By the Book

by Amanda Sellet

  Jasper cocked a brow. “Getting schooled by your little brother?”

  “Being as dumb as the people in books. I always thought I’d be smarter. Make a better choice at the moment of crisis. Take the road less likely to screw up my whole life.”

  “Yeah, but those people weren’t reading about themselves. They couldn’t, like, peek ahead to the end.” He mimed flipping pages. “It was all happening to them. Boom! In your face!”

  I pressed my fingers over my eyes. “Okay, I get it. You can stop saying smart stuff now.”

  Dear Diary,

  You go your whole life thinking you know exactly which kind of character you are. Virtuous. Loyal. Full of integrity. Brave if the situation calls for it, which hopefully isn’t too often. The hero, not the villain.

  But what if the bad guys feel the same way? Maybe they aren’t sitting around cackling evilly and twirling their mustaches; they just cut themselves too much slack when it comes to doing what they want.

  M.P.M.

  Chapter 30

  Like a dream that fades upon waking, the optimism I’d felt after talking to Jasper was hard to sustain by the light of day, especially when I walked into school and found Anjuli waiting next to my locker. My first instinct was to pretend she was invisible, or that I was, but that didn’t fit with my new unflinchingly honest approach to life.

  “You actually did make friends,” Anjuli said by way of greeting. “With those girls. Assuming that was for real.” She chewed pensively at her thumbnail while I struggled to pull the metaphorical dagger out of my chest.

  “Yeah. It just sort of happened.” It felt both strange and not strange to be talking to her. The weight of habit almost balanced the months of estrangement, like we were on a teeter-totter temporarily holding level.

  “So I guess you are capable of changing. When you want to.”

  “Maybe I didn’t have to. They liked me the way I was, old books and all.” I hoped she didn’t notice the past tense.

  “Sure. It’s all my fault. Perfect Mary never does anything wrong.”

  I tried not to betray myself by flinching. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Please. Everything just falls into your lap.”

  I stared at Anjuli, the coddled only child whose parents bought her the latest everything, sent her to expensive camps, took her on trips all over the world. “What are you talking about?”

  “New friends, a cute guy.” She crossed her arms, fixing me with an accusing scowl. “I bet you even went to the dance.”

  “Yeah. And that turned out so well. Lucky me.”

  Her eyes lit with curiosity, but I had no intention of giving the “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” speech before first period.

  “What about you?” I countered.

  “What about me?”

  “You have a whole new group of friends. And a fancy hobby.”

  “Stamp collecting is a hobby. Experimental film is a passion.”

  I had a sudden inkling of how my conversational style must sound to Anjuli. The way it might make her want to beat her head against the nearest hard surface. “Right.”

  Anjuli looked down, adjusting the strap of her backpack. “Listen. We both know it wasn’t working. You’re not a risk-taker, so you expected me to stay the same too. Like there was this box labeled Anjuli and I was supposed to sit there quietly and be your sidekick. And watch PBS with you on the weekends.”

  This was a palpable hit, but I didn’t think the fault was all mine. “Why didn’t you say something, if I was so horrible to be around?”

  “Not horrible, just . . . not what I wanted.” Anjuli blew a breath out the side of her mouth. “It’s not like I was what you wanted either. You moved on fast enough once I was out of the picture.”

  It almost sounded like her feelings were hurt. But there was a trace of smugness too, like she’d done me a favor. Maybe I’d never really understood the way her brain worked.

  “So it wasn’t about Pittaya?” I asked, relieved to think we hadn’t fallen into that particular cliché.

  “That was a side thing. The icing on the cake.”

  “Or maybe the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

  “Whatever, Word Girl.”

  It was something one of our teachers had called me years ago, though I couldn’t recall Anjuli ever using the nickname before. Somehow in that moment it wasn’t uncomfortable to have the weight of so much history behind us.

