Getting Over Garrett Delaney

by McDonald, Abby

  “But look at everything I’m donating.” I point to the not-at-all-insubstantial stack of books, movies, and CDs that I’ve decided to purge from my life. Sure, my mom reorganized the place just six weeks ago, but that was merely a surface job. This? This is an archaeological excavation we’re on here; delving through the sands of time and/or my hoarding habit to find every Garrett-related artifact and purge it from my life. Everything I have only because of Garrett goes, that’s the rule. No exceptions, no excuses. It’s time I figure out what I like for myself.

  At least, that’s the theory. But watching Kayla toss aside my precious memories with such casual disregard is too much for my sentimental heart to take. “Not that!” I yelp as she grabs a handful of faded old flyers from my dresser.

  “This?” Kayla holds up a crumpled blue sheet of paper. “‘Library sale, Wednesday, 2 p.m.’ Wow.” She laughs, “I can see why you want the reminder . . . from two years ago.”

  “It was the first time Garrett and I hung out.” I take it from her and smooth out the paper, remembering how nervous and excited I’d been. Meeting him by accident was one thing, but the first real, live plans we made? That was momentous. “It stays.”

  Kayla sighs. “OK, let me see it.” I pass it back to her, but she doesn’t pause for a split second before announcing “Nope!” and ripping the flyer in two.

  I let out another yelp. She rips the pieces again. I whimper.

  “Sadie!” She laughs. “Get a grip. These are just things, remember?”

  “They’re memories.” I look around, feeling a pang. “And once he’s gone, they’re all I’ll have left of him. Don’t you keep things from Blake, to remember all the time you’ve spent together?”

  Kayla shakes her head. “Not like this. Photos are memories. Special gifts are memories. A room full of junk is just a creepy stalker shrine.”

  “I’m not creepy!” I object. She doesn’t reply, just holds up an old shirt of Garrett’s I “borrowed” six months ago and conveniently forgot to return.

  “When was the last time you washed this?”

  “Um, never?” I reply in a small voice. “I didn’t want to lose the scent of him!”

  “Just listen to yourself.” Kayla shakes her head in despair. “Personal hygiene isn’t negotiable!”

  I blink.

  “You’re right,” I say in shock. “What have I become?”

  And just like that, I see the clutter for what it really is: sad, pathetic hoarding, a testament to my powers of denial and self-delusion. But no more.

  “Trash it!” I say, a new surge of energy coursing through my veins. “Trash everything!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Kayla grins as I tear into the stack of stuff anew. All those dreary indie bands that Garrett loves so? Gone! The endless parade of books about twenty-something men having identity crises in Brooklyn? Out of here! My shelf of snooty foreign films about existentialism and the constant betrayal of death? ¡Adiós, amigos!

  Soon, the garbage bags are filled to overflowing and everything useful is packed up and ready to take to Goodwill. “Somewhere, a pretentious teenage boy is about to get very lucky,” I joke, hauling the last box to the doorway.

  “Wow.” Kayla exhales, sinking onto the bed. “It’s like a blank canvas. You can be whoever you want now.”

  I sit next to her, taking in the spaces on my shelves and the white gaps on my walls where my set of Criterion Collection movie posters used to hang. She’s right — it is kind of . . . freeing, to be rid of it all. I’m liberated from reminders of that pining, angst-ridden past: no signs of Garrett hanging around, waiting to fill me with indecision and second thoughts. Now I just have a few boxes of photos and gifts stored away, safely out of sight in the top of my wardrobe.

  But how empty the room looks is heartbreaking in a whole different way.

  “Was I really this pathetic?” I ask quietly.

  Kayla turns to me in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “Beth said once that it was obvious how much I loved him, that I trailed around like some kind of puppy.” I gulp, anxious. “Is that what everyone thought?”

  “No!” Kayla gives me a hug. “I mean, we knew you were superclose. It just seemed like . . . you were in your own world together — that’s all.”

  “Really? Because I want to know if it was a running joke or something.”

  “I swear.” Kayla squeezes my shoulder. “To tell the truth, some girls were kind of jealous of you. Garrett’s up there on the school hot list.”

