“They’re our new friends, you know? They won’t stop being your friends just because you’re not coming along tonight.”
“I know. I’ll go make coffee, all right?”
“Yeah, okay. And, Meg?”
“What?” I ask, stopping to look back halfway out the door.
“If I haven’t found anything to wear by the time you’re back, you may help me.”
I bounce a little on my feet and grin at him. “I’ll be quick! You won’t regret it.”
He heaves a sigh. “You always say that. And then you try and make me wear my Yoda T-shirt.”
I wave at him and hurry down the stairs.
And I have just realized: He is right! They are my friends, too! So if he’s not willing to tell me about Danny, I am sure I can get the full story of tonight from someone else at drama club next week.
I’ll try not to do anything. Unless—well, unless stepping in appears to be absolutely necessary.
Chapter 46
Linus
THE GROUP ACTUALLY LIKED MY idea of going bowling, which I almost regret even suggesting in the first place because a movie is so much more comfortable, but I’m not letting myself dwell on my fears. I’m doing this.
Danny picks me up like he’d promised and we listen to his nineties cassette tapes in the car on our way over to the bowling alley.
“I should put some newer music on tapes so I can listen to that in the car,” he says.
“You could also get a new car stereo,” I suggest carefully, but he shakes his head.
“Where would be the fun in that?”
I nod along to Savage Garden, and I kind of have to agree. This is awesome. I feel a little like I’m in a nineties high school movie.
We’re six people: Alyssa, Stella, Malik, Katie, Danny, and me, of course, and I know all of them from drama club. We all know one another and have seen one another making fools of ourselves during drama club, which I guess means we have already bonded. That makes this evening a lot less intimidating in my mind.
We meet up outside in the parking lot so we can all walk in together and, first of all, go and rent our shoes.
While we’re waiting for the guy behind the counter to find all six sizes we ordered, Alyssa taps my shoulder. “This was a really good idea,” she tells me. “I love bowling.”
“I don’t even know a lot about bowling,” I admit. “I just thought it sounded like fun.”
“Meg didn’t want to come along?”
I shake my head. “I tried to persuade her, but no. She already had plans for tonight.”
“That’s too bad,” Alyssa says. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, at least you’re here.” She smiles, and I smile back because Alyssa is nice and I like her.
“Does anyone want pizza?” Malik asks. “I kind of want pizza.”
“Yes!” Stella nods enthusiastically. “Absolutely!”
“Pizza is always good,” I agree.
Since everyone seems to share that opinion, once we’ve put our shoes on, Stella and Malik go to get pizza and sodas for everyone while the rest of us go ahead to claim our lane and enter our team names into the computer. Then, as soon as Stella and Malik are back and have set down their trays with our drinks and the giant pizza they got for all of us, we start playing.
So far, being out with people is not as awkward as I thought it would be at all.
I was right about one thing, though. I completely and utterly suck at bowling! Which was to be expected since I have been, like, three times in my life so far. That hardly makes me an expert. But it’s not about winning, and the playing in itself is actually a lot of fun.
To my utter delight, Danny sucks as well, so I’m not the only one here who’s looking a little silly.
My first try, I don’t even knock over one single pin. Neither does Danny. On my second try, I get two—Danny once again gets none. His ball ends up in the gutter. He turns around to the rest of us, grinning widely, bouncing up and down on the heels of his feet.
“How bad was that?” he calls. “I missed two in a row! If I keep this up, is there an award for worst player?”
Everyone laughs and I say, “I guess you’ll have to fight me for that title.”
Danny comes over, one hand lifted up in the air, and it only takes me a second before I realize I’m supposed to high-five him. “It is on!” he promises.
I’m still going to try to hit the pins, though, and I know Danny will, too—this is the purpose of the game after all and also everything else would be unfair to Alyssa, who is on our team and actually kind of amazing at bowling. She even got a strike. Thanks to her, mostly, we’re not doing too badly.
On my next try I knock over one pin, which is at least more than Danny had done. Katie raises both eyebrows at me. “I assume you were trying to make it go to the right like that?”
I grin at her. “Of course! That was my intention.”
“Good job, in that case,” she says, giving me a thumbs-up and grinning back. “I’m starting to suspect that you’re some sort of secret agent and you’re really playing for our team. You and Danny both,” she adds, smirking up at him.
Danny laughs. “Shut up, you’re blowing our cover!”
“Ohhh,” she whispers loudly, exaggeratedly waving us away from her. “Sorry! Go back to secretly losing. I didn’t say anything!”
“Katie, would you kindly stop intimidating my teammates? That would be awesome, thanks,” Alyssa jumps in, handing Katie another slice of pizza. “Here, stuff that in your face and stop it with the slanderous accusations!”
“It’s not accusations, darling; the evidence is right there in the computer,” Katie says, but she takes the pizza. “Your team is going down.” She does an evil laugh that is honestly impressive before reaching for her soda, focusing back on Stella, who is just now rolling her next ball. “Watch how it’s really done,” Katie says, taking a huge bite of pizza and nodding toward her teammate, then flinching at the flash of light and the clicking sound of a cell phone camera. “Hey!” she manages around a mouthful of pizza, lips greasy and a string of cheese clinging to her chin. She glares at Malik, who is examining his phone screen with a grin.
