Zach grins. “Told you I wasn’t a lost cause,” he says, standing up and walking toward me. He stops when he’s right in front of Mr. Sellers’s desk. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d actually tutor me.”
“I figure I have some lost time to make up for,” I say.
Zach leans over and I know he’s going to kiss me, but I step back. “Wait,” I say, holding out my hand. “I need to tell you something.”
I swallow hard and start speaking before I can talk myself out of it.
“I didn’t not write about you in my journal because you were nothing, Zach. That wasn’t the reason why.”
He cocks his head quizzically. “Why, then?”
I ball up my hands so hard that my nails dig into my palms.
“Because you were everything. You weren’t one night, one experience I had to record for proof that it happened. You were so much more than that. I didn’t write about you because I took it for granted that I would always have you.” I bite the inside of my cheek and try to stop myself from crying, but it doesn’t work, and I know my mascara is running, but this time I don’t care.
Zach reaches across and wipes my cheek with his thumb. “What are you saying?”
I smile through quivering lips. “I’m saying I want to eat spaghetti with you.”
Zach takes my hand and laces our fingers together, and I don’t stop him. I’m holding hands with a boy, and it feels so much better than I could have imagined.
“You know what this means,” he says slowly. “We can’t just be Wednesday friends anymore. This will probably involve more days of the week.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be just Wednesday friends.”
“Good,” he says, stepping around the desk and wrapping his arms around me. “Because I’m busy that day. I mean, I switched into this home economics class just to be closer to this girl I’m totally crazy for, and I have all this extra homework now because she’s such a slacker.”
I press my face into his chest. There’s so much I want to say, so much to tell him about myself that he doesn’t know. But there will be time for that. There’s no need to rush.
“I don’t know how to be a girlfriend,” I say. “I’ve never done it before.”
Zach kisses the top of my head. “It’s okay,” he says. “That’s something we can figure out together.” He pulls away and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Now, former Wednesday friend, can you help me with this covalent bonds thing now? Because they still make no sense. Maybe one of your diagrams would help?”
I smile, bigger than I’m sure I ever have before, and his lips are on mine, and if this isn’t the best kind of chemistry, I don’t know what is.
41
It’s funny how giving up control can actually end up putting things back in place. But that’s what I’m learning, that too much of something ends up yielding the opposite reaction. It’s a logic that has taken me the longest time to figure out but the shortest time to mend. And in two weeks, my life goes from complete shambles to something resembling almost normal.
The best part—besides Angela and I being best friends again—is that Faye is allowed to come back to school. I don’t know exactly how it happened, and Angela won’t tell me the specifics, but she went into Principal Goldfarb’s office early one morning and didn’t come out for almost two hours. She must have had some serious ammunition.
“What did you say to Goldfarb?” I ask when she finally emerges, with a serene smile on her face. “If there’s one thing I know about Goldfarb, it’s that he never changes his mind.”
Angela just shrugs. “Maybe I’ll tell you, maybe I won’t. But come on. We’re late for prayer group.”
I’m still not sure I buy into prayer group, but I’m definitely starting to see the importance of having faith in something, or somebody. Even if that somebody is your best friend. Today’s prayer-group topic hits especially close to home. It’s forgiveness.
“Everybody open your Bibles to Ephesians 4:31,” Angela says with a broad smile. She clears her throat and reads with confidence.
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
“Everybody” no longer includes Charlie, who hasn’t shown his face at prayer group since Angela gave back her engagement ring. Prayer group is a place I can count on never seeing Charlie again. I wish I could say that about everywhere, but I can’t. There’s no magic chemistry formula that will make Charlie disappear, but there is a little thing called the truth. And now that the former virgins know that Charlie was the one responsible for that video, I don’t think I’m the most hated person at Milton High anymore.
Plenty of people do still hate me, and there’s not much I can do to change that. But now I have Angela back. She doesn’t physically hold my hand when somebody hisses slut or whore at me in the hall, but she doesn’t have to. She is my strength just the same. Charlie didn’t get to be her first. That becomes my mantra.
Angela still wears her promise ring. When I asked her about it, she had a good reason.
“I’m keeping this,” she said, twirling it around her finger. “I picked it out. But it’s not a promise to Charlie anymore, it’s a promise to myself, that I’m always going to trust my gut.”
The best part is, she got me one to match and told me to make my own promise on it. Which I did, but I didn’t tell her what it was.
I owe Faye more than I could ever tell her. She somehow got the website Charlie made taken down from the Internet. I could have let it ruin my life, but I let it die a quick death at Faye’s hands instead. She’s another best friend now, somebody I trust with my life. But I don’t want to be her anymore. I’m still getting the hang of being myself.
Faye was right and wrong. I’m not quite old news yet. People still whisper when I approach them, and there are several girls who wouldn’t mind seeing me get hit by a car. I still have to deal with death stares in the hallway, and I probably always will, at least until senior year is over. I left a lot of pissed-off ex-girlfriends in my wake, and I’ll never be able to explain to them why I did what I did. I considered trying to, but maybe they’re trying to move on as much as I am. And no reason will ever justify what I did to them.
