by James Ramos
“I didn’t know,” I admitted sheepishly. “I mean, she’s always been into computers. She used to always take mine apart. But I always thought she just liked ruining my stuff.”
“I’m also trying to convince her to try standup, because the girl is hilarious.”
“Nicole? Hilarious?”
“Why’s that so hard to believe?”
“I always thought she was just, you know, annoying.”
“Lucky for me,” Lucas grumbled.
“Look, Lucas, I’m sorry. I’m happy for you guys, really. Sounds like you make a good couple.”
Lucas grunted, which was the closest thing to an apology accepted as I could expect. “Yeah, well, we’re hoping to win cutest couple.”
“You just might,” I said. Now that Jake and Bridget weren’t in the running anymore.
“How is Jake holding up?” Lucas asked as he drove.
Jake’s parents—my Aunt and Uncle Gardiner—had whisked him away for an impromptu weekend trip to Canyon Lake, which was only about an hour away. Aunt Gardiner—who was by far one of my favorite relatives—had called me Thursday night to ask what was up with Jake.
“The boy’s a Sphinx,” she’d complained with the voice of a woman at her wits end. “He won’t talk about it to me, or even his father.”
I’d explained as best I could what had happened, even though honestly I still hadn’t made much sense of it.
“But Bridget’s such a sweet girl,” Aunt Gardiner said. “There must be more to it than that.”
I was still sure there was, but nothing could convince Jake. As far as he was concerned, she’d left of her own volition, and she was perfectly justified in doing so. “If that’s what’s best for her,” he said, “that’s all that matters.”
As noble a sentiment as that was, and as much as Jake tried to act like he wasn’t upset, it didn’t change the fact that he was hurting. Badly. He was like a flower that had been plucked from the ground and left to wilt, and I suspected Bridget wasn’t in tip-top shape either.
But since Jake refused to admit any of that, his parents had decided that a little getaway was just what he needed. I agreed with them, and, strangely, so did Jake.
“It’ll be nice to get out of the city for a while,” he’d told me the night before they’d left. “I think everyone needs a change of pace every now and again. I like lakes. It’ll be fun.”
He’d sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone.
* * *
On the way to the park Lucas told me he wanted to film some more of our tricks, and I was happy to oblige him. Fifteen minutes later I’d nailed the same frontside nosegrind four times, each from a different angle. Lucas was giddy. After my fifth attempt—which ended in a nasty bail—he took a break to review his footage, leaving me to tend to my fresh wounds.
As I limped over to one of the benches to recuperate, my mind wandered from thinking about Bridget and Jake to thinking about Darcy. She made absolutely no sense to me. Whatsoever. One minute she acted like she was allergic to me, the next she maybe wanted us to be friends. Almost. I could never be sure with her. And the worse part about it all was that I really didn’t mind. But the more I thought about her, the more I realized how much I didn’t know about her. Like the jogging thing. The same went for Nicole and her computer skills.
But then, there were the things I did know about her. Like how she had treated Gabby. There was no room for confusion about that. My mom used to tell me that there were some things decent people just didn’t do, lines that by nature we didn’t cross, and to me, Darcy had crossed that line with Gabby. Still, what had happened between them was in the past. Maybe Darcy had changed for the better. I very much doubted that, but I was beginning to think that I didn’t know people as well as I thought I did.
I had a hard time landing any more tricks. By the time we called it quits, my legs were a patchwork of bloody cuts. When I got home I went straight for the first-aid kit Mom made me keep under the bathroom sink.
Dinner with my parents was a quiet affair. Well, for me it was. I ate in silence while they did all the talking. “I think we should move,” said Mom as she furiously cut into her lasagna.
“I think our mortgage says differently,” mumbled Dad as he sipped at his coffee.
“Seriously, Janine’s plants are making my garden look bad.”
“Are you sure it’s Janine’s plants?” He chuckled.
