I know what I have to do.
41
GIGI IS HESITANT WHEN I text her first thing Wednesday morning to see if she’ll meet me at lunch and maybe do me a favor I don’t even deserve.
Harper:
Please?
Harper:
PLEASE!!! I miss you.
Harper:
I’ll bring you mac and cheese from Ban Bread.
Harper:
Please?
Gigi:
Fine. But only because I’ve been craving that all week.
I tell Gigi I’m sorry the second she walks out of the Bosh Building to meet me.
“Shift Girls don’t say sorry, Harper,” she says, grudgingly accepting my offering of gluten-free mac and cheese. She walks ahead of me toward the fountain.
“I’m not a Shift Girl anymore,” I reply, taking a seat on the ledge next to her.
I spend the next thirty minutes apologizing. I don’t qualify any of my actions. I don’t make excuses. I don’t leave out details. There will be no lying through omission today.
“You should have told me in the Hamptons,” Gigi says. “Now I feel like a fool.”
“I’m the fool. You were the one telling the truth. I was lying because I was a coward and a hypocrite,” I continue. “And not just about my nonexistent love life before coming here. I never should have gotten pissed at you for writing about purge watching. Did I ever tell you how good that article was? I didn’t, but it was amazing. You deserve to get the magazine feature.”
“Maybe,” Gigi says, a very slight smile forming at the edges of her mouth. Even though she warned me she was leaving as soon as she finished her mac and cheese, she’s still here in spite of her empty bowl. “McKayla says it’s really close between me and Abigail right now. I think I need one last clicky story to put me over the edge. Preferably something Internet friendly that I also don’t think is idiotic. Artistic, even?”
“Wait! I know exactly what you should write about!” I burrow in my bag to find my phone. Which isn’t there. I picture it lying next to Princess’s bed, where I used it to take a picture of her lying on her back with her Manolo Bark-nik chew toy hanging out of her mouth this morning. I was going to send it to Ben until I remembered that I couldn’t because he hates me.
I make Gigi give me her phone, so I can show her Ben’s dog Instagram account.
“Is that dog getting bar mitzvahed?” Gigi asks in disbelief.
“Bark mitzvahed! And yes, my friend’s an amazing dog photographer. You should do a profile on him and make a slide show of his pictures. Clicky and artistic.”
“I’ll consider it,” Gigi says coyly, but I can see her smiling to herself, already imagining it getting picked up by BuzzSnap.
“Maybe I forgive you.” She puts her phone away and takes the key card I asked for out of her romper’s pocket. “Here.”
“You got Abigail’s?”
“I had to,” she says. “Abigail is the only one you could pass for with security downstairs. All I had to do was tell her there was an up-for-grabs bag of organic antihistamines in the open kitchen. I grabbed her card off her desk when she went running. Why do you need to get up there, though? McKayla isn’t your biggest fan right now.”
“I’ll tell you if it works.”
I use Abigail’s ID to trick the security guard into letting me through to the elevators. As planned, Gigi distracts the Shift Girls while I sneak into McKayla’s empty office.
When McKayla strolls back in from her Wednesday beauty department lunch, I’m sitting on her charcoal couch. Judging from the glare in her eyes, I’m worried she’s going to use the eyeliner pencil she’s carrying as a weapon.
Her greeting is, “Get out.”
“I came here to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“You know I hate that word,” she seethes. “And I don’t care. I know that following directions isn’t your strong suit, but get out. It’s not that hard.”
I ignore the get out part. And the insults. And how terrifying she is when pissed off.
“I know you hate that word,” I say. “But sometimes it’s necessary. I put you in a horrible position, I jeopardized all the work that you’ve done to turn this website around, and I want to make things right.”
I hand her two printed pages. “I e-mailed this to you as well, but I was worried you’d delete anything from me. I know I’m not the dating blogger anymore, but please at least consider publishing this.”
McKayla snatches my mea culpa out of my hands and gives it a quick skim. Probably just to feed her curiosity. “It’s more than a little too doe-eyed and sincere for my taste.”
“Please, McKayla.”
“You’re not going to cry, are you?” McKayla asks. But this time she pushes a box of tissues my way. She sighs. “It galls me to say this, but people have been sending e-mails asking where your new dating blog is since we didn’t put one up this morning.”
She skims the entire piece. “All right. Some media reporters have been asking questions. Word’s out that we dramatically lost two interns in less than a week. This thing would clear up any confusion that it was Shift’s fault. If I publish it.”
“Is that a yes?” I ask hopefully.
“This will never make the Leader Board.”
“Thank you!”
“I’m not doing this for you, Harper. I’m doing this for Shift. Now get out of my office before I call security.”
I’VE BEEN LYING ABOUT WHO I AM
And it’s time to say the “S” word.
At Shift, we aren’t supposed to say “I’m sorry.”
It’s not the worst rule. Girls often apologize too much.
I’m sorry, I have a question.
I’m sorry, I already have plans.
I’m sorry, you bumped into me—sorry for my own physical presence, sorry simply for being.
