The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  It felt like that. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” with the same rote lack of expression. Only Lilly had had a whole team behind her, and this class was twelve of them and one of me. A huge part of me wanted to duck away from a dozen sets of eyes and run and hide, but I shoved down that anxiety and covered it with my anger. The only good that came out of all this was my determination to prove them all right—they should be scared of my talent! I was going to create something so wonderful that I’d be one of Mrs. Mundhenk’s Snipes workshop nominees. And then I was going to get picked.

  18

  It wasn’t a date. It was tutoring. Tutoring.

  Which didn’t explain why I spent an hour getting ready, blow-drying my hair instead of letting it do its volumeless air-dry thing. I got out my makeup, all fancy-pants hand-me-downs from Lilly, and did my whole face. Makeup was easy; it was just painting and shading on a 3-D canvas—but looking in the mirror and seeing myself through the highlighter and eyeliner never felt right. The only paints that seemed natural on my face were accidental acrylic, watercolor, and oil smudges.

  But under Lilly’s powders and creams I looked older. And reminding Toby I wasn’t still in overalls and pigtails wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened.

  Except it wasn’t a date, and that girl in the mirror wasn’t me.

  “Whoa.” Merri was headed toward her room as I came out of mine. “Look at you.”

  “Yeah.” I ducked my head. “I was playing around.”

  “If you ever want to ‘play around’ on me, I’m in. You look amazing.” She grabbed my chin and angled my face in both directions. “Lilly! Come see this!”

  I jerked my head away. “I was going to wash it off.”

  “Not until Lilly sees it,” ordered Merri. “Lillian! Get your buns out here! Now!”

  “What?” asked Lilly, her bedroom door cracking open. “I was on a conference call with Lucinda and the florist. This better be important.”

  “Look at Rory.”

  Oh, I really didn’t have time to be the butt of whatever teasing Merri was coordinating. I covered my face with both hands. “Leave me alone.”

  “No, wait.” Merri grabbed my arm, and for someone so little, she was formidable. “Lilly, her makeup is exactly what you were saying you wanted for the wedding.”

  Lilly stepped in front of me, blocking the hall. “Can I at least see it?”

  I sighed and dropped my hands, making a face as I said, “See?”

  “Wow, Rory—you look . . .” She beamed at me. “Amazing.”

  I tugged my hair, trying to pull it forward over my face. “When you say it like that, I wonder how horrible I normally look.”

  “No. It’s—You look like you’re going to look in college. It’s like getting a peek at future you.” Lilly’s eyes were wide and hadn’t stopped scanning me.

  I rubbed at my cheek with my sleeve. “It’s not like I walk around sucking my thumb.”

  Lilly shook her head. “I don’t mean it that way—and this is exactly the natural look I want for the wedding. Whatever you did made your eyes look huge and pop.”

  “It’s not that hard. I can teach you.”

  “Can you just . . . do it?” Lilly was circling me like a judge at a dog show. “Maybe we could do a practice run and if I look as good as you do, I’ll cancel my makeup artist and you could do it instead?”

  Merri shoved her phone in my face. “Let me get a picture so we don’t forget.” She wouldn’t stop snapping until I obeyed her command to “smile,” but once she was finally satisfied, I ran to the bathroom and washed it all off. Just in time for the hall clock to strike five and the doorbell to ring.

  It wasn’t a date. Really.

  I had my math book on the floor beside my shoes. Granted I was wearing non-paint-spattered black flats, so that was fancier than normal, but my textbook definitely wouldn’t be riding shotgun on a real date. Toby had on the Dunkirk score. I didn’t know the movie well, but the war premise didn’t sound romantic and the music just made me anxious. Not a date.

  But Mockingburger was adorably date-worthy, all reclaimed wood and earth tones and mason jars. The lampshade over our small table was the color of pine needles. I was literally sitting across from the love of my life under a freaking green light. Seriously though, I didn’t need a book’s stupid symbol of pathetic pining to tell me my crush was hopeless; I’d figured that out all on my own.