“Hey, guys?” I interrupted. “Kind of off topic, but what type of girl would you picture me with?”
Dad dropped his fork and looked at me with a horrified expression. “If you have impregnated some poor girl, so help me—”
“Seriously!? No!” I shrieked.
“Don’t discourage the boy!” said Mom, with no attempt to mask her delight. “Why do you ask, sweetheart?”
I shrugged. “No reason.”
“There’s a reason for everything,” said Dad.
“Have you finally found yourself a little bunny?” asked Mom. “When are we going to meet her?”
“There’s no her, Mom. Geez.”
“Well, why not?”
“Respect,” Dad said, waving a cautionary finger. “Always respect a woman. If we’ve taught you anything, let it be that. And a good rule of thumb; think with your head, not your . . . other bits. That’s how you end up miserable.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You don’t know what your other bits are?”
“Yeah, I got that part.”
“He means,” Mom interjected, “that you don’t want to go after a girl just because she’s got a nice figure or whatever it is you boys go in for these days. And to answer your question, I’ve always pictured you with a sort of, oh, how do I put it . . .”
“A nerd,” Dad finished.
Mom swatted at him. “I was going to say bookworm.”
“Same thing,” said Dad. “She’d be way too into comic books, and she’d probably be a bit on the socially awkward side.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing from my own parents. “Guys, a bookworm? Seriously?”
“Remind me where you work again, Elliott?” Dad asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah, but where do you get the ‘socially awkward, too into comics’ part?”
“What’s that on your shirt?” Mom asked.
“Optimus Prime, but that’s not the point. You agree with him?”
“Well, dear, people are generally drawn to people they share similarities with.”
“And not just the superficial ones,” Dad added. “Things like values, morals, beliefs, goals—those all come into play when we choose a significant other.”
I thought about Jake and Bridget. They seemed to have had a lot in common. Yet, look how that had ended. I thought about Gabby. We liked a lot of the same things. We were both into Star Trek, we got along, and we made each other laugh. But that was where the similarities ended. If I was completely honest with myself, we just didn’t belong together, at least not romantically. And then there was Lucas and Nicole, who outwardly had nothing in common, but that, as I’d learned today, was not entirely true. They had things in common, just not the things that were obvious.
“You know there’s no hurry, Elliott,” said Dad. “It’s not like there’s a time limit on things like these.”
“Yes, there is,” Mom interjected. “I would like to be around to see my grandchildren.”
“There’s still a wide window for that, dear,” said Dad. “You’re not over the hill just yet.”
“Fine, smarty-pants, I’d like to be around to see my great-grandchildren.”
Their bantering became background noise in my head. Eliminate the impossible, and whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes said that. So did Spock. Gabby was an impossibility. But what remained?
Darcy. Thinking her name, finally admitting to myself that, at the very least, I f
ound her to be . . . interesting, was a relief. I definitely did feel something for Darcy, but what that something was, I had no idea. I didn’t like that. It had always been so straightforward with my friends and their crushes. They either liked a girl or they didn’t, she either liked them back or she didn’t. This was something else.
“How do you know if you’re in love?” I asked. Asking my parents about a “crush” sounded stupid. Besides, they were old. No telling whether they even knew what a crush was, or if that was what they called it.
My parents paused to stare at me. “I knew there was a bunny!” Mom shouted.
“No, this is strictly hypothetical.”
“It’s the greatest feeling you could ever experience,” Mom said with a sigh and a longing glance at my Dad that made me two types of uncomfortable.
“Don’t romanticize it, dear,” said Dad. “The boy’s confused enough as it is.”
“But when it happens, do you feel it?” I asked. “Is it sudden, like flicking on a light switch?”
Dad shook his head. “No, it’s more like the flu.”
Mom scoffed. “Morbid much?”
