“No problem,” I tell her. “We already have our conclusion, anyway. I’m a loser.”
“A loser who must read my Yale essays this weekend,” Caitlin says. “I emailed the latest drafts to you an hour ago. My application is due November first, and I need time to revise it before sending. Knowing me, lots of time.”
“Sure,” I say, still thinking about Josh. “He said why when I asked him if he liked Megan. That definitely means he likes her, right? Otherwise he just would’ve said no.”
“Do you make these rules up as you go along? Or are they from the same relationship manual that recommends asking the guy you like if he likes the hot blond girl?”
“She asked me to talk to him for her!”
“Ohhh. So that was your motive. It was philanthropic.” I can picture her rolling her eyes. “Hey, I gotta go,” she tells me. “We’ll obsess about Astronomy Boy later. Just read my essays, okay?”
“Of course I’ll read your essays,” I reply. “But no, we will not obsess later. Or ever. I’m officially over Astronomy Boy.” As I say it, I am certain, but I delete his number from my phone just to be safe.
“Your mom sure knows how to throw a party,” Dad remarks, looking around the crowded room. We’re standing in the High Museum’s Grand Lobby, which has been transformed into a nineteenth-century French salon. Mom is holding court nearby, stunning in royal blue silk. The gown belongs to Caitlin’s mom, a remnant from her ten-week stint as the lead in Madame Bovary: The Musical! six months before Caitlin was born. Thanks to the fifteen pounds Mrs. Moss put on in her first trimester, the dress is a whopping size six. With the help of some full-body Spanx and a pair of five-inch heels, it fits my mom perfectly.
“No one would believe she’s almost fifty,” I muse, watching her.
“Just don’t let her hear you call her ‘almost fifty,’” Dad replies, swirling his scotch. “She’s convinced that forty-eight still qualifies as midforties.”
“Not too shabby, Barnes.” Tyler’s voice cuts across the dull adult chatter. He strides over to us, wearing a tux that looks like it belongs in the 1970s. “You don’t look bad either, Ab.”
I stick my tongue out at Tyler as he shakes Dad’s hand. “What happened to the crutches?” Tyler asks me. “Don’t you have another week left?”
“Yeah. But crutches plus a floor-length gown equals Abby face-planting in front of hundreds of people. So I left them in the car.”
“See, now that would be fun,” Tyler says. He looks at my dad. “Not that this party isn’t super fun already, Mr. B.”
“Of course it is,” Dad replies between sips. “We’re surrounded by boring old white guys in ill-fitting tuxes. How could it not be fun?” He tilts his glass, finishing his drink.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Tyler deadpans. “Your tux fits okay.”
My dad laughs, but since he has an ice cube in his mouth, it comes out as a snort. The sound earns a few looks from the people around us. Dad doesn’t notice. Chuckling, he ambles off to get another drink.
“So where’s Ilana tonight?” I ask when he’s gone, trying not to scowl as I say her name.
“Play rehearsal,” Tyler replies. “She’s all worked up ’cause some big casting director is coming to see it opening night.”
“Ooh. Can Cate and I come heckle her?”
“She’s been acting weird,” Tyler says.
“News flash. She is weird.”
“I meant Caitlin,” he says.
“Oh.” I think about it. Has she been acting weird? I haven’t noticed anything, but between my foot and the SATs and the feelings Josh doesn’t have for me, I’ve been sort of preoccupied lately. “Weird how?”
“I dunno. Skittish.”
Skittish. Not a word I’ve ever used to describe my best friend. She’s the opposite of excitable. But just as I’m about to tell Tyler that I don’t know what he’s talking about, I remember how she reacted when I asked her if she had feelings for him. Uncharacteristically cagey. Perceptibly off-kilter.
She’s acting weird because she likes him. All at once, I know for certain that I’m right. I don’t know how I know, I just do. Caitlin likes Tyler, and Tyler likes her back.
“You haven’t noticed?” Tyler asks.
