Getting Over Garrett Delaney (3 page)

After two years of agony, destiny is on my side once more!

“Remember, no more moping around, reading her old love letters,” I order Garrett as I hop off the Vespa and tuck the helmet under the backseat.

“Yes, ma’am.” He laughs.

“See you tomorrow?” I ask. “We could spend the day reading out by the river.”

“Sounds good.” Garrett revs the engine. “Give me a call in the morning, OK?”

I watch happily as he rides away, Vera spluttering all the way back down the street, a flash of red against the green of the shady oak trees and overgrown front lawns. Me and mom live on the older side of town, where the streets are full of rambling colonial houses and leafy backyards, but Garrett’s family is across town in one of the newer developments by the lake: the crisp mock-Tudor houses full of plush cream carpets and sofas that get smudge marks just from looking at them.

“Hey, Sadie.”

The voice comes from across the street, and I turn to find Kayla sitting on her front porch steps in a pretty print blouse and cutoffs. She waves. “Happy birthday,” she adds. “It
is
your birthday, right?”

“Yup, thanks!” I call back, but neither of us crosses the road. After a childhood of sleepovers and playdates, our friendship kind of faded out after we started high school. We still get along fine, but it’s clear we’re different kinds of people. After I met Garrett, I got involved with the lit magazine, while Kayla turned out to be one of those perky, cheer-filled girls, wearing bright bands in her blond ponytail and gossiping over celebrity breakups. She’s been dating a varsity basketball player named Blake for a year now, and sometimes, when Garrett drops me off at home late at night, we pass his blue pickup truck, parked two blocks over, the windows steamed up inside.

I’m just deciding whether to go over and say hi when that very truck pulls around the corner, some rock song playing loudly through the open windows. Kayla bounces up. “Have fun!” she calls, smiling, and then hurries toward the truck. Blake leans over to open the passenger door; Kayla hops in, kissing him for a long moment before he slings one arm around her shoulder and they drive away.

I watch them go, feeling a curious pang of envy. Not because I harbor a secret love for monosyllabic jocks — I would die of boredom spending even an hour with Blake. I’ve met him in passing a couple of times, and sure he’s cute (in a hair-product-and-tan kind of way), but the guy has nothing to say. Not even a little; not even a teeny, tiny bit.
Nothing.
Garrett and I talk for hours, about everything under the sun: politics, philosophy, religion. He challenges me to think about the world in a whole new way. That’s real love: when you’re intellectual equals. The Ted Hughes to my Sylvia Plath.

Except, of course, without that whole sticking-my-head-in-the-oven thing.

I’ve barely closed the front door behind me when my mom bounces out of the kitchen, resplendent in matching aqua velour yoga separates. I swear she’s the only woman in the known universe who irons her loungewear.

“Honey!” She beams. “I’ve been waiting! Are you ready for your surprise?”

“Sure,” I say. “Let me just go change and —”

“No need! Your gift is upstairs.”

I follow her up. Everyone says that we look alike, with our Jewish coloring and dark, wants-to-be-curly hair, but she’s the petite, polished version, while I got my dad’s awkward height and bony figure — forever doomed to the Extra Tall section at department stores, and the continual assumption of gym teachers that I should be good at organized sports.

“Close your eyes,” I’m ordered for the second time today. I wait patiently while Mom opens my bedroom door. “Ta-da!”

I open my eyes — and promptly let out a wail of distress.

“What did you
do
?”

Gone are my haphazard photo collages; all my pictures are now neatly pinned on a bulletin board in the corner. My messy but totally personalized desk system has been reduced to color-coded storage boxes and a gleaming in-box. My collection of battered old books is nowhere to be seen, and the clothes I had carefully — well, lovingly — strewn across the night table, floor, and dresser …

“What do you think?” Mom spins around, proud as a catalog model. “I reorganized the closet. See? Everything is color coded, with sections and boxes. And your desk is set up for maximum functionality, with a proper filing system and —”

“Mom!” I interrupt, staring in horror at the organization she’s wrought on my perfect mess. “I thought we agreed: you keep your life coaching out of my life!”

