The Art of Holding On and Letting Go

by Kristin Lenz

“You know, Ashley, the one who usually sits over there, always wears white, ruffly peasant shirts and dresses, and those lace-up boots.”

  “I thought goths always wore black.”

  “You have so much to learn. Being goth is about expressing yourself as a unique person—we don’t follow a mold.”

  Except for Virgin Goth Girl, they all looked pretty much the same to me. But I didn’t say that to Kaitlyn. It wasn’t like I had any style of my own. I didn’t buy my jeans with artfully ripped holes; they were thin and torn at my knee from wearing them so much.

  “So when are you going to ask Tom?”

  “Shh,” I said, looking around to see who was in earshot. “I’m not asking him.” I picked at the frayed cuff of my flannel shirt, the beaded bracelets peeking out.

  “Now you’re messing with a … son of a bitch,” Nick appeared next to Kaitlyn and pounded out the drumbeat on the table. His shirt was inside out and backward with the tag in front.

  “You’ll never guess who just asked me to Sadie Hawkins,” he said.

  “Virgin Goth Girl,” Kaitlyn and I said at the same time.

  “Ooh, her fatal attraction to moi has been that obvious?”

  “Please …” Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “What’d you say?”

  “Actually, I didn’t let her finish. She started fishing around, and I bolted. Save me?” he whimpered.

  “Of course. Would you like to go to Sadie Hawkins with me?”

  “That would be lovely,” Nick said and bowed and kissed her hand. The hand.

  For a second, I think we all held our breath.

  Kaitlyn recovered first and waved Nick off, her hand disappearing under the table. “Okay, enough already. Now we have to find a date for Cara.”

  “Go Tom, go Tom, go Tom,” Nick rolled his arms and chanted.

  “Shut up!” I hissed. Two rows over, Tom sauntered toward his table, carrying a loaded tray.

  “I heard all about you and Tom in your Road Rage class,” Nick said. “Way to go.” His dimples flashed and he raised his eyebrows up and down.

  And they both had the nerve to sit there looking innocently at me.

  “I’m not asking him,” I said, crossing my arms.

  Tom slid onto the bench with his basketball buddies. No Ann-Marie Fidesco. No other girls. Just a group of guys, sharing food, gesturing, acting goofy.

  38

  I had missed Tom at his locker in the morning. I chickened out when he was sharpening my pencil before class. I twisted my beaded bracelets together while our teacher droned on. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing it. If my blood pumped any harder, it would spurt out of my ears. I hadn’t even been this nervous at the World Championships.

  In the hallway we were swept along with the tide of students, pausing at a jam up in front of the library. Katniss Everdeen peered out from a poster, her bow and arrow aimed straight at me. I forced the words out of my throat. “Do you want to go to Sadie Hawkins with me?”

  He stood dead in his tracks while the crowd surged and swarmed past us. “Oh Cara, that’d be fun, but I’m already going with someone else.”

  “Sure, okay, no biggie,” I stammered. We were still standing in the middle of the hallway, and someone knocked into my shoulder, shoving me closer to Tom.

  He reached out a hand to steady me, but I kept my eyes down. I twisted out of his grasp and bolted. At least that’s what I tried to do, weaving and dodging my way through the crowd.

  “Cara!”

  I kept going, blood roaring through my ears.

  In English, the teacher gave us the prompt, “How does one define love?” and told us to write for fifteen minutes. Are you kidding me? I stared down at my paper, replaying the scene with Tom. Mrs. Smith walked up and down the aisles offering help. She paused at my desk and touched my shoulder.

  “Cara, are you feeling okay? Your cheeks looked flushed.”

  “I’m okay,” I muttered and ducked my head while my cheeks flamed even more.

  What was I thinking, asking him in person? I should have let Kaitlyn ask him for me. Or I should have just texted him first and asked if he was going to the dance. Idiot. It was going to be awkward every time I saw him now.

  At the end of the day, I headed straight outside into the freezing air. Tears filled my eyes, blurring the path. Who did I think I was? How did I get caught up in this superficial high school life? What was I doing here?