I hesitate. If Tyler and Caitlin do have secret feelings for each other, then until one of them actually does something about it, they’ll both be miserable. Okay, so maybe not miserable, but less happy than they otherwise could be. And what if the year passes and we graduate and they miss their chance altogether? That has to be worse than any fallout from my playing Cupid. Besides, Caitlin needs this. She hasn’t dated anyone since Craig, and I know it’s because she’s afraid of getting her heart broken again. Ty would never hurt her.
I choose my words carefully. “It’s the Ilana thing,” I say, keeping my voice light. “It’s hard for her.” I make it sound like this is no big deal, when Tyler and I both know it is. There’s only one reason Tyler’s relationship with Ilana would be “hard” for Caitlin.
Tyler’s face stays neutral. “She told you that?”
“She didn’t have to tell me,” I hedge. “I’m her best friend.” It strikes me that Caitlin might take issue with that statement at this particular moment.
“So she never said it explicitly?” he asks.
“She did,” I lie. “I just wasn’t supposed to tell you.” What am I doing? I open my mouth to take it all back, but Tyler cuts me off.
“I’m in love with her,” he says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his. Maybe because he’s using words I’ve never heard him use before. At least, not with a straight face. “I didn’t think I had a shot,” he says then. “You’re saying I do?”
Okay, whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this. I mean, I thought he had feelings for her, and I might’ve used the word “love,” but I’ve known Tyler since preschool, and I’ve never heard him use the L word except when talking about golf clubs. Yet here he is, throwing it around and sounding all heartfelt and sincere. As I stand here, looking into his open and honest eyes, I’m startled by the depth of emotion I see. He’s really in love with her. And I’ve just hinted that she feels the same way.
My mind keeps reeling. Caitlin is going to kill me.
“Depends on how you play it,” I try to backpedal. “You can’t come on too strong.” If you do, she’ll know I said something to you.
“Yeah. Okay.” He’s trying to play it cool, but he’s failing. The boy is beaming, which is good, because the look on his face removes any doubt that I did the right thing. Not that I even did much at all—my words were nothing more than a nudge in the direction he was already heading. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself over and over again right now, trying to mitigate the rising swell of guilt. “Think she’ll be at the party tonight?” Tyler asks a few seconds later.
“What party?”
“Cul-de-sac party in that new neighborhood off Providence Road. Football team got a keg.”
“Oh. No. She’s working at her dad’s lab tonight.” Thank God. Caitlin is scarily intuitive. She’ll take one look at Tyler’s dopey grin and know something’s up. He needs to recover from his euphoria before their next encounter. And figure out what to do about Ilana.
Across the room, someone is waving. I’m not sure if the gesture is directed at me—all I see is a man’s hand flailing in the air. Whoever the hand belongs to is blocked by two obese women in silk taffeta. The women shuffle away and Dr. Mann comes into view, looking rather dapper in a gray suit. His smile widens when we make eye contact.
“Ms. Barnes!” he calls across the crowd.
“Who’s that?” asks Tyler, clearly amused by the wild-haired old guy moving toward us.
“Dr. Mann,” I reply. “My astronomy teacher.”
“That guy won a Nobel Prize?”
“Shhh.” I look past Tyler to my teacher, who’s balancing a plate of meatballs on a can of Dr Pepper. His other hand is extended to shake mine.
&nbs
p; “They didn’t give you a glass for that?” I ask, nodding at the soda can as I shake his hand. The old man laughs.
“They offered me one, but I declined. It’s harder to spill on oneself from a can.” Dr. Mann smiles and takes a careful sip.
Tyler looks at me. Again: That guy won a Nobel Prize?
I ignore him. “Dr. Mann, this is my friend Tyler Rigg. He goes to Brookside also.”
“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Rigg,” says Dr. Mann, shaking Tyler’s hand. “Perhaps I’ll have you in class next semester.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Tyler says pleasantly.
“So what brings you to the museum?” I ask Dr. Mann.
“My daughter is on the board,” he tells me, and points at a woman who looks to be in her early thirties, wearing a demure black dress. She has an Audrey Hepburn quality and her father’s striking blue eyes.
“So you got dragged here, too,” Tyler says. He stops a man carrying a tray of lamb chops and heaps six onto a cocktail napkin.
