“But Ca--”
“Look, if you really care about me, then prove it,” I say. I lean against my sunbaked car, closing my eyes and sighing. Logan is long gone, probably back to his apartment to tell all of his geeky friends what a hideous freak I am, and yet, I don’t want to leave this stupid shop. My heart is still hammering and I can’t take any of this anymore, can’t take the confusion, can’t take the misery.
The phone crackles on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry,” Mom finally says, and it hurts how much I believe her. “I just… I don’t know what to do anymore.”
My muscles tense up at the rawness in her words. It’s like she’s opening up, really opening up, and something about that is both surreal and painful at the same time. She can’t just say something heartfelt one time and expect it to make up for the last four years. She can’t pretend like none of it ever happened. So I open my mouth to say something, to comfort her maybe, to tell her either thank you or that she needs to shut the hell up--I’m honestly not sure which--but then I just can’t take it. Without a word, I hang up on her, and let the silence take me away.
For a while after that I relax on the side of my car, ignoring the hurt in my heart, ignoring the deep, aching emptiness I get whenever I talk to my mom these days. I need to get away from all of this--for a day, a week, a month. I need a way out, if only for a little while.
Automatically, my gaze shifts back down to the pamphlet in my pocket, but I shake my head. No, I tell myself. I can’t go there. I can’t disappoint Ben and go without him. I can’t be reminded of all I could’ve done to save him, all of the times I could have touched his arm and asked how he was feeling--really feeling. All of the times I heard him crying and assumed it was nothing. All of the times I told myself my brother was totally, completely, and perfectly fine, just like he always was, even when, deep down, I knew he wasn’t.
All of the times I could’ve said something, but was too afraid of making a big deal out of nothing.
So I stand here, doing nothing, feeling nothing, just like I did those four years ago.
~
WHEN I finally get home, Ruby isn’t in our apartment. But that’s not to say it’s empty.
I step inside, dropping my bag on the ground and groaning to myself. My ears are still ringing from my phone call with my mom as I stumble across the room, ready to collapse in my bed and wallow there for eternity. I’m about to, too, but then I glance up at my apartment. And my mouth might literally drop open.
The whole room is covered from head-to-toe in Albert Einstein posters, and in each and every poster fake lipstick covers Einstein’s cheek like someone just kissed him on the face. He has his old frizzy gray hair, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and the entire image is taken in black and white. It’s not the most attractive picture I’ve ever seen, to say the least. At the bottom of the posters are the words, “See? Math nerds can be hot, too. -L”
I just stare. Every poster is like that, lipstick and all. Covering my bed, Ruby’s bed, the ceiling, the TV, the windows--everything. They make everything else slip away, take me right back to where I want to be, to the one constant left in my life: my rivalry with Logan.
As soon as the shock wears off, a huge smile spreads across my face. Logan. I can’t help but give him credit for this. He snuck that in right after our date, and he did a hell of a job incredibly quickly. For one, long minute, I just keep looking around the room in awe, admiring his work. Everywhere I turn a lipstick-covered Albert Einstein stares back at me, all old and weird and kissed, and I just laugh.
Oh my god.
I’ve got to hand it to him. This is one of his better pranks.
After a while of circling the room, I walk up to the fan above my bed. It’s spinning quickly, carrying something around the room with it as it moves. I turn off the fan and let it slow before reaching out to see what that something is. I frown as it comes to almost a full stop, and then I see it.
Attached to the fan is a long string which holds a thin pancake-like food at about eye level.
I stop. Holy shit.
It’s a crepe.
Logan told me he hates crepes.
On the crepe is a little note with nerdy, rushed writing scribbled onto it--Logan’s handwriting. It says: “This is also a ransom note, Cali Monroe. Now it is my turn to hold a hostage. This crepe. For every hour that you don’t agree to go with me to the poetry convention, I put three crepes somewhere in your room. And crepes suck, so you know that will add up quickly.”
I reread the note several times before it finally sinks in. I bite back a smile. Goddammit he is a cocky asshole. I can’t even imagine anyone not hating him.
I turn the note over, just to check. On the back in even smaller handwriting is a Robert Frost quote from “The Road Not Taken.” I read it, rolling my eyes. Of course he turns the only information I give him about myself against me.
“Knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
I translate it pretty quickly in my head to “COME WITH ME TO THE CONVENTION.” In your dreams, asshole, I think to myself.
I close my eyes and collapse back onto my poster-covered bed. Leave it to Logan to find such new and innovative ways to piss me off, because right now I’m incredibly annoyed at how charming I find him. God, I hate him and his quirks. I hate him because he abandoned me, because he was never there to comfort me after Ben’s death and because he flat-out annoys me in general. I hate him too much to let one non-date change my feelings toward him, and that is the truth. He is charming, sure, but he is a bastard. A bastard who, according to my gut, knows more about what happened to Ben than he is letting on.
