by Ariel Kaplan
I also wouldn’t get to talk to him anymore, but that seemed like a small price to pay for not flunking my class.
I fished my phone out from under the cat, not because I wanted to reply, but because I wanted to know what he’d said.
He’d typed, Please just tell me who you are. I promise I won’t get mad. I just want to know who I’ve been talking to this whole time. Be bold, right? Who are you?
I touched the screen. Who are you?
I imagined a world where I could tell him. Where he’d actually want to know who I was, where I would tell him and he’d drive to my house and climb up to my window. I’d open the glass—in my fantasy, there’s no screen—and he’d lean inside, his face flushed with longing, and he’d tell me he’d been hoping, all this time, that it was really me. He’d touch my face and tell me I had the prettiest eyes in the world, and then he’d kiss me, and I’d kiss him, and it would be the most perfect moment that ever existed.
My heart was racing with imagining it. I tried not to think of what people would say if they saw us together, or how we’d look in pictures, or how it would hurt when he realized that my face was not something he could overlook.
It was so stupid to even think that far ahead, because I knew we would never get that far. I could tell him, sure, and then there’d be some banter, and maybe we’d go on being friends, but I couldn’t pretend not to be disappointed.
On the other hand, being friends wasn’t nothing, either.
I rolled over in my bed, the phone still clutched in my hand. I would tell him, I decided. When I saw him tomorrow, I would tell him. There wouldn’t be any declarations of love or midnight kisses at my window, but I knew him and he knew me and we were friends and that wasn’t nothing. Maybe I’d even take him some French toast. He’d like that, probably.
I’d tell him tomorrow, and I would not, would not, let myself hope for anything more.
I was off-kilter the next morning, probably because I’d woken up half an hour earlier than normal after a weird dream. Well, not weird so much as bad. Actually, it was both weird and bad.
I was sitting by my window, watching Delia come home from college. She pulled up in a yellow taxi, like they have in New York, and she got out and came inside, where I was waiting for her in the kitchen. I went to hug her, but then at that point I realized I was wearing a porcelain mask—like, a mask of my face on top of my real face—so I looked exactly the same, only it was pretty clear my skin wasn’t real. Before I could hug her, she stiff-armed me, holding me back, and said, “You know, we can fix that.” And before I could answer, she pulled out this giant ball-peen hammer and smashed it into my left cheek. I expected it to hurt, and it did, but I didn’t scream because that seemed embarrassing, as if Delia didn’t already know that it hurt to get hit in the face with a hammer. Anyway, then she picked off the remaining pieces of porcelain until my true face was revealed—exactly the same as the mask.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” she said, and then hit me with the hammer again, right between the eyes.
So anyway, I got up and ate two bowls of Kit’s frosted wheat, which I have promised never to eat since I accidentally finished the box before he got breakfast one time, but it seemed like I needed some sugar that morning. Probably that was a low-blood-sugar dream. Also, I had a little bit of a sinus headache on the left side, which might explain the hit-in-the-face-with-a-hammer part. I took an ibuprofen and went out to get the bus.
At lunch, I still felt a little sick, maybe from my weird dream or my weird breakfast or from knowing I was going to see Greg in the not-too-distant future, and I was having major second thoughts about this entire operation. I ate one of Bethany’s Oreos, telling myself I’ll tell him, I won’t tell him with alternate bites. I ended on I’ll tell him, but that really didn’t seem to be the best way to make a decision.
Bethany, for her part, was also kind of upset, to the point of not being able to finish the Twinkie I’d packed, which usually would have been the first thing she ate. After staring at it for a minute, she said, “She’s buying a house there.”
“Who?” I said with a mouthful of cookie. “Whoa. Wait. Are we talking about your mom?”
“Yeah. I asked her about the Shady Pines thing. She’s buying a house there. After I graduate from high school, she’s selling our house and moving.”
“Oh,” I said.
“She said I can live at home during summer breaks, but that’s it. Once I graduate, I’m out. I can’t move back after college, or live at home and go to school at the same time.” She flattened the Twinkie until the filling squished out.
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like I wanted to live at home forever, but now…I don’t know. It’s like—it’s like there’s no more margin for error. You know? What if I hate the dorm, or I can’t get a job right away when I graduate? Or—or—or I don’t know.”
It did sound a little like doing the flying trapeze and realizing that someone had just pulled your safety net back. I sure don’t want to live with my parents forever, either, but it’s nice knowing I have someplace to go if, like, I get a brain tumor or something. “Are you okay?”
“I mean, no? I’m just so pissed at Colin. If he was even kind of pleasant to live with, she wouldn’t be doing this. It’s just, why can’t he buy a gallon of milk once in a while? I’m not like that. But I think Mom’s kind of done.”
“Yeah, well. What’s Colin doing?”
“He’s going to have to get a job and some roommates, I guess. And be twenty percent less of an asshole or they’re going to throw him out, too.” She sighed. “I feel like I’m being punished and I didn’t actually do anything.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I do my own laundry. I do the dishes every other night. I make dinner once a week.”
“I know.”
