“We’re pretty solidly in the lead,” he says, and he’s right. “What other option is there if you don’t want a fine? And if you want to walk on Sunday?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. Damn it, he’s right. I don’t want to risk not walking. I mean, I definitely don’t believe him, but just in case.
“We’ll be safe in there,” he continues. “And we’ll be fast. In and out.”
I stop at an intersection before making the turn that will take us back to school. “Then I guess we’re doing it. We’re breaking in to the library.”
Text conversation between Rowan Roth and Neil McNair
April of junior year
McNIGHTMARE
Mr. Kepler accidentally hinted at a pop quiz in 3rd period today.
I know you have him for 4th period, so I wanted to let you know.
So we’re on equal footing and all.
that was… oddly nice?
are you broken?
8:51 p.m.
“PETRICHOR,” NEIL SAYS as we creep toward the library. We parked a few blocks from the school to make sure no one would recognize my car. We’re in a residential neighborhood, half the homes already shut down for the night. A man tugs his dog away from a row of flowers, while across the street a trio of girls in fancy dresses piles into a Lyft.
“What?” I ask, lugging the books in a canvas grocery bag.
“The smell of the earth after the rain,” he says. “It’s a great word, isn’t it?”
I tug his hoodie closer. We’re not soaking wet anymore, just a little damp. Now that we’re outside again, I’m convinced the scent of his hoodie had to be the rain. I’m not still thinking about it, but if I were, it’s just… petrichor.
“So you know the plan?” he says as we head down the sidewalk.
We discussed it in the car after googling “how to break in to a library” because we are nothing if not resourceful.
“Yep.” I hold up the backpack filled with books. “We find a window and see if it’s unlocked. Then we get in and drop off the books.”
“And then we get the hell out,” Neil says.
“You’re sure there’s no security system?”
“Not for the library.”
We match each other’s steps, and I try my best to ignore the scent of his hoodie.
“I can add this to the list of my sentimental late-night Westview memories,” I say. “Right after hooking up with Luke Barrows for the first time in his car, parked right around… there.” I point across the street.
He mock-gasps. “Rowan Roth, I thought you were a good girl.”
That stops me in my tracks.
“I am,” I say, extremely aware of the thud of my heartbeat, “but… that doesn’t mean I’m a virgin.”
“Oh—I didn’t mean—”
“Because you assumed good girls—girls like me who get straight A’s—don’t have sex?” My voice is a little too hard-edged, but I can’t help it. He fell right into something I happen to feel particularly strongly about. I don’t know what’s messing with my head more, wondering what Neil might have meant or that we’re now officially talking about sex. “You realize how wrong and outdated that is, right? Good girls aren’t supposed to have sex, but if they don’t, they’re prudes, and if they do, they’re sluts. And of course, none of that takes the spectrum of gender or sexuality into account. Things are starting to change slowly, but the fact is, it’s still completely different for guys.”
Neil chokes on what I assume is his tongue, his wide eyes indicating he had no idea this was where the conversation was going. “I wouldn’t know,” he says, clearly making every effort not to meet my gaze, “seeing as I’ve never… you know.”
Oh my God, he can’t even say the word.
“Had sex?” I say, and he nods.
“I’ve done other things,” he adds quickly. “I’ve done… everything else, just about. Everything except…” He waves his hand.
Other things. My mind goes a bit wild with that, wondering if other things means the same for him as it does for me. And here’s my answer to the question I had earlier: Neil is a virgin.
“Sex.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not a bad word,” I say.
“I know that.”
We start walking again. A few years ago, I’d have been utterly embarrassed by this conversation. While my friends and I have had these kinds of discussions—Kirby won’t miss an opportunity to rail on the patriarchy—I’ve never talked like this with a guy. Not Luke, not Spencer. Romance novels should have made me less afraid. I’ve read the words so many times. I should be able to say them out loud, but it hasn’t been easy when I can’t even admit I love those books in the first place. And here I am, finally saying what I want, and it’s with Neil of all people.
“You’ve…?” he says, letting me fill in the blank.
“Yeah, with Spencer. And Luke,” I say, and I appreciate that he doesn’t have a dramatic reaction to this. “I don’t know why it should be embarrassing when so many of us think about it so often. And yet it’s especially taboo for girls to talk about it.” This is another reason I love romance novels: the way they attempt to normalize these conversations. Not saying the world would be better if more people read romance novels, but… well, yeah. I am. “Masturbation is the worst double standard.”
The sky is nearly black, but a streetlamp slashes light across his extremely red face.
“I’m… familiar with the topic.”
I snort. “I’m sure you are. It’s just assumed that guys do it, so much so that guys can even joke about it. But for girls, it sometimes still feels like this dirty thing we’re not supposed to talk about, even though it’s perfectly healthy and plenty of us do it.”
“So you…”
“I mean, I’m not going to give you a play-by-play.”
He coughs again, and it turns into a choking fit. This is it. I have murdered Neil McNair.
He holds up a hand as though to assure me he’s okay. “I’ve learned a lot tonight.”
