The S-Word (19 page)

And nobody had seen through it yet.

She laid her head on my shoulder, still hugging me. “I miss you.”

“I’m right here.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” I turned to look at her. She looked surprised, like she wasn’t expecting me to be so close. “But summer’s almost here, and Drake’s going on that trip with his dad, so . . . God, I sound pathetic, don’t I?”
My boyfriend’s leaving, so we can hang out more.

Yikes.

Lizzie brushed the hair from my eyes. I’d parted it far over on the side, in an attempt to look glamorous. Even my eyes were dark. Smoky. Sultry.

Yeah, right.

“You don’t sound pathetic,” she said. “You sound like someone who’s in love.” She popped her glossy pink lips. She never needed to wear much makeup, did she? “Are you in love?” she asked.

It was weird. Even with Drake in my life, Lizzie and I still spent the night together about once a week. But she’d never asked me that. And I’d never offered it up.

“I love him.” Wrenching myself from the mirror, I sat down on one of the two beds. Normal kids got ready for prom in their bedrooms, but Lizzie and I didn’t feel at home in our houses. We’d checked into our room early, wanting a space that was our own.

Lizzie continued to fuss with her hair, giving me the space she knew I needed. “That doesn’t sound so convincing.”

Her tone was playful, but I caught the underlying message: If he’s not so great, why do I have to share my best friend with him?

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “Drake’s great. He’s sweet, he’s funny. I know for a fact he looks hot in a tux.”

She grinned.

“But we’ve been together for four years. For all of high school. This is the time where people break up or, like, get married.”

Her grin slipped, but she caught it quickly.

“And I don’t want to break up,” I said. “But marriage? Seriously? I don’t even know if I want that.”

“Pragmatist,” she teased, an old joke.

“Hopeless romantic.”

“You don’t have to make a decision yet. Just because other people do doesn’t mean you have to.”

“I know, but . . . I have to register for school,” I reminded her. “I’ve got, like, two weeks left. Two weeks to decide between CU—”

“Where Drake is going.”

“Or Colorado State—”

“Where
I’m
going.” Lizzie smiled sweetly, as if to say,
Pick me!

Of course, I hadn’t told either of them about the acceptance letter to UCLA I’d buried under a mountain of socks in my top dresser drawer. They wouldn’t have understood. Drake lived a charmed life in Colorado, and Lizzie refused to leave her widowed dad.

As for me, well, my parents would be better off without me. And I hated this wintry place.

But could I leave Lizzie and Drake?

“Well, even if you do go to CU,” Lizzie said, clearly taking my silence to mean I’d chosen my boyfriend, “it doesn’t mean you have to marry him.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m full of shit. Tell me what to do!”

Lizzie laughed. “Tell me if you’re in love with him, and I will.”

I can’t.

If I admitted to being in love with him, he became everything to me. Then, if I lost him, I lost everything. Better to keep myself safe.

I said, “I just don’t want to be like Romeo and Juliet, you know? They died for each other and they were, like, fourteen.”

“So you wouldn’t die for me?” She gasped, flitting over to me like a butterfly.

“That’s different.” I could still see us in the mirror. Even though we looked like opposites, we complemented each other. For the first time in my life, I let myself believe I deserved her friendship.

“So you would?” She put her hand over her forehead, like a damsel. “You’d die for me?”

“Of course I would. You’re my best friend.”

She stared at me a minute, like she wanted to say something important. But when Drake entered the room, she only whispered, “Me too.”

I KNOW WHAT
you’re thinking. I was thinking it too. I’d wanted Drake for so long and now I was afraid to let myself fall in love with him. After all, he was just a guy, I told myself as we moved to the dance floor, leaving Lizzie behind. He didn’t get involved when I talked about psychology, or politics, or the hundred little things that bothered me about religion. And when we made love, I tried so hard to get him to connect with me, I swear I missed out on the experience half the time.

He was average.