  “He is?”

  “No idea why.” She laughs.

  “Yeah, yeah, pretentious jerk, I know.” I manage a smile. “But he wasn’t, not to me. He still isn’t,” I add. “But I just can’t believe I ended up like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like my entire world revolved around him. I didn’t even realize — that’s the crazy thing,” I tell her. “All this time, I’ve been walking around thinking I’m some strong, independent girl who would never lose her head over a boy. And it turns out, I’m nothing but a Garrett clone.”

  “You’re not!” Kayla protests, grinning. “You have way better hair.”

  I laugh, despite myself.

  “It’s OK,” she tells me. “We all go crazy for a guy sometimes. And then we date him, figure out he’s not this perfect mythical god, and get over it. Maybe that was your thing,” she suggests. “You never got together with him, so he stayed up on the Perfect Boyfriend pedestal.”

  “Maybe.” I look around. “Anyway, come on. Let’s get this stuff into the garage.”

  Kayla pulls me to my feet. “You know what the best thing is about this clear-out?” she asks, hoisting two bags of trash down the hall.

  I struggle under the weight of the boxes. “I don’t have to go to sleep with Vladimir Nabokov staring down at me?”

  “Sure, that, but also you’ll be able to bring guys back here now.”

  “Guys?” I laugh, following her downstairs. “What guys? Aside from Garrett, the only man ever to step foot in my room was there to fix the heat.”

  Kayla grins. “Exactly! But that’s all going to change. And when you do bring a guy up to, ahem, pretend to watch a movie, he won’t take one look around and run.”

  “OK, now you’re just exaggerating.”

  “Trust me on this, Sadie. Obsession is not cute in a date, especially if they’re obsessed with someone else.” Kayla dumps her bags in the garage. “It’s like those girls who collect dolls or have a wall full of kitten posters. You might want to look up at adorable bundles of fluff every night, but just think how it looks to someone else. You know Lizzie Jordan, right?”

  I shake my head.

  “Junior, blondish, student council?’

  I shake my head again.

  “Sadie!” Kayla sighs as we head back into the kitchen. “You’re oblivious. Anyway, she was dating Chris Leeds last year. They’d hung out a little, nothing serious. He goes over there to “study,” walks into her room, and finds pictures of her ex everywhere. Like, everywhere! He dumped her like that.” She snaps her fingers. “Now everyone thinks she’s a psycho bunny boiler.” She goes to the fridge and pulls out a jug of lemonade.

  “Charming.”

  “But true.” Kayla shrugs. “Anyway, don’t worry, we’ve saved you from that fate.”

  “For which I’ll always be grateful.” I laugh. “No, seriously, thanks for helping out with this. I know it’s not the ideal way to spend your Saturday.”

  “No problem.” She shrugs again. “These days, if it doesn’t include an army of evil brats, I’m in.”

  “Didn’t you have plans with Blake?”

  She shakes her head, following me out into the backyard with the drinks. “He’s with his family on some trip to Philadelphia this weekend.”

  “Oh, that sucks.” I head for our usual spot under the far tree — sunny enough to get some tan on our legs, shady enough for those epic games of Connect Four we used to play or, today, to cool
down after all that manual labor. “Every minute probably counts, before he goes away, I mean.” I settle on the grass.

  Kayla nods slowly. “I’m not thinking about it.” She gives me a weak smile. “Otherwise, I’ll just get sad and mopey for the rest of summer.”

  “Denial: the ultimate coping tactic.” I grin and clink my glass to hers in a toast.

  We stretch out, relaxing beneath the sun-dappled canopy. It’s one of those perfect cloudless summer days: cool breeze rustling the leaves above us, the distant comforting hum of a lawn mower somewhere down the block. I slowly relax, feeling a strange sense of belonging to be back here with Kayla after so many years.

  “Can I ask you something?” I prop myself up on one elbow to look at her.

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t take offense or anything, but I’m curious. . . .” I bite my lip, trying to find the right way to ask. “What is it you see in Blake? I mean, I don’t know him all that well,” I add quickly. “I’m just wondering. Most people our age don’t make those kind of plans.”

