13 Little Love Stories

Artifact 3 All-Access Wristband

The Grand Gesture

Elise Bryant

Playlist: “Fifteen”

This hot glue gun isn’t working, and it needs to start working, because this is my last hope to fix my life.

And I know, I know, that’s a lot of pressure to put on a hot glue gun.

I know it would be a lot more practical to consult my mom or, like, at least a sentient being.

But we’re talking desperate times here. And this hot glue gun and pink foam poster board and all the glitter and paint I could afford from the craft store with the last of my birthday money are the desperate measures.

“I hate you,” I say to the hot glue gun.

It’s been either scalding, so the little tubes of glue drip out of the sides as soon as I stick them in, or weirdly cold, which is truly a feat if you consider the fact that it’s summer in Long Beach and we don’t have air-conditioning.

What it hasn’t been is helpful at all in gluing the letters that I carefully cut out of the white cardstock—the letters that make up the message I need to deliver now, tonight, if I want things to go back to the way they were. If I want to be forgiven.

A string of burning glue drips onto my fingers, and I throw the damn thing on the ground. “I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!”

“Harriet?” My mom’s concerned voice drifts in from down the hall. “Are you okay?”

She’s a worrier. I feel like she’s always feeling my forehead or checking my location or consulting hardcovers that the TODAY show tells her to buy about how to raise teenagers the right way. But I guess the concern is valid this time. Because I am in here talking to a hot glue gun.

Also, I haven’t left my room since the last day of school, except to blow all my money at the craft store.

And I’ve been listening to the same song on repeat, pretty much cosplaying Bella in that one scene in New Moon when Edward peaced out of her life, leaving her all alone and questioning who she even is anymore if she’s not half of that whole.

Which…yeah, relatable. Except it’s a lot less cute without that Twilight filter and with the smelly, unwashed reality of all that blank stare chair-sitting.

“It’s nothing! I’m fine!”

I am fine. Really. Now that I have a plan. A mission.

See, I’m going to do a grand gesture.

Grand gestures are my favorite parts of romance books and movies.

When someone realizes their mistake in letting their one true love go and rushes through the airport (which for some reason doesn’t have TSA) to get them back.

Or hires a marching band or a skywriter or an acrobat troupe to share all the feelings they should have confessed long ago.

And then every mistake that was made is immediately forgiven.

And the music swells, the credits play. The reader clutches the book to their chest and sighs in contentment. Happily ever after.

Now, I’m not racing to Italy like Bella, and I definitely can’t afford a marching band. But the grand gesture I’ve got planned is still perfectly respectable: Rocks at the window. Holding up a big sign. It’s a classic. And it’ll work—I know it will. It has to.

But first, I have to finish the sign, and if this hot glue gun is going to continue to be an asshole, then I need to move on.

Maybe I should just paint it? I’m shaking my head as soon as the possibility pops up in my head, because that’ll look awful.

Gaile always says (or always said, I guess) that I have serial-killer handwriting, and she’s not wrong.

Oh, but wait. Double-sided tape! I know I have some double-sided tape somewhere around here, left over from when we moved last summer and I covered every inch of these boring beige walls with posters from those movies with grand gestures: To All the Boys, Always Be My Maybe, and Rye Lane…

My eyes catch on my bookshelf and the stack of cream fabric bins on the top.

My mom bought them at one of those stores that basically only sells cream fabric bins and left them in my room as a hint that the shoeboxes I kept things in weren’t good enough.

I pull a chair over from my desk to help me reach the top, and I put one foot on the third shelf from the bottom to anchor myself as I reach up for the bin that I think has the double-sided tape.

But then I accidentally knock over another bin that looks exactly the same.

And of course it’s the worst one. The one I never wanted to open again.

The one I should have burned instead of keeping it on top of my shelf, making it possible for this to happen.

Everything that’s in the bin tumbles to the floor, all the artifacts of my relationship with Oliver. All the things I boxed up because I couldn’t look at them without crying but also couldn’t bear to throw them away.

