2
J oe signaled to the bartender. “Whiskey on the rocks and a vodka soda.”
MC was too disoriented for a drink. They’d left the Jawbreaker office and migrated to a poorly lit bar where even the draft beer was overpriced.
Visually, though, it fit the profile of the archetypal literary dive she’d fantasized about as a teenager: vintage metal signs hung askew, broken sconces, unoccupied booths in red velvet.
It was early evening, so the atmosphere was placid. At least there was that.
MC wasn’t sure what Joe had been expecting when he’d presented her with the revelation that her childhood neighbor had secretly written a smash-hit rom-com cribbed directly from their senior year of high school, in which she and MC were not distant acquaintances, as they had been in real life, but madly in love.
It probably wasn’t her staring into space and trying to recall the only moment of potential significance that had ever passed between them.
But even as they’d spent long hours together, arranging terrible poems and stories alongside terrible art and photography, their dynamic remained distant. Sometimes they might have shared a smile or a semi-triumphant moment. Other than that, it was all business.
Then the magazine’s reading night had rolled around.
The event had drawn a crowd. Even Nora was in a decent mood.
She’d gone from being a reluctant presence at their bimonthly meetings to an unofficial co-editor with MC by spring, delivering an actual publication that put the much-better-funded yearbook to shame.
Performances of student writing were met with cheering and applause—especially an anonymous poem that MC had been cajoled into presenting in lieu of the real author.
“On the Look You Give (Before Turning Away)” had come in just before the end of the year.
Nora, who served as the submissions gatekeeper on account of her excellent organizational skills, refused to reveal the author’s identity.
It was the only thing from Explorations that’d been passed around the school at large, its short, precise verses perfectly capturing the speaker’s overwhelming desire for a person who couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge what was between them.
The after-party was bigger than the reading, a culmination of all the parties that’d been hosted at MC’s house that year, which had become their default hangout spot after her mom had moved out the previous summer and her dad had become a lot more permissive, or at least a lot less involved.
It didn’t hurt that her older brother, Conrad, had decided to drop out of Harvard in March and had little to do but work at the grocery store and look the other way whenever they wanted to buy alcohol.
MC had figured his sudden return had something to do with their parents’ impending divorce.
But he refused to discuss it, at least with her.
Around midnight, when the party was in full swing, MC had decided to head to the basement for another case of beer.
She needed a last swig of courage. A moment to gather herself before taking command of a situation she’d been agonizing over for two years: her longstanding crush on fellow Explorations member Gabby Ramirez, whose tendency to earnestly compliment MC while making intense eye contact had fostered something like love.
Unfortunately, MC didn’t quite get to the beer. Or her confession. Because when she made it to the foot of the basement stairs, she saw Gabby was already making out with someone else on the old suede couch.
And that someone was Conrad.
MC had fled to the shadows of an elm tree in their yard.
She could still hear her friends’ drunken antics, but the high of the night was gone for her.
In its place was a sense that she’d been a fool not to see this coming.
Her brother might’ve been a dropout, but he was an Ivy League dropout, and the glory of his time at Green Hills High hadn’t faded.
“Your adoring fans,” Nora said flatly, “are wondering where you are.”
MC had noticed her walking out the back door, arms folded, but hoped they wouldn’t interact. She wasn’t in the mood to be seen, especially by the person least likely to show sympathy.
Nora was about the same height as MC, with choppy, shoulder-length black hair permanently pulled up in a ponytail. That she’d made the effort to maintain bangs was one of senior year’s big surprises. She was in all black, as usual, with a thick application of eyeliner.
MC sighed. “They’re your fans too.”
Nora had gone through a minor social transformation over the spring, her good taste earning respect from even the harshest critics in the club. Not that she seemed to care.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“Already?”
“It’s boring in there.”
MC toed a tree root. “Can I ask you something?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
MC was used to Nora’s rudeness by that point and skipped over it.
“Did my brother write that poem? The anonymous one.” He wasn’t a student anymore, but he was only a year out.
And after he’d become the supplier of their parties, he’d basically turned into an honorary member of the club; maybe he’d bribed Nora into putting the poem in as an overture to Gabby.
“Nope.”
