Seeking Jake Ryan (Dear Molly Book 1)

by M. F. Lorson

  Grover only had one cemetery, and it had been there since before Grover was Grover. To get to Mom, I had to walk past ancient moss-covered graves where the inhabitants had been dead too long to have any relatives left to care for them and sad little baby headstones with angel wings carved above their names. I hated those. It was hard enough losing my Mom, I couldn’t imagine being a Mom who had lost a child.

  I plunked down on the grass in front of Mom’s headstone and plucked a few fall leaves from the top. Picking that stupid cement slab had Dad and I scratching our heads for weeks last year. Did it matter? Would dropping the big bucks to have a statue on top, or her image etched into the granite prove that we loved her more? We couldn’t decide. In the end, we settled for the basics. Lived, died, loving mother. I didn’t regret not making it fancier, but I wished I had brought flowers. It felt like she deserved peonies every now and again.

  “You’ve been gone three years now and I still can’t seem to get my act together and remember to bring flowers. I’m really gonna try harder. I swear. But on the bright side, I at least have something interesting to say.”

  I know talking to a grave seems like a juvenile thing to do. A little on the crazy side for sure, but in my opinion it was weirder not to talk to it. What was the point of burying someone if you weren’t going to get a little crazy when you visited them?

  The part that made me a tiny bit crazier than the rest though was the way I paused a beat as if she was going to respond. Like if you were watching me you might ask yourself, is she auditioning for Dora the Explorer? Why does she keep staring at that thing and blinking? When it felt like I had given Mom a sufficient amount of time to say something back, I continued on, explaining the peaks and valleys of the day. Peak, Media Studies. Valley, Becca Landry. At the end I told her my plan to write our favorite '80s icon.

  “She’s not going to write back. But I still think writing to her will make me feel better.” I paused for some blinking.

  “Kinda like how you don’t talk back, but I feel better telling you all this stuff.”

  Behind me I heard a set of footsteps crunching through the fallen leaves in pursuit of one of the giant graves on the other side of the lawn. We hadn’t even considered burying Mom there. That was for big families. They didn’t just have headstones, they had life-size sculptures, some of which bore a very strong resemblance to the person below them.

  I couldn’t help but peek to see who I was sharing the lawn with. Standing with his hands in his pockets and his back to me, Gabe Maxwell spoke to the statue of a woman. I couldn’t hear his voice through the wind rustling the leaves around us, but I could tell that like me, he came here to have a conversation.

  “Don’t look now,” I whispered, “but Jake Ryan is lurking in the rich people seats.” Sometimes I liked to imagine the cemetery was just a giant theatre, and my Mom was seated somewhere in the middle, where the view was good and no one kicked the back of your chair. It was easier to stomach than the idea that she was just a pile of bones in a box.

  I stood up and brushed the dirt off of my jeans. It was only a little noise, but it caused Gabe to turn in my direction. He gave a quick wave across the lawn before turning back to face a tall white statue, its granite slick and polished.

  I had forgotten the Maxwells’ mom died. It was a huge thing when it happened, but I was too bitter about Landon’s bullying to stop and consider how losing his mother might have accounted for some of his less than kind actions. Now that I was a card carrying member of the Dead Moms Club, I got it. I hadn’t called anyone names or made them feel invisible the way Landon did, but that year we lost Mom, I hadn’t been the most fun person to be around. All things considered I was lucky Harper and Reagan liked me enough not to bail.

  Later on the drive home, I thought about Landon at Burger Barn, the way he barked at our table, so entitled, so immature. Maybe he still acted like a twelve-year-old boy because there was no one in his life willing to tell him to grow up. Mr. Maxwell was always away on business, Gabe had bailed for Europe, and let’s face it, his friends weren’t exactly Harper and Reagan material.

  I really didn’t like being sympathetic toward douchebags, but I felt my resolve weakening. Maybe if I was feeling extra-generous later, I would call Harper and let her know it was time to retire the well-aged, well-tortured Landon Maxwell voodoo doll we kept for special occasions. Or maybe not.

