Getting Over Garrett Delaney

by McDonald, Abby

  You have to understand: I’ve been madly, hopelessly, tragically in love with Garrett Delaney for two years now — ever since the fateful day when I looked up from my list of the Top Ten Couples of All Time and saw him sauntering into the local coffeehouse.

  (And before you say that fourteen-year-olds aren’t capable of real love, well, my Couple Number Four, Romeo and Juliet, were barely out of junior high when they first met, and nobody doubts the burning force of their passion.)

  But back to Garrett. There he was, all long limbs and faded corduroy pants, his dark blond hair falling carelessly over cloudy blue eyes. He stood in the doorway, a battered leather satchel slung across his chest, and right then I knew. He was the one I’d been waiting for, sent by the heavens to make my life infinitely better and exquisitely painful all in one fell swoop.

  Because it was fate — don’t try telling me otherwise. How else can you explain the fact that Totally Wired — usually half full at most with study fiends and hard-core cappuccino addicts — was packed solid with baby-yoga moms and their bawling brats, meaning that I, Sadie Elisabeth Allen, was sitting next to the only free table in the entire room?

  Never mind that my BFF Kayla was stuck late at viola practice, so I was waiting there alone. No, the real reason I know that Garrett and I were destined to meet is that out of all the trashy, uncool books I could have brought along (this being the Judith Krantz era of my sexual education), I happened to pick a battered old copy of Pablo Neruda poetry my dad had given me, so that when Garrett collapsed into the chair beside mine, he looked over and lit up with a crooked half smile that to this day still does strange things to my stomach.

  “Twenty Love Poems?” he asked while I tried not to choke on my cheesecake. The teen boy god was looking at me. The teen boy god was talking to me! “Neruda is my favorite. I love his surrealist work.”

  He waited patiently while I took a gulp of my mocha whip and tried to register this new reality where cute boys actually made intelligent conversation with me instead of just shooting spitballs into my hair all through third-period bio. Maybe Kayla was right: maybe high school really would be different.

  “Did you know he wrote only in green ink?” I replied at last, reciting the only factoid I knew about Neruda. I took a breath, thanking the Gods of False Advertising that I was wearing a padded bra, which could, maybe, possibly make me look at least sixteen. “He said it was the color of hope.”

  “Really? That’s cool.” He gave me an admiring look. “I’m Garrett. I just moved to Sherman.”

  “Sadie,” I managed. “Hi!”

  “Sadie,” he repeated, and my name — which had always seemed like such an old-lady name to me, up there with Gertrude and Ada — suddenly sounded glamorous and exotic. “So, Sadie, tell me what the hell you do for fun in this town.”

  He grinned at me like we were in this together. Friends, partners, future class couple. Prom king and queen. And in that glorious instant, I could see it all stretching out in front of us, like those cute couple montages in all those romantic-comedy movies Kayla and I love: Garrett and me fooling around with old video games in the arcade; Garrett and me snuggled up in a listening booth at the record store; Garrett and me lying out by the riverbank, holding hands, making out. . . .

  So what if I couldn’t play arcade games and the nearest record store had closed down the year before? I looked over at him and knew that this was the start of my own real-life love story. Move aside, Elizabeth and Darcy (Couple Number Six); make way, Scarlett and Rhett (Couple Number Nine) — there was a new entry on that list, and our names were Sadie and Garrett.

  “Hey, birthday girl!”

  I sit up so fast I get a head rush, the world tilting from blue sky to gray bleachers and back to the lush grass of the empty football field. It’s the first week of summer, and there’s nobody here but Garrett, heading my way with a knowing grin on his face and both hands hidden behind his back. He’s in his usual uniform of faded corduroy pants and a crumpled button-down shirt, this time over an old Clash T-shirt that I can’t help noticing hangs against his torso just so. Fifty percent prep, twenty percent punk, thirty percent old-school British indie rock, and one hundred percent gorgeous — that’s Garrett for you.

  “Close your eyes.” He stops a few feet away, the setting sun shining through his hair like some kind of halo. “And no peeking.”

