Been Here All Along

by Sandy Hall

  “Does Gideon know about this?”

  “Yes. It’s totally Gideon sanctioned. He doesn’t know that you had the binder this whole time, but he wants Kyle to see the other stuff in it.”

  I hand it to her. “All right. Fair enough.”

  She gets out her phone and starts texting. “I need to show it to Kyle right away. He didn’t even come to school today.”

  “Why are you so invested in this?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I’m trying to right my wrongs, be a better person, all that good shit.” Her phone buzzes. “Cool, he says to come over.”

  I follow her to the front door.

  “So, listen. I don’t know if you’d be into this, but maybe you want to hang out sometime?” I ask. “I’m getting a little tired of Monopoly with my parents.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe,” she says. “You have my number.”

  And then she’s gone.

  It’s definitely time for me to get on with my life.

  twenty-four

  Kyle

  Everything is literally the worst. I lied to my mom about having a headache to get out of going to school today. I just couldn’t face the people at school. Any of them. Not Gideon, not my friends, not Ruby. Everyone knows. The only good thing is that back when Gideon wrote the list, he didn’t know what was wrong with me, so it’s not like the whole school knows about my LD. But still. It feels like they do.

  Oh God, and now Ruby’s texting me. Is this just going to be her rubbing it in that I made the wrong choice? I don’t even really want to look. But I should. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “Can I come over?” the text says.

  That’s not what I was expecting.

  “Um. Sure,” I write back, even though I’m not sure at all. Even though I feel like I’m falling into a trap that I’m too dumb to even recognize.

  The doorbell rings almost immediately, and I’m completely confused because technically Ruby should be in gym class right now and not at my front door.

  I open it up, not even checking my hair or anything. I know how terrible I look. No reason to hide it. I haven’t showered since Saturday. It just feels like nothing matters anymore. Who do I even have to impress?

  “You need to read this,” she says, shoving a navy-blue binder into my hands and walking through the front door, sliding her shoes off like she owns the place.

  “Did you text me from outside?” I ask.

  “No, I was next door getting that binder.”

  I examine it like it has some kind of disease. “It’s Gideon’s.”

  “Yes. And you need to read what’s in there.”

  “I would rather not read anything else about how awkward and pathetic I am. But thanks for thinking of me.” I try to hand the binder back to her, but she waves it away and takes a seat on the couch.

  “You need to read it, Kyle. I’m not joking. He’s your best friend. He loves you.”

  “He really doesn’t,” I say, flopping into the easy chair and tossing the binder on the coffee table.

  “What if I tell you he loves you so much he had to make a list about the things he doesn’t like about you, just to talk himself out of it?”

  “I’d say that he’s brainwashed you, because he tried to tell me the same thing the other night, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “Kyle, read these lists. Or else I’m going to read them out loud to you.”

  I definitely don’t want to have to hear all the mean things read aloud by my ex-girlfriend, so I might as well get this over with.

  I pick up the binder and flip to the first page. It’s a to-do list, a very Gideon-like to-do list. The words swim a little, as they do thanks to my brain being broken. I can feel Ruby watching me.

  “Could you maybe stop staring at me? It’s not making any of this easier,” I say.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” she says, picking up a copy of Weight Watchers magazine from the coffee table.

  Some of the lists are very logical. Am I gay or just Kyle-sexual? makes me laugh because it’s so Gideon. Then another one is ways to hide his feelings for me, followed by a list of reasons we’ll never work. Most of the things on that list are related to the fact that Gideon seemed to think back then that he wasn’t my type. I especially like the part where he says he’s like Danny DeVito to my Chris Evans.

  Everything in this binder is basically the opposite of the terrible, horrible, no-good list. It’s everything that makes me feel good about myself. It’s everything that makes me remember why Gideon’s my best friend.

  Ruby is not-so-subtly watching me over the top of her magazine.

  “Where’s the bad list?” I ask, flipping back through the binder but not finding it.

