5

Morgan stops by to get the full scoop the next morning on her run before I go to sleep. I’ve already texted her the overview of my exchange with Charlie—which is embarrassing enough—but now she wants the down-and-dirty details straight from the dead-cat owner’s mouth.

“A cat?” she screeches, making a horrified face at me.

I groan and shove a pillow over my head. Maybe if I bury myself under here for long enough, I’ll wake up later and find out it was all just a horrible dream.

“A cat funeral!” Morgan sputters, laughing so hard now she almost falls off the desk chair she’s spinning around in.

“Stop saying it out loud!” I yell from under the pillow. There’s no way this is going to turn out to be just a nightmare if she keeps repeating all the dumb things I said last night.

Morgan gets up, walks across the room, and plops down on the bed next to me. I can’t see any of this, but I know she’s there from the ripples of laughter shaking the mattress. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Katie. I’ve actually heard that dead pets are an aphrodisiac.”

I sit up and take the pillow off my face. “What was I supposed to say?”

“Anything else,” she tells me. “Literally any other combination of words in the English language.”

I know the cat story was ridiculous and lame, but I can actually think of a few sentences that would have been worse. “Really? Like ‘Hey, I’m Katie, I’ve watched you from my window every day for the last ten years’?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t start with that…”

I cross my arms and give her a hard stare. “Okay, how about this, then. ‘You may recall me from Purdue Elementary, where everyone referred to me as Vampire Girl.’”

Morgan rolls her eyes at me. “No one remembers that!”

I sigh and punch my pillow. “I’ve always wanted to talk to him and I’ve always wanted to see him in real life and then I finally got to and I froze. My body betrayed me. You betrayed me!” I yell, staring down at myself in disgust.

“You’ll make up for it next time,” Morgan says, her voice softening. She’s not laughing at me anymore. She knows how much last night could have meant to me, and how crappy I feel for screwing it all up.

I give her a look. “You saw my tweet.” I’m referring to the one I made last night after I got home: Ugh. Never going out again. I mean it.

“Katie, this is actually a good thing, you’ll see,” Morgan says. “Now you know you can go out and interact with people our age and not everyone is a mean-ass bully. You’re very likable. Even when you say dumb stuff about your dead cat to the hottest guy in school.”

“Stop reminding me!” I say, smacking myself in the forehead with my palm. I really think I might cry now. “Besides, all last night proved is that I’m completely socially inept after being stuck in the house all these years. I refuse to embarrass myself like that ever again.”

Morgan pats my knee. “So you’re a little rusty. All the more reason to get back out there. Who knows what exciting thing might happen next time?”

“There’s not gonna be a next time,” I grumble. “At least not with Charlie.”

“You don’t know that—”

I stop her before she can give me any untrue reasons for why things might possibly work out in the future. “Yeah, I do. That was my shot. I’m never gonna see him again. And I know that for a fact because I’m never leaving the house again. My dad will be so relieved!”

“Come on now,” Morgan says. “You don’t really mean that.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Yes, I do.”

She stops trying to convince me I’m anything but a total fail at boys and life on the outside in general, and starts scrolling through her phone instead. Her jaw drops and she looks back up at me with saucer eyes. “Have you checked out Dear Gabby today?”

My heart shifts into high gear. This can mean only one thing. I wrote a question to our favorite advice columnist months ago, thought about sending it every day, but refused until a moment of weakness—not to mention acute loneliness—got me late one night a few weeks ago. I never thought I’d actually get a response, so I have no idea how to deal with the news that my frighteningly honest and embarrassingly revealing thoughts are out there in a public forum for anyone to read. I head straight into denial.

“No,” I mumble, fighting the urge to rip the phone out of Morgan’s hands to assess the damage. “I don’t really follow Dear Gabby anymore.”

Morgan screws up her mouth and gives me her best sassy face. “So you’re telling me you didn’t write this letter? And that some other random girl with a condition that sounds like XP who sounds exactly like you did?”

I refuse to meet her eyes and pretend to be totally engrossed in picking fuzzies off my baby blanket instead.

“Fine. This totally isn’t you,” she says, and starts reading the words I already know. My heart is hammering against my rib cage now like it’s trying to jump out and run away from this mortifying situation. “Dear Gabby, First, the bad news: I have a life-threatening illness where my body can’t deal with UV rays. Now the good news: Other than flipping day and night—if I can’t go out in the sun, I might as well enjoy the stars—I live a normal life for the most part. I play guitar, hang out with my BFF, kill it in school (I’m graduating with a 4.0 and am now taking college classes), and have a great relationship with my dad.

“The only thing missing is that special someone—I’m no different from anyone else when it comes to wanting to find a deep and magical connection. But barring dating a vampire who’s centuries too old for me, what guy would ever be able to deal with the strange hours I keep? Not to mention the fact that we’d never be able to go on a beach vacation together?

“Despite everything I have working against me, there is someone I’d like to get to know better. He has no idea I exist, but I’ve watched him from a distance for years and have always been drawn to what appears to be his kindness and good humor. He’s also ridiculously cute.

“So, Gabby, give it to me straight: Should I just give up on the idea of love, specifically with this boy? Or make a grand gesture to get his attention and hope he’s cool with my genetic malfunction? Signed, Sunless but not Hopeless.”