“Yup, I’m uploading that right away and you’re getting tagged,” he announces.
Katie groans and swallows her bite. “Oh my god. You suck so much. This will have dire consequences, my friend! When you least expect it!”
Malik rolls his eyes at her and proceeds to upload his photo.
“Oh, team selfie?” Danny suggests, throwing a questioning look at me and Alyssa.
I shrug. “Sure.”
“Malik, you can take one of us while you’re being lame and waving your phone around anyway,” Alyssa decides, pushing Danny and me together and putting an arm around my shoulders. I’m tightly sandwiched in between her and Danny all of a sudden, Danny’s arm landing across my shoulders from the other side, and it’s really not very difficult to grin into the camera from this position.
Just as Malik is snapping the picture, Stella, who must have sneaked up behind us, shouts “Boo” and gives us a little shove, so as the camera flashes we’re all screaming and making weird faces and the picture comes out looking rather funny, all of us with wide eyes and our mouths open and hands flailing.
“Can you send me that?” I ask Malik, looking over his shoulder at the screen. I really want a memento of this night and that picture is kind of hilarious.
“Sure,” he agrees, and as I give him my number, everyone else realizes they don’t have my number yet, either, and suddenly they’re all getting out their own phones so we can exchange contact info. And just like that, for the first time in my life, the contacts list in my phone looks as if I actually have a group of friends.
We go back to playing after that, and Katie goes back to teasing us for playing so badly, but in a friendly way. Nobody really cares that our bowling balls keep rolling off the lane into the gutter. Everyone laughs with us, and Da
nny and I keep high-fiving each other after our worst shots. Rolls? Well, whatever you call them.
The best thing about the night, except for getting to hang out with Danny, is how no one seems bothered by the fact that I’m here. They act like I’m their friend, they don’t make me feel weird about being the new guy in the group, and they don’t have a million inside jokes that make me feel left out—something I had definitely been a little afraid of. Though, to be fair, Danny is new, too. But he has been out with them before. I’m newer. And I was afraid of just not being able to settle into the group dynamic.
But no, they are just genuinely nice people and I really like hanging out with them. A lot. More than I expected.
And this doesn’t mean that I am magically transformed and that I’m going to buy T-shirts without prints on them tomorrow and start hanging out with the cool kids during lunch break. This doesn’t mean that I want to spend all of my evenings like this. But for tonight, it is fun. And I can definitely imagine doing it again.
Malik, Stella, and Katie on the other team beat us in the end, which surprises pretty much no one and doesn’t even really seem to matter. Katie gloats, but only until Alyssa and Stella physically pick her up and threaten to use her as a bowling ball until all three of them collapse into a laughing heap.
Bowling is definitely a sport I could get behind.
* * *
Danny drives me home once we’re done having fun and it’s dark out with millions of stars overhead, the air cool and crisp in November. I’m looking forward to winter. I really want to build a snow Vulcan.
“Did you have a good time?” Danny interrupts my thoughts.
I turn my head against the backrest of the passenger seat, smile at him. “Yes. I did. You couldn’t tell?”
“No, I could. I guess I just wanted to make sure.”
“It was amazing. Thank you for making me come along.”
“It wouldn’t have been the same without you,” he says quietly, and I have to look away and clear my throat.
“You probably wouldn’t have lost quite so badly without me, though.”
“Hey, did you see me play? And it’s not about winning anyway.”
“I agree. There’s just something so satisfying about—what exactly? It’s not even knocking over pins. I didn’t do that a whole lot, so that can’t be it. Why is it even so much fun?”
“I—honestly have no idea. But it’s kind of addictive, isn’t it?”
“A little, yes,” I agree. “We should do it again sometime!” The words are out before I can stop them, but Danny looks delighted.
“We should! Whenever you want! Just let me know.”
“And whenever everyone else has time, right?”
He pauses. “Or we could also, um. Go by ourselves? One day? Just us?”
“That way each of us would get more turns!”
“Precisely. Yes.”
“We could do that.”
It’s dark in the car so I’m pretty sure he can’t see me blush. I hope he can’t see me blush.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he says quietly.
Chapter 47
Meg
I KNOW FOR MOST PEOPLE Thanksgiving break means family reunions and stuff. But that’s not how Mom and I handle things. Mostly because Mom’s parents live on the other side of the country and the flight is very expensive, so we’re saving the reunions for Christmas. And Mom’s sister has a huge family of her own, also on the other side of the country. And from what I understand, Dad’s family lives only a few hours away, but neither of us really wants him or any of his family (or any of his current girlfriends—who knows how many he has right now) at our holiday celebration.
So in the week leading up to it, we start preparing for a holiday of our own the way we do every year: lots of food, board games, and a movie marathon for Friday because we’ll be too tired and too lazy to move. We’ve done it this way for the past few years and I am looking forward to it a lot. It’s the best holiday ever, almost better than Christmas.
