“Are we going to hook up or not?”
I didn’t say anything. I should have said no. I should have said this was a big mistake. But I was so afraid, not of him, maybe a little, just so afraid of everything that I didn’t want to say anything.
“You know, you shouldn’t leave a boy like this. It’s not fair.” He pointed at his groin. But I looked away, out the window. “Freshman. Fucking freshman. I should have known better.” Then he put the car in reverse, left Target, put on an Eminem song really, really loud, and drove me home.
As soon as he parked, I jumped out and ran back inside. My mom was waiting on the couch. “Who was that?” But she really said it like WHO WAS THAT? except not loud. Just the effect was like that. I almost ran to my room. But instead I ran to the couch, laid my head on my mom’s lap, closed my eyes, and breathed big breaths until I calmed down. I didn’t cry. I didn’t. I think I would have cried on every day of my life before this one. But not today. My mom didn’t say anything. She just petted my head. It helped. It helped that she didn’t say anything too. I didn’t need advice or a lecture or even one word that would make me feel worse than I already did. I just needed her to be there.
After about ten minutes or maybe much longer, I gave her a big hug and then went to my room and checked my phone, which had been off. There were a bunch of messages from Trevor. All of them were so nice and caring and loving. Stuff like “Hope you are okay” and “I’m here for you” and “You’re my soul mate.” When I saw that, that’s when I finally cried. Oh my gosh, why did I get in Alexander’s car? How could I have been so stupid?
I texted:
ME
I love you so much, Trevor, and I want
us to spend eternity together
I wanted this so badly I could feel my body scream the words over and over. Then I went and took a shower and tried to scrub everywhere that Alexander had touched me.
When I got out, I found a text from Trevor that said:
TREVOR
I should have told you about our
parents. I was worried you’d hate me.
ME
It’s okay. I understand. I don’t want to
talk about it. I just want us to be
happy forever. Okay?
TREVOR
Okay. I promise.
I sent a smiley face and then crawled into bed in sweatpants and went to sleep. I was so tired. So, so, so tired. Like I couldn’t even think anymore.
When I woke up, it was dark. I had slept the whole day away. There was a text. From Peggy. So weird. So, so, so weird. It said:
PEGGY
Heard about Alex. Want details!
Trevor was so boring. He made you
weird. Call me.
Oh my gosh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. If Peggy knew, more people knew, and if more people knew, Trevor would know soon … so soon.…
78
Trevor crashes the car
After breakfast, Lily and I went to a movie. I texted while we watched, even though I hate people who text during movies. At least I sat in the back so nobody behind me had to look at my phone’s light.
Carolina didn’t respond, but I figured she would be sleeping. Licker and I texted about basketball and about Kendra. (He had a crush on her but told me not to tell Carolina until he was sure Kendra liked him too.) Then I got a text from my mom:
MOM
Going to pick up Dad. Will have long
talk. Will be home late. Please take
care of Lily.
I hated seeing her name on my phone but I also liked it. Maybe I liked hating it. Hearing from her allowed me to release my frustration instead of just letting it build louder and bigger and crazier in my head. After the movie, Lily and I got hot chocolate from Starbucks even though we had just had candy at the theater and chocolate pancakes at Roth’s. It didn’t even taste good. It made me feel sick. Maybe I wanted to feel sick. Who the hell knows? Life makes no sense.
As we were driving home, we stopped at a light. A police car stopped right next to us.
“Trevor,” Lily said, then pointed at the police. Which only made it worse.
“Don’t point,” I said. The police officer looked right at me. Crap. We were going to get arrested for me driving without a license. We were. I’d be thrown in jail. But then the light turned and the officer drove on. I guess I fooled him. Everyone was so stupid.
As I opened the garage door, my phone buzzed. I reached for it because I wanted it to be from Carolina but instead it was from Licker:
LICKER
Sorry about Carolina, dude.
Huh? He couldn’t know about our parents and that text wouldn’t make sense even if he did. So I texted:
ME
What about her?