“It’s not fair.” She rubbed her face. “Don’t say ‘I know.’ ”
“You’re not horrible to live with like Colin is. She knows that. You’re great. He sucks. It’s not fair.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and sounded like she was thinking about crying. “It’s like she doesn’t even want me around,” she said.
“Hey,” I said. “I want you around.”
We sat and picked at our food, her wondering what it would be like not to be able to go home anymore, me wanting to tell her she could stay with us if she wanted but knowing my parents’ house wasn’t exactly mine to offer.
I also wondered if Greg was at school yet.
I did realize that one of these things was probably more significant than the other.
My head was killing me again. Probably eating all of Bethany’s Oreos hadn’t helped with that. After some time, Bethany said, “It’s five till,” because lunch was nearly over and people were starting to leave. The bell rang, and my head throbbed in time with it.
“I think,” I told Bethany, “I’m going to the nurse.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just going to take another ibuprofen and maybe lie down for twenty minutes until it kicks in.” I have a bottle on file in the clinic that my mom signs off on every September so I can get it at will for cramps or whatever, since they can technically suspend you if they find it in your backpack, which is both puritanical and stupid. “Tell Mr. Positano I’ll be there in a couple of minutes, okay?”
Bethany frowned. “The app’s due today.”
“Yeah, I— Oh.” I understood what Bethany had not said, which was that if I was not in class, Mr. Positano would likely think I was someplace finishing the app and could therefore dock me ten percent for handing it in late. “Damn it.” I got the folder out of my backpack. “Can you give it to him? That way it’s not late.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
“Thanks, B.” I rubbed my cheekbon
e. “I’ll see you, okay?” We split up, me heading toward the nurse’s office, her toward the app design classroom. I got to the nurse’s office and found it locked.
The nurse’s office is attached to the main office, so I stuck my head in and asked one of the secretaries, “Where’s Ms. Dao?”
“Getting lunch,” she said. “Didn’t she put up a sign? She’ll be back in ten minutes. You should go to class and come back with a pass later.”
“But,” I said.
“Go to class. Come back with a pass.”
I didn’t much feel like arguing. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll come back.”
“With a pass.”
Jeez, it was like dealing with a prison guard. Sometimes being seventeen and stuck in high school makes me feel like I’m trapped in a straitjacket. “Sure,” I said. “With a pass.”
When I walked out, I saw Bethany at the far end of the hall and started speed-walking over to tell her she didn’t need to hand in my project after all. She rounded the corner to the science hall and I heard the sound of a collision…body hitting body and papers hitting the floor. I sped up to see if she was okay, only to discover that she’d run face-first into Greg, who was carrying a travel coffee mug, the contents of which were now mostly dribbling down his shirt.
Bethany was on the floor on her butt, looking like she’d hit Greg and bounced off. She was a little dazed, but I couldn’t tell if that was because she’d actually gotten hurt or because it was Greg, who looked a little addled himself.
“I’m sorry,” he was saying, pulling his wet, hot, coffee-stained shirt away from his chest. “Are you okay?”
Bethany made some noncommittal noise.
“I’ll get these,” he said, setting his cup down on the floor and gathering the papers that were scattered in front of her. I recognized the printout of Bethany’s chemistry lab, and then…
I was close enough now that I could have said something, in a normal tone of voice, and been heard. I wasn’t on the other side of the hall, even. I was close enough to smell Greg’s spilled coffee and tell it had cinnamon in it. That’s how close I was. Bethany, if she’d looked up, could have seen me standing there. She didn’t look up. Her world had narrowed down to the slice of it occupied by Greg D’Agostino and his eyes and his smile.
Greg stopped picking things up—he was staring at my green app design folder, with the title of my project front and center in 14-point Times New Roman. My name, I realized, was not on the cover. I’d written it inside, on the first page, because Mr. Positano was finicky about his formatting, and that was how he liked it done. At that moment, I could have killed him for that. I willed Greg to open the folder. Look at the first page. Instead, what Greg said was this:
“It was you.”
Oh, no. No, no. Greg’s heart, I swear I could feel it. It was going…going…“It was you all the time.”
Gone.
He put the stack of papers down on the floor; the top one, which read “Counselor Deanna App: Code and Examples,” stared at me. I wanted to pick it up. I didn’t pick it up.
Everything in my brain tilted sideways. Greg’s eyes went to Bethany’s, which was when I saw it…how happy he was. There was actual joy there, like he’d just walked through some miles-long dark tunnel and had suddenly gotten his first glimpse of the sun.
There was no way, none at all, he would have looked at me like that.
Bethany seemed to have fallen into the depths of Greg’s eyes, because she made no reply. How could she? This beautiful boy was looking at her like he was Pygmalion and she was his own personal Galatea come to life. She had no idea what he was even talking about, except that he was clearly having some kind of an eros moment, and then he was touching her, threading his fingers in her hair.
This was, I realized, the last chance I would ever get to clear up the confusion. I could go over there right now and explain everything: How the app was mine, how I was the one he’d actually been talking to all this time. How I was the one who saw beyond the pretty face to who he really was.
