“I kind of like helping you,” he said, digging his hands into his pockets as he watched me work. “And being nice to you. We’re friends, right?”
“Yeah, sure, we’re friends. But you haven’t even known me that long. I’m just some girl who moved in next door.” I gathered two flattened cereal boxes and an egg carton. “Seriously, I can clean this up by myself. It’s not your responsibility. None of it is. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re crying,” he said suddenly. “What’s wrong?”
What was wrong? How could I explain it to him when I barely understood it myself? I was embarrassed, and sad, and so so angry. Behind the jokes I made and the tough front I put up, I felt scared and alone a lot of the time—but now more than ever. At a time when I needed friends the most, I couldn’t seem to let anybody in.
What was wrong was that the last time I’d opened up my heart and admitted to needing somebody, he’d turned around and flattened it to a pulp. What was wrong was that my new best friend, who deserved all the happiness in the world, was about to get it, and it was making me miserable. What was wrong, I realized fully with a shock, was that I had fallen completely and utterly in love . . . again . . . with someone who didn’t love me back . . . and I was terrified. More terrified than I’d ever been in my life.
I looked at Patrick. His eyes were wide with worry.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, ducking down for more garbage. “I just . . . scratched my hand on a can lid. That’s all.”
“Do you want me to take a look?” he said, coming toward me. “I can get you a Band-Aid or something.”
“No,” I snapped. I couldn’t stand another minute of his niceness. I didn’t want his Band-Aids. I couldn’t accept his outstretched hand. If I leaned on him, he’d only let me down eventually, anyway. Falling in love was just the first step toward getting your heart broken. I knew that. And not only that, if I did admit to Patrick that I was falling for him, and he did like me back, it would mean betraying my only real friend. Dina deserved better than that. So much better. Sure, Patrick had had a crush on me before, but it was ancient history now. He wanted to be with Dina, and she wanted to be with him. Which left me alone, exactly how I’d said I wanted to be.
“Go inside, Patrick. I don’t want your help.” I grabbed the snow shovel and started piling the organic waste back into the bin. Patrick just stood there. “I said go inside. I can do this on my own. Just leave me alone. Just don’t come near me.”
“Sure,” he said. I could see him biting his lip in confusion. He backed away slowly, giving me my space—like I was some kind of frightened animal. “Okay, Elyse. Good night.”
I didn’t answer. Instead I slammed the lid of the organic waste bin shut, accidentally pinching my finger. I yelped, then threw the shovel down in the snow in frustration. With tears still streaming down my face, I marched up the steps and into my empty house.
Chapter 15
The second I’d slammed the door behind me, I covered my face and crumpled into a ball on the kitchen floor, letting my tears soak the sleeves of Patrick’s blue jacket. A few minutes later, when the sobs had worked their way out of my body, I kicked off the pair of too-big Nikes he’d loaned me. My socks were wet and my feet were freezing, but I didn’t care. I deserved it. I’d acted like such an idiot.
Patrick must have thought I was insane. He’d only been trying to help me and I’d thrown it back in his face. And the worst part was I’d have to see him the next day for our driving lesson, and at work, and around the house. I sniffed and wiped at my eyes, trying to calm myself down. Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world. He was a really nice guy, right? I’d just have to apologize to him somehow and explain (without revealing Dina’s crush or my feelings for him) why I’d behaved like the world’s biggest jerk. After all, a guy who bought you a milk shake after you’d just almost crashed his car wasn’t the type to hold a grudge.
And even if—worst case scenario—he never wanted to be my friend again, at the very least I had to smooth things over enough that we could be civil to each other, especially since he was going to end up dating Dina. I couldn’t afford to lose her, too.