  Gatsby was the worst.

  The food, however, was delicious. Toby praised the number of broccoli-free options—“Not gonna lie, I was worried”—and said his mockingburger “tasted like real cow.”

  Since I turned down his offer of a bite, I wasn’t sure if it was true; but my butternut squash risotto was plate-lickable.

  While there was plenty of chewing and swallowing, there wasn’t a whole lot of math accomplished on the nondate, which was a thousand percent my fault, not Toby’s. I was distracted by his flannel shirt, by his wrists, by his jaw when he chewed, and by the way he wiped his mouth. Every explanation went in one ear and evaporated before we hit the next problem. He didn’t get mad, just more determined.

  Me? While I wasn’t sure what to do with the tiny numbers hovering to the right of X and Y, my own humiliation was exponentially increasing with each new failure. Why couldn’t I be home painting? Or torturing myself with math away from all the witnesses? Or reading Gatsby—because things weren’t looking too great for Daisy or Jay. I’d stopped with two chapters between them and what I was pretty sure wasn’t a happily ever after—despite all of Gatsby’s efforts. Maybe there was a moral or a response journal in there somewhere. Maybe Merri was right and Ms. Gregoire’s lit lessons were life lessons if I only looked at them the right way.

  “Roar?” Toby touched the back of my hand and I jumped, nearly stabbing him with my pencil. “You stuck?”

  “I’ve hit a wall,” I said. “Sorry. Dinner was great and I appreciate all your help—but everything’s confusing me tonight.”

  “I know that feeling.” He looked at me for a long minute. He’d been doing that a lot tonight—at first I kept discreetly wiping my mouth, licking my teeth, but I hadn’t found any food to dislodge. “That picture . . . on iLive?”

  “What picture?” I asked, closing my notebook and textbook.

  “The one Merri put up of you.”

  “Oh no.” I was going to kill her. “Show me.”

  He pulled out his phone and unlocked it. That was all he had to do because the photo was already on the screen—one Merri had taken in the hall “so they’d have an example for Lilly’s wedding.” One where she’d made me smile. I didn’t look at her caption or the comments or how many stars and hearts it’d received. I looked from my face on the screen to Toby’s.

  “I didn’t recognize you right away.” The confession made him uncomfortable; he was fidgeting with his fork. “I’d scrolled past it, scrolled back—then realized it was you.”

  My cheeks were warm and growing hotter. Was that the scrolling version of a double take? “I was just messing around. I didn’t know she’d post it.”

  He ducked his head. “I didn’t know if you’d show up looking like that—and it’s gorgeous, you’re gorgeous . . .”

  Did it count as a compliment if there was an invisible “but” tacked on the end? I waited him out, knowing that if I didn’t hop in, he’d be forced to fill the silence and finish his thought.

  “But, I hated that I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Still me.” I forced my voice to sound light. “Still right here and the girl you see every day. Often at unholy early hours for the drive to school.”

  “Yeah,” but he stretched the word out and shook his head.

  “Seriously, Toby, it’s just makeup. I’m the same person. You see more of me than Major May—don’t get weird on me.”

  Toby laughed bitterly. “Well, that’s certainly true.”

  His voice made me want to tiptoe with my response. “How is the major? I
haven’t seen him in a while.” Not that we were coffee buddies, but we got along. Better than he and Merri did. At least he used my name. He called her “the wild twin.” I’d been “the quiet twin” before he switched to “Aurora”—though I was fairly certain that sometime in the past decade he’d figured out we had separate birthdays as well as personalities.

  “He’s—” Toby cleared his throat, and something about the way he was holding his mouth made me put down my water glass. “He’s seeing someone. It’s getting pretty serious, I guess.”

  “Oh.” The former Mrs. May had moved out when Toby was eight, so I didn’t think that was the issue here, but the angles of his chin and jaw were all stiff and wrong. I didn’t know how to draw this version of his face. “Do you like her?”

