Carter
And so:
Maggie Spear and I are over.
I mean, we never even really started.
I will stop bothering her. I will stop going to her shows. I will take the hint and get on with my stupid stuck life. That’s
what a mature seventeen-year-old would do, right?
I will be the change I want to see!
It’s kind of freeing in a way.
And now at least I have someone else to focus on.
As I drive up to the curb in front of our house, my mind tabs over to Layla Banerjee. The person who, whether she knows it
or not, may be the key.
The key to what, I’m not exactly sure. Unsticking me?
Could it be as simple as an apology? A vulnerable apology?
I hope so.
I breeze into the kitchen, where Dad is chopping away at zucchini, already deep into cooking dinner. “Smells good!”
“Thanks,” Dad says, pulling off an impressive spin move to cascade the zucchini chunks from the cutting board into a sizzling
pan. “How was therapy?”
“Good! I think . . . Yeah.”
I don’t want to get into all the details, nor do I want to bring up Maggie to my parents. I probably didn’t share that much with them, so it’ll be more annoying than helpful. They might have opinions I don’t like.
“All right, great. I don’t want to pry, of course, but if you ever want to share more . . .”
“Thanks, Dad, yeah. There weren’t like any major epiphanies or anything. But it was helpful to talk with him.”
“I’m glad.” Dad holds the pan above the flame and gently shakes the contents around. This guy could seriously have his own
cooking show. “Hey, and you’ve been taking the herbal medicine, right? From the Ayurvedic doctor?”
“Oh, yeah.” I forgot to the past two days, but I don’t want to tell Dad that. The appointment happened earlier this week.
The doctor was warm and smart and wise, and talked about everything in the body and mind being interconnected, but I wasn’t
really sold that she’d be able to cure me. Dad seemed so hopeful about it, though. “It’s good. I mean, I can’t really feel
if it’s, like, gonna help me turn seventeen. But who knows, right?”
“As long as you’re taking it. And doing the pranayama breathing exercises too.”
“Definitely.” Nope. I suck.
“Hello!” Mom says, taking off her long camel coat as she walks into the room. “My boys in the kitchen, what a lovely sight
to come home to.” She kisses Dad and wraps an arm around me.
“Hey, Mom,” I say.
“Carter had a good therapy session,” Dad said. “And he feels like the herbal medicine might be working.”
“Oh! That’s great news!” I can’t fully read Mom’s expression. But it seems possible she’s just as skeptical about the effectiveness of any of this as I am.
“Yeah!” I can’t maintain this faux-hopefulness for much longer. “I’m just gonna drop my stuff in my room and do one thing
before dinner.”
“Go for it,” Mom says, giving me one final squeeze before releasing me.
Once I’m in my bedroom, it’s Layla time. I pull out my phone, dive onto my bed, and head to Instagram.
Layla has a story up, a reshare of a dog rescue looking for a family to adopt a fuzzy little creature named Peaches, who is
looking directly into the camera in a way that’s unexpectedly moving. Maybe I should adopt Peaches. Maybe that would fix everything.
I scroll through Layla’s grid again. She’s definitely attractive. But nothing on here makes it seem like we’d be a perfect
match or anything—I’m not actually a dog person, and I prefer captions that have jokes in them—so I get why I might’ve wanted
to end it. Still, I need to apologize for being a heartless sixteen-year-old.
And show her—and the universe—that I have what it takes to be seventeen.
I begin crafting a message.
Layla! Whaddup! You are looking so good, girl!
No. Delete.
Layla! Yo. Do you remember me? Because of my condition, I only just found out we dated. Fun! But then I also found out I broke
up with you like a real jerkhole. Less fun!
That’s not right, either. Delete.
It’s hard to write a message when you’re hoping it will, like, singlehandedly solve your life.
Ten minutes and approximately eighty-five drafts later, I compose something I’m happy with:
Layla! Hi! Carter Cohen here. How are you? I hope great. As I’m sure you know, I’ve had this weird disorder since our junior
year, where I keep regressing back to age sixteen and forgetting everything that happened the previous year. It’s fairly horrible!
But I recently learned that you and I were a thing that year before this happened. And I heard the way I ended things was,
shall we say, NOT SO NICE. I have no memory of this (how convenient, right??) but hearing about it made me feel bummed. So
I was hoping we could talk at some point if you’re down. Hope all else is good for you. Your life seems pretty cool!
I press Send.
You hold my fate in your hands, Layla Banerjee.
I hope you respond.
I stare at my message for a while, trying to will those three I’m typing dots into existence below it.
They don’t appear. But a thought does instead, something that’s been bothering me since Maggie told me we’d dated.
I call Lincoln.
“Hello, brother,” he says, the world moving behind him as he walks. “Mind if we make this a call instead of a FaceTime?”
“Sure, sure.” We switch to audio only. I hear loud voices in the background. Laughter. Singing. “Is this not an okay time?”
“Yeah, yeah, I can talk a sec. Just leaving a cappella.”
“Noice! Is Terrell with you?”
“He is.”
“Tell him I said hey.”
“Carter says hey,” he says. “Terrell says hey back. So what’s up?”
“I know that Maggie and I dated. Despite the fact that you pretended Maggie and I never dated.”
There’s a pause on Lincoln’s end of the line, filled with two guys harmonizing a lyric of some song I don’t recognize.
“I’m sorry I lied to you, CT,” my brother says finally. “Maggie didn’t want me to tell you. I was trying to protect her. And
you too.”
“I guess I get it,” I say. “It just feels freaky.”
“No kidding. I despised having to do that.”
I scroll over to Insta to see if Layla’s written back. She hasn’t.
“So is that why you told me Maggie was annoying?” I ask.
Lincoln laughs. “Yeah, I’m sorry. She told me to say that. Like, I had texted with her asking what I should do if you started
asking me about her because I didn’t want to lie to you. And she said, ‘Just say you’ve heard I’m really annoying!’ So I panicked
and did that.”
“That’s actually hilarious.”
“It is,” Lincoln agrees. “But I’m sorry. I never really know how to handle those conversations. What the right thing to do
is.”
I lie back in bed, staring at the off-white ceiling. “Anyway,” I say, “Maggie doesn’t want to be with me again. Because it’s
too hard to start over.”
“Ah, sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal. I mean, I don’t even know her. We’ve talked like twice.”
“Right. But. I get that it might feel shitty.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“I try.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Depends on how uncomfortable it makes me.”
“From your perspective, did I like Maggie a lot?”
Lincoln’s end goes silent again except for a voice saying, “What if we did it like this?” followed by a bunch of guys roaring with laughter.
“I think you did,” he says eventually. “But there will be others, CT. I promise.”
“Yeah.” I pop up from the bed. Need to walk around. “Maggie told me how this all started, the breakup the night before my
first loop.”
“Oh wow. Well, I definitely want to talk about that, but I actually gotta go. We’re at this bar on campus. It’s my turn to
demolish Terrell in darts.”
“Ha!” I hear Terrell say. “Sure you will.”
“All right.” I want to ask Lincoln to just stay on with me a couple of minutes longer. But I don’t. “We’ll talk some other
time, then. Have fun.”
“You too, bro. Later.”
The silence after he hangs up feels unbearable.
My throat feels tight.
I go back to Instagram.
Next to my message to Layla, a word has appeared:
Seen.