by Amy Spalding
Somehow, we still feel like the same to me, though. Maybe that’s what family is.
“Hey, guys.” Dad steps into the room, looking as surprised as I feel to be using it again. “I wanted to talk to you while you were both here. Since Luke’s around for another week, I thought maybe . . . we could have dinner with Diane.”
I glance at Luke, who shrugs and nods. “Sure.”
I shrug and nod, too, even though I’m only pantomiming what casual people look like. Inside my chest my heart thuds and I try to count beats like a metronome. Maybe I should own a metronome. You can’t worry about skipped beats when you can line them all up like that.
Once I’m alone in my room, I start to text James. It’s just my auto-reaction to anything happening, but now there’s this lie hanging out there, and I’m not sure what to do with it. Regardless, though, there’s a more urgent matter at hand.
I actually have no idea who to type. Why does it feel like something horrible to be . . . I don’t know, popular or something? Not that it hasn’t always been like this, but it’s definitely intensified. I know that there’s something people want to like about Quinn and me as a couple. It’s a good story that Matty Evans’ ex-girlfriend fell in love with a girl. But being popular doesn’t mean what it means to be loved by James, by Luke, maybe by Logan still. And if I can see that difference so clearly, I don’t know why other people can’t.
Ugh, Logan. Should I tell James about our conversation? I need her to be there for me while I’m figuring all of this out with my dad. Potentially pushing her away right now is almost literally the very last thing I need. Sure, I’m dying to ask, but I’m not an idiot. Our texts are not what they used to be. My side of the screen is always so much heavier these days.
And, anyway, breakups are hard. Maybe it felt like getting dumped, the way I technically broke up with Matty but he’s the one who did something unforgivable. Not that I can see James or Logan doing anything horrible. Not only to each other, but at all.
Even though I have homework and even though it might not be the most ethically sound thing to use someone for distraction, I go to Quinn’s after school our second day back from winter break. The night I’m supposed to meet Diane.
“Can you help me with my calculus homework?” Quinn asks once we’re in her bedroom with the door closed and I’ve already stepped out of my shoes.
I sit back on her bed and pull her toward me. “Um, I can, but does it have to be now?”
Quinn and I have only had sex once, on New Year’s Eve. It’s not that we haven’t wanted to since; it’s that logistics have been super annoying. Luke is almost always at my house while he’s home on break, and when he’s not, my dad is. Quinn’s sister is nearly always home here. Today is a rare occasion that we have a house to ourselves, and I thought we were both well aware that we needed to take advantage of this situation.
She leans over to kiss me. It is not a sex-starting kiss; it’s way too polite.
“You should talk to James sometime,” I say. “She’s way better at explaining math stuff than I am, and unlike your sister she’s actually taking the same classes you are.”
Quinn shrugs. “I don’t really think James wants to help me. We’re not friends, you know.”
“No, I know, but, like, you’re not not friends, either.”
“I don’t think we’re going to be friends,” she says in her most gentle voice, like it’s a consolation. “James doesn’t like me, K.”
“No, totally not true,” I say as quickly as I can. “James is just, you know, all stoic and quiet. She’s a tough nut to crack, but those are always worth it ’cause they’re the most delicious nuts.”
“Sure,” Quinn says, and there’s one tiny ribbon of hope laced through the word. Unfortunately, there are way more ribbons of reality in there, and so I know she doesn’t really believe it, no matter how good it would be if she did.
“Also, I don’t think that’s true about nuts.”
I pretend to gasp. “Do you doubt my nut knowledge?”
She cracks up and I take advantage of the moment to tackle her back on the bed. She slips right out of it, though.
“Not homework,” I say. “That can’t be what you want to do right now.”
“Of course it’s not. But I also want to graduate with a decent GPA and get into a good school and have a future to look forward to. Calculus is jeopardizing all of that.”