LICKER
About Alex Taylor. What a dick. You
could totally beat the shit out of him.
The texts. He was talking about her New Year’s Eve texts. This seemed strange. And then I got a text from my cousin Henry:
HENRY
Told you not to go out with her.
What the fuck? So I texted Licker:
ME
I know what happened but you tell
me what you think happened
I didn’t know. Maybe I did. But my gut said I didn’t. But I didn’t want anyone to know I didn’t. Licker texted:
LICKER
She gave him a hj in his car this
morning
“TREVOR!” Lily yelled as the BMW crashed into the back of the garage and my mom’s hanging bicycle, which she had never used once, dropped from the ceiling onto the car’s roof and made a dent so big you could probably sit in it.
Shit.
But then I looked back at the text. From Licker.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
Everything inside me twisted tighter. Tighter. Tighter. So goddamn tight I couldn’t breathe. My skin everywhere broke and shattered. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Why are we leaving again?” Lily screamed, but I didn’t respond. I just backed out of the garage, let the bike fall off the car and lay crumpled in the middle of the garage floor. “Trevor!” Lily said every few minutes as I sped faster and faster toward Carolina’s.
* * *
I parked in her driveway, told Lily to stay, opened the door to Carolina’s house without knocking, walked past her mom, who was watching TV, and maybe yelled at me, and then opened her bedroom door and there she was, crying, phone to her ear. She was calling me. My phone was ringing. I looked at it, saw her name, saw the picture of us at the Metropolitan Club, then pressed ignore.
“Did…?” But I couldn’t say any more.
“I didn’t!”
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” I screamed even though she said she didn’t. Because I just knew. Knew. Crap. I hated knowing every goddamn thing ever.
“He kissed me! And he tried to touch me! And tried to make me touch him! But I didn’t! And then he took me home! And I want to only kiss you forever! I hate myself! I hate myself! Please, Trevor, don’t hate me too!” She ran into my arms and sobbed into my chest and her whole body went limp and I caught her but I didn’t want to so I let her down on her bed. She looked terrible. So red-faced and snotty and boyish in her sweatpants. But I was still excited. My penis was still hard. That makes no sense! And I still wanted to kiss her so bad. But I wasn’t going to. I was never, ever going to kiss her again.
“I hate you as much as I hate my mom,” I said, and then I screamed again and then I grabbed the notebook I had made for Christmas and ripped out five pages just because and then I threw it against the wall and I left.
79
Carolina’s brain goes to mush
I wanted to run after Trevor, I think, but I was crying so loudly it made my legs wobbly so I crawled along my bedroom floor, yelling his name, I think, but maybe I wasn’t saying anything, not any real words, just loud yells and wails and crazy noises that people make right before they die fro
m so much pain no person could survive it. No person would want to.
And then my mom was standing there, then she was on the floor, opening her hands, and I crawled the last few feet and collapsed into her lap.
“TREVOR!” I yelled. I think. Something like that. A word like his name. But filled with all this spit and snot and tears.
“He’s gone,” my mom said. And then she squeezed me tight against her, and my brain stopped knowing what to think or do so it just went to mush.
* * *
Later. I don’t how much later. But later. My mom led me back to my bed and laid me down. I slept. I think. But can you sleep when your brain is mush? Wouldn’t it be impossible? I don’t know. I should look that up. People in comas must sleep. Right? But my brain was more mush than a coma. I swear. It was worthless. Just worthless. I think. I suppose I’m kind of having these thoughts or kind of remember having these thoughts so maybe it wasn’t one hundred percent mush. Who knows? Maybe we are all two different people. One person who feels and one person who thinks. And the person who feels can think a little and the person who thinks can feel a little, but sometimes one of those people dies or gets hurt and can’t do what she is supposed to do. So maybe the person in me who feels died or at least went into a coma and the person who thinks just kind of lies there because she has never been so alone and afraid before.