“Let me finish. At first, you feel the symptoms. They may be mild. You might shrug them off. You’ll tell yourself that it’s just allergies. Until it gets worse. You can feel your body changing as your symptoms worsen, until one day you wake up, and you know what? You’ve got full on influenza. It’s the same with love. You can’t tell when you’ll catch it or who you’ll fall for. But once it happens, it’ll change everything for you. You’ll never want to go back to the way you felt before.”
Dad smiled at Mom, and she gave him a starry-eyed look.
“And there’s no vaccination, right?” I asked, hoping to distract them from each other. “And I hope it isn’t contagious, because there sure is a lot of it floating around in here.”
“Joke all you want,” said Mom, “but one day, you’ll have this same look on your face.”
I hoped not.
I thought about Darcy again. I couldn’t be in love with her. Not in a hundred years. I couldn’t even have a crush on her. I refused to even consider that possibility. Maybe I just liked to bother her. Maybe I enjoyed having someone to argue with.
“Look at him, with his face all knotted up,” Mom said. “You used to get that face when you were a baby, trying to figure something out. I could see the wheels turning in that big old head of yours. You always loved mysteries, always trying to make sense of everything.”
“That’s it!” I shouted.
Mom frowned. “That’s what?”
That’s what Darcy was to me. A mystery! I couldn’t figure her out. One moment she was this callous, stuck up jerk, and the next she was an articulate, thoughtful, even somewhat pleasant person. I just couldn’t reconcile the two sides of her.
I got up from the table and started cleaning my mess. “Thanks, guys, nice talk. You’re the best.” I was relieved to finally understand what was going on. I wasn’t going crazy, or falling in love with Darcy. I just wanted to make sense of her. And once I did, everything would be back to normal. Her name wouldn’t pop up into my head at random. I wouldn’t have dreams about her.
Once I figured Darcy out, I could finally let her go.
Chapter 19
A lot can happen in two months. Winter arrived, and the weather grew cold enough to warrant wearing a jacket—only in the mornings and evenings, because Arizona is still a desert, seasons be darned. The school year took on a new energy. Now that we were a fourth of the way through, the reality of our impending graduation (or not graduation) dawned on most of us seniors. Talk in the hallways began to shift to things like credits and transcripts and GPA’s.
Rehearsals also became more and more intensive. They started costume fittings. Sets were built. Ms. Wright brought in a choreographer to teach the cast proper sword fighting technique.
Jake seemed to improve. The trip to Canyon Lake had apparently done its job. When he came back he threw himself into his role, pouring over the script, researching the fourteenth century Renaissance, polishing his phrasing and mannerisms—he even talked about dying his hair, since blonde wasn’t a very tragic color. At lunch he sat at our table again. He never talked about Bridget, and I threatened both Liam and Kyle with bodily harm should they mention her.
But with as much as was happening, my progress in solving the Darcy puzzle was agonizingly slow. Darcy was not one to open up easily, and our status as friends was tentative at best. Still, I was constantly on the lookout for any clue I could get, any puzzle piece that would allow me to see the whole. Sooner or later, I would figure her out, but as time went on, I grew more and more impatient about it.
I was reminded of the field trip the second I stepped onto the concourse at school on Monday. For whatever reason—one I was sure I would never understand—whenever there was a change in the daily monotony that was the typical day of class, the majority of my fellow students took it as a cue to shed all traces of civility. Seniors were running up and down the halls, whooping and hollering while the unfortunate instructors who had been tasked with managing this unruly crowd tried in vain to rein them in.
Our destination today was the Phoenix Art Museum, somewhere I had visited a grand total of once, although I’d passed it countless times. It dawned on me that I probably hadn’t remembered today’s trip because I hadn’t cared about it to begin with. An art museum was the last place I wanted to spend any quantifiable amount of time, and the fact that it would be of the morning hours was sure to make things even more unbearable.
I followed the signs taped to the walls that read “Senior Trip This Way.” If I was to be honest with myself, there was another reason I’d forgotten the trip. I was distracted with Darcy. I reminded myself that the sooner I figured her out, the sooner I could get on with my merry life without her intruding on my every waking—and sometimes sleeping—moment.
