Chapter 5 Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
Ellery Paige O’Shea. Even her name was enchanting.
I’d never met an Ellery before, nor a Paige, and there were definitely no O’Sheas to be found in Indonesia.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry, I get excited when I talk about her, and all I want to do is tell you all the things I love about my Ellery.
Anyway. She said, “Did you hear what I said?”
And I looked up and saw this blond goddess.
Blue eyes. Light but not pale. Blue like the LA skies.
And so tall. I think her height was what startled me most about her.
She was nearly six feet tall, you know. What is that in metric?
One-eighty? Izzy, you need to work on your math.
Okay, anyway. She was very tall. Certainly the tallest girl I’d ever come across.
And shoulders to die for. Underneath a bright red PCC Bookstore vest, she was wearing a T-shirt and it was kind of tight around her shoulders, probably because they didn’t expect women to have shoulders like that.
And her biceps, oh my. She was lean but toned in a very practical way, not the showy kind that you get from the gym, but the kind of lean muscle you’d get from chopping wood or lugging heavy boxes of books around all day.
My gaze trailed down her arms—I have a thing for arms, whether it was men or women—and Ellery’s arms were the kind you wanted wrapped around your waist—am I making you uncomfortable?
Fine. She was cute, that’s all I’m saying. More than cute. Okay. Moving on.
By now, I’d been staring dumbly at her for so long that she probably thought I was some kind of moron. She said, “Do you…speak English?”
It was a fair question to ask, especially since I’d just been gaping at her like a goldfish, but something about that question snapped me back to the present, and I said, “I probably speak better English than you do.”
The moment I said it, I was horrified. You should’ve figured out by now that at age sixteen, I was just about as mousy as anything.
Especially around Iris. But there was something about Ellery that brought out the playfulness in me.
It would take me a while longer to figure out what it was.
We’ll get to that. Anyway, I didn’t remain horrified for long.
Ellery’s eyebrows rose, making those blue eyes of hers widen, and she laughed.
It was a low laugh, kind of like a “Heh, heh.” I’m not describing it well.
That makes her sound like a witch. It was the most beautiful laugh I’d ever heard, low and comforting.
“Yeah, you probably do. I’m sorry. That was kind of a dick thing to say, wasn’t it?” she said.
I’d fulfilled my sass quota for the day and ran out of wit, so I just smiled and shrugged and mentally kicked myself.
“Do you have your class schedule with you?” she said. “I’ll get the books ready for you while you wait.”
“Oh. Yes.” I took it out of my bag and handed it to her.
Her eyes scanned the sheet. “Psych 001, Psych 021, English 001A, Chemistry 22, Calculus 005A—dang, smarty-pants.”
I smiled and shrugged again. Think of something to say, damn it!
“Okay, you’ve got Calculus in—oh, ten minutes.” She winced. “I don’t think you’re gonna get the books in time.”
My stomach sank. “Am I going to get in trouble?”
She laughed again. “Oh my god. No. It’s the first day of class after Christmas break.
No one gives a shit. And anyway—” She lowered her voice and leaned close to me.
I was pretty sure my heart stopped working entirely.
“You shouldn’t buy the books here. They’re so overpriced.
You should go to A Thousand Screaming Voices. ”
“A Thousand…what?”
“The secondhand bookstore near Old Pas?”
I stared at her blankly.
“You know Old Pas, right?”
I continued staring at her blankly. God, she was going to find out that I literally arrived in this country two days ago and was the fobbiest FOB that ever fobbed. Belatedly, I said, “Uh…yeah?”
She bit down on her lower lip. It looked like she was trying hard to hold back a smile. “Really?”
“No.”
“Okay.” That low laugh again. “Right. Well, looks like you have an hour between Chemistry and Psych. If you want, I could take you there.”
I don’t want to sound like a cliché and tell you how my heart fluttered or my stomach flipped.
Which they did. Nothing like this ever happened in Indonesia.
Strangers didn’t offer to take other strangers they just met to secondhand bookstores.
And that’s the other thing, words matter.
And she didn’t say: “If you want, we could go there.” No, she said: “I could take you there.” And there’s something so sweet about that, the idea of her taking me someplace.
