Chapter Thirteen #2
But then they started doing “Baby Blue.” Maurice’s new song!
It sounded so different from when he’d played it in the car.
It sounded full. It sounded…I don’t know, real.
A real song from a real band. It still seemed funny, coming from my doofy brother who ordered the pickle on the Subway sandwich, then took out the pickle.
Okay, I did the same thing, but you know what I mean.
I was so proud of him that I took out my phone and snapped some photos.
In my photography class, Ms. Costa wanted us to take shots of things that were personally meaningful to us, and not just sunsets and stuff, to try to see how the mattering mattered in the art.
And, well, Maurice mattered. His new song did.
The photos weren’t great, with all the heads in front of me, but they made me happy to look at anyway.
When Solar Flare played “Greetings in Fifty-Five Languages,” that oh-so-wild frenetic energy song, I put away my phone. I didn’t even care anymore that I was there alone, with only my familiar post for company. I just danced—how could I not? Everyone danced. My partner was the whole room.
You weren’t coming.
But Severin Gyles was. He was coming right then.
Heading over. I hadn’t noticed him in the crowd, and when I looked behind him, at his group of friends, I saw that it wasn’t Ramone this time.
It was other kids, from another school. Imagine that—being popular at your own school, and another one, too.
My body took me on a wild amusement park ride—from the euphoria of dancing to the dread of him winding his way toward me to something unexpected: a curiosity.
A Why not? You had dumped me, after all.
I smiled. I tried to be cute. Tried to channel Sandrine’s shy fire, haha, no such luck. I was aware of how sweaty I was. Some sour body odor was coming off me in waves, maybe, or else the whole room just smelled like that.
“I’ve seen you here before,” he shouted.
“Yeah,” I said. I could shock myself with how witty I could be. But the weird thing was, he seemed to have forgotten entirely what happened last time. How you had arrived, and how he’d turned around all pissed, accusing me of being a tease, making any rejection he felt my fault.
“Don’t you go to my school?”
He seriously wasn’t sure. It was insulting beyond belief.
I mean, I’d been sitting right at his lunch table since school started.
Plus, we’d been in world history together for a whole semester.
It was pretty clear that people could be invisible to Severin Gyles until he beamed them into existence with his gaze.
And I didn’t miss it, either. The way he’d said my school.
He wasn’t exactly wrong. In lots of ways, it did belong to him, way more than it did to me.
“Yeah,” I shouted. I was such a sparkling conversationalist with the amazing Severin Gyles right in front of me, wow. Some people could just freeze you right up, while others somehow let the real you just walk on out, ready to be yourself.
“I thought so. You like these guys?” He arced his thumb toward the band.
“Love. The drummer’s my brother.”
“No shit!”
“Shit,” I said. I could never be with someone like Severin Gyles, clearly. Or rather, I could never be me with him. My insides were clumsily bashing around, trying hard not to mess up, which pretty much guaranteed that I’d mess up.
“I like this.” He took a pinch of my top. The flowered one that Addy and Priya had bought me.
“And I like this.” I swirled my finger up, down, and around Severin Gyles.
I had no idea what came over me. The amusement park ride was on its wild zooming descent, and my arms were up in the air.
Who was this girl? That’s what I wanted to know, but it was a question for another day, not right then, when there was energy in that room, energy that might bring me to some new and interesting place.
The compliment did its job. Severin leaned his whole body toward mine.
He kissed me. No, that implies one kiss, when this one might not be ending anytime soon.
It was hard to concentrate, or rather, hard to not concentrate, because my mind was giving a running commentary, crafting a kiss documentary, with film footage and a me-interview with observations.
His tongue seemed so big and thick, so much thicker than yours—sorry for these details.
It had a serpent quality, and it was, like, overtaking my mouth, and I couldn’t quite get over the fact that I was kissing Severin Gyles enough to actually kiss Severin Gyles.
Me, the girl with, like, three friends, and him, who everyone thought was so awesome.
Everyone, which meant, uh, that tongue had been in lots of mouths, not the nicest thought, for sure.
