Crash Test Love

by Ted Michael

  London and I walk through what appears to be the living room, where a bunch of people are (dirty) dancing and a DJ is set up in the corner. I’ve been to enough Sweet Sixteens to know the party doesn’t really get started until a few hours in. I wonder what kind of crazy prank Duke and Nigel have planned. This is pretty much the first Sweet Sixteen I’ve been to as myself—no disguise, no lies. A step in a new direction. Now all I have to do is lose London. And come clean to Garrett that the two of us hooked up.

  I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a fork. A dull fork. Or even a spork.

  We approach the bar, which is humongous.

  ME

  You know, they probably won’t serve you. But I’m pretty sure Duke has a flask on him. It’s no mixed drink or anything, but—

  LONDON

  Oh, Henry, I don’t really want a drink.

  ME

  You don’t?

  She moves closer. There are people everywhere; I feel as if all eyes are on me. London and I haven’t spoken since we hooked up. Truthfully, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to.

  LONDON

  I’ve been thinking about you all week.

  Uh-oh.

  ME

  You have?

  She runs a finger up and down my arm.

  LONDON

  I never thought anything would happen between us again, but I’m so glad it did.

  ME

  You are?

  LONDON

  It’s like, destiny or something. Getting back together after all this time.

  ME

  Look, London, I don’t know how to say this, but … we’re not getting back together. I mean, we were never together in the first place, and well—

  LONDON

  Wait. You don’t want to go out with me?

  ME

  (awkwardly)

  No.

  LONDON

  Then why did you hook up with me?

  I don’t want to make her feel bad—at least, not any more than I already have. She deserves to know the truth, though.

  ME

  I was drunk, London. It was a moment of weakness. I guess I thought it would make me feel better about what happened with Garrett if—

  LONDON

  Whoa. Take a step back. You hooked up with me because of Garrett? What does she have to do with anything?

  ME

  We’re sort of … dating. I think. I thought you knew that—you’re, like, her best friend. Last weekend was a mistake, a one-time thing. I didn’t realize you wanted anything more than that.

  LONDON

  But … you’re not dating! She doesn’t even like you!

  ME

  What? What are you talking about?

  LONDON

  I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. You already hurt me once, Henry. You have some nerve doing it again. And I am such an idiot for believing you could change, or that you even wanted to change.

  ME

  I can change … I do want to change. I’m not the same person I was two years ago, London. I’m not. I’m sorry if you want something from me that I can’t give you.

  She starts to cry, and I have no idea what to do. I feel terrible, not having considered her feelings, only thinking about my own. But I really had no idea that she’d want something serious … or that she would ignore Garrett’s feelings so easily.

  Not that I’m in a position to throw stones.

  London wipes her nose. Maybe it’s because her oh-so-perfect exterior has been compromised, or simply because I’ve seen her show actual emotion, or because my experience knowing Garrett has chipped away at my own facade, but for the first time I don’t see her as a character in a movie who has no depth. I see her as a girl I have treated incredibly poorly.

  I feel awful.

  “I really am sorry,” I say.

  She looks at me with red eyes. “So are you going to tell Garrett, or should I?”

  I know this shouldn’t feel like a threat, but it does. Clearly, the right thing to do is tell Garrett exactly what happened (and why) and hope she’ll forgive me. However, I also know that if I tell her I hooked up with London, there’s a (very) good possibility I will lose her.

  “I have to figure it out,” I say.

  London laughs. Actually, it’s more of a guffaw. “There’s not much to figure out, Henry. Either you tell her or I will.”

  “It’s not really your place to say anything, London.”

  “It’s not? I’m her friend.”

  “I don’t know a lot of things, London, but I do know you’re not her friend. A friend would never hook up with someone who her friend is dating.”

  “That sentence is so ridiculous I won’t even begin to unpack it,” she says venomously. “I’m not going to keep this a secret anymore. A week is enough. And she doesn’t even know about what happened sophomore year.”

  London starts to walk off toward where we left Garrett. I instinctively shoot my arm out to block her path.

  “Please don’t,” I say.

  London blinks at me like I’m some nearly extinct animal at the Bronx Zoo. The light from the candles in the room bounces off her hair and makes me see spots.

  “Don’t tell me you have actual feelings for this girl,” she says. “You’re Henry Arlington. You don’t have feelings.”

  London sounds incredibly like Duke and Nigel right now—I hate it when they lecture me, and they’re my best friends. I certainly don’t need to hear it from her.

  I’m about to respond with something obnoxious when suddenly, out of nowhere, I start to cry. I haven’t been able to cry for so long, and now, after telling Garrett about my mom, I can’t seem to stop. I think about how I betrayed Garrett by hooking up with London and how Garrett will never forgive me, about how I used London to make myself feel better about what happened with Garrett—only now, I feel worse. I’m in love with Garrett and I’ve ruined everything.

  My whole face feels wet. London just stares at me, completely frozen. After a moment or so, her expression softens. “Wow. You do have feelings for her.”

  “Yeah,” I say messily. “I do.”

