Take Me There (23 page)

And I know it wasn’t just a kiss.

Oh my god. This is why.

Gloria sits down next to Steve. She pulls her chair all the way over so it’s touching his. She puts her hand on his shoulder. You can see her perfectly done nails from all the way over here. She has this clingy black shirt with bold-colored stripes, and jeans that fit all her curves perfectly. And her perfect hair has that glossy thing going on that boys love.

That’s the thing with Gloria. She’s beyond gorgeous. So it’s obviously a physical thing. I just can’t believe that Steve would be such a
guy
. But there it is.

Gloria leans toward Steve and says something.

And that’s when he finally looks up and sees me staring at them.

My stomach churns. I have no idea what to say. Her hand is still on his shoulder. He’s avoiding eye contact with me.

Maybe I’ll say something like, “So . . . did you get my message?” all facetiously, the way we like to joke around. The way we used to.

Some boys at the table look up at me. Then they look over at Steve and crack up. They make noises. They snort into their cheeseburgers.

It’s official. I’m pathetic. I’m a pathetic, groveling, desperate ex-girlfriend.

I wish I had never come over here. I wish I could erase everything that’s happened since last night. But it’s already out there.

So I say, “Hey, Steve.”

When he looks up at me, he’s not Steve anymore. He’s someone I don’t know. My Steve would never look at me like that. Like I don’t belong here. Like he doesn’t even know me.

Gloria examines me through perfectly mascaraed lashes. She goes, “Hey, Rhiannon.”

Question: Why is she answering for him?

“We’ve been going out for two weeks,” Gloria informs me. “Which is why he dumped your ass. Or didn’t he tell you?”

I stare at her.

Gloria glares at Steve. “You didn’t tell her?”

“No—I . . .” Steve rips a piece of his napkin off.

“You did or you didn’t?” Gloria demands.

“Um . . . I was . . .”

But Gloria looks back at me. “Haven’t you been scary stalker chick enough for one day? Or are you a masochist, too?”

The whole table cracks up.

Steve doesn’t defend me. He just keeps ripping his napkin apart.

I turn around and look at the table I usually sit at with James. But he’s not there. He’s not anywhere. I’m all alone.

I can’t escape fast enough.

That did not just happen. There is no way that just happened.

I keep walking down the hall. Blocking out the hall monitor who asks for my pass. Blocking out the sound of everyone laughing at me. Blocking out everything. I have four more classes today. I won’t be in any of them.

The front doors double-dare me to push them open and ditch this disaster area. It’s not just raining. This is technically a torrential downpour. Rivers of water flood down the street. I stand in the hall, looking out at the world. The sky is so dark it’s like night out. Lightning flashes. Thunder booms so loudly the floor vibrates.

Normally in a situation like this, I would wait it out. Well, no, normally I wouldn’t cut class in the first place, but drastic times call for drastic actions. Or I would walk with James. I know he has an umbrella, because he listens to the weather forecast every morning. But James can’t save me this time. No one can save me except myself.

I push the door open. I step outside. I am immediately saturated. My message is a smeary swirl of purple and pink and blue, written for someone here who was already gone.

I don’t make a run for it. I’m walking all the way home.

I walk slowly in the rain. It feels like buckets of water are being dumped over my head, one after the other. My jeans are soaked. My white T-shirt is totally see-through now. Two crusty guys standing under a deli awning whistle as I go by. My flip-flops are drenched, squishing over puddles.

I need this rain to wash it all away.

It’s not until I get home and put my bag down that I realize my shirt is destroyed. My bag is from the Strand, this bookstore that sells dyed canvas bags. I guess I never thought about what would happen to a red bag against a white shirt in a downpour. I peel my shirt off. It was my favorite white shirt. Now it’s all streaked with red blotches.

Everyone has a breaking point. I’ve just reached mine.

The crying starts. And it doesn’t stop.

My phone’s ringing for like the tenth time. I let my machine pick up again. My cell is off. I don’t even care who it is. Probably James or Nicole. But I don’t feel like talking to anybody.

I open my lists journal and make a new one.

Snick-Snick purrs like a motor. He’s in this fluffy sleeping ball next to me on my bed. I wish I could be like that. All oblivious to how disgusting life can be.

I’m listening to “My Immortal” on repeat. Because apparently I haven’t felt enough pain for one day. Bring it. Maybe next I’ll even read over all of Steve’s old love letters.

The pain.

There’s a knock on my door. I look at the clock radio. 6:42. Mom’s home early.

So real.

She opens my door. “I’ve been calling you for dinner. I got Chinese.”

Too much.

“You okay?”

I turn over. Mom lingers in the doorway.

But then she sees how damaged I look, so she comes in. “I got your favorite. Pot stickers.”

Even that doesn’t make me smile.

“Do you want to talk about something?” she says.

Maybe. But talking to her feels like work. And I’m just too exhausted.