  Before, I always figured Kayla was being naive and predictable, thinking she could make the high-school golden couple thing last in the real world, like those prom king and queen couples who get hitched after graduation and start having kids right away. But now that I’ve spent time with her, I just can’t make those pictures gel. Kayla is smart and sensible — not the kind of girl to buy into that happily-ever-after vision of romantic perfection.

  Kayla stares into the canopy, as if organizing her thoughts. “I don’t know how to describe it, but we just fit. He’s my best friend, and I . . . I can’t imagine us not being together.”

  “But tons of people date in high school and then split up,” I point out. “I’m not saying you will. It’s just that you seem so certain you won’t.”

  She gives a small shrug. “He knows me better than anyone. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything,” she continues. “I mean, when we started dating, it was just fun, you know? Movie dates and parties and making out in the back of his truck.” She laughs, but then something else drifts across her face, something more somber. “But when my dad got sick, Blake was just amazing about it —”

  “Wait. What?” I sit up in surprise. “When was this?”

  “Last year. We didn’t tell anyone,” she explains, “and he’s in remission now, so . . .” She trails off. “But Blake, he was, like, a rock. I expected him to back off, you know, because I was being all emotional, but he was so supportive.”

  “Really?” I suddenly feel bad for all the times I wrote Blake off as a dumb jock with zero depth.

  “I know he doesn’t seem like it,” Kayla adds, as if reading my thoughts. “But away from all the guys, he’s really sweet. He dropped all that player crap, was there whenever I needed to talk. Or just cry. That’s when things got real.” She smiles — the calm, secure smile of a girl in a long-term relationship. “I knew I could count on him.”

  “That’s great,” I say quietly.

  “He even did a stupid home karaoke version of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ on my birthday, to cheer me up,” she adds, grinning at the memory.

  “Like in 10 Things I Hate About You?” I laugh. “I haven’t seen that movie in . . . I don’t know, forever!”

  “What?” Kayla cries. “You were the one who made me watch it every month all through sixth grade.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” I tell her, then crack a smile. “It was every other month.” I pause. “You know, I bet I still have all that stuff stashed away,” I say, leaping up. “Come on!”

  We head back inside, this time going to the storage closet under the stairs, aka the Cupboard of Doom.

  Kayla blinks as I tug on the overhead bulb, illuminating approximately ten years of clutter crammed into boxes, spilling off every available shelf.

  “Whoa. Hasn’t your mom cleared this out yet?”

  “It’s her guilty little secret,” I answer, scrambling up onto a broken chair and reaching perilously for the back of the top shelf. “Every time she opens the door, she chickens out.” I stretch as far as I can, fingertips nudging a shoe box closer. “OK, got it!”

  I clamber down, holding my trophy aloft.

  “What’s in there?” Kayla asks.

  “Only every teen movie we ever used to watch.” I grin, pulling off the dusty lid. The DVD boxes are stacked inside, remnants of my childhood I packed away when Garrett came around and deemed them teen-girl trash: Josie and the Pussycats, Clueless, Bring It On . . .

  “What are they doing locked away in a dark corner?” Kayla demands. “These are classics! I have them out on my main shelf.”

  I laugh. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to deny myself all these years.”

  “Hell, yes, you were.” Kayla pauses. “You’re free tonight, right?”

  “I guess. . . .”

  “Perfect! How about a sleepover movie marathon?”

  “Sleepover movie marathon?” I repeat slowly, as if it’s a foreign phrase, but Kayla only beams at me.

  “Trust me, this is going to be the best!”

  What does he hate? What stuff makes him rant or rage or just curl his lip in disdain? Books, music, TV shows, food? The collected works of Amanda Bynes, peanut M&M’s, fries with mayonnaise?

  Go out and try it all — everything and anything. Fill your world with the stuff you’ve been avoiding to keep his good opinion. It might suck, just the way he always said, but it might also be made of awesome.

  Embrace the teen movie experience. Bring on the peanutty candy joy! He has crappy judgment about suitable romantic matches, so why trust his taste in anything else?