  “Is it a kitten?” I clap my hands in excitement, my bracelets jangling. “A unicorn? A kitten-unicorn hybrid?”

  “You wanted a kitti-corn?” Garrett teases. “Why didn’t you say so? They had them at the store, but I just figured, you know, your allergies, and those wings flapping around . . .”

  “But all the other girls have one!” I laugh. “And ponies are so last season!” There’s a thud as he collapses on the ground and I open my eyes to find him smiling at me.

  “Sorry, I failed. Will you ever forgive me?” He presents me with a package.

  “Forgiven.” I give the package an exploratory shake. Garrett never just takes the store gift-wrap option or grabs a roll from the closet at home. This time, he’s created wrapping out of pages from old books, the paper yellowed and fading at the edges. “I love getting older,” I muse as I carefully begin to peel the layers away. “You’re closer to death, but there are presents.”

  “They should put that on a Hallmark card.” Garrett laughs. “And file it under Consumerist Celebrations.”

  “Is there any other kind?” I quip. The last layer of paper flutters to the ground, and I’m left with my bounty: a bundle of Paris Reviews, an old-school mix CD, and a beat-up copy of a Kerouac novel, The Dharma Bums.

  “Thanks!” I beam, turning the book over in my hands. “This is awesome! I’ve wanted to read this for ages — ever since you told me about it.”

  Garrett smiles. “Let me know what you think. I left some notes in the margins for you. I can’t wait until we do our own big road trip,” he adds. “Nothing but open highway, all the way to California.”

  “Staying in seedy roadside motels . . .” I lean back on my elbows, slipping into our well-worn refrain.

  “Living off diner food . . .”

  “Stopping to see the world’s biggest ball of yarn.”

  “No way,” he protests. “None of that tourist trash. We’re going to see the real America.” He sprawls out beside me, carelessly flinging one arm over his eyes to block out the sun.

  I watch him for a moment, shadows falling across those perfect cheekbones. I should be happy, I know — with my gifts, and Garrett’s daydreams of our awesome plans — but there’s one thing wrong with this picture. With every picture.

  He’s not mine.

  I don’t understand it, either. We’re supposed to be together. I knew the day we met that it was fate! But I guess even fate finds a way of destroying your hopes and dreams, leaving your heart dashed on the cruel rocks of life — just ask the poor souls in all those Greek myths. See, it turns out I wasn’t entirely right about me and Garrett back then. Not the friends part, because despite my fears that he’d show up on the first day of school, get sucked into the vortex, and never speak to a lowly freshman girl again, that’s exactly what we turned out to be: buddies, pals, BFFs. Everything except the only thing I ever really wanted us to be.

  In love.

  And it kills me. Mom says I exaggerate, but I’m not even kidding about this. You can die of a broken heart — it’s scientific fact — and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we’re together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.

  I sneak another look at Garrett, lying out on the grass beside me. He yaw
ns, stretching a little as he does; his shirt rides up, revealing a whole inch of pale-golden stomach.

  Be still, O heart of mine!

  I stifle a familiar sigh of longing. It would be one thing if he was completely unobtainable — gay, for example, or madly in love with some other girl — but I have no such comforting reason why we can’t make it work. No matter which girl he’s dated — and there have been plenty — he’s stayed just as close to me. Closer, even, since I’m the one who gets to listen to all his deepest, darkest fears and secrets, the one who brings over pizza and root beers after the (inevitable) breakup.

  For two long years, we’ve been inseparable. And for two long years, I’ve been desperately waiting for more.

  Garrett can never stay still for long, and sure enough, after a couple of minutes, he sits up, restless. “So, you ready for the next part of your birthday? We’ve got a whole night o’ fun ahead of us.”

  “As long as it includes sugar and caffeine,” I reply lightly, as if I haven’t just been meditating on his delicious abs.

  “Done and done.”

  I stuff my goodies into my own beat-up leather satchel and head back toward the parking lot, my frayed jeans dragging on the grass.

