Getting Over Garrett Delaney

by McDonald, Abby

  The answer should always be you.

  How dare they?

  My sneakers hit the ground with angry purpose as I cut through lazy shoppers and the crowds of tourists with their backpacks on and cameras looped around their necks. How could LuAnn say that stuff — look at me like I was just a pathetic girl, repeating everything a boy told me? She’s the one who sacrificed everything to trail some guy across the country; my friendship with Garrett is nothing like that! He cares about me, we’re on the same wavelength. That’s why we even became friends in the first place!

  I walk and walk, the city blocks disappearing behind me as that burn of indignation in my chest drives me on. I’ve always looked down on those girls in school. You know the ones: they start dating a skater guy, and suddenly they’re scribbling skate-punk lyrics all over their notebooks. And then they break up, and they become someone else entirely — waiting on the sidelines during football practice or trailing the emo rock guys to every crappy show in someone’s basement. I could never understand it, don’t they have any self-esteem at all? Their entire identity revolves around some guy who probably never even considers changing anything about himself for her.

  And now LuAnn is saying I’m just the same, as if I have no independent thoughts or opinions. Of course I do! So, yes, my tastes overlap with Garrett’s, and I like most of the same things as him, but that’s not the same at all. I like our music, and movies, and books because, well, I like them — not just because he’s the one who introduced me to them.

  I leave the busy stores and sidewalks behind, running out of steam as I reach a wide-open square, skyscrapers looming above neat areas of grass and trees. I stop by the edge of a fountain and sink onto the wide marble edge. Kids with their cuffs rolled up are playing in the shallow water. They look so carefree and happy that I kick my shoes off, swing my feet over the edge, and sink my toes into the clear, cold water.

  There.

  Now that my initial rage is dissolving, I remember the hurt look on LuAnn’s face and feel a flush of shame, hot on my cheeks. She opened up, telling me about her past, and what do I do? Throw it right back in her face, when all she was even trying to do was make sure I didn’t make the same mistakes. I splash my feet, watching the way the sun glints and glitters on the water. I was such a brat, to her and Aiko, too. And they’ve been so nice to me! Taking me under their wing, treating me like an actual friend with support and guidance, instead of just leaving me to battle my Garrett problem alone.

  Garrett . . .

  I let out a long, weary sigh. The truth is, he is the one who brought a lot of this stuff into my life. OK, most of it. The books I read, the movies I watch — even most of my music first found its way onto my iPod via Garrett’s mix CDs and playlists. And I love it — that he opens this whole new world up to me, showing me all these new writers and artists and songs that I’d never stumble across on my own. It always makes me feel so special when he collapses into the seat next to me and starts telling me about this amazing new novel he’s reading, and how he’ll lend it to me when he’s done. I read those dog-eared copies cover to cover, savoring the notes he’s penciled in the margins, knowing he made them just for me.

  But what about the stuff I like, without him?

  The question niggles at me, but I try to block it out, pulling my sandals on over damp feet and heading back into the busy pedestrian throngs. I’m not those girls, I tell myself firmly, striding onwards. I’m not that weak.

  I pause at a crosswalk, watching the street vendors set up on the corner, selling jewelry and handcrafted mobiles from tiny kiosks. And then I catch sight of my reflection in one of their mirrors, hanging lopsided from the side of a cart of Red Sox memorabilia.

  Dyed black hair forced into a short, angled bob and ironed straight. Blunt-cut bangs. Regular jeans, a faded T-shirt. I’m carrying a beat-up leather satchel and wearing an arm of bangle bracelets.

  I stare carefully, as if looking at a stranger.

  And maybe I am one. I started wearing my hair this way because of Garrett, because I wanted to look like the exotic French movie stars he always seemed to rave about. I bought this satchel because Garrett has one just like it. The simple, nondescript clothes . . . Well, Garrett always seems to mock the girls who dress retro or outlandishly. He laughs about how they’re trying to make up for their lack of personality: dressing up to pretend to be themselves. Real creative types don’t care about their clothes, he would tell me. They have their minds on other, more important things. And so, I never looked beyond my standby jeans, shirts, and sweaters, not wanting him to think I was one of those desperate types.