  Spring was around the corner in California. It was nowhere in sight in Michigan. Piles of polluted sludge lined the streets. More snow was forecasted overnight. I stepped over the slick patches of ice on the sidewalk. My nose dripped, and I sniffed—a familiar smell from home—a campfire? Wood burning from someone’s fireplace.

  I fingered the smooth stone in my pocket.

  Kaitlyn pulled up at my house just as I rushed up the sidewalk. I glanced over at her but kept walking. She hopped out of her car.

  “Cara!”

  I paused but didn’t turn to look at her. I just couldn’t.

  She caught up to me. “Hey, how come you didn’t wait at school?”

  I shook my head, and she followed me into the house, past my grandparents’ questioning looks, to my room.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I flopped on my bed face first, grabbing my Tahoe dog and squeezing her tight. “I’m such a loser.” My eyes filled with tears again.

  Kaitlyn sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my back. “You’re not a loser. What happened? It’s Tom, isn’t it? That asshole! What did he say?” She got up and came back with a tissue. “It’ll be okay.”

  I sat up and blew my nose.

  “He’s already going with someone else.”

  “Did he say who?” She scratched my back.

  I shook my head.

  “Was he a jerk about it?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “He said he was already going with someone else. End of story.”

  “I mean, did he seemed bummed or anything, like he really wanted to go with you, but …”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not just Tom. I shouldn’t even be here. This isn’t my life.” My lips trembled.

  Kaitlyn was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “It might not be the life you had before, but it’s good to try new things and have fun. You don’t always have to be a serious climber girl.”

  I tugged at Tom’s bracelet to take it off, but it was twisted and tangled with my other one. I slid them both off and tossed them on my nightstand.

  “I know bad stuff happened when you were in Ecuador. And when something bad happens, it’s okay to feel bad for a while, for a long time even, but you have to keep going. Good things will happen again. You need to let them.”

  “I need to go home. I need to go back to California.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I pressed my fingers over my eyelids, trying to halt the tears inside. “I just need to.”

  “You mean to go back and live there or like right now, soon, to visit?”

  “Yes. Both. I don’t know. I just can’t stay here. I don’t belong here.”

  We sat in silence, my blunt words hanging in the air.

  “Okay,” Kaitlyn said. “Well, I will miss you terribly, but if you need to go back, I guess that’s just what you need to do. Will your grandparents take you?”

  “Yeah right,” I said with a snort. “My grandma can barely ride in a car for more than ten minutes. They wouldn’t understand.”

  “I have money saved up from my job,” Kaitlyn said. “We could hit Nick up too.”

  “Oh Kaitlyn.” My tears flowed. “I would never—”

  “Come here.” Kaitlyn opened her arms, and I leaned into her.

  She gave me a squeeze then released me. “You need to eat some ice cream, read some Agatha Christie, and we will figure out a plan tomorrow. ’Kay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  I stayed in my room for the rest
of the evening, telling Grandma and Grandpa I didn’t feel good. It was true. My skin burned. I felt feverish. I didn’t cry. I just turned out the lights and crawled into bed.

  I woke up with a gasp at three a.m. My skin sweaty and clothes twisted around my body. I took off my jeans and sweater and tried to drift back to sleep, but my mind had been revved to racing speed. I peered into the darkness, feeling more lost than ever.

  Four a.m. Still couldn’t sleep. Tahoe rested in the crook of my arm. The darkness of my room was actually full of color, like glitter, hovering in the air above me. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the tiny pinpricks of color on my eyelids.

  What an awful friend I had been. Such a baby to fall apart over one rejection from a boy compared to what Kaitlyn’s been through. She wanted good things to happen. For both of us. She must have thought that she didn’t matter enough for me to stay here. That I could just leave her behind. I hadn’t said anything about missing her if I left, or even if I would come back.

  39

  I got to school early and waited for Kaitlyn by her locker.

