Maggie
I was eleven years old when I first learned of the existence of one Carter Cohen.
It was the beginning of August, and I’d just gotten home from four weeks at sleepaway camp. They were good weeks for me, very
good weeks, and I felt like a new person: more confident, more empowered, more worldly-wise. I’d had my first relationship,
a week and a half of steamy hand-holding with Ryan Fischer, topped off the last night by a slobbery kiss in the shadows outside
my bunk—yes, my first kiss—followed by a promise to stay in touch on the interwebs. In retrospect, Ryan was not at all my dream guy, and he was overly
obsessed with talking about the stars and pointing out the same constellations every freaking night, but at the time, he was
it, man.
And I couldn’t wait to talk to Vivian about him.
Mom and Dad picked me up from the camp bus in the afternoon, and even though they put on a good face, it was clear they were
both in shitty moods. This was about a month before they officially called it quits. So neither of them could really take
in New Maggie. And I certainly wasn’t going to rub my joyful dalliance with Ryan in their sour faces.
Once we pulled into the garage, I bolted out of the car and into the house, leaving Mom and Dad squabbling in my wake. I left my duffel bag at the foot of the steps and hightailed it upstairs, where my heart sank as I discovered Vivian’s room was empty.
“Where’s Vivvy?” I shouted down to my parents.
“Oh shoot, I forgot,” Mom said. “She’s working today.”
My effortlessly cool sister had spent the first two weeks of the summer at an intensive music camp and the time since then
working a part-time job at Ridgedale’s best ice cream place, Scoops ’n’ Sprinkles.
It was the spot where tons of kids from our high school hung out in the summer, loitering in the parking lot till the sun
went down.
“Want to go over and say hi?” Mom shouted up to me. “We can get some cones.”
Hell yeah I wanted to go say hi.
We pulled up in Mom’s green Honda CR-V, loud teenagers amassed on the front benches like a colony of ants, only a couple of
them actually eating ice cream. I stepped out of the car with my New Maggie confidence, ready to turn heads and take on the
world.
The door jingled as we stepped inside and were aggressively enveloped by AC. I spotted my sister behind the counter and went
through a slot machine whirl of emotions, starting with excitement and landing, finally, on a bright yellow disappointment
lemon. The thing I hadn’t accounted for was that my sister might also have turned into a new person while I was away.
Vivian was chatting happily with a customer, tapping their order into the iPad register, her dark brown hair pulled tight
into a ponytail, sporting a blue employee T-shirt—with its classic image of a dripping three-scoop cone covered in sprinkles—that
fit her perfectly. She looked . . . radiant. It was the most appropriate word I could think of. She somehow looked older than her fifteen years, just the way she was carrying herself.
Her glowing newness made mine seem . . . small. I should’ve seen it coming.
But it wasn’t just that.
There was someone else behind the counter with her.
A boy.
He was radiant, too, bouncing around with a genuine smile plastered to his face, dramatically flipping the stainless steel
scoop in the air before muscling misshapen spheres onto a cone, his blue shirt speckled with mint chocolate chip (or pistachio?).
He was an adorable human. Like a character straight out of a Netflix show about teenagers that Vivian would let me watch with
her, except he was slightly less perfect-looking, with a crooked nose and green eyes a bit too large for his face. Which only
added to his aura of hotness.
“What do you think you’re gonna get?” Mom asked as we joined a line of six people.
I couldn’t even answer. I was too fixated on the dynamic between Vivian and The Boy. They were flirting with each other. Exchanging glances, muttering things that made the other crack up, engaging in tiny arm touches, scattered
like glitter amid the sand of their interactions with customers.
I watched as The Boy took a small clump of rocky road that had affixed itself to his shirt during the scooping process and
mushed it into Vivian’s nose. I thought she’d be horrified, and she did scream, but it was with glee. Sure, she said, “You
are a fricking jerk!” but the tone was much more like, “Please do that again, I never want to be apart from you!”
“Yup,” Mom said, seeing what I was seeing. “Vivvy’s got a boyfriend now.”
The words reverberated in my head like a taunt, even as I knew it was ridiculous to feel anything but happy for her. But here
I was, ready to show Vivian who I had become over the past month, and, even in this, she’d somehow found a way to outshine
me.
That’s what Vivian did. And still does. She shines.
Vivian’s obvious sparks with this scoop-flipping boy made my time with Ryan Fischer seem like a puddle. One of those small,
flat ones you barely notice until you’ve stepped in it.