The faded Velvet Underground T-shirt, the Art Theatre ticket stub. Pressed flowers from my spring formal corsage, a passed note, and stacks of photobooth pictures from the Mode. My neon green all-access wristband.

And each artifact takes me right back to before. Before I was beefing with a hot glue gun and climbing furniture and clinging to a grand gesture as my only hope. Before I ruined everything.

Artifact 1: His T-Shirt

I didn’t expect the first day of high school to be the best day of my life. Like, I wasn’t completely delusional.

But I guess I did think it might work in my favor, moving to a brand-new town and starting freshman year at a brand-new school. I could be the mysterious, intriguing new girl. I could decide exactly who I wanted to be, free from all the versions of who I was before.

Except the people at Willmore Prep were nothing like the people I left behind at my old middle school in Fresno.

And I don’t know if it was middle school’s fault or Fresno’s fault, but I walked through the doors and immediately felt ridiculously unprepared, like everyone else crammed for an exam when I didn’t even know I was enrolled in the class.

The girls wore put-together outfits and knew how to apply mascara without it getting all clumpy and walked with their shoulders back like they were totally comfortable in their bodies and not at all consumed with anxiety about those bodies in relation to other bodies.

They looked like they had skin care routines and strong, correct opinions about capitalism and the patriarchy. They were cool, effortlessly.

And everything about me just felt immediately too effort…

full. I put hours of thought into my outfit the night before—the perfect jeans, the perfect T-shirt—and now I could see they were all wrong.

It was clear I was never going to fit in no matter what I did.

So, by the time my lunch period rolled around, I had decided that my best course of action was to stay out of everybody’s way and keep my head down—that way, they wouldn’t notice that I was all wrong, too.

But then Gaile came along.

She had an afro of auburn curls and an explosion of freckles across her light brown skin. Her outfit was an overdose of dopamine: a pink-and-red squiggle-patterned dress, shiny yellow satin ballet flats, and wrists full of rainbow beaded bracelets.

She didn’t fit, either, but it wasn’t in the same way as me.

She was like a baby swan in a crowd of ducklings, and even as a freshman, I could see she would be vindicated eventually.

Because the way she carried herself, it was like she was trying not to fit.

Like she had figured it all out already and was just waiting, impatiently, for the rest of us to catch up.

“So, high school?” She plopped down where I was hiding at the edge of the quad behind a concrete pillar, like we had previously arranged it. “What’s your rating?”

“My rating?”

“Yeah, like five stars? Two thumbs? You could even do a grade scale if you need room for more nuance.”

My stomach felt tight as I searched for narrowed eyes or a snarky smile—any sign that she chose to sit next to me because I looked like an easy target to mess with. But her dark eyes were kind and open, and she was smiling like she was genuinely interested in what I had to say.

“Zero. Stars or thumbs.”

She nodded. “Please expand.”

And now that I had her attention, I felt this intense need to keep it. I wanted to say just the right thing, to sound smart, so she didn’t regret picking me to talk to.

“I guess…I guess I just thought high school would be something new, you know? But it’s like we’re in the same race we’ve always been in?

And I…I tripped. I tripped and I fell right in the beginning, so I have no hope of catching up now.

” Instantly, I wanted to gather the words right back up.

This girl wasn’t looking for a simile. My whole body flushed with embarrassment, and I said a little thank you to the melanin that kept the physical manifestation of my mortification a secret just for me.

“God, that sounded so dramatic. I’m sorry. ”

“It’s not dramatic. Like, girl, preach! That is exactly the right way to put it.”

“Oh. Um, yeah…”

“I just always thought it would be like in the movies. Like, you know in the first Twilight movie—”

“I love Twilight!” My skin flamed again. Too loud, Harriet. Too much. But I was just so surprised to hear her reference the thing I would have referenced if I wasn’t trying to sound smart and cool. “I mean, I know it’s campy. And problematic.”