by Amy Spalding
Matty starts to take off but mutters a disgusting word to describe Kat under his breath.
“Sorry,” I whisper to Kat before stealing her gelato and throwing it right at Matty.
“What the fuck,” he says, as everyone in the restaurant turns to look at my extremely mature defense of my best friend.
“You two girls need to get out,” a guy behind the counter says. “There’s no throwing food at people here.”
Kat and I grab our bags and hurry outside. Miraculously, neither Matty nor Co. follow.
“You’re my hero,” she tells me. “James, be real with me. Was he that horrible before?”
“No,” I say without having to think about it. “He was kind of . . . I don’t know. A hipster d-bag. But he always seemed sweet to you.”
“I know Logan hated him,” she says.
“Logan thought you could do better,” I say.
“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I don’t want to make you talk about Logan. Or freaking defend Logan.”
“It’s fine. Logan’s annoying, too, but he’s no Matty.”
“Do you guys still talk?” Kat asks me.
“He texts me still,” I say, though I hadn’t planned on telling her. “Do you still get drunk Matty texts?”
“Oh my god, I got one on New Year’s! I forgot to tell you. Hang on.” She takes out her phone and scrolls for a few moments before handing it to me.
“Two-gether?” I crack up, and everything feels like it used to. I should have thrown gelato at Matty months ago. It worked way better than Disneyland.
“Tonight he said we were destined to be prom king and queen,” she says. “Matty didn’t give a crap about any of that when we were together.”
So it was definitely always her priority.
“Maybe he actually cared,” I say anyway. Because I think he probably did. And that’s what I want to believe about Kat. “He couldn’t act like it and jeopardize his tough vegan rep, though.”
She giggles. “Now he’s got a dairy product all over him. Great work.”
“I didn’t even think about the dairy factor.” I take a deep breath while watching Kat. “A lot has happened this year.”
Suddenly I can just picture them, all the words finally spilling from my mouth. It’s been so much to carry around, and while I know that technically it was my choice to do so, it’s never felt like one. Until maybe now. And I know it would all come pouring out—the divorce and Mom’s new home and the way I felt breaking Logan’s heart and how goddamn stupid I feel for believing in fairy tales—but then it’d be out there. All of it would be out there. Maybe it could even feel better.
“Right? James, do you think it’s bad that maybe I don’t hate Diane?”
This brief window where it felt safe to tell Kat everything is already closed. Of course it is! How could I presume she’d spend even a single moment that’s not about her and nothing but her?
“Of course it’s not bad.” Kat’s mom is gone, and whether her dad dates someone or not won’t bring her back. It’s not at all like wishing that Todd didn’t exist. Diane isn’t breaking up something already formed, something already good.
“What if she’s being erased?” Kat asks. “Her memory. Her stuff in my dad’s room is boxed up, and he didn’t even ask me if I wanted it. I don’t know where it is. And he’s really happy and I’m just like . . . I don’t know.”
“It’s good that he’s happy,” I say. “And that you don’t hate her. Think of how much it would suck if you hated her.”
“You’re right, of course,” she says, and since her nose now sounds clogged, I’m pretty sure she’s crying. Everything is always such a huge deal to her. “You’re always right.”
“I was only right about that and throwing the gelato.”
“It’s enough!”
I’m not sure it actually is.
“Soooo I still haven’t found a prom dress, can you believe it?” Kat sighs dramatically. “Raina and I went the other day over to Fashion Square and still nothing seemed right. And you know I don’t trust clothes from the internet.”
“I can pay you back,” I say.
“OMG no, no, no,” she says quickly. “That’s not what I meant. My dad has no idea what anything costs anyway. He’ll give me more if I need it.”