“You dork, we’re early decision. Oberlin has probably already made its mind up about us.” I grimace when I realize that’s true. “Whoa. We’ll know within a few weeks if it’s happening or not. How weird is that?”
Quinn sighs and looks away from me. “I . . . should tell you something.”
It is never good when people start sentences that way.
“K, I didn’t apply early decision,” she says.
It feels like someone just threw cold water all over me with no freaking warning at all. “What are you talking about? Did you mess up the deadline? I feel like they completely changed since I wrote them down last year.”
“No, I didn’t mess up the deadline. I just didn’t apply.”
“Quinn, what is going on?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say something.” She runs her hands through her hair. “It just wasn’t right for me, and I didn’t think you’d understand.”
I search her face for some change, something I could have seen in her eyes. But that’s never where you see important things, and I have no idea why I bother to check anyway. “Why didn’t you even tell me? You could have given me a chance to understand! Do you not want to go to school with me anymore?”
“No. It’s not that at all,” Quinn says. “It’s . . . you treat me like I’m perfect.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting her to say, but it’s not that.
“But you are perfect!” I tackle her back on her bed and mess up her hair. “You’re, like, amazing and magical and—”
Quinn sighs and squirms away from me. “Kat. You get that you think that because you’re my girlfriend, right? You have a pretty biased take.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” she says, though her voice sounds potentially the opposite. “I just wish I could make you see reality a little more clearly. You had really good reason to apply early. My grades aren’t as good as yours, and I’m positive I won’t write nearly as good of an essay as you did. We aren’t the same.”
“I don’t think we’re the same,” I say. “I just think you have, like, tons of value that you pretend isn’t there.”
She just sighs.
“Is it because you have to commit?” I ask, because if you apply early decision to Oberlin and get in, you are going to Oberlin. Which means right now that I could be signed, sealed, and delivered to a school my girlfriend has rejected.
“We hadn’t even been together two months at the deadline,” Quinn says, which is technically true, but why are we just counting from the afternoon she kissed me? Why can’t we count from the night we met, when suddenly there was this new person I couldn’t get out of my brain? Why do we even count time when it means nothing? Mom’s been gone for years now but I still occasionally have mornings when I have to remember that she’s gone. How many days do I have to log with Quinn for it to be real?
“No, like, I totally get that,” I say anyway, because I do, even if I also hate it. “I just thought we—”
“We are! I promise I’m applying for regular decision,” she says. “And all my backup schools, which have plenty of overlap with yours, if Oberlin doesn’t work out. Early decision was just too much. OK?”
I inch my way over to her, trying to close this gap that seems to have opened up out of nowhere and threatens to swallow everything. I wish she’d told me sooner, but she did tell me, which isn’t at all like James and Logan’s breakup, still out there with its truth unsaid. I mean, it would be way better if it wasn’t a thing at all, but at least Quinn told me.
Eventually.
&n
bsp; “Are you mad at me?” I ask again, because that, I’m sure, I can fix. I can be a better girlfriend. I can try even harder and be the best girlfriend who’s ever lived.
“Of course I’m not,” Quinn says, though, again, her tone doesn’t totally match her words. “You have to promise me something.”
“Possibly,” I say, as my stomach drops again. Today Quinn seems full of scary possibilities. “What is it?”
“If I don’t get in, you have to go anyway.”
“I might not get in either!”
“If you do.”
“If I do, I have to go. You know that. That was why we were doing this together.”
She’s quiet.
“But I might not,” I say, because at the moment it’s a less heartbreaking scenario than the one where I do but Quinn doesn’t even try, and next year she’s—what? Just some girl I remember? I don’t want to have to just remember anyone.
“And, like, I’ll still apply regular decision then,” I say. “Then it still depends where else we get in. Oberlin isn’t, like, my dream school. I don’t have a dream school. I want to be somewhere cool and liberal artsy and hopefully where my girlfriend is, too.”
Quinn makes a scoffy noise.
