The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  Across the room, Clara gave me a below-the-table thumbs-up. At least she was being discreet. I wouldn’t have put it past her to post a bullet-point plan on the room’s chalk-board wall: Rory’s Guide to the Guy Next Door.

  “Hey, Roar.” Toby bent forward on his stool. He waited until I pulled my head off Huck’s shoulder and looked up at him. “These get-to-know-you things—think it’s unfair we have such a big advantage?” He shifted his eyes to Huck, who’d leaned his chin on my shoulder when he turned toward Toby too. “No one in this room knows you as well as I do.”

  “Um, except for my sister?” I countered.

  Toby’s ears turned red. “Well, yeah. But after Merri—”

  “Then maybe we should trade partners,” interrupted Huck.

  It was a good thing Mr. Welch had stopped talking and was handing out papers in the front, because even with the increased buzz of forty pairs of students making plans, Toby’s “What? No! Rory is my adoptee” sounded super loud.

  “M’kay. I’ll let you borrow her,” said Huck. He stood and I was suddenly staring at three hands in my face as he, Toby, and Curtis all reached down to help me up. I decided Curtis’s was safest and also that Huck needed to check if it was too late to join the drama club. He was way too good at this.

  “I’ll see you after, Camp . . . bear.”

  Or maybe good, but not perfect. I mouthed Campbear? at him and he grimaced. I laughed and said, “Later, Huck. Curtis.”

  Toby frowned at everyone who greeted us as he strode across the room to get our packet, then trudged to a pair of stools in the back corner. Digging a pen out of his faded red backpack, he turned to the first page and pressed the tip to the line beside the top question. “Let’s get started. Maybe I don’t know everything about you after all.”

  Huck and Clara were going to be way too pleased—but for however long this moment lasted, I had Toby’s full attention, despite the fact that Merri was in the same room. Maybe it was time to take a page out of Gatsby’s book and attempt to be alluring and mysterious. I arched an eyebrow. “But wouldn’t it be boring if you did?”

  We didn’t finish even half the questions, mostly because Toby insisted on writing down my answers word for word. It was like a high-intensity version of the question game Huck and I had played at Saturday detention, only stranger because Toby was acting like his life depended on my answer to Favorite sports team. “Um, none? Does Olympic figure skating count?”

  About forty minutes into the interrogation, he asked, “What was your scariest moment?”

  I tilted my head. “You know this one. That time with the basement door? When the knob came off and I couldn’t get out and you couldn’t hear me banging because Merri had dragged you off to play circus on the swing set.” Super-wonderful memory, that one. Slamming my fists against the rough door until my hands had splinters. Screaming until my voice gave out. Mom found me slumped against the door after I’d wet my pants and sobbed myself sick. I’d been six. I’d refused to go into the basement again until it had been finished.

  “Why don’t you tell it from the beginning,” suggested Toby, his pen at the ready.

  “No.” I laughed. “Toby, you know all this. We could blow this off, talk about anything.”

  He clicked his pen twice. “It started when you were going to get a quilt from the dryer, right?”

  “We were going to build a blanket fortress.” I was surprised he remembered that much—the day hadn’t been nearly as scarring for him.

  “And then you never came back,” he said at the same time that I added, “And then you forgot about me.”

  I glanced up from my hands. I’d been knotting them together in my lap, thinking about how long it had taken Dad to dig out the splinters. Toby looked up from his paper. And I’d always heard about falling into eye contact—like it was a pothole or a puddle. But there was something trapping about that moment. About the way we were really seeing each other and seeing perhaps we didn’t have the same memory of that day. It was like Toby said earlier: Maybe we didn’t know each other as well as we thought.

  “Annnnd, time,” called Mr. Welch from the front of the room. “The lesson plans I inherited from last year’s Knight Light supervisor instruct me to have you all come up here and introduce your adoptee—but I vote we skip that part.”

  Toby and I faced him. We provided our part in the obligatory laughter, but I wasn’t really seeing what was in front of me. I was too deep in my head, trying to deconstruct Toby’s expression the way I would if I were drawing it. Had he looked as vulnerable as I felt? Had there been something wistful or eager in his eyes?

