I walked past room 207 and kept going until the corridor ended. The door to the last room on the right was open, so I went inside. I’d never taken a class in here. When I was in school, this had been the remedial science room. I used to feel sorry for the kids in here. Now I realized it didn’t matter. Grades didn’t matter. Being almost valedictorian didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what kind of person you were, and in that, I’d failed miserably.
I walked to the front of the class and sat down. Either the desks had gotten smaller or I’d gotten bigger. Or we were both exactly the same size and it only felt different because I was older, like the streets in my old neighborhood. Oh God, who cared. That didn’t matter either.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually someone softly said my name. I didn’t turn around. I had my head down, my forehead pressed against the cool wood of the desk.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Gillian sat beside me. She put her arm around my shoulders and waited for me to look at her. All the blood rushed to my head when I lifted it up. “You’re the one he’s singing about.”
I closed my eyes for a second. They were swollen and hot from crying. I nodded.
“Holy mother of pearl,” she whispered. She squeezed me to her so hard that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I knew it. I knew it the second he looked at you, how he said your name. Just…wow.”
“Yeah.”
She let out a breath. “Okay, so I know you might not want to tell me what happened, and that’s okay. But whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“It’s bad,” I said. Her eyes got wider and wider. “I was mean. I was mean to him.”
She didn’t say anything. I was probably scaring the shit out of her.
“Okay,” she said, very calmly. “Okay. But the thing is? He’s out there, waiting for you. He wants to talk to you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“No. You can. Natalie. Listen to me. This is Jack Holy Hotness Moreland. And he is waiting out there for you. So get up, fix your hair, because something very weird is going on with it right now, and go talk to him.”
Gillian, I was learning, was quite good at pep talks. I stared at her. She stared at me. I nodded. I could do this.
Instead of me going out to meet him, Jack came to me.
Gillian said she’d wait in the lobby and that she’d make up some story to placate Ray and anyone else who might be lingering. On her way out, she flipped on the lights and it took my eyes a minute to adjust. In the hallway, I heard her say something, and a second later, Jack walked in to the classroom.
He closed the door behind him, then assessed the room, choosing to lean against a window that looked out over an empty ball field. I remembered the endless days of softball in gym class, the smell of freshly cut grass and always wishing I was somewhere else. Back then, it felt like high school would never end. Now all I wanted was to go back, make different choices, be someone else.
I got up from the tiny desk and claimed a spot near him. Not too close. His dark eyes passed over me again, and I realized with a sudden flush that the scoop-neck shirt I’d chosen this morning exposed my collarbone, what used to be his favorite place to kiss me.
I bit my lip as we made eye contact and then broke it. “I shouldn’t have come, but my editor gave me the assignment.”
“Your editor again, huh?”
“She scares me.”
He half smiled. “I have to admit, it was a little shocking, seeing you here. I thought you’d be, I don’t know, anywhere but here.”
You and me both. “Yeah, I hadn’t meant to. But my plans didn’t exactly turn out the way I thought they would.”
I turned to face him, bringing us a little bit closer, the closest we’d ever been inside the walls of Stonebury High. Between these walls, it was like we’d never met.
“That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Was he talking about us, or something else? There was a closed-off look in his eyes, reminding me of how he was when we had our first conversation at the café—and our last, at his house. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t want me too close.
And yet, close was all I wanted to be. Coming here, I’d thought that if I could make amends, that would be enough. But now I couldn’t deny that the feelings I’d had for him had never really gone away. They’d been locked up in a box somewhere, and seeing him again had opened that box. But what the hell was I going to do with them now?
“You look the same,” he said. I couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing. He wasn’t offering me a peek into his soul, like one of the magazines had said about his album.
“You look different,” I said. Now that his hair was short, it was the first time I’d ever seen his neck. “No more eyebrow ring. Not like how I remember.”
“Five years is a long time,” he said, shrugging.
I looked at him. “But you have a very good memory.”
He smirked, but it passed quickly. “Yeah. I guess I do. But hey, I made you famous. Kind of.”
“Jeez, thanks.”
“Aw, come on. You broke my heart. I channeled it into my music. It’s the circle of life, Science Club.”
Hearing him call me by my old nickname made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. All the emotion welled in my throat and I couldn’t say anything.
“And no one knows it’s you,” he continued, “so it’s all good.”
Is that really what he thought? “How is it all good when I’m a horrible person? Everyone else in the world might not know who those songs are about, but I do.”
He watched me for a while without speaking. “How did you feel when you heard it for the first time?”
The straightforwardness of his question rattled me. “What? What kind of question is that?”
He pushed himself from the wall and moved toward me, and I took in a breath as he stopped just short of being close enough to kiss. I could see where he nicked himself shaving, a tiny gash on the side of his chin. “I know you don’t like talking about all those things—what are they called? Oh yeah. Emotions. Come on, Natalie. How did you feel?”