Of course he will. Of course Kat would never have to choose between colleges—between futures—because of money. Of course those twenties she shoved into my hand didn’t mean what I wanted them to, because there are always more. I guess on the surface I knew that Kat’s family had more money than mine, but there’s knowing something and then there’s knowing something. And I’m lucky; plenty of people don’t get to go to college at all, or they have to pay their own ways, and that isn’t something I have to worry about. But at least it’s something I think about. I can’t imagine it even crossing Kat’s mind what a private university more than halfway across the country will cost.
“Just, like, this is so important, you know?”
“I mean, it’s prom,” I say. “Compared to graduation or—”
“Me and Quinn are getting interviewed for the newspaper,” she says.
“Whoa. The L.A. Times?”
She snorts. “Not quite. The Burbank Leader. Does that still count?”
“You’re getting a lot of attention,” I say, keeping my voice level as I wonder how it must feel to seek it out, to love the spotlight, to need even strangers to know what you’re doing. Can’t anything just be quiet? Why not keep something only for yourself?
Kat shrugs. “Why do people always act like attention is so bad? Oh, she just wants attention. So? Attention’s great!”
I stare at her.
“What?” She giggles and checks something on her phone. “OMG. You have to see this GIF Quinn just sent me. An otter is eating lettuce, like, super delicately.”
“You know I don’t share your otter thing, right?”
“Don’t you dare call them OCEAN DOGS again, James,” she says in her faux-outraged tone. “Look, you’re bananas, because there’s nothing cuter in the whole world than an otter, except a baby otter.”
I just kind of stand there while she texts back. Why am I here and not still at Jon Kessler’s party, where I at least feel like people would listen to two sentences in a row from me before getting distracted by otters or girlfriends or anything else?
“I guess I’ll head home.” I wait for her to stop me.
“Oh, OK! Talk later.” She gives me a quick hug and bounds off down the sidewalk without a look back.
“You said this would be exciting.”
“I absolutely didn’t.” I grin at Hannah and then look back to the pile of canned goods I’m sorting. “But I’m glad you volunteered anyway.”
“Sure, sure, sure.” She stares at a box of cornbread mix. “I can’t even read this expiration date. It’s completely worn off.”
I point at the discard pile. Unfortunately. Food banks receive so many expired or near-expired donations, and we’re here to get rid of the old stuff. It’s far from interesting, but if it makes it easier for people to get food that they need, I’m happy to give up a Saturday afternoon.
“Hey, whatever it takes to hang out with the elusive James McCall.”
I pretend to glare at her, but eventually I laugh. “You see me all the time.”
“We’re going to college together . . . hopefully! I’d like to be your actual friend, not the girl from your track team you occasionally walk cooldowns with and who drags you along to parties.”
I open my mouth to point out other times we’ve hung out, but notice that she’s closed her eyes while she’s shaking her head.
“What?”
“I sound like such a sincere weirdo,” she says, and even though Hannah isn’t Kat, at all, it sounds like something Kat would say. Maybe there are things about Kat that are also about Hannah, the things I miss, at least. Not the things that have kept me from even mentioning my volunteer work to Kat in the first place.
I try to imagine Kat quietly working toward good in the world, and I literally can’t. Everyone would have to know.
“Sincerity isn’t weird,” I tell Hannah. “And we are friends, aren’t we?”
We work silently for a while, which is good because a coordinator from the local food bank peeks in to see how our work is going. I never want to be a teenage stereotype, so the last thing I’d want is for someone to catch me chatting instead of working.
“I am here to help,” she says. “I’m not just scamming my way into a friendship via volunteer work.”
“Likely story,” I say, and I’m relieved she laughs because my sarcastic voice often sounds eerily similar to my regular voice. We keep working, and I like the silence punctuated with only the sound of boxes and cans of food being sorted into piles. This is where it’s different, I feel. This is where it’s not Kat, not at all.
I know that, originally, I wanted to prove something to Mom by volunteering. Of course, I care about the world and also about my own future. Sitting here making sure that people who are hungry have food to eat, though, I feel ridiculous that I’d ever thought that this was about me. What a relief that, really, it never was.
