Gimme a Call

by Sarah Mlynowski

  “Want to take a drive?”

  “Um … I can’t. Sorry! I actually have to go,” I mumble, squirming away from his grasp and hurrying diagonally through the cafeteria and out the door into the yard, where I spot the wooden bench. My bench. Our bench.

  I drop to the seat of the bench and it still feels safe. Safer than the cafeteria. My fingers roam the wood to see if Bryan’s carving is still there, but the bench is smooth. I swallow the lump in my throat. Will it ever completely go away? What’s the point of getting rid of my entire relationship with Bryan if my chest still feels like a block of cement is pressed against it?

  What now? I should call Frosh. I told her I’d call her at lunch. I dial my number, but it goes straight to voice mail. What is wrong with her? Why isn’t she answering? Oh, crap. She has freshman/sophomore lunch, which is over. This is junior/senior lunch. I can’t do anything right.

  I pull out my phone and type in Hi! Sorry I missed u. Will call u after school! XO me.

  It might be weird to send myself hugs and kisses, but I deserve some love. Some non-Harry-Travis-personal-space-invading love.

  “Hey, Dev,” I hear. My heart stops. Bryan?

  I look up. It’s Jerome Cohen. Just Jerome Cohen.

  He’s wearing a green T-shirt for his band, the Spanks. He plays the drums. When Bryan and I first hooked up—when Jerome was with Joelle—Bryan was thinking about taking up the drums too, but that never happened. He was too busy with me. “Can we hang here?” he asks.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” I ask quickly.

  “Just me and Sands.” He swings his lunch bag in circles, to whatever rhythm is in his head.

  I jump off the bench like it’s on fire. “All yours. I need to … do stuff. Bye.” I hurry back inside like I’m trying out for the track team. I spot Joelle and Tash at the table beside the window. A primo table. Not bad, girls. I sit down beside them. I’ll get something to eat in a minute.

  “What just happened?” Joelle asks me.

  “With what?”

  “With Jerome! I saw you talking to him outside. Did he say anything about me?”

  I shake my head. “Sorry.”

  She shrugs. “You really should have come with me to the show last night. He rocked the guitar.”

  Huh? “Isn’t he the drummer?”

  She gives me a weird look. “Noooo. Bryan Sanderson’s the drummer.”

  “Since when?” I shriek.

  “Since … always? I don’t know. You’ve been to their shows. Don’t you remember? That’s where he and Karin first hooked up.”

  Way too much information. “Where is Karin?” I ask, trying to keep this morning’s Kogurt Juice down. “She said she’d meet us here, right?”

  “She has cheer at lunch on Mondays.”

  “She’s a cheerleader?” I ask. “Since when?”

  They both look at me strangely. “We’ve only gone to all of her games,” Joelle says.

  “We have? I mean … we have! Of course! I’m just kidding. Ha-ha.” My mind is racing. Karin did not used to be a cheerleader. This I would have noticed. This change has got to be Frosh-related.

  My stomach growls, and I order and eat a slice of pizza—upside down, of course—all the while wondering what Frosh said to put this in motion. We’re about to pack up and head back to our lockers when I spot Karin bounding toward us, her ringlets flying.

  “Hi!” she chirps. “Wanted to check in with you ladies before the bell rang.” She flounces down beside me.

  I stare. She looks … different from this morning. What’s going on?

  She smiles and grabs one of my fries.

  She’s eating fries?

  What is it about her that’s off? Has she changed her hair or something? I give her the once-over. Her arms and legs aren’t as brittle-looking. They have more meat on them. Like they used to when we were freshmen. And they’re tanned. Very tanned. It’s sunny outside, but not that sunny. “How come you’re so … tanned?” I ask.

  “I’m so not,” she says, shaking her head. “I was just thinking that I need to pay the tanning salon a visit. Anyone wanna come with me after school?”

  “No. I’ll pass,” Joelle says. Tash and I shake our heads.

