Chapter 1 #3
“I, um, I actually used to have a crush on you,” I say. Blurt it out, just like that.
He stops and tilts his head, his reaction subdued, as if cautious about taking me too seriously. “Really?”
I’m almost tempted to say more, to confess that I’ve loved him in secret for years, when he was a sophomore and I was a wide-eyed freshman.
Not like that means much—it would be as trite and unoriginal as telling a celebrity you were a fan.
Everybody loved him in high school. He was the fastest runner we had in years, but he was humble about it.
When the teachers announced at assembly that he placed first yet again in the track-and-field championships, he just shook his head slightly, with this suppressed smile, while all his friends whooped and thumped his back.
But that wasn’t when I first noticed him.
It was after class one day, in the corridor. He was talking to this girl about the posters the sophomores needed for their annual fundraiser event. She was locally famous for her art skills, and they wanted her to help them with the design.
She was nodding fast before he even finished describing the job. I could see his reflection aglow in her eyes, how tall he stood, how beautiful. “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it,” she said breathlessly. I’m sure I would’ve said the same thing. I would’ve agreed to whatever he asked for.
“No, hang on,” he told her. “Don’t agree just yet—we haven’t even spoken about pricing.”
“Wait, what?” She blinked at him in confusion. “What pricing?”
“I’m paying you, of course,” he said. “It’s a big project, you shouldn’t do it for free.”
“Are you kidding?” She flushed. “I don’t really know if my art is that good, I mean, I’m happy to just draw it and . . .”
“Don’t undersell yourself,” he said, firmly but gently.
I wanted his gentleness, his easy, smiling manner, his confidence and calm. His attention. I wanted him.
I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it, acting normal about the whole thing.
As if I’d ever been good at acting normal about anything.
Then, one day around exam season, we happened to be in the study hall at the same time, and the only empty seats left were across from me and my best friend, Victoria.
I lifted my head from my history textbook, then quickly glanced back down again, but I could feel my whole body reacting to his presence.
I was suddenly very conscious of my hair falling on my shoulders, my posture.
I underlined the same sentence three times and couldn’t remember a single word.
“Hey, does anyone here have an eraser I could borrow?” he whispered.
Without even thinking, I unzipped my pencil case and offered him mine. “Here,” I said. That was all I said. But maybe I had been a little too enthusiastic, a little too flustered as he took the eraser from me.
Because after he left the library, Victoria turned to me with her brows raised, a disdainful look on her face. “Oh my god, you like Luke Blythe, don’t you?”
Blood rushed to my cheeks. “What? No, I—”
“You so do,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Really, Luke? That’s so cliché of you.”
These are my feelings we’re talking about, I wanted to argue.
I’m not trying to make a statement of individualism here.
But I knew that arguing with her would’ve led us right where she wanted: a heated intellectual debate on my moral failings for pining after a conventionally attractive, upper-middle-class representative of the male population.
She was always the better debater, anyway.
Victoria didn’t speak to communicate; she spoke to win.
I wonder what she would say now, about me talking to Luke like this, after all these years.
Luke’s phone buzzes, and he takes it out quickly, checks the time. “Hey, listen, I’ve got to run to class—but we’re heading down to the club tonight.” He tilts his head. “You want to come?”
“Who’s going to be there?” I don’t know why I’m asking—it’s not like I would know anyone even if he named them all.
“Mostly some of my frat brothers.”
“Oh,” I say. “You’re in a frat?”
He smiles in a way that’s almost self-mocking. “Not anymore, no. I joined for a few days, but, like, it wasn’t for me.”
This is more surprising to me than the idea that he was in a frat to begin with. “Why not?”
“They were just doing stupid shit all the time,” he says. “Like, physical stuff.”
“Oh,” I repeat.
“Not physical like that,” he says, his smile teasing now, and I wince at how obvious my reaction must’ve been.
“More like stupid pranks. They always expected me to join in because of—well, I don’t know, people always seem to have this idea of me in their heads.
This fun athlete guy who only ever parties.
But it’s exhausting, and I feel like there are more productive uses of my time and energy, you know what I mean? ”
“Right, yeah.” I feel a twinge of guilt, realizing I’d fallen for that image of him too. The popular boy. The champion athlete.
