CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday morning dawns with everything inside me screaming to look at the reunion site. But I don’t really need to. I know what it’s going to show. After last night, I might as well have put that ring on my own finger. Truman and I are probably written in stone now.
Except now, as in today-now, I have an actual boyfriend who has no idea that his girlfriend is a Cheating Cheater. Eli meets me at our bench in the commons with a bottle of OJ and a box of old-fashioned cherry cough drops. It’s millions of times more thoughtful than I deserve, and it actually makes me tear up. The only positive is that my red eyes and nose make me look sick enough that Eli doesn’t even try for a kiss out of fear that I might be contagious.
He goes on to show choir, but before following him there I stop in the bathroom to hyperventilate a little. Up until now, my relationships have been black-and-white: Love Eli, hate Truman. Then came that stupid reunion site. And I can’t stop wondering why it was sent to me. Did the universe or fate or some other higher power decide I needed to see my future so I could become a better person, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol? If that’s it, then why isn’t the site showing some sort of warning, like evidence of some looming catastrophe only I can prevent? And if the looming catastrophe involves marrying Truman, then why does Present-Day Me seem unable to stop doing things that are destined to make that catastrophe come true?
Wherever it came from, the site now sits at the center of a seesaw in my mind. I definitely don’t hate Truman Alexander anymore—but do I want to spend the rest of my life with him?
No. No, I do not. Eli is the guy who staged that amazing promposal, complete with barbershop quartet—the one who is right this very minute planning a fairy-tale prom for the two of us. He’s the one who buys me waffles every Sunday and makes me feel included and loved. And he’s the guy I’m talking about getting a hotel room with—the one I’m planning on giving everything to within a matter of weeks. All my friends love Eli. I love Eli. If I ended up with anyone from high school, it would be him.
“Get it together,” I tell my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You can fix this.”
My phone pings. It’s an update from the school portal. Mr. Bannister has finished grading our trig tests and just posted the results. My stomach clenches when I check it out.
I failed. Crap.
I studied. I thought I knew the material. And I still tanked it.
While I’m staring at the screen, my phone pings again. This notification is from the reunion site. I want to ignore it like I’ve ignored everything all weekend, but something tells me that an update so close to the new grade posting can’t be a coincidence.
My new bio is still pretty bare bones. I have to scrutinize it to find what’s changed. Then I see it: Where “Head of Marketing Research” used to be, it now says “Administrative Assistant.” One bad grade in trig equals a demotion in my future career? I scroll through the albums, thinking I might find a bright spot—I’d maybe be willing to take a demotion if it meant no longer being with Truman. But no. We’re still together, still wearing matching rings, except my hair doesn’t have those nice highlights and Truman has a beard.
Damn!
I spend the rest of the day, and the day after, in a freaked-out haze. I can barely look at or speak to Eli. When Harper gets her promposal from Kiran Smith—a big stuffed goat on her seat in the cafeteria with a sign that says YOU’RE THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME—WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME?—I have to force myself to act as happy for her as I feel, because my face seems to be locked in a permanent frown. And sitting across from Truman in English makes me almost vomit all over my copy of Mrs. Dalloway. When class ends, I don’t even try to make up an excuse for why I can’t hang around. I bolt from my seat and push past him out of the room, making a mad dash to my car so I can get my rear end home.
Jordan video chats me after dinner.
“What’s the deal?” she says. “And don’t try to deny it. I can tell something is wrong.”
“School,” I tell her. It’s partially true. “I tanked my trigonometry test.”
“You’ve tanked tests before. Do some extra credit and make it up.”
I don’t want to bring up the reunion site and tell Jordan she’s still super successful while my fortunes have dwindled. But I can’t not talk about it, especially since I know it’s only a matter of time before she asks.
“I wouldn’t be worried, except now my future job has been downgraded to an assistant. I mean, not looking down on assistants or anything, but I definitely saw something a little more prestigious for myself.”
“I can see where that’s troubling,” Jordan says. “But I feel like there’s something else.”
“Plus I’m still not feeling all that great.”