It’s a bad habit we need to break, being sorry for things that we have no reason to apologize for.
But today I am genuinely and unabashedly sorry. I’m not the girl you think I am, and I am sorry for lying to you all summer.
I got my job at Shift by writing a “personal” story about a crazy dating experience that I’d never had. Because, really, I didn’t have any dating experience period. That’s right, a girl who had never been on a real date has served as your dating guru all summer.
I’ve always been horrible with guys. My instructions on how to dazzle a guy on the street? Those were all hypothetical things that I thought sounded good but had no experience with myself. In fact, when I tried them out, I crashed and burned. But I was too embarrassed to share the truth.
It wasn’t all a lie. I did go foraging in Central Park and made out with a stranger in a gallery, but every fact was riddled with fiction and embellishments.
Why did I do it? Maybe because I was sorry for who I actually am.
But, really, where you fall on the dating spectrum doesn’t make you any more or less worthy. There’s no shame in embracing your truth, and by pretending to be more experienced than I was, I implied that there is.
And when I got caught up in being this desirable “cool girl,” that other “cool girls” could look up to and “cool guys” would want to date, I turned boys into my main priority. They became the only thing I cared about. But I was picking the wrong boys and I was ruining the most important relationship I will ever have. With my best friend.
My line about “being a good friend means putting your love life on hold” was good advice, but I wasn’t following it. And I hurt people I really care about.
Dates come and go; friends don’t. At the end of the day, the jerk you went to homecoming with won’t matter. Your friend who kicked him in the balls when he was a jerk to you will. Because she’ll be kicking jerks in the balls for you for the rest of your life.
And that’s the only relationship advice that I can give.
Carpe your Effing Diem (and no one else’s)!
Harper
Editor�
��s Note: The writer is no longer working at Shift and her other blog posts are under review. As a publication, we take authenticity very seriously and apologize for this writer’s actions.
42
EVEN THOUGH I MIGHT BE ruining any future credibility I could have as a journalist, in eight weeks this is by far the best advice I have given.
I take my final walk to the Shift elevators.
For the first time this whole summer, there are no stops on any of the forty-two floors on the way down. I wish there were. I want this to take as long as possible. I’m not ready to leave the soundproof elevator. Or the Bosh Building. Or journalism. I’m not ready to walk into the lobby, into . . . chaos.
Complete and total chaos.
I’m not talking about my own metaphorical struggle; something is happening in the Bosh Media lobby. Someone is getting patted down by security, there’s a lot of splashing in the koi pond, and the world-famous editor in chief of Icon magazine is wearing only one shoe and screaming, “Someone get that dog away from my Louboutin!”
I know those dogs. The one with the shoe, the others splashing around the waterfall, and a final pup chasing his tail, spinning himself into oblivion, next to the guy about to get handcuffed.
It’s Ben.
“Stop,” I yell, running over to the security guard. “Stop, I know him.”
“Is this the girl you were talking about?” the annoyed security guard asks Ben.
“Yes, sir.”
“So now you’ll agree to take your dogs and leave?”
“Yes, sir.”
The security guard takes his hand off Ben’s back and gives him a stern warning, “Now you know. When I say no dogs allowed, I mean no dogs allowed!”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, picking a surprisingly swimming-proficient Princess out of the koi pond.
“Don’t do it!” Ben says. A look of panic is on his face.
“You want me to leave Princess in the water?”
“Haven’t you been getting our texts?”
“Our?”
“Me and Kristina’s?”
“Oh. No. I forgot my phone today. I was kind of preoccupied.”
“Whatever, that doesn’t matter.” Ben grabs me by the arm and says, “I’m here to tell you, don’t hand in that story! Kristina texted me that I had to stop you from coming clean. She wanted to run down here herself, but she’s on a plane right now. Am I too late?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look,” he says. “You made a mistake. A huge one. But Kristina accepts your apology! She doesn’t want you to ruin your whole career before it ever gets started.”
Gigi and McKayla weren’t the only ones on the receiving end of my truth overdose. After spending hours writing in my notebook last night, coming to terms with everything I had done wrong, I realized that Kristina was the most important person to see the blog post—whether or not it got published.
I e-mailed it to her this morning with an overdue apology and the promise that I would never take her friendship for granted again. If she would consider still being friends with me.
Ben takes a crumpled piece of notebook paper out of his gym shorts pocket.
“I wrote it down so I got it right.” He reads his scrawl. “Kristina wanted me to tell you, and I quote, ‘to stop smoking Bobby McKittrick’s bad pot. We never stopped being friends, we just had a really bad fight. But we’ll work it out. Don’t wreck your career to fix it. It’s already been fixed.’ ”
I hug Princess a little tighter. My best friend doesn’t hate me.
Ben takes a step closer to me before the security guard grabs him by the back of his T-shirt. “How many times do I have to tell you to take the damn dogs outside?”
“Right. Sorry,” Ben says.
I walk with him to the front of the lobby and watch the dogs squeeze into a revolving door.
“You should have seen them in the cab,” he says.
“You took a cab?”