  “Let me get this straight: you, Henry Arlington, the king of the random hookup, who is deathly afraid of commitment … actually want to be with Garrett? Like, for real? Like … you love her?”

  “Yeah.” There. I said it. Say it again, Henry. “I love her.”

  I can’t believe what I just said. Out loud. Is it true? I kind of have no idea what love is, really, but I do know I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about Garrett. She’s the first person I want to see in the morning and the last person I want to see at night. The first person I’ve ever talked to for more than five minutes on the phone, who I can tell anything. The first person I’ve been able to watch ten movies in a row with and not get sick of. The first person who has ever understood me, who has ever tried to understand me, who I’ve told about my mom, and who has made me feel like maybe there actually is a person out there in the world who’s my partner, who gives me joy, who I miss when she’s not there, who drives me crazy just thinking about her, let alone touching her.

  Is that love? And if it’s not, what is?

  I look around and see Duke and Nigel standing a few feet away.

  “I love her!” I scream, pounding my chest like a maniac. “I love Garrett Lennox!”

  DUKE

  Dude.

  NIGEL

  Dude.

  DUKE

  (looking around)

  Be quiet! Someone’ll hear you.

  ME

  That’s the point! I want people to hear me!

  NIGEL

  You need to get a grip, Henry. You’ve gone totally mental.

  “I haven’t, though,” I say, grabbing Duke by the shoulders and looking at him—really looking at him. “I feel more like myself than ever before.”

  NIGEL

  Henry, you’ve been acting bonkers ever since you met this girl, and now you’re saying you love he
r? This is crazy talk!

  “Maybe it is, Nigel, but I don’t care.” My brain is going buck wild. My heart is throbbing. Where is Garrett? I need to find her.

  “Wait,” London says, grabbing my wrist. “Listen to me.” Jyllian and Jessica have sauntered into the room; they approach us warily, as if they can tell something serious is going down.

  Nigel and Duke look as confused as I am.

  She clears her throat. “It’s about Garrett. There’s something you should know.”

  I cannot run fast enough. I blink the tears out of my eyes but can’t see where I’m going. There are walls everywhere, surrounding me, blocking me in. There are too many rooms in this house. I push people out of the way. I feel like a stranger in my own body. What am I doing? Where am I going?

  I make my way outside just in time: I can hardly breathe. I am sweaty and my hands are shaking. I trip over my own feet. Dozens of kids from school are standing in a semicircle; there are cameras everywhere. I feel like I’m on speed—everything is rushing, everything is racing—but then I see Garrett and I stop. I pull her from the crowd, onto an open patch of grass in front of the party. People start taking our picture; everyone is looking at us strangely but I don’t care.

  “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?” Garrett asks.

  “What London said. Am I just a joke to you? A bet?” I am screaming now. I want to rip every single hair from my head. I want to reach inside myself and dig out my heart and hand it over for her to squeeze until it pops. “Is it true?”

  Duke and Nigel have materialized out of nowhere. I can see the J Squad pushing their way to the front of the crowd. There are security guards waiting to whisk us away, I’m sure, but no one seems to be making a move. All cameras are on us. I hear some of the crew members yelling at each other and pointing in our direction.

  Garrett moves her head. Not left to right, though. Up and down. “Yes,” she tells me. That one word hurts like a million bee stings. Like an electric shock. Like an explosion. “It’s true.”

  GARRETT

  Sometimes, the truth comes out in ways you wish it didn’t; all you can do is hope that someday you will be forgiven, that the blemish will be erased from the permanent record known as your soul.

  The whole thing goes down like this:

  Henry and I, standing, watching each other. Him waiting for the moment I will break and laugh and say this is all one big joke.

  But that moment doesn’t come. Because this is not a joke. It’s real life.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” I tell him, and even though I am, it sounds like bullshit. “I tried to tell you earlier but I didn’t have the chance.”

  “When? When did you try and tell me?”

  “Before, at my house, and—”

  “Tonight doesn’t count,” he says. “You’ve been lying to me for weeks. How could you?”

  Everyone I go to school with is staring at us. All the people I wanted to like me, I wanted to impress. Henry’s face sours and I have to turn away. I can’t look at this person I have grown to care about so deeply and not feel like the most wretched, deceitful girl in the entire universe. Even though I never really saw it coming until it was “Too Little, Too Late” (JoJo, 2006). “Honestly.”

  “You lied to me,” Henry says, rocking back and forth. “You acted like you loved me, and I told you things—things I’ve never told anyone before.” He points at London, Jessica, and Jyllian, who are standing diagonal to me. “Did you hang up the phone with me every night and then give them the scoop on how fucked I am?”

  “No,” I say, reaching out for him. He flinches. “Of course not. Our friendship was real, Henry. The stuff we shared was real. I promise.”

  Duke and Nigel walk toward Henry, one on either side of him. “Let’s go, man,” Duke says, frowning in my direction. “She’s not worth it.”