“That would be called guilt. Harper says you are giving off major guilt vibes, and I agree. Come on, Sky. We deserve to know what’s going on.”
“It’s just…” I know I can’t keep this a secret. My friends would never forgive me, plus it’s just too big. I need advice. I need moral support. I need a complete reboot of the past forty-eight hours. “Truman and I have been spending a lot of time together.”
“And you hate him.” She rolls her eyes. “So you really can’t get over it? You guys are supposed to be working together on this garden thing. We need somebody else on it if you two can’t figure out how to get along.”
“That’s the problem.” I suck in air through my teeth. “We’ve been getting along a little too well.”
She pauses.
“So you and Truman…”
“I don’t know, Jordan. I really don’t.”
“But you and Truman…”
“Yeah. It’s a mess.”
“What about Eli?”
“Like I said, it’s a mess.”
“But Eli did that whole promposal.”
“Not everything is about prom, Jordan.”
“It actually is. Prom is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with what you’re telling me right now. You’ve got a guy who wrote a song to ask you and had it sung by a barbershop quartet, of all things, and you’re thanking him by messing around with some other guy behind his back—a guy who, not to mention, you are trying not to freaking marry!”
An urge to defend Truman grips me—the sudden sense that he’s been misunderstood by all of us.
“You make it sound like Eli’s the only good guy here. Truman is doing a lot of good too—stuff he doesn’t have to do, I might add—to save your prom from getting literally bulldozed to the ground.” That came out meaner than I’d intended. But I wasn’t prepared for the strength of Jordan’s disapproval.
“You’re basically making that website true,” she informs me.
“Oh, really? I hadn’t thought of that. But see, here’s the thing: I didn’t ask to see my future! How do you think it feels, seeing how fabulous all my friends are doing when I always end up with a guy I can’t stand?”
“Well, it sounds like you’re feeling that way about him less and less these days.”
I pull off my glasses and slump over with my head in my hands. I hate fighting with my friends, especially Jordan, who lately feels like she is one argument away from ditching me.
When I retrace our steps to when all this tension started, I can go as far back as when Harper was in the hospital. It didn’t just expose the pain in her life, it brought out cracks in everything. Like when snow melts, revealing potholes created by assaults of ice and water that you never saw because everything was so beautiful on the surface.
Jordan jumped into planning mode, collecting schoolwork, and organizing friends to come visit. I went into quality-time mode, spending every spare minute at Harper’s side. You’d think Jordan and I would have made the perfect team, but that’s not how it worked out. If Harper and I spent a day watching TV, Jordan would become antsy. And she became obsessed with getting Harper to do her schoolwork.
“You’re getting behind, Har,” she said one Saturday in the middle of a Friends marathon. “If you studied for chemistry, you could take the test when you get back and you’d be pretty much caught up.”
“She has plenty of time for homework,” I said. “Let her rest.”
“If she doesn’t get something done now, it’s just going to be more painful later.”
“This isn’t helping, though.”
“You aren’t helping either by wallowing for days on end.”
Harper threw us out then, and I never got to tell Jordan that if she saw my thoughtfulness as wallowing, then I saw her refusal to pamper Harper as just a little insensitive. We’d come to the edge of a fight that could have broken our friendship, only to back off at the last minute.
I’m not up for going all the way tonight, so I say, “I’m sorry. It’s just a lot more complicated than it sounds.”
“Then uncomplicate it. If you know you don’t want to be with Eli, then break up. But do it now. I’m not going to watch you get caught up in some ridiculous love triangle, Sky.”
Which is absolutely, 100 percent fair. This isn’t some cringy Netflix drama, even if the existence of a website from the future feels more than vaguely out there. Jordan hangs up, and before I can chicken out, I text Eli.
No sooner have I hit Send than I hear the front doorbell.
Truman stands on the porch, no backpack, no notebook. He looks at me with those intense green eyes and says, “We need to talk.”
I take Truman to the kitchen. Sit him at the table. Pour sodas and open a bag of chips just to have something between us. This way there’s less chance of ending up on the couch in the den or on the floor or anyplace else where we might be able to do anything other than talk.
