“Cool.” Harper pushed her way in and headed straight to the kitchen.
Oliver, dumbstruck, followed her.
“I’m bored.” She rummaged around in the Princes’ cabinets and pulled out a pot, some oil, and a jar of popcorn. “Elena’s working. Sam’s working. Your sister’s wherever.” She held up a measuring cup. “This okay? I probably should’ve asked first.”
Oliver shrugged. “I like popcorn.”
She tossed three test kernels into the heating oil and put a lid on the pot. “You have fun at my party last night?”
“Yeah,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the counter. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He wasn’t sure what this was. Were he and Harper…hanging out? Spontaneous social situations were not Oliver’s forte. He usually needed to prep himself for person-to-person interactions. But Harper had barged in out of nowhere, shaking up his day. He wracked his brain for a way to politely tell her to get the hell out. He had things to do. He had proud_hoser to chat with.
Harper turned to him. “Did you really have fun?”
“Sure.” No, he hadn’t. He’d spent the night stuck in a house full of people he didn’t want to talk to, with people asking him questions about the game he’d created but was no longer in charge of. He’d longed to check his phone to see if proud_hoser was there, but he couldn’t do it, not with so many other people around.
“Liar.” Harper grinned, turning to check the heating kernels.
“Hey,” he said, “I had the great misfortune of talking to Elena last night. Why haven’t you told her about you and Regina?” Elena had tried drilling him again that morning about Harper’s ski trip hook-up. He’d told her, “Let’s stick to the Latin, please. It’s what you’re being paid for.” Then she’d thrown an eraser at his face.
Exhaling, Harper turned and shook the pan. Oliver didn’t know Harper very well, but he knew her type. Harper was a tough, strong, popular girl who always got her way. She was the queen bee. But standing in front of him right now, she was anything but. She was wounded. She looked all doe-eyed and pathetic, like Regina after a particularly bad breakup. They weren’t so different, the two of them.
“Would Elena not understand?”
Harper turned around, surprised. “It’s not that. Of course it’s not that. It’s just…I don’t know what to tell her. I’m still trying to figure the whole thing out myself.” Darkness crossed her face. “I’ve always gone out with guys and it was fine, but with Regina it just felt…right.”
Oliver nodded slowly, scared of what he’d gotten himself into with this conversation. He wanted to be there for Harper, but he did not want the details of her romantic liaison with his sister. This situation right here was precisely why he’d spent most of his life avoiding emotional entanglements.
“My whole life,” Harper continued, “I believed I was one thing, and now…I don’t know. Am I gay? Am I bi? Is it just Regina?”
Ugh, just Regina. Another way he and his sister were polar opposites—she had some kind of magical powers that drew people to her, and Oliver was basically spray repellant for humans. The test kernels popped, and he nudged Harper out of the way. He poured a measuring cup full of popcorn into the pot and tossed the lid on top. “Regina is…” He struggled with how to finish that sentence.
“Special?” asked Harper.
“She’s the heroine in her own romance series,” he said, turning back to Harper. “She loves love. She’s…kind of the anti-me.” He laughed mirthlessly.
“You hate people and love?” Harper blinked.
“No. I don’t know why I said that.”
“Do you wish you were more like her?” she asked. “Also, I thought this was my therapy session. I’m the one trying to suss out her sexual identity.”
“I’m sorry for hijacking the conversation,” he said.
“I’m not,” said Harper. “I came over here to get away from the swirling vortex inside my brain for a few minutes. Let’s talk about your thing. Do you wish you were more like Regina?”
He shook the pot, just for something to do. The kernels were popping rapidly. “I don’t want to be like her. Regina’s life is exhausting—see this friend, text that one, meet here, go there. It’s too much. I like peace. I like my computer.”
“Which you don’t have anymore,” added Harper.
“A temporary setback.” Soon he’d have his computer back, and everything would be normal.
Harper frowned. “I envy you,” she said. “Sometimes I feel so needy, having to be around people all the time. I mean, I freaking showed up at your house this morning unannounced.” She winced. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” he said, shaking the pot again.
“Sometimes it’s like, ‘Harper, why can’t you be by yourself for five minutes?’”
Oliver gave a mirthless smile to the popping corn.
“I’m afraid of being alone. It’s what my brother Sam says. He’s fine with being by himself—watching movies or whatever. I always get too in my head when left to my own devices. That’s why I love having Elena around—when she is around. She hasn’t been as much lately.”
Oliver turned off the burner and listened as the popping subsided. “What’s it like to have a person?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have Elena. You can count on her. I think about this a lot. If something terrible happened, if I found out I was sick or if someone broke my heart, I’d have no one to go to. There’s no one I could call and know they’d have my back.” He thought of proud_hoser. He’d tell her those things, but how pathetic was that? He only believed he could count on her because the two of them had never met face-to-face. “I have no one.” He kept his eyes on the pot, which had long since stopped popping, because he couldn’t look at Harper.
Harper padded up behind him, lifted up the lid, and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Well, you’re kind of a jerk.”
“Thanks?” he said, watching her.
