As soon as I hit send, the emptiness returns. I’m back into the day I was having. Maybe this is what alone really is—finding out how tiny your world is, and not knowing how to get anywhere else.
I go on Facebook. I read Gawker. I watch some music on YouTube, including the Fun. song from the day with Justin, the one Nathan sang back to me. I feel stupid doing that. I know Nathan wouldn’t find it stupid. Somehow I know that. And I know Justin would find it stupid. I asked him once if he thought we had a song. I mean, most couples have a song. But he said he had no idea, and that he didn’t even understand why we’d want one, anyway.
I’d told myself he was right. We didn’t need one. Every song could be ours.
But now I want one. It’s not enough that every song can make me think of him.
I want one, just one, that will make him think of me.
Chapter Six
The hangover hangs over Monday as well.
It’s like his personality has spoiled from lack of use. He’s in school, but he still thinks he’s in bed. I can’t take it personally that he’s not happy to see me, because he’s not happy to see any of us. He won’t say more than two words in any sentence, and after a few minutes I decide to leave him alone.
A lot of our Mondays are like this.
Our Monday at the beach seems like much longer than a week ago.
What is wrong with me?
“How was your weekend?” Rebecca asks when I get to third period.
“How wasn’t my weekend?” I reply.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I just mean that not much happened.”
“How was the party?”
“It was fine. I danced with Steve’s gay cousin. Justin got shitfaced. The cops came.”
“Steve has a gay cousin? I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t think they’re close.”
“Well, if he’s still around, Ben and I were going to hang out with Steve and Stephanie during assembly period this afternoon. Just get coffee or something. Wanna come?”
I notice she hasn’t invited Justin. It’ll be a triple date, only I’m not being asked to bring my date.
“Can I get back to you?” I ask.
Rebecca’s not stupid. She knows why I’m not committing.
“Whenever,” she tells me. “We’ll be there either way. Although it would be great to have some time with you. I feel I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Now it’s clear that Justin’s being deliberately excluded. Because Rebecca sees me all the time. It’s just that he’s always by my side when she does.
I find him right before lunch.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks back.
It looks like he is switching his books in his locker. It looks like he’s about to head to lunch.
“What do you want to be doing?” I ask.
He slams the locker shut. “I want to be playing video games,” he says. “That work for you?”
“Wanna get out of here and do something? There’s that assembly seventh and eighth period. Nobody will notice we’re gone.”
I am looking for that spark. If it’s gone out, I am trying to relight it. Because I have a spark inside of me, too. And right now it wants to be bright.
“What the fuck has gotten into you?” he asks. “If we could just leave, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now? Jesus. It’s bad enough to be here. Why do you have to keep pointing it out?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I just thought it could be like last week.”
“Last week? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“The beach? The ocean?”
He shakes his head, like I’m making things up. “Enough, okay? Just stop.”
So I stop. I swallow the spark and feel it scratch as it goes down.
We eat with our friends. Preston asks about the party, and Justin tells him it sucked. In his version, skank girls kept crowding the kitchen. Stephanie yelled at him for putting his feet on a table. Then the police came, because the police clearly have nothing better to do.
Preston then asks me how my night was. I tell him that my night sucked, too. I don’t tell him about the basement, or about the dancing. No, my version transforms itself into Justin’s version. He doesn’t even notice, but I do it anyway.
I am disappearing. This is the thought that occurs to me: I am disappearing. Like nothing I say or do matters. My life has become so tiny that it’s completely unseen.
The only way I can think to fight this is to text Rebecca and tell her I’m free to hang out after school.
He doesn’t care. I tell him I made plans for during the assembly, and he genuinely doesn’t care. He doesn’t ask to be invited along. He doesn’t even ask me what the plans are. He’ll go home and play video games. He won’t text me unless I text him first. I know all this—but why do I still feel surprised, as if it isn’t meant to be this way?
Rebecca decides she’s in the mood for ice cream, and convinces the rest of us we’re in the mood for ice cream, too, even though it’s not summer and the nearest good ice cream place is about twenty minutes away. It is, as we expected, surprisingly easy to get out of the assembly—we figure the visiting author won’t miss us too much, since none of us have ever heard of him. Rebecca, Ben, and I pile into her car, and Stephanie and Steve meet us there. Steve is wearing the effects of the weekend more obviously than Stephanie is; she looks like she spent the past two days at the gym.
We get our cones and head for a table. When we start talking, it’s not about the party, but everything that happened after—all the cleanup that had to be done, all of the bullshit with the police, who didn’t end up arresting anyone. They just wanted to break up the party and they did a good job of it.
Stephanie admits she was a little relieved. “There are some people,” she says, “who will never leave a party unless the police come.” From the sound of her voice, I know I’m supposed to know who she’s talking about. I have no idea.
“I really liked your cousin,” I tell Steve. “He kinda saved the night for me.”
Steve looks confused. “My cousin? When did you meet my cousin?”
“At the party. Nathan.” I almost add your gay cousin, but then I realize I have no idea if Steve knows.