* * *
So many people texted me that night. Even gross, disgusting Alexander Taylor. So many people. But not Trevor. I texted him five hundred times. That’s not even an exaggeration. I mean, maybe. But it was close. It felt like ten million … ten million texts to the one person I could ever love and no texts back. I even sent him a sexy picture. Except I looked so sad it wasn’t even sexy. I shouldn’t have sent it. But I had to. I would have done anything to have him back. I’d have done anything he asked. Anything. But Trevor is so nice he’d never ask me to do anything gross or dumb. Unlike Alexander Taylor and every other boy on earth. See? SEE? I had the most amazing boyfriend in history and I kissed another boy in his dumb truck just because … just because … I don’t even know anymore. Just because I’m a horrible person, I guess.
* * *
So I had to take the bus Monday morning. My mom had an early shift. My dad was gone because I told him to be gone. Peggy and Katherine had stopped driving me to school after homecoming. And Trevor, whose parents had driven me the most this year, was not going to pick me up. Not ever. Not ever again. Oh my gosh, I have no Trevor, no Peggy, no Dad. And I have to ride the bus with a bunch of people who look at me like I’m a psycho slut. And it smells like plastic and it’s slow and it’s loud and I need to transfer schools.
Biology was like torture. No, not like. It was torture. GIRLS SHOULD BE ABLE TO STAY HOME WHEN THEIR BOYFRIENDS DUMP THEM! Or at least not go to classes they have with them! He sat on the other side of the room. Like, one desk away from Peggy. Peggy talked to him. Smiled at him. She’d texted me that he was boring, and now she was flirting with him? Humans are all terrible people. I cried the whole class. Not loudly. I would have been kicked out. But this low, shaking cry that I tried to keep quiet, but everyone knew. Everyone in class knew. And they kept looking at me, either like I was so pathetic or funny-looking. But not Trevor. He didn’t look at me once. If he looked at me, wouldn’t he fall back in love? Wouldn’t he remember all the good things and forgive me and take me back and then everything would be amazing again?
But he didn’t. He didn’t want to remember, I guess. I don’t blame him. I wanted to forget.
* * *
So that’s how all of school went. History was almost as bad as biology, and my other non-Trevor classes were terrible in a different way because I couldn’t see him there and dream he would look at me and love me again.
Lunch was terrible too. Duh. Boys laughed at me, and girls whispered stuff. Only the soccer girls sat with me. Kendra sat the closest. She kept saying, “It will be okay,” over and over. I knew it wouldn’t be. I knew my whole life was ruined—YES, RUINED! IT’S FINALLY TRUE! SO I CAN SAY IT AND IT’S NOT ME BEING IMMATURE OR EXAGGERATING AT ALL! CUZ IT’S TRUE! RUINED! RUINED! RUINED!—but anyway … gosh … anyway … yes, so it was nice of Kendra to say it would be okay even though it was a horrible, terrible lie.
* * *
I sent Trevor texts, like, every five seconds I had my phone on. He didn’t respond. Even if he had cheated on me, I would have responded. I would have wanted to yell at him! Why wouldn’t he yell at me? Why? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? If he yelled at me, I’d know he still loved me. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t look at me or talk to me or text me or think about me. I bet he doesn’t even have one thought about me. I bet someone today said, “What’s happened with you and Carolina?” and he said back, “Who?” Yep, I bet he’s forgotten every beautiful thing we ever did and having sex and saying we loved each other. I bet he’s already looking at new girls and thinking about them and kissing them and he’ll probably think the new girl is his real soul mate. But I am. I’m his real soul mate. And he doesn’t remember. He has amnesia. He has to remember. If he would just remember, he’d forgive me. He would. Then everything would go back to normal. My life would be fine. I don’t need Peggy or my dad or good grades or a job or anything besides Trevor. Just him. Oh, please, please, please, please let me have him back.