  I blink, the truth finally dawning. I am one of those girls. God, I’m practically the queen of those girls. Just look at me!

  The light finally turns red, and the people around me hustle forward. I stumble on, still in a daze. What about the music you loaned him, but he said wasn’t his thing? a voice whispers in the back of my mind. I stopped playing those bands when he came over, took them off my playlists in the end. And why don’t you read your mom’s bodice-ripper romance novels like you used to? Is it because Garrett saw a stack of them in the living room once and laughed about the trash that passes as literature these days?

  I wanted so badly for him to think we were the same: cultured minds, people who know great art and appreciate the classics. I could drink espresso, read Franzen and Flaubert, and debate long into the night with him about the themes of obsession and sexuality in Lolita. But now when I think back to all that time we spent together, I only hear Aiko asking if I even liked any of it or if I just wanted to be the kind of person who did.

  This whole recovery program thing started out as a survival tactic — for me to learn how to get by without him, to go about my regular life despite the massive Garrett-shaped hole in my existence. But now I wonder if that isn’t far enough. What if I have no regular life apart from the one I constructed around him? What if the very fabric of me, Sadie Elisabeth Allen, has been molded and shaped so much by who he is that I’m like the plants Mom grows in tubs on the back porch: you plant them next to a taller, stronger structure and they adapt around it, snaking their whole body around the frame until they have no shape of their own, just the outline of something else?

  I gulp. I want shape! I need an outline! And just like that, it becomes painfully clear that my simple steps for getting over Garrett don’t go nearly far enough. It’s one thing to survive once he’s gone, but now I need to go further. Much further.

  I need to find out who I am without him.

  I walk the city streets in a daze a while longer, as those big questions roll around my mind. Finally, Aiko texts to let me know they’re at a café nearby. I go to meet them, finding them tucked in a back booth in a dark dive of a place, LuAnn sipping a cream soda and Aiko attacking a mountain of pie.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell them quickly before either can speak. “I was a total brat, and mean, and cruel, and I didn’t mean any of it.”

  Aiko smirks. “That’s a pretty comprehensive apology.”

  “Well, I was a pretty comprehensive bitch.” I offer up an apologetic smile, but LuAnn is still stony-faced. “I really am sorry,” I tell her, desperate. “You were right, what you said, but I just didn’t want to hear it. It’s kind of hard to admit your entire life is based on a guy.”

  I stand there, anxiously awaiting my fate. I didn’t realize it before — how much their friendship means to me — but now that I might have screwed it up for good, I see just how great they’ve been. How much fun I’ve been having, just hanging out. My voice catches in my throat as I think of losing them. “Forgive me?”

  LuAnn just lets out a long breath, then nods.

  “OK,” she says quietly. She scoots over in the booth to make room for me.

  “Come on,” Aiko adds, her mouth full. “Help me out with this pie. I can’t eat all of this alone.”

  “Sure, you can.” LuAnn laughs at her. “Remember Thanksgiving?”

&nb
sp; Aiko groans. “Don’t! I dreamed about pumpkins for weeks after that. And evil little yams, dancing all over my room.”

  I take a fork. “Did you buy any other stuff?”

  “Some,” LuAnn answers, managing a glimmer of a smile. “But I hit my spending limit an hour ago, so the city can breathe easy for a while.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. She raises an eyebrow. I take a breath, as if preparing myself for battle. And, in a way, I am. “Could you offer your expertise for a good cause?”

  She looks at me carefully. “Depends what for.”

  “Me,” I tell her firmly. “I want to try that haircut. And some new clothes — and anything else we see. It’s time I figure out who Sadie really is.”

