Maggie
I really thought I could change him.
So stupid, I know. The cliché of all clichés.
But I wanted to be the one to get him to seventeen.
To undo the curse or whatever. The Belle to his Beast.
Obviously, I didn’t do it.
I knew it was hopeless when he didn’t text this morning.
But still, some mentally damaged part of me thought I might come to school and just now, when I looked at him, he would be
all, It worked, Mags!, and I would say, Of course it did, Coco, and we would high-five and make out right there in the hall as the music swelled—“Tale as old as time, true as it can beeeeee”—and the entire school would cheer and we would all live happily ever goddamn after.
But there’s Carter, with those stupid little spikes in his hair, walking by me without a clue in the world.
He did actually stare at me for a second.
And, in that second, everything seemed possible. He looked vulnerable and adorable, and I wanted to hug him and tell him who
I was and that we were going to figure this out together.
Then he kept walking.
At which point a vise squeezed my heart until it burst into a dozen bloody chunks that exploded a hole in my sternum and landed
with a pitter-pat of thuds on the dingy hallway tile near my feet.
Now I am a dead person.
And suddenly it’s crystal clear:
I cannot do this again.
I will not do this again.
Start from scratch? Do our whole relationship over?
No. No no no.
That sounds like fucking torture.
It must end.
“Yo, sorry, Maggie,” Shana says, putting an arm around me as I let out a sob and collapse into a strange formation, like a
broken tripod that won’t fully close. “Totally sucks.”
And for the briefest of moments, even though she’s one of my closest friends, I want to grab Shana by the ears and scream,
“COULD YOU SAY ANYTHING MORE OBVIOUS RIGHT NOW?”
But I don’t.
Instead, I say, “I’m done.”
Or I try to, anyway, but I can’t even do that because I’m crying too hard.
Yesterday Carter knew me.
Today he does not.
And this pain right now—this brutal, kidney-wrenching pain—is why I can’t do this again.
Why I can’t talk to him.
Why I can’t know him.
Why, starting now, I can’t even think about him.
Because it’s hopeless.
Like voluntarily putting my hand into a paper shredder.
Even Carter agreed. (The one from yesterday, not that zombie I just saw in the hall.)
(Is it offensive to talk about his condition that way? I’m sure it is. I’m a terrible person.)
(You’re allowed to be a terrible person when your heart’s in chunks on the floor.)
(I should make that into a T-shirt.)
(Or at least a mug.)
Point being: I know Carter would understand. We’ll both move on.
Me knowingly, him . . . not so knowingly.
Mom will definitely be happy. She’d already been saying that continuing to date Carter would be “throwing away more time on
someone who’s just gonna forget you anyway.”
I hated her saying that. But she’s not wrong.
I spent the past five months with Carter, and he doesn’t even remember it happened. So what was the point?
And where could we possibly go from here?
Am I going to be seventy years old, playing mah-jongg with my friends while my sixteen-year-old husband goes to high school?
Oh wait, that would be impossible because, at a certain point—probably somewhere in my early to mid-twenties—the very act
of me flirting with Carter, once he has YET AGAIN forgotten who I am, will become definitively creepy and inappropriate.
So it ends now. We’re done.
And I can enjoy some me time. I just got all my college applications out a few weeks ago, so bring on the BIG SENIOR-YEAR
ENERGY. Time to hang out with my friends. Kiss new boys. Play with my band. (Which most of my friends are in, so the first and third items are pretty much the same thing. Makes me sound cooler if I
say them separately, though.) Live my goddamn life!
Ugh, who am I kidding?
I can’t be chill about all this. Not yet. It’s too horrible.
The Carter Cohen I knew has died.
And there’s no funeral to provide closure.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Shana asks, handing me a tissue, ostensibly to deal with the mascara swamp on my face. Of
course I spent way more time than usual putting myself together this morning. So that, if the worst happened, at least I would
make a good first impression.