“Why are you being like this?” I cozy up behind her and wrap my arms around her shoulders. My bare toes are cold against the backs of her still laced-up boots. “Please talk to me.”
“I’m talking! I just think I could end up getting in nowhere, and going to PCC next year, and that’s fine, but I don’t want your future screwed up when you have more choices. I worked out this whole plan where getting into a computer science program at a liberal arts school is my best chance, but there’s no guarantee, K. We haven’t been together that long, and you shouldn’t rearrange your whole life for me.”
I feel that I’m about to cry and try to distract myself by looking at the soft blonde hair at the nape of Quinn’s neck.
“You’re quiet back there,” she says, and her voice sounds soft again, the voice that I know is just for me, for moments like this when we’re lying in her bed. “I’m just nervous.”
“Well, duh, me too.” I bury my face against her shoulder and hope she can’t tell I am crying, just a little. “I don’t feel like I’m rearranging my life.”
My life got completely rearranged the day Mom died. Trying to be at the same school as Quinn next year doesn’t feel anything like that at all. And I’d say it, but it’s so freaking depressing. I don’t want to be the crying grief girl, when I can be the girl snuggled up against my girlfriend and her soft hair and the back of her neck with all my tears hidden.
“I feel like I screwed this whole afternoon up,” Quinn says. “I just wanted help with my homework and to have sex with you. Which would have been a much better use of our time.”
I reach into her pocket to take out her phone and check the clock. “I definitely don’t have to be home for a while longer.”
“Oh thank god.”
Diane is waiting in the lobby of Firefly when the three of us walk in. I don’t know what I expected her to look like—I just hoped that it would be nothing like Mom. And she doesn’t. Mom was fair and blonde, and even though she was a tough businesswoman, she had this sort of carefree quality about her. Diane has dark curly hair, dark brown skin, and a perfectly put-together outfit of expensive-looking jeans, gray boots, and a cashmere sweater layered over a soft-looking T-shirt. It’s good Dad asked me about the shirt for his first date with her, because Diane’s style is perfect. The restaurant is dim and sophisticated, and so I assume she chose this as our meeting spot.
“This is Kat, and this is Luke,” Dad says to her, even though it’s probably not necessary. I pull on my monogram necklace as Diane shakes Luke’s hand and try to look friendly when it’s my turn.
“I’ve heard so much about you both,” she says. Her voice is warm and husky, like a lady who’d be on NPR.
“I’m not that exciting,” Luke says with a smile. “Kat, on the other hand . . .”
“Oh my god, I’m super boring, too,” I say. “Trust me.”
Dad sighs loudly. “Don’t be weird, guys.”
For some reason that breaks the tension and we all laugh. Diane’s laugh is warm like her voice, and I already don’t hate her. Already I hope she thinks my outfit is cute and that my hair is well-styled. Her curls seem in much better control than mine.
“Luke, Charlie tells me you’re a freshman at Purdue,” Diane says once we’re seated and looking at menus.
“Yeah, I’m in the engineering program,” Luke says. “My plan is to specialize in civil engineering, get into urban planning.”
“Luke is, like, a genius,” I say.
“You do OK,” Dad says with a grin, and I feel it, how proud he is of us. I don’t totally understand how that works, being a parent. Luke got into a great college and has these big and real goals to make cities better. I’m still not sure what my future’s going to look like. Is there much to be proud of me for—yet, anyway?
“Your dad says you applied early decision for Oberlin?” Diane asks, and I nod, while a lump tightens in my throat. I’m not sure that I want it as much without Quinn, and I don’t know that I like feeling that way. But is it wrong to feel that Quinn’s so right? It’s not like I was making college plans with Matty. I don’t fall the same way for everyone.
“I did,” I say. “I haven’t heard back yet. It’s OK if I don’t get in. I can go somewhere else.”
“What do you want to study?” she asks, and she looks so eager for my response that I feel even worse that I don’t really have one.