I guess the only thing I can do is leave the past in the past. Most of the couples are done for good. Laura Adams dumped Trevor Johnston in a profanity-laced text message. Isabella reportedly threw her shoe at Juan Marco Antonio’s face during soccer practice and told him she couldn’t wait for him to go back to his home country. Rafe Lawrence found himself at the receiving end of Caroline’s wrath, just like he wanted, although rumor has it he wants her back now and she’s not having any of it. Good for her.
Jillian Landry decided to give Tommy Hudson another chance. I still pass them in the hall, and they still hold hands. I don’t tutor her anymore, but sometimes I swear Jillian gives me the faintest hint of a smile, like she knows more than I have told her. Like she forgives me for what happened. I hope Tommy and Jillian make it.
I wasn’t expecting it when Toby Easton found me at my locker, waving his midterm report card in my face. He got an A in polymers. If he noticed the covered-over words on the locker door, the blacked-out WHORE and SLUT and BITCH, he didn’t show it. He lunged forward like he wanted to hug me but stopped short. He had probably seen the website, read the notebook pages. He was probably saying thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t blame him.
I waited for him to say good-bye, but he didn’t. He said something else.
“Same time, same place today?”
I nodded. Something swelled in my chest. I got to keep tutoring Toby. That meant everything to me.
“You really did save my life,” he said as he walked away.
Nobody else tells me that anymore. And if Toby is the last person I ever hear it from, I’m okay with that.
Some people think I’
m a bitch, some people think I deserve to die, and some people think I’m a glorified prostitute. I hear all kinds of rumors about myself, most of which have absolutely no root in reality. They don’t just go away, but I knew they wouldn’t. They linger, but they’re no longer insults hurled across the cafeteria. They’re more like whispers, echoing off the walls.
“I heard she quit sleeping with high school guys and moved onto college ones,” I heard somebody say when I was sitting on the toilet taking a pee.
“I heard she got herpes,” another girl said.
“No, she didn’t get herpes. She got pregnant,” a third voice chimed in.
“No, you guys are wrong. She has an actual boyfriend now. I saw them holding hands yesterday,” a fourth girl said to a chorus of disbelieving laughter.
Thankfully, only the last of those rumors is true.
And tonight is a particularly special night. Tonight, Zach and I are having our first real date. My first real date ever.
“It’s about time,” Faye says with a wink. She and Angela are over at my place, helping me get ready. Angela is thumbing through Kim’s old copies of Us Weekly magazines, and Faye is trying to make me sit still while she does my makeup.
“I’ll say,” Angela says. “Mercy’s first date. This is a big deal.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t make me more nervous than I already am,” I say. “You’re supposed to be helping me feel like I’m ready.”
“Please,” Faye says, swiping mascara across my upper lashes with a flourish of her hand. “You were born ready.” She squints at me and frowns. “Now close your eyes. I need to do your eyeliner.”
I do what she says. I never thought I would be able to sit like this, to give somebody control over even something as simple as my makeup. But I’m learning to take baby steps.
“So what’s the plan?” Angela says. “Knowing you, there’s a big elaborate plan. I’m dying to know, and you haven’t said anything.”
I smile, despite Faye’s instructions not to move my face.
“Nope,” I say. “There’s no plan. We’re playing it by ear.”
“There must at least be an outfit,” Angela says. “You have so many nice dresses to pick from.”
She’s right—I have a closet full of nice dresses that I never wear, dresses that Kim bought me for random charity events and dinner parties and other occasions I found a way to weasel out of. I have a closet full of dresses and drawers full of lingerie, some of which I have worn for Zach on multiple occasions. Lingerie that was supposed to say something. I’m playful. I’m fun. I’m sexy. I’m a bombshell.
So maybe it’s telling that I’m wearing a cotton bra and underwear set that I haven’t worn in years. My days of letting my lingerie speak for me are long gone.
“No dress,” I say. “I’m wearing exactly what I have on.”
That statement is met with silence. I crack my eyes open and see the disappointment on their faces.
“What? You don’t like my jeans?”
“It’s just, you wore them all day,” Angela says. “I thought you were going to wear something more girly.”
“Nope,” I say, blotting my lips against a piece of tissue paper that Faye presses against them. “I’ve spent enough time pretending to be somebody else’s fantasy. Tonight, I’m just going to be myself. I think Zach will approve.”
Faye narrows her eyes. I can see a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“It’s not about what you’ve got on top. It’s about what you have on underneath. Let me guess. Leather and lace.”
Angela pretends to cover her eyes and hide her head, but I can tell she’s laughing. I tug at the corner of my shirt, exposing an unembellished nude bra strap, and see Faye’s face fall again.
“That’s, like, the world’s most boring bra,” she says. “If this is a real date, he probably wants to see your boobs.”
I bend over to rummage under my bed for my Cons. “Really, Faye,” I say. “It’s a first date. I’m not that easy.”
Angela claps. “I think this is great,” she says. “You found someone you really like.”
