“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m—”
My phone wouldn’t shut up. The call was an unknown number, and when I fumbled for the switch to silence it I noticed I had something like fifteen missed calls since last night—none of them numbers I recognized. Then I stood there, phone in hand and heart pounding queasily hard.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, my voice preschooler-tiny. Mom got up and shoved her chair back in place a little too hard.
“Grounded,” she said. “And I hope you think a little harder about how you treat your family, Nattie. Sam, your father, all of us.”
“I—”
Dad, tight-lipped above his Haverford sweatshirt, stood and came over, presumably to give me a squeeze on the shoulder, but I shrugged out of his grasp. He sighed.
“Well,” he said. “Well. I’m disappointed, Natalie.”
And then he was gone, leaving me alone with my phone in my hand and a stomachache. I stood for a minute, two, overwhelmed, until a single memory started pushing its way to the front of my mind. The texts. From Dad. From last night. When they’d been out of town and so, of course, had I.
I picked my phone up again and tapped over to my texts.
Hey NG can you gimme a call? xo D
NG it’s Dad, you at Tess’s? Looks like rain . . . from Mr. Yurt
please call . . . SH at A Cappella & says you’re not home?? v important . . . need someone 2 tarp yurt before big storm! love Dad
The yurt.
The bottom fell out of my stomach. No. I shoved on a pair of Mom’s clogs, flew out the screen door into the muddy backyard, and gasped. In the corner of the yard stood a pile of splintered, soggy wooden slats and a soaked, dirt-covered heap of canvas.
“No,” I said out loud. But I was too stupidly late. The yurt was destroyed.
If I’d felt guilt heartburn on the train before, I was now utterly immolated. Carefully, awfully, I stepped over to the corner of the pile and crouched—maybe the damage wasn’t so bad—but when I picked up a slat, it split right in half.
“Shit.” I threw the slat back into the mud, and then, because swearing didn’t seem to do anything the first time, I increased the volume. “Shit!”
Everything was broken. Every stupid thing was broken. And my phone was buzzing with another call—a New York area code. Bethany, I thought. Shit. I took a deep breath and answered.
“Hello?” I said. “Hi, Bethany, I’m really sorry about your ID. I totally—”
“Hello?” The voice was deep and male and definitely not Bethany. “Hey, hi. Are you—is this Natalie?”
“I . . .” My wrong number died in my throat. “Yeah?”
“Awesome,” he said quietly. “I mean, hi there. This is Carter Murasaki at Jawharp magazine. Can I ask you a couple of questions about Sebastian Delacroix?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I turned off my phone for the rest of the weekend, which was like being a ghost, or living without a soul. When I did go back to school, for the first time in my entire high-school life, even though it was a special emergency last-minute Monday damage-control session, I skipped an OWPALGBTQIA meeting. Or tried to, anyway.
“Excuse me?” A tiny freshperson girl with severe eyebrows cornered me just outside Dr. Frobisher’s room, as I was attempting to skulk past. “Um, are you Natalie?”
“Um,” I said. “What?”
She threw a look back at the double doors of the Alumni Building, where her friends were clearly waiting.
“Um, sorry. I was just wondering. Because you’re kind of . . .”
I braced myself for her to say something nasty.
“. . . famous.”
She giggled, and her eyes went wide. And even though I knew it didn’t matter, and that I shouldn’t have cared, I felt a tiny glow in my chest. No freshperson had ever thought I was cool before.
“I was just wondering if you, um, knew Sebastian Delacroix?”
“Everyone at Wister knows him,” Tall Zach, my savior, my excellent sugar-fueled, long-legged friend, had bounded up to me in the hallway and insinuated himself between the freshperson and me. “I mean, everyone who was here when he went here, anyway. I know him.”
“Yeah, but, like . . . she kissed him, right?”
“Question time is over!” Tall Zach shouted, and he gave the girl a few emphatic shooing gestures with his bag of candy until she finally scurried off.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.” Tall Zach held open the door. “I guess you’re a celebrity now.”
