by Jen Klein
Still staring straight ahead.
Still gripping the wheel.
I shake my head and don’t even care when Oliver notices.
Two hours on a bus doesn’t sound that bad anymore.
A week later Oliver apparently has had enough. “It’s none of your damn business,” he says as soon as I climb into the behemoth. He’s staring straight at me, not putting the car into reverse, not heading toward school, nothing. “Yes, taking that bet was a dick move, but I can’t explain it to you. I don’t want to explain it to you. It’s not something you can understand.”
I find my voice. “Being on the receiving end of a jerk is universal. It’s a global experience.”
“You and I live in two different worlds,” Oliver snaps. He leans across the seat, so I know he means business. “And my world might seem stupid to you, it might seem basic and dumb and boring—”
“I didn’t say that—”
“But you don’t know that world.” Oliver glares at me. “And apparently you don’t know me, either.”
But I thought that by now I did know him.
“You could have told me,” I say. “Back at the very beginning, before we were friends. At least then I…”
I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
“You what?” he asks. “What would have been different?”
I stare into his brown eyes, ringed in gray and outrage, and it hits me: nothing would have been different. It’s all one big cruel trick of fate. I could have taken any other road—the one where I stayed with Itch, the one where I took the bus, the one where I didn’t help with the prank—and it wouldn’t have mattered. All those other roads, they still would have led to the same place. I was always going to fall for this boy.
And he was always going to break my heart.
“Fine,” I tell him, because the truth isn’t an option.
“Fine?”
“Fine-I’ll-make-a-concerted-effort-to-stop-judging-you-for-the-bet.” I spit it out all as one word, retreating into the corner of my seat. Trying to put as much distance between us as possible.
“Fine.” Oliver frowns at me. “Besides, there’s something else we need to talk about.”
His voice is still hard and the sound of it jolts my sadness into panic. He’s been mad at me all this time—this whole week—and I haven’t known why. Maybe it was more than a reaction to my anger. Maybe it was something else.
His parents.
Oliver could know about his parents, which would mean he knows I know about his parents, and now he might hate me, and—
“Oliver,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. He has taken out his phone and is sliding a finger over the screen.
“Here’s the deal,” he says. “It’s not a big thing, so don’t freak out or make a huge fuss, and I definitely don’t want to have a whole conversation about it, but for today—just today—we are going to listen to my music and my music only.” He starts a song—I think it’s Warrant but it’s not one from our playlist—and finally looks at me. “Ainsley and I broke up.”
The news sends my heart racing. Oliver sees me open my mouth—although I’m not sure what I’m going to say—and he hastens to add: “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
So that’s why he’s been such a mess ever since getting back from spring break.
Oliver backs out of my driveway and heads toward Plymouth. He stares straight ahead, but I’m gawking right at him. He shakes his head. “I knew you’d be like this.” He glances at me and sighs. “Don’t, June. Just…don’t. The only reason I’m even telling you is because I don’t want to repeat your bullshit when you and Itch broke up.”
I turn away and look out my window. Yep, Oliver definitely has the ability to hurt my feelings. Beside me, I hear him shift in his seat, and I wonder if he’s going to say something, but instead, his stupid music blares louder. He’s only turning up the volume.
As I watch the fields blur by, I realize I’m not unhappy only because Oliver’s acting like a douche. It’s because the rules just changed again and I’m surprised by that. No, worse. I’m rattled.
I don’t know how to do this whole friendship/not-friendship with Oliver if he’s single.
• • •
I’m waiting for physics to start when a pink notebook plops onto the lab table. I look up to see Ainsley standing beside me. She gives me a wry smile. “Can I sit here?”
“Sure.” Part of me is painfully curious about what happened between her and Oliver. The smarter—but smaller—part of me thinks I should stay blissfully unaware. Besides, the less we talk, the less guilty I feel about not telling her about the bet.
She sits down and sets her elbow on the table, leaning her head against her hand so she’s gazing up at me. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.” She keeps looking at me, so I elaborate. “It felt awkward.” At least that part was true.
“How is he?”
I’m not sure what the right answer is, so I reply truthfully. “I don’t know. He didn’t say much.”
Ainsley nods. “But he told you we broke up.”
This time I can’t keep myself from asking: “What happened?”
She presses her lips together before answering. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Being his girlfriend stopped being fun.”
Wow. It wasn’t a mutual breakup; it was a dumping. Which means Oliver is heartbroken. It sure explains his behavior when we got back from spring break.
“How did he take it?” I ask Ainsley.
“He was quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry or what. How was Itch when you broke up with him?”
At least that’s an easy question to answer. “He was really mad.”
As the bell rings for class to start, a last group of kids hurdles through the door, Oliver among them. He stalks right past my (our) lab table without a look.
Ainsley sighs. “I think Oliver is mad, too.”
• • •
“Here.” Oliver juts his phone at me as I strap myself in. “Add a song.”
“Why?” I look at him warily. “Did I prove something that I somehow missed?”
