by Jenny Han
I took the brass poker from the fireplace and my cell phone, and I crept over to the foyer. I was too scared to look out the window, and I didn’t want him to see me, so I just pressed my body up against the door and listened hard, my finger on the number nine.
“Steve, open up. It’s me.”
My heart nearly stopped beating. I knew that voice. It was not the voice of a burglar. It was Conrad.
I flung the door open. It really was him. I gazed at him, and he gazed back. I didn’t know it would feel that way to see him again. Heart in my throat, hard to breathe. For those couple of seconds, I forgot everything and there was just him.
He was wearing a winter coat I had never seen before, camel colored, and he was sucking on a mini candy cane. It fell out of his mouth. “What in the world?” he said, his mouth still open.
When I hugged him, he smelled like peppermint and Christmas.
His cheek was cold against mine. “Why are you holding a poker?”
I stepped back. “I thought you were a burglar.”
“Of course you did.”
He followed me back to the living room and sat in the chair opposite the couch. He still had that shocked look on his face. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged and set the poker on the coffee table. My adrenaline rush was fading fast, and I was starting to feel pretty silly. “I was all alone at home, and I just felt like coming. What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were coming back.”
Conrad was in California now. I hadn’t seen him since he’d transferred the year before. He had some scruff on his face, like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. It looked soft, though, not prickly. He looked tan, too, which I thought was weird, seeing how it was winter, and then I remembered that he went to school in California, where it was always sunny.
“My dad sent me a ticket at the last minute. It took us forever to land, because of the snow, so I got here late. Since Jere and my dad are still in New York, I figured I’d just come here.” He squinted at me.
“What?” I asked, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. I tried to smooth down the back of my hair—it was all fuzzy from being slept on. Discreetly, I touched the corners of my mouth. Had I been drooling?
“You have chocolate all over your face.”
I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. “No, I don’t,” I lied. “It’s probably just dirt.”
Amused, he raised his eyebrows at the near-empty can of chocolate-covered pretzels. “What, did you just put your whole head in it to save time?”
“Shut it,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling.
The only light in the room was from the flickering TV. It was so surreal, being with him like this. A truly random twist of what felt like fate. I shivered and drew my blankets closer to me.
Taking off his coat, he said, “Want me to start a fire?”
Right away, I said, “Yes! I couldn’t get it going for some reason.”
“It takes a special touch,” he said in his arrogant way. I knew by now it was only posturing.
It was all so familiar. We had been here before, just like this, only two Christmases ago. So much had happened since then. He had a whole new life now, and so did I. Still, in some ways, it was like no time or distance had passed between us. In some ways, it felt the same.
Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because he said, “It might be too late for a fire. I think I’m just gonna go crash.” Abruptly, he stood up and headed for the staircase. Then he turned back and asked, “Are you sleeping down here?”
“Yup,” I said. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”
When he reached the staircase, Conrad stopped and then said, “Merry Christmas, Belly. It’s really good to see you.”
“You too.”
The next morning, right when I woke up, I had this funny feeling that he had already left. I don’t know why. I ran over to the stairs to check, and just as I was coming around the banister, I tripped over my pajama pants and fell flat on my back, banging my head along the way.
I lay there with tears in my eyes, staring up at the ceiling. The pain was unreal. Then Conrad’s head popped up above me. “Are you okay?” he asked, his mouth full of food, cereal probably. He tried to help me sit up, but I waved him off.
“Leave me alone,” I mumbled, hoping that if I just blinked fast enough, my tears would dry up.
“Are you hurt? Can you move?”
“I thought you were gone,” I said.
“Nope. Still here.” He knelt down beside me. “Just let me try and lift you up.”
I shook my head no.
Conrad got down on the floor next to me, and we both lay there on the wooden floor like we were about to start making snow angels. “How bad does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten? Does it feel like you pulled something?”
“On a scale of one to ten … it hurts an eleven.”
“You’re such a baby when it comes to pain,” he said, but he sounded worried.
“I am not.” I was about to prove him right. Even I could hear how teary I sounded.
“Hey, that fall you took was no joke. It was just like how animals slip and fall in cartoons, like with a banana peel.”
Suddenly I didn’t feel like crying anymore. “Are you calling me an animal?” I demanded, turning my head to look at him. He was trying to keep a straight face, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up. Then he turned his head to look at me, and we both started laughing. I laughed so hard my back hurt worse.
Mid-laugh, I stopped and said, “Ow.”
He sat up and said, “I’m gonna pick you up and bring you over to the couch.”
“No,” I protested weakly. “I’m too heavy for you. I’ll get up in a minute, just leave me here for now.”
Conrad frowned, and I could tell he was offended. “I know I can’t bench-press my body weight like Jere, but I can pick up a girl, Belly.”
I blinked. “It’s not that. I’m heavier than you think. You know, freshman fifteen or whatever.” My face got hot, and I momentarily forgot about how badly my back hurt or how weird it was that he’d brought up Jere. I just felt embarrassed.