  “Apparently Gideon had a fit of guilt about it several weeks ago and burned it.”

  “Why did you text that list?” I ask her.

  “In the interest of full disclosure, it wasn’t me. But I shouldn’t have taken pictures of it to begin with. I’m very sorry.”

  “This doesn’t fix everything,” I say.

  “No, I know. But it seemed like something you should see.”

  I nod. “I think I need more time.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. But I wanted to make sure you had a sense of the whole picture.”

  “Maybe I should keep this,” I say.

  “Sure, I don’t think Gideon would mind.”

  “Did he know you were doing this?”

  “I talked to him, but he didn’t know where the binder was. Turns out Ezra had hidden it from him.”

  I roll my eyes and shake my head. “That’s so Ezra.”

  “It is,” she says, getting up to leave.

  I walk her to the door. “Thanks, Ru.”

  “You’re totally welcome.”

  twenty-five

  Gideon

  Kyle comes back to school the next day. He doesn’t talk to me, but at least he’s there. The good news is that slowly but surely other people start talking to me again. Ruby starts sitting with me at lunch, and as the week goes on Sawyer and Maddie come back, along with some other people from student council.

  I find out that Ezra had the binder and that Ruby made sure Kyle got a chance to read it. But if there’s anything I know about Kyle, it’s that when something bothers him, more than anything he needs to be left alone to hide in a blanket burrito for a while. We were friends for a long time, until I ruined it by being an idiot.

  The student council election is coming up soon, and I totally assume I’ll lose. But I have to hope people are more forgiving than I expect them to be.

  School kind of sucks without Kyle to talk to; I miss him a lot. I know I should probably try one more time to talk to him, but I don’t want to rush him. Maybe he’ll get so bored one day this summer that he’ll just hop the fence and come sit on the deck with me out of nowhere.

  That would be ideal.

  I’m just really sad that we’re not going to do everything we planned. Like we were going to go to Great Adventure over Memorial Day weekend and the Junior Dance a couple of weeks later. I hate that none of that is going to happen now.

  The day before student council elections, I get home from school late. Really, really late, because I wanted to wallpaper the whole school with my slogan and posters. My parents are out for dinner and Ezra is sitting in the dark in the family room, watching Teen Mom.

  “Hey Giddyup. There’s something on the deck for you,” he says.

  “Like what?” I ask, glancing outside into the falling darkness.

  “I don’t know. Go look,” he says, staring zombielike at the TV. He has a date with Ruby this weekend, and I’m trying not to think about how weird that is.

  When I go out onto the deck, my navy-blue binder is sitting on the table. I know it’s mine because there’s a star on the cover that I drew with a silver Sharpie. I open the cover but I can’t really see anything, so I wave my hands around to make the motion-sensor light go on. Then I sit down to read.
<
br />   I’ve had this for a couple of weeks and I’ve made some edits to it. I hope you like it and you understand my vision. And my handwriting. God, I have terrible handwriting.

  My smile cannot be contained. It’s been almost two weeks since I communicated more than a brief “hi” to Kyle in the halls, and it’s so relieving to hear from him, even if it’s only a little note.

  Every page after that has Kyle’s messy scrawl on it, crossing things out and making funny asides.

  The last page is a list written by Kyle. I get the feeling he’s been working on it for a while, off and on, because a lot of the items are written in different-colored inks.

  Things Most People Might Not Appreciate about Gideon, but I Do:

  1. He writes terrible lists about people sometimes, but he means well.

  2. He’s short but fits perfectly in the crook of my neck. Also, he could still grow. Lots of guys grow even in college.

  3. His hair is cute and curly even though some people might say it looks like a sponge. Maybe a sea sponge, because they’re adorable.

  4. He enjoys a good Disney movie. He enjoys bad Disney movies, too.

  5. He uses big words, but I never have to be nervous about asking what they mean.

  6. He knows when to back off and just let me be alone for a little while.

  As I finish reading the list, there’s the unmistakable sound of Kyle hopping over the fence behind me and I stand up to face him.