I had just pushed myself to my feet when I heard another loud banging noise. Then more snuffling and grunting. The raccoons were back but I wasn’t scared this time. I flung the door open. “Go!” I shouted at one who was halfway down the porch steps, dragging an empty cookie package behind it. It sat up on its fat haunches, looking at me quizzically before going right back to its chocolate chip cookie crumbs. “Shoo!” I yelled, waving my arms. The second one popped its head out of the organic waste bin to see what was going on, decided I was unworthy of its attention, and returned to gnawing on some gross, old pork chop scraps. “Okay, fine then.” I threw up my hands. “Enjoy your meal.” I slammed the door again. I’d just get up early to clean the mess again before the garbage trucks arrived. I didn’t have the energy to stand guard all night anyway, plus, they clearly weren’t afraid of me.
But the next morning, when I dragged myself out of bed in time to do the cleanup and get the garbage bins to the curb, the yard was spotless. In fact, if it wasn’t for the big indents the tipped bins had made in the snow and the faint trail of cookie crumbs leading down the steps, I almost might have been able to convince myself that the whole thing had never happened.
Had the garbage fairy paid a visit overnight? Somehow, I doubted it. There was only one possible explanation for this good deed. I leaned out the door to get a view of Patrick’s house, but nobody was in the yard and the curtains were all closed. Hugging my bathrobe around me, I walked to the front of the house and peered out. There were our bins, neatly arranged at the end of our driveway—our perfectly shoveled driveway. How early must Patrick have had to wake up to do all of this in secret? And why had he bothered after I’d been so mean to him?
Well, I’d have the chance to ask him when I apologized that afternoon before our driving lesson. Until then, there wasn’t much I could do. I had to get ready for school.
All day long, I tried my best to focus on kinetic molecular theory and logarithmic functions, but my mind kept wandering back to Patrick . . . his crinkly eyed smile and curly hair, his unending kindness, and his incredible optimism in the face of my horrible driving skills. But, most of all, the shocked, confused expression on his face when I’d told him I didn’t want his help the night before. I didn’t know what, exactly, I’d say to him. Still, I found myself counting down the hours until I could see him again and set things right.
“Are you okay?” Dina asked finally as she drove us to the mall for work that afternoon. I knew I’d been quiet and distant all day at school, but there was no way to tell her what had happened without revealing my feelings for Patrick.
“Yeah. Sure,” I lied. “I just miss my mom, I guess. And maybe I’m nervous about my driving test.”
“I’m not surprised,” Dina said. “You and your mom are really close, right? She’ll be home soon, though. And, seriously, if what Patrick tells me is true, you really don’t have to worry about passing your road test tomorrow. He says you’re an awesome driver.”
“You were talking to him?” I asked. “Today? Did he call you?” I could hear the desperation in my own voice and silently prayed that Dina wouldn’t pick up on it.
“Oh. No,” she said. “I haven’t talked to him since he was in the store yesterday. Did you know that he bought enough cards to get a Cupid doll? Who do you think he’s going to give it to?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I answered, looking at her meaningfully, “but I have a pretty good idea.”
A wide smile broke across her face just as her phone started to buzz. We pulled into a parking space and she reached down, taking it out of her bag. “Seriously,” she said with an exaggerated sigh when I looked at her questioningly, hoping it was Patrick. She flipped the phone shut. “My mom just keeps texting me all day long. I’m losing my mind.” But she didn’t look like she was losing her mind. If an
ything, she looked positively content. I guessed that when the guy you’d been crushing on liked you back enough to give you a tacky, singing doll, it tended to put things like an overbearing mother into per-spective.
The time passed slowly at work that day. But when quarter to six finally came around, I stationed myself in the pen aisle to wait. We had a new shipment of liquid ultra gels in, and I’d already tested them out. They were crisp and smooth and rolly, without a hint of sploodgyness. If that didn’t make Patrick forgive me, I figured nothing would. But six fifteen came and went, and there was no sign of him.
“Did Patrick call?” I asked Dina, who was busy texting on her cell. “Can you check if there are any messages?” There weren’t.
I hung around the store another fifteen minutes, then made my way to the key-cutting kiosk. Maybe he’d just lost track of time.
A big, burly guy with a tattoo of a killer whale on his arm was busy working the key-cutting machine. I had to repeat myself three times before he could hear me over the high-pitched grinding noise. “I’m looking for Patrick.”
“Huh?”