My stomach gave a nauseous wiggle. “Don’t say that.”
“Sorry, sorry. For the record, though, I always thought the song was kind of . . . never mind,” he finished, seeing my look of anguish. “Anyway, I hope you’re ready for intense problem-solving mode. That party is becoming, like, a thing.”
“Party?”
“The A Cappella party?” Tall Zach said. “Well, A Cappella slash cross-country, I guess. The guys are sort of polite about it in front of me, but basically no one is planning to go to the dance. Except us, I guess. And now that A Cappella is going to the party, too, Tess is trying to get some major firepower on our side, and . . .” He sighed and rubbed his temples. “This whole thing is really becoming a thing, huh?”
“I mean . . . yeah.” I swallowed, thinking about the weekend. “Would you expect any less from Tess? Go big or go home.”
“Yeah. It’s just, like . . .” Tall Zach’s lips twitched, and he folded his long arms. “Okay, remember my bar mitzvah?”
“Um, of course? You became a man. And also crushed my hopes of us getting married.”
“Nattie.” His eyes went wide. “Really?”
“You . . . have good bone structure,” I said, feeling myself blush. “I couldn’t help but have a crush on—actually, never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Zach laughed. “God, and we’d have had such beautiful children! But, anyway, so . . . yeah.” He fiddled with the strap of his fancy digital watch. “That was a whole thing, too. I mean, the party and stuff was fun, and all of you guys were great after I pulled the whole ‘hey, I’m gay’ declaration. But my family wasn’t . . .” He exhaled. “My parents were fine, more or less. But my grandparents and stuff . . . they didn’t think it was ‘appropriate’ for that occasion. And we kinda didn’t talk for a while?”
“Oh,” I said. “God. I had no idea.”
Zach shrugged. “I mean, I don’t regret doing it, but sometimes I wish I hadn’t, like, gone in so hard. Like maybe I should’ve gone easier on it, for everyone else? So when I see this whole thing with Tess and the dance getting bigger and bigger . . .” He sighed. “It’s not that I don’t support this thing. You know I do. I just . . . I worry about her. I can’t help it. We kind of have to worry about each other, you know?”
“I mean . . .” I couldn’t finish. I worried about Tess, too, but it was different. I hadn’t even thought about it, but of course it was different for Zach.
“Hey, it’s okay.” He swept an arm toward the classroom. “Shall we?”
I didn’t move.
“I, um, I have to go.” I held my backpack straps tight and shuffled my feet sort of toward the door.
“Go?” Tall Zach frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere else,” I said. “I . . . um, I can’t today.”
“Can’t?” Tall Zach looked aghast, or as aghast as one can look while biting the head off a gummy shark. “But we need you, Nattie.”
“Yeah? For what?”
Tall Zach chewed his gummy. Saying nothing. Of course.
“Yeah, so.” I started to go, but Tall Zach jumped in front of me and grabbed my elbow.
“Wait! Um, for treasuring?”
I gave him a look. Tall Zach let go of my elbow.
“Okay . . . well, then, as our token straight girl?”
“Hey, Nattie!”
Meredith White, chipper as ever, was rolling her backpack right for us
. “Did you hear about the song that—”
“Yes,” I said, so sharply that Tall Zach almost dropped his candy. Meredith actually gasped a little.
“Oh,” she said. “Um, okay. Is this where the OWPALGB—”
“Yup!” Zach said, and jerked his head toward the room. “Why don’t you just go . . . on . . . in.”
Meredith kicked her backpack from off its haunches and hurried inside. I, meanwhile, folded my arms over my stomach, wishing I could fold up entirely and disappear.
“So, yeah,” I said to Tall Zach. “I think you’re fine on that front.”
“But Nattie—”
“Just . . . go, okay?” I said. “Your boyfriend’s probably waiting.”
“What do—oh.” Tall Zach made a face like the gummies had suddenly gone sour. “Endsignal? We’re not a thing. He’s just way too young for me.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, he’s nice and all, but it’d be creepy, you know? I don’t want to be that older guy who takes advantage.”