We’ve reached the senior parking lot on the edge of the library. I’m grateful to refocus on the reason we’re here, because truthfully, the conversation was making me a little feverish. And my brain won’t quit with the other things spiral, summoning a variety of helpful images to fill in the many, many options.
More likely, though, I’m anxious about the break-in. That would account for my increased heart rate.
“I’ll go check these windows,” McNair says, jogging several yards away, and once he leaves my general bubble, I let out a long, shaky breath and rearrange my bangs.
First I try the back library door. It doesn’t budge. “Back door’s locked,” I call to Neil. I push at a window. “Damn it. If anyone spots us here, do you think they’d rob us of our titles? I mean… we’re breaking and entering to return books. They wouldn’t call the police, would they? Since we go here? Or went here? All of these are stuck. There’s supposed to be something you can do with a credit card, right?”
I unearth a card from my backpack and locate a very helpful wikiHow. “It says to wedge the card into the gap between the door and the frame, and—Neil?”
I turn to Neil, who’s suddenly struggling to muffle a laugh. He fantastically fails, the laughter sputtering out.
“What? What’s so funny?”
He shakes his head, doubling over as he clutches his stomach. I get the sense he’s laughing at me.
“Neil McNair. I demand you explain yourself.”
He holds up a finger and digs into his pocket, revealing a key ring. “I—I work here,” he manages to say around a laugh. “Or—worked here. I should probably turn this thing in while we’re here.”
“Seriously? This whole time?” I reach for them, but he holds them out of my grasp. “Why didn’t you tell me you still had a key?” But I’m laughing too. A little bit.
“I wanted to see if you’d actually try to do it. I didn’t think it would go thi
s far. I thought you’d give up sooner.”
“You are the worst,” I say, shoving his shoulder.
Still howling with laughter, he turns the key in the lock, and then we’re in.
* * *
We use the light from our phones to guide us to the circulation desk.
“It’s kind of eerie in here,” I say.
He must sense I’m nervous, because he says in a soft voice, “It’s just us, Artoo.”
“You know, I’ve never seen Star Wars.”
“You haven’t seen the originals,” he corrects, but I shake my head. “Wait. What.” He shines his phone light on my face, making me squint.
“I told you I didn’t know who Yoda was!”
“Yoda is barely in the new ones. I assumed you’d at least seen one of those!”
“I think I saw a few minutes of one at a party? All I remember is a really moody guy all in black.”
“You think? You’d know, Rowan. You’d know,” he says. “We have to watch them.”
Now I turn my phone light on him. And I stare. “We have to watch them?”
He flushes, using a hand to shield his face from my phone’s light. “You have to watch them. Not with me. Why would we do that?”
“I have no idea,” I say, lifting my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “You’re the one who suggested it. And now you’re blushing.”
“Because you’re interrogating me!” He whips off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It was a slip of the tongue. And I hate that too, almost as much as the freckles. It always gives away how I’m feeling. I’ve never been able to talk to a cute girl without turning into a fucking tomato.”
“Would I fall into that category?”
His deepening blush says it all. Huh. Neil McNair thinks I am a cute girl.
“You know you’re not unattractive,” he says after a few seconds of silence. “You don’t need me to validate that.”
True, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to hear. I must really be starved for compliments if “not unattractive” makes me feel this great about myself, if the warmth in my chest is any indication.
“Should I just leave them here?” I ask, taking the books out of my backpack. “Or should I write a note or something?”
“As much as I’d love to write in calligraphy ‘Rowan Roth’s overdue library books,’ you should probably just drop them in the slot.”
One by one, I feed each book to the return. They land with increasingly loud thumps.
I’ve been at Westview after hours plenty of times. I know this school so well: best locker locations, which vending machines are always out of order, quickest route to the gym for assemblies. But tonight… it really is spooky. It doesn’t feel like my school.
I guess it isn’t anymore.
We should go, I try to say, because I want so badly to win that money for him, but instead, I find myself drifting toward the stacks. Neil follows me. The library may be eerie, but it’s also peaceful.
“I really will miss all of this,” I say, running my fingers along the spines.
“I think they have libraries in Boston. Big ones.”
I nudge his shoulder. “You know what I mean. This might actually be our last time in here.”
“Isn’t that kind of a good thing?”
I lean against the stack of books opposite him. “I’m not sure.” I reach into my backpack, pull out the success guide. We’ve already shared so much today. After you’ve cried on your nemesis’s shoulder, what boundaries are left? “I was so wrapped up in having this perfect high school experience, and I can’t help feeling disappointed that the reality isn’t what I thought it would be. You’re going to make fun of me, but… here’s that success guide.”
He accepts the wrinkled sheet of paper and scans it, one corner of his mouth tilting upward. I wonder what he’s smiling at: figuring out my bangs or making out with someone under the bleachers.
“I guess I thought I’d be this very specific person by now,” I continue. “And I’m just—not.”
When he gets to the end, he taps number ten in this matter-of-fact way. “ ‘Destroy Neil McNair,’ ” he reads. “I can’t say destroying you wouldn’t have been on my own hypothetical success guide.”