“But the guys are friendly,” he says. “And there won’t be any pranks, promise.”
“Sure, I’d love to come,” I say before I can lose my nerve. “Where is it?”
“Don’t worry about that, I can come pick you up,” he offers. “What’s your number?”
He holds out his phone and I take it slowly, almost expecting him to retract it at any second and tell me he’s joking.
Could it have been this easy, all along?
He has not collapsed in horror at my confession.
He hasn’t run away from me yelling at the top of his lungs.
He’s letting me add my number to his contacts.
“Cool,” he says, once I’ve finished typing. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Victoria only exists inside libraries.
That’s how it seems, at least. It’s where we’re always meeting—in the beginning, to study for our tests in middle school, then to study for our SATs in high school, and three years ago, or now, to study for our college assignments and exams.
I was technically closer to Victoria than I was to anyone else at school, which I guess made us best friends by default.
We were tied for first place in every subject except compulsory sports, which neither of us took seriously.
There were times when I wondered if that was maybe the sole reason she tolerated me: to keep tabs on me or intimidate me.
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer and whatnot.
Once, in class, I made a stupid comment about the film we were watching—I can’t even remember exactly what I said. But everyone sitting around me laughed, and Victoria looked over, brows raised, and asked me to repeat it.
“It’s stupid,” I said.
“No,” she insisted, loudly, like it was a challenge. “You said something really funny, didn’t you? I want to know what it is.”
It had not even been that funny the first time, and it was even less funny when I was made to repeat it. She didn’t laugh at all. Just waited a moment, and then released a quick huff of breath between her teeth.
“Oh, right, hilarious,” she said, turning her eyes back to the screen while I sat there, feeling foolish and judged.
Still, when I see her sitting inside the library, in our usual spot by the window, wearing the same blue turtleneck she’s worn since we were fourteen, I’m overcome by this urge to rush over and tell her everything: that I died and now I’m here, that I burst into tears in the middle of my economics lecture and it was maybe the most honest I’ve ever been about my own feelings.
The words are on the tip of my tongue as I take a seat next to her, but when she looks up and sees me, she starts talking first.
“Oh my god, I just had the worst day ever, you would not believe it,” she says, rubbing her temples.
I feel my words fall back down inside me. “What happened?”
“You know that super-important group project that’s due literally next week?
One of our group members skipped our meeting last night to watch that new Kate Diana rom-com.
” She rolls her eyes. It’s not even directed at me, but my shoulders tense.
I love Kate Diana rom-coms, though of course I’m not going to admit that now.
“Like, if you’re going to jeopardize everyone’s grades for a movie, the least you could do is pick out a movie that’s actually worth seeing. ”
I forgot that Victoria could be like this.
That almost everything is silly or a waste of time to her.
That she holds real contempt for people who enjoy rom-coms. In high school, when I told her that I wasn’t sure if I was smart enough to sign up for the Math Olympiad challenge, she snorted and said in her most derisive voice, “Please, even Cynthia is doing it.”
Cynthia was one of our mutual friends—not that we were super close or anything, but she invited both of us to her birthday party every year, and only the week before she’d brought an entire cheesecake to school and given me one of the biggest slices.
This all mattered more to me than her math grades, which were objectively maybe not so great, but still. I should’ve defended Cynthia then.
Instead, I was preoccupied with making sure that Victoria never spoke about me in that same derisive tone.
“I’m sorry. Group projects can be super stressful,” I say, trying to sound sympathetic.
“Tell me about it.” She heaves a sigh. “If he doesn’t show up for our meeting tonight, I might as well just drop dead. No, he might as well drop dead.”
Well, speaking of dropping dead, this funny thing happened to me earlier . . . But even as I imagine myself saying it, I know by now that I won’t tell her. The moment has passed.
“. . . show you the PowerPoint I made before the meeting?” Victoria is saying. “I just need someone to double-check all the numbers for me. It shouldn’t take that long, maybe three hours at most. We’ll be done by eleven.”
I feel myself frown. Something about her tone is uncomfortably familiar. “Wait, tonight?”