  Gabe

  I sat in my room, a hot cup of noodles in my hand as I scrolled through my phone. The house was eerily silent. It used to bustle with the constant sound of someone working. My dad and his business partners. Landon and his friends. The house cleaners and cooks.

  Now, it was just me, and a $0.39 dinner my mother would die a second time if she saw me eating.

  Dad was off on business, or in search of it. Landon was probably eating at his girlfriend’s house.

  So, naturally I did the most depressing thing one could do when they were terribly homesick. I scrolled through pictures of my school in Prague, my friends, and my travels. Because of the time difference, nobody was online to talk to.

  My best friend, Leo, had another dozen selfies of himself in various spots around the city with a dozen different girls. I was never much of a ladies’ man and always faithful to Becca, but it was kind of fun galavanting around the city with France’s own Casanova.

  The one nice thing about being back home was seeing Mom again. Not that I really bought into the idea that the gravesite was her. It was still nice to talk to her. I told her about school, my media studies class, and how nice Prague was in the spring. I didn’t tell her about the business, Landon failing all of his classes, or Becca. I guess you could say I was sparing her the depressing details...or maybe I was sparing myself.

  Seeing Sloane in the cemetery was unexpected.

  Suddenly, I opened a new tab and put her name in the search bar. Creepy move, sure. Don’t judge me. I was bored and lonely.

  Immediately, her social media pages popped up. Her smile in the profile pics made me smile. I guess you could say she was a bright spot on an otherwise dreary day.

  That thought alone made me the world’s worst boyfriend.

  Like she was being summoned by incantation, a text from Becca popped up on my phone.

  Becca: What are you up to?

  Gabe: Eating dinner.

  Becca: Wanna hang out?

  I let out a long sigh. Being alone with Becca was a recipe for disaster. She would want to do far more than hang out, and it would be one battle after another. So, I’m not proud of what I did next, but I think somehow, it’s what my mom would have wanted.

  I played the dead mom card.

  Gabe: I went and saw my mom after school. I think I just want to be alone tonight.

  I’m going to hell for this.

  She answered back immediately.

  Becca: Awww, babe. I’m sorry. Can I cheer you up?

  Gabe: You’ll cheer me up when I see you in the morning. ;)

  Becca: [a hundred heart emojis]

  She kept texting me while I scrolled mindlessly through my phone. I went back to the Sloane search and learned that she loved '80s movies, was almost always with her two best friends, and was an adorably pudgy ginger with thick glasses when she was a little kid.

  It didn’t take long before my search landed on an obituary. Not an old one either.

  This certainly explained her presence in the cemetery today. Her mom died only three years ago. If I remember correctly, I was still pretty not-myself at this stage of post parental-loss. I wanted to hate everyone, yell, cry, and make all the right excuses for my behavior. But I couldn’t do that. Because my brother and my dad were doing enough of it for all three of us.

  Suddenly, I was very anxious to get back to Media Studies class. And not because I wanted to be the stupid co-anchor but because I finally knew someone else in the same miserable situation. Somehow, that connected us and made me feel much less alone.

  Sloane

  M
olly Ringwald was not going to write back to me. Heck, Molly Ringwald was not even going to read that letter, but writing it was therapeutic. Writing it made me feel like I was committing to the issue at hand. The issue of course being that I, Sloane Miller, was two days into my junior year and roughly 44 hours into a hardcore crush on a boy who lived several thousand miles out of my league. Oh, and he had a girlfriend who some (whom I did not agree with) might describe as the hottest girl in school.

  Writing Molly was about as effective as screaming into the void, but who didn’t like screaming at nothing? Harper, Reagan, and I were really good at it.

  Weird fact about us: We used to scream the name of our current crush from the top of Harper’s balcony every time we slept over there.

  It looked like this: three nervous nerd girls in pajama pants and tank tops stand shivering on an upstairs balcony. One by one they step forward, cup their hands over their mouths, and shout, “I love Harry Styles!” (or whoever we were into at the moment).

