The Shortest Distance Between Love & Hate

by Sandy Hall

  “I hope so.”

  -PAISLEY-

  He gulps hard a few times.

  It’s pretty obvious by his body language that I’m the last person he wants to talk to about this, but I had to ask. It felt wrong not to ask. And now, I feel sympathy. Honest to goodness concern. How will I ever finish my revenge scheme if I start feeling feelings for Carter?

  “She’s okay. Right now. She was in the hospital last night, and I really wanted to be there.”

  “I’m sorry she’s sick,” I say.

  “She’s getting better. This was a minor setback.”

  “Carter?”

  “What?” he asks; his whole body is tired.

  “I really am sorry about your mom. That sucks. Sincerely.”

  “Thanks.”

  We end up walking to the front of the store together, because really, I have what I need and I don’t want to get arrested for extended lurking or something.

  I get in line behind his mom and sister, who are almost done paying.

  Carter introduces us.

  His sister’s face remains stony, but his mom’s breaks into a wide grin.

  “Why, Paisley, I remember you from back in the day. You were always so mischievous,” she says. “Always up to something.”

  “I still am,” I say. I know she thinks I’m joking because she laughs, but I feel a little bad given the source toward which my mischief flows these days.

  “We’ll give you a ride back to campus,” she says.

  Thea doesn’t look pleased.

  “Oh no, I’m fine. I don’t mind the walk.”

  “But it’s pouring,” Carter’s mom insists.

  And indeed it is.

  It’s really hard to say no to a ride in a cold October downpour.

  The car ride back to the dorm is quiet. I thank Thea as I get out of the car but she doesn’t say anything back. I say goodbye and I leave Carter to say goodbye and potentially complain more about me to his sister.

  The elevator takes eight million years to come, so I’m still standing there with soggy bags when Carter walks past on the way to his room.

  “So I guess your sister hates me. Makes sense that you would talk to her about this stuff. She seems like she’d be a good person to talk to,” I say, keeping my tone breezy.

  “Yeah, pretty much. You don’t make a very good impression when I tell stories about you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” I say. “But even if everyone in your family hates me, I really do hope the best for your mom. Let me know how it goes for her.”

  He stops and shakes his head. “Listen, Paisley. I don’t need your pity. You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t like me. I definitely don’t have any interest in keeping you updated on my mom’s health.”

  “Okay,” I say, wishing I had some retort. Why do I feel so disheartened? This is what I’ve wanted him to say all along.

  “We’re not friends. This isn’t going to make us friends.”

  I kind of hate that he’s saying this. It’s making me sad. But I hate being sad, so instead I get angry.

  “I wasn’t trying to be friends,” I say. “I was trying to be decent about someone who has cancer.”

  “Too little, too late,” he says.

  He’s about to walk away, but I call to him, “Oh, Carter. By the way, since you missed calc this morning, you should know that class is canceled on Thursday.”

  “Sure, thanks for the message,” he says even though he doesn’t sound grateful at all.

  I walk away slowly, imagining that I’m an action movie star casually walking away from an exploding bomb behind me.

  This is my ultimate revenge.

  I know I promised Stef that I wouldn’t play any pranks involving class. But this is my last one. I just need to get it out of my system.

  Later on that evening, Stef is at class and I take an early shower and climb into bed. I spent the afternoon making T-shirts and not thinking about Carter, so I deserve the evening off.

  I decide to call my mom because while I’ve been very busy not thinking about Carter, I have been thinking about moms in general and my mom in particular.

  “Hey, Mom,” I say.

  “Hey, Paisley, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

  “Just missing you,” I tell her.

  “Well, it’s awfully nice to hear your voice.”

  “It’s nice to hear yours too.”

  “So what’s up, buttercup?”

  “I was thinking about moms. I saw Carter’s mom today,” I tell her. I’d previously told her all my Carter issues, minus the part with the making out. She doesn’t need to know that part.

  “Stacy. I remember her. She was always trying to get me involved with class stuff and PTA, but I was so busy back then with night school. I wish I could have been more present back then. Especially since she was so welcoming.”

  “Yeah. I always liked her. But she’s sick. And I guess I forget sometimes that moms can get sick. Like, really sick. It made me want to check on you.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m fine. You know that, right?”

  “And you’d tell me if you weren’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pinkie swear?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Please don’t hope to die,” I say.

  “Cross my heart and hope to live. Anyway, I’m a nurse. I’m very aware of my own health.”

  “I know.” My eyes prick with tears so I decide to change the subject. “How’s your alone time going?”

  “Well, you know. It’s funny you should ask. It’s a little boring. I miss my binge-watching buddy.”

  “Oh yeah? What are you watching?”

  “Parks and Recreation.”

  “Well it’s about damn time, Mother.”

  She laughs and we continue to talk. I feel better. I feel like this is what I needed even though I didn’t necessarily know it before I called. I needed to talk to her. I was missing her. But even more than that, I was missing our time together. I was missing us.

