The Distance from A to Z (19 page)

Wait, what? What?

This can't be about us being together. The only reason my brothers would care this much about meeting someone is if they were a—

No. No. No. No.

Zeke is holding my phone out to me. “They said they'll talk to you later. I wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Those words? All those words? They're nothing like any of the words we've ever spoken to each other before. They're empty shells of words, no flirting, no teasing. They don't even sound like sadness, like the words I used when I thought Zeke was with Chloe, the words he used when he told me how he felt.

“I didn't know how to say it. I didn't want to lose you.”

“Tell me.”

The words are ugly in English but I don't translate in my head. It's like all the French words have disappeared, slipped away into the breeze. There's only English left, and I hate it.

“We should start walking.”

“Tell me.”

“I play baseball.” He pauses and purses his lips for a long moment. “I play a lot of baseball. I'm a pitcher, and I'm good. I'm good enough that there are teams interested in drafting me out of high school.”

No. No. No. No.

It's so obvious. I'm an idiot. I can't believe I missed it all. The injury, Zeke's athletic body. All the calls and the trips to doctors in Boston. The baseball glove in his backpack. The T-shirts. The trivia.

I take a step back and Zeke follows.

“Stop. How good?”

He wipes his eyes with his fingers. “I'm the top-ranked high school junior.”

Top-ranked?

“Then why aren't you playing now, doing summer training?”

“Because of my shoulder. I was in a car accident, and I sprained my ankle, hurt my shoulder.”

“Oh, so
that
part of your story
is
true.” The bitterness is so thick it coats all the words, all the words in my head, all the words in my body. He lied to me.

“Everything I told you was true—”

“Stop.” We used to say
arrête
. That's what he said that day in my room, moments before he kissed me.
Arrête. Arrête de penser
. Stop thinking. “You . . . you must have thought I was the biggest joke. What, was this a contest? Like, see if you can snag the girl who hates baseball? The one who claims she's an expert but doesn't even know that she's slowly falling in love with . . .”

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

“Abby—”

“You made me feel like you understood me. And all along you were probably laughing. The girl you almost let beat you in baseball trivia. Were you thinking I was a big joke?”

“No, Abby, listen to me.” He's coming closer and closer and I keep moving back and I'm on the sidewalk and half-afraid that in a moment I'll be in the fast-moving street. “Abby, I wanted to tell you but I was afraid.”

“Stop.”

“Abby, je craignais que tu—”
I was nervous that you would—

“No French. No more. No.”

His face drops.

A cab is stopped at the corner and I glance inside. Empty. I fling open the door. “Hi,” I say in English, my words as flat and accented as I can make them. I'm a parody of an American tourist without the decency to even say
bonjour
. “We need to make a stop at Hotel du Lac to pick something up and then on to the bus station.”

Before he has a chance to respond, I slide down the seat. As much as I want to be far from Zeke, we're going the same way.

“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle, mais—”

“Hotel du Lac,” I say slowly, enunciating every word. “Bus
station.”

I don't translate; I don't even accent my words. I speak English. That's it.

“Bien,”
the driver says, flicking on the meter.

“Abby.”

“No.” And that's the last word I speak to him. I don't say a thing as we head into our hotel to grab our bags. Not a word as we head to the smelly bus station, call to tell Marianne that we're catching the bus back to Merritt. I don't say a word when I hand my dozen fresh Montreal bagels to the homeless guy outside the entrance to the station, pitch the postcards, flags, and rose. All of it, gone.

When the bus comes, I wait to get on toward the end of the line, and choose a seat at the front of the bus, a single seat next to an older woman. Zeke slips into the seat across the aisle.

“Abby,” he tries again, his tone plaintive. “That's what I wanted to say, this morning.”

And now I want to vomit. My eyes burn with tears.

“Do you want to switch seats?” the lady beside me asks.

“No, thank you,” I tell her with a large smile. And I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. For the entire four hours back to school.

He lied.

WHEN I WALK INTO OUR
room, Alice is lying on her back on her bed, legs up against the wall. She's writing in her Moleskine notebook with a pencil.

“That can't be very comfortable,” I say, surprised that the words even come out. I haven't spoken since I rejected the woman on the bus's offer to switch seats. I ignored Zeke even though every part of my body wanted to listen, wanted to lean into his words. Words that he eventually stopped using. Eventually, he closed his eyes too. I know because I peeked.

“You know, I heard that some country or other wanted to develop a special pen that can write in zero gravity during the space race, and spent like a gazillion dollars on it and then the other country just used a pencil. I guess one of the countries was probably the United States. And the other was Russia?”