“No, but you will. You are amazingly competitive, so as soon as you think it’s been long enough, you’re going to use my breakup as a reason that high school doesn’t matter. Since I won’t really feel like fighting about it or taking it up with Shaun, you’ll win, so here.” He shoves his phone into my hands. “Go ahead. Add your song.”
He cranks the car into reverse and I look down at the phone in my hands. The opening screen used to feature a photo of him and Ainsley smiling at the camera, but now it’s blank.
“I need a second,” I tell him, and pick up my own phone.
A few minutes of purchasing and texting and sending later, our “Sunrise Songs” playlist has one new addition. I touch a final screen and the opening drumbeats reverberate out of the speakers, followed by an acoustic guitar and piano. A moment later, a melodic voice floats over us both.
Oliver frowns. “This doesn’t sound like your usual screamo.”
“It’s not.”
He glances at me. “Then what gives? Who is this?”
“Carly Simon. Seems appropriate.”
I sit back in my seat and cross my arms over my chest just as the chorus of “You’re So Vain” hits the air. Oliver takes the turn onto Plymouth with a little more vehemence than usual. “Cute, Rafferty. Really cute.”
• • •
It’s the fourth day of nothing but music on the way to school. I want to have an actual conversation with Oliver, to see how he’s doing, friend to friend. To try to get past this crap about the bet and the breakup. I want to comfort him, to talk it out, to slide my arms around his waist and hug him hard, to feel his breath in my—
No, wait! Not that. Never that.
I just want us to be normal again.
But we’re not.
“Hey, Olive
r,” I say over the music as we pull into the parking lot. “I was wondering—”
I stop, because of course Oliver is waving to someone, and of course that someone is Theo, who is strutting across the asphalt toward us. So much for any last hope of reasonable discourse today.
Theo is there by the time we get out. He gives me a very obvious and obnoxious once-over before head-bobbing at Oliver. “You check out that link I sent you?” He cuts his eyes toward me and drops his voice. “The one about literature.”
Yeah, right.
Oliver nods. “The literature was very…well rounded.”
Then some high-fiving and fist-bumping occur, after which Theo makes hand motions that leave nothing to the imagination in terms of what this website link was actually about. It’s definitely—definitely—not literature.
“Bye, guys.” I head toward the school. Unfortunately, Oliver and Theo follow right behind me. They don’t even bother to lower their voices.
“I’d like to try some of that,” Theo tells Oliver, apparently still talking about their gross website. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Who says I haven’t?” Oliver asks, and a sour taste crawls up the back of my throat. My attraction to him shrivels up, turns to dust, and blows away in the spring wind. I know some girls are inexplicably into guys who are pricks, but I am 100 percent not.
Which means, now that I think about it, maybe it’s a good thing Oliver has reverted to his jock-hole ways.
Ainsley grabs my arm as we stand up from our lab table at the end of physics class. “There’s a party at Kaylie’s next Saturday. You should come.”
“Kaylie and I don’t really hang out.” It’s true, since I’ve spoken maybe twelve words to Kaylie in my life, and some have been things like “Excuse me” and “That’s my pencil.”
“Everyone can come. The whole senior class.”
“I’ll wait for my invitation,” I say, and she bonks her purse into me.
“This is your invitation.” She’s smiling, but then it drops from her face. “Can I ask you something?”
Not-about-Oliver-not-about-Oliver.
“Sure.”
“It’s about Oliver.” Natch. “How’s he doing?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“You just listen to music when you drive to school?”
I nod. “You might want to ask Theo.”
Ainsley’s arched eyebrows jut together in the middle. “Theo?”
“From what I can tell, that’s the only person who Oliver’s hanging out with.”
Ainsley shakes her head. “That’s not good.”
“Tell me about it.”
• • •
It’s spring, which means it’s sunny and lovely but not yet too hot. It also means that all kinds of people eat on the bleachers. Lily and Darbs and Shaun and I are at our regular spot, but now there are tons of others dotted all around in little clusters like ours. We’ve just finished an entire conversation about the end of spring break and Yana and the final book report for the year when Lily asks the question I’ve been hoping to avoid. “Are you guys definitely going to prom?”
Shaun and Darbs both nod, which I was not expecting. Shaun, yes. Darbs…I kinda figured she’d flake.
“I’m deejaying,” Shaun says. “I can’t escape it.”
“I don’t want to escape it,” Darbs tells us. “It’s going to be hilarious.”
“Will you go with someone?” I ask her.
“I’m debating.”
“Between what?” Lily asks.
“Taking a risk on asking Yana or saying yes to Ethan.”
“Ethan asked you to prom? He never even texted me.” I gawk at her. “You must be an awesome kisser.”
Darbs waggles her tongue in my direction. “Oh, I’ve got moves.”
“Gross,” I tell her.
“Are you going?” Shaun asks Lily.
“Maybe if my new boyfriend’s into it.” She smiles when she says it, all smug and amused because we react exactly the way she knew we would: by squealing and hammering her with questions. Apparently Lily has been hooking up with a twenty-year-old dude she met in Saline at an underground concert. His name is Gordy, his hair is dyed shiny black, and he wears eyeliner. “He’s so hot,” Lily tells us.