“I’m afraid it was me who did the dragging,” Dr. Mann says. “Greta just flew in from Munich this afternoon and was planning to stay home, but I insisted that we come. I am a great admirer of ‘le petit jeune chimiste qui accumule des petits points.’” His French is perfect.
“Hmm . . . Something about a chemist and small dots?” I say, trying to parse it out.
“‘The young chemist who puts together little points,’” he translates. Then he explains, “It’s how Gauguin described Seurat. He missed the artistry of the pointillist method, I’m afraid. Saw only the science.”
“And you see both?” I ask.
“In my view, the science is the artistry,” the old man replies. He looks past us to Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, the painter’s most famous piece and the centerpiece of the exhibit, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. “With his ‘petits points,’ Seurat invited the viewer to participate in a transcendent experience instead of thrusting one upon him.” He points his Dr Pepper can at the painting. “The inherent order you perceive in that image has not been constructed on that canvas; rather, it is being constructed as we speak, in your mind.”
This, of course, is not the first I’ve heard about pointillism. When you’re the only child of an art curator and a retired painter, you get more art theory at the dinner table than would fit in a semester on the subject. But for the first time, the theory resonates on a grander scale. Up close, all you see are the pieces, strewn about, heaped on top of each other. Total disarray. But step away, and a picture takes shape. When you make sense of the chaos, the chaos disappears. Or maybe, what looked at first like chaos never was.
In an ocean of ashes, islands of order.
It’s a line from Arcadia, a play we read in AP English last year. (I wouldn’t have remembered it except for the fact that I flubbed it when I read it aloud in class. “In an island of ashes, oceans of order,” I’d said, and someone made a joke about Oceans of Order being a great band name.) The original line is a reference to the patterns that emerge out of chaos, a major theme in the play. The phrase captures Seurat’s masterpiece perfectly. By themselves, the dots are just little circles of color. But in the right arrangement, they become so much more.
Before I can get too far with this idea, Tyler interrupts it. “Is that a monkey?”
“It’s supposed to be satirical,” I say vacantly. “The word for female monkey in French—singesse—was a slang word for prostitute.” My comment earns an impressed look from Dr. Mann. “It’s an equation,” I say then, still thinking about Arcadia. “The dots are the variables. The coherent image we see from far away is the solution.”
“Et l’artiste est le mathématicien,” Dr. Mann says.
“The artist is the mathematician,” I translate, liking the idea. But how much control does the artist have over the solution? I imagine my life as a painting and wonder the same thing.
My left foot begins to throb, so I shift all my weight to my right one.
“Papa!” Greta is calling to her father, gesturing for him to come meet whoever she’s talking to. Dr. Mann gives us a little bow before departing.
“So how long till we can get out of here?” Tyler asks, clearly not interested in discussing my philosophical ideas about life and math and pointillist painting. “I’m bored.”
“We’ve only been here an hour.”
“An hour in museum time is, like, five hours in regular time,” he replies. “How about we stay until nine, then hit the keg?”
“Fine. This ends at ten, anyway.”
“You should call Caitlin,” he says. “Tell her to stop by the cul-de-sac after the lab.”
I’m debating whether to shoot this idea down or pretend to call her when I hear my phone buzz from inside my clutch. Tyler hands it to me. He’s looking at my screen when I read the incoming text:
Caitlin: C U AT THE PARTY?
I look from the text to Tyler.
Shit.
By the time we get there, the “party” has dwindled to more of an intimate gathering.
Everyone is standing around the fire someone built in a metal trash can. Some football players are roasting marshmallows on a stick. Andy Morgan, our star running back, whistles when he sees us.
“Lookin’ good, kids!” Andy calls out. Tyler twirls me, and I do a little curtsy in my dress, careful not to put too much weight on my bad foot. Across the cul-de-sac, Ilana is giving me the death stare. She’s standing away from the fire with a group of drama girls, drinking a diet soda and looking pissed off at the world. Tyler heads toward her.
“S’more?” Andy asks, pressing a charred marshmallow between two graham cracker squares and holding it out for me. “There are chocolate bars around here somewhere.”