As much as every part of me is hollowed out until I am only
a dry husk, I laugh. “For a writer, I can't help but be unimpressed by your storytelling skills.”

I drop my bag on my bed, wishing I could have pitched it with the bagels and postcards and the rose. The effing rose.

“I could Google the story if you want?” Alice offers, her pencil still traveling at a rapid pace across the paper.

“No need.” I sigh. “The story is that the Americans spent millions and the Russians used a pencil. But the story's an urban legend.”

An urban legend. Basically a lie. A story that gets told so often you begin to believe it. The story of the supercute athlete who loved to speak French, who held my hand like it mattered, who took care of me when I was hungover, who spent last night with his body wrapped around mine. Who never took things a step further than I was comfortable with. The boy I told all my secrets to, and I thought he did the same. Only he didn't.

And what's worse is that I knew something was off; I knew there was more to the story than simple physio. I knew it, and I didn't ask the questions. Not about the odd phone calls or the texts that angered him. I didn't ask him why there were still so many secrets.

Except, what would I have done if he'd told me that secret?

If I'd Googled him, if I'd tried to force him to talk? I'd have walked away, no doubt. If that first day, he'd told me he
was on his way to becoming a professional baseball player, I never would have given him a chance.

If Alice notices my edge, she doesn't say anything. Instead, she slides her feet down the wall until her legs are bent to each side, like two angle brackets. It makes her previous position seem almost comfortable.

“Was Montreal in the summer as romantic as Paris in the spring?” she asks, closing her notebook and attempting to toss it onto her desk. It lands in her wastebasket.
“Merde.”
She sighs.

“Don't.” I can't help it. No French. “It was crappy. And I don't want to talk about it.”

Because even though I should have asked, even though I could read the signs, he was still lying. Deliberately lying.

“Okay.” Alice rolls to her side, her long braid trailing behind her. Except instead of the mousy brown color that should match mine, there are all sorts of colors in there. Reds and blues and oranges and a gorgeous dark purple. Holy
aubergine
. I mean, eggplant.

Merde
.

Stop.

“What did you do to your hair?”

Alice puts her hand back as though she needs the reminder. “Oh right. Yesterday, I dyed it.”

“Like, permanently?” Zeke and Montreal and the lies all
disappear.

“Yup. Turns out that Jackie down the hall is great with this stuff. I just bought the dyes and she did it for me. We turned the common room into a salon, and I figured what the hell? Only live once, right?”

“I want to do it.” The words shock me. I want this. I want something unexpected and big; I want everything to be different.

“Um, okay?” Alice lifts up until she's on her hands and knees. She arches her back down and then back up, cat pose to cow pose, again and again. “But maybe we should first talk about the weekend?”

“Nope.” I don't want to bring in this weekend. I just want this. Something entirely new. “Do you think she'll do it now?”

“It's almost eleven.”

“I don't care. I assume there's nowhere else I could do it, right? No salons open now? Isn't this a college town? Shouldn't they be open late into the night?”

“Abby?” There's a hint of concern in her voice, and I can't do that. I can't do concern right now. I don't want to go back to crying, to trying to hide my tears from Zeke. No more. New Abby now. Abby who doesn't need Zeke. Abby who can't be hurt by Zeke if she doesn't care about him.

“I need this, Alice. Please.”

“Okay. I'll grab my leftover dyes and let's see what Jackie can do.”

Jackie, as it turns out, is more than happy to earn forty dollars at eleven o'clock at night.

“Here's the thing,” she says, combing through my long hair with her fingers. “You don't have enough dye to do all of this, and it's gonna take a ton of time because you have so much hair. I can maybe do the tips—”

“Can you cut it all off?”

There's a long beat of silence.

“Um . . .” Jackie looks at Alice.

“Abby, why don't you think about it.”

“No.” I don't look at Alice. I don't look at her because she's saying all the right things and I know they're true, but not right now. Right now I need a big gesture. Not a big, romantic gesture like a hero does at the end of the movie to get back the girl after he messed up. But my own big gesture. A big gesture so I can get myself back. So I can be someone other than the girl whose heart is breaking. Effing baseball.
Quelle surprise
. What a shock.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Alice nod, and I reach for her hand.

This is what matters.

Operation New Leaf is officially on. Who cares if there's
only one more week. I'm not wasting another moment being sad.

An hour later, I walk out of the common room feeling light and airy. Like I'm no longer a husk of a body but a balloon floating through an ugly college corridor.

“It's awesome,” Alice says, skipping beside me. I slip my fingers to the back of my neck, bare now, the short ends at ear level. I don't even care that there was no time to dye it. I love my hair like this.