“I was in the park when Kristina started calling from the airport. I had to stop you. Did I stop you?”
“No.”
Ben looks like someone punched him in the gut. He sinks onto the ledge of the fountain with a look of utter defeat.
“It’s a good thing!” I sit down next to him. “I want people to read it. My other blog posts have been funny, but this one feels honest. It feels like me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Sorry you wasted the cab fare.”
“It’s not a waste,” he says. “I had to see you anyway.”
There’s that dimple. I didn’t realize I’d missed it so much.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask.
“I have to show you something, but I’m afraid you’re going to kill me when I do.”
He smooths the paper where he wrote Kristina’s message against the leg of his cargo shorts. It’s riddled with bite marks. He hands it to me. The other side is filled with familiar handwriting. My handwriting.
“How did my notebook get ripped up?” My heart stops beating when I see what’s actually written on the page. “Wait, you didn’t read this, did you?”
“It was an accident! Atticus got to it when I was picking up Princess. I tried to put the pages back together again, but when I saw my name . . .”
No.
No, no, no.
“So I took it with me on the walk,” he says. “Maybe I read it. I couldn’t help it. I had to talk to you, but then Kristina called and—”
I left my cell phone behind and my notebook out. Brilliant. “No. You should ignore every word of this! You and Kristina are great together. You have so much in common. You and Kristina—”
“Are friends,” he says with great finality. “We’ve only been friends. She knew I was crazy about someone else. She said it was obvious. I didn’t believe her when she said you felt the same way . . . until I read this.”
Ben takes his big hand and brushes a wisp of my hair behind my ear. He leans in slowly enough for me to stop him, but I don’t. I lean in too, until our lips are touching. His lips are softer than I thought they’d be. And also more intense. Carter’s kisses felt dangerous. Ben’s feel like home.
There are no tourists. There are no selfie sticks. It’s me and Ben and this amazing endless kiss.
Until Princess takes a running leap into my lap.
But Ben isn’t looking at Princess. He’s looking at me. In a way I’ve never been looked at before.
I have to catch my breath. “So, you and Kristina didn’t . . . ?”
“No.”
“And you’re sure, after everything, you don’t hate . . . ?”
“No.”
“How did she know I liked you?” I didn’t put that in my mea culpa e-mail to her. I didn’t want her to feel guilty if she and Ben had hooked up.
“I asked her the same thing. She just said a best friend always knows.”
I smile.
“So what happens now?” I ask. “I leave in a week. And I don’t know how to do . . . any of this.”
Ben grins so big that another dimple emerges. One that I never knew existed. “We’ll just have to figure it out as we go.”
Carpe that Effing Diem.
Epilogue
WE DID CARPE THAT EFFING Diem. And the Diem after that, and the diem after that. I helped walk a lot of dogs and played a lot of Frisbee with boys. Ben came to Shakespeare in the Park with me and actually liked it. Until it was time to go back to Castalia, with a Saint Agnes Lacrosse T-shirt packed snugly in my bag next to a lot of Aunt Vee’s hand-me-downs, and face reality.
* * *
The glossy pages of Shift’s September issue are spread across my polka-dot bedspread.
“She might be terrifying, but she sure does look beautiful,” Kristina says.
After my departure, Gigi was awarded the title of “Teen Journalist to Watch” and the promise of an internship for next summer. We FaceTime every few days when it’s early in Californ
ia and dinnertime in Geneva.
“I can’t believe you’re seriously going to wear that to school,” she says. “It’s a denim skirt!”
“I am. And I’m going to look damn good in it too.”
She sighs.
“Just don’t wear it when you pick that dog-walking boy up from the airport,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m telling you this as a friend.”
It’s only been a week, but I missed Ben so much.
* * *
I’m swaying with him at Bobby McKittrick’s “Sayonara Summer” party the Saturday night before the start of senior year—surrounded by couples whose Dance Floor Make-Outs are so intense, so ravenous, I’m kind of worried someone’s going to drop down dead due to suffocation—when I get what might be the most unexpected e-mail of my life.
“Oh my God, Ben. You won’t believe it,” I shout over the loud music blasting in the middle of Bobby’s yard. “Kristina, get over here!”
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: The “S” Word
It turns out that I miscalculated the impact of that godawful doe-eyed blog post of yours. I underestimated how much sentimental sap resonates with our readership. The clickability was outrageous, and Trenton Bosh wants you back as our dating blogger next summer. I think it’s a mistake, but I can let him find that out for himself. One misstep and you’re gone.
All the best,
M
“Um, what was that?” Kristina asks after we finish reading.
“I think that was the least enthusiastic job offer ever,” I reply.
“I think that’s us in New York next summer,” Ben says, squeezing my hand.
“There’s just one teeny, tiny, infinitesimal problem,” I say. “Do you think they’ll let me be a relationship blogger instead?”
Acknowledgments
There are so many people who helped make this book possible. To those who gave me their emotional support, their business savvy, and their permission to incorporate pieces of their lives into my fiction (Princess was based on a real pug!), thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies Page 25