Faye plops down on my bed. “Well, I want details later,” she says. “I’ll be expecting a late-night phone call with all the specifics.”
The doorbell rings. Seven o’clock—right on time.
I grab my purse off the back of my chair and head for the door. “I don’t think so,” I say with a grin. “I think the whole school has heard enough about my love life. From now on, the rest of it will take place behind closed and locked doors.”
42
I’m nervous to see Zach. Nervous because I have never actually been on a real date, and nervous because I hope I’m okay at it. I’m just about the furthest thing from a virgin, but I guess there are some things that are still virgin territory for me.
But Zach makes it easy. Kim has already answered the door by the time I get downstairs, and Zach is standing in the foyer wearing a button-down shirt and carrying a bouquet of flowers. Daisies, not roses. They’re the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen.
“For you,” he says, handing me the bouquet.
This time I don’t chuck them at the bottom of the stairs. I let Kim put them in a vase. Later, I’ll bring them to my bedroom and leave them on my nightstand. Flowers from my boyfriend.
“Ready?” Zach says, placing his hand on my lower back and guiding me to the door.
“Ready,” I say.
“I’ll have her home by curfew, Mrs. Ayres,” he says as he opens the door for me.
Kim idles in the foyer, and I wait for her to make an embarrassing comment, but for once she doesn’t. “You kids have fun,” she says instead. I glance back at her and for the first time in forever, I don’t scowl or roll my eyes or blow her off. I meet her eyes and smile. Because Kim might suck at being a mom, but she’s the only one I’ve got. Maybe she’s trying, in her own misguided way. And I guess I can understand something about that.
I look up the stairs one more time, and there are Faye and Angela, standing on the landing, waving at me. And in this moment I have never felt more normal, more like a regular girl going on a date with a boy she likes.
I have never felt luckier, either.
Zach leads me down the driveway to where a white sedan is hidden behind my Jeep and Kim’s convertible. “I borrowed my mom’s car,” he says. “It’s a hunk of junk and it only goes one speed, but it should get us there in one piece.”
I smile. “It’s perfect,” I say.
He holds my car door open and shuts it gently once I get in. He lets me pick the music on the radio and reaches for my hand as he pulls away from the house.
“Where to?” he says. “What big adventure did you decide on?”
Zach let me design our whole date, not because he’s indecisive but because he knows I like to have a plan. But I think I’m about to surprise him.
“Actually,” I say, “I do have an idea. Keep driving. Straight for the beach.”
Zach raises an eyebrow. “Are you trying to get me out of my clothes?” he says. “Because if you wanted to see me naked, there was already this video that went around.”
I punch him in the arm. “No, silly. You’ll see.”
When I finally tell him to stop the car, he gives me a quizzical look. “This doesn’t look like a fancy restaurant,” he says. “Or a movie theater, or bowling. So where exactly are we going?”
“Well,” I start, “I was kind of in the mood for milkshakes.”
And this is our date. It’s not fancy or over-the-top or adventurous or even what most people would describe as romantic. But to me, it’s perfect. My life has been dramatic enough. We order milkshakes and French fries, and I eat in front of Zach without feeling self-conscious at all. He makes me laugh and finds little ways to touch me, in places I never thought I’d like being touched. On my wrist, on my knee, on the tip of my nose.
We even sit on the same side of the table.
“You know, I’ve been
thinking,” he says as we walk on the beach afterward. “California will be awfully lonely without you next year.”
“There’s always phone sex,” I say, bumping up against his shoulder. I take a deep breath before what I’m about to say next. “Or you could just come with me. Go to school somewhere it snows in the winter.”
Zach hasn’t let go of my hand, but now he squeezes it gently. “Mercedes Ayres, is it possible we’re driving the same speed for once?”
A smile twitches at my lips. “Well, you know. I’m trying this thing where I go a bit slower. Like a minivan, instead of a Mercedes.”
Zach stops and pulls me toward him and traces the shape of my face with his finger. A month ago, I wouldn’t have let him. It would have been too intimate, too meaningful. But today, I don’t pull away.
“You can’t be a minivan,” he says. “I love that you’re a Mercedes. But I’ll do my best to keep up with you.”
“You already are,” I say, brushing my lips against his and letting him lift me off the sand.
Here’s the thing. I can’t make up the speed limit any more than I can take back time. I can’t fix what has already happened to me, and I certainly can’t fix what happened because of me. But what I can do is drive beside the somebody who is beside me now. I could drive away in a few months like I planned and start fresh. Or I could stay here and love the people I’m with and the life I have with them. Maybe Zach and I will be together forever, and someday we’ll tell our kids that we were high school sweethearts, a much tamer version of what really happened. Maybe we’re soul mates. Maybe we really have come together to make each other stronger, like sodium and chloride. Or maybe a year from now, we’ll be on opposite sides of the coast and decide we’re better off as friends. But all those maybes aren’t important, because I can’t control them.
I can control what happens in the chemistry lab. There’s a formula and an equation, and I know exactly what the reaction will be when I mix one thing with another. Life, not so much. Love, not at all. No matter what elements you combine, you really have no idea what happens next.
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