  I felt a shifting in my brain, pieces of the past rearranging. All this time I’d been thinking in absolutes, like it was an either/or proposition: friends versus not friends, and if it ended badly, the whole thing must have been a lie. But maybe it was more complicated. There could be different types of friendship, and different stages within each one. Deep bonds of loyalty and affection, or ties that have more to do with convenience. Relationships that hold you back, and ones that grow with you.

  I thought of something Arden said weeks before, when only Lydia’s size had been available in a pair of boots both admired. “A true friend is happy for you when good things happen. They don’t get jealous and petty.”

  Instead of which, Anjuli and I had cast each other as villains. As obstacles to be overcome. It was a weak move, pretending it was all someone else’s fault—like they had the power and you were a waif tied to the railroad tracks.

  I took a deep breath, feeling a weight lift. Now that the hurt and shock had faded, I could admit that Anjuli and I had been rubbing each other the wrong way long before the Shunning. And even though getting to this point had been graceless and painful, we were probably better off not pretending, or trying to force each other to become different people and resenting it when we couldn’t.

  “What you said about me, that day?” I looked her in the eye. “It wasn’t completely wrong. I could have put myself out there more, instead of hiding behind books.”

  Her sigh spoke of exasperation, but maybe also relief. “And I guess I could have . . . used my words better.” She grimaced. “Can we be done talking about this now?”

  “Okay,” I said, and it was. This ending I could live with.

  * * *

  When lunchtime rolled around, I hovered near the cafeteria entrance. Fever-like symptoms had set in: flushed skin, trembling limbs, a fog that muddled my conscious brain. The pervasive aroma of boiled hot dogs didn’t help. Perhaps it would be better to lie down somewhere dark and quiet instead.

  Alas, it was too late. They had spotted me. I eyed the three of them warily as I moved in that direction, alert for signs of anger, or disgust. When I reached the table, no one spoke.

  “Hello.” My voice sounded rusty. The pause that followed stretched on and on, a century or two at least. I gripped the back of a chair to hold myself upright.

  “Hi,” Arden said at last. Lydia gave a stiff nod. Terry’s mouth moved in what might have been an attempted smile.

  I drew an unsteady breath. “Could I talk to you?”

  Arden’s narrow brows arched. “I don’t know, Mary. Can you?”

  It took me a second to realize she wasn’t being sarcastic. “I hope so? I mean, I’d like to. If that’s okay.”

  The three of them looked at each other before nodding. With a shaking hand, I pulled out the chair and sat down. The others fidgeted in silence, their lunches forgotten.

  It was nothing like old times. The starkness of the change drove home the enormity of what I’d lost. I tried to swallow, but the saliva stuck halfway down my throat. The tickling sensation made me want to cough; I cleared my throat instead. It sounded like I was gagging.

  “How come you’re not avoiding us anymore?” Arden darted a glance at me before returning her attention to the water bottle she was turning in circles.

  “What? I wasn’t. I mean, I was, but not because I wanted to.”

  “You bailed on us,” Lydia blurted.

  Arden snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Like you didn’t care,” Terr
y whispered.

  “No! It was the opposite. I care a lot. A really lot.” Why did words always desert me at the most inopportune moments? My mother would have had the perfect quote for the occasion.

  Lydia hooked a finger under the chain of her necklace, rolling the enamel daisy pendant back and forth. “Then it wasn’t all part of a master plan?”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “A plot,” Arden put in.

  “Because if getting with Alex was your goal, then it would make sense that you dropped us as soon as you had what you wanted.” Lydia’s tone fell just shy of accusing.

  “No,” I said quickly. “It wasn’t like that at all. That would be diabolical. And incredibly complicated. What made you think that?”

  “We’re kind of in the habit of looking for the deeper meanings behind things,” Arden reminded me.

  “Psychology,” said Terry.

  “Hidden motives,” added Lydia.

  It dawned on me that they were talking about my influence. I had trained them to see everything as a twisted reflection of something that once happened in a book.