  “We haven’t met. My dad says there’s no point. I’m leaving for college soon.”

  “Three years,” I clarified, in case there was some plan for him to skip a grade that I hadn’t heard about. “And it’s not like college is shipping you off to war—you’ll come back for holidays and summers.”

  “Just telling you what he said. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll go to college in California near my mom or something.”

  “Please don’t.” It slipped out before my head could catch up with my heart.

  He gave me a brief smile and spun the last sweet potato fry in a circle on his empty plate. “Anyway, he doesn’t bring her to our house. He’s been working more out of the Manhattan office, so he stays over at her apartment a few nights a week.”

  “So you’re . . . alone?”

  “Sometimes.” He sat back in his chair. “It’s not like he ever worked normal hours. And I’ve gotten real close with the pizza guys. And Chinese food. And the one sub place that delivers. So this . . . this is a good change. Vegan food is surprisingly tasty. Maybe you’ll convert me.” He paused to eat his fry. “Except for ice cream. I’m keeping real ice cream. Is licorice vegan? ’Cause that’s a deal breaker.”

  I crossed my arms. “No idea. I’m not a real vegan.”

  “You mean you’re imaginary?” Toby asked with a grin.

  “No, I just—I don’t ever call myself that. I know Merri does, but . . . I’d say ‘plant-based diet,’ but then people want a whole explanation and it becomes a thing. And I cheat sometimes. I like honey in my tea. I’m not—I’m not in it for the animals. I mean animals are fine, but . . .” I shrugged, not wanting to fall into the trap of using the same stereotypes I resented.

  “Okay, so what are you in it for?” He pointed to the remaining risotto on my plate and I pushed it over. I was already six bites past full.

  “Myself.”

  He took a bite and groaned his pleasure. “Good ordering, Roar. Also, explain.”

  “If I eat this way I sleep better. I focus better.” And neither of those had ever come easy for me. “See, it’s selfish.”

  “The cow on the menu—in other restaurants—doesn’t care why you’re not eating it.”

  “The cow on the menu is past caring either way.” I leaned forward. It felt good to get this out, especially since all the judgment I’d been expecting hadn’t come. “But you know when I’m the worst? Right before bed. Sometimes I just crave milk chocolate or a bite of cheese.”

  “Ah, yes. The bedtime munch.” Toby waved his fork at me. “I’m guilty of that too.”

  The bedtime munch? My heart was, as Merri would say, squishing in my chest. Could he be more adorable? “Yeah, but if you give in to yours, it’s not a big deal. It’s not . . . cheating. No one teases you for it.”

  “When I get the bedtime munch, no one’s there to even notice. But, yeah—I can see how Merri would be . . .”

  “Obnoxious?” I suggested. “It’s not just her. People assume that vegans are moralistic and when they find out I’m not one hundred percent committed . . . you’d think I’d gone out and slaughtered the animals myself, or that they’d just won some big victory because I ate butter.”

  “Hey.” Toby reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine. Forget fancy cars and their zero to sixty, my heart had gone resting pulse to sprint in the space between beats. “If you want, I’ll take you from here to get bacon ice cream with a side of fried chicken. It’s not ‘cheating’—it’s your choice. You get to decide what you put in your body, and that’s no one else’s business.”

  I smiled. I mean, I’d been wanting to since he touched my hand, the hand he was still touching, but at least his comment warranted one. Maybe not the radiant beaming I aimed in his direction, but there was no toning it down. “That sounds like a speech Eliza would give.”

  He pretended to frown. “Stupid carpool. She’s rubbing off on me. But since she’s the smartest person either of us will ever meet, maybe I’ll take it as a compliment. Is that a no on the ice cream?”

  “It’s a no. And a thank you.”

  His hand squeezed mine before he pulled away to flag down our waitress. “Could I have the check?”

