She’s quiet for a long time and then she moves forward and wraps her arms around me. “Okay, Oli,” she says. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
I want to tell her that I have no idea what I want. I don’t really want anything anymore. I’m empty inside and when I look into my future, all I see is black.
She strokes my hair. “Come on. Let’s get some grub.”
OLIVER
BROOKE’S CAR IS parked in my driveway when I get home that evening. The sun is almost down, the light shining on her silver hatchback, and I’m surprised at how excited I am to see her. I’ve missed her a lot.
She’s not in her car, and when I unlock the front door, I find her in the living room, talking to Dad. The TV blares in the background, the Royals game, and when I shut the door behind me, Dad mutes the TV.
“Brooke, hey,” I say when she hops up off the couch. “Were we supposed to hang out today?”
She sighs. “No. Look, Oli, normally I would be totally opposed to this kind of thing, as, despite my previous actions, I don’t 100 percent believe in friends interfering in their friends’ shit, but I … I have something for you.”
Brooke is holding out a long white envelope to me, and when I reach out to take it, she says, “it’s from Amy,” and I almost drop it. “She’s been trying to get a hold of you,” she goes on. “But, you know, new cell and all.”
I feel the weight of my phone in my back pocket. It feels heavier somehow. Mom stopped paying my cell phone bill, and I had to get a new phone, a new number, everything.
“She even came here, but um…” Brooke trails off and when I look up, her eyes are on Dad. He looks guilty as fuck.
“Did she come here?” I ask him.
He can’t meet my eye. “She came a few nights ago. Wearing a fuckin’ ball gown like Cinderella or something.”
Prom. She must have been dressed for her prom. I can’t even imagine her here, all dressed up in that blue dress I saw her carrying. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He sighs and his head falls into his hands. “Oh, Oli. Don’t hate me.”
I don’t hate him but if he doesn’t start talking, I might kill him.
“Oli,” he says again, finally looking up at me. “I was drunk. I’m so sorry. You weren’t here, and I was lonely, and I just started drinking. By the time she came, I was halfway through a bottle of Jack. I was an asshole to her, completely and totally. I’m sorry.”
I can’t even look at him but now that I’m holding this letter in my hand, I realize it doesn’t matter. What my dad did or didn’t say doesn’t matter. Because he didn’t scare her away. She still wrote this letter. She still has something to say to me.
I tear my eyes away from the letter and look at my dad. “I want every fucking bottle of alcohol you have hidden in this place,” I tell him. And when he doesn’t move, I say, “Now.”
He scrambles off the couch, and I hear him rummaging in different parts of the house while I sit on the couch. My hands tremble, and even though it would probably be smarter to wait until Brooke is gone to open it, I tear at the envelope.
Dear Oliver,
I realize that you probably don’t want to hear what I have to say. And I get it. I fucked up. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. But I want to apologize. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t good enough. I’m sorry for throwing away our friendship. And I’m sorry for not realizing sooner that I’m in love with you.
You’re not a distraction, Oliver. I need you to know that. I was getting in my own way and blaming it on you, and I’ll regret that forever. But I don’t blame you anymore. You were the one who kept me going when I didn’t even have faith in myself.
Do you remember when we talked about Plato’s Cave, that night in your truck? Well, I’m the people in the cave who are facing the wall. I’m the people who mistook the shadows of the objects for the real things. I’m the people who were terrified when reality was right in front of them. I thought what Jackson and I had was real. I thought that was love, but I didn’t know what the real thing looked like until I met you. No one has ever really seen me before, not the way you do. No one has ever accepted me just the way I was, and I’m sorry I tossed that aside like it didn’t mean anything. It meant everything.
Maybe what your father told me is right. Maybe true love doesn’t exist. But, Oli, I love you. And if you never want to speak to me again, I understand, but it’s not going to change anything. You’re still my best friend, and I’m still in love with you.
I miss you.
Amy
My hands are still shaking when there’s no letter left to read, and I can’t explain the pain in my chest. It’s want and also hurt and also confusion. When I open the envelope to put the letter back in, I see that there’s something else there. It’s my ticket to the Lumineers concert. After everything, I forgot all about it.
“What did she say?” Brooke whispers.
“That she loves me,” I say because it’s the easiest way to sum it all up.
Brooke nods, like this is obvious. “And what are you going to do?”
I set the envelope on the couch between us and stand, Brooke craning her neck to look up at me. “I’m not going to do anything.”
I’m actually surprised by the look on Brooke’s face. After I told her what happened between Amy and me, she was so angry, I thought she was going to kill Amy. But now here she is, with this look on her face like she can’t believe I just said that. “But, Oli—”
“There’s a reason I don’t spend much time with people,” I say, “and it’s not because I’m mean, and it’s not because I don’t like people, and it’s not because I’m a loner. It’s because people tear you apart. And I’ve been torn apart enough. I gave Amy everything I had, and there’s nothing left.”
Brooke’s eyebrows crease in. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I smile at her. “Don’t be. It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. I’ve moved on, and she will, too. Because that’s real life.”
