Chapter 4
Eleanor
You know those first few minutes after you’ve finished an amazing book?
Those moments when you aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself?
You simply sit there, staring at the last words, unsure how to move on with your life.
How can it be over?
How can those characters just fade to black?
For you, the characters are still imprinted on your soul. Their actions, their dialogue still alive and strong in your mind. Your tears haven’t even dried, and you crave another fix.
I loved that feeling—the bittersweet love story between a person and a novel coming to an end.
That’s what happened to me after I finished Wesley Peters.
I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Mom was still recovering from her cold, and Dad was off watching TV, so I did the only thing that felt natural: I thought about Greyson.
I was officially a teenage cliché.
Every time I headed over to watch Molly, I grew more and more nervous about the idea that Greyson could be sitting on the porch across the street, three houses down. I knew it was stupid, but on those days, I might’ve started combing my hair a little more, and I might’ve asked Shay for makeup tips.
I might’ve overplucked my eyebrows too.
Each time Greyson wasn’t there, I let out a sigh of relief, but then I felt a little sad.
When Friday came three weeks after our first interaction at Molly’s, my heart raced as he came jogging across the street toward me.
“I’m a midnight,” he declared, waving the book he had gripped in his hand.
I tugged on the bottom of my cardigan. “What?”
“I’m part of the midnight tribe. It was a toss-up between that and crimson, but then I read some articles online, and I’m pretty sure I’m midnight.”
Midnight was a prominent tribe in my favorite series. “You read Wesley Peters?”
He nodded. “Yup. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but those are long.”
“You . . .” My heart pounded against my rib cage. “You read all of the books?”
“All five, and now I’m counting down the days until the next one releases.”
Same, Grey, same.
“Why did you read them all?”
“So we’d have something in common. Plus, I wanted you to form a stupid, unrealistic crush on me that goes against everything you stand for.
” He began flipping through the book, pointing out a few of his favorite quotes, which he’d highlighted.
He talked quickly, going over his likes and dislikes for each of the books.
He told me his favorite characters, he told me his pet peeves, and he spoke as if he truly understood what he was talking about.
I was still stuck on the fact that he’d read all five books simply so we would have something in common.
If he were a book character, he’d be the hero.
After he showed me his last highlighted quote, he closed the book and gave me a slight shrug. “So what are you?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s your tribe?”
“Oh.” I traced the sidewalk with the toe of my shoe. “I’m a sage.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Yeah, most people think it’s the worst tribe.”
“The sage seemed silently strong and loyal. There’s nothing wrong with loyal and patient people. I think there should be more of that.”
I smiled.
He smiled back and said, “More of that, Ellie.” He tapped his fingers against the spine of his novel. “So now that we have something in common, does that mean we can hang out?”
“Well, I did make that promise, and as a sage, I have to keep my word.”
“All right. So what are you doing next Tuesday?”
“Um, nothing?”
“OK, awesome. You want to meet me at my place? I’ll plan something for us to do.”
I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “All right.” Note to self: Knees can sweat too. “Well, I have to get to Molly.”
“All right. I’ll see you Tuesday!”
He headed off, and for a few seconds, I wondered if I was stuck in a dream. I was too afraid to pinch myself, though, because I worried I’d wake up. If this were a dream, I wanted to live in it a little bit longer.
* * *
“I like a boy,” I blurted out Sunday afternoon as Mom and I sat in our hidden location at Laurie Lake.
We’d been going there as long as I could remember, even sometimes all bundled up in our winter gear to be near the water.
If Mom loved one thing, it was the water.
She said it was because the water healed her.
Her dream was to someday place her feet in the ocean and stand with her arms wide open, but since we were in Illinois and there was no ocean to be found nearby, that dream had to wait a little bit longer.
For the time being, small lakes and ponds worked fine for us.
We always made it our mission to go sit by our hidden pond and watch the dragonflies pass around us.
Laurie Lake was normally packed with people during the summer, but one day during our exploring, she and I found a smaller body of water hidden between the trees, and we’d always go there to sit and chat.
After feeling a bit off, she was finally well enough to get out of the house, and I was happy to get back to our regularly scheduled mama-daughter dates. She still looked tired, but not sick-tired. It seemed like the kind of tired people got when they overslept.
Still, in the back of my mind, I worried. Couldn’t help it. That worry would probably always linger.
Mom tilted her head toward me, and her blue eyes lit up with joy at my words.
There were two things we never really talked about with each other: sports and boys.
I’d never had any interest in either one, but that afternoon, I knew I had to tell her, because she was my person.
I told my mother everything. We were a regular Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.
“Oh my gosh, who? How? From where?!”
“His name is Greyson East. We talked at the party you and Dad forced me to go to a few weeks ago.”
She tossed her hands in the air with excitement. “I knew I was being a good parent forcing you to go to a party with drugs and alcohol!”
I snickered. “Something like that.”
“So tell me everything. What is he into? What does he look like? If he were to be an animal, which animal would he be?” She placed her chin in her hands and stared at me with eyes wide and filled with wonder.
I told her everything—everything I knew, at least.
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you’ve been wearing my makeup lately?”
“You noticed?”
“Honey, I’m sick, not dead. Plus, we really need to have a makeup lesson because the way you curled your eyelashes was a bit wild.”
I laughed. “I just wanted to, I don’t know, girly up a little.”
“Wearing makeup doesn’t make you a girl. Were you wearing makeup when you first met him?”
“No . . .”
“Then there’s no need to wear it now, unless you want to. Do things for you, Ellie, never for others. He obviously liked you just the way you were.”
My stomach flipped as I fiddled with my thumbs. “He’s the complete opposite of what I thought my first crush would be like.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d go for a nerdy type, or an artist, or a musician. Greyson is popular.”
“You say it like he has an STD,” Mom joked. “People like him—so what? That’s not a bad thing.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just people; it’s everyone. He could have any girl he wanted, so it’s hard to think he’d want—”
“No.” Mom placed her hand on my knee. “We don’t do that.
We don’t put ourselves down.” She combed my hair behind my ear and placed her hands on my cheeks.
“Not only are you beautiful on the outside, Eleanor Rose, you are stunning on the inside. You are creative. You have the best laugh I’ve ever heard.
You are kind, giving, and brave. Don’t ever think you aren’t good enough based on what the magazines define as beauty. You. Are. Beautiful.”
Mom always did this whenever I slipped into my random teenage doubts.
It was easy for me to not feel beautiful in a world of prom queens, yet my mother was always reminding me of how worthy I was.
I was a lucky daughter.
“Plus, it sounds like you caught his attention with your looks and your mind,” she commented. “That’s the most important part.”
“Can we just not tell Dad? He’s a bit dramatic about things like this.”
“Your father has never shot a gun in his life, but I feel like you having your first crush would be enough to push him over the edge, so I’ll keep it between you and me.”
“Thanks.”
She started to reply but broke out into a coughing fit instead. She couldn’t catch her breath for a while, and my gut filled with worry. When she stopped, she shook her head. “I’m fine, Ellie.”
I heard her words, but sometimes I felt like they were lies just to keep me from hurting. I had a feeling moms would do anything to keep their children from feeling any form of pain.
I rested my head on her shoulder as we stared out at the water and watched as three dragonflies flew by. “He read Wesley Peters, all five books, because I told him we had nothing in common, and he wanted to make sure we did.”
Mom’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “He read your favorite series?”
“Yup.”
“Eleanor?”
“Yes?”
“Marry this boy.”