In a quiet voice, he said, “Well, you look the same to me.” Then, very gently, he scooped me off the floor and into his arms. I held on with one arm around his neck, and said, “It was more like ten. Freshman ten.”
He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
He carried me over to the couch and set me down. “I’m gonna get you some Advil. That should help a little.”
Looking up at him, I had this sudden thought.
Oh my God. I still love you.
I’d thought my feelings for Conrad were safely tucked away, like my old Rollerblades and the little gold watch my dad bought me when I first learned how to tell time.
But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it. He was a part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart. He would inhabit just that tiny piece of it, the little-girl part that still believed in musicals, but that was it. That was all he got. Jeremiah would have everything else—the present me and the future me. That was what was important. Not the past.
Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old. For the rest of my life, I would think of him fondly, the way you do your first pet, the first car you drove. Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important. And Jeremiah, he was going to be my last and my every and my always.
Conrad and I spent the rest of that day together but not together. He started a fire, and then he read at the kitchen table while I watched It’s a Wonderful Life. For lunch, we had canned tomato soup and the rest of my chocolate-covered pretzels. Then he went for a run on the beach and I settled in for Casablanca. I was wiping tears
from the corners of my eyes with my T-shirt sleeve when he came back. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” I croaked.
Taking off his fleece, Conrad said, “Why? It had a happy ending. She was better off with Laszlo.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve seen Casablanca?”
“Of course. It’s a classic.”
“Well, obviously you weren’t paying that close of attention, because Rick and Ilsa are meant for each other.”
Conrad snorted. “Their little love story is nothing compared to the work Laszlo was doing for the Resistance.”
Blowing my nose with a napkin, I said, “For a young guy, you’re way too cynical.”
He rolled his eyes. “And for a supposedly grown girl, you’re way too emotional.” He headed for the stairs.
“Robot!” I yelled at his back. “Tin man!”
I heard him laughing as he closed the bathroom door.
The next morning, Conrad was gone. He left just like I thought he’d leave. No good-bye, no nothing. Just gone, like a ghost. Conrad, the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Jeremiah called me when I was on the way back home from Cousins. He asked what I was doing, and I told him I was driving home, but I didn’t tell him where I was driving from. It was a split-second decision. At the time I didn’t know why I lied. I just knew I didn’t want him to know.
I decided Conrad was right after all. Ilsa was meant to be with Laszlo. That was the way it was always supposed to end. Rick was nothing but a tiny piece of her past, a piece that she would always treasure, but that was all, because history is just that. History.
chapter nine
After I left Anika’s room, I turned on my phone. There were texts and e-mails from Jeremiah, and they kept coming. I got under my covers and read them all, each and every one. Then I reread them, and when I was done, I finally wrote him back and said, Give me some space. He wrote OK, and that was the last text I got from him that day. I still kept checking my phone to see if there was anything from him, and when there wasn’t, I was disappointed, even though I knew I didn’t have a right to be. I wanted him to leave me alone, and I wanted him to keep trying to fix things. But if I didn’t know what I wanted, how could he possibly?
I stayed in my room, packing up. I was hungry, and I still had meals left on my meal card, but I was afraid I might run into Lacie on campus. Or worse, Jeremiah. Still, it was good to have something to do and to be able to turn the music on loud without having to hear my roommate Jillian complain.
When I couldn’t take the hunger anymore, I called Taylor and told her everything. She screamed so loud, I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She came right over with a black-bean burrito and a strawberry-banana smoothie. She kept shaking her head and saying, “That Zeta Phi slut.”
“It wasn’t just her, it was him, too,” I said, between bites of my burrito.
“Oh, I know. Just you wait. I’m gonna drag my nails across his face when I see him. I’ll leave him so scarred, no girl will ever hook up with him again.” She inspected her manicured nails like they were artillery. “When I go to the salon tomorrow, I’m gonna tell Danielle to make them sharp.”
My heart swelled. There are some things only a friend who’s known you your whole life can say, and instantly, I felt a little better. “You don’t have to scar him.”
“But I want to.” She hooked her pinky finger with mine. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Better, now that you’re here.”
When I was sucking down the last of my smoothie, Taylor asked me, “Do you think you’ll take him back?”
I was surprised and really relieved not to hear any judgment in her voice. “What would you do?” I asked her.
“It’s up to you.”
“I know, but … would you take him back?”
“Under ordinary circumstances, no. If some guy cheated on me while we were on a break, if he so much as looked at another girl, no. He’d be donzo.” She chewed on her straw. “But Jeremy’s not some guy. You have a history together.”
“What happened to all that talk about scarring him?”
“Don’t get it twisted, I hate him to death right now. He effed up in a colossal way. But he’ll never be just some guy, not to you. That’s a fact.”
I didn’t say anything. But I knew she was right.
“I could still round up my sorority sisters and go slash his tires tonight.” Taylor bumped my shoulder. “Hmm? Whaddyathink?”