  It felt brave in the moment, but we would totally rush back through the sliding glass doors immediately after. None of us wanted to be seen when the neighbors poked their heads out the windows to see who was making all the noise.

  I wasn’t going to be shouting ‘I heart Gabe Maxwell,’ but writing Molly was the next best thing. I briefly envisioned this letter somehow landing in the hands of Becca Landry and considered stashing it back in my underwear drawer, but courage got the better of me, and I plopped a stamp on that sucker and stuck it in the mailbox instead.

  Technically, I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong by having a crush on another girl’s boyfriend, but that didn’t stop me from blushing whenever Becca glanced my way in Media Studies. Which of course, was basically every second of class, considering she was lead anchor and I was the camera girl.

  We were filming another phony episode of Good Morning, Grover, and it wasn’t going well. Becca couldn’t read a script to save her life and watching her and Gabe interact was painful. She must be a really good kisser, because if their relationship was based on witty banter type conversations—or even coherent conversations, it would not have lasted three years. I tried to not eavesdrop during the break, but it was pretty obvious that while Becca wanted to spend every second of our ten minute off-camera time canoodling, Gabe wanted to use the time to remove her suction cup like presence on his arm.

  He finally broke free with an indisputable, “I have to pee.”

  After the break, Ms. Mitchell and her trusty teaching aid, Nadine, tried to give us all a little feedback.

  “The camera work looks good,” said Nadine, her eyes fixed on me, “but you tend to lean a little toward Gabe. Try and make sure Becca and he are both centered in the frame.” I nodded obediently, whilst trying not to let my cheeks turn the color of my hair.

  “And you two,” she continued, shifting her attention to Becca and Gabe. “You need to look more like you’re having fun.”

  Becca rolled her eyes but quickly jotted down a note in her three ring binder. I would have loved to be a fly buzzing over her shoulder so I could read that note. Attempt to appear fun. I had a feeling Becca was going to be hard to improve. It wasn’t that she wasn’t trying, more that she was just naturally terrible.

  Once Nadine had finished doling out constructive criticism, and Ms. Mitchell had finished smiling and nodding behind her, (hello teacher of the year) the group reconvened to create an outline for the first official episode.

  I noticed that Gabe chimed in quite a bit when it came to developing content, and before I could stop myself, I opened my big mouth.

  “Maybe you would be better writing the script than delivering it.”

  I saw a little spark light behind Nadine’s eyes, and I knew she was thinking I was onto something. But Becca… Becca was lit with a different kind of spark. The kind that was ready to burn the place down.

  “You don’t want to give up your anchor spot to write, do you? No offense,” she said, casting a side glance to the writing team as she leaned closer to Gabe.

  I held my breath. I really did think Gabe might be more interested in the production process than being on camera, but what the heck did I know? He and I had only ever had two conversations. There was a good chance I had just pointed out that he sucked as an anchor. That wasn’t exactly the move I’d planned to make when I drove to school this morning, all high on the idea that I could close that thousand-mile gap between his world and mine.

  Gabe shrugged, not meeting my eyes or Becca’s.

  It was clear that even if Gabe didn’t want to stay on as anchor, he didn’t want to let Becca down either. So Nadine moved on with the outline, reminding us as a group, but with her eyes lingering on Gabe, that we could always switch up roles later in the term.

  It was none of my business and certainly not an official camera girl duty, but I fully planned to get Gabe Maxwell to climb out of his popular-dude-who-doesn’t-care shell and admit he had a personality.

  Gabe

  Whatever the writing team was coming up with sounded like hot garbage, but somehow also dull. Dull hot garbage. I could hear them reciting what they wrote, and if I had to deliver that every morning, my new reputation around campus would be the sandman, responsible for putting everyone to sleep.

  I tried to weasel in as much input as I could before my girlfriend was there to remind me and everyone else exactly what I was better suited for.