  “We can finish these up tonight,” said Toby.

  “Tonight?” I swung back toward him.

  “Tutoring.” He flipped his pen and caught it. “I’ll come over after dinner.”

  “Wait—” I wanted to delay or cancel, but Toby had gone to find his friends and Huck and Clara had popped up like the smuggest prep school jack-in-the-boxes.

  “Come on, heartbreaker,” Clara said, steering me by the wrist. “You can tell us about it on the way to history.”

  I had a response journal due for English the next day, and as I stared at my computer that night, it would’ve been so easy to write about Toby or Daisy or anything that ended in an “ee” sound, but that was never happening. Instead I wrote about New York, about Nick Carraway’s observation that “the city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world.”

  I could relate to that. Each time I stepped out of the train station in New York City, it took my breath away. It was easy to fill a page about New York, especially when I made the font as big as my NYC dreams.

  New York is a combination of breathless beauty and soul-stealing sorrow. But even its poverty and garbage can be picturesque with the right framing and backdrop. As an artist I’m trained to look for compositions. It’s enough to make me forget for a moment that that pile of trash bags is someone’s belongings, or that that blackened toe peeking out from tattered cardboard is someone’s foot. Those are the types of reminders I need—the ones that cancel out all the promise of mystery and beauty and force me to consider things with rational thoughts. Because New York City does that—it teases you with ambition, the type that’s swept up Nick Carraway. But it also doesn’t hide the carcasses of other people’s smashed dreams. The trick is to force yourself to see them.

  I read it over. It was pretty bleak. But bleak was good, right? Merri always joked that upbeat things were commercial and depressing things were called “literary”—I wondered if I could sell Ms. Gregoire on this being a “literary response journal” versus one fueled by stress.

  It was after dinner—granted our dinner had been early so Mom could head back to the store and relieve Lilly, but it was still after dinner—which meant Toby could arrive at any time. And I wasn’t ready.

  I spent the next half hour storming all over my house to try to figure out where we should work. Not the living room, because there was nowhere to put books and papers besides Mom’s low coffee table, which was covered in porcelain dog figurines. Not the dining room, because it hadn’t been cleared from dinner and Gatsby and Byron would beg and bug us. Dad was doing dishes and listening to podcasts at ear-killing volume in the kitchen. My bedroom? No, the thought of Toby in the room with all my secret sketches was enough to make my hands shake.

  So that left the basement. I lit a mint-scented candle to cover the burnt-popcorn smell. I vacuumed up the kernels and dog hair tumbleweeds. I put away the remote controls, plumped the throw pillows, restocked the mini fridge with Toby’s favorite root beer and waters for me—and hid Merri’s cream sodas so the sight of them wouldn’t snag his attention. Pencils had been sharpened, mechanical pencils reloaded. There were erasers and paper and calculators lined up. If I’d had time, I would’ve bought his favorite brand of licorice or made a playlist—but this was the best I could do on sh
ort notice.

  And it was stupid. This was Toby. We’d spent hours and years together. But that didn’t mean I wanted to fail in front of him. My phone rang a half second before I picked it up to call him and cancel. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Roar.” Toby hesitated, then added, “I saw Fielding’s car in your driveway and was thinking—maybe you’d better come over here instead.”

  And if I’d needed any sort of demonstration about why stressing out was worthless, there it was. I wasn’t Gatsby. I had no allure or power or fancy orange juice machine—there was no way I was winning him over. While I was worried about what to wear to learn sine and cosine, he was worrying about seeing Merri with her boyfriend.

  Was he avoiding Fielding all the time? Or just when he was around my sister? And how long until Merri noticed and tried to mediate? Yeah, that was not going to go well.

  “Sure,” I said as I snuffed out the candle. “I’ll be right over.”

  14

  Gatsby was a moron. There were other girls. Ones unattached. Forget green lights. Find a red one. A blue one. Any other color to obsess over.