“Patrick.”
“Who?”
“PATRICK.”
He shut the machine off, and handed a gleaming gold key to a woman wearing a leather jacket.
“Oh,” he said as he made change for the woman. “You must be Elyse.” I looked at him in surprise. “Sorry. I was supposed to come find you, but it’s been so busy I haven’t had a chance. Patrick wanted me to give you this.” He reached underneath the counter and pulled out a box. On the side was a photo of a cordless phone with two handsets. It looked all sleek and space-aged and seemed to have about ten million features. There was no way it could have been cheap.
“I can’t take that,” I said immediately.
“Yeah. He said you’d say that,” answered the guy. Then he held out his hand. “I’m Jax, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shook his hand. “I’m Elyse. But, then, you knew that.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and started to read from it. “Okay. He said to tell you the phone was on sale, and so he can’t return it. Plus, anyway, he already lost the receipt.” I sighed. “He also says he has to cancel your driving lessons because he’s got scurvy. He’ll probably be sick all week, at least, but he says not to worry, you don’t need him anymore anyway. Because you’re an awesome driver.”
“Give me that,” I said, taking the paper from Jax. Written in point form, in smooth black ink, were more or less the exact things Jax had just told me—with one exception. At the very bottom, underlined three times, was the word “Sorry.”
“Did he say anything else?” I asked, although I didn’t know what I was hoping for, exactly.
“Nah,” Jax replied. “But, between you and me, he’s lying about the scurvy. He’s just avoiding you.”
Well, that much, at least, was kind of obvious.
“Thanks,” I said, picking up the phone and tucking it under my arm. “If you do see him, could you tell him—”
“Uh-uh. Sorry,” Jax interrupted me. He pointed to the sign in front of him. THE KEYHOLE. “I cut keys. I don’t take messages.” I nodded. “Don’t take it personal, or anything. I just know better than to get involved in a lovers’ quarrel.”
“Right. Thanks anyway.” I turned and left. He obviously couldn’t help me, so there wasn’t any point explaining to him that, for it to be a lovers’ quarrel, you’d need two people to be in love.
It felt weird to take the bus by myself, and weirder even to come home and walk past Patrick’s house. The red car was parked in the driveway, so I knew he was home, but the curtains were still closed tightly.
I threw my bag on the front steps, setting the cordless phone beside it, and walked back to the end of the driveway to collect the garbage bins. And that was when I noticed them: black nylon straps, bolted to the tops of each bin with buckles that opened and closed. Tiny pictures of raccoons ran along their length. The Patrick fairy had struck again.
Later that night, when I went down to the basement to do a desperately needed load of laundry, I discovered one more good deed: the huge, heavy wardrobe that had tipped on top of my mother was standing upright, pushed against the wall. Patrick had returned my key days ago. So obviously he’d done this when he’d been in to put away the groceries. But how? My mom and I combined couldn’t lift that thing. And then I remembered Patrick had been on his way to pick up Jax that day. He must have roped Jax into helping him with the wardrobe, since it was clear his friend and coworker didn’t share his annoyingly overly helpful nature.
I opened and closed the wardrobe door, noticing how the cracked wood had been glued back together, then sighed again. Knowing that Patrick was falling in love with Dina, and especially after the way I’d treated him, every nice thing he did felt like a tiny knife going through my heart. Why wouldn’t he just stop already?
But he didn’t stop. The next morning, the driveway had been magically shoveled again, and a thin layer of Patrick’s trademark salt had been spread over the icy patches. For someone who lived next door and worked at the same mall, he also continued to avoid me in a truly spectacular way. Twice, I snuck out while Dina covered the cash, hoping to see him at the Keyhole, but both times Jax told me I’d just missed him.
Dina swore she hadn’t seen or heard from him either. “Oh no. I hope he’s not sick again,” she worried. “Do you think he’ll still show up for the panda party?” Considering the way he felt about her, I thought it was a safe bet that even his fake scurvy wouldn’t keep him away and—when he showed up to see Dina—I intended to be there to talk to him. We couldn’t go on like this forever, after all. He’d have to face me on Valentine’s Day. I could wait.