“How do you think I felt? Really, really awesome.” Shit, now the tears were back. I did a lot of blinking until they went away.
“Sarcasm.” He nodded. “I’m happy to know your favorite defense mechanism is still firmly in place.”
“If I recall correctly, you were a fan of it, too.”
He smiled. “Maybe that was why we got along so well.”
I smiled, too. “Yeah. Maybe.” I bit the inside of my cheek as I tried to think of the words I wanted to say, to explain things. “I felt bad when I heard the song,” I blurted out. “I mean, I felt awful. Guilty. About the things I did and the person I was and all I want is to be able to fix things, somehow, even though I know I can’t.”
We looked at each other, and he didn’t say anything. There would be no pep talk from him.
He moved so that his back was up against the window again. I hadn’t answered his question like he wanted me to. He wanted something more—he’d always wanted something more from me, something I found myself unable to give. I had to fix that. At least, I had to try. “I did something, something kind of strange. After I listened to the album, I made a list. Of people I hurt the most. I still don’t even know why. I felt like I had to get it out on paper for some reason.”
I could feel him watching me, even though I was talking to a poster of the Periodic Table of Elements. “Then what did you do?” he asked.
“I folded up the paper and put it in a drawer.”
“That seems productive.”
“I know.” I hated the way I sounded—helpless. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Maybe you need to talk to them.”
“And say what? That I suck? They already know that.” Well, all except for one.
He shook his head, the slightest
gesture. “Maybe you need to tell them you’re sorry.”
It was so simple. Obvious, even. So why hadn’t I thought of it?
Probably because right now, I couldn’t think of anything other than having him so close to me. There had been a time—not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, even though it felt like forever—that all he wanted was me. I could live with everything else I’d screwed up, but that one thing…I wanted it back.
“I’ve changed,” I told him. “I’m not the same person I used to be.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected him to say to that. Something like, I can tell, would have been nice. And then he could have reached for me and I’d have been in his arms again, the one place I never should have left.
But all he said was, “Really?”
It was then I knew for sure that he didn’t love me anymore. But I also knew the feelings I had for him would never go away. I would have to figure out something else to do with them.
I blinked a couple of times, opening my mouth, but no words would come out. I couldn’t answer his question, because nothing I had done so far could prove that I really had changed, to Jack or to myself. Maybe he could sense it, and that was why he didn’t believe it. He always had known me so well.
Jack shifted suddenly and I thought he was walking away. Instead, he came toward me. I wondered if it were biologically possible for your heart to beat out of your chest.
“Have you ever thought what might have happened if one of us had been a slightly different person?” he asked. I could smell his minty shampoo. We were that close.
I answered without hesitation. “All the time.”
Then I did something crazy, without thinking. I grabbed his hand. “You didn’t need to be any different, though. It was me.”
I held on tight, thinking that maybe it would make him remember what it used to be like to touch me, and then he’d remember everything else. It seemed to work. For a split second, it felt like he was squeezing back, and he was starting to say something—
The door to the remedial science classroom creaked open. Ray stood there, phone in one hand, Jack’s sunglasses in the other. Behind him, Gillian mouthed, “Sorry!” Jack let go of my hand.
“Sorry to cut this little reunion short, but you’ve got a plane to catch.”
And just like that, Jack was walking away. “We have to get back to New York for some more press,” he told me. He was back to using his speaking-to-his-accountant voice. “Thanks for taking the time to do this today.”
“Oh…right. You’re welcome.”
Ray patted his back, leading him out of the room. “We’ve got to be at Logan in an hour, and I need something to eat on the way.”
Their voices grew faint as they walked out. A couple of seconds later, Gillian rushed in. “Are you okay? What happened? What did he say? What did you say?”
I shook my head. Our conversation had already faded into a memory. He’d been here, in the same room with me, seconds ago. But now he was only as real as his picture in a magazine. It’d all happened so fast.
And I’d never even apologized to him.
“I cannot believe I asked Jack Moreland about his underwear.”
Gillian covered her face with her hands. We were sitting in a back booth at a sandwich shop close to the high school, though I hadn’t touched my food. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “He loved it. I could tell.”
Gillian watched me closely. “And you love him. Right?”
I didn’t say anything, just tilted my head ever so slightly, and she understood.
She dropped her hand from her face to mine, patting it gently. “Man, I still cannot believe it’s you. What happened? I mean, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
She had shown a great amount of patience up to this point and hadn’t pressed me for details when I knew she must have been dying for them. The thing was, I was sick of keeping everything inside. So there, over our break, I told her everything.
Gillian kept her hand on mine the whole time, even during the really bad parts. I’d kept my eyes on my plate, not looking up until I was done, scared of how she would be looking at me. But there was nothing in her eyes except what looked like surprise and sympathy.
“Holy—”
“Mother of pearl. Yeah, I know. Okay, so please tell me I’m a horrible person so we can get past this and go back to being friends.”