80
Trevor has pizza with his dad
After I got back in the car with Lily Sunday night, she asked, “What happened, Trevor? What happened?” She was so scared. She cried a little. Not a big cry. But a real cry. Our parents sucked. She knew it. But I think she, maybe me too, wanted Carolina and me to be her real parents. The real couple. The couple who loved each other so much we could take care of anyone else too. Like Lily. So Lily didn’t have to be so goddamn old when she was just seven.
“We broke up,” I said. Face twitched. Twitched bad. Like my skin was about to peel off and this monster was going to take over. Like I was always a monster. Like only Carolina kept the monster from taking control.
“Get her back, okay? Please! Please!”
“I hate her.”
“You love her! You love her! Trevor! Don’t say that! You love her!” And she just kept saying I had to get her back, but I pulled out of the driveway and started driving.
* * *
Eventually Lily stopped talking. Eventually my body stopped feeling like it was just one huge raging piece of flesh, and I realized I had driven halfway to Wisconsin. I pulled over into the next gas station. Lily, who looked like a ghost, said, “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dad should be home by now,” she said. “Can we go see Dad?”
“I think Dad and Mom are going to talk by themselves all night, Lily.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll think of something,” Lily said, and she closed her eyes. Like the idea of how to fix all this crap would come to her if she just concentrated.
“How about we pick up McDonald’s, go home, and watch TV?” I said.
“That’s a good plan, Trevor. Except can we go to Sonic? They have better milk shakes.”
“Okay.”
* * *
I didn’t sleep that night. Sometimes people say that, but I know they’re making it up. I really didn’t sleep. I just lay there and thought about Carolina kissing and touching another boy. Like, each time the image of that would hit my brain it was like this giant bird dinosaur would tear into my chest with its giant dinosaur claws. Here’s what I had to do. Fucking had to do: Pretend she didn’t exist. Ignore her. Ignore people who talked to me about her. Not look at her. Not think about her.
I was thinking about her every goddamn second. Crap. But I would keep yelling at my brain until I stopped. Or something. Just ignore her, Trevor. Just ignore her until your brain can forget her.
That’s what I did Monday. Didn’t look at her. Not once. My whole stupid body wanted to look at her. For her to
see me and tell me it didn’t happen. Even if that was a lie, I wanted her to convince me. Maybe. Crap. I don’t know. What the hell happened? How did this happen? My mom. My mom and her dad and their bullshit.
* * *
My dad picked me up from practice Monday night.
He said, “Let’s go talk.” I nodded. He drove. We went to this pizza and bar place near the train tracks. They gave you peanuts to eat and had no real menus, just big chalkboards with pizza toppings. My dad got a beer and I got a Coke. We ordered a pepperoni pizza.
“How are you doing?” my dad said.
I shrugged my shoulders. He knew about Carolina. Lily had told him this morning when my dad started yelling at me about the BMW having a dent. Lily was the smartest, best person ever.
“Sorry about Carolina.”
“I want to go back to California,” I said.
“We’re not going back to California.”
“You’re leaving Mom, right? You’re getting a divorce, right? No way Lily and I can stay with her. No fucking way.”
“Watch your language.”
I wanted to yell, Yeah? Yeah? I should watch my language? Yeah! How about you watch your wife? But I didn’t say anything.
“Trevor … we’re not getting divorced. You get married, you make promises. You make promises to the Church and God—”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“He still believes in you.”
“Mom doesn’t believe in God,” I said.
“And she’s not very happy because of it.”
My dad was a lunatic. In a different way from Mom or me, but still a lunatic.
“Trevor, listen … sorry … I didn’t want this to be combative. I want this to be a grown-up talk. Your mom and I will keep working on things. But you have to let us work on them. If you unleash that wrath of yours on her every time she steps into a room, she won’t be able to take it. She’s fragile. She needs our strength.”
“Isn’t a mom supposed to give her kids strength?” I said, and as I did I almost lost it. Not mad. But emotions. I held it. Barely.
Forever for a Year Page 27