  She took one look at me and said, “Were you up all night packing?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going. Not anytime soon anyway. It’s okay. Thank you for being such a good friend. I would miss you so much if I left.”

  We hugged each other tight.

  “Girly hug! Girly hug!” Nick wrapped his arms around both of us and jumped up and down.

  We laughed and shrugged him off.

  “Okay, I heard that you are still dateless for Sadie Hawkins, and I have the solution,” Nick said. “You should go with my brother Nate.”

  Kaitlyn and I both opened our mouths in shocked disgust.

  “Ew,” Kaitlyn said.

  “No way,” I said.

  Nick looked hurt. “What’s wrong with my brother?”

  “You know very well what’s wrong with your arrogant ass of a brother. No offense,” Kaitlyn said.

  “No way,” I said again.

  “Fine, who’s it going to be then?”

  Kaitlyn and I looked at each other. I shrugged and said, “I’m just not going.”

  “You have to go,” Kaitlyn said.

  “You could ask Jake,” Nick said, snickering. “You’d make his day. No, you would make his life. He’d be the talk of his school. The first middle schooler asked to a high school dance. And you only come up to like his belly button. It’d be like—”

  I held up my hand. “Not funny.”

  “So not funny,” Kaitlyn said.

  And we linked arms and marched down the hall.

  My stomach convulsed all the way to Algebra II. I spotted Tom as soon as I walked in, but I quickly looked away. When I took my seat, he got up to sharpen his pencil. I followed his back with my eyes, but looked down when he reached the pencil sharpener. I don’t know if he looked my way. I was busy digging out the mechanical pencil from Grandpa. I dashed out of class the second the bell rang.

  Kaitlyn rushed by my locker at the end of the day. “I’ve got to go to work, you okay to walk home?”

  “Oh yeah, go ahead.”

  She waved, then called out from down the hall, “I have an idea! I’ll call you later.”

  An idea about what? She was gone before I could ask. I turned back to my locker, and Tom appeared out of nowhere.

  “Hey Cara, how’s it going?”

  I opened my mouth but my chest was caving in.

  “You get to drive your grandpa’s Mustang much? You’re so lucky. I’ve got an old beater now. My parents surprised me with it. Not that I’m not grateful, but it’s a hand-me-down ancient Escort wagon from my neighbor.”

  I managed a smile. I think. Maybe it came across as a wince.

  “Well, I just wanted to say hi. I’ll catch you later.”

  And he was gone.

  God, I needed to go climbing.

  Jake was already at Planet Granite when I arrived.

  “Cara, come look!”

  He hung about twenty feet in the air, just below an overhang, and dipped his hands in the chalk bag tied at his waist.

  “I think this is it. A 5.14. Nate and I put it up yesterday. I can’t get past the darn crux!”

  A cute, middle school girl was belaying him. Jake always had girls checking him out, but he was too into his climbing to pay attention. Or too into me, as Nick would tease.

  “Climbing,” he called down to the girl.

  “Okay,” she called back.

  He hooked his right ankle on a pretzel shaped lump, smeared his left foot on the wall, stretched with his left arm, grabbed a moonrock hold, reached his right arm up and—

  “Falling!” he yelled.

  His belayer girl popped about two feet off the ground from the force of his fall, and I grabbed her harness to pull her back down.

  “Let him down,” I said.

  “I don’t know if he wants to. He’s almost got it.”

  “Let him down.”

  She let out the rope and Jake sunk to the ground, trying to catch his breath.

  “Your turn, Cara.”

  I tied in to the rope, and Jake took over belaying.

  “Climbing,” I said.

  “Climb on.”

  I motored up the first stretch until I got to the spot where Jake had fallen. I hooked my right heel on the pretzel like he did, but I couldn’t stretch far enough to reach the left handhold. I backed down and used the pretzel simultaneously as a handhold and foothold, pushing up with my triceps, balancing my weight. I stood on my tiptoe on the tip of the hold and inched my way up, smearing my other foot, my right hand finding a tiny pincher hold that Jake had later used as a foothold.