  Six hours, two bags of chips, and a quart of rocky road later, I’m kicking myself for having put away my childish things for so long. Sure, the movies I watched with Garrett may have been insightful meditations on the nature of the human condition, but they were severely lacking in spirit fingers, and while those dour black-and-white Swedish films may win all kinds of prestigious awards, they don’t leave you with a radiant glow of possibility and girl power the same way the kick-ass story of a wannabe roller-derby girl does.

  So what else have I been missing out on? Inspired, I spend the next week devouring Kayla’s movie collection, and soon I’m hungry for more.

  “What else?” I demand from LuAnn, wielding my pen and a growing list of new must-sees. I’m using a lull at work to assemble a new curriculum: the education of Sadie going full-speed ahead.

  “Um . . .” She considers. “How about some TV shows? Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, The Vampire Diaries . . .”

  “Do they have makeovers and spontaneous musical numbers?” I ask hopefully.

  She laughs. “No, but they’re good — trust me.”

  “Ooh, have you got Empire Records down?” Aiko asks, clearing the next table. “It’s way old, but great.”

  “Yes!” LuAnn cries. “And read Elaine Dundy, and Lorrie Moore, and Emma Forrest, too.”

  I make diligent notes as they banter suggestions back and forth. It’s not that I like everything I’ve seen — the appeal of teen horror movies goes way over my head. Same for macho sports movies, and that whole “she takes off her glasses and suddenly is the most popular girl in school” thing — but the point is I’m trying it. If I’ve learned one thing from this crash course in mainstream culture (besides the fact that smushing marshmallows into vanilla pudding is all kinds of delicious), it’s that appearances can be deceptive. Don’t write off a book (or person, or movie) just because it has a pink, sparkly cover.

  Soon, I have pages of suggestions from everyone — all of them just dying with jealousy that I get to experience these wonders of the world for the first time.

  “All of the Battlestar Galactica reboot? Aww, man . . .” Jules says wistfully. He pushes a handful of shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. His face is dusted with three-day-old stubble. “I spent some of the best years of my life with that show.”

  LuAnn and Aiko join me at the t
able for our traditional downtime break. “My feet are killing me,” LuAnn moans, sinking into a chair next to me. The lunch rush is over, and now there’s just a smattering of students and our usual WiFi leech camped out around the room, sun filtering through the slatted blinds.

  “That’s because you wear heels.” Aiko grins, sticking her sneakers in the air. LuAnn pushes them away.

  “But these shoes are so pretty. . . .”

  We all pause to admire the strappy sandals, adorned with little red bows. “They are cute,” I agree.

  “Beauty is pain.” LuAnn sighs. “Oh, well.” She pushes a plate of smushed pastries toward me. “Eat.”

  “What are you, my mother?” I laugh. LuAnn is like my personal Goddess of Nutrition, always insisting I’m but one skipped meal away from wasting to nothingness.

  “Were those actually broken?” I ask, surveying the plate of suspiciously fresh goods.

  “They are now!” Aiko pops a chunk of double-chocolate cookie in her mouth.

  I pause. “Guys . . . I can’t get in trouble with Carlos again. I’m on permanent probation after my meltdown.”

  “Relax.” LuAnn laughs. “Like he cares about a few crumbled cookies. As long as nobody drags him into work — ever — he’s happy.”

  Aiko nods. “Anyway, he’s been in a weirdly good mood recently. The other day he wandered in and announced coffee on the house, because his song got licensed for some car commercial again.”

  “Which song is it, anyway?” I ask.

  “You know, I’m feelin’ free. . . .” Aiko hums a few bars.

  “No way! That’s him?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow.” I pause. “What’s he doing here then? Instead of out in Hollywood or something?”

  She shrugs, pulling out a sketchbook. “Says he hates the industry, it’s full of snakes and liars.”

  “He just wants to find a girl,” LuAnn adds, her voice syrupy with sarcasm, “spit out a few kids, and live in a cabin in the woods somewhere. Rock ’n’ roll.” She pushes her half-eaten salad toward me. “Here. Greenery. Vitamins. Try them.”