I willed my feet to move forward.
Okay, maybe just my left foot.
I stood stock-still.
I couldn’t do it.
Not to either of them. Not to Bethany, who had a chance to be with the guy she wanted, and not to Greg, who deserved to be with someone he could actually fall for. If I left things alone, there would be two very happy people. If I told the truth, it would be awkward and uncomfortable and there would be zero happy people. It was simple math, really. Keeping my mouth shut resulted in the greatest amount of general happiness. I’d have to be the biggest asshole in the world to mess that up, and it would be for nothing. It wasn’t even like I was giving him to her, because clearly this was what he wanted, too.
Greg leaned forward slowly, slowly, like I’d always imagined he might if he were ever to kiss me, and he kissed Bethany. She reached around his neck and pulled him closer, kissing him back.
Well, good for her.
I turned, my fingers brushing my own bottom lip, and walked back the other way, back to the nurse’s office and my ibuprofen and twenty minutes on a paper-wrapped cot. It hadn’t been ten minutes, though, so the secretary, as I entered the office, said, “Did you bring a pass?”
I doubled over into the nearest chair.
“Honey,” she said. “I can’t let you into the clinic without a pass.”
Officer Barry, who must have finished manning the door during lunch, walked past me and smacked something into my hand. It was, I realized, a blank hall pass. I felt a great surge of affection for Barry and his Taco Bell habit. I got up and set the pass on the secretary’s desk.
Just as she was unlocking the door for me, the nurse came back with her lunch, so I took my pill and lay down on the cot facing the wall, my brain turning and turning the image of Bethany and Greg in the hall, reminding myself that I had no reason to feel bad because I’d been a good person, a good friend. I’d done a good thing, and I’d made two good people happy, and then I thought about how weird the word good is, and I wondered about its derivation, since it clearly doesn’t come from Latin. It must be Germanic, I guess. Greg would know. I could ask him. Except that we wouldn’t be talking online anymore, because that was done with now. But at least I wouldn’t be failing my class because of my crappy app, so that part was good, too. Good. What a stupid word. I should get people to start using something better, like bonum, instead. It makes more sense; we already use the root, like for bonus.
Sum amica bona. I am a good friend.
Mihi est vita bona. I have a good life.
It’s so much better than good, which doesn’t work as a prefix, or a suffix, or anything. It just sounds dumb. Good. Good. Fuck my life.
I didn’t wake up until the nurse was shaking my shoulder and telling me it was time to go home.
Before my sister went to college, when I wasn’t rowing or hanging out with Bethany, I was usually with Delia.
Her basement bedroom was kind of cave-like, but she made it cool, with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and chalkboard paint on the wall over her bed that she used to leave notes for herself or doodle pictures of anime characters: Sasuke Uchiha, who’d been her crush since she was Kit’s age, or L from Death Note, who was mine. Sometimes she’d leave secret messages for me to find, telling me she was sneaking something into my backpack that day, which usually turned out to be some racy book I’d have to hide at school or risk having confiscated. She belonged to an anime club at school, and they used to go to conventions twice a year. I was never invited…it was for club members, and I was usually too busy to be gone all day on a weekend anyway. Except one time, when I was in eighth grade and Delia was in tenth, the group was all going as the girls from Sailor Moon and then Sailor Neptune got sick at the last minute.
They already had her ticket and her costume,
and while I was sitting on my bed making my way through The Golden Compass for the third time, Delia came in and asked me if I wanted to go.
The costume was not particularly my thing. The skirt was super short, even on my little thirteen-year-old legs, but I’d never been to anything like that before, so I said okay, and I went, not really sure what it was going to be like.
It turns out that anime conventions are basically like Carnival for nerds, like, in the best way possible. Not everybody was dressed up, but lots of people were. Bunches of people asked us for pictures, so we posed, giving the victory sign or an exaggerated wink. We saw panels of voice actors I’d never heard of who looked more like regular people than normal actors. Delia bought me a key chain that’s still in a drawer in my room somewhere, and at the end, we had a picture taken of the two of us together, both of us trying to channel the awesomeness of Sailor Moon and sisterhood, our arms around each other. Our wigs were getting a little droopy by then, but the thing about wearing a wig is that the sudden change in hairstyle seems to make your face really stand out. Back then, Delia and I were almost the same height—I didn’t get taller until later—so even though my wig was blue and hers was red, we looked like twins. Like, if you didn’t know which one was me, if you were a casual observer and not my parents or Bethany, you would not be able to pick me out in the picture. That’s how alike we looked. After Delia changed that, I took that picture off my desk and put it downstairs in the bottom of her dresser, where she keeps her sweaters. I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw it out. But I didn’t want it anymore, either.
* * *
—
We had a regatta Saturday morning, which meant enduring five hours of Bethany wide-eyed and vibrating all over. Greg wasn’t there; he had a Mandarin final or something, and he’s still not on the team anyway. The girls’ eight came in third to Great Falls and Madison, which I guess wasn’t bad. Afterward, though, I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, and while everyone else was going out for pizza, I just really wanted to go home.