Just then, my father reappears. He slams five unopened bottles of liquor down on the coffee table. It’s all whiskey, and I’m so shocked that I don’t say anything for a full minute. “What the hell is all this, Dad?” I finally ask. “When did you get this?”
My father looks like he’s near tears. “Here and there. None of it’s open. That bottle of Jack was the first one since I quit, I swear. All this is just in case.”
I reach out and snatch up a bottle. “Just in case doesn’t exist. Just in case isn’t an option anymore.” I gather the bottles in my arms and head for the door, ready to smash them all on the pavement outside when Dad says, “I’m sorry about the girl. I thought I was doing the right thing. I wanted to keep you from getting hurt again.”
I open the screen door without looking back at him. “Whatever you told her, you were right.”
AMY
I’M NOT SURE what I was expecting. I gave Oliver the concert ticket in hopes that he would meet me there, but the concert isn’t for another month, and I guess I was hoping he’d read the letter, forgive me, and show up at my doorstep.
But that doesn’t happen.
I spend the rest of April focusing on my schoolwork. My break up with Oliver plunges me into motion. Once the sadness is over, I barely take a breath between student council, volunteering on the weekends, and getting ahead on homework. I feel like a machine.
Staying busy keeps the sadness away, even when it kills me a little to walk by Spirits on my way to the tutoring center, where I’ve been working part-time. Every time I’m inside, I have to avert my eyes. Looking at Spirits is just as painful as looking directly at the sun.
While everyone else celebrates the end of senior year, I spend it locked away, because making valedictorian is the only thing I have left.
OLIVER
I SPEND THE rest of April in a haze. It’s hard to explain it, really. I go to work at Charlie’s, I come home and make sure D
ad isn’t drinking, I go to church with my mom on Sundays, but at the end of every day, I lie in bed, staring up at my ceiling, wondering.
Wondering what would happen if I just left.
What’s holding me here?
Dad hasn’t had a drink that I know of since that incident, Mom seems to be doing just fine without me, Charlie’s will find another waiter as easily as they found me. I fantasize about getting in my truck and driving until I don’t recognize anything anymore. I imagine leaving Kansas City and going to Boston or New York or L.A.
MAY
AMY
WE GET THE call at the end of the month, in the middle of last period.
“Amy,” my teacher says. “You’re needed in the office.”
Everyone’s eyes are on me as I grab my stuff and head for the door, but I already know what’s going to happen. All my other responsibilities, all my clubs and duties, are over. School is almost over. Finals have been taken. There’s only one thing left.
Petra is already waiting when I get to the administration office. She’s got her hands folded in her lap and her legs crossed beneath her chair, and I take the seat next to her.
We sit in silence for a second. We’ve been hanging out a lot since prom, since I cried in her car. Studying in the library after last period, eating lunch together in the cafeteria, planning last week’s ice-cream social to mark the end of student council.
She reaches over and takes my hand.
“You nervous?” she asks.
“No, my palms are always this sweaty.”
She laughs, and I suddenly regret so much. I regret all the times I didn’t tell Petra that she was the closest thing I had to a friend, all the time we spent fighting instead of being friendly. I think it would have been nice to have her on my side. I open my mouth to tell her these things, but the principal’s door swings open, and his eyes go back and forth between us before finally deciding on me.
“Amaría, why don’t you come in?”
I stand, and he steps out of the way to let me through. I was nervous before, but now I feel like I’m going to be sick. I’ve been working toward this for four years. Four years of hard work and dedication, and when he sits in front of me, his mouth a solid line, I already know what he’s going to say.
I fucked up, letting everything else in my life get in the way of this. It’s irreparable, that much I’m sure of.
“You seem to think you already know what I’m going to say.” Principal Cohen’s face is completely impassive.
I shrug. “I had a rough semester. I didn’t do my best, so I don’t expect to get valedictorian.”
His whole face seems to crease. “Your grades tell a different story. And your standing doesn’t just depend on you. It depends on Miss Johnson, too. And it seems you both had a hard time this semester. I even hear from your AP biology teacher that you cheated on a test.”
A surge of anger rushes through me. “I didn’t cheat on that test. Jackson copied off me.”
He holds up a hand. “What’s done is done, I’m afraid. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Even with a zero on that test and what you think was a bad semester, you still pulled out quite far ahead of everyone else. So, you better start writing your speech.”
I stare at him for a second. “I … I got it?” I stammer.
Principal Cohen smiles at me. “Yes, Amy. Congratulations.”
I’m going to cry. I can feel it starting in my throat, pressing against my eyes, but when Principal Cohen reaches across the desk to shake my hand, it knocks me out of my shock.
“Thank you,” I say.
He lets go of my hand and sends me a confused expression. “You have no one to thank but yourself.”
That settles in my brain as I open the door and see Petra in her seat right outside. Her head comes up, and it only takes a second before she’s standing up, grinning at me.
“Damn, you have the worst poker face,” she says, and her words cause the dam to break. I stand in Principal Cohen’s doorway and cry. I feel Petra’s arms come around me, smell her laundry detergent on her shirt, and I hug her back.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I pull back, wiping away the tears. “You worked hard for it, too.”