  I try vintage dresses and modern hipster looks, preppy pullovers and ’60s-style pencil skirts. Wedges and boots, scarves and bangles, lipstick in a dozen shades, and more types of denim than I even knew existed. Nothing is rejected; no style is judged too extreme. If I’m going to find out what I like outside my Garrett-shaped bubble of a world, then I have to try everything for myself. And I mean, everything. I feel like Columbus setting out for the New World, braving new territories with nothing but a compass and a collapsible telescope. Only instead of discovering foreign lands, I’m navigating a treacherous sea of mirrors and shiny hair appliances, thanks to the tiny salon LuAnn swears is the best in the city.

  “And maybe then some soft waves, just around here. What do you say?” Derek, my stylist, asks but before I can even open my mouth, LuAnn jumps in.

  “Yes, absolutely. And maybe some color?”

  “Streaks. Pink!” Aiko demands, swiveling in a chair to my right.

  “No pink,” I tell them, panicked. My reflection stares back at me: wet haired and swathed in blue towels. I begin to have second thoughts. “And are we sure about this?” I venture. “Maybe a haircut is going too far right now. I don’t know if —”

  “Trust me, kid,” LuAnn interrupts with a reassuring smile, but for a terrible moment I wonder if this is all just elaborate revenge for our fight earlier. Lull me into a false sense of security with the wardrobe, then scar me for life — well, a few months — with a disaster of a haircut.

  I gulp.

  “Think about it,” Aiko says, pausing to blow a bubble with her gum. She waits for it to pop before continuing. “A whole fresh start. You’ll look in the mirror every morning and know you did this for you, not him.”

  “But that isn’t exactly true.” I try one last excuse. “I mean, I am here because of Garrett, kind of, even if it’s in reverse. So really —”

  “Enough!” LuAnn spins my chair back around. “No more excuses. And honestly, kid? This Amélie look is so two thousand and five.”

  “She’s right.” Derek meets my eyes in the mirror and gives me a reassuring wink. Well, it would be reassuring if his own hair wasn’t styled in a towering purple Mohawk. “You’ll be fine — I promise.”

  Two hours (and a headful of goopy paste that stung so hard I cried a little) later, I emerge from the salon: new, and — I hope — improved.

  “Love it!” LuAnn declares, clapping.

  “Really?” I reach up and touch it gently, still not used to the soft waves and general bounce of the whole thing. I’m used to battling it for half an hour with a blow-dryer and a straightening iron, but with some magical serum from Derek’s cupboard of wonders, the frizz is miraculously tamed. Throw in the lighter brown dye that caused me such pain, and I feel . . .

  Different.

  “Different bad or different good?” Aiko asks as we walk to meet Josh at the gig venue.

  “I don’t know. . . .” I bite my lip. They insisted I change into that red vintage dress, too, and now every time I catch my reflection in a store window, I have to do a double take. “It’s just . . . so not like me. The me I’ve been, I mean.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” LuAnn tells me breezily. But then again, she would be breezy; she’s the one who wears denim farm-girl overalls on regular workdays and manages to look cute and quirky in them, instead of deranged. “There’s a whole world of fashion possibilities out there! You’re just getting started.”

  “Uh-huh,” I murmur. Now that I’ve gone ahead with this whole makeover idea, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. Old Sadie may have been predictable and understated and, sure, kind of on the conservative side of things, but I knew her! I knew I could roll out of bed in the morning, grab my jeans and a shirt, and be done. Dressing: achieved! And now to just cast that off and set myself loose in the dangerous jungle of original style, where fashion faux pas lurk at every turn?

  “Calm down. You look like you’re having a panic attack.” Aiko giggles. “This isn’t like you’re trying to be someone else. It’s about finding out what fits you. You!”

  Me.

  I take a short breath. They’re right — I was comfortable with my old look, but the reminder of how much I molded myself around Garrett snaps me back to reality. Enough with the exploration metaphors; it’s time to just relax and see how I feel in this new skin.

  Besides, if I don’t like this look, I can always try a new one.

  “There he is, the nerd himself!” LuAnn calls ahead. Josh is just up the street, feeding quarters into the meter. “Sorry,” she adds cheerily, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. “I meant geek.”