“Ahhhhhhh, Mags!” Vivian said when we made it to the front of the line. She reached across the counter to hug me and kiss
the side of my head. “I missed you!”
“Missed you too,” I said.
“She really did miss you,” The Boy said as he grabbed an empty cone. “Won’t shut up about you, actually.” He leaned over the
counter and offered me a fist to pound. “I’m Carter.”
“Maggie,” I said, pushing my knuckles into his, smiling in spite of myself.
“Oh, uh, good to see you, Mrs. Spear,” Carter said, directing his charm spotlight onto my mom, who also couldn’t help but
grin.
“Hi there, Carter.”
We ordered. “I want to hear all about camp!” Vivian said, straining to scoop my chocolate chip cookie dough. “Was it good?”
“It was.” The invincibility I’d felt a mere five minutes earlier was nowhere to be found. “Really good.”
“Yay! That’s the best news. You need to tell me all about it when I get home.”
“Definitely.”
“My shift ends at five, but then I seriously need to know everything.”
Vivian didn’t get home until ten that night. She thought she’d end up hanging out with Carter for a little first and completely
lost track of time. I, meanwhile, spent the evening pitying myself, bingeing Fuller House while trying to tune out the sound of Mom and Dad arguing about money, specifically Dad’s inability to make enough of it.
Thus began the Days of Vivian and Carter. My sister was around far less than usual the rest of the summer. The silver lining
was that her cameo appearances were always accompanied by a disturbingly good mood. Her absence was a buzzkill, though, not
helped at all by Mom and Dad sitting us down on the couch the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, less than a week before
the start of school, to let us know they were going to separate. Mom would stay with Vivian and me in the house; Dad would
get a nearby apartment and visit a lot.
Vivian was upset. I was wrecked.
Somehow, in spite of the perpetual cloud of snark and resentment that had settled in our home, I hadn’t seen it coming. Divorce
was something on TV, something for other people, not for us.
It was a tough fall. As if seventh grade wasn’t already a struggle without throwing a divorce into the mix.
One of the worst parts was that, once school started, Vivian—who’d never encountered an extracurricular activity that didn’t
appeal to her—was around even less, which I hadn’t thought possible. So there was a lot of me and Mom hanging out. We’d transformed, practically overnight, from a vibrant family of four into a wisecracking mom-and-daughter duo. Like a poor man’s Gilmore Girls.
Mom seemed sad but mainly relieved. “It was really for the best,” she’d say. “Your father and I have different ideas of what
it means to be an adult, if that makes sense. We weren’t a good team anymore.”
For some reason I always pictured my parents in field hockey jerseys when she said that, shouting at each other while flailing
their sticks around.
Some of my favorite moments during that lonely time were when Vivian was home long enough to hang out with me, even if we
were just lying on a couch watching movies we’d seen a zillion times already, like Love, Simon or either of the Frozens. I could temporarily forget that we’d undergone this wrenching shift, what felt like a prank: me coming home from camp,
thinking I’d changed and then realizing it was actually the rest of my family that had.
Ha ha. Good one.
My other favorite moments that fall were when Carter came over for dinner.
It only happened twice, but those meals—with him, Mom, Vivian, and me—were, I don’t know . . . fun. Bright. A lovely distraction.
“Do you think I can balance this on my finger?” Carter asked at one of them, holding out the plastic ketchup bottle he’d just
used to squirt a splotch next to his fries.
“Which finger?” I asked. “Like, your index finger?”
“Probably start with that, yeah. Then work up to doing it with my pinky.”
“No,” I said, smiling. “I don’t think you can.”
“Cart, don’t actually do it,” Vivian said, laughing.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Carter said, putting out a calming hand, directed mostly toward Mom, who was giving him a skeptical
look. “I’m very experienced.”
He stuck his pointer finger up in the air and, like a professional magician, slowly lowered the bottle of Heinz onto it.
“Voilà!” Carter shouted, releasing his hand. The bottle balanced there for almost a full second before toppling over and landing
with a thud in the Caesar salad.
“Carter!” Vivian shouted with glee.
“Oh god, sorry,” Carter said, genuinely mortified. “That’s never happened before. I seriously practice all the time.”
“All the time?” Vivian asked, cracking up.
She and I couldn’t stop laughing the rest of the meal. Even Mom, who was obviously annoyed, eventually laughed too.
I definitely wouldn’t call what I felt for Carter at that time a crush. I mean, he was four years older than me and dating