“Yeah.” I swipe the tissue down my cheeks. “I can’t start this up again. With Carter. It’s too much.”
“So don’t,” Shana says. “You already knew this might be a possibility. He did too. Sure, you were weirdly cute together, but—”
Another sob bursts out of me. A couple of first-years flinch as they walk by, and one bumps into the other.
“Oh god,” Shana says. “I am so sorry. That was the wrong thing to say. Redact that shit.”
“Too soon.”
“Of course, my dear. I think you just traumatized those kids.”
“Sorry!” I shout, turning back in their direction. I blow my nose into the tissue, extra loud for dramatic/comedic effect.
I can tell Shana is grossed out, but, uncharacteristically, she tries not to show it—a testament to how bad she’s feeling
for me.
“What if Carter . . .” I say. “What if he finds out we were together?”
“Not gonna happen.” Shana puts an arm around me. “Ember and I are all over that. We’ll make sure everyone keeps their big
fat mouths shut. And you can just text his brother and his friends, tell them the deal.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “That’s smart.” I pull out my phone and go to Instagram since I don’t actually have Carter’s brother’s
number. I tap the word Message on his profile and try to compose something quickly without giving it too much thought.
Hi Lincoln. It’s Maggie Spear. So obviously you know Carter looped again. Could you not tell him about me? When you talk? This is a weird message. Sorry. Hope you’re doing ok.
And then I find the profile for Carter’s current best friend, Bodhi, and send him a similar message (except with his I put
DO NOT TELL HIM ABOUT ME in all caps because Bodhi’s the kind of person who needs extra guidance).
“Okay, sent,” I say, feeling relieved but also a little shady, like I’ve just done something illegal.
“Brilliant,” Shana says as we approach Mr. Cha’s homeroom. “Hey, so I have something actually.”
“Oh?”
With Shana, a sentence like that could be referring to a billion things, from a pack of Trident she just bought to a party
she’s throwing in two days while her parents are away to a girl she hooked up with in a side room during a speech-and-debate
tournament.
“We have our first gig. Angry Baby.”
Angry Baby is our band (coming up with that name is one of my proudest life achievements), and I know how I’m supposed to
react to this—with a Squee! and a How did you . . . ? and a This is amaaaaazing—but I’m not feeling any of that. It’s more of a terror-nausea-why-are-you-telling-me-this-now-of-all-the-times-to-be-telling-me-this
cocktail.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Shana says, swooping in before I can deliver a hard no. “Just listen to the details, store
them in that beautiful brain of yours, and we’ll talk more about it some other time. The gig is in February, a full month and a half away, at Bean-Age Dream—”
“Ugh, the coffeehouse?”
“Do you know another Bean-Age Dream? Yes, the coffeehouse, and my dad’s friend Misty owns it, so don’t make fun of the name like you always do.
I agree it’s an incomprehensible and stupid moniker for an establishment, but the actual place is pretty great, and my dad’s friend is being kind enough to let us open for this other band without ever hearing us play—”
“Right,” I say, dread oozing from my pores in the form of mean-girl snappiness, “because we’ve never for real performed anything
and we’re absolutely not ready!”
“We’ll be ready,” Shana says. “This will make us be ready.”
“I think it will make us be embarrassed.”
Shana laughs, shakes her head, playfully jostles my shoulder, and walks into Mr. Cha’s class ahead of me. We’re definitely
going to end up doing the gig. That’s just Shana’s way.
But maybe there’s something to it because, would you look at that: I just went a full thirty seconds without thinking about
Carter.
A pathetic victory, but I’ll take it.
I sit down at my desk and, as I’m putting my phone into my backpack, I see a new IG notification.
It’s a message from Lincoln: Totally get it. Won’t mention you.??
I know it should be encouraging, but instead it just reminds me of the recently exploded hole in my chest. I wipe at my cheeks
and hope Mr. Cha’s morning lecture will be engaging enough to distract me for at least another thirty seconds.