She’s unswayed. “But honey, you’ll love it. You can be so much more productive now. You know what I always say: an ordered environment means an ordered internal life!”

“And you know what Nietzsche says?” I counter. “‘You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star’!”

Mom blanches. “Birth?”

“It’s a
metaphor
!” I catch my breath. “And where did all my books go?”

“They’re here.” Mom shows me the shelf full of neatly ordered volumes. Shiny, brand-new volumes. “They were all so battered and old. I replaced them with brand-new editions.”

“But …” I gasp, lost for words. Are we even related? “That’s the point! That they’re old; they’ve been passed along from somebody else. They had notes in them! History, and meaning, and —”

“OK, all right!” Clearly, Mom realizes that tampering with my library collection is an intrusion too far. She puts a soothing hand on my shoulder and back-tracks. “They’re still boxed in the garage. We can go get them back.”

“Thank you.” I sigh with relief. “And, um, thanks,” I add, not wanting to seem like a completely ungrateful brat. “For all of this. It’s a … nice thought.”

She smiles. “I promise, just a few days of the new system, and you’ll be convinced. It’s the first thing I do with my clients. And look, I even made you a wall chart with space for your personal goals and achievement schedule!”

I sigh. “Thanks, Mom.”

It was inevitable, I guess. For years now, she’s been just itching to get her hands on me: to turn me into one of her little clones, following their checklists and seven-step plans that she hands out like a grade-school teacher passing around paint-by-numbers sheets. She used to be cool, once upon a time — scatterbrained and artistic. She was into pottery, these weird abstract sculptures, and would sometimes be so deep in a project that she’d lose all track of time. We’d wind up eating PB&J sandwiches for dinner and wearing pajamas around the house on laundry days.

It was awesome.

But then Dad left us to go play saxophone on tour with his jam band, and overnight it seemed she turned into this stranger — guzzling self-help books and going on motivational weekends designed to strip her of all spontaneity and turn her into a goddess of achievement and positive thinking. It worked out for her, I guess. She qualified as a life coach, and now she has a ton of clients, paying her ridiculous amounts of money to brainwash, I mean,
teach,
them, too.

But not me.

As far as Garrett and I are concerned, organization and structure are the mortal enemies of creativity. I mean, did Emily Dickinson plan her goals in a color-coded workbook? Did Shakespeare use an inspirational daily quote calendar?

I think not.

Mom turns to go, and I flop down on my — crisply made — bed. “Wait,” I say, stopping her. “Did the mail come? Is there anything from camp?”

“Why don’t you check your in-box?” Mom winks. I leap up.

There it is: a single white envelope. “Why didn’t you say something?” I cry, tearing it open in such a rush that I rip part of the letter itself.

“Slow down!” Mom laughs, but I’m already eagerly scanning the printed letter, my eyes racing over the small type.

Dear Ms. Allen:

Thank you for your application to our summer program. However, we regret to inform you that due to the high number of eligible candidates this year, we have decided to limit intake to those who have completed at least their junior year of high school… .

I stop. That can’t be right. But no, there it is, spelled out in hateful Times New Roman.

We regret to inform you …

I lower the letter, numb. “I didn’t get in.”

“What?” Mom snatches it and reads it through. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. But see here: ‘Your application was strong, so we welcome you to resubmit for next summer’s session.’ See? It was just the age criterion.”

“Not age,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “Grade.”

She doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty. “Maybe it’s for the best. You wouldn’t want to go and be the youngest there, behind everyone.”

I don’t even bother trying to explain that I wouldn’t be behind everyone, that I’m
ahead
pretty much most of the time. Instead, I stand there, rereading the letter, feeling my last sliver of hope fall to the floor and shatter into a million tiny pieces.

No lit camp. No summer quoting poetry under the stars with Garrett. Nothing.

I’m on my own.

Garrett got in, of course. He’s been published (twice!) in obscure New England literary journals, and he won a statewide contest for the best poem inspired by the work of Walt Whitman. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they gave him a special TA position or invited him to run some of the workshops. I can see him now, strolling on the lakeshore, deep in meaningful discussion with the beautiful literary wunderkind professor (because of course there’ll be a beautiful literary wunderkind professor, some charming twenty-four-year-old with published short-story collections and a taste for eager high-school seniors).