  We hang up a few minutes later, and I remind myself I could go see her anytime.

  But work and school and selling T-shirts and trying to get in even a little bit of socializing all take too much time. I need to prioritize.

  I fall asleep thinking about priorities.

  I fall asleep thinking that I need to be better about Carter. Not nicer to him, I don’t owe him that, but the universe seems to be getting some kind of revenge on him. Maybe I don’t need to be in charge of his retribution. Maybe that’s not my place.

  I’m not changing my mind about him because his mom is sick. That’s not what this is about. I’m not changing my mind about him at all.

  But maybe I don’t have to give him a hard time.

  Maybe lying to him about calc can be my final act of Paisley justice.

  Maybe I don’t have to make things more difficult for him.

  Maybe it’s time to move on.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  -CARTER-

  On Thursday, by some gift from a higher power, Paisley and I don’t have work together. I’m not sure what I would do. I don’t think I could handle dealing with her so soon after her learning about my mom.

  I’ve been thinking about transferring.

  It’s a thought that’s gone through my head a couple of times lately. I could go to school someplace closer to where my mom and Thea live. Just live at home, save some money. It would be better for everyone.

  On the other hand, it’s not like I would get away from Paisley so easily. Thea just happened to buy a house in the town next to where Paisley lives, where I lived up until middle school. I’d definitely end up seeing her around still. Because I’m lucky like that.

  I go to my other classes, ignoring Paisley. Thea’s advice plays over and over in my head. It’s time to get over her, over this.

  It’s not like it’s difficult. We’re not friends. We were only ever maybe friends in my head. And even that didn’t last for a full forty-eigh
t hours, and it didn’t exactly get off on the right foot for platonic friendship anyway.

  I really need to stop thinking about her. And the first weekend of school. And everything that’s wrong with my life.

  And that kiss.

  But how do you start fresh with your life in the last week of October?

  Maybe I could pretend that Halloween is the start of a new me.

  A better Carter.

  Maybe I could convince myself.

  When I get home after dinner, I check my email and I have a message from my calc TA, Becca. It reads:

  Carter,

  You’ve missed two classes in a row and today there was a pop quiz. Your grade was already suffering. This string of missed classes is not going to help. I hate to see someone give up like this. You’ve worked hard this semester, and I don’t want you to lose your momentum.

  It goes on from there, giving me options and possibilities for making up the work, but that my grade on the pop quiz will remain a zero.

  I don’t understand what happened.

  I start to write an email back, explaining that I don’t know what happened.

  But then I realize. I do know what happened. I know exactly what happened.

  I’m so embarrassed and angry. Why would I listen to her? Why would I fall for this trick? Why would she do this in the first place? What does she stand to gain from making my life worse and harder?

  I run up to her room. She better be home because I need to confront her while I’m angry. I can’t wait for this feeling to dissipate. I can’t sleep on it. I need to act. I know this is her fault and I need to hear it from her.

  I fly up the stairs two at a time, bursting through the doorway into her hallway, and race down the hall, nearly knocking into someone coming out of the bathroom. I barely stop to apologize.

  And then I’m there, standing in front of her door.

  I pound on it.

  -PAISLEY-

  Someone is pounding on my door. I’m almost a little scared to open it since Stef isn’t home. What if it’s a mass murderer?

  But also, how would Stef protect me from a mass murderer? Sometimes my thought process makes no sense.

  I creep over to the door, not wanting to alert the door-pounding mass murderer to the fact that I’m in here alone. I lean into the peephole, and there out in the hallway is Carter.

  He’s sweaty and red in the face and can barely catch his breath.

  He’s terrifying.

  I don’t want to talk to him when he’s like this. Mostly because it can mean only one thing. He knows I lied about calculus.

  I was going to come clean to him because we ended up having a pop quiz. And I wasn’t trying to ruin his grade or make him fail. I don’t know what I was doing. I was going to be a better Paisley! At least, that’s what I thought on Tuesday night. But then I haven’t really seen him and I didn’t want to bring it up.

  I take a deep breath and open the door.

  He pushes through and stands in the middle of my room. He spins in a circle, taking in the mess that my room is. I’m in the midst of catching up on orders. I don’t know who Zoe promoted my T-shirts to, but I have been overwhelmed. I have the urge to hide my wares, lest Carter say something else disparaging about them.

  Carter brushes his sweaty hair off his forehead. He actually looks kind of hot and that thought makes me hate myself.

  “Why?” he asks, his voice oddly, suspiciously calm. I get goose bumps.

  “Why?” I respond. “Why what?”

  “Why would you do that, Paisley?”

  “Do what?” Maybe if I play coy and oblivious long enough, a mass murderer will eventually come along and finish us off.

  He massages his temples.

  I know I’m in the wrong here. I know that this is what being a bad person looks like. But I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what my recourse is.

  “Please, Paisley,” he says. “No more games. I’m so tired of games. I don’t know why you decided to use me as a plaything this semester. I suppose it’s because I made myself vulnerable to you. But, like. This? This is disgusting.”