She bites her lip and nods. “That’s true. But you won it, fair and square, and that’s all I could have asked for. A true competitor. And honestly, I’m just relieved.”
I look up at her. “Relieved that I got it?”
“Relieved that it’s over.”
I know exactly what she means. We swap places and she closes the principal’s door behind her, even though it’s useless now. We both know what he’ll say to her. Standing in the office, quiet since all the office attendants are getting ready to go home, I pull out my phone and grip it hard.
All I want is to call Oliver. I want to tell him about this, I want to tell him that I love him, I want to tell him that I couldn’t have done any of this without him.
I already know what will happen when I call the number that’s saved in my phone.
I’ve called it a thousand times. Maybe more.
But I dial anyway.
We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.
OLIVER
“I’M SO GLAD you’re here,” Mom says as she puts a plate of lasagna on the kitchen table in front of me. “This place is so quiet without you. What’s it like living with your father?”
I shovel some pasta into my mouth and shrug. “It’s loud. Dad listens to his music louder than I do. Plus, he’s been playing again.”
Mom’s eyes go wide. “His guitar? Really?”
“Must be because he’s sober.”
Her eyebrows shoot up further, but she doesn’t comment.
After a long time, she says, “Is everything okay?”
I take a sip of my water. I came here for a reason, to talk to her about Dad, and now it’s time. “Dad told me, you know, about his parents and why he moved here. He told me everything.”
Mom doesn’t look angry, she just looks tired. “That story doesn’t exactly paint me in a good light.” She sighs, and for the first time I feel like she looks her age. “When I was younger, I had this idea that there was some kind of fairy tale love, and if you tried hard enough you were guaranteed a happy ending. And, unfortunately, your father paid the price for me being such an idealist.”
“You don’t believe in any of that anymore?”
“No.” She doesn’t even hesitate.
“When did you stop believing it?” I hope she can’t see that these questions are more than just questions. That there are things that have been going around and around in my mind for the past month. I don’t know what’s real anymore, and I don’t know what’s worth working for anymore. Don’t even know what I’m doing.
“Despite what your father thinks, it wasn’t him that made me stop believing in happily ever afters. It was me. He gave up everything to come here and help me raise you. And he got here, and we didn’t have money, and he didn’t have his band, and he was working all the time, and we were never together. He gave up everything. He came here, and all he got was an ordinary life with an ordinary person, and it wasn’t the fairy tale that we thought it was going to be. I still wanted him even when he started to drink, but I could see that we were destroying each other. I was destroying him. So I stopped believing in all of it because we did everything the way all the storybooks tell you to, and all it did was ruin our lives.”
This, at least, I understand. Because I feel like I did everything right, and look where it got me.
“Oli,” she says, and I look up at her. “If I could do it again, I would. I want you to know that. I don’t know if fairy tale romances exist, but I know that you can be happy. I know that real happiness exists as long as you’re not afraid to go after what you want.”
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
She shrugs. “What makes you happy?”
I shake my head. �
�I don’t know. Maybe nothing anymore.”
She laughs. “Nothing? What about the way your eyes light up when you put your favorite CD in the stereo in your car? Or the way you smiled for a week after you took that job at Spirits? Or the way I knew you wanted to date that girl you worked with before you even told me her name?”
Her words send a jolt through me, but she keeps talking.
“I’m sorry I made you believe there was only one road to take in this life. I just saw what happened to your father when he gave up his future, and I didn’t want that to happen to you.”
“Can’t give up what you don’t have.” I mutter the words, but she hears them anyway.
“Oliver, you have a future. I don’t know what it is or who it’s with or where it’s going to take you, but it’s there and it’s up to you to make it a good one.”
I can’t stop myself from thinking about Amy, as if I’ve stopped thinking about her even once since she sent me that letter. It’s under my pillow, always there because I still don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
“You make me believe in happily-ever-afters, Oli. You make me believe maybe I did something right.”
My heart is pounding, the way your heart pounds when you’ve made up your mind, when you know what you want, when you know you’re going to go after it.
JUNE
AMY
I SIT IN my assigned ticketed seat, and my leg bobs up and down. We’ve been through two openers, and so far there hasn’t been any sign of Oliver. I keep checking my phone even though I know I won’t recognize his number even if he does call or text me.
Every time I see movement at the end of the aisle, I spin around thinking that maybe it’ll be him, but it never is. I check the time on my phone. I look up an itinerary to see exactly what time the Lumineers will be taking the stage, and I only have three minutes left.
I can’t even pretend not to be upset when the music starts, and the seat next to me is still empty. The Lumineers are my favorite band, but as everyone else stands up, I sit in my seat and try not to cry. I guess the idea that maybe today would fix everything has kept me going more over the last month than I thought it has. Maybe he wasn’t calling or texting or showing up at my front door, but I still had this tiny little bit of hope that he would show up at this concert. And now that he’s not here, my heart is even more shattered than it already was.
All Our Worst Ideas Page 25