A few texts come in from Sarah updating me on all of the pointless gossip I’ve missed over the last few days, and I respond calling all of the gossip-victims bitches and sluts and assholes accordingly, but I’ve completely lost interest in conversing with Sarah and everyone. They’re morons, I realize. Total freaking morons. They don’t deserve me.
After a few minutes, I pull out my computer and click over to Two Roads, the same poetry blog I visit every day. I start scrolling through the recent posts. There is only one new poem this time, about a boy and a girl who run away together but halfway through it the girl realizes the boy she always wanted was right in front of her the whole time. The poem is titled Choice, and it is not the most original poem on the whole blog, so I skim it.
I go back and reread the poem from yesterday, the one about Frost and his idiocy and the road leading to love. I let the words wrap me up, take me away. It really is a sweet poem, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites by The Roadkeeper. I love it because it talks about true love, of the power it holds, and how it is always the answer. When two roads diverge in the yellow wood, it’s saying that the only real choice, the only one that matters, is the one leading to love.
I remember what Logan told me about the E.E Cummings poem earlier and how his favorite poems are the ones that argue that love is the most powerful. He would love this poem, I realize, and I almost want to go run to his room and share it with him right this second--something I’ve never wanted to do with anyone before. But really, he was right. The fact that true love is the most powerful thing in the world is a nice thought. All of these poems argue that love can break all bonds, that love can change the course of life, that true love always triumphs in the end. People do crazy things for love, and no matter how it works out, in all of literature there is always a positive that comes from loving someone. It’s why people read romance novels and love poems and why they watch chick-flicks; because no matter what happens, no matter how things end, no matter how impossible or dark or hopeless life seems, true love always shines through. It’s always the victor. It’s always the driving force. It’s always the answer.
Real life
may not be a romance novel, or a chick-flick, or a quirky poem on an anonymous blog I’m a little obsessed with, but Logan’s theory still holds true for it. Because when you love someone, when you really love someone, it is always worth it. It makes you feel, makes you change, makes you grow. It turns you into something scary and beautiful and inexplicable all at once, and it’s the most amazing thing in the world.
Just like in that poem about the girl named Rose, all you have to do is take a chance, all you have to do is open the door, and love will light up your whole goddamn house.
~
Sometimes saying nothing
is easier than facing the truth
~
I GO for a run a few minutes later. I slip on my running shoes and throw on a t-shirt, burst out of my room, and jog down the street outside of my apartment. Sunlight beats down on my back and a slight breeze whistles through the air, ruffling my dark hair as I go. A few cars pass by me and I listen to the steady hum of their engines, the screech of tires on pavement. When I run, my head clears, my body shuts down, and everything else leaves me. I take a deep breath, and I keep on moving. I run for a long time, until all of this melts away, until all of the pretending and the anxiety disappears and I feel like me again. The real me.
My arms pump at my side, my legs moving steadily back and forth and back and forth. The gentle burn in my thighs causes a small smile to flicker across my lips, and I feel whole again. My heart pounds in my chest and I breathe in and out, once, twice, three times. The cool air feels so good against my skin, and I just keep running and running, down the street, around a corner, through a parking lot, until I finally stop in front of a supermarket and catch my breath.
For a long while I just stand there, panting, and find myself glancing around the neighborhood. It’s so full of life, with laughing kids walking down the sidewalk beside their parents, a couple kissing across from me, an old woman holding a barking dog who tries to sniff as many people as possible, the full-on green trees and yards on every side of me, and the distant sound of a plane overhead. I smile. I love the energy this town gives off, the life, the happiness. Even if I don’t feel that way about myself, it gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, one day, I will. I’ll feel alive.
After another minute, my phone buzzes beneath me. Automatically, I grab it out of my pocket to see who it is. “The Asshole” is written in small font at the top of the message--a name I’ve proudly given Logan in all of my contacts--and beneath it is his message, Go to the convention with me.
I roll my eyes and start typing.
No, I say.
Jerk. I hate you.
The feeling is mutual, asshole.
So does that mean you’ll go with me?
I’d rather die.
Even if I beg?
Yep.
There’s a pause. Why not?
I stop, bite my lip. There is no way I’m going to tell him why, because telling the truth means admitting to him what a freak I am to still have not gotten over Ben’s death four years later, admitting to him that despite our rivalry, he really is the strong one.
I remember certain things from my high school years: the time Logan and I decided to convince my parents Ben had been abducted by aliens one day when he showed up late from school. The day I was one of the only girls cut from the soccer team, and I came home pretending not to care when really I felt completely worthless and Ben hugged me and told me that they were just jealous of my badassery. I remember the day Logan got sick with a bad flu and Ben and I took it upon ourselves to write fanfiction about what we thought was going to happen to him--my prediction was that there were killer monkeys inside of him that would destroy him from the ground up--and we read the stories aloud to him, and we all laughed and laughed and he puked into the toilet and we got out the febreeze, and then we laughed and laughed some more. But more than all that, I remember the time at the end of my freshman year, when Ben was about to head off to college and Logan, him, and I all compared and teased each other about our grades, and my parents just smiled because they weren’t as controlling then, because they loved us and sure they were pushing us to be engineers but Ben and I didn’t care because it made us happy. Because we were happy.