I reached the side doors of building two, and stepped outside where the seniors were being herded. Two buses lined the curb, and teachers with clipboards hurried back and forth in a useless attempt to bring about some sort of order. At the very least, this trip was an opportunity. Darcy loved art. Actually, love was a little strong for Darcy. She was fond of art, always carrying that sketchbook of hers. Perhaps when she was in her own element, surrounded by something she enjoyed for a change, she would more inclined to open up about herself. It was a long shot, but it was worth trying. One piece of the puzzle, at least. That was all I was asking for.
First though, there was my cousin. He was easy enough to find, standing next to Lucas, Kyle, and Mark. Safe enough hands, I supposed.
I started looking for Darcy, who was much more of a challenge to find. Bridget wasn’t here today—in fact she had been absent more and more lately; maybe she had a cold or something—which increased the odds that Darcy would be alone.
People were being funneled onto the buses by twos now. I had to catch her before she boarded. Perhaps we could pair up. The prospect of a bus ride in Darcy’s company excited me more than it should have, invigorating my search. I sifted through the faces, growing more and more desperate as the buses loaded.
When I finally found her, my pulse jumped. She was next to the wall, by the same bus Jake and the others had already climbed into. My feet couldn’t carry me to her fast enough. The distance between us seemed to stretch with each step I took. She was standing still, texting with her eyes glued to her phone.
I was close. So very close.
And then came Calvin. He swooped in from nowhere, a hawk now instead of a rooster, to touch her shoulder and whisper something into her ear. She looked up, and while her face remained impassive, she turned away with him, and together they boarded the bus. I froze, and it felt as if my heart had stopped with me. As they climbed aboard, Calvin looked up, and by chance his eyes found mine. He gave a quick grin, and then he was gone.
The incident with Andrew notwithstanding, I wasn’
t one for attacking people. But I was sorely tempted now, and as I latched onto the nearest person to form a pair, it was only the remembrance of how much trouble I’d be in that prevented me repeating the incident.
My seatmate and I pushed through to the back of the bus. I forced myself not to look at either Darcy or Calvin, who were squished together in the compact seat, and we sat across from Lucas and Jake, who were in front of Kyle and Mark, who was only coming because he took senior classes. I ignored their conversation, too irritated to speak, and finally the bus lurched forward and we were on our way.
“I think she’s looking at me,” Kyle whispered, gesturing up toward a girl who had probably never even seen him before.
“She’s not looking at you,” I snapped.
“Maybe me then?” asked Mark, who I hadn’t even realized was into girls until recently.
“She isn’t looking at you either.”
“How do you know?” he asked indignantly.
“Because she’s facing the complete opposite direction.”
By some miracle, Kyle seemed to pick up on my sour mood. “What’s eating you?”
“Nothing’s ‘eating me.’ Are chunks of me missing?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with She-who-will-not-be-named, does it?” he asked.
I glared at him. “I told you not to talk about Bridget,” I said in a hard whisper.
“Not her, the other She-who-will-not-be-named.”
I frowned, and he nodded toward the back of Darcy’s head. Since when has she been on the do-not-name list? “Why would you think that?”
Kyle laughed. “Maybe because you’ve been staring at the back of her head since we left?”
I jerked my head in a new direction. “What else am I supposed to look at?”
“She actually isn’t that annoying,” said Mark.
“Yes, she is,” said Kyle. “And Elliott’s got her in, like, four classes.”
“Two classes.”
“At least she’s cute, right?” said Kyle. “It’d suck if she was cantankerous and hideous.”
“Heaven forbid,” I muttered sarcastically. “Because self-worth has everything to do with looks, doesn’t it?” I crossed my arms, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I knew I was being a snot, but I was too frustrated to apologize. I made a mental note to do so sometime.