Or, at least, I thought I could wait . . . until that Thursday, after another day Patrick had spent avoiding me. I was just finishing my shift and starting to cash out when I heard a familiar voice. “Elyse.” I looked up. “I was on my way home from the hospital, and I just had to come in and say thank you.” My favorite customer, Mrs. Conchetti, was standing near the counter with tears in her eyes. “Little Nolan made it through his heart surgery. The doctors are saying he’s going to be just fine.”
“Oh, Mrs. Conchetti. That’s such a relief.” I actually came around the counter and hugged her. It wasn’t something I’d do with any other customer, but over the past few months I’d gotten to know her and I’d heard so much about her family. The occasion just seemed to call for it.
“We’d just heard the good news from the doctor when that curly-haired delivery boy of yours arrived. And I have to tell you, your thoughtfulness meant the world to me. And to my son and daughter-in-law.”
My curly-haired delivery boy?
“The second I saw the Cupid doll, I knew it was from you. We put it right beside Nolan’s crib, so he saw it as soon as he woke up. He’s still so weak, the poor thing. But I think he almost smiled when it started to sing.” Mrs. Conchetti grabbed hold of me again, squeezing me tightly against her ample chest. Then she pulled away before giving me two smacking Italian-style kisses—one on each cheek. “You’re a beautiful girl,” she told me. “Beautiful inside and out.”
Before I had a chance to correct her, or to ask her what she was talking about, she glanced at her watch. “I should go. My son and daughter-in-law are spending the night at the hospital. I told them I’d bring dinner. You can’t eat anything they serve in the cafeteria there. It all tastes like glue.” She actually pinched my cheek. “Thank you,” she said again, and then she was gone.
I dropped the coins I’d been counting back into the cash and sat down, trying to put the pieces together. A curly-haired delivery boy? A Cupid doll? I remembered how Patrick had been standing beside the counter when Mrs. Conchetti had come in to tell me the news about the baby. . . . How I’d said I wished there was something I could do. . . . How Patrick had immediately bought eleven valentines with all the money he had, getting his customer loyalty ca
rd stamped, then coming back for four more the next day. Fifteen in all—but they weren’t for fifteen girls. That much was clear now. It was all making sense . . . except that it also wasn’t.
Up until the last few days, it had seemed like all the nice things Patrick was doing were designed to impress Dina. But bringing the Cupid doll to the hospital? Shoveling my driveway? The raccoon-proof straps? Why was Patrick being so nice to me?
I’d been wrong about him. The Cupid doll had made that much clear. He wasn’t a player and he wasn’t a pig. He was sweet, caring, and genuine—the elusive two percent. So different from Matt Love that the two barely belonged in the same category of humankind. But then again, Patrick could have been a full-fledged and official saint and it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d already told him I didn’t date. Also, he’d made it crystal clear that his crush on me was history, and that he was interested in Dina.
Which just brought me right back to my original question: Why was he being so nice to me? Did he still think it might somehow help him to score points with Dina? Or, if that wasn’t it, did he have some kind of rare disorder? (Not scurvy, obviously, but some genetic brain disease that led to chronic niceness?) Or was he just trying to drive me crazy with guilt for having been so mean to him?
Whatever the explanation was, this couldn’t go on. I needed to find out what was up, and I couldn’t wait until Valentine’s Day to do it, either.
Chapter 16
The first thing I did when I got home from work that day was march into the kitchen to find the jacket Patrick had let me borrow on the night of the raccoons. I also picked up the too-big Nikes, sliding them into a plastic bag. Then I had a handful of crackers with cheese. (It was bad enough having to confront Patrick without doing it on an empty stomach.) Then I went upstairs to make sure there weren’t any cheese bits stuck between my teeth and to put on some lip gloss. Then I tied my hair back into a ponytail and looked at myself from different angles in the mirror. Then I decided the ponytail made my face look too pointy, took out the elastic, and let my hair down. Then I checked my teeth again, just to be certain.
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