  Daisy Buchanan didn’t deserve him. She wasn’t loyal or smart. And what was up with him and his whole stupid fancy car? I hated cars and shotgun seats and the fact that Toby would always be my green light, but Merri was his.

  Merri, who was sitting in his passenger seat making him laugh and smile and totally oblivious to the way he’d watched our driveway out his kitchen window the whole time we sat at his table and trudged through my homework last night. His posture hadn’t relaxed until Fielding’s car backed out, and he hadn’t noticed when I’d said, “And that’s the last one. Thanks, Toby,” with half a dozen problems still to go.

  Daisy. Toby. They sounded stupidly similar and that was probably the type of thing I was supposed to confess for English. Ms. Gregoire would likely give me an A-plus if I ripped up the response journal in my backpack and submitted nothing but the lyrics for the song about a bicycle built for two with Toby’s name swapped in.

  “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you . . .”

  “What are you humming?” Toby turned around at a stop sign to give my knee a playful flick and my heart turned over. Or, it did until he gave Merri one too. “You Campbell girls and your mysterious humming. This one does it whenever she’s bored or smug or has a secret.”

  I slumped down. Of course he knew every one of her moods and tells. He probably had spreadsheets where he analyzed her smiles. Which were totally different than my sketchbooks full of his expressions . . .

  “What is it for you, Roar: bored, smug, or secret?”

  “Secret,” I said. “But unlike This One.” I reached forward to flick her too, only I aimed for her neck and the wrong side of gentle. “I won’t crack and tell six seconds later.”

  “Ow!” said Merri. “Everyone stop flicking me!”

  I watched Toby’s eyes narrow in the rearview mirror and braced myself for a rebuke for harming poor Merri. “But I’m your Knight Light,” he said. “You can tell me anything.”

  Merri snorted. “You’re letting that title go to your head. It doesn’t actually come with a badge and privileges. Leave poor Rory alone.”

  Normally I’d object to “poor Rory,” but today I was too grateful. Or cruel, because the easiest way to make her happy was also the easiest way to hurt Toby, and that didn’t stop me from saying, “So, has Fielding asked you to Fall Ball yet?”

  Ms. Gregoire ended class on Thursday by telling me to stop by after school. Which meant I stressed and sweated and squirmed through my afternoon classes. All that work Toby put into trying to cram math into my brain—wasted. I spent the whole period staring at the clock and the light bulb–shaped poster above it: Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

  Well, I had the sweat part down and totally needed a new deodorant, one that was Hero High panic–proof.

  Another consequence was it cost me my ride with Toby. I texted him while standing outside the classroom: Meeting with Gregoire. I’ll walk home after.

  She was waiting with a smile, a coffee mug, and my response paper—or what was visible of it beneath her scribblings. “Grab a seat. I want to talk grades and support and making sure you’re getting enough of the latter to improve the former. I don’t want you missing out on things here.”

  Eye contact while being lectured was always tricky, but even trickier was trying to pay attention while also stealing peeks at her upside-down comments on my paper. “Um, I’ve got a math tutor now. I’m taking a retest tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that will be good. Mrs. Roberts had expressed concern about you. Who is it?”

  “Toby.” My cheeks turned pink just saying his name.

  “Interesting . . .” She crossed her legs and tapped the paper in front of her. “Well, since I can see you’re curious, let’s talk about this. You’re still not showing me any connections.”

  I slumped down in my seat. Apparently, I hadn’t managed to pull off “literary.”

  “Nothing about this book feels personal? Nothing about the parties? Or feeling like a fish out of water? New to a social scene?” I kept shaking my head and she kept giving me a dubious look. “No . . . green light?”

  There was a knock on the door and both of us shifted our gaze to the guy standing there. “Hey, Roar, sorry to interrupt. But, I got your text. Ride home, you-me? I don’t have piano until four thirty, so I can wait. Twenty minutes? Thirty? An hour?”

  I went dazed and dizzy, because he’d shown up with no warning. My nod was slow, like a bobblehead with a rusty spring.