  Now I was within reach of the moonrock that Jake had used. My fingers pressed into its divots. I matched both hands on it, pushed my feet off from below, let out a huge grunt, and dynoed to the next hold. I danced to the finish and clipped the last bolt.

  “Take!” I called.

  Jake lowered me down.

  “5.13,” I said with a grin. “Maybe even 5.12.”

  “You make me sick,” he said, tying into the rope to give it another go.

  Kaitlyn texted me later, but I told her I couldn’t talk. I didn’t want to think about plans for California or Sadie Hawkins. I just wanted to keep the feeling from climbing. Contented and weightless, like floating on a cushion of clouds. It was the closest I ever came to the feeling of being home. I went to bed and slept until my alarm woke me up.

  40

  It was a good thing I entered school well rested the next morning. I had forgotten that it was sex ed day. I had no idea what to expect. For some reason I expected the girls and guys to be separated, but we were all together, herded into the auditorium. Girls huddled together on one side, jittery and giggling. The boys sat on the other side, yelling down the aisles and shoving each other. Only Nick straddled the imaginary line that divided the sexes. He sat in the middle of the back row, Kaitlyn beside him. I filed in next to her, spotting Tom down toward the front in the middle of a guy row. He was slumped in his seat, long legs sprawled out to the sides. As if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned around and scanned the room. I sat down before he could catch me.

  A hush fell over the room as our assistant principal, Mr. Halloway, and Nick’s favorite, Mrs. Plaster, took the stage. A few twitters and elbow jabs went around the room. Nick had a name for Mr. Halloway, too. It was Hal, short for halitosis. Which was kind of mean, but his dragon breath was enough to make you gag. Hal was an ex–football star, looked big and beefy in his suit and tie, and walked like he knew he was a stud. It turned out that our two teachers had minored in Human Sexuality in college. For real. Who does that?

  They began with a brief introduction of the class, saying that we had already been taught the mechanics of our bodies in previous health classes, so they would be focusing on relationships.

  “We want to hear directly from you. What concerns you, what are you struggling with?” Mrs. Plaster s
aid. “You are growing up a rapidly changing time with technology, social media, like we’ve never seen before. You spend much of your time in an online world, and we’re going to talk about how that is altering relationships for better and for worse.”

  “I want everyone to pull out a piece of paper and write down at least one question,” Hal instructed. “Anything that’s on your mind. Friendships, dating, sexuality. Don’t put your name on it. We’ll collect them and try to answer as many as we can.”

  I glanced at Kaitlyn, and she crossed her eyes. Nick scribbled away. I had no idea what to write. What do you do when you get up the nerve to ask a guy to Sadie Hawkins, and he turns you down? Yeah right.

  I twirled my ponytail. In Spanish, the word for “questions” is “preguntas.” I wrote, “No preguntas,” and folded up my paper, smiling to myself.

  Hal and Mrs. Plaster circled the room, collecting all the folded up notes. Then they began, which I thought was pretty brave of them. I assumed they’d take a few minutes to review them first. I mean who knows what kind of perv questions some kids were going to write down.

  Hal read the first question. “What do you do if someone you know has bad breath?”

  Half of the room burst out laughing. Kaitlyn and I looked at Nick, but he was sitting with a perfectly straight face, as if he was eagerly anticipating the answer.

  “Now, now, this is a good question. It’s a touchy subject. You’ve got to find a way to tell the person without hurting their feelings, but sometimes honesty is the best policy. Do you have any thoughts, Mrs. Cooper?”

  Mrs. Plaster looked at Hal with a sly smile, and said, “You could offer them a breath mint.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a roll of mints, and held it out to him.

  Laughter exploded around the room. Nick was physically shaking in his seat, doubled over.

  Hal laughed with us, clueless. I felt a little bad for the guy.

  Mrs. Plaster read the next question. “What do you do when you’re friends with a girl but you like her more than that?”

  Whispers spread around the room. The basketball guys craned in their seats, trying to guess who had written the question. I couldn’t see Tom’s face.