I have the curly version of Audrey Tautou's haircut from
Amélie
. Or maybe Marianne's. But I'm going with
Amélie
.

I can't remember the last time my hair was this short. At first Jackie cut it to shoulder level and I begged her to go shorter. “Are you sure?” she'd asked, and I couldn't stop bouncing up and down in my chair. “Shorter, shorter.” And that's when I found a picture on my phone from the movie and lifted it up so she could see it. “This is what I want.”

“Oh,” Alice had said. But it was a good
oh
. Like an
oh, yes
.

“You have a very sexy neck.” Alice giggles as we reach our room.

“I do, don't I?” I use my behind to push open the door and turn to find Zeke. Sitting on my bed.

“Oh,” Alice says, and this time it's not a good
oh
. It's an
oh, this is awkward
.

“Wow,” Zeke says, standing up. His fingers are reaching for my hair, and I can't help it. I lean toward him because those fingertips on my neck are everything I want. Until I remember. I remember and take a step back. Right into Alice.

“Oh,” she says again.

Who knew one sound could have so many meanings?

Zeke's hand drops and his head tilts forward. “You cut off all your hair.”

He's wearing a different T-shirt, an old, ratty white one with the toucan from the Froot Loops box in the center. It's not the one he wore all day today, the one I rested my head against as we watched soccer, the one in the picture we took this morning in Vieux Montreal.

The picture. My brothers. The call. The lie.

“I wanted to get rid of the dead weight in my life,” I say, and even though it's meant to hurt, I can't look at his face when I say it.

But still I see him flinch. Because it's a motion that he does with his whole body.

“Fuck,” Alice whispers.

“Can we talk?” he says to my shoes.

I look at his shoes: red Chucks, untied. Like always.

“Maybe tomorrow would be better,” Alice says, her hand finding the small of my back.

I don't want him to go, but I don't want him to stay. I want to go back to five minutes ago, when I felt strong and powerful. Or yesterday, when I felt loved.

“Tu es toujours belle, mais comme ça, tu es vraiment magnifique,”
he whispers as he passes.

You are always beautiful, but like that, you're really magnificent.

Fuck
is right.

I wake up the next morning feeling unsettled. Like something's off, only I'm not sure what. Pulling my hair back to get the fuzzy ends out of my way, I'm reminded what it is.

I have no hair.

And no hair means no Zeke.

“You slept through breakfast, so I picked up a bagel and mocha for you,” Alice calls from her bed. She's writing in her Moleskine, and my sense of general doom and gloom is slightly tempered by the reality that there's coffee nearby. One day I want to buy a cappuccino machine that will live right next to my bed. I have no idea why people put them in kitchens; they are so much better off as the first thing you see when you wake up.

But a quick glance at the actual first thing I see beside my bed—my clock—brings the dark clouds right back where they belong. “Damn, I'm late for class.”

Alice caps her fountain pen and closes her journal. She rolls to face me. “Zeke stopped me at breakfast and asked me to remind you that you don't have class today because of the weekend trip.”

Zeke. Zeke who lay with me in bed, our limbs intertwined, hands together, my head on his chest. Zeke who lied.
Il a menti
. He lied.

Alice reads my reactions as though I wrote them all down. “He looked—”

“Don't care.” My eyes screw shut as though it can stop the words.

“Broken.”

Zeke, broken? He'll bounce back. Liars always do. Even if he can't right now, he'll learn it when he goes pro. One day, he too will stand behind a podium and look sad—broken, even. “I feel like I let down my team, my fans, my family,” he'll say, eyes downcast. “I've entered counseling/sought help/prayed with my pastor, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to earn the trust and respect of those I let down.”

I flop back to bed. Ballplayers are good liars.

“Did he tell you what happened?”

There's a long pause, and I know that if I opened my eyes, I'd see Alice's nod. Of course he did. He probably made it seem like I was the one who overreacted, like it's all my fault.

“He feels awful about it.”

I'm sure he does. Because there's a week left of the program, and he'll have to find someone else to screw around with, someone who won't care that he'll likely be the first high school draft pick.

Someone like Stephie. Or Chloe. Or really anyone in this dorm apart from me and hopefully Alice.

The fact that the thought of him touching any of them makes me want to vomit only succeeds in reinforcing my determination to stay away.

Ballplayers lie. And whatever ass he's capable of getting at Huntington is only a small portion of what he'd be able to score back home, or once he accepts the deal that will likely be offered to him. Top-ranking junior that he is.

“What's your story today?” Alice asks. “I'm headed to the pottery studio after class. Want to join me?”

The pottery studio is outside this room.

“No. My only plan for today is avoiding Zeke Martin.”