“No.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

I crawl over Snick-Snick and slide out of bed. I feel like I’ve been run over by a cement truck and then pounded by a wrecking ball. “Yeah,” I croak. I’m all groggy. “I’m going to the bathroom first.”

But I’m not okay. I can’t imagine ever feeling okay again.

Question: Is it possible to die of a broken heart?

When I check my messages I can’t believe it. James only left one message. Then there’s a bunch from Nicole.

Normally he’d leave more than that. Normally he’d be crazy worried about me.

It’s like he doesn’t care as much as he used to.

I call his house. His mom answers.

“Hi, Mrs. Worther,” I go. “Is James there?”

“Hello, Rhiannon! He’s not here right now.”

I hear Brian in the background, asking if he can talk to me. But I don’t have the energy right now.

“Oh. Well . . . do you know where he is?”

“It’s laundry day.” Which means he’s at Wash World. “I’m sure he’s having a marvelous time over there. Maybe you could keep him company?”

“I think I might. Thanks.”

The second I walk into Wash World, I feel a little better. It’s an automatic response. I’ve sat here with James so many times while he did laundry. He hates being here by himself. So we sit on the couch and talk, and whatever’s bothering me usually gets worked out by the time we leave. Kind of like an eighties sitcom.

I find him sitting on the couch, reading a book.

I’m like, “Hey.”

James looks surprised to see me. He says, “Hey.”

The dryer dings. James gets up.

“I, um. Are you mad at me or something?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

I’m all shy for some reason. Which is really weird. Because James and Nicole are the only people I feel totally myself around.

James takes a load of clothes out of the dryer and starts folding them.

I just stand there. Watching him fold.

“Why would I be mad at you?” he finally says.

“I don’t know.” I can’t exactly tell him. Like, how would that go?
Hey, yeah, so I noticed you only left me one message instead of five. What’s
that
about?

“I got your message.”

“I’m sorry about—”

“Yeah.” The whole thing is beyond words. That’s the cool thing about having a best friend. They know what your pain feels like already, so you don’t have to explain it.

I want to ask him why he wasn’t there. I want to tell him how hard it was for me. How alone I felt. But I have this feeling that I shouldn’t talk about Steve anymore. With Nicole, yeah. Just not with James.

He has to wait for another load of laundry to get done. So I wait with him. I lean back against the couch, sitting really low the way I like. I scrunch over and put my head on his shoulder.

We sit like that for a long time. Watching other people’s laundry dry.

MIGUEL’S RIPPING APART
his notebook, frantically searching for the extra-credit assignment. “I had it right here,” he gripes to no one in particular. “It was
right here
.”

The thing about extra credit for Earth Science is that Ms. Parker hardly ever gives any. And when she does, the only way to get it is if you’re the first one to hand it in. Thus, Miguel’s present state of conniption.

I feel bad for him, all frantic and scrabbling through his harassed folder like he misplaced the cure for sleep or something. He’s super smart, but I’ve told him a thousand times how his life would run a lot smoother if he’d just organize his binder.

Question: What’s so hard about understanding that?

Miguel wildly flips through more papers. “Where the—?” A wave of papers crashes to the floor.

He’s on the floor picking everything up when Eliezer creeps in, still half asleep as usual. He saunters by Ms. Parker’s desk with this bored expression that makes you tired just looking at him. Then he takes a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and drops in on her desk and goes, “Here’s the extra credit,” just as Miguel triumphantly whisks the paper he’s been looking for out of the mess on the floor and yells, “I found it!”

Life is so not fair. Kids like Miguel who work crazy hard and do all these activities like being in charge of lighting for plays and community service in the South Bronx are constantly disappointed. While burnouts like Eliezer think they can do one extra-credit assignment and it’ll make up for an entire marking period of failing tests and not doing homework. It’s some kind of twisted slacker logic.

We’re doing a rock-identification activity. Ms. Parker tells us to get into think tanks, which I hate. It’s her idea of working together and helping each other to make sure everyone understands everything. When really it’s just a smart kid paired up with a slow kid, and the smart kid ends up doing all the work and the slow kid just copies because it’s easier than the smart kid trying to explain a bunch of stuff the slow kid will never get.

So I’m paired up with this girl Heather who never talks. I guess Ms. Parker ran out of smart kids when she matched us up, because we’re both lost when it comes to science. All I know about her is that she’s into designing water fountains.

We use the Reference Tables to figure out the name of a weird rock that looks like sheets of paper all stuck together. Since we’ve been on this one for like five minutes and Heather’s not exactly an abundance of assistance, I listen to another team to see if I can hear what they got for it.

“You’re so retarded.”

“That’s not metamorphic.”

“It’s schist.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“Try eating sometime.”

“Is it shale?”

“Dog. I told you. It’s
schist
.”

“This isn’t rocket science, people.”

Alrighty then.

I was expecting to wake up today even more depressed than I was the day Steve broke up with me. But it’s not like that. I’m wicked angry. Angry at Steve, angry at Gloria, angry that this is my new reality. Basically, I’m angry at the whole world.