MC blew out a breath. She was relieved, even if it didn’t change anything.
“Did you like it?” Nora added, her tone slightly less assured.
“Are you kidding? It’s the best piece in the magazine. No offense to everyone else.”
“You seemed pretty nervous when you had to read it tonight.”
MC laughed. “I guess I’m not too smooth when it comes to that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Uh, reciting sensual poetry?”
“I thought you did a good job.” It wasn’t just Nora’s tone that’d changed.
It was her whole expression. Her posture wasn’t so confrontational, her green eyes wide in the moonlight.
But as she took a breath—maybe to say something more—a shattering sound came from inside the house.
MC seized on it, because an inexplicable panic had begun to rise in her chest.
“Shit,” she said, “hope that’s not my dad’s pottery.”
“Yeah,” Nora replied, snapping back from whatever had possessed her, “good luck with that.”
And then she walked toward the picket fence between their houses without another word.
MC hadn’t thought much about their exchange at the time.
She’d been too preoccupied with Conrad and Gabby, whose kiss blossomed into a full-blown relationship over the summer.
The only way she could distract herself from the romance filling her house was with the prospect of breaking away.
She and Joe were headed to the city for college in the fall, a turning point they readied themselves for by acquiring piercings, overpriced haircuts, and an encyclopedic knowledge of gay bars across the five boroughs.
Whenever the subject of Nora Pike had come up again in later years, which wasn’t often, their conversation under the elm tree had flickered in MC’s mind.
But she’d refused to linger on it. Too confusing.
And anyway, life in the city had been just what MC had hoped—an existence free of her brother’s shadow.
“Still among the living?” Joe said.
The bartender had brought over their drinks.
“Theoretically.” MC pressed the cold tumbler to her forehead. Had Nora really written that poem about her ? It still didn’t feel possible. But there were more immediate concerns: “Do you think anyone else from Green Hills has read this?”
Joe had put the book on the bar between them.
She’d avoided looking at it, like it might burn her eyes, but now she couldn’t help staring at the swooping font, the pastel palette, the cartoon protagonists.
The flap copy was damning: Back in high school, Nicole Penny had it bad for Michaela Carson.
But Michaela was too hopelessly obsessed with Abby Rodriguez—her brother’s hot new squeeze—to notice.
She’d panic-scrolled reviews back at Joe’s office.
The novel was “charming, stylish, and dazzling,” yet somehow also “refreshingly down to earth.” Nicole, the main character, was “whip-smart and not afraid to show it,” while Michaela was “next-level clueless in the most adorable way.” MC had been shocked that anyone would refer to a romance between teenagers as “unabashedly sexy,” but then Joe had explained that only the first couple of chapters took place during high school, while the rest detailed a ten-years-later reconnection between Michaela, a bestselling novelist, and Nicole, a curmudgeonly librarian with a heart of gold.
None of it should’ve mattered. MC didn’t care if Nora Pike had made it big. Even if she’d done it by twisting the quiet agony of MC’s senior year into a cute little romp.
Joe tucked the book under his arm, plucked up his vodka soda, and guided them toward a booth.
“Gabby would be the likeliest to have bought something like this,” he said. “But if she’d read it, she would’ve told Conrad, who would’ve told you.”
“Or maybe she did read it,” MC muttered, “and now she thinks I was hopelessly obsessed with her the whole time she and my brother were falling in love and would prefer never to speak to me again.”
“To be fair, you were hopelessly obsessed.”
“I was hopeless. Not obsessed.”
“You sure about that?”
“She’s my sister-in-law!”
“You gave a weird toast at their wedding.”
MC put her face in her hands. “Is this actually happening?”
“The fact that you’re in a rom-com? Or that you got written as the Oblivious But Sexy Love Interest?”
“Both.” She sipped her whiskey and wished it was a beer. “What’d you get written as?”
“The Envious Asshole.”
“Envious of who?”
“You.”
“That makes no sense.”
He shrugged. “She has you as the most popular girl in high school.”
Puja Singh, class clown and homecoming queen, had been the most popular girl in their high school. Or Trish Tanner-Cruz, who was now working in the White House. Friendly, unassuming MC Calloway?
No.