Later, I’m walking back into the main building with Shaun when he nudges me. “Are you still anti-prom?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Just because it’s an antiquated tradition from a patriarchal era that disenfranchises females by placing them in the subordinate position of waiting to be asked by a male?”
“Pretty much.”
“Change your mind,” says Shaun. “Be my date.”
“What about Kirk?”
“I can’t ask him. He’ll say no and I’ll be destroyed. It’s better if I just let him drift away. You be my date instead.”
“That’s crazy,” I tell him. “And no. You’ll be deejaying.”
“You could keep me company.”
“No offense, but no thanks,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is that the idea of hanging in the deejay booth with my gay best friend during the most sacred of high school traditions makes me feel like a pathetic loser. Like the girl who can’t find a real date. And yes, I know plenty of my fellow seniors are planning to go in big groups with each other and that it’s totally fine to fly solo…but I don’t want to. I don’t want to because—
“Oliver,” says Shaun, and I feel my body twitch in response.
“What about him?” I say in the most casual tone I can scrape up.
“He’s single. You’re single.” Shaun shrugs. “It kinda seems like a duh.”
“I thought you would be on the Oliver hatred train with Darbs and Lily.”
“No, I’ve done stupid things because I was trying to fit in.” Shaun shakes his head. “Granted, not since middle school, but still. Most of the time, Oliver’s a really good guy. He should get credit for that.”
“I guess.” We walk in silence until we’re almost to the building. “But we’re friends, or something like friends. Going to prom—that would make it a different story.”
“Maybe you need a different story.” Shaun gives me side-eye and I shove him.
“Maybe shut your trap-hole.”
• • •
“Are you going to Kaylie’s on Saturday?” My question is a desperate attempt to make conversation with Oliver as we approach campus.
“Nope.” And then, for the first time in a week, he actually asks me a question in return. “Are you?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You should. Kaylie throws a good party.”
“Then why aren’t you going?”
“I’ve been to a lot of Kaylie’s parties.”
I eye him, debating asking a different question. We seem to be making progress—at least in this moment—but I don’t want to piss him off and possibly send him back to the Land of Jerkdom, even though there’s a certain peace in that land, because when he lives there, I have no fear of the attraction coming back.
“Is it because Ainsley will be there?”
Oliver glances at me, and I see him weighing how to answer. “No.”
“Then why?”
“I promised my mom I’d help her with some stuff at home, that’s all.”
We’re silent as Oliver finds a parking spot, but when we’re walking toward school, he suddenly turns to me. “Do you think I should go?”
“Yes.” I say it reflexively, which is why I don’t have an answer when Oliver asks the inevitable next question.
“Why?”
Because I want you there.
It comes into my head as a simple fact over which I have no control. Like gravity. “Because…because it’ll be fun.”
“But don’t you think there will be other fun parties?”
I’m not sure what Oliver is getting at. “Maybe. Or maybe not. We don’t have that much school left.”
Oliver nods. “
So it’s one of the last times I’ll get to hang out with all my friends.”
“Yes. It might even be the last big party of the whole year.”
“Except for prom.”
Ugh.
“Right. Except for prom.”
Oliver’s face gets very serious. “So you’re saying that it’s important.”
“Exactly,” I tell him, and then realize my mistake as the first bell rings and Oliver grins really big. “Dammit!”
“Oh, June,” Oliver says, and all my attraction to him comes flooding back, because his smile is so wide and his eyes are so brown, and something about the way he says my name makes my abdomen tighten. “Another song for our playlist. When will you ever learn?”
Apparently the answer is “never,” because here we are again: me falling hopelessly; him unaware and unattainable.
Of course, the only thing I say is “Shut up.”
It makes him laugh out loud.
When Shaun arrives at my house, he insists on playing dress-up. At least, that’s what I call his desire to pick out my clothing for the party. “It’s not that you look bad,” he says, scanning me. “But it’s hardly party attire.”
“My dad says these are the hottest jeans in New York,” I protest, pointing to the elaborately ripped hole along my upper thigh.
“Those are sexy,” Shaun assures me. “But you could wear that shirt to teach Sunday school. What else do you have?”
After half an hour in my closet (and several jokes about coming out of it), Shaun has exchanged my T-shirt for a long-sleeved crop top screen-printed with tiny zebras: a present from Dad two summers ago. I tug at the bottom of it, which barely skims my navel. “I think this might be too small.”
“There’s no such thing as a shirt that’s too small.” Shaun assesses my outfit. “Shoes.”
I want flip-flops and he wants stilettos. Since I don’t own the latter and he refuses to sign off on the former, we settle on a pair of jewel-studded platform wedges that I’ve worn only a couple times.
“If I break an ankle, I’m blaming you,” I tell him.
Shaun only points to my hair, which is pulled back in a ponytail. “Down.”
“It gets out of control when it’s down.”