She was trying to make me laugh. It worked. I laughed for the first time in what felt like a long time.
chapter ten
After our fight the summer before senior year, I really thought that Taylor and I would make up fast, the way we always did. I thought it would blow over in a week, tops. Because what were we really even mad about? Sure, we both said some hurtful things—I called her a child, she called me a crappy best friend, but it wasn’t like we’d never had a fight before. Best friends fought.
When I got home from Cousins, I put Taylor’s shoes and her clothes in a bag, ready to take them over to her house as soon as she gave me the signal that we were done being mad at each other. It was always Taylor who gave the signal, she was the one who initiated making up.
I waited, but it didn’t come. I went to Marcy’s a couple of times, hoping I’d run into her and we’d be forced to talk things out. Those times I was at Marcy’s, she never came. Weeks passed. The summer was almost over.
Jeremiah kept saying the same thing he’d been saying for all of July and most of August. “Don’t worry, you guys will make up. You guys always make up.”
“You don’t get it, this isn’t like before,” I told him. “She wouldn’t even look at me.”
“All of this over a party,” he said, which pissed me off.
“It’s not over a party.”
“I know, I know—hold on a sec, Bells.” I heard him talking to someone, and then he came back on the phone. “Our hot wings just got here. Want me to call you back after I eat? I can be quick.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said.
“Don’t be mad.”
I said, “I’m not,” and I wasn’t. Not really. How could he understand what was going on with me and Taylor? He was a guy. He didn’t get it. He didn’t get how important, how really and truly vital, it was to me that Taylor and I start off our last year of high school together by each other’s side.
So why couldn’t I just call her, then? It was partly pride and partly something else. I was the one who had been pulling away from her this whole time, she was the one who had been holding on. Maybe I thought I was growing past her, maybe it was all for the best. We’d have to say good-bye next fall, maybe it would be easier this way. Maybe we’d been codependent, maybe more me on her than the other way around, and now I needed to stand on my own feet. This is what I told myself.
When I told this to Jeremiah the next night, he said, “Just call her.”
I was pretty sure he was just sick of hearing me talk about it, so I said, “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
The week before school started, the week I usually came back from Cousins, we always went back-to-school shopping together. Always. We’d been doing it since elementary school. She always knew the right kind of jeans to get. We’d go to Bath & Body Works and get those “Buy Three, Get One Free” kind of deals, and then we’d come home and split everything up so we each had a lotion, a body gel, a scrub. We’d be set until Christmas, at least.
That year, I went with my mom. My mom hated shopping. We were waiting in line to pay for jeans when Taylor and her mom walked into the store carrying a couple of shopping bags each. “Luce!” my mom called out.
Mrs. Jewel waved and came right over, with Taylor trailing behind her wearing sunglasses and cutoff shorts. My mom hugged Taylor, and Mrs. Jewel hugged me and said, “It’s been a long time, honey.”
To my mom, she said, “Laurel, can you believe our little girls are all grown up now? My gosh, I remember when they insisted on
doing everything together. Baths, haircuts, everything.”
“I remember,” my mother said, smiling.
I caught Taylor’s eye. Our moms kept on talking, and we just stood there looking at each other but not really.
After a minute, Taylor pulled out her cell phone. I didn’t want to let this moment pass without saying something to her. I asked, “Did you get anything good?”
She nodded. Since she was wearing sunglasses, it was hard to tell what she was thinking. But I knew Taylor well. She loved to brag about her bargains.
Taylor hesitated and then said, “I got some hot boots for twenty-five percent off. And a couple of sundresses that I can winterize with tights and sweaters.”
I nodded. Then it was our turn to pay, and I said, “Well, see you at school.”
“See you,” she said, turning away.
Without thinking, I handed the jeans to my mom and stopped Taylor. It could be the last time we ever talked to each other if I didn’t say something. “Wait,” I said. “Do you want to come over tonight? I bought a new skirt, but I don’t know if I should tuck shirts into it or what …”
She pursed her lips for a second and then said, “Okay. Call me.”
Taylor did come over that night. She showed me how to wear the skirt—which shoes looked best with it and which tops. Things weren’t the same with us, not right away, and maybe not ever. We were growing up. We were still figuring out how to be in each other’s lives without being everything to each other.
The truly ironic thing is that we ended up at the same school. Of all the schools in all the world, we ended up at each other’s. It was fated. We were meant to be friends. We were meant to be in each other’s lives, and you know what? I welcomed it. We weren’t together all the time like we used to be—she had her sorority friends, I had my friends from my hall. But we still had each other.
chapter eleven
The next day, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I called Jeremiah. I told him I needed to see him, that he should come over, and my voice shook as I said it. Over the phone, I could hear how grateful he was, how eager to make amends. I tried to justify calling him so fast by telling myself that I needed to see him face-to-face in order to move on. The truth was, I missed him. I, probably just as much as he did, wanted to figure out a way to forget what had happened.