I looked at my sneakers to hide how furiously embarrassed I was. Because of course—only an interloper would make a mistake like that.
“Yeah,” I said at last, my voice whispery. “I really don’t think I belong here.”
And with that, I pushed through the Alumni Building doors and into the freezing-cold rest of the world.
After school, I sat on the Donut, forlornly, my phone still off. I had spent the rest of the day fighting off heart-stuttering panic and the weird shimmery feeling you get in your eyeballs right before you erupt into sobs, but because being seventeen meant alternating between life-melting emotional disaster and intense academic boredom, I also had Dr. Frobisher’s Latin test to study for, which I had forgotten about until she’d mentioned it at the end of class.
The main building door banged, and Zach the Anarchist came out, backpack over one shoulder and no jacket on even though it was only like forty degrees. His T-shirt today was blank—just black.
“Hey! Wait up!”
Zach kept walking fast toward his Volvo. He must not have seen me on the Donut, so I had to jog to reach him, and my breath was coming in puffs by the time I got to his car. “Can I have a ride?”
“Why?”
“So . . . I can get to your house?” I said. “To do Latin stuff?”
“Oh.” He bit his lip. “Yeah. Sure.”
The whole drive there, Zach the Anarchist was weirdly silent. The drive wasn’t silent, because as soon as we’d gotten in, he’d jacked in his phone and started blasting something angry and anticapitalist, before even turning the heat on. Also, it seemed like he was driving way faster than usual. Either way, we were pulling into the West abode like twenty minutes later.
“Hey, Bacon. Hey, buddy.” I fell to the ground as soon as we got in, but Bacon just sort of lolled on his doggie bed.
“He’s been having megaesophagus problems,” Zach said. “He just got back from the vet.”
Bacon waggled his tail-stub, but didn’t get up.
“Oh.” I got up and kicked off my shoes. “Well . . . should we get started?”
Zach put his backpack on the counter and just kind of looked at the floor.
“Whatever. I’m gonna bake something.”
I got out my Latin notebook and hopped onto my stool. “I thought we were done with bake sales.”
“We are. Which you would’ve known if you’d come to the meeting.”
Zach unfolded the little cupboard door and started getting stuff out. I stood there, stupidly, unable to help and unable to play with Bacon, which was my fallback activity whenever my help was not needed.
“Oh.” I swallowed. “Okay. Well, do you want to read, or—”
“I have notes. Just check them.”
“Okay.”
I flipped open Zach’s notebook to Catullus 58, where he’d done a translation in pointy boy handwriting on Dr. Frobisher’s worksheet.
Caeli, Lesbia nostra,
O Caelius, our Lesbia,
Lesbia illa.
that Lesbia.
illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
That Lesbia, whom Catullus alone
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
Loved more than himself and all his own
nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
Now in the crossroads and alleyways,
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.
She jerks off the descendants of magnanimous Remus.
“Ew,” I whispered. Zach didn’t even look up. I flipped incredulously to the Gs of my student’s abridged Latin dictionary for glubo, glubere: “to deprive of its bark, to peel, to husk. In obscene sense, to service manually (Roman men being uncircumcised).”
I slammed the dictionary shut, still grossed out, and went back to the worksheet. Under Themes, Zach had written righteous indignation.
“What do you mean, righteous indignation?” I asked. Zach shrugged.
“You’re the one who’s so good at Latin.”
“Your translation is totally perfect,” I pointed out. Zach pulled a cookbook off the shelf.
“She did something gross and so he’s mad that he wasted his time.” He flipped through pages. “Pretty simple.”
I pushed away my notebook and rubbed my arms. The West kitchen, which was usually so cheerful and warm and full of the good kind of organic snacks, now felt chilly. I looked from the countertop up to the refrigerator, which was papered over with pictures: Pat and Trish hiking up some mountain, little Zach playing a guitar twice his size, Bethany grinning a mouth full of braces at her Wister Prep graduation.