  I throw my arms up and shake my head.

  “Honestly, I have no recourse or excuse,” I say. My thoughts bursting from my mouth like I have no filter. “I was pissed off at you. I didn’t like what you were saying. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to get back at you in some small way. I didn’t think you’d actually believe me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

  “Gee. I don’t know, because I’ve been a complete bitch to you.”

  “See, you’ve been a pain in the ass. You haven’t been friendly or kind or made any attempt to even act neutrally toward me. But I didn’t think you would downright try to make me fail a class. Try to mess with my grades. Try to ruin my semester with some weird passive-aggressive shit because of something I did when I was twelve.”

  “Well, I did,” I say, sticking out my chin defiantly. “Why wouldn’t you believe it? Why wouldn’t you believe I was capable of that?”

  He runs his hands through his hair again and tugs at the ends, making it stick up in every direction. “I was a kid, Paisley. I was a child. Didn’t you make mistakes when you were in middle school?”

  “I didn’t flush anybody’s gym clothes if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Don’t you have any feelings? Don’t you understand that I’m just barely surviving here? I’m barely making it through? And you’re doing everything you can to make me miserable. To punish me for something I did to someone else a million years ago? You act like you’re so interested in fairness and loyalty and all that bullshit. But really, you’re out here for you. Because you enjoy having the power.”

  “Oh my god,” I say. “Where do you come up with this garbage?” It’s not my best move, lashing out like this. But he’s just. He’s right about everything and I have no arguments. Nothing left. Not a leg to stand on.

  He shakes his head. “You’re not even going to try to apologize.”

  “I’m sorry I told you that calc was canceled. I’ll do my best to fix it.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “I have a scholarship you know? I have a GPA I need to maintain. This isn’t a game. This is my life. This is my future. And you’re out here manipulating it, trying to ruin it. Why? Why are you doing this?”

  I have so many reasons and I can’t think of even one right now. They all sound like weak excuses compared to the big angry scene he’s making. He’s so full of logic, and I’m over here like, “Because you’re not nice!”

  But the problem is, he is nice. He’s the nicest boy on earth, and I’ve managed to piss him off so hard he’ll never even want to look at me ever again.

  I need to say something.

  “It’ll be okay,” I say.

  “No. It really won’t be.” He looks around the room, taking in everything that I’m working on. He huffs out a breath and shakes his head. I almost think he’s going to start throwing things.

  Instead, he walks purposefully from my room and slams the door behind him. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so awful in my entire life.

  -CARTER-

  I go back to my room but can’t concentrate on anything. I should really email back my TA and try to plead my case. But where will that get me? It’s a bunch of “he said, she said” crap. I’m going to look like a joke, like an immature asshole, just because I was involved in this situation. Paisley has never and will never see me as anything besides a bully that needs to be taken down. And that’s fine, that’s her problem. Unfortunately, she also made it my problem now.

  I will figure this out.

  But maybe right now isn’t the best time. Maybe right now I need to take a beat, walk away, distract myself.

  Ray comes in then and I vent to him, telling him the whole story, every little detail, right down to the T-shirts Paisley was making when I walked into her room.

  “Wait, what?” Ray asks, int
errupting me.

  “T-shirts. She makes T-shirts in her dorm room and sells them online.”

  Ray’s whole face brightens.

  “You want to get back at her?”

  “More than anything in the world.”

  “I have a great idea.”

  He scrounges into his bottom drawer and pulls out a student handbook.

  “Did we all get those?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, I found it in my desk.” Upon further inspection, it has last year’s dates in it, so maybe they stopped handing them out. “But I have this habit of reading pretty much everything I can.”

  “Because you like to be a know-it-all,” I say with a grin.

  “Well, yeah, you don’t get to be a Jeopardy! teen tournament champion by not being a know-it-all.”

  “True.”

  He flips to the index and then finds the right page and hands me the book, pointing at a list. I read out loud.

  “Solicitation, collecting money, and/or selling items under any circumstances within a residence hall is prohibited. Students who break this rule will be required to cease all sales immediately. If they do not obey the initial warning, they will be placed on housing probation.”

  I laugh for what feels like the first time in days.

  “So, who do we report her to?” Ray asks.

  “Anyone? Everyone?”

  “Let’s get to work.”

  -PAISLEY-

  I sent Becca, the calc TA, an email last night about needing to see her today. I need to come clean. This whole situation is bad for my karma.

  And my complexion. I woke up with a zit the size of the moon on my forehead today.

  We make plans to meet late Friday afternoon. The campus is nearly deserted at this point. Which is good. I don’t need anyone to hear me groveling on behalf of my worst enemy. But I need to make this one up. I need to solve this one.

  Because as much as it pains me to admit it, Carter is right. I’m punishing him for something he did a long time ago and it’s not exactly a case where the punishment fits the crime. He shouldn’t lose his scholarship because I’m pissed off on Henry’s behalf. Henry would hate that. And that’s just one reason, in a sea of endless reasons, to make it right.