She shrugged, munching. “It’s true, though. You’re always walking through the halls fast, like you have no time for anyone else. You’re either on your phone or your computer or you’re wearing earbuds. You give off this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ aura. I—and probably everyone else—have always assumed you don’t actually give a fuck.”
He stared at the cabinet behind her head for a few beats. “I think I do give a fuck.”
“Good.” Harper grabbed another handful of popcorn. “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.” When she finished chewing, she put her hands on his shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry I said you’re a jerk.”
He pursed his lips.
“But obviously you’re not a total jerk. You let your enemy’s best friend and your sister’s one-time hook-up make random popcorn in your kitchen, and you were totally cool about it.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m a very cool guy.”
“Here’s the thing, Oliver: If you want to keep living your solitary computerized existence, fine. Keep doing that. You’ve got that locked down. But if you want people to want to hang out with you, you have to start letting them into your life. And that means dealing with the inconvenience of having social obligations.”
He groaned.
“I know. But you can do this, if you want to. The first step is to stop acting like every interaction is a waste of your time.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“It’s not that I think I’m better than anyone,” he said. “Just the opposite, actually. I know people think I’m weird or whatever, and I don’t want to be rejected.”
“Well, who does? Being rejected sucks. But it’s the risk you have to take if you want to make friends.”
Oliver munched on some popcorn. “I do want to make friends.”
“Good.”
“How do I do that, though? Like, do I just go up to your brother and say, ‘Hi, Sam. Be my friend.’”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it
like that, but you have all the tools. You’re smart, you can be amusing, and, Oliver Prince, you’re a beautiful, beautiful male-type person. You look like—who’s the guy from the show? Ugh.” She hit her head, wracking her brain. “I’m sure Sam would know, speaking of.” She pulled out her phone and started texting. “But maybe you should start with not letting ‘dick wad’ be your default setting.” She sent the text, then snapped her fingers. “Practice on Elena.”
Oliver scrunched up his nose.
“I mean it. This is brilliant. I’m brilliant for coming up with this. If you can be nice to her, you can be nice to anyone.”
He let out a deep, rumbling sigh, and was about to tell her why that was a terrible idea, when her phone buzzed. “Robb Stark! That’s who you look like.”
“It’s just the hair,” he said. He didn’t look like the King in the North. He didn’t look like the king of anything except maybe a vitamin D deficiency.
Harper stayed for a little while longer, and the two of them talked about other things, less heady stuff—North Pole gossip and what it was like to live in Florida. Then, after she’d gone home and left him drained from the extended social interaction, Oliver poured himself a bowl of popcorn and trudged upstairs. He sat on his bed and again noted the silence. It was even worse now, because now he wasn’t just a guy sitting in a quiet room; he was a friendless asshole sitting in an empty room.
His phone buzzed with a message from proud_hoser. “There’s an Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on TV. I just wasted half the day.”
He sent her a smiley emoji, even though he actually felt sad-face. As much as he dreamed about hanging out with her in real life—running through snowdrifts while trying to catch Stashes; sipping cider at Santabucks; kissing her in a dark room at a party, like how he’d caught Kevin Snow and Katie Murphy last night—his thing with proud_hoser was only good because they hadn’t met in person. If she got to know the real him, she’d learn the truth—he was a jerk to everyone.
She said, “I was at a party last night. Harper Anderson’s. You know her?”
His heart banged against his chest like it was trying to escape his rib cage. “I was there, too.”
proud_hoser sent him the party favor emoji. “I scoured the place for you. I wish I had known you were there.”
What if they had found each other last night? What if she had found him and they’d met at the party? He would’ve blown it, that’s what would have happened. He would’ve gotten all self-deprecating and snarky. He wouldn’t have known how to communicate to her that he really, really, desperately liked her. Or that he was terrified she wouldn’t like him.
“I want to meet you,” she said. “I want to know who you are.”
His eyes grew heavy. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
He ran through all the reasons why not in his head—he’d ruin it, he’d disappoint her, he was, point of fact, a total jerk to all humans. Instead he said, “We’re the Grecian urn.”
“Like the poem?” she asked. “About the scene on the vase where the guy is trying to get the girl?”
“Yeah, and the people on the vase will never actually get together. They’re always and forever going to be pre-kiss.” He blushed after typing the word “kiss.” “It’s all anticipation and excitement. You and I, right now, we’re in the good part, before everything’s revealed and it all goes to shit. And I want to stay here for a little bit longer.” He’d stay here forever if he could. But he knew this had a shelf-life, no matter what. The game would be over in a month. He’d either lose his connection to proud_hoser or she’d grow tired of the anonymity and he’d have to reveal his identity in order to keep chatting with her.
“It doesn’t have to go to shit, does it?” she asked.
“Doesn’t it always?” Oliver couldn’t remember a time in his life when he hadn’t caused a relationship to end badly, usually before it started. Like back in Florida, sophomore year, when he went to homecoming with a girl and spent the entire dance ignoring her because he didn’t know if she liked him and he didn’t want to let on that he was interested if she wasn’t.