  19

  Merri was waiting in the kitchen when I got home. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the cabinet, Gatsby’s head on her lap, a book in her hand, a cup of tea beside her, and the most ridiculous orange and blue tie-dyed robe draped around her shoulders. She used a napkin to mark her page and nudged Gatsby to move. “Where were you?”

  “Out with Toby. He’s tutoring me, remember?”

  “Right, because you wouldn’t let me.” She fell in step beside me as I headed for my room. “Did you forget it was your day to work in the store? Mom came home to get you and you were gone.”

  I dropped my head. “I totally forgot. How much trouble am I in?”

  “Lilly covered. You owe her.” Merri paused between steps. “Rory, Mom and Dad have signed your academic warning, right?”

  No, but they could sign the next one if my exam went poorly. I fidgeted with a picture of the three of us in snowsuits. “Hopefully it’s a nonissue after next Friday. Toby’s been trying his best to make me less stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid.” Merri stomped her slipper sock. “Also, I can help too. Did it ever occur to you that I wanted to tutor you? That I like spending time with you when we don’t fight?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. “That didn’t occur to me even a little.”

  “Well, I do, you jerk.”

  I pushed past her and finished climbing the stairs. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have said Toby ‘didn’t deserve to be stuck with me.’ Or that I was your responsibility and you ‘had’ to help me.”

  Merri’s eyes went doll-wide. “Oh. That does sound bad.”

  “You think?” I lowered my voice as we passed Mom and Dad’s room. “I know you’ve got this whole Rory is prickly and it’s her fault we’re not friends story. But it’s not all on me. This is not one-sided. You can’t blame me for not wanting help from someone who makes it clear she doesn’t want to spend time with me.”

  Merri’s head fell until her chin hit her chest. “I do so want to.”

  “When would that be? When you’re not hanging out with your boyfriend? Or your best friend? Or your other best friend? Or your whole new group of friends? Or doing wedding stuff with Lilly without me? Or running with your cross-country team? Or your new lit club and writing thing? When exactly do I fit in your busy social schedule?”

  I hadn’t meant to make her cry. I just wanted to be heard, to be seen, to matter. Merri’s eyes were shiny, but she blinked. “Right now. Get your notebook.”

  While I struggled through the first problem she assigned, she doodled. Hearts, of course. Strings of them cascading and ballooning all over the page. “Equations are a lot like relationships,” she said softly.

  I didn’t look at her, but I stopped writing.

  “They need to be balanced. The variables—the people—on both sides need to be equal for it to work. They have to both want it equally. If they don’t . . . well, there’s no solution for that.”

  I knew she was talking about us. About my X
effort needing to match her Y. And that was true and fair and something I’d think about later. But that algebra didn’t just relate to sisters.

  “If you subtract from one side, you add to the other. They have to work together. It can’t be one variable doing all the heavy lifting. The other variable needs to . . . care. Equally.”

  My pencil dropped from my hand and rolled off my bed. I didn’t look to see where it landed, but I folded my arms across my twisting stomach.

  “Does that make sense?” she asked.

  I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice. Maybe that’s why math and I never got along—I wanted the least balanced relationship in the world to work. I kept trying to force the variables into a solution, but really was there any combination that made sense when I was putting in all the feeling and Toby was reacting with friendship?

  “I’ll try more if you will too,” Merri added.

  “Promise,” I whispered.

  And maybe she was expecting me to be snarky, because it took her a moment to accept the arms I held out for a hug. “Good,” she said. “And you’ve got this. Get some sleep.”

  I didn’t. Instead I stayed up and finished The Great Gatsby. And after that—I didn’t know if I’d ever sleep again.

  20

  Campus during exams looked like something out of a zombie movie. Everyone was sleep-deprived and distracted. Well, everyone but Eliza, who still looked like an undercover movie star, one who viewed exams the way elite athletes do the Olympics. In the car on the way to school, we gave her free rein to lecture us about studying and caffeine and the latest scientific articles she’d enjoyed. Not because we were interested—or at least I wasn’t—but because everyone was too tired to make conversation.