“I’m still figuring that out,” I say. “I just want to be somewhere where I can learn a lot and be surrounded by interesting people.”
“That’s more than enough right now,” she says. I’m sure she’s trying her best to seem nice to us in front of Dad, or maybe she’s just flat-out being nice to us. So she might not mean it. She might have had her plans all lined up at seventeen. But I am so glad to hear it anyway.
“Diane’s a social worker,” Dad tells us, and I like that. It sounds like an important job, that she has to be responsible and look out for people. I sneak a look at her and see the way she’s looking at Dad, and then it’s sort of too much for me, even though I wish it wasn’t. I want to feel the way Luke looks, calm and accepting and mature. Instead I sneak a look at my watch and count my heartbeats.
Luckily a waiter pops up at our table to get our drink order, so there are a few moments I don’t have to think too hard about what to say next. Diane orders a beer, just like Dad, and suddenly I can’t remember what Mom’s drink was, if Mom even had a drink.
It’s not Dad going out with Diane that’s erasing Mom, I realize. It’s time and distance and death.
Luke elbows me. I try to evaluate what my expression is because apparently it’s not the best right now. My heart could choke me, I think, and then I wonder if that’s literally possible. For now, I can still breathe, so I focus on that.
“You OK?” he asks, but quietly, and I nod.
It’s just a dinner, I realize, even if it’s also a big scary deal. I eat pasta and make conversation, and before I know it, we’re saying good night to Diane and getting into Dad’s car. We all survived.
“Diane’s cool,” Luke says, almost like an afterthought. He’s so chill it just rolls off his tongue.
“Diane’s super cool,” I say. “Her job sounds awesome, too.”
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Luke says, and I glance back at him from my regular spot in the front seat. Mom’s old spot. “You can just be normal. Nonperfect.”
I wince as if I’ve actually been stung. It’s true I’m not chill and I’ve probably never had a casual afterthought. It’s true I want to be perfect and that I wish that was my normal. With Dad and Luke and Diane—and Quinn, I realize. Before Mom was gone, Dad and Luke felt as safe as James still does to me. But we’ve lost too much; I can’t let them down.
&
nbsp; “Guys, come on,” Dad says, and the rest of the ride home is quiet. Luke slinks off to his room once we’re back at the house, but I hang around the shared spaces like Dad will suddenly be the kind of guy who has the right thing to say to me.
“Hey, kid?”
I look over to Dad, my heart pounding. My hands clasp my chest, just in case.
“You good on cash for lunch and whatever?”
I nod. And remember something I’ve forgotten.
“What was Mom’s drink?” I ask. “Did she have, like, a regular drink?”
He looks off in the distance like she’s only actually that far away. “Vodka and soda, and she wasn’t picky about what kind of vodka. Said it all tasted the same to her.”
We laugh together at that.
“Kid . . .” Dad sort of sighs. “Thanks for coming tonight.”
“Did I have a choice?” I mean it as a joke, but I don’t think it comes out like one.
“You should get some sleep,” he says. “Or do your homework, if you’ve still got homework.”
“Good night, Dad.” I want to hug him, but then maybe everything would seem too big and serious, so I just kind of wave before heading off to my bedroom.
I take the tiny gift box out of my dresser drawer and examine the KRE monogram necklace. The letters feel so unfamiliar compared to the loops of JLA, which maybe is silly. After all, these letters are mine.
I take off Mom’s necklace, slide the new charm off its chain, and add it to Mom’s. It’s slightly heavier when I refasten it around my neck, but the weight actually feels comforting.
My phone buzzes, and I scoop it up when I see Quinn’s name.
Are we?
I start typing about my evening, but think better of it, delete it, and pull up a new text to James.
Just for freaking once I wish James would use more words than the bare minimum. Because even though everyone in my general circle of friends knows that my mom died, it’s not a continuing conversation with any of them, besides James.