No, he was better than average, because he genuinely cared about me, and he did make me laugh, doing goofy impressions or telling me funny stories about the stuff that happened during practice. Hell, he didn’t even balk when I
insisted
we bring my best friend to the prom, because she didn’t have anyone to go with and wasn’t it our responsibility, as good people, to make sure she had a rockin’ time?

Drake was a great guy. I was lucky. And right now, he was doing that dorky thing where he tried to slow dance with me to a
really fast song, and it was making me laugh. I leaned into him, watching the dangling star-lights twinkle over our heads. Behind his back, van Gogh’s celestial masterpiece spread out across the circular wall, re-created by the art students. Even our outfits matched the
Starry Night
theme: Lizzie in blue, me in black, and Drake in a black tux with blue accents. I slid my hands up his lapel, wrapping my arms around his neck. It didn’t even bother me that people were knocking into us and it was totally our fault. I just wanted to be close to him.

Maybe I really am in love.

For the first time in a long time, I felt safe. Happy.

Unfortunately, I was so immersed in this newfound feeling of happiness that it took me far too long to realize Lizzie was missing. Okay, I probably noticed after two or three songs. But I felt like an asshole, standing there clinging to my boyfriend while my best friend had fled the premises.

And, in that moment, I started to think about some things.

If Lizzie was really my opposite, then she
needed
romance. She was Cinderella searching for her prince. And though it was far from midnight, the sight of me, and so many others, pairing off in this beautiful ballroom was probably too much for her slippered feet to handle.

So she bailed. And maybe I should’ve let her. But it seemed unfair that she should miss out on tonight when she was the one who actually cared about these things.

I detangled myself from Drake. “Lizzie left.”

“What? She’s right over . . .” He trailed off, pointing in some vague direction.

“She
was
over there,” I said. “Then she was at the snack table.”

He smirked. “Were you just pretending to pay attention to me?”

“Drake, she’s my best friend. And this is kind of a big night for some people. People who, like, believe in this shit.”

“Eloquent, as always.”

I punched him in the arm. “Stop teasing me. I’m being serious.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Listen, you go fulfill your Prom Court duties.” He nodded to the cluster of girls in the center of the room. Naturally, devil-in-a-red-dress Kennedy had scored the best real estate in the place. “I’ll look around for Lizzie,” he said. “It’s pretty warm in here anyway.”

“We’re not supposed to leave the ballroom.”

“They’re not even paying attention.” Then, as if to settle the matter, he planted one on me.

“Thank you.” I felt a spread of warmth as he left my side. Sure, he was a guy, but it was his prom too. He should’ve been mingling with his buddies and making lewd jokes about prom sex. Instead, he was searching the grounds for my friend.

Searching. And searching. Yeah, Drake ended up being gone for a long time. By the end of the first half hour, all my doubts had mutated, and I started to think about some more things. Things my heart hadn’t let me see before.

I thought of that night in middle school when Lizzie described the attributes of her crush. Brown hair. Blue eyes. How many guys in our grade even had notably blue eyes?

I thought of that day in the Alternate Dimension Bathroom. Lizzie had looked so flustered after her talk with Drake. Her hair had been messed up. She’d immediately reglossed her lips. I had to have been an idiot to miss what those things meant.

They’d kissed!

Or he’d kissed her. God, had Drake wanted Lizzie all along? Had he merely settled for me? No wonder he hadn’t minded that she’d come with us to prom.

She was the one he wanted to take.

I raced out of the ballroom. My heart couldn’t even catch up
with my feet, but damn it if it didn’t try. It took practically no time at all to reach the hotel room. I remember thinking, even before I opened the door, that I’d gotten there too quickly. I wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready to be proven right. I’d never be ready.

But I opened the door anyway.

I opened the door and I heard Lizzie gasp.

It might’ve been a gasp of surprise. Looking back, that’s what makes the most sense. But at the time, I heard it as a gasp of pleasure. And part of me died.

So much of me died.

Lizzie.

Yes, I looked at her first. I’d been close to her the longest. I’d trusted her the most. A part of me had always suspected Drake might break my heart. Hell, wasn’t that why I’d been so afraid to get close to him?