CHAPTER SIX
January of Senior Year
KAT
“Did you know that what you’re doing at midnight is supposed to be, like, symbolic of how you spend your whole year?”
Quinn’s standing right behind me with her arms around my waist, so when she laughs, it’s right into me. “That sounds OK.”
“Only OK?” I turn around to kiss her, but her serious face gives me literal pause.
“I like you,” she says.
“Duh.” I laugh and kiss her. “I like you, too. Like, a huge amount.”
“Earlier was . . .” She gazes away into the distance as a grin slides across her face. “It was pretty great.”
“It was amazing,” I say. “We could go back to your house and—”
“Kat, trust me. When it turned 12:01, my parents said good night to their friends and immediately Ubered home.”
“My dad probably didn’t even stay out until then! He was probably all, OK, Diane, let’s be home at a reasonable hour.”
Ugh, I’m somehow sneakily alone with my amazing girlfriend at a party and it’s only moments into the New Year and my brain decides to fixate on my dad and his love life. Super awesome.
“Want more beer?” Quinn asks me, and I nod and follow her back to the crowd. She navigates through the room easily and has nonkeg beer for us almost immediately. I look around for James, but I think she’s still on the roof. I only said the symbolic midnight thing because at midnight exactly I was mid-extremely-dreamy-kiss with extremely dreamy Quinn, but I genuinely hope it isn’t too real. Otherwise, it means something that my best friend was up on the roof, a place I was afraid to climb to.
And, like, symbolically? That sounds pretty bad.
Logan is ahead of me in line when I walk into Simply Coffee a couple days later, and I’m not sure what the correct best friend protocol is. I decide that ignoring him is proper and not harmful to him or to James.
“Hey,” he greets me. “How’ve you been?”
“Pretty good,” I say, immediately. Oh no. I’d be terrible in wartime; I’d give my secrets over to an enemy as soon as they asked. Forget being a spy! Not that I ever considered work in the spy industry, but it’s never fun to learn a new shortcoming.
“It’s OK,” he says, and I wonder if my thought process is that obvious on my face right now. “You can go ahead and feel as sad as you want for poor pathetic brokenhearted Logan.”
“What?”
He turns around to order his cold brew, and then he’s back to facing me. “Rydell, I’m not a proud guy. I am a sad broken shell, hoping my ex-girlfriend reconsiders whatever she’s thinking, and texts me.”
“But I—” I stop myself, pleased at my restraint. “She broke up with you.”
“Don’t remind me.” He sighs and turns back to the counter, as it registers I’ve had this whole thing wrong, and James has never bothered to correct me. “And whatever my friend Kat is getting, on me.”
“No, Logan, I—” But I can’t resist Logan, who’s the nicest guy I’ve ever known. Nicer than my own brother! “An iced dirty chai.”
He orders it for me, and even though I guess I don’t really know what’s going on, I feel somehow so settled at seeing him. He’s a calming presence, just like James. Even if, right at this moment, I don’t even know what’s going on with James. Is that normal? Maybe best friends don’t have to have every detail logged. Maybe this is just growing up.
But it doesn’t feel like growing up, not really. It feels like lying.
“So how’s UCLA?” I ask. “Are you still on winter break?”
“I am, and it’s good. I feel less smart now, ’cause there are some certified geniuses in my classes. But I probably need the humbling.”
I grin. “You probably do.”
“What about you? Where are you off to next year? You still think you need to flee the state?”
“I’m not fleeing! But, yeah. I just want to see what else is out there. I’ve barely left LA. And Mom always said—” My voice gets hung up on the words and I stop.
Logan touches my arm. “Any advice your mom gave you was probably pretty awesome.”
“She wanted me to see the world,” I say. “And, like, I know she’s gone but—”
“Hey, I get it. I’m just giving you shit because I can. And I’ve missed a few months of doing it. Making up for lost time.”
“Is it weird that I’ve missed you?” I cover my face with my hands. “Sorry, I’m such a dork.”