“Obviously, I failed. At everything.”
He’s still staring at it, and it’s killing me not knowing what’s going through his head. “You wanted to be an English teacher? ‘Mold young minds’?”
“What, you don’t think I’d be a good mind molder?”
“I actually think you would be. If you could get over your distaste for the classics.” He passes it back to me, and I’m both relieved and disappointed he didn’t say anything about the perfect boyfriend thing, if only because I’m curious what he would have said. “It’s not a bad list. I don’t know if it’s realistic, but… do you still want any of these things?”
The thought has crossed my mind a couple times today—before I’ve soundly dismissed it.
“Some of the ones it’s still possible to achieve, yes. It’s not something I think about very often, but I’d love to be fluent in Spanish,” I say. “My mom is, and her whole family is, and I’ve always wished I learned it when I was younger.”
“It isn’t too late, you know.”
I groan with the knowledge of him being right.
“And there was a reason you stopped taking Spanish.” When I shrug, he says, “Because your interests changed. Other things became more important for a while. It’s the same reason you don’t want to be a teacher anymore. You can’t tie yourself to this list you made when you were fourteen. Who still wants the same things they did at fourteen?”
“Some people do.”
“Sure,” he says. “But plenty don’t. People change, Rowan. Thank God they do. We both know I was an arrogant little shit at fourteen, though it didn’t stop you from crushing on me.”
“Twelve. Days.”
He smirks—funny he thinks the arrogance is a thing of the past. “Maybe this version of you would have been cool,” he says, tapping the paper again. “But… you’re kind of great now, too.”
Kind of great.
The compliment turns my heart wild. I slide down the bookshelf, settling onto the carpet, and he mirrors me, so we’re facing each other.
“I just wish it didn’t have to end right now,” I say, though part of me would love for him to elaborate on all the specific ways in which I’m kind of great. “I wish I had more time.”
It’s not until I say it out loud that I realize it’s true. Time. That’s what I’ve been chasing all day, this notion that after tonight, after graduation, none of us will be in the same city again. The things that mattered to us for the past four years will shift and evolve, and I imagine they’ll keep doing that forever. It’s terrifying.
“Artoo. Maybe you didn’t do everything on this list, but you did a lot. You were president of three clubs, editor of the yearbook, copresident of student council…” The smirk returns as he adds: “… salutatorian.”
But it doesn’t bother me anymore. I tug up my knee socks, which are damp and muddy. Howl has wreaked havoc on my perfect last-day outfit.
“It’s strange, though, isn’t it?” I say. “Thinking about our specific group of seniors all spread out next year? Most of us will only be home for breaks, and then less and less after that. We won’t see each other every day. Like, if I see you on the street—”
“On the street? What exactly am I doing ‘on the street’? Am I okay?”
“You’re probably selling your signed collection of Riley Rodriguez books for pizza money.”
“A whole signed collection? Sounds like I’m doing great, then.”
I stretch across the aisle to swat his arm with my hoodie sleeve, which is, well, his hoodie sleeve. “Fine, if I run into you, how are we supposed to act? What are we to each other when we’re not fighting to be the best?”
“I think it would be kind of like how we are tonight,” he says
softly. He taps my ballet flat with his sneaker, and while my brain tells my foot to shift away from his, for some reason, the message doesn’t quite get there, and my shoe stays put. “Kind of like… friends.”
Friends. I’ve competed with Neil McNair as long as I’ve known him. I’ve spent so much time wondering how to beat him, but I’ve never considered him a friend.
The truth is, I’m having more fun with him than I’ve had in a while. Here he is, this secret source of deep conversations and adventures and fun. I was so sure I’d be sick of him by now, but the opposite is true. We only have three clues left. Finishing the game means severing whatever connection we’ve forged. It means graduation and summer and getting on two different planes at the end of it. Maybe that’s why I’m reluctant to leave the library—because, of all the things I’ve learned about him today, at the top of the list is that I genuinely enjoy spending time with him. I thought beating him would feel incredible, but all of this feels so much better.
It makes me wish, again, that I’d realized sooner that we could have been more than rivals. I wonder if he feels it too, this desire to have had more talks like this over mediocre pizza. And whether that makes us friends or just two people who were supposed to meet somewhere but got lost along the way.
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring this weird flip my stomach does that must be caused by this after-hours heart-to-heart. I should move my shoe away from his. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair, even as friends, don’t do shoe-to-shoe contact. I don’t know what they do. “I guess we could be that.”
I lean back against my stack of books, feeling less comforted by the biographies of incredible women quite literally backing me up than I thought I might. Neil and I have been in close proximity in too many dark places tonight. It’s rearranged my molecules, made me unsure of things I thought I was certain about.
Example: how much I like not just his arms or his stomach but him, and the way he looked at me when he told me I was “kind of great.”
But that’s absurd. Isn’t it? Of all the things on my success guide that I got wrong, Neil is definitely not the perfect high school boyfriend. It’s just that it’s hard to remember that when our shoes are touching or when a streetlamp outside catches the softest angles of his face.
Today Tonight Tomorrow Page 18