  My eyes inevitably travelled back to the face standing behind camera number one. I didn’t know if her speaking up for me was because she noticed how much I hated being an anchor or because she honestly thought my time would be better spent on the writing team. Still, it was nice to hear someone talk about me like I was an actual person and not just another rich Maxwell kid.

  She sent me a smile and small wave, catching me staring and zoning out. I smiled back before giving her a wide-eyed expression and nodding toward the three writers in the corner. We kept up this wordless conversation as she nodded with a grimace meaning she completely agreed that this show was quickly going down the toilet.

  Finally, after some more notes from Nadine and Ms. Mitchell, we did our first test run with the actual script. The words played on the teleprompter-slash-powerpoint presentation opposite where Becca and I sat. The room got quiet as we ran through the first part.

  The words on the screen said, Anchor 1: Good morning, Groundhogs! It’s Monday, September 4th, and this is Good Morning, Grover.

  What Becca said was: “goodmorninggroundhogs. [awkward pause] It’s...like Monday, the fourth? And this is morning. I mean—good morning! [another awkward pause, followed by her glaring at me] It’s your turn.”

  The room was silent for the length of a perfect comedic beat before breaking out in muffled laughter, myself included.

  Even Nadine stared, wide-eyed and afraid to say anything. Ms. Mitchell stepped forward. “Let’s try it again. Stick to the script, Becca.”

  “I can barely read it!” she whined, looking flustered and frustrated.

  “Relax, babe,” I said with a smile. I put my hand on her back and that seemed to calm her nerves.

  “First readthrough flusters are normal,” Ms. Mitchell joined in, trying to keep Becca from exploding with rage. “Let’s run it again.”

  Before we started over, I glanced toward the cluster of students whispering to each other in the corner. Judging by their residual chuckles and glares in Becca’s direction, I could tell they were judging her performance. In her defense, it was her very first run, but I honestly prayed she would get a lot better very fast or they would mutiny to have her removed.

  I froze, a sudden idea interrupting my thoughts.

  If the anchor was bad enough...they would certainly get fired from the position. At the very least, they could step down if they considered their shotty performance a detriment to the entire show…

  I glanced at Becca, letting an even more diabolical idea settle in.

  If I was a bad anchor, I’d get
fired.

  If I was a bad boyfriend, I’d get dumped.

  I shook away the thought. It was deplorable. Surely I wasn’t that much of a coward that if I wanted to change positions, I could just ask for it. And if I didn’t want to be Becca’s boyfriend anymore, I could tell her so.

  She grabbed onto my arm, pulling me closer and giving me one of those disarming, bright teeth smiles. It was the kind of smile that made it virtually impossible to do anything mean to her, like breakup with her.

  But if she broke up with me—say because of my bombing reputation, the whole school would totally take her side, and she’d recover in no time. In fact, a much better suited boyfriend would probably be right in line after me.

  I’d be doing her a huge favor. And that was the thing. I didn’t want to hurt Becca. I wanted what was best for her, so if you thought of it that way, it wasn’t diabolical at all. It was downright sacrificial.

  Becca’s second run was far better. She got through the entire line without tripping up, and when my line came, I delivered it without trying too hard, but I could feel the energy drain out of the room.

  We got through the whole segment that way. It was a long, snore-inducing recap of the summer—who went where, new teachers, alumni news, and a welcome to new students and staff. Absolutely no one would be paying any real attention, especially with the lack of chemistry between the anchors.

  As it was, I loved looking into camera one, knowing the person behind the lens was just as disappointed in the delivery as I was. It almost made me feel as if the whole thing was one big satire, something no one could take seriously, and it was a secret joke between her and me.

  Still, it wasn’t bad enough to get me fired as anchor. Nadine tried to give me notes on picking up the energy, and in no uncertain terms, she tried teaching me how to make bad writing sound good. I took all the notes in stride, knowing full well that if I wanted to get replaced as anchor, I was going to have to try a little harder at sucking in the future. And I had some truly wicked ideas to accomplish just that.