Carter
“Man, this is the most delicious,” Bodhi says after taking a swig from his bottle of hard lemonade.
“It’s freaking scrumptious,” Robbie agrees.
Bodhi, Robbie, Amir, and I are hanging out in the woods in Robbie’s backyard, one of our go-to after-school activities on
days when Bodhi and I don’t have yearbook. Well, usually we hang out inside, but since I picked up a six-pack of hard cider,
we’re back here. The trees obscure us from view in case Robbie’s parents get home early from work.
“You realize this is considered, like, kind of an immature thing to drink, right?” Amir asks as he takes a swig from his hard
lemonade. “We should probably start getting IPAs or something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bodhi says. “I know it’s not the coolest position to take, but I gotta be real: I think beer tastes pretty bad,
dude.”
“You are a child,” Amir says.
Bodhi shrugs. “I can live with that.” He raises his bottle in the air. “Being a child was dope!”
“Are you even drinking, Carter?” Robbie asks.
“Uh, I will,” I say, fiddling with some buttons on my fancy digital camera as if I know what I’m doing. I snap a pic of Robbie
with the sun setting behind him through the branches.
I look at it on the small digital screen. It’s actually kind of good. Not ready to be shown to other humans who aren’t me, who might rightfully call it out as unpolished or trying too hard. But I do like it.
“Though I actually might pass,” I say, “because someone’s gotta drive two out of three of you losers home.”
“So proud of you,” Bodhi says in a jokingly sincere voice. “So responsible. So thoughtful. At this rate you’ll turn seventeen
for sure.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I snap another pic, this one of Bodhi and Amir.
“Hey,” Bodhi asks, “did that Layla lady hit you back yet?”
“Nope,” I say. It’s been more than three weeks since I messaged Layla Banerjee, and my hope of her being any kind of key has
pretty much fizzled out. I searched for her on other platforms, but the only place I found her was LinkedIn. So I sent her
the same message there.
No response. Is it possible she’s still mad at me five years after I dumped her? Or maybe she’s weirded out. Or maybe she didn’t look carefully at the message and
thinks it was from some rando.
Whatever the reason is, I can’t apologize to her if she doesn’t respond. Not the way I want to, anyway. So I’ve tried to put
Layla out of my mind, into the same locked box where I’m keeping Maggie.
I didn’t mean for that to sound so creepy. The box is figurative. Like, in my head. I haven’t put any of my exes into boxes!
Is what I’m saying.
“Yo,” Robbie says. “Do you think this really happened because you dumped someone? Because if it did, I might be seriously
at risk. I dumped Lina in September after eight months, and I didn’t even tell her like you did. I just stopped replying to
her texts.”
“You mean you ghosted her,” Amir says.
“It sounds more messed up when you say it like that.”
“It is messed up,” Bodhi says.
“What? I didn’t want to be with her anymore!” Robbie says. “And I knew she’d get really upset if I told her that.”
“Wow,” Amir says, gesturing to the unopened bottle of hard lemonade next to my feet. I hand it to him. “Just wow.”
“Do you think I’m gonna get what Carter has?” Robbie asks. “I really don’t want to.”
“Don’t worry, Robbie,” I say, framing his panic and taking a pic. “I think you would have gotten it by now.”
“Okay, yeah,” Robbie says. “’Cause yours happened the next day, right? Yeah.”
“I’ve dumped a ton of people, and I keep aging,” Amir says. “They usually deserve it, though. Like Patrick. He didn’t take
my food allergies seriously at all. He’d eat hummus, like, right in front of me.”
“Such a dick,” Bodhi says, taking a final swig of his bottle before flinging it deeper into the woods, where it lands unseen
with a somehow gentle shattering noise.
“Bruh!” Robbie says. “This is my backyard, man! My parents might find that.”
“Oh, shoot,” Bodhi says. “I just thought it would be cool to throw it.”
“It wasn’t!”
“Kinda was,” Amir says, taking a final swig of the bottle I’d passed him and chucking it in the same direction as Bodhi’s.
“brUH!” Robbie says.
“Don’t worry,” Amir says, giggling, “mine didn’t make a sound.”
“Didn’t throw it hard enough,” Bodhi says. He pulls out his phone and checks a text, then smiles goofily. I snap a pic.
“Must be Lizzy,” Amir says, looking to Robbie.
“So what if it is,” Bodhi says without looking up.
“Are you guys official yet?” Robbie asks.
“We’re not concerned with labels,” Bodhi says.
“So no,” Amir says.
“Yo, actually, Carter.” Bodhi finally lifts his eyes, aiming them toward me. “Lizzy says Tatiana has a crush on you. Would
you ever be down to hang out with us? Like a double date?”
“Uh. Maybe.”
“You know you made out with Tatiana at that party, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “This is, like, the eighth time you’ve told me that. I still don’t remember it, but . . .”
“Well, let me know if you’d be down,” Bodhi says. “Tatiana is mad cute.”
“Yeah. I will.” Tatiana Robinson is super cute. And I know I should be excited to hang out with her.
But, try as I might, I still haven’t been able to fully steer my brain away from Maggie. I have stretches when she’s completely
out of my thoughts, but then I have other stretches, like right now, when I’m fixated on that moment after her concert when
I grabbed her hand. My fingers on her skin, my heart whooshing around like an extreme weather event.
There was something there. I know Maggie felt it too. And I get why she doesn’t want to associate with me, I really do. Like,
why would you want to relive a relationship knowing it’s just going to end in more pain?
But then I think maybe you should relive it. Because maybe the good outweighs the pain. And maybe a genuine connection is profound, no matter what the freaky circumstances surrounding it are.
“You’re serious?” Amir is asking Robbie when I stop fuguing out about Maggie.
“Yeah I’m serious!” Robbie says. “Go pick it up! You too, Bodhi! Get your damn bottle shards.”
“All right, fine!” Bodhi says, stepping deeper into the woods.
I stay back and photograph the three of them arguing as they venture through the crisscross of trunks and branches, the sun
ahead of them in its last moments before setting. It’s sort of gorgeous.
As a reward for taking this artful photo, I pull out my phone and go to Chord Ramirez’s Instagram profile.
Since Maggie is private, Chord’s story and grid provide my best opportunity for getting a pulse on her love life. Much to
my chagrin, it immediately delivers. There’s a selfie on the grid from yesterday of Maggie kissing Chord on one of his well-defined
cheeks as he smiles at the camera, gray winter sky behind them.
The caption: Lucky guy
Ugh. Someone fetch me my puke bowl.
I immediately post a comment:
Blech get a room
I can’t do that. Why did I do that?
I delete it.
Chord will probably still be able to see what I said in his notifications, which is not ideal.
But whatever, he should know that was a heinous photo/caption combination! I would hate it even if I had never met him or Maggie. People understand how to use the internet now even less than they did six years ago.
Still. I don’t love that I did that.
I keep pretending that I’m fine with everything, with this stupid spiral life, but I am not.
I need to be trying harder to get myself out of this loop. I go to Layla Banerjee’s profile and dash off a new message:
Really need to talk with you. To apologize. PLEASE.
I hit Send right as Robbie, Amir, and Bodhi stumble back, giggling from their bottle retrieval mission.
“I’m down to hang with Tatiana,” I tell Bodhi. “I’m definitely down.”