That’s what I miss most of all: being happy.
Sometimes I wonder what our family would be like if Ben hadn’t died, or how I’d feel if we at least knew what drove him to kill himself. Would I feel less alone? Would I forgive my parents and Logan and myself? Would this deep, aching guilt in my heart disappear?
Because your eyelashes are so obnoxiously long, I reply to Logan after a while, shifting my weight to one foot as I stand in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s a total turn off, man. I can’t go to a convention with someone who has such self-important lashes.
*gasp* Did you really just call my lashes self-important?
I really just did.
Well, they’d like to let you know that they think they are gorgeous, and it’s what they think of themselves that counts.
Oh shut up, asshole.
Go with me and I’ll shut up.
No.
Yes.
In your dreams.
Yes.
I hate you so much right now.
Does that mean you’ll go with me?
No.
Yes.
NO.
YES.
NOOOOOOOO
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It goes on like that for some time, until I find myself standing there and giggling at my phone like a complete idiot. It doesn’t take long for people to start staring, so I immediately cover my mouth with my hand for damage control purposes. That doesn’t stop a random mother from hurrying her kids by me, eyeing me suspiciously as if she’s afraid I’m a serial killer or something--because serial killers totally spend their free time giggling at their phone screens.
Never going to happen, so you can just give up now, I write.
Logan’s response is immediate. Also never going to happen.
You are such a loser.
And you are such an uncreative insulter. Now will you go with me?
No.
Now?
No.
…now?
NEVER.
There’s a short pause. ………..now?
Are you ever going to stop asking?
Probably not.
Then I’m just not going to respond.
I don’t think so.
And why is that?
Because you know in your heart that you want to talk to me.
Yeah, to make fun of you.
Go with me.
Wow. You really are desperate.
Sure. Now go with me.
I start walking back toward my apartment complex, realizing this conversation is headed nowhere in particular. I tell myself I’m going to scream at Logan the second I lay eyes on him.
No.
Yes.
No.
Oh my god.
I can do this all day, just so you know.
I am well aware. I never thought I could hate you more than I did before either but you are most certainly proving me wrong now. So congrats on that.
Thank you. Now to celebrate, why don’t we go to the poetry convention together?
Sure, when I’m in hell.
I can make that happen.
Do you ever plan to stop texting me?
Not until you agree to go with me. The convention is in five days! C’mon, Cali…
No.
Yes.
No.
You’re seriously annoying me to the point where I might actually go with you.
That was the plan all along.
Hmm. Okay. So if I go with you, will you shut the hell up?
Yes.
Good to know. Also, no.
Why not?
Will you just stop?
Okay, okay fine.
There’s a minute-long pause and I start to pocket my phone, thinking this whole conversation is finally over with, but Logan does not seem to share the thought. Come with me, he says again. I roll my eyes. Logan Waters never fails to piss me the hell off.
I will never, ever go with you. You should probably just give up now.
I don’t think so.
I do.
Unfortunately, I never asked your opinion.
And I never said I needed your approval, so we’re even. Now, go with me?
Nope nope nope.
Yep yep yep.
I will literally kill you.
And I will literally rise from the dead and ask you to come to the National Poet’s Convention with me all over again.
Fine.
Fine?
Fine.
I give up.
So you’ll go with me?
No. Seriously, Logan just stop.
Cali…
Logan… Please. We can talk about this later, okay?
Why?
Just give me time, for the love of god. Please.
Okay, okay. Fine, I will be the wonderful Good Samaritan I am and I will stop annoying you for now. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ask you again in, say, five hours, and that also doesn’t mean I think you aren’t worthy of attending with me, because you most certainly are.
Are you going to leave me alone now?
I am.
Good, I write. Goodbye, Logan.
Goodbye, Cali.
I take a deep breath as I turn the corner. I start to pocket my phone when I hear another beep. I groan. Oh, for the love of god…
Hey Cali? Logan writes.
Yeah?
You suck. You know that, right?
I smile. I’m well aware. There’s a pause. Hate you, Logan.
Hate you too.
~
What
is
happening
with
her
life.
~
A DAY passes, and I try my hardest to keep to myself. I ignore Ruby, Logan, and my parents, and I slip back into my Mean Girl Cali act. I go to classes and gossip a little with Sarah and Lindsay because it helps take my mind off things, but all I can really think about is Logan. Logan. Logan. Fuck, that bastard really gets on my nerves sometimes. He has totally consumed my thoughts, and I hate it. He’s getting to me, and not in the revenge kind of way. I wish it were the revenge kind of way.
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