She blinked a couple of times. “I’m not going to say that. I have no idea what it must have been like. My dad was in the Army and we moved all the time. I was never in a school for more than a year, if that. I used to wish I had a normal high school experience.”
I laughed. “Not at Stonebury High, you didn’t.”
“Girls are brutal. You know how much I got made fun of for these?” She pointed to the freckles that sprinkled her nose and arms. “They called me Freckle Face, Ginger, oh, and Raggedy Anne. How stupid is that?”
“Stupid. And you have the total right to hate me, given that I would’ve been the one to call you that if we went to the same school.”
Gillian smiled. “That’s okay. I forgive you.”
“I wish he would.”
“You don’t think…?”
“You’ve heard the album.”
Gillian grimaced, probably remembering how she’d gone on about the horrible girl Jack sang about. “So how did you leave things?”
“I don’t know. Completely up in the air. He was about to tell me something when Ray barged in. It’s like there’s all this…unfinished business between us, you know?”
Her eyebrows twitched. “Unfinished business,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, it just sounds so romantic.”
I rolled my eyes. “Use it in your fan fic.”
There was one thing, though, that wasn’t unfinished. One thing he’d helped me understand. When I got home that night, the first thing I did was go into my bedroom and pull open the drawer of my nightstand. I grabbed the folded-up piece of paper and smoothed it out. I sat on my bed, reading over the list of names.
I knew what I had to do with it.
Chapter Seven
I found Fiona Locke’s phone number easily enough online that night. The hard part was actually dialing the numbers. That and not hanging up.
I stood in my bedroom, trying to psych myself up. I knew I was being stupid—I was a grown woman, this was a phone call. I told myself to pretend that I was a real journalist. In college, we did assignments where one of us would pretend to be a journalist and the other a victim of a high-profile crime or natural disaster. It was the kind of story you’d see on CNN: some poor woman’s kid had just been murdered and they’re trying to get a statement from her. I’d been pretty good at it. This was nothing compared to that. But still.
I could do this. I forced myself. I punched in the numbers, dialed, and held my breath.
She sounded surprised, but not necessarily shocked, to hear from me. I asked if there was any way that we could meet up in person. She lived in Rhode Island now, and I’d go to her. I almost wished she’d said she had no interest in seeing me. But what she said was, “I’m free on Saturday.”
At least I had an excuse to miss out on Saturday coffee and shopping this week. I told Sarah I had a work appointment, and I wasn’t sure she believed me. She was in the final throes of moving out and I hadn’t seen much of her. Lately, when I found myself wanting to talk, I called Gillian.
On Saturday, I drove to Newport. Fiona had given me the address of a bookstore on Bellevue Ave and told me she’d be sitting in the back by the window with her laptop. The streets were already packed at eleven, the way they always were around here in the summer. The mansion tour along Newport’s rocky bluffs had been one of my other favorite summertime activities. I’d always liked the architecture and cobblestone streets of downtown. This place had charm, where Stonebury had only plastic.
I passed all the galleries and art supply stores, wishing I’d come here for fun. But I had a mission, and this
was the first stop on my list.
I spotted her easily. She was where she’d said she’d be, typing away on her computer, no idea I was frozen beside the World History section. Her hair was short now, cut to her chin with bangs that swept to one side, and the beigey-brown color was now a pretty, soft blonde. She actually looked younger now than she did then.
I took a deep breath and approached the table. When she looked up, I smiled. “Hi.”
She smiled back, a bit hesitantly. “Oh, hi.” She moved a stylish black bag from the seat beside her and put it on the floor. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
I sat, placing my purse on the floor, too, even though I’d read once that there were more germs on a floor in a public place like this than on a toilet. I wondered if I could wash my bag when I got home. Focusing on details like this was way easier than the fact that the girl I tortured endlessly in high school was sitting beside me, waiting for me to say something.
“I really like this place. Newport, I mean.”
Fiona pushed her hair behind her ear and blinked big blue eyes—had they always been that big, that blue? “I love it. Came here for an internship after college and never left.”
I remembered that she’d gotten into Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. We’d lived in the same city for all of college. “What do you do?”
“Assistant curator at the Newport Art Museum.”
Well, that was a tiny bit more impressive than copy editor at the Stonebury Gazette. “That’s really fantastic. I’m trying to start my own photography business. I mean, it’s really just an idea right now, but…I’m trying to do some freelance, build up a portfolio. I mean, I’m trying…” I let my voice trail off. I didn’t come here to talk to her about my failed career, even though she was being polite and nodding as I rambled. I cleared my throat, trying again.
“I wanted to apologize.”
Fiona sat back a little, turning toward me. I’d practiced a whole monologue the night before, but now that I was speaking to her, words came out in no particular order. “I’ve been thinking a lot about high school and how I acted. I was so mean. To you. Well, to everyone, but especially to you.”
The Mean Girl Apologies Page 9