  “Did you pick your classes yet?” he asks as I curl my fingers into my palm to make up for the fact they’re not wrapped around his.

  “Not yet,” I admit. “The short-story class sounds kind of fun. . . .”

  “It will be — you’ll love it,” Garrett insists, enthusiastic. “And your short fiction is getting really great; you’ve improved so much this year.”

  “Thanks.” Praise from Garrett is praise indeed. “Then short stories it is!”

  I think again of the fabulous summer ahead of us. Six weeks together at an intensive writing camp in the woods of New Hampshire — who could ask for a more romantic retreat? Sure, there are eight-hour days of classes scheduled, but those will fly by. It’s the nights I’m looking forward to the most. Snuggling together around the campfire, walking in the moonlight down by the lake . . . It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for — I just know it. We’re still waiting on our acceptance letters, but Garrett knows one of the instructors through his parents and swears we’re a lock.

  We reach his old Vespa, parked in the middle of the concrete. “Hey, Vera,” I coo, stroking the metal. “How are you feeling?”

  “Temperamental as ever.” Garrett hands me the cherry-red passenger helmet.

  “Aww, she’s just messing with you.” I knock three times on the metal for luck as I climb on board. It’s stupid, I know, but tradition. The only time I didn’t knock, Vera threw a mechanical temper tantrum and gave out on us somewhere past the last gas station but before the creepy abandoned development on the outskirts of town. We froze on the side of the street in the rain until my mom came to pick us up — armed with “I told you so” and a lecture on road safety and organ donation.

  “You think she’ll make it through another year?” I ask, tucking my hair into the helmet.

  Garrett feigns outrage. “You’ll have to pry Vera from my cold, dead hands!”

  I laugh. “You might want to rethink that metaphor, with all those road-safety stats my mom keeps leaving out for you.”

  “Hush, child,” he scolds me, climbing on in front. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “I’m plenty adventurous!” I protest, wrapping my arms around him. Never mind adventure. This is the part I love the most: the excuse to hold him tight for as long as our journey takes. “Just remember who you drag along to all those foreign movie nights in the city.”

  “You love them.” Garrett starts the bike, and slowly, we start to ride away. “Don’t even try to deny it!” he calls over the noise from the engine.

  So I don’t. Because I do love them.

  And him.

  Totally Wired is busy when we arrive, the evening cappuccino crew jostling for position with the summer college crowd buried behind their textbooks. We head for our regular table in back, the one under the wall of old rock-show posters, peeled and fading. “The usual?” Garrett asks.

  “Yup!” I hurl myself down on the cracked leather bench. “Here, I think I’ve got . . .”

  Garrett waves away my crumpled dollar bills. “Are you kidding? It’s the day of your birth. Your money’s no good to me.”

  He heads for the counter while I settle back and check out the scene. This place is the closest Sherman, Massachusetts, comes to having a hangout of any kind: the lone beacon of coolness in a line of generic drugstores, take-out places, and bland clothing outlets. I live in the cultural wastelands, I swear. After years of praying to the Gods of Cultural Experience, I’ve had to accept that this town is a lost cause; when they opened a strip mall outside of town with, gasp, a Chipotle, it was all kids in school could talk about for a week. No, if we want culture, we have to drive for it: forty miles to the nearest college town or a couple of hours east to Boston, where Garrett and I gorge on Indian food, art-house movies, and the sweet, sweet mildewy scent of used bookstores.

  But I have to admit, as lone beacons go, Totally Wired is great. The bare brick walls and steel pillars and weird art are like something you’d find in Brooklyn, or Chicago maybe, and there’s always a cool song playing. If you ask, the baristas will tell you the band and the album and how this new stuff isn’t as good as the release from a few years ago, when they had a different bass player and the lead singer hadn’t sold out.

  “Hey, kid.” LuAnn snaps her gum as she clears the table next to mine. At least, I think her name is LuAnn; that’s what it says on her old-school diner name tag, but I’m always too in awe of her to ask if it’s for real. “Cute shoes.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I mumble. “They’re only from Target.”