  “Thirty should be plenty. Thanks, Toby.” It was Ms. Gregoire with the answer, since I hadn’t noticed he needed one. After he left, she was all “Hmmm” and head tilting and glances from me to the door. If one more person guessed my crush, I was going to find a place that gave poker-face lessons and enroll immediately. “If I recall, I was asking about any green lights in your own life.”

  “It’s . . . not green?” Nope, not green. Toby—like everyone in a Hero High uniform—was wearing navy, gray, and red. The only thing green about it was my envy of how he looked at Merri in ways he’d never looked at me. As for lights? I was grateful my room didn’t face his house, because there were far too many times I’d glimpsed the glow beyond his bedroom balcony doors and been glued in place, wondering what he was doing. Wishing I had half the access to him that Merri did.

  The nights where he had his door cracked and I could hear him playing his keyboard were the hardest. I’d spent hours sitting on the side of the tub below the bathroom window listening to his compositions cross the narrow strip of lawn between our houses. Every time I’d walked out of that room while he was still playing—usually because Merri banged on the door and announced she needed to pee—it was physically painful.

  “Come on, Rory. Give me something to work with. What words do you think of when you think of Gatsby?”

  Did she mean the character or the book? And would it be okay if my answer wasn’t positive or PG? I swallowed. “Um, it’s a cautionary tale.”

  “Good. More. Cautionary against what?”

  I was probably supposed to say “capitalism” or “excess” or “reckless consumption” or who knows what. Something smart, with quotes to back it up.

  I looked around the room, wondering which of these seats was Toby’s. “Love.”

  “Well, there’s a start.” Ms. Gregoire dusted off her hands. “We’re done here.”

  “Wait. What?” Hadn’t she told Toby thirty minutes? But why was I protesting her letting me leave? “I mean, thanks! I’ll try harder.”

  “Don’t try harder—try not to not try so hard.”

  Whatever that meant. But I had a feeling the explanation would use all those minutes I’d gotten back, so I nodded and left.

  I practically ran from the humanities building to the art studio. I needed a hideout. A place to wind down from that meeting and vent some of the creative energy and anxiety
crackling beneath my skin.

  I had only twenty-five minutes, but it was one of those days where everything felt enchanted. The lines I drew flowed like magic from my pencil. Within a few minutes, I’d roughed out a sketch and was ready to paint. The colors I mixed matched the ones in my head and the connection between my brain and my paintbrush was flowing at autobahn speeds. I hadn’t gotten a smock. I hadn’t pinned back my hair. Which meant both my face and my uniform were speckled in gold and gray and green, but I didn’t stop and I didn’t care.

  I’d finally found my way back to the art zone and I was never, ever leaving.

  “I hope you haven’t missed your ride.”

  I jumped and screeched. But luckily, the only thing I spattered with my paintbrush was my shirt. I made things worse by pressing my hand—still clutching the brush—to my pounding heart as I turned to face the door.

  Ms. Gregoire had spoken, but she was standing with Mrs. Mundhenk. “Didn’t we tell Toby thirty minutes? It’s been more than an hour.”

  “It has?” I put down the brush and pulled out my phone. The screen was covered in texts I hadn’t heard. Toby looking for me. Merri looking for me because Toby had called her. Toby worried. Toby calling Lilly. Toby threatening to call my parents. Toby giving up and driving home to look for me there.

  “I lost track of time. I need—” I texted one-handed as I walked my brushes to the sink. Sorry! I’m fine. I’m safe. Be home soon. I looked up from the screen a step too late, already midcollision with the sink. I bobbled everything I was holding, almost giving myself and my phone a bath in paint water.

  “Let me help,” said Mrs. Mundhenk.

  “Ahem,” said Ms. Gregoire. “First, you should come see this.” She was standing in front of my easel, studying the painting I hadn’t had a chance to stop and take in yet. I’d been so focused on each individual part that I didn’t know if it worked as a whole. But I knew those parts well. I knew what they added up to. I knew it wasn’t a painting I’d intended for public consumption. I’d planned on this one joining all my recent projects in the recycling bin. It had just been good to paint. Good to remember that I could.