After a truckload of salty hors d’oeuvres, a melted marshmallow is hard to resist. “Sure,” I tell him. “Thanks.” I nibble on the corner of the graham cracker, waiting for the insides to cool. “How long have you guys been here?”
“About an hour,” Andy replies. “Long enough for Ilana to get pissed that Tyler hadn’t shown up yet.” I feel a flash of sympathy for Ilana. She and Tyler are standing off to the side, away from the rest of Ilana’s friends, in the midst of what looks like a heated discussion. I try not to stare. “Hey, there’s Caitlin,” Andy says, shoving another marshmallow into his mouth. “She’s so hot.”
I look up and see Caitlin parking her Jetta down the street. My eyes dart back to Tyler. Ilana has his forearm in a vise grip. It doesn’t look like he’ll be having any alone time with Caitlin tonight. I feel myself begin to relax. I’m not really worried that Tyler will rat me out since I told him it was a secret, but he’s been known to get chatty when he’s been drinking, which, thanks to his flirtatious banter with the bartender at the museum, includes tonight.
“You look amazing!” Caitlin says to me as she walks up. “How was the gala?”
“Really great,” I tell her. “You should’ve seen my mom—”
“Are you kidding me?” Ilana’s voice, even more high-pitched than normal, stabs me in the eardrum, stopping me midsentence. All heads swivel in her direction. She’s staring at Tyler, her face contorted in disbelief. Tyler mutters something indecipherable.
“Keep my voice down?” Ilana shrieks. “You break up with me—at a party, in front of my friends—and then you have the audacity to tell me to keep my voice down? Who do you think you are?”
My eyes dart to Caitlin. Hers are glued to the drama unfolding across the street. I brace myself, waiting for Ilana to come screaming toward me.
This is not how I expected this to go.
Yes, I assumed Tyler would probably break up with Ilana at some point. But I didn’t think he’d do it tonight. Or in front of a crowd.
“If that’s all it took to put him over the edge, their relationship was doomed anyway,” I murmur.
“If what was all it took?” Caitlin asks.
“Whatever made him break up with her. Not that I know w
hat that is,” I quickly add. “Because I don’t.” Caitlin gives me a funny look.
“And . . . she’s out.” Andy points his roasting stick at Ilana’s retreating figure. She flings open her car door and gets in. I look over at Tyler. He’s looking at Caitlin.
This is bad. This is very bad.
“Hey, I’m pretty tired,” I say to Caitlin, feigning a yawn. “Can you take me home?”
“Right this second?” Caitlin asks. “I just got here. Besides, didn’t you drive? I saw your car when I drove in.”
“I’m not feeling well.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tyler heading toward us. “I don’t think I should drive.”
“I can take you,” Andy offers, skewering another marshmallow with his stick. “I told my dad I’d be home early tonight.”
“Oh . . . that’s okay,” I say. “I’ll just wait for Cate.” Caitlin eyes me. She knows something is up. I pretend not to notice.
“You okay?” Caitlin asks as Tyler joins our little circle. She puts her hand on his forearm. There are nail marks on the inside of his wrist.
“I’m great,” he tells her, and smiles. “Although I think she may have shattered my eardrum,” he adds, tugging on his earlobe.
“That girl does have quite the set of lungs,” Andy muses as he watches his marshmallow burn. “Want a beer?”
“Nah, I think I’m done for tonight,” Tyler tells him. “I had about a quart of JB at the museum. I should probably quit while I’m still standing.”
“I’ll drive you,” I say before Andy can offer. There’s no way I’m staying to make small talk with Caitlin. She and I don’t do small talk. And we don’t do fake talk either. So unless I’m prepared to admit that I’m freaking out about the fact that I told our best guy friend that she has a thing for him after she told me unequivocally that she doesn’t, it’s time to call it a night.
“A minute ago you were too sick to drive,” Caitlin points out.
“I got a second wind,” I say.
“In the last sixty seconds?”
“Ty, you ready?” I ask, pretending not to hear her. He’s busy shoving marshmallows onto a stick.
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