  “I wanted to be friends with you,” I said slowly. “That was my only secret agenda. Except not secret. If anything, I was using him to impress you.” Not the actual Alex, of course, but the Vronsky I’d conjured.

  “Then why have you been ignoring us?” Blotches of color appeared high on Arden’s cheeks. “I kept thinking, ‘We need Lady Mary to lay down some truths, because this sucks,’ and then it was like, ‘Oh wait, that’s not going to happen, because she ditched us!’”

  Startled by this unexpected outburst, I was slow to respond. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

  “You’re the one who jumped out of my car and ran away!” Arden reminded me.

  “Do you have any idea how long we spent cruising your neighborhood?” Lydia asked. “It’s a miracle nobody called it in.”

  I bowed my head. “It was my fault, so I figured I should be the one to suffer. I didn’t want to offend you with my presence.”

  Arden exhaled loudly. “That’s not how it works.”

  “It’s probably because of what happened with her other friend,” Terry said.

  “Or maybe it’s from a book!” Lydia jabbed a finger at me.

  My mouth opened and then closed again, cutting off the denial I’d been about to issue. There was something highly literary in the idea of succumbing to a fatal, solitary misery, like working myself to death making hats.

  “Maybe,” I allowed. “I can’t tell anymore.” When it came to my own behavior, I felt less insightful all the time.

  “If those books were even real.” Arden lifted her chin. “Some of that stuff sounded way over the top. Like the one where they find that lady’s exact double and then put her in an asylum so they can get the other lady’s inheritance?”

  “It’s a real book,” I assured her. “They all are. In fact, there’s one that’s really apropos, about a dying heiress and this couple that wants to get married, but they don’t have enough money.” I broke off when Lydia held up a hand.

  “No books.”

  Arden nodded her agreement. “Let’s stick with the people at this table. IRL.”

  I took this as my cue to launch into the remarks I’d painstakingly prepared. “Okay, first I want to apologize to all of you. Not just for ruining Winter Formal, although I also feel really bad about that.” I looked at each of them in turn. “I’m so sorry. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had, and I feel terrible that I repaid you by being underhanded. And I betrayed you most of all.” I turned to Terry.

  She stiffened. “Why me?”

  “Because I talked you out of dating Alex, when it turns out he’s actually a nice person.” A better woman might have enumerated his sterling qualities, but even that much of a concession made me want to roll around on the floor gnashing my teeth. There was a difference between selflessness and masochism.

  “That’s okay,” Terry said. “I didn’t want to go out with him anyway.”

  My first reaction—profound relief—was followed by a paradoxical urge to argue. “Why not?”

  “I’m just not interested.” She shrugged. “In any of them. I never was.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Lydia asked Terry.

  “I was going along with the crowd, since you guys were into it.”

  Arden gasped. “This is like that story about the girl who cut off all her hair but then the guy sold his watch and they had nothing for Christmas. Not that we’re talking about books right now.” She mimed zipping her lips. “New rule. From now on, everyone has to be straight up about what they want, or don’t want. Like with me and Lydia, and how I secretly felt guilty that I had a boyfriend and she didn’t, because I kept thinking it would bother me if it was the other way around.”

  “It did bother me,” Lydia admitted. “Which made me feel stupid. But I felt even worse when it seemed like you were totally obsessed with me being single, like it was a massive head wound.”

  Terry nodded. “And the boyfriend would be like stapling your scalp, so you don’t bleed out.”

  “That is one hundred percent not how I thought of it,” Arden assured us.

  Lydia shrugged. “I know that now.”

  “Because we got it all out in the open,” Arden concluded, with the same inflection typically given to the phrase and they all lived happily ever after.

  “And—you and Miles?” I crossed my fingers for another miraculous reconciliation.

  “He sent me an email.” Arden lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know what will happen. I’m not sure I like the way he made me feel like a burden. I want someone who wants me.”

