by Amy Spalding
“What are you doing tonight?” Kat asks me. “Do you want to go to the AMC 16? Brett Bolton’s having a party, but it might be more fun to see a stupid movie.”
I do want to see a stupid movie, and obviously I want time with Kat that’s just us, so I agree before saying good-bye to her and to Quinn. Mom’s actually out when I get home, and of course Dad is at Vino Mag. I mean to catch up on the reading for AP Lit and Comp, but I get distracted looking at Instagram and texting Logan and Kat. I should probably feel guilty, but it’s just so much more interesting than Bleak House.
“Hey there.” Mom leans into my room. “Your dad and I need to talk to you, but he’s still on his way home. Why don’t you head to the living room now, though?”
I follow her in and search for some sign of what this very serious talk will be about. For a Saturday, she looks nice: dark jeans and a T-shirt that hangs in an expensive way. That in and of itself doesn’t seem like a sign of anything, though.
“I thought it might be a good time to fill in your college application list,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “I thought this was something serious, the way you sounded. It’s really filled in already.”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “Just UCLA?”
“UCLA, yes, and USC as a backup. I’m sure I can get into one local school.”
“You realize that UCLA is actually more difficult to get into than USC, right, James?” she asks.
“Yes, I understand, but I still prioritize UCLA.”
“I’ve been doing some research, and ideally you should be applying to at least six. Of course you can go with UCLA and USC as your target schools, but then two or three dream schools, and two or three safety schools.”
“I’m sure that I’ll be fine,” I say. “My SAT scores are above what both schools are looking for, my track stats are strong, and Kat says she’ll help me with my essay so I don’t sound like a robot.”
Mom sighs. “Honey. You have your whole life ahead of you. Are you really ready to commit everything to staying in your hometown, just for your boyfriend and your best friend?”
“It’s not for ‘my boyfriend.’” I use air quotes. “We both agree that UCLA’s pre-med options are best, and I can run track there. I made this plan on my own; it wasn’t that he decided and I’m following him. As for Kat, she’s going more than halfway across the country, at the least, because she wants to be somewhere ‘artsy and interesting.’”
“You’re only seventeen.” Mom’s phone buzzes, and she glances at it with a little smile. But she quickly turns it over and her expression is serious again. “You’re making decisions about your entire life.”
“Uh, isn’t that the whole point of college? How is deciding to move across the country and be away from my boyfriend any more of a decision than staying here?”
Mom sighs more. “James, I’m just worried that your world so far is so limited, and you’re designing your future in the same manner.”
“How is my world limited?”
“Well, you already seem to have committed for life to your boyfriend, you don’t seem interested in living anywhere besides your hometown, you only have one close friend—”
“I know that you don’t like Kat,” I say, for the first time, though I’ve worried about this fact more often than I could keep track of.
“I like Kat just fine,” Mom says. I decide not to call her out on it. “I just don’t think that it’s healthy not to have more of a social life at your age. And Kat’s . . . a little self-centered. I worry there’s no room for you in your friendship sometimes.”
There’s immediately a feeling that’s double in all ways. It’s fiery and freezing at once. It’s wrong but it strikes dangerously close to something true.
“We just went skating last night, remember? Logan, Kat, a bunch of girls from school, and me.”
“That’s right.” I hate how happy Mom looks at this reminder. “Did you have a good time skating?”
“It was fine,” I say, and then, “I kicked Logan’s ass, so.”
“Good girl.” Mom smiles again, and it hits me that I haven’t seen her smile like this at me in a while. Is she that worried about my future? I’ve seen photos of Mom at my age—at all ages, really. My parents went to school together, starting in kindergarten, though they didn’t start dating until high school. As they tell it, Dad was too shy and intimidated by everything about Mom. After all, she might clearly dislike my best friend, but pictures paint Mom as the Kat of her high school class. Everyone looked at her.
“I go out with groups of people all of the time,” I say, which seems almost true.
“I know that you do, but you don’t seem to be that close to anyone beyond Kat or Logan.”
“You and Dad went to school together,” I say. “Your life is perfect. Why can’t I want the same thing?”
Mom laughs, but as if nothing is funny. “My life isn’t perfect, James. I just . . . I challenge you to do something with your year that doesn’t involve your boyfriend or Kat, OK? And add at least a couple more schools to your list. I did some research and I think UC Berkeley or the University of Michigan would fit you just as well.”
“Fine,” I say, as Dad walks in. “If you’re as upset about my college list as Mom is, I’m fine adding Berkeley and Michigan to my list.”
“That’s not what we’re here to talk about,” Dad says in a snappish tone I’ve rarely heard from him before. When we were little, Kat and I had this elaborate conspiracy theory that Dad was a stoner because he was just that chill all the time.
“I’m sorry if you think my plans for—”
“This part isn’t about you,” Mom says, though not harshly. “James . . . god, I didn’t think this would be so . . .”
“Your mother and I are separating,” Dad says in the same horrible tone.
“What?” I look to Mom, and then back to Dad. There must be a moment coming where they tell me they’re kidding. I’m ready for this conversation to turn back to my dismal future. I’ll willingly go back to my room and read Bleak House all night if that’s what it takes.