  “Umm, aren’t you forgetting something?” says London. Murmurs rise from the crowd as she burrows into the conversation. “You can’t just be the good guy here,” she says to Henry. “Aren’t you going to reveal your little secret for the cameras?”

  I look at Henry. “What is she talking about?”

  He hesitates for a moment, and then it spills out. “I hooked up with London. Last Sunday.”

  Last Sunday. Last Sunday was the day after we … Oh, right.

  My stomach quivers and my eyes begin to tear. Even though I betrayed his trust, I thought I had discovered the real Henry, the Henry who is kind and sensitive and misses his mother and wants to be in a relationship. That’s why I feel so horrible about having lied to him. But this …

  I should have known better.

  “Well, then I guess I made the right decision the night before, huh?” I say.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Henry says softly.

  “It’s not the first time we’ve hooked up either,” London tells me. Her tone is venomous and, at the same time, devastated. “Two years ago we sort of had a thing. Didn’t we, Henry?”

  It all starts clicking into place. That first day at lunch with the J Squad, when London told me that Henry was a heartbreaker, it was her heart she was talking about. All the times she seemed uncomfortable when I spoke about growing closer to Henry. The whole idea of teaching him a lesson—this was all for her, really. She tricked me into doing her dirty work.

  Henry looks crushed. “Garrett, listen to me. I hooked up with London because—”

  I hold up my hand to silence him. I think of Ben and Amy, my former boyfriend and my best friend, who betrayed me and found refuge in each other. Is Henry the new Ben, and London the new Amy?

  I don’t know whether I’m actually entitled to be this upset, but I am. I hurt Henry—that much is undeniable. My own feelings, though, surprise me. I am jealous. I am furious. I am devastated.

  Why am I never enough?

  Finally, I say, “Whatever your explanation is, it doesn’t matter. You hooked up with London the same weekend you were with me. But for your information, the reason I came over to your house that night was because I’d just found out that my ex-boyfriend and my best friend are now an item. I was upset. And the only person I wanted to be with, who I thought would make me feel better, was you.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Henry. I can see in his face that he means it, even though “Sometimes Sorry Is the Wrong Thing to Say” (Ryan Calhoun, 2008). “If I could take back what I did, I would. But you lied to me, Garrett. Is the J Squad why you got a job at Huntington in the first place? Do you even like movies, or is my entire life some big joke to you?” His voice cracks. “Which parts of you are real and which parts of you are make-believe?”

  I am about to lose my shit and I don’t want to be sobbing in front of the cameras. Also, I hear the sound of a helicopter in the distance; we are probably standing in the exact spot where Destiny is going to make her grand entrance. Hence the menacing-looking security guards closing in on us. “I gotta go.”

  I haven’t gotten very far when I see blond hair coming right toward me to attack. Or embrace.

  “Are you okay?” Jyllian asks me, pulling me into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Here,” Jessica says, taking a brownie from her purse. “This will make you feel better.”

  “No thanks,” I say. London is standing behind them. I wait a few seconds to see if she will speak first. She doesn’t.

  “This is awkward,” Jyllian mutters. “Can’t you two just kiss and make up?”

  “Are you even sorry?” I ask London.

  I watch as she thinks. “I am sorry,” she says finally. “I thought he wanted me back, but all he wanted was you.” The tears start forming; she tries to shake them away, only it’s no use.

  “I thought you were my friend,” I say. “How could you hook up with him when you knew we were together?”

  London chokes back a sob. “Do you hear yourself? You weren’t together. This whole thing was a game. Only you forgot how to play.” She looks at Jyllian, then at Jessica. I watch her fa
ce go from red to purple, then back to normal. Jyllian hands her a tissue. “If anyone messed up here, it’s you, Garrett.” She blows her nose. “And this, girls, is exactly why we should never date high school boys.”

  London turns her back to me and walks away. J & J follow.

  I’m not perfect. I know that Henry and I weren’t officially “together.” He wasn’t my boyfriend. I flat-out told London I didn’t have feelings for him and that the most important thing to me was earning a spot in the J Squad. But no matter how you slice it, that still didn’t give her an excuse to do what she did. A real friend would’ve known better. But the J Squad were never my real friends. I knew that from the start. Only somehow, that knowledge got lost and I thought, maybe, things would all work out.

  Well, they didn’t.

  And I guess that’s okay.

  I want so much more than the J Squad. I still want friends, sure, but not friends who are going to make me pass a test before I can hang out with them—even if they are the most beautiful, influential girls in school. I want friends I have common interests with—excluding sabotage. Being popular, even just for a little while, doesn’t really matter. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before. It certainly would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

  People don’t forget about my scene with Henry—I’m sure it will be all anyone talks about at school on Monday—but after Destiny jumps out of that helicopter and the party truly gets underway, I’m able to slip out unnoticed. I call my dad to pick me up. Then I wait.

  It’s pitch black outside, but there’s candlelight from the pumpkins that line the driveway, giving off a romantic atmosphere I would have found appealing had tonight not sucked hard-core. How many times do you get to hurt someone who cares about you and lose your so-called friends, all within fifteen minutes?