Morgan looks back up from her phone. I’m blushing from head to toe. I shake my head furiously. “Nope. No, no, no. Not me.”

“So I guess that also means you have no interest in Dear Gabby’s reply then, huh?” Morgan says, a little smile playing around her lips.

I’m still trying to play it cool. I don’t even know why. Clearly this letter was written by me. “I mean, if you think it’s a good one, I’ll read it,” I mumble. “If you really want me to. I guess.”

She smirks. “You’re not going to like how Dear Gabby totally, one hundred percent agrees with my advice to you. Oh, I mean, that other girl with XP who’s living a parallel life to yours. You have to… I mean she has to get back out there and try again with Charlie.”

“Dear Gabby didn’t say that!” I grab for Morgan’s phone. She lets me have it. I start to read.

Dear Sunless,

There’s a not-so-famous adage a New Jersey–born friend once passed on to me: Everyone has their shit sandwich. The only difference is some people aren’t willing to talk about it. Believe me when I tell you everyone comes into a relationship with baggage, and I mean everyone. Depression, dysfunction, debt, doubt, you name it. You just happen to have cells that can’t process the sun and force you to be nocturnal. So what? Is that so much worse than anyone else’s shit sandwich?

You might not be able to meet him for an afternoon of minigolf, but dating mostly goes on at night, anyway. Which means you’re not out of the running as a potential partner—not by a long shot, pumpkin.

Besides, it seems to me you’re putting the cart before the horse here. You’re already assuming this guy—who you’ve said appears to be full of great qualities—would surely reject you because of a circumstance beyond your control. Remember, while you may not be out and about during daylight hours, he most certainly goes out at night. So why not put yourself somewhere he’s apt to be and give him a chance to prove you wrong? Start a conversation. See where it leads. Be casual, cool, calm, collected. Allow yourself to be surprised.

I’m going to leave you with this thought. Actually, it’s a challenge. Do not let this one aspect of your life—which doesn’t define you, might I add—stop you from chasing your wildest dreams. Try putting a little more faith in yourself and your fellow humans, and our infinite capacity to love and forgive each other in spite of our shortcomings.

As for this boy, I say go for it. In fact, go for everything you want in this life. I hope you get everything you dream of and more.

Love,

  Gabby

I ignore the part about not letting this one aspect of my life define me (because when you have a rare disease like XP, there’s no getting away from it—but Gabby couldn’t know about that) and try to let the solid advice sink in, but all I can think about is how vulnerable and exposed I feel. I pray Zoe Carmichael and her crew don’t follow Dear Gabby. I’d hate to think how much more they’d be able to torture me with this kind of knowledge.

“The needing to have more faith in yourself and other people part, and our infinite capacity to love and forgive each other’s shortcomings, is great, right?” Morgan says when I hand her back the phone. “I almost teared up, and you know how much it takes for me to get emotional.”

“Personally, I liked the poop sandwich analogy,” I say with a little smile. Dear Gabby really is the best. She’s smart and honest, and always tells it straight even when you might not exactly want to hear it. “And I still contend I didn’t write that.”

Morgan eye-rolls me into the next century. “Sure,” she says. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to talk to him again. You could, like, snap him a funny picture of one of your stuffed animals in a box and say you can hang out now that the funeral is over or something.”

I shake my head. “Not even a chance.”

“But he was so nice to you,” Morgan protests. “He liked your song. And your voice. And you.”

I think about that and come to the conclusion that Morgan’s not completely off base. Charlie was really nice to me, despite all my awkwardness. He listened to my song and seemed to really appreciate it. He still wanted to talk to me even after I started making up insane lies to get away from him. He’s pretty much the perfect guy… which is why he doesn’t need me and my problems in his life, I quickly conclude. “Charlie Reed and I are just not in the cards,” I tell her.

Morgan gets off my bed and grabs my guitar, then hands it to me. “You know what would be a great way to spend your time instead of being so stubborn? Write a song about last night. This is what Taylor Swift does! She has awkward interactions with boys and then writes amazing songs about them.”

So maybe there is a silver lining to this mortifying situation after all. Everyone knows heartbreak is a great source of artistic inspiration.

“Oh, you mean like this?” I take my guitar from Morgan and start improvising.

“I’m a crazy pathetic person, don’t know why,

couldn’t even look him in the eye,

I choked, I blew it, felt like I’m gonna hurl,

I’m the biggest dork in the whole wide world…”

“Hmmmm. I’d keep working on that,” Morgan tells me.

I walk over to my guitar case, a new idea for a song forming in my head. I’m totally going to write a country tune called “My Fake Dead Cat (Wants You to Come to His Funeral),” which I will dedicate to Charlie Reed and he will hear it on the radio and laugh and find my awkwardness adorable and we’ll start over. There’s only one problem, though: My lyrics book isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

“Oh my God, my notebook!” I gasp, my heart racing into full panic mode. “I think I left it at the station. Every song I’ve ever written is in there! Can you go get it?”

“I would, but my parakeet died, and I have to sit shiva for him…”

I smack her on the thigh. “Seriously. Please.”

She laughs. “Of course. I’ll pick it up this afternoon.”

Once Morgan takes off, I go back to wallowing in regrets of what might have been. Damn you, Charlie Reed. If only you’d been a total disappointment, I wouldn’t care what an ass I made out of myself in front of you last night.

Unfortunately, you were even more awesome than I’d imagined.