“Are you sure you’re not Craig?” asked proud_hoser. “Were you lying to me before?”
“NO!” he said. “I’m not Craig.”
“Then why can’t we meet?”
“We will. I promise. Soon.” In the meantime, he’d do what Harper suggested. He’d work on his people skills. He’d practice on Elena Chestnut.
“Okay fine, but tell me one tiny, little, concrete thing about yourself, one itty-bitty morsel I can obsess over for now.”
He opened the metaphorical door just a tiny crack. “Okay…I hate cheese,” he wrote. “I don’t eat it. I tell people I’m allergic just so it scares them into not putting cheese on my stuff.”
She wrote back almost immediately. “I can no longer speak to you. We’re going to have to end this virtual relationship. Nice knowing you. Good-bye.”
Oliver’s heart started thumping again, this time from fear. She was kidding, probably, but what if she wasn’t? What if she had some kind of thing where she truly could never be friends with someone who hated cheese? What if this, right here, was the last time he’d ever get to chat with proud_hoser?
She wrote back a few seconds later. “You know I’m going to be checking out everyone’s lunch in the cafeteria from now on, trying to figure out if it’s you.”
He hugged the phone to his chest for a moment, then responded, “I hope you do.”
Chapter Seven
Elena was already in a bad mood when she arrived home on Monday afternoon.
It had been fish and chips day at school.
Fish and chips meant too many people in the cafeteria were eating cheese-free lunches, so she couldn’t sniff out the non-cheese eaters. Her Stashiuk4Prez stalking attempt fell flat.
Then she had to meet Oliver at Santabucks for a quick tutoring session before his Latin quiz the next day. For some reason, he was unflappably pleasant to her. She’d say something snide to him, for instance, “Your handwriting looks like a serial killer’s.”
And he’d respond with a compliment, like “Yours is so straight and neat.”
When she stood up to leave at the end of a half hour, he looked her right in the eye and said, “Thanks for working with me today, Elena.”
She had no idea how to respond to that, so she bugged out her eyes and left the store, wondering what this new overly polite angle was all about. Was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security before dropping some bombshell? Well, she would not be lulled.
Even though she was wearing snow boots and not her gym shoes, Elena ran all the way home from Main Street—stopping to catch a few Stashes on the way. That little burst of exercise was enough to keep her from totally losing her mind until she reached her house.
There she found her mom in the kitchen, yelling into the phone. “We’ve never been late before…Okay, yes, ‘until now,’ but please, I need you to give us one more week!” She rushed through the last words. Then, “No?…No?…Okay, fine!” She stabbed at the end button on her phone and dropped her head into her hands.
“Mom?” Elena asked after a moment. She was fairly certain she wasn’t supposed to have heard that.
Her mom glanced up, startled. “Honey, hi.” She turned her back on Elena and wiped her eyes on her T-shirt.
“Is everything all right?”
Her mom turned around. She plastered a smile across her face that couldn’t mask her red eyes. “It will be. Don’t worry about it.”
Of course she was worried. What else did her mom expect her to be? “What was that call about?”
Her mom shook her head, the Joker-esque, fake smile still on her lips. “It’s really nothing. I’m glad you’re here, though.” She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, sat down, and started flipping through her address book. “Your dad and I have decided to take a little trip, last minute.”
“A vacation? Do we have m
oney for that?”
Her mom’s eyes were down on the book. “Nothing big, just going to see Aunt Patti in Wisconsin for a few days. It’s been a while.”
“She was just here for Christmas.”
“It’s been a while since we went to see her.” Elena’s mom sighed and rubbed her eyes. “We just need a few days away, okay? We’ll leave Friday and come back Sunday. It’s not up for discussion. Can you hold down the fort?”
Her mom’s words slapped Elena across the cheek. She’d never seen her so frazzled before, so near the edge. “The fort? You mean, the store?” asked Elena. “You need me to watch that, too?”
Her mom sniffed. It was almost a laugh, like she had forgotten, momentarily, that the store even existed. “Yes, and the store.” She frowned, her shoulders slumping. “Is that okay? I should’ve asked first. Are we ruining any big plans?”
Elena’s mom ran a hand through her short, highlighted hair. Over the past few days, since Oliver Prince had cornered her and told her about their parents’ maybe-past, Elena had hunted for photos around the house. She’d found pictures of her mom and dad, but not even one of Trip Prince. Back in the day, her mom had long, dark hair like Elena’s. She was a totally different person now, from a completely different life. Her mom was a stranger to her now. “No big plans,” Elena said.
She marched upstairs to her room and tossed her bag onto the bed, fuming, wondering why she was old enough to watch the store and the house and everything, but not old enough to be told what was going on. She knew her parents were having money troubles; that much was obvious. But apparently, it wasn’t just their past her mom and dad liked to keep hidden from her. It was their present, too.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Stashiuk4Prez. Her fears and frustrations melted away, at least momentarily. This game, this guy, were the best distractions on the planet.
His message said, “Okay. Help me out here. Today I stood in front of the sports trophy case for my entire free period, staring at the track team.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Trying to figure out which one was you.”
Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota) Page 8