  “Still, you’re working them.” She winks and struts away in her pink 1950s sandals that match her floral-print sundress. I look down at my red sneakers, feeling a glow of pride. Fashion compliments from the resident vintage queen are gold dust; LuAnn is always showing up in crazy ensembles, with her long red hair in pin curls or a severe wave. She can’t be more than a few years older than me, twenty at the most, but she has this aura of awesome confidence I can’t even begin to mimic. Not that I’d ever try.

  “Make a wish.” Garrett returns, depositing a tray with our drinks on the table and presenting me with a cupcake adorned with a single candle.

  “You didn’t have to!” I protest, but inside, I’m beaming. Red velvet: my favorite.

  He remembers.

  “Sure, I did. It’s a momentous day. You’re seventeen now. You can do . . . absolutely nothing you couldn’t already.” Garrett makes a face, then laughs. “Still, we have to celebrate. You’re all grown up!”

  I grin. “As long as there’s no singing,” I warn him, then blow out the candle. “You’ll get us barred for life.”

  Garrett blinks. “Are you saying I can’t sing?”

  “I’m saying the last time you broke out in a chorus of Radiohead, half the neighborhood cats went into a frenzy.” I scoop a fingerful of frosting from the top of the cupcake. After all, what is cake if not a vehicle for frosting?

  “Yum.” Garrett reaches over with ink-stained fingertips and does the same before I can slap his hand away. “Ow!” He sticks out his tongue, covered with sprinkles. “So what did you wish for?”

  I shrug. “The usual: world peace, winning the Nobel prize . . . Meeting Justin Bieber . . .” I add with a laugh.

  “Aiming high. I like it.”

  “A girl can dream.” I busy myself with the cupcake, hiding my lie. The truth is, I wished for the same thing I always do, when I let myself wish at all.

  Him.

  A group of girls comes chattering along the aisle next to us, fourteen or fifteen years old maybe, heading back toward the bathroom. They’re loud and excited. “Ohmigod, we have to see that movie!”

  “I know — he’s so cute.”

  “Do you think he did that flying thing, or wa
s it all a stunt guy?”

  “No way, he wouldn’t do something like that!”

  Garrett and I share an amused roll of the eyes. “God, someone needs to lock them in a room and teach them about real culture,” Garrett murmurs conspiratorially. I giggle. “I’m serious!” he says darkly. “A whole generation raised on plastic pop stars and movies with happily-ever-afters.”

  “The only way they’ll ever discover great literature is if someone makes a Disney sing-along,” I say. “Anna Karenina: the dance-off.”

  He snorts on his coffee, and I feel a surge of pride at my quip. The girls move on.

  “So what did your mom get you?” Garrett settles back in his seat.

  “No idea.” I pour half the canister of sugar into my coffee, the only way I can stand it so black and strong. Garrett says those ice-blended syrupy things are milk shakes with delusions of grandeur — kid stuff — so I switched to the hard stuff ASAP after we met. “She was talking about some big surprise for when I get back tonight.”

  “Maybe she’s finally caved on the car,” he suggests. “You left out that list of used models, right?”

  I fix him with a dubious look. “We’re talking about the same woman, right? Tiny, incessantly organized, insanely overprotective?”

  “OK, maybe not,” he agrees. “But she’s got to let up sometime, right? You’re a junior now. It’s not like you can ride around on the bus forever.”

  I grimace. “Don’t remind me.” In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a senior. Not anywhere close. In my many disagreements with my mom, this is the sorest spot of all: that despite the fact I turned seventeen today, I’m still only heading into my junior year of high school. Such is the fate of those of us born on the school-year borderline. Sure, Mom has psychology reports in her corner — and believe me, she quotes them all the time — about how it’s better to be the most advanced, intelligent, mature kid in your peer group, instead of the underdeveloped wisp in the class above with lower reading scores and a way smaller chest, but honestly, I’d take that boob-related insecurity in a heartbeat rather than feel so out of place and old all the time.