  He has his hands in his pockets, but I notice for the first time in a long time he’s not hunching his shoulders, as if for once he doesn’t care if anyone notices just how tall he is. He leans against the deck railing while I stay by the table. I’m a little overwhelmed by his appearance.

  “So, what do you think of those changes?” he asks.

  “I like them. I think they work.”

  “Excellent.” He smiles and takes a step toward me.

  “So we can be friends again?”

  He opens and closes his mouth.

  “Or not. We don’t have to be anything. I don’t want to pressure you.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he says, shaking his head and taking another step toward me, this one longer and more confident. But he keeps his eyes locked on the deck floorboards. “I don’t want to be friends anymore. I kind of liked the whole not-being-friends thing.”

  “Oh,” I say, not getting it yet.

  “I like the boyfriend thing. I think we were pretty good at that,” he says, lifting his eyes toward mine and smiling.

  “Oh,” I repeat, feeling my shoulders deflate in relief. “I liked that thing, too.”

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”

  “No way. I’m sorry that I wrote any of that. And I’m sorry you had to see it and I’m sorry—”

  He cuts me off by closing the distance between us and pressing his mouth to mine. I lose track of everything and anything I was about to say. Nothing even matters except for his lips on mine. I fist my hands in his T-shirt and have no clue how long this even goes on, except it’s long enough that the motion-sensor light turns off.

  We both pull back and laugh.

  “I wish there were lightning bugs,” I say, looking out into the yard. “When was the last time you caught a lightning bug?”

  “It feels like about a million years ago. Even if it was actually more like middle school.” He puts his arm around my waist.

  “They’re so easy to catch,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.

  “You were always such a pain about them. You’d never let me capture them and keep them in my room. You’d make us release them at the end of the night.”

  “And then sometimes Ezra would hit them with a baseball bat.”

  “You should have just let us keep them safe in jars! So many lightning bug lives would have been spared,” Kyle says.

  “I wasn’t that logical as a child. I just was kind of creeped out by the idea of them living inside. I could swear that I would hear them light up, and it scared me.”

  “I always kind of loved that about you. That you weren’t very logical. You still aren’t always very logical.”

  “For the record, I am a very logical person,” I say.

  “Sure you are,” Kyle says, nodding.

  “There’s lots of stuff I love about you.”

  “Oh man, I didn’t know this was a competition,” he says, letting go of me and shaking out his arms like we’re about to wrestle or something. “I was not informed that we were bringing out the big guns.”

  “Oh, I can bring out the big guns,” I say.

  “Let’s hear it then. Big guns, go,” Kyle says.

  “I love that you just turned this conversation into a competition.” Our faces get closer and closer with each sentiment, like we’re playing a game of kissing chicken, but it doesn’t matter because we’re both going to win in the end.

  “I love that you know when to ask if I need help.”

  “I love that you edited my Kyle notebook,” I say.

  “I love how you read ridiculously long books and then recommend them to me even though you know I’ll never touch them.”

  “I just want to share good literature with you!”

  “I love that you—” Kyle starts.

  I cut him off by planting a loud kiss on his lips, which throws him into a fit of giggles and he nearly trips over his own feet.

  “I love that you did that,” he says.

  “Well, yeah. Apparently we both love lots of stuff.”

  “Seems like it,” he says with a shrug before pulling me in for a longer, deeper kiss.

  I guess that’s how it’s going to be with Kyle and me from now on.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, as always, to the Swoon Reads staff. As a whole, you never fail to give me the warm fuzzies. Particular thanks to Jean Feiwel, Kathryn Little, and Caitlyn Sweeny. And of course to Nicole Banholzer for all of her excellent “publicist-ing.”