  But there’s something more. Karin’s face looks different. Rounder. Her cheeks are fuller. She definitely looks healthier. But that’s not it.

  “Karin!” I scream. “Your nose!” Her nose is perfectly straight. Perfectly. Straight. And narrow. What happened to the curve? What happened to the wideness?

  Her fingers flutter to her face. “Did something happen during cheer? Tell me no!”

  “Nothing happened,” Joelle says. “It looks fine.”

  “It just looks so straight,” I blurt out. “And narrow.”

  She removes her hand and laughs. “Good. It wasn’t cheap.”

  Oh. My. God. I steady my hands on the table. “Karin, remind me, when did you get it done?”

  “My sixteenth birthday. Remember? You brought a cake to the hospital.”

  “Right,” I say. How thoughtful of me.

  “Dr. Honig is the best,” she says. “We booked him for my graduation present too.”

  “Your what?” I have a bad feeling about this.

  “You know,” she says, and then lowers her voice. “My boobs.”

  Oh, God. Oh, no.

  “I have to get something from my locker,” I gasp to the girls, and then hurry out of the caf. Back at my locker, I slide to the ground, pull out my phone, and hit send.

  It goes straight to voice mail. I hang up and type out a text instead.

  Frosh! I write. What the @#%* did you do?

  chapter fourteen

  Monday, September 12 Freshman Year

  I’m sitting on the bleachers in the gym with Joelle and Tash, watching Karin try out, when my phone rings. It’s my number.

  “Hi!” I say. “I just turned my phone on. Did you forget about me at lunch?”

  “I guess you didn’t—”

  The rest of her sentence is drowned out by the tryees’ screaming at the top of their lungs, “Went down to the river! And I started to drown! And I thought about the Florence Fins! And I couldn’t go down!”

  Karin is kicking river butt. She’s definitely going to make the team. I’m a genius. “Repeat what you said!” I yell. “It’s loud in here!”

  “I—”

  “Said one, two, three, four, five, the Florence Fins don’t take no jive, said six, seven, eight, nine, ten, let’s start this cheer all over again!”

  I block the ear that doesn’t have the cell pressed against it. “Sorry, I missed it again. Repeat?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Cheerleading tryouts!”

  “What? Why?”

  “Actually—”

  “Went down to the river! And I started to drown! And I thought about the Blue Hill Lions and I went straight down! Said one—”

  “This is ridiculous!” she yells. “Go somewhere quiet!”

  “Hold on, bossy-pants.” I turn to Tash and Joelle. “I’ll be right back.” I maneuver my way off the bleachers and into the hall. “What’s up? Where are you?”

  “I’m walking home and getting some air,” she snaps. “Not screwing up the future like you.”

  Uh-oh. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you see my texts?”

  “No. Hold on a sec.” I pull the phone away from me and flip through. Two texts. The last one is not as loving as the first.

  “Tell me what you did to Karin. And how cheerleading is involved.”

  “I saved her!” I say. “Why? What happened? Did she hurt herself in cheer or something? She didn’t break a leg, did she?”

  “Why are you even at cheer tryouts?” she asks. “I don’t understand what happened. Can you start at the beginning?”

  I switch the cell to my other ear, take a deep breath, and report all that’s gone on from lunch until now.

  “Well, she makes it,” Ivy says whe
n I’m done. “She’s still a cheerleader.”

  It worked! It worked! Wahoo! “That’s great! Does she still have an eating disorder?”

  “Nope.”

  Yay! I cured her! “What’s the problem, then? I did what I was supposed to do, didn’t I? Wait. Does she ditch us? Does she become all obsessed with her cheerleader friends and forget about us?”

  “Also nope.”

  “So why do you sound so annoyed?”

  She sighs. “She got a nose job.”

  I almost drop the phone. “Oh.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m assuming it has something to do with cheerleading, though.”

  “But she doesn’t have a big nose,” I say, still in disbelief.

  “She always thought she did.”

