll let it go,” Mia said.

  “Katie’s a little cheesy,” I reminded her. “Remember?”

  “True.”

  Seth: I’m at this party, and my friends are trying to convince me to hook up with this girl from our school. She’s kind of terrible, though. If I hook up with her, am I destined for hell? Will she ruin my life?

  “Oh my God!” Mia shrieked. “See, I told you he wasn’t out to dinner with a great-aunt! But who is he talking about?”

  “Ummm.” I thought for a second. I couldn’t believe Seth put so much thought into his random hookups. But then again, after the whole Adia thing, I guess he had to. I guess he was learning his lessons. That was a good thing. “Fran Pucillo?”

  “Ew,” Mia replied. “No.” She paused for a second. “Is she a V or an NV?”

  “Total NV,” I declared. “Last summer with Edward Tonno. Last winter break with Dylan Simms…I could go on.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “No, thanks.”

  The Seth conversation was just sitting there, lingering in the air. What were we going to say to that?

  Mia leaned over and started typing.

  Katie: Don’t do it. Honestly, it’s not worth it. A girl like that could ruin your life…

  I pulled Mia’s hands away from the keyboard. I had no idea what she was doing.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just sounds eerie,” I said. “Is what we’re doing going to ruin his life? Were you foreshadowing about us?”

  She looked at me, her eyebrows curved inward. “No, I don’t think so.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I mean, we’re not ruining his life forever, but for a little while.” She paused. “He ruined my life for a little while, too? Nothing is permanent, right?”

  “Right,” I answered. I wasn’t sure if she meant that her life was no longer ruined, that she felt okay now. Over him, even. I had so many questions to ask, and so many doubts, that I kept them all locked up in my head.

  If I let them out, I feared everything would unravel.

  We had to meet him soon, finish our project before I really had time to think about what we were doing. If I gave it too much thought, I would probably see that this was the most evil thing in the world.

  MIA

  Seth: This party is super lame. And I really want to get out of here. Want to be my excuse to leave?

  “Umm, look at this.” I covered my face, showing Justine my phone. We’d moved away from the computer and we were watching a Real Housewives marathon on her bed.

  “This is happening,” Justine said. “This is actually happening. Right now.”

  “Can we go out now, though?” I asked her, sitting up. “I mean, your parents. And it’s almost ten at night. What should we do? What should we do?” I tied my hair back into a ponytail.

  “Let’s just go,” she said, getting up from the bed. “My mom is probably asleep. My dad won’t really notice.”

  “Wait.” I grabbed her hand. “We didn’t even respond yet.”

  “Oh, right.”

  We went back to the computer because it was easier than typing on our phones.

  Katie: Ummm…

  Seth: Are you free to meet up tonight?

  “Why are we stalling?” I asked Justine.

  “Well, we need to make him work for it. At least a little bit.” She looked at me. “He can’t think Katie’s just sitting around waiting for him.”

  Katie: Give me twenty minutes. Let’s meet at the Oakridge Diner. Just in case you don’t recognize me from the pictures, you’ll know it’s me because I’m wearing a red shirt.

  Oakridge was the town next to Bridgefield, and it made the most sense to meet there. It was close enough to where Seth lived, and close to where Katie “lived,” but we probably wouldn’t know anyone there.

  Yeah, we wanted to embarrass him. But this whole project was also a little embarrassing for us, too. Did we really want spectators? Not at all.

  Seth: Cool. I’ll have a Yankees cap on.

  “We need to go,” I said. My whole body was shaking. I couldn’t control my hands or my leg twitches. I kept smoothing my hair down, over and over again. I wished I’d worn something different, but there I was in my rattiest cutoffs; I loved them, but they weren’t quite long enough to prevent the chub-rub during long walking periods. The chub-rub was shrinking, thanks to the smoothies, but it was still there.

  “We both need to be wearing red shirts,” Justine said. “That way it’s clear. He knows what we did. He knows we demolished him.” She went over to her dresser and grabbed a red V-neck tee and a red tank top. “I’ll wear the tee. You wear the tank top. Show off your amazing arms.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  This felt like when we’d have fire drills at school. Sometimes the teachers would tell us in advance, so we’d be waiting for the alarm to go off. But it didn’t matter how prepared we were. When the alarm finally did start blaring, we jumped. Completely startled. Always.

  Maybe there was never a way to prepare. For anything.

  Justine’s mom was asleep in the brown recliner, covered by this fuzzy orange blanket they had. I think Justine’s grandma had knitted it years and years ago.

  “We’re going out for a bite,” Justine told her dad, not looking at him.

  “Okay.” He turned around from the computer. “Be careful.”

  “That was easy,” Justine said when we were in the car.

  We drove in silence for a while after that. We didn’t even listen to music.

  “What if we get there first?” I asked.

  “We go in and get a booth and order a plate of cheese fries.” We were at a red light. She looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Duh.”

  “Duh,” I repeated.

  “What if he gets there first?” It seemed like I was quizzing her, which I kind of was, because it was comforting for me to know she had this all figured out.

  “If he gets there first, we go in, see where he is. Done.”

  “Done?” I asked.

  My heart sank a little then because that would mean it was over. Really, really over. As over as it could possibly be. No more talking late at night. No more finding out his innermost feelings.

  There was no coming back from this.

  There was nothing after over. Over was the end.

  I was ready for it, but it was still so final.

  “I can’t imagine it will be a very long interaction,” Justine said. “But I could be wrong. I mean, maybe he’ll think it’s super funny and then sit and chat with us.”

  “You’d let him sit and chat with us?” I asked.

  “No. Definitely not.”

  We pulled into the diner parking lot and I looked for
his car. He wasn’t there yet.

  “We should go in, right?” I asked Justine.

  “One second.”

  “My heart hurts,” I said. “But not like it did after the breakup. It’s like a physical hurt this time. I feel it in my throat.” I put my hand to my chest. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  Justine looked worried. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “We should leave, right?” Justine asked. “Maybe this really did go too far. Maybe it was too cruel. Either way, you can’t die on me, Mia. You can’t die on me!”

  I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or if she was really worried. I wasn’t going to die. Did people know they were going to die before they died?

  “I don’t think I’m actually going to die,” I said. “Honestly.”

  We got out of the car and stood there in the parking lot, staring at each other, and I wasn’t sure what to do. My throat felt tight. It’s not every day that you make up a fake person and develop a fake relationship with your ex-boyfriend. It’s not every day that the fake relationship gets so intense that you end up meeting face-to-face at a diner.

  One thing was for sure: I was never doing this again.

  Never. Ever.

  JUSTINE

  I wanted to back out so badly. I was nauseous and my heartbeats felt uneven. Was that a sign of a stroke?

  I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t daring. I wasn’t the kind of girl who came up with plans like this.

  I couldn’t even remember why I had done this anymore. I wanted to prove something to Mia, but she got the point. She was probably over Seth way long ago, and I was too focused on Katie to even notice it. I wanted to prove something to myself, but I knew the truth all along.

  People hurt others. It was a simple fact of life. And even the best revenge plots wouldn’t change that.

  I didn’t need to take it this far. I still hadn’t Googled if this was an arrestable offense; I was too nervous to find out the answer.

  “Let’s go in,” I said. “We’ll just be at the diner, like, the two of us sharing cheese fries and a vanilla shake, like normal. And he’ll show up. And he’ll look for Katie. And he may not put two and two together. Ya know?”