Still, what would Addy or Priya or, even more, Severin’s ex-girlfriend Gwynyth James, who’d never even said hi to me or Priya, like, ever, think of this?
Hey, look, I wanted to say. Check it out.
But, too, I hoped Maurice and Sandrine wouldn’t see me.
Then, wait—I hoped she did. I hoped she’d bring you back some steamy report that might hurt you.
I hadn’t thought of that when Severin’s mouth first clamped onto mine, but it wasn’t the worst plan.
Jeez, his hips, and oh, God. I mean, I didn’t want more than this, but it seemed like he did. Actually, I wasn’t even sure I wanted this, to be honest. It was just what happened next.
The crowd was clapping now, song over. The kiss wasn’t.
It was maybe a world record. It made me think of those dance contests, where you see the last couple slumped in each other’s arms and barely on their feet but still trudging on, hours later.
I was starting to maybe need air. I gave him a little push back, which seemed to have the opposite effect, weird.
Like, now he was really clamped on, and that serpent tongue just got all going again.
Now Sandrine’s guitar began to strum. Just her, no drums, no electric anything.
The chords sounded familiar. It was hard to concentrate, but the strumming hit some part of me, some real part, connected and alive, not this distant girl with Severin Gyles’s tongue jammed in her mouth.
Sandrine began to sing, about shadows falling, about running out of breath, and I shoved Severin Gyles hard enough that he almost stumbled.
“Fuck,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or frustrated or just interrupted, and I didn’t even care to figure it out.
Because Sandrine was singing “Keep Me in Your Heart.” She was singing that song, the Warren Zevon one, our song more than any other, and I realized she must have taken your advice, about the band doing some of his music.
It wasn’t the band, though—they sat silent.
I couldn’t think of the word acoustic right then.
But it was just her, and it wasn’t just “his music,” either—it was that song. It was you and me.
I looked around. For a minute, I was sure you had to be here. You just had to be, but you weren’t. I asked Sandrine later, and she said no. That very minute, though, I was certain of it. You can be so certain and be so wrong.
But Severin Gyles was there, and my whole heart and soul just thought, What? Like, Who are you, and what are you doing here, and where is my Mars? Like I woke up.
And then, maybe it was the song, but I was sad, way sadder than I’d ever been before, because there was only a non-you future from here on out. Even though, right that minute, you were in the world doing who knows what. You could be kissing some other girl, for all I knew.
That kiss served a purpose, is what I’m saying.
A horrible purpose. It made me understand, deeply, how many people weren’t you, and how many kisses weren’t ours.
It made me realize that loving you and being loved by you was unique and irreplaceable, so what was I going to do now, huh?
Just feel the loss of it forever? Any single person from here on out, it was going to be different. It would be not-you.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said to Severin. “I’ve got to go!” I didn’t have to go anywhere, but it seemed like a smarter idea, to make my push away about time, or the clock, or whatever, and not just about him.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
“Oh! Okay! See you.”
“See you.”
He pinched the flowered shirt again, this time on my sleeve.
He got a bit of my skin with it, maybe on purpose, a real pinch.
I’d have to wash that shirt, in really hot water, so it could be new again, and mine again.
I wished you could do that with memories.
Just wash them in superhot water so your mind and heart could be new and yours.
“Who was that?” Maurice asked later. We were in the truck driving home.
“Just a guy from my school,” I said.
“He looked like a douchebag.”
This is hard to explain, but he wasn’t being critical of me, or giving me some big warning, anything. He was just stating a fact.
“He is a douchebag.”
Maurice glanced at me. I shrugged.
“The new song sounded amazing,” I said.
“The Zevon one?” I could hear the hope in his question.
“Yours, doofus,” I said.
There are a lot of breakup musts, I guess.
There’s the get-a-new-outfit one, and the eat-ice-cream, and the shit-talk-the-ex.
But there’s also this: The minute, the very minute, you even slightly move on, the breaker-upper will feel it in the airways like a zap of dark matter, the most unknown thing in the universe, the unseen force that draws galaxies together.
The next day, I got a text from you.
I miss you so much I can’t stand it.
I looked at it a hundred times. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was real, though.