  “But she doesn’t!”

  “Too late now!”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I chew on my bottom lip. “But maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can fix it. And anyway, a nose job is better than an eating disorder, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Ivy says. “Relatively healthier. Her body definitely looks healthier. Her skin doesn’t. It looks like leather.”

  I pause. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “She’s tanned. Fake tanned. It looks like she lives in a tanning booth.”

  “That’s still better than being anorexic,” I say. “I still helped her. Didn’t I?”

  “I’m not so sure. Guess what her parents are getting her for graduation.”

  “A car?” How cool would that be? Maybe I’ll get a car too!

  “A boob job.”

  “What?”

  “A boob job.”

  I did not see that one coming. “Whoops.”

  “Yeah. Whoops. Big whoops.”

  “I swear I didn’t know that was going to happen,” I say.

  “I’m sure you didn’t. And I understand why you stopped her from trying out for gymnastics. But from now on you should run any changes to the past by me first. And I think we just learned a bit of a time-travel lesson, don’t you? Trying to fix things can really mess them up.”

  “Shoot,” I say. “So what now?”

  “You need to stop her from trying out for cheer.”

  I can still hear the screaming from inside. “I think it’s too late. And anyway, cosmetic surgery is still better than anorexia.”

  “Yeah, but they’re both kind of craptastic. You really will have to discuss these things with me.”

  “But what about the rest of the list? The seventy-two things we’re still supposed to fix?”

  “I’d hardly call Karin fixed. And I don’t know about the rest anymore…. What if you make things worse? Let’s hold off on the list for the time being. And from now on, you have to run everything by me. Everything.”

  Yes, she’s mentioned that already. Three times. I shuffle my feet. Just because she’s older, does that make her the boss? “But—”

  “No buts. Karin is getting a boob job and it’s your fault,” she snaps.

  “She hasn’t had the surgery yet. Maybe you can convince her not to.”

  “I’ll have to fix your screwup somehow, won’t I?”

  I roll my eyes. What does she know? She didn’t even have friends two days ago. There’s more cheering behind the door. “I think I should get back inside. Unlike you, I want to support my friends.”

  “Oh, God.” I hear a sharp intake of breath. “I have to go. It’s Bryan.”

  “But you guys broke—I mean—”

  She hangs up.

  Now what do I do? I can’t let my best friend become a plastic-surgery junkie. I need to fix this. I need a plan.

  chapter fifteen

  Monday, May 26 Senior Year

  I’m on Fleet, halfway between school and home, and Bryan is half a block up, beside a stop sign. He’s wearing his green shirt—my favorite color on him—and he’s smiling. I can see his dimples from here. Bryan, my Bryan.

  Exept he’s holding hands with Celia King. I stop in my tracks. What. Is. He. Doing? Why is he touching her? We hate Celia! She’s annoying! The only thing we like about her is that we met at her house! Otherwise we think she’s a snobby party girl who wears too much glitter and turns every compliment she gives into an insult.

  He leans over. And kisses her.

  Oh. My. God.

  My legs freeze. My arms freeze. My blood is liquid ice. Hasn’t he already done enough damage? Is he trying to give me a heart attack? He lifts his hand and runs it through the back of her hair, like he does with me.

  Like he did with me. Or like he didn’t do with me anymore. I take two steps back, as if he just drop-kicked me in the stomach. I need to sit down. I need to get home. If I click my heels together, can I go home? Please? Stranger things have happened this week.

  I try. It doesn’t work.

  I need to run. Home. Now. I turn at the next corner, a slightly longer route home, and run. My eyes are pricking with tears, but I’m not going to cry. The image of them kissing is still burning my eyes. But I won’t cry. If I can just get home, then I won’t cry.

  My heart pounds angrily against my rib cage, but I don’t stop until I’m in my house, in my room, on my bed.

  I never thought I’d feel this sick. Seeing him with another girl—imagining him with another girl—feels even worse than his breaking up with me. Feels worse than anything.