Mom comes in to get a glass of wine. Truman greets her with the same formality he greeted my dad with Monday night, and she looks like she wants to crack up. My mother can smell BS a mile away. Nevertheless, she greets Truman with her usual warm Mom-ness.
Dad comes in next and appears pleased to see the two of us working toward our “deadline.” Mom tells us she’s going to her room to watch TV and decompress.
“We had protesters at the clinic today,” she says. “The ignorance made my brain hurt.”
Dad reminds her that ignorant people have First Amendment rights too; then he goes to his study to work.
I sit down across from Truman. He looks at his hands, then back at me with unnerving frankness.
“I guess it’s stating the obvious to say we haven’t accomplished much where that council meeting is concerned.”
“You’re not blaming me for that, are you?” I say. “Because it takes two to do…whatever this is we’ve been doing.”
“There’s no blame to place. If I’m going to not accomplish anything, then I’m not sure there’s a more enjoyable way of doing it. I was more thinking about you. You don’t seem to be enjoying it as much.”
“Really?” I run a finger through the condensation on my soda glass. “Because I thought I was being pretty enthusiastic.”
This brings a flush to his cheeks. “Yes. Yes, you have been. And believe me, I more than appreciate that. But at school, you were clearly uncomfortable. And I know you’re officially with Eli, so that right there means we aren’t being honest. I have a thing about honesty. It often gets me into trouble.”
“Yes, you’ve said that.”
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you that if this whole thing makes you as uncomfortable as it makes me, then maybe we should figure something out.”
I think about how maddening Truman was, coming over and baiting me into kissing him. I think about all the grief I’ve gone through over the past few days trying to change my future. This is my chance to take care of it directly, cleanly, and finally.
“I say we quit right now. End it here.”
“Really?” He frowns. “That’s it? Just stop?”
“Yep.” I let the silence sink in and, I hope, make its way into the future, to whatever space in time put the two of us together in the first place.
“Okay…” He slumps backward. “I won’t lie. That’s disappointing.”
“It’s what I think we should do.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t move. The next step would be to get up and show him to the door, but I’m stuck to my seat too. I slide my hand into the pocket of my hoodie and pull out my phone. I bring up the reunion website under the table, ready to see the change, feeling like once I’ve confirmed it I’ll be able to move again, ready to get on with my life.
The first photo that comes up is me and Truman. Rings. Happy faces. Funny hats, because now the reunion apparently has some sort of Derby Day theme.
I drop my head into my free hand and groan.
“Hey.” Truman leans in. “What’s wrong?”
I set the phone on the table, screen down. I’m worried I might start crying.
“It’s not because of Eli. Well, it partly is. Eli is…”
“Popular. And attractive. Not that I’ve noticed personally, but I can appreciate from the perspective of a member of the opposite sex that he’s attractive. And popular.”
The way Truman says popular twice shifts a lens into focus. I see myself in Alton’s social rings again. And I see how the gravity of Eli’s position has helped keep me where I am. Looking at it like this is like looking at that part of our relationship through a truth filter.
“You make me sound really shallow.”
“I mean, the fact that I noticed Eli’s popularity shows my own lack of depth,” he replies. “But I think it’s good to be honest about all aspects of each calculation.”
“I don’t see my relationships as calculations. Do you?”
“Maybe that’s too cold of a word. Let’s say I try to be aware.”
When he puts it like that, I realize I’ve been woefully unaware of what goes on around me. I also find myself amazed that Truman, whose social skills have always seemed nonexistent, has been observing from the sidelines this whole time.
“So if we’re being honest, then yes, Eli is popular,” I say. “But he’s also a great guy. I would never want to hurt him. That’s not what’s freaking me out, though. What’s really freaking me out is too crazy to talk about.”
Truman’s hand moves across the table. Before I can move away, his fingers have twined with mine.
“It can’t be that crazy.”
“Believe me, this takes crazy to a whole new level.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Actually, I do.” I realize as I’m saying this how true it really is. Part of what I’ve always hated about Truman was his inability to be anything other than honest. Now, because of that honesty, I believe him when he says he’ll believe me. And if we’re telling truths, then maybe we should just get the whole truth out now.