But there’s no coming moment where the joke’s explained. Mom and Dad just sit there with unchanged expressions.
“James . . .” Mom moves to sit closer to me and takes my hand in hers. We aren’t that touchy-feely, and I jerk my hand away from hers without even thinking about it. “This is . . . it’s incredibly hard to tell you. But I’ve met someone and—”
I pull back from her even more. “Wait, what? You’ve met someone? Like you’re having an affair?”
“I don’t like that phrase,” Mom says.
Dad folds his arms across his chest. “Neither do I.”
I feel like I’m watching a stranger who looks like my father. Nothing about his voice or the way he’s holding himself is Dad.
“I wouldn’t risk . . .” Mom closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I wouldn’t make such a big decision that affects both of you if I wasn’t so sure that this is what’s right for me.”
“For you,” I say. “Clearly, not for me or for Dad, right?”
“For the three of us,” Mom says. “Our lives are better if we’re all truly happy, aren’t they?”
Dad and I don’t answer.
“Anyway, James.” Mom keeps trying to make eye contact with me that looks like something straight out of a serious TV drama, but I don’t want to be part of this episode. “I’m moving out, and Todd and I—”
“His name is Todd?” I ask. “It’s like what you’d name a dog.”
Dad coughs like he’s trying not to laugh. I want to join in except that nothing’s funny. How could anything ever be funny again, when Mom is leaving us for someone named Todd?
“Todd and I have found a house in Toluca Lake,” Mom says. Toluca Lake is only one town over, but it’s not retro or quirky like Burbank is. It could be almost any other personality-free town in the Valley. “It’s less than a ten-minute drive from here—only five without traffic. You’ll hav
e a huge bedroom, and—”
“I’m not moving,” I say. “This is my home. Not somewhere in Toluca Lake with someone named Todd.”
“We’re not asking you to move,” Mom says. “Half your time here, half there.”
“Half?” I don’t want to live in Toluca Lake, even half of the time. I don’t want to meet anyone named Todd. I don’t want Mom to think that Dad isn’t the best man she knows.
“I know this is a lot to process,” Mom says.
I don’t decide to, but I just stand up and walk away, down the hallway, to my bedroom. Nothing feels real, but it’s not like a dream where deep down somewhere you know you could end it all by willing yourself to wake up. Everything might feel numb, but it’s all actually happening.
“James, honey.” Mom walks into my room and wraps her arms around me. “I know this must seem ridiculous.”
“It doesn’t seem ridiculous,” I say. “It is ridiculous.”
“I was fifteen when I started dating your father,” she says. “I had no idea what I wanted then. And in a flash, I’m in my forties married to my first actual boyfriend. It’s like I don’t even know how I got here.”
“Great,” I say. “That makes me feel fucking great.”
“No, James—that isn’t what I meant.” She hugs me even more tightly, but considering how numb everything feels, it doesn’t matter at all. “I really thought that I was happy enough. And then . . . it turned out that I wasn’t.”
I stare straight ahead at my wall, at the framed square of pictures Kat had printed from Instagram. Five photos of her and me, four photos of Logan and me. Logan and me at prom. Logan and me after a track victory. Logan and me on his eighteenth birthday when he bought a pack of cigarettes he never smoked, just because he could. Logan and me holding hands walking down the sidewalk in a photo I had no idea Kat was taking.
The first photo of us together isn’t up there—and I’ve always been grateful for that fact because it took me until fairly late sophomore year to make decent hair and fashion decisions—but if it was, I’d be fifteen in it. Just like Mom and Dad.
I didn’t know that everything could break at the same moment.
“Can I please be alone?” I ask.
“Of course.” Mom shuts the door behind her.
I’ve always been someone who didn’t necessarily know the right thing to say, but right now I don’t even know the right thing to think. Facts and research and plans have always made so much sense to me, and my life has worked. But this constant comfort I’ve had, since the fifteen-year plan gelled into place, was because I felt that my hypothesis had already been proven. This wasn’t new, bold research. I had sources to cite, proven theorems, historical documents.
Maybe she’s selfish, and maybe she’s a bad person. But if Mom wasn’t happy, my hypothesis is completely flawed. And, therefore, my fifteen-year plan is riddled with errors.
Dad’s face flashes into my head, the way his eyes lost their light as Mom made her pronouncements. Then it’s not Dad’s eyes I’m seeing. It’s Logan’s dark brown eyes, and I’m the one breaking his heart.
When the best guy in the world has chosen you, you don’t think it could be within you to ruin it. But now I feel it: my destructive possibilities, the new unproven formulas, the research yet to be written.
I don’t want to be Mom. I can’t imagine being a person whose own happiness is the only thing driving her. But it’s better to know how things could end, isn’t it? It’s better to cut something off before it has a chance to bloom into malignancy.
I grab my phone with shaking hands. Kat’s texted that Brett Bolton’s party might actually be worth going to, but I leave those messages unread and maneuver to my ongoing conversation with Logan. What if the fifteen-year plan worked out and then suddenly it was twenty, twenty-five years, and then my unhappiness choked me until I had to leave him, leave our hypothetical kids?