I torture myself for the rest of the week, trying not to wince every time Garrett slips up and shares some other enthusiastic news about his dorm assignment or lecture schedule. He thinks I’m devastated over the loss of my summer of intellectual and creative discovery, and sure, I am, but mainly I’m devastated over the loss of my summer with Garrett.

“Hey, it’ll be OK,” Garrett assures me yet again. I’ve escaped Shabbat dinner early for a party one of the outgoing seniors is throwing, out by the woods. He checks that the Vespa is securely locked and then turns back to me. “I’ll e-mail all my notes — you can do all the classes right along with me. It’ll be like an independent study program.”

“Right.” I try to act like the writing is what matters in all of this. “I’ll have finished the Great American Novel by the time you get back.”

“Not so fast,” he says with a laugh. “Try aiming for the Fairly Good American Novel first.”

We walk slowly up the driveway. “So …” I pause, doing the math on the few, precious days we have left together. “This is our last night hanging out?”

Garrett grins. “You make it sound like it’s forever, not just six weeks.” He puts his arm around me, hugging me close. “We’ll just have to make it unforgettable, OK?”

I nod, not trusting my voice, and follow him up to the door, past the parade of shiny status cars. It figures. Paul lives a couple of blocks over from Garrett. The house isn’t gated, as such, but the dead-end road makes it pretty clear there’s no point coming out here unless you’ve got an invitation.

“Hey, Garrett, you made it!” A bunch of seniors absorb him into the crowd the minute we step through the column-flanked door. Garrett has never been the highest on the Sherman High popularity rankings — though he’s swooned over in certain drama/lit-magazine circles, he’s not one of the undisputed clique kings. But tonight, there’s backslapping and general bro fist-bumps, as if they’re all actually lifelong friends and not separated by class or status. It’s a weird thing I’ve noticed about seniors the summer after school finishes: enthusiasm and camaraderie sweep through the graduating class, washing away all grudges and cafeteria hierarchies in their path, until girls who’ve spent four years bitching about each other suddenly start hugging, tearful, the best of friends, while the guys who spent their free periods stuffing geeks into bathroom stalls laugh with their former victims about how it was all just high school — no hard feelings, right?

The force is so strong, even a lowly sophomore like me gets caught up in it for a moment. Julie Powers traps me in a fierce bear hug as I loiter, waiting for Garrett.

“I can’t believe it’s over!” she cries, clutching me. Her mascara is flaking in a flutter of black freckles across her flushed cheeks; I’m clearly not the first victim of her nostalgia tonight.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmur, waiting for her to release me.

“It’s like, what do we do now? Who
are
we?”

“The ultimate existential question.”

She pulls back and frowns. “What?”

“Nothing.” I smile. “Have a great summer!”

I detach myself and move deeper into the party. Our high school is on the smaller side, so I know pretty much everyone by sight. There’s the usual crowd of varsity kids over by the keg, and the skater crowd is sprawled out in the living room, playing Xbox on the wide-screen TV, while a group of girls dance at the other end of the room, sloshing brightly colored punch from plastic cups.

I take up residence in the kitchen, surveying the spread: chips and dip as far as the eye can see, pizza, a mountain of cookies —

“Boo,” Garrett whispers, inches from my ear.

I yelp. “Oh, it’s you.” I smack him. “You scared me. Why do you always do that?”

“Because you always make that funny sound.” He laughs and hands me one of the bright-red cups. I pause. “Diet Coke,” he reassures me. “I wouldn’t lead you astray, not when you’re so young and impressionable.”

“Ha.” I take a sip. “Just try.”

Garrett looks around at the scene. “So, I see tables, yet you’re not up there dancing on them.”

“I’m saving the floor show for later,” I tell him. “After my opening acts are done.” I nod toward the grinding girls, their moves getting more X-rated by the minute.

“Um, sure.” Garrett blinks, dazzled by the sight of Jaycee Carter’s gyrations. “Because you’ve got to bring your A game to follow that.”