“It would be weird if you didn’t,” Logan says. “I’m cool as hell.”
I laugh. “Uh huh.”
“What’s your college list?” he asks.
“I applied early decision for Oberlin,” I tell him. “And I have, like, a whole list of other liberal arts schools I’ll try for if I don’t get in. Kenyon, Wellesley, Smith, Vassar, Wesleyan, et cetera. Someone has to want me, right?”
“Someone definitely will,” he says. “I’m not worried about you.”
“Oh, thank god! Since you’re a college expert and all now.”
“Oh yeah, just living that college life, nothin’ else!” He takes my beverage from the barista and hands it to me. “You didn’t get back together with that vegan asshole, did you?”
“Oh my god, no.” I push a straw into the cup and take a long sweet-spicy sip. “Actually I’m dating someone else now. Someone freaking amazing. I think you would like her.”
Logan’s eyebrows go up. “Her?”
I grin. “Yep.”
“No wonder you’re trying to get into all of those women’s colleges.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That is not why. Those were on my list anyway.”
“Maybe it was a sign.” He tinkers a bunch with his cold brew: half and half, simple syrup, a lot of stirring and testing.
“You should refollow me,” I tell him, even though I’m the one who unfollowed him, everywhere I could, out of best friend solidarity. But, like, what even is that now? She broke up with the nicest guy I’ve ever known and then lied about it? What’s solidarity for?
“Look, I’m just trying to figure out her rules and abide by them,” he says. “So, I don’t know, Kat.”
“I’ll refollow you, then,” I say, and he grins.
“You’re hard to turn down,” he says.
“Duh! That’s my charm.”
He surprises me by giving me a very sweet hug. “Take care, Rydell. Hopefully see you via the magic of social media soon.”
I add Logan back as I walk home. And I barely feel guilty at all.
Luke is in the living room reading a thick novel when I get back to the house. Dad and I have basically quit using this room altogether since Luke left in August, and I’d almost forgotten people could be in here.
“You should go out and do f
un stuff while you’re here,” I say. Luke glances up from his book, which is probably something about dragons or quests. “You’re on break! You can’t hang out with George R. R. Martin all the time!”
“Firstly, this book is not by—never mind, I know you don’t actually care. And I have plans for later. Keith’s having some of us over to hang out in his garage.”
I’m pretty sure Luke spent some portion of every weekend of grade school, middle school, and high school in his friend Keith’s garage. “That doesn’t seem very exciting.”
Luke shrugs. “There’ll be beer. That’s exciting enough. And Delia will be there.”
“Oh my god!” I hop up and down. Delia was Luke’s crush throughout most of high school. And I’m pretty sure if he wasn’t so slow-moving with girls that she’d be his girlfriend already. “Have you talked to her lately?”
“We text sometimes—”
“Ooh!” I exclaim.
“Kat.” He gives me an exhausted look. “Anyway. I saw her on New Year’s, but I don’t know what she thinks. She probably met some cool guy at Emerson.”
“If she flirted with you all through high school, she’s probably not looking for a cool guy.” I laugh and sit down next to him. “I’m kidding! A little. Not really.”
He marks his place in his book. “How do I figure out if she’s got a boyfriend at school?”
“Luke, oh my god, you just ask her. You don’t have to be all sneaky and artful about it. Just treat her like a human you’re having a normal conversation with.”
Luke sighs and messes up his hair. It’s thick and straight like Dad’s, nothing at all like mine. “You get that we’re pretty different people, right? You’re the one everyone likes and who goes out with whoever you want.”
“That is not at all how I would describe myself,” I say, though there’s something about Luke being back that makes me reconsider our family dynamic. I’ve always thought of him as somehow more than me. Stable and smart and thoughtful and reliable. The stereotypical perfect big brother. But I guess at the end of the day he is a guy who likes to hang out in a friend’s garage or read books alone when he could be out with friends. There’s nothing wrong with that, but he’s right that we aren’t the same.