  I have a secret. I lied to Frosh.

  Bryan never cheated on me.

  What else was I supposed to say? She wasn’t listening to me! She would have gone out with him. I had to tell her something that she could grasp. Something bad. It was better than making up something worse, like that he was a drug addict or a bank robber or something.

  I wouldn’t have said that. Though it did cross my mind.

  But how else could I explain? You can’t understand what it feels like to have your heart stomped on until you’ve been through it yourself.

  She wouldn’t have understood the truth: that he broke up with me not because he doesn’t love me—so he said—but because he wants to see who he is without me. Because even though we had decided to go to Stulen together, he decided to try something new, something else, something different. Because he thought it was time for a change. Because his dad convinced him to go to college in Montreal, where his dad lives and where SAT scores don’t matter. Because he made plans that didn’t include me. Because he’s leaving me. Without anything.

  “Who knows?” he said to me the night of our breakup. “If we’re meant to be, maybe we’ll get back together one day. But right now, this is what I have to do. It’s not about you. It’s about me.”

  That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? Everything I did was about him.

  I flip over onto my back and bang my fists into my duvet.

  Someone who loves you doesn’t leave you. I’m better off without him.

  And now he has a new girlfriend. Or an old girlfriend. Of course he has a girlfriend. Why shouldn’t he? Just because I don’t have photos of him in my bedroom doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t. I wonder how long they’ve been together. Are they in love? Did he have feelings for her when he was with me?

  Maybe I was right after all. Maybe he did cheat on me. Jerk.

  I wonder what happened to all the other frames I tossed. Is he gone from those photos too? I rummage through the garbage and pull them out.

  They’re all of Karin, Tash, Joelle, and me. Us holding up chopsticks and eating sushi. Us outside a school dance. Us in sleeping bags, making kissy faces at the camera.

  Fun. But Bryan?

  He’s gone. Still gone. And the lump in my throat? Still there.

  I look down at my bare wrist. I look up at my bulletin board. There are pictures of me and the girls, birthday cards I don’t remember getting, collages of words and pictures I don’t understand or remember the importance of. A picture of Harry Travis’s head on a cartoon body.


  The card Bryan made me for our second anniversary. Gone. The card he got me for Valentine’s Day. Gone. The acceptance letter from Stupid State that was tacked to my bulletin board. Gone.

  Wait a sec. I jump into a sitting position. Instead of the white sheet of paper congratulating me for getting into Stupid, tacked to my bulletin board is a mint green paper.

  It says Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to Ballor State!

  I have?

  I jump up and pull it from the board. Yup. It definitely says that I’ve been accepted to Ballor. Sure, Ballor is a fourth-tier school, but it’s better than Stulen. It doesn’t accept everyone.

  How did that happen?

  Maybe … because I didn’t spend all my time hanging out with Bryan, I spent more time studying. And by spending more time studying, I got better grades and got into Ballor.

  Maya was right all along.

  If I apply myself this time around, I don’t have to have a B-minus average. I could have an A average. Or an A-plus average. Maya doesn’t have to be the only Banks girl to get into a good college. I can get into one too.

  By not dating Bryan, I can change more than my relationship history. And my friendship history. I can change my college acceptance.

  With Frosh on my side, I can go anywhere I want. UCLA, maybe. Why not? If Maya can go, why can’t I? I don’t have to be just the pretty Banks girl. I could be the smart one too.

  There are a million possibilities.

  I won’t even have to retake my SATs or anything. I’ll just have to instruct Frosh on what to do differently and then watch the changing acceptance letter on my wall.

  Yes! This time, I am not going to let some boy distract me from making something of myself. No way. This time, I’m not going to let a guy who’s going to dump me anyway ruin my future. This time, I’m going to focus on school and get into a great college.

  This time I have a plan.

  I call Frosh immediately. “Guess where you’re going.”

  “Can I pee first? I just got home two seconds ago.”