I managed a nod.
She grinned. “Cool. Meet you at the parking lot at noon.”
I nodded again.
“You should go,” she said. “Don’t be late for your class.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I stepped out of the line. I didn’t even know her name. “What’s your name?”
“Doh! Can’t believe I forgot to tell you. It’s Ellery. What’s yours?”
“Magnolia.”
“Magnolia,” she said, and coming from her lips, it sounded sacred. “That’s a pretty name. I’ll see you later, Magnolia.” And with that, she turned away and spoke to the student behind me. “Can I see your course schedule? I’ll get your books ready while you wait.”
I felt both special and unspecial. She was working.
She only saw me as a customer. But a customer she was taking to another bookstore, so not just any old customer.
Unless she had a habit of taking every customer to other bookstores.
Maybe this was just what Americans do. Maybe, when I got to the parking lot during my lunch break, I’d find a group of students waiting for Ellery.
In a bit of a daze, I went to my first class of the day—Calculus. When you go to college, dear, I highly recommend not starting off your day with calculus. That’s all I have to say about that.
Then it was Chemistry, and that was significantly more fun than calculus.
I liked chemistry. I liked studying the periodic table, marveling at how much creativity and patience it took for scientists to build something like that.
How many mistakes they must’ve made along the way, small ones and tragic ones.
If you ever want to see how wonderfully complex the human mind is, all you have to do is take a look at the periodic table.
Here’s another complex thing about the human mind—most of the time, it doesn’t know what it wants.
Other animals have it all figured out. Food, shelter, sex.
But humans make everything so complicated.
We don’t just want food, we want different kinds of food.
Hell, most of the time, we don’t even know what we want to eat.
And sex is even more complicated. I didn’t know this at sixteen, of course.
I was a virgin—are you a virgin? You know what?
Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.
And there’s no shame either way. I had this plan—I had it all figured out.
I was going to save my virginity for my rich husband.
Fucking stupid plan, I’ll tell you that much.
The other thing I didn’t know about sex was who I was actually attracted to.
Because up until I met Ellery that very morning, I’d chugged along through life thinking I was straight.
It was the kind of thing I never questioned, like breathing.
Why do you breathe air? Who the hell cares?
Everyone breathes the same air. Why was I straight?
I was straight because I assumed I was, because I never knew anything different.
The girls back at my high school and I—we often had girl crushes.
You know what they are. Do you know what they are?
Platonic little crushes that have more to do with “Oh, she’s so pretty, I wish I looked like her” than “Oh, she’s so pretty, I wish I could date her.
” I don’t think I was ever conscious of the nature of my girl crushes.
I simply assumed they were of the sort that everyone else had.
Maybe I stared a little too hard, maybe my girl crushes lasted a tad longer than most, but none of it amounted to a discernible difference.
So when I met Ellery, when she took my breath right out of my chest, I didn’t think: Oh, I might like her in that way. I didn’t think: Maybe I’m not straight after all. I thought: Oh, this is just another girl crush because she’s so cool, who wouldn’t have a girl crush on her?
I see your eyes glazing over. I’m sorry, am I boring you? Should I stop? It’s no big deal, I’m just telling you the story of how I met the love of my life, that’s all.
Hmph, if you say so.
I reached the parking structure two minutes past noon.
I kept checking the time on my watch. I was convinced that because I was two minutes late, Ellery would be gone by the time I arrived.
That was what Iris would’ve done, anyway.
Do you know what it takes to sprint from one side of campus to the other in two minutes?
By the time I got there, I was panting hard and sweating bullets. Not a good look.
She was there, leaning against the wall, her hands in her pockets. Not pretending to read a book or a magazine like most people would be. She was just chilling. I’d never seen anyone so at ease in her own skin, so comfortable with her place in the world. When she spotted me, she smiled and waved.
“Hey, Magnolia. Wow, did you run here?”
I was so out of breath I could only nod.
She laughed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I was afraid you’d leave without me,” I blurted out. Then I gave myself a mental kick. How much more pathetic could I sound?
“Aww, what?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t have done that.”
Something in the way she said it made it clear she really meant it, and without thinking, I said, “Really?”