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Authors: Audrey Couloumbis

Not Exactly a Love Story

BOOK: Not Exactly a Love Story
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ALSO BY AUDREY COULOUMBIS

Getting Near to Baby
Jake
Lexie
Love Me Tender
Maude March on the Run!
The Misadventures of Maude March
Say Yes
Summer’s End
War Games
(cowritten by Akila Couloumbis)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2012 by Audrey Couloumbis
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Sarah J. Coleman

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web!
randomhouse.com/teens

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
RHTeachersLibrarians.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Couloumbis, Audrey.
Not exactly a love story / Audrey Couloumbis. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After his parents divorce, high school junior Vinnie Gold moves to Long Island with his mother and new stepfather and must negotiate a secret crush and a rather complicated connection with the popular girl next door.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89865-5
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Moving, Household—Fiction. 3. High schools—
Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Stepfathers—Fiction. 6. Divorce—Fiction.
7. Long Island (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C8305Not 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2010048547

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1_r1

For Alix, who has never made it
a secret that she has a crush on Vinnie

Contents
ONE

On my fifteenth birthday, January 16, 1977, I slogged through a
New York City rainstorm of hurricane proportions to buy the Sunday paper.

Actually, several newspapers, including those from Chicago and Houston. I didn’t get the California papers. If I’d been born at the same moment on the West Coast, with the three-hour time difference, I’d have been born yesterday. Plus, the rain had already reduced the California paper to papier-mâché.

I’m a Capricorn, the sign represented by a goat with a fish’s tail. Altogether, five horoscopes told me these things:

—I would suffer a disaster that would lead to a major discovery about myself. Good, with reservations.

—I would make a career move. We-ell.

—I would have an opportunity to see more of the country. Um, good.

—I would find romance. Good, but at the time, I felt I had romance. I decided this meant my interest would be reciprocated.

—I would learn that some kinds of long-term relationships are irreplaceable. My God. My mom. Or my dad? Maybe just a grandparent.

Just?

TWO

My dog died.

I grant you, she was a pretty old dog. Her health had been poor for some time, and it came as no surprise when she just didn’t wake up one morning. It’s what old dogs do, after all. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

Dad called the vet so we’d have someplace to take her. Mom went to work, worrying she’d be late, but Dad and I sort of took the day. We sat with my dog curled up between us on the couch, right where she’d died, and remembered all her best stuff.

On the way back home, Dad asked if I wanted another dog. I said no. She’d been my dog for fourteen years, she was irreplaceable.

* * *

A few days later, I bought a Valentine’s Day card for my girl—or at least the girl I’d been very fond of for two years—and slipped it into the vent in her locker. I signed it “Anonymous Admirer.” I had an idea that would be more interesting than getting a signed card.

I’d planned to ask her to the movies or maybe a museum, and I’d say something witty about anonymous admirers so she’d know that card came from me. Mainly, I wanted to stand out a little from the crowd. I’d take her to a school dance for our second date, where I figured I would really shine.

She didn’t show up for math class, and then she didn’t show up in the cafeteria. Somebody told me she’d moved away over the weekend. Without saying a word to me. Not even good-bye.

Of course, it’s true that I never told her that I thought of her as my girl. And she did leave several other admirers behind. I could see that she might not feel obligated.

Only a week later, my parents called me to the dining room table for a family conference. Not an unusual occurrence in itself. I’d been neglecting to take the garbage out. I had a pile of laundry in one corner of my room.

“Your dad and I—we have something sad to tell you. We’ve decided to divorce.”

“Divorce?”

Dad’s eyes looked like deep wounds in a quivering heart. Pleading for its life.

“We’ve grown apart,” Mom said. “We’re still very fond of each other, of course.”

Tears filled Dad’s eyes and shimmered there on the brink of his eyelashes, but he never let them trickle pathetically down his face.

“We know you’re old enough to understand how this could happen,” Mom said.

Dad nodded.

“The divorce will be amicable,” Mom said. “We’ll try to work things out so that your life changes as little as possible. In those interests, your dad will find another place to live as soon as he is able.”

Dad nodded amicably.

Mom mumbled something about work to do and retired to the bedroom. Dad looked at me and I shrugged. A shrug that said I found all of this pretty awful but I was handling it. What good is it to be fifteen with everyone calling you a young man if you can’t handle something?

I woke up the next morning to a case of galloping acne.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody has a few pimples. A few pimples is what I went to bed with. By morning the number of blotches had doubled, and by the time I got home from school I had weeping pustular eruptions. That’s what the dermatologist called them.

“Gold! What’s happened to you?”

I shrugged.

He wore goggles and a surgical mask during the
appointment. If not for the rubber gloves, I’d’ve thought he was going snorkeling.

“Worst case I’ve ever seen,” he said, looking like I might be contagious. He said he’d leave a prescription at the front desk and quickly left the exam room.

THREE

Cultural differences. My mother told me this was the reason for
the divorce. That’s not to be read as religious differences. My dad grew up with a Hanukkah bush twinkling in the corner of the living room while the menorah was being lit, and baskets of chocolate from the Passover Bunny. As for Mom, the more candles, the better.

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