  “How’d it go?” He takes a look at our armfuls of bags and then laughs. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

  “This? Ha. It was a slow day.” LuAnn starts piling things onto the backseat.

  “You kept up with them? I’m impressed,” Josh tells me as I pass over my own bags. I shrug, suddenly self-conscious.

  “How was the harbor, or wherever you went?” I ask, too aware of his eyes flicking over me. But despite the fact that I started the day a gawky girl with overgrown bangs and came back looking completely different, he doesn’t seemed surprised, just . . . curious.

  “Fun.” Josh breaks into a smile, waiting until all of our bags are unloaded before locking up again. “I walked the whole city.”

  “Great.” We start to head up the street to the venue, where a line is already snaking back from the doors. “Well, great for you,” I correct myself. “I think I was better with the shopping.”

  He laughs. “To each his own.”

  “Josh!” Aiko suddenly elbows him. “You haven’t said anything about Sadie’s new look!”

  “Ooh, yes. Tell us what you think,” LuAnn insists. “Gorgeous or what?”

  “Guys!” I protest, flushing. “Stop it.” I turn to him quickly. “You really don’t have to answer that.”

  “Yes, he does!” LuAnn nudges him from the other side, joining Aiko in an elbow onslaught until Josh is bent double, laughing.

  “OK, OK.” He pulls away from them. “It’s, uh, nice.”

  Nice? I blink. Is that a good thing?

  “Nice? Nice?” LuAnn screeches. “Boy, you need help. Sadie is a work of art. A vision. A dream!”

  “LuAnn.” I blush, pained. “Please . . . ?”

  She must see the embarrassment on my face, because she stops her theatrics. “Oh, fine.” She sighs. “He’s a boy, ‘nice’ is like a soliloquy from them. We’re lucky he didn’t just grunt.”

  The doors finally open, and the line begins to inch forward. “You ready?” Aiko asks me, rolling up her sleeve in preparation for the underage wristband. I pause. If I was with my dad, we would already be inside by now: me camped out on a prime stool at the bar with a lemonade while he trades touring war stories with roadies and bouncers he knows from way back when. But even though I’ll probably spend the gig crushed up with everyone else on the main floor, getting my toes trampled by some overenthusiastic frat boys from Vermont, I’m actually more excited than ever. I’m in the city for a show with my new friends, and if that sounds simple to you, then you clearly have a way more exciting high-school life than I do.

  I grin, giving my head a tiny shake to feel the curls flutter against my face. S
uddenly the dress doesn’t feel so foreign; the armful of cool carved bangles I picked out feels just perfect. It’s different, sure, but as I’m finally starting to see, different can be good.

  “Ready!”

  It’s time to get ruthless. Living in a shrine to your failed non-relationship isn’t helping with this whole moving on thing, so something’s got to give. And that something is every photo, every gift he gave you, and every crappy mix CD he made full of depressing British indie bands from the 1980s.

  Get thee gone.

  Keep a couple of mementos, sure, for when you’re way older and wiser — like, in college — and can laugh about the time you wasted on him. But for now, that crap needs to be stuffed in a shoe box on the very back shelf of your closet — out of sight and even further out of mind.

  “One copy of The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder?”

  “Donate.”

  “A program from the Sherman Amateur Dramatic Society production of Brigadoon?”

  “Trash.”

  “The collected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke?”

  “Keep!”

  Kayla pauses rifling through the great piles of my possessions littering my bedroom floor. Like me, her hair is tied back and she’s wearing her oldest jeans; unlike me, she’s armed with a garbage bag and a look of steely determination. “Sadie . . .” she warns, her tone exasperated.

  “I like Rilke!” I protest. “‘Live the questions now,’ ” I quote. “See? It has nothing to do with Garrett.”

  Kayla flips the book open and reads the inscription. “‘Sadie, Happy Hanukkah. Love, Garrett.’”

  I snatch it away from her. “So he likes Rilke, too. I am allowed to keep some stuff!”

  “You said you needed my help,” Kayla cries. “Total Garrett detoxification. But we’re not even halfway through your library, and you keep wanting to save things.”