The only thing that dampens my excitement is remembering how it was last year. How Sophia had come over for the movie marathon on Friday. It had been so nice, having her here and imagining what it would be like a few years ahead, when we’d be making our own holiday traditions, celebrating in the spacious yet cozy apartment we were always talking about renting together.
But it’s fine, really. I’m fine. I’m just wondering how long it will take until all those memories will stop haunting me. I just … miss her. That’s all. I’m also aware that she’s most likely back in town for the holiday, and I don’t know what I’m more afraid of: that she’s going to ask me to meet up or that she’s not going to ask. I don’t think I’m ready to see her. But if she asks, I don’t think I could say no. And if she doesn’t ask—what would that even mean? That she doesn’t miss me at all? On the other hand, I’m not asking her, either, am I?
Anyway. I know that Linus is doing the traditional Thanksgiving experience with his family; he doesn’t have any brothers and sisters, but he has something like fifty thousand cousins and two full sets of grandparents and I don’t even want to imagine what his tiny house looks like with all of them crammed in there.
I am usually really looking forward to my four days of not moving from the house, except that this year that’s kind of all that I’ve been doing for weeks. Even if I really like being by myself a lot of the time, all of this sitting and not having anyone to talk to is making me more than a little antsy at this point. At least once the holiday is over we’re almost into December, which means just a couple weeks until the play, and that means things will be busy. Even if I’m not onstage, Alyssa has me doing all kinds of things behind the scenes. It’s actually exciting.
So, my Thanksgiving is just as calm and uneventful as I am used to. And, like every year, we have prepared way too much food for the two of us and will probably be living off the leftovers for several days until we have to throw them out. This is also nothing unusual.
We only leave the house for a short walk on Friday just to stretch our legs a bit and get some fresh air, and then it’s right back to watching movies for the rest of the day. I do my best not to miss Sophia, to not even think of her. My Thanksgiving tradition with my mom is older than my relationship with Sophia was. I just have to go back to the way things were before.
Just like every year, I fall asleep on the couch before midnight and Mom has to wake me to send me up to bed once the movie is over.
And this is exactly why it is (usually) the perfect kind of holiday: no responsibilities and nothing to do; the most exhausting thing we had to do was to wash the dishes.
I sleep in on Saturday because I can—once I am properly rested I will have to get started on my studying, but for now I am happy extending my holiday a little bit and getting the rest I want for some reason after doing nothing but resting for two days straight.
After a late brunch and some TV while Mom finally sits down in the big armchair and resumes reading her new boss’s paper, murmuring insults aimed at him under her breath the entire time, I finally pull myself out of my weird funk to get started on everything I have to do this long weekend.
* * *
Starting the Monday after Thanksgiving we have extra rehearsals for drama club every afternoon because the first performance is just about two weeks later, and the days fly by.
We’re doing six performances altogether, mostly because our auditorium is small and doesn’t seat a big audience.
This means we’ve had to cancel all our other clubs for the duration of this school play craziness, but only for a couple of weeks before the Christmas holidays, so that’s okay. And also I assume that for Linus it’s absolutely worth it.
I tell myself that whether Danny is straight or not, Linus is obviously at least getting a friend out of it. And there’s still a chance that Danny is, after all, interested in him. The bowling invitation has given me a bit of hope back in that regard. Mostly because I s
till don’t really want to think about what I did in case Danny has no romantic interest whatsoever in my best friend. That would just be—not good. Seriously, seriously not good.
I’ve never seen Linus fall for anyone before—I’m not counting his online flirtation with the guy from Portugal, because I think that was more wishful thinking than actual attraction—so this is all new. But seeing him with Danny now makes me realize that he really is in love, whether he wants to admit it to himself or not. And after the way I’ve encouraged him to give this a try, I don’t know if he could forgive me if it turned out it was all just false hope. I don’t know if I could ever forgive myself.
So I spend my afternoons backstage with the other club members who didn’t get cast and help out making everything run smoothly. I tell myself I am working backstage, not hiding from anything.
Organizing is my thing, so I do manage to have a good time. Whenever I succeed in focusing on what we’re doing here instead of dwelling on all the happy memories this setting evokes. Memories of me hanging out here with Sophia back when she was part of the club. I used to accompany her to her auditions and sometimes I picked her up from rehearsal.
I still miss her so much. I don’t know how to stop. It’s even worse after the holiday and all those happy memories I just can’t seem to shake off no matter how hard I try.
But anyway. Alyssa takes care of all the actual cues and rehearsal reports and whatnot, but I’m mostly in charge of props and costumes and making sure everything is where we need it and I’m good at that. Organizing things calms me.
And yet I can’t help it, I’m still … jealous. I spend a lot of time just watching the rehearsals go on up there on the stage and it looks so amazing. It looks like so much fun. Fun that I’m left out of. Because they didn’t want me. That seems to be a pattern developing in my life.
Girlfriend, best friend, drama club—they’re all perfectly fine without me. I’m not necessary. I’m not needed. And, okay, I pushed Linus into spending time with Danny, but once it turns out that Danny doesn’t in fact want him, Linus is never going to talk to me ever again and I’m going to be completely alone at last.
Meg & Linus Page 20