  Big, big thank-yous to the Trifecta of Awesome, Holly West, Lauren Scobell, and Emily Settle for being there at the inception of this book. To Holly for telling me about her ideal YA novel, Lauren for pulling us into her office to watch the video, and Emily for having random knowledge about high school basketball camp at the moment I needed it most.

  To Lauren Velella, who always finds the time to read every draft (unless it’s October) and always answers the phone when I need to babble. To Shayla Flournoy for reading this story while it was still in flux but for loving these boys anyway. To Rachel Schaffer for spending a long Saturday afternoon explaining Passover to me via e-mail.

  Last, but never least, thank you to my family for their unwavering support. I would have never made it this far without them.

  Humans That Kyle Kaminsky Finds Attractive

  (Yeah, we’ll start with the humans and save the inanimate objects for a separate list.) (I am not attracted to inanimate objects.)

  1. Chris Evans (Obvious. I expect more creativity in the rest of the list.) (YOU’RE THE ONE WHO WROTE HIM IN. He just happened to be the first male person I found attractive.)

  2. Elijah Wood (Now you’re simply kissing my ass.) (Ignoring you.)

  3. Demi Lovato (Makes sense. She’s aesthetically pleasing.) (Thanks.)

  4. Ben Savage (Because he reminds me of Gideon.)

  5. Gideon (Because he reminds you of Ben Savage.) (Stop taking over my list. We’ll do a list for you next.)

  7. Alia Shawkat (Because she also reminds me of Gideon.) (I feel like she’d be offended by that on the off chance she ever met me. And if you told her she reminded you of me.) (Whatever.)

  8. Ruby (Still?) (If this is a list of people I find attractive, then yes. I still think she’s attractive.) (Fair enough.)

  9. Harry Styles (Kyle. NO.) (KYLE. YES. You can cross him out all you want. I’ll make him every name on the rest of this list.)

  10. Harry Styles

  11. Harry Styles (Terrible.) (Could be worse.) (Do I even want to know?)
(Could be Justin Bieber.)

  People Gideon Berko Finds Attractive

  1. Kyle

  2. Kyle

  3. Kyle

  4. Kyle

  5. Kyle

  6. Kyle

  7. Kyle

  8. Kyle

  9. Kyle

  10. That guy from One Direction who is cuter than Harry Styles. (No such thing.) (YES SUCH THING. The other one. You know, Larry.) (There is no Larry.) (They talk about Larry on the Internet all the time.) (Who is this “they”? There’s Liam, Louis, Niall, and Harry. Zayn left the group.) (WHY DO YOU KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT ONE DIRECTION?) (Because I am a human with ears and emotions. And I have two younger sisters.) (You’re sure there’s not a Larry?) (YES.)

  A Coffee Date

  with author Sandy Hall and her editor, Holly West

  “Getting to Know You (a Little More!)”

  Holly West (HW): What is your favorite childhood memory?

  Sandy Hall (SH): I’m number three out of four kids and my older brother and sister were nine and eleven when I was born, so anytime they were around was the BEST TIME EVER. Like, no offense to my younger brother, Sean, but when Karen and Scott came on trips or on family outings, it always felt like way more fun.

  HW: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

  SH: I got glasses when I was in first grade and basically wanted to be an optometrist for the next five years. Until I found out you had to go to medical school.

  HW: What’s your favorite scene from Lord of the Rings (or The Hobbit)?

  SH: I’m a really big fan of the Smeagol scene at the beginning of Return of the King. I hadn’t read the books before seeing the movies (I can hear all the Tolkien fans groaning in the distance. I AM SORRY!), so this was super-interesting backstory. And an unexpectedly light moment in what was going to be a dark movie. At least until Smeagol killed his friend.

  HW: Gideon and Kyle are such huge Lord of the Rings fans that they learned how to write Elvish. What is the oddest/coolest/most involved thing you’ve ever done for a fandom?

  SH: I just did a little math, and I have something like half a million words of fanfiction floating around on the Internet. Definitely the most involved thing.