I don’t tell Mom and Dad where I’m going. I’m not sure if Mom’s even still here. Why would Mom still be here? She’s made her decisions about her priorities.
I let Waze tell me the quickest—and most stressful—path to Logan’s dorm. My fist is banging on his door before I even know it.
“It’s about time.” He swings open the door and grins. “Just can’t stay away, can you.”
I wish that I could change my mind. If I were a different person. If proofs meant nothing to me. If evidence never felt binding.
“Logan,” I say, and the word feels heavy, hard to push out. “We need to talk.”
He runs his hand through his black hair. He suspects nothing. I imagine Mom telling Dad, and Dad starting the conversation with that easy smile he has, for everyone, but especially for her.
“What’s up?” Logan asks.
I step inside and dodge him as he tries to kiss me. “We have to break up.”
“Great prank, nerd,” he says. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
“I’m serious,” I say, and something shifts in his eyes. This is what it’s like to carry this possibility, to be able to ruin someone. If time, if a life together, can only make it worse, this is the kindest I can be.
“I felt like I owed it to you to do this in person, not by text,” I continue. “So I’m here.”
“McCall.” He wraps his hands around my wrists. “Slow down. What the hell is going on?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, and my voice catches on matter but I recover quickly. “This isn’t going to work and . . . and it’s stupid of us to pretend we have some big fifteen-year plan when—”
“What happened?” he asked, and his eyes are so big, and so serious, especially as I pull out of his grasp. “Can we just talk about it?”
“Nothing happened,” I say, still moving back from him. “I’ve just been so stupid.”
His eyes are still huge and earnest. I have to turn away.
“I have my whole life ahead of me,” I say.
“OK,” he says. “If you need a break or—”
“I don’t need a break.” If only a break was some kind of magic potion. I’d take as much as it called for. “I need you to take me seriously right now.”
“McCall,” he says in a small voice, “I always take you seriously.”
“Then, seriously,” I say. “This is over.”
“Please talk to me,” he says, and now it’s his voice that’s catching. I have to get out of here, and so I leave without another word or look back at him.
Brett Bolton lives in the same little section of Magnolia Park as Kat and I do, and so even though I don’t really know him, it’s easy to make my way back to the neighborhood and find his house. Kat’s hanging out with a small circle of people, including Quinn (of course), in the front yard, but she shrieks and flies over to me as soon as I walk up.
“James is here!” she yells with her beer-scented voice. “Yay!”
“Hi,” I say, and a tiny sob escapes me before I can help it. Kat’s mouth falls open and she throws her arms around me.
“Come on.” She drags me away from the crowd, down the sidewalk, around the corner. “What happened?”
“Logan and I broke up.” It becomes real as I say it, and I try to imagine homecoming, Christmas, my birthday, Valentine’s Day, prom without him. Mom in Toluca Lake, Logan gone forever. My world cut in two—no, three—pieces.
“James.” Kat starts to cry, too, and hugs me tightly. “How is it even possible? You guys were like my OTP.”
“You spend too much time on Tumblr,” I manage to say, which sends her into snotty-sounding giggles. It’s so tempting to lay it all out right now for Kat, but for all the horrible things I can’t stop feeling, no matter how much I don’t want to, the worst part is how stupid I must be, deep down. I might comfort myself with books, research, and carefully laid-out plans, but maybe these things mean nothing. Maybe I’m just a child who doesn’t understand how life actually works.
Plus, my sweet still recently heartbroken friend believes the story, too, the
fifteen-year plan, the fairy tale of Jamie and Valerie McCall who fell in love at fifteen and then lived happily ever after right here in Burbank, California. This amazing girl who’s been my best friend every goddamn step of the way believes she might be no more lovable than a wild, snarling cat, because a boy made her feel small.
How can I do this to her, too? Someone still deserves the fairy tale.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “I just needed you to know.”
“OK,” she says. “We can talk or not talk about anything. Do you want to leave?”
“No,” I say. “I want to have one of those ill-advised rebound hookups, actually.”
I have no idea this is what I want until those words have left my lips, and judging by Kat’s face, I think I might have scandalized her.
“Does that make me terrible?” I ask even though I’m not sure that I care. But I’d like Kat to think I care.
“No, no,” she says. “Go get some! Who’s cute? Who do you want to make out with?”
My brain literally can’t conjure up even one guy, so I just head back to the party, arm in arm with Kat. I don’t remember the last time that neither of us had a boyfriend, and suddenly our options seem incredibly open. Kat strikes up a conversation with Gabriel Quiroga, who’s in our humanities class, and I feel myself a little giddy with excitement for her until she’s disappeared, and I realize she’s sent him my way.
“She’s funny when she’s drunk,” Gabriel says. “I guess she’s funny in class, too. Hopefully she’s not drunk there.”
“Hopefully.” It’s genuinely my best attempt at small talk. I really can’t believe I’ve had multiple boyfriends. It genuinely would have been a miracle even if there had been only one.