But Lizzie? The sun to my moonlight? The girl I’d rocked to sleep when she had nightmares as a child. The girl who was always supposed to be a part of my life, whether boys came and went.

My forever friend.

The truth hit me so hard I could barely stand.

Lizzie doesn’t love me.

My eyes turned to Drake then. Drake, crawling off her like an animal. He had a look in his eyes I’d never seen. Was it passion?

My heart cracked and spilled out inside of me.

Was it love?

Was this how he looked when he loved someone?

I looked him right in the eye and said, “Thanks for proving me right.”

I tried, without turning, to back out of the room. But Lizzie called to me, and I looked. Stupidly, I looked.

Her eyes were bright. Her lips were red from kissing. I
hated her in that moment, but only because I’d loved her so much. I hated her because she didn’t love me, and hers was the only love I’d ever completely believed in.

Why don’t you love me?

My eyes strayed to her hands as she pulled at the broken strap of her dress. Stumbling from the bed, she brushed past me, out of the room. But my eyes were stuck on Drake now, thinking:
You wanted her all along. She wanted you. You both fooled me.

Neither of you love me.

I finally succeeded in backing out of the room. Halfway down the hall, I ran into the cheerleading squad. At the time, I thought they were worried about me.

Now I think they were just sniffing for a scandal.

It took three of them to lead me down the hallway. Ideally, they would’ve just locked me up in a hotel room, but hell, mine was already occupied. I remember Kennedy stroking my hair while the girls yelled obscenities in Drake’s direction. We slipped into the ballroom through a door in the back (who knew?) and spent the next half hour taking pulls from Kennedy’s flask. I don’t remember much after that, though not really because of the alcohol.

What I do remember is this: Lizzie and Drake never returned to the dance, but their damage had been done. The entire ballroom was abuzz with whispers of my undoing. When the results for Prom Queen were announced, a quiet numbness overtook me. I climbed to the stage and looked out at the student body. They stared back at me, filled with sympathy. Filled with awe. And I realized something: I finally had the recognition I’d desired.

I had nothing.

A
T TWO IN
the morning there’s a knock on my window. Half-asleep, I’m convinced it’s Lizzie’s ghost. I’m scared shitless but I go to the window anyway.

I’m wrong. It’s not a ghost. It’s a flesh-and-blood person.

I open the window so he can climb in. I can see him perfectly in the moonlight. “Hey.”

“Don’t you answer your phone, girl?”

“My phone?” Yeah, my brain is still a little hazy. “Oh, I turned it off. Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” Jesse says. He’s wearing all black like he’s dressed for a spy mission. It takes me a minute to realize this is the mission. Me. My house. “I just got worried,” he says.

Worried about what?
I wonder.
Worried that the pain will become too great for me, or worried I’ll bulldoze over someone who can’t handle it?

“I’m okay,” I say as he sits on my bed. “I just needed a break.”

“That’s cool.” His voice sounds a little wounded. He pulls off his hat and his hair is all matted. “I just couldn’t sleep, and I
remembered you were only a few blocks away. Sorry. Is that weird?”

No, it’s sweet.

But I have to be cold. I sit on the bed, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Kind of. Look, Jesse—”

“I get it,” he says. “I’m a stalker. I’ll get out of here.”

“No, wait.”

“I can take a hint.” Then, because he can’t seem to go two minutes without teasing me, he sniffs. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“You’re wanted,” I say before I can stop myself. And since I’ve already started, I keep going. “You’re wanted too much, that’s the problem. I like you.”

I can’t believe I’m doing this. There’s absolutely no reason to be telling him this. But he just looks at me with those dark brown eyes, taking it in.

“I like you,” he says, poking my knee. “That’s a good thing.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” I feel like a six-year-old when I say “I
like
you.”

You know,
want to invite you under my covers
like.

I keep that one to myself.

“I see.” He looks at the open window. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You probably should, yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be.” He stands. It happens so quickly, I feel panicked even though I told him to go. “It’s okay.”