  “And who you want,” I said, easing into my next point. “Whoever that might be. Because it’s okay to want things that aren’t the things you think people want you to want.”

  Lydia squinted at me. “You lost me there.”

  “Sometimes people want someone . . . ” I searched for a tactful way to phrase it, “unexpected.”

  “Like you and Alex?” Arden suggested. “Because I did not see that one coming.”

  I winced. Naturally I knew he was beyond my reach, but did we have put it out there so baldly?

  “I pictured you with someone way smarter,” she continued, and now I felt bad for Alex. People probably under­estimated him all the time because of his looks. Or maybe that was just me.

  “Actually, I was talking about Terry,” I said, demonstrating my newfound commitment to full disclosure. “And I hope I speak for everyone here when I promise that if she ever wanted to tell us about feelings she might have for a certain someone, we would fully understand. Even if it was more or less hopeless, at least for now.”

  Lydia looked questioningly at Terry. “Do you have any idea where she’s going with this?”

  Terry shook her head.

  “Let’s just say I’ve noticed you admiring this person,” I hinted.

  “Oh my gosh, are you talking about yourself?” Arden imitated my eyebrow-raising.

  “No,” I sighed. “It’s obviously not me.”

  “Obviously,” Lydia echoed. “Crystal clear.”

  I smiled gently. “It’s Cam, isn’t it?”

  “Your sister?” Terry shook her head. “I’m not in love with her.” It was a simple, forthright denial. No blushing, no cringing, no looking away.

  “I didn’t say in love,” I amended, thinking it might be a semantic issue. “I just meant you might be carrying a torch. Because of how you talk about her.”

  “I do admire her,” Terry said. “She’s so cool. Great poker face.”

  It wasn’t exactly an ode to romantic love. “Then you don’t want to date her?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Huh.” My eloquence seemed to be fading along with my ability to read people.

  “I thought it was because of your mom.” Arden lifted her chin in Terry’s direction. “Like you were afraid she’d feel bad if you found
someone before she did.”

  Her mother! A classic thematic wrinkle. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “I do worry about her being lonely, but that’s not why.” Terry looked at us through her lashes. “I’ve never really had a crush on anyone. Or if I did, I didn’t notice. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like. Is that strange?”

  “Strange is someone who picks off pieces of their own skin and eats it. Your feelings, and nonfeelings, are just part of who you are.” Arden smiled encouragingly. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet.”

  “Or maybe she’d rather be alone,” Lydia countered.

  “Or a nun,” suggested Arden, snapping her fingers.

  I pointed at Terry. “Who’s also a forensic pathologist.”

  Lydia looked impressed. “I’d watch the crap out of that TV show.”

  The first bell rang. We still had five minutes to get to class, but lunch was technically over. I felt a frisson of panic. Was everything settled? Had they forgiven me? Were we friends again, or merely in a state of détente? These didn’t seem like the kind of questions I could verbalize.

  Arden stood, looking down at me. “You know what we need to do now?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I stumbled to my feet.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia asked.

  “I meant to leave after the apology. Not overstay my welcome.”

  “That was your plan? Show up, apologize, take off?”

  “Kind of? I thought maybe you’d want to discuss things—without me.”

  “What I was going to say,” Arden cut in with a trace of impatience, “is that we should celebrate. Preferably someplace that is not the cafeteria.”

  I looked down at the scarred tabletop. “Then you’re speaking to me?”

  “We never stopped,” Arden pointed out.

  Sighing, I added this to my list of recent blunders.

  As we wended our way through the cafeteria, I felt Arden watching me. “I guess they didn’t cover this in any of your books,” she said when I looked up.

  “This?”

  “Friendship.”

  It was true that the driving force in novels was more often a romantic arc: the so-called marriage plot. Unless it was a story-of-my-life bildungsroman, but those seemed to be the exclusive province of boys. (Quelle surprise, as my mother would say.)