“It was cool to see your sister this weekend,” I said. “Thanks for asking her to let us stay there.”
“Mm.”
“Tess found this awesome suit to wear to the dance,” I said, with a weird twinge of guilt. I hadn’t spoken to Tess since our fight. It was the longest time we’d gone without speaking in possibly ever. “Except, um, she didn’t actually buy it. But I got this yellow dress, which I thought was going to look horrible with my hair, but it actually looks pretty great.”
“Mm.” Zach was measuring out chocolate chips and didn’t look me in the eye.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“I’ve got it.”
I stood and watched for another few minutes as he melted butter and chocolate in a small saucepan, then started to stir in some sugar. It smelled divine.
“I should really say thanks,” I said, to break the silence. “You really pulled all those bake sales and stuff together. We never would’ve gotten any customers without your stuff.”
“Mm.”
He grabbed the guitar spatula and began to scrape the melted chocolate into a bowl. I folded my arms. Zach’s silence was the opposite of Tess’s overtalkativeness, but it was just as annoying. Maybe worse.
“You know, most people say you’re welcome when someone thanks them for something.”
“Mm.”
“Zach!” I actually banged my hand on the counter. “Come on. You’re being really weird.”
Zach stopped scraping.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to New York to see him.”
“What?”
“Bethany told me about the concert,” he said. “The Young Lungs? Seriously? You told me you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t like him,” I said. “For your information, it was Tess’s idea. She wanted me to ask him to get the band to play at the dance. So more people would come.”
“Yeah? So now we’re having them at Winter Formal?”
“Well . . .” I looked at the ground. “It didn’t exactly go as planned.”
At that, Zach rolled his eyes. “Of course not. Good going, Natalie. Way to think of someone other than yourself.”
I clenched my hands into fists. “No, actually, you know what? So what if I liked him? What’s the big”—even in the heat of anger, I couldn’t make myself swear—“freaking deal?”
“Sebastian Delacroix is a t
ourist, Nattie. He’s a shitty musician and he’s a total tourist. He only goes places so he can take pictures of them and use them to make himself seem more interesting.”
“Yeah, well . . .” I struggled to figure out what I wanted to say. “We can’t all be cool, anti–social media types like you.”
Zach stopped stirring and looked me right in the eyes.
“Did you really date him?”
“What?” My heart thudded against my rib cage. “Who told you that?”
“The song, Nattie. The one that’s named after you?” Zach shook his head. “Seriously, Nattie, how dumb do you think I am? I may not be on Pixstagram or whatever, but I’m not dead. Everyone at school’s talking about it. Did you actually think I wasn’t ever going to hear about it? Or did you just happen to forget to tell me in particular? Because I know you told everyone else.”
He’d heard it. He’d heard it. My heart sank. I had to act fast—deflect. No, deny.
“Oh, ‘Natalie’?” I tried to fake a laugh. “For one thing, that’s the thirtieth most popular name in the US right now.” I knew this because I had checked. “For another, the song’s not about me.” I knew this because Sebastian’s bandmates had all but confirmed it in New York. I’d never been anything to him.
“That’s not what the interview says.”
I snapped my head up. “What interview?”
“The one on BuzzKlik?” Zach’s cheeks were a little pink. “Everyone’s seen it. He’s calling you his ex-girlfriend. Says he wishes you could still talk. Is that true?”
“I . . . what?” None of this was making sense. “But we talk all the time!”
Zach looked away.
“God, this is stupid,” he said. “You’re better than this.”
“Better than what?” Suddenly, I was mad. Zach was supposed to talk to me, make me feel better, not berate me.
“Better than being a groupie, Nattie.” Zach made a disgusted noise. “You don’t like his music. You don’t even like him that much. You just like being famous.”
“For your information,” I said, “I spent last night really messed up about this whole situation. I had to lie to my parents because magazines wouldn’t stop calling my house. I had a huge fight with Tess about it.”
Who's That Girl Page 24
