The moment Nina had been dreading finally came on Monday morning, when Mel peeked shyly around the council office door. Nina had been hiding in there, stuffing holiday dance envelopes. The letters didn’t need to go out for weeks, but Nina was briskly working down the assembly line she’d made for herself, trying to seem as busy as possible. Anything to stall for time.
“Have you got a second?” Mel asked.
“Um … sure,” Nina replied with a slight nervous twitch.
“Need help?”
“No. I’m good.”
Mel sat down at the table and picked one of the reservation cards out of the stack and stared at it. She poked at the snowflakes on the card with her finger, going from flake to flake like a little child with a picture book.
“Has Avery seemed … upset to you?” she asked.
This was it. The beginning of the lie. Every second Nina kept quiet would just make the lie bigger.
“Upset?” she said.
“She hasn’t said anything to you about me?”
Between friends, not speaking was the same thing as lying.
Talking, not talking. It made no difference. She was screwed.
“Maybe I shouldn’t get involved in this stuff.” Nina asked. “I can’t really take sides, you know?”
Jeff came in, gave a quick hello, then dropped himself at the computer and started checking his sales, bringing an end to their conversation.
“I better get to homeroom,” Mel said, backing up.
Nina followed her to the door and grabbed Mel by the shoulder before she could walk away.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I think it’s just that she’s getting used to the idea that people know.”
“But did she say something?” Mel asked. There was a real urgency in her eyes.
Lies, lies, lies, lies …
“No,” Nina said. “She hasn’t said anything.”
“Really?” Mel perked up a bit.
“Really.”
“Okay,” Mel said.
Nina went back into the office and sank down at the table. Georgia came in a minute later and threw down a container of small, dry-looking bran muffins. Nina gazed at them and realized that she had absolutely no appetite.
Third-period music theory wasn’t a class Avery could really zone in since there were only four people in it, but it was hard to keep her mind on appropriate uses of the nondominant seventh chord when she could see Gaz out in the hallway, reading something off a music department notice board. He shouldn’t have been there. He was supposed to be somewhere on the other side of the building. This had to mean he wanted to talk, which wasn’t really like Gaz.
She’d just managed to get through the talk with Nina. She’d done her shift on Sunday then gone to see Mel. She’d played it well, but in her head, nothing was right. Mel was so tiny. Mel was so squeaky. Mel sat in her lap like some kind of overgrown orange kitten. Mel wanted to make out and would not let Avery watch The Royal Tenenbaums, because Mel did not understand the movie and anyway you’re supposed to make out instead of actually watching movies. You’re supposed to want to. But Avery didn’t want to. She wanted to watch Owen Wilson go insane and crash his car into the building. Owen Wilson reminded her of Gaz. They were both blond guys, after all, with that same strange blank delivery. Nonchalant.
And they were guys. She had guys on the brain. She’d eyed up every single one of her male customers at work. She’d even looked at Bob.
She went through it again in her head. The car. The cold. Gaz’s pale face, his thin, wide lips. He had muscles in his upper arms. She’d never noticed that before Friday. He’d always seemed like a beanpole.
Truth be told, the kiss wasn’t a four out of ten. It was more like a seven. She’d happily do it again. But that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. That was the problem with dating your best friend—you needed a really serious reason to stop. It was kind of a permanent situation. It was like she’d gotten married without realizing it.
Oh, now the panic was going. Now she had it good. She jammed her pen hard up the coil of her spiral notebook and wondered if the gesture meant something.
And Gaz was outside the door, and the bell was going to ring. And she’d just missed the entire homework assignment.
Great.
She wondered if anyone would think it was weird if she just jumped out of the window and started running across the soccer field, escaping. Other people had to have these impulses.
Escape attempts are only had if they catch you.
Which they would, given her current luck.
And the bell. Ding. Round one.
“Hey,” he said, as she came out of the room. He looked really good today. He was wearing a black button-down shirt made of some kind of satin or polyester or something. It was tapered, but it still hung loose against his thin frame. It made him look taller. (What was with this sudden height obsession?)
“S’up?” she said, casting an eye over the board, but not really reading anything.
“Nothing.”
Maybe she was going to get away with this after all….
“You have a second?” he asked.
Nope.
“Um … yeah. If you walk with me to chem.”
Gaz didn’t say anything at all for about half of the walk. He just moved along beside her. There was nothing really different about his walk, except that it seemed kind of … possessive. Like he was with her.
“I was thinking …” he said.
Admittedly, this was kind of a major announcement, coming from Gaz.
“Right,” she said, swerving to avoid half the lacrosse team. A few of them threw her looks. Lacrosse. Screw lacrosse.
“I heard something,” Gaz said.
“What?”
“About you and Mel.”
This was it. Moment of truth.
“It’s just …” How the hell did she explain this? “I can’t do anything about the other night. I’m in the middle of this … thing.”
“With Mel?”
“Yeah.”
He got it. She didn’t need to draw a picture.
“I think it’s cool that you’re open to stuff,” he said.
“So we’re cool?”
“We’re cool.”
And that was that. He didn’t even seem surprised. He wasn’t mad, or revolted. He didn’t ask to watch. He was just Gaz, and things were easy with Gaz. But something swept over his expression. He wasn’t completely happy with this. There was just enough hesitation….
And then there was the part that was both exciting and terrifying to Avery as Gaz left her at the door of the chem lab—nothing had ever been as appealing to her as his faint look of disappointment
TO: Nina
FROM: Steve
I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be living in our house right now. The ceiling in my mom’s studio is sagging from all this water that’s trapped on the roof, our one toilet won’t stop flushing itself, and the corner of the wood floor in the living room turned black overnight and no one knows why. Plus this herbalist guy is staying with us. He keeps burning things and the place totally reeks.
All of this has driven our cat crazy and he has expressed his dismay by attacking my good biking shoes.
The weird thing is, no one notices any of this but me. When I point to the water coming through the ceiling or the stuff that’s growing on the floor, my parents just shrug and say, “What?”
I guess when you grow up in a teepee, some things just don’t get to you.
I’m starting my application for Stanford. By the time I’m done, it’s going to be wet and clawed up and smelly. At least I’ll stand out.
Sorry to complain.
November 22
TO: Steve
FROM: Nina
You can always complain to me! I love you, and it scares me that you are surrounded by mold and sagging ceilings and crazy cats. Come live here! My mom and I have cleaning parties for fun! (Sounds like a joke but is not. We buy Swiffers, cleanser, and ice cream and play music. We are v. sad but we like it.)
TO: Nina
FROM: Steve
You and I have very different lives. Want to hear sad? Know what I bought my parents for Christmas last year? A vacuum. They never had one before. No one used it but me. It doesn’t work anymore because somehow my brother accidentally chopped the cord off.
November 23
TO: Steve
FROM: Nina
Yes, we’re different but that’s what makes us so perfect! Every good couple is kind of mismatched. Don’t you watch TV? (Oh, wait. You probably don’t.)
I love you even more. I will buy you a hand vac when we get to school as a room-warming gift.