I pick up my phone and say a quick prayer to whatever part of the universe is in charge of this little adventure in communing with the future. “Just trust me when I tell you that this is super weird. Trust me, and don’t freak out.”
I surrender the phone to Truman. He squints as he starts to scroll.
“What is this?”
“I keep thinking it’s got to be a joke. It’s supposed to be from our ten-year reunion.”
“As in—” He does the math. “Eleven years from now?”
“Yes. It’s creepy how realistic it is.”
“Creepy is an understatement. Who sent this to you?”
“It came from an Instagram with Jordan’s name on it, but she swears she didn’t send it.”
I want to look over his shoulder, but then I wouldn’t be able to watch his face and see his reactions. He taps to open photos and thumbs things into the search bar.
“So this is that website you were talking about?”
“Yes.”
“And I assume you’ve looked yourself up,” he says. “Right?”
“That’s the part that’s really going to freak you out. I can’t believe I’m showing you this, but…” I take the phone, enter both our names, then hand it back again. “Here.”
He smiles faintly as he looks through the photos.
“So there are some of you and me together…Oh.” He’s noticed the rings. I watch his expression turn from bemused enjoyment to confusion and then alarm.
“You’re freaking out.”
“I’m just positive this is a joke,” he says. “I mean, it’s an impressive effort, but I’m sure if we look around a little more, we’ll be able to figure out who’s behind it.”
He starts scrolling again, eyes scanning for clues.
He freezes. “Oh my God.”
“What?” I can’t resist jumping to his side. He’s looking at one of the photos of himself with Harper and the woman with the red hair. When he speaks again, his voice sounds thick.
“That’s my aunt Margaret. How would anybody get a photo of her?”
“Maybe someone knows your family?”
“She moved away years ago. And she hasn’t talked to the rest of us since even before then. I looked for her awhile back and couldn’t even find her on Facebook.”
“Why would she be at our reunion?”
“It looks like it has something to do with the garden.” Neither of us says anything else for what feels like a solid five minutes. The room might be quiet, but my thoughts are screaming. Nobody I know would care about Truman’s aunt, let alone go to the trouble of putting her in a prank website. I can see the realization hit Truman, slowly at first, then with full force.
The website is real.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is a lot to take in.”
“I know. I have no idea how to explain it.”
He puts my phone down and scoots his chair from the table. “I should go.”
I stay in my seat, thrown suddenly off-kilter. “Why?” Of all the reactions I anticipated from Truman, getting up and walking out wasn’t one of them. “Is something wrong? I mean, besides the obvious fact that some creepy stuff is going on here? Why do you need to leave?”
For once, Truman is at a loss for words. “I just wasn’t prepared for this.” He gestures from me to himself and back to me again.
“This what?”
“The whole you and me thing. Being married. I don’t know what to do with that.”
Regret and defensiveness create a combustible cocktail inside me. Part of me is pissed at myself for showing Truman the website. The other part is offended that my honesty has been rewarded with awkwardness.
“So…what? Am I somehow suddenly repulsive to you?”
“No! Not at all.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“What if the site really is for our ten-year reunion?”
“Say it is. Is the idea of being with me that horrible?”
“I just…I’ve already planned out my future, and that isn’t it. I intend to be nowhere near Alton once I leave for college. And I haven’t even thought about how marriage fits into all that. What if I want to have a lot of different girlfriends after high school?”
I can’t help myself. I burst out laughing, because the thought of Truman Alexander having a lot of different girlfriends is hysterical.
“What’s so funny?” he says.
“Just that if you think you’re going to have lots of girlfriends, it’s no contest compared to how many boyfriends I plan to have. I plan to date a ton in college. A TON!”
“Fine,” he says. “Have fun with that.”
“Oh, I plan to. And another thing: How misogynistic is it of you to assume that just because I’m a girl, I’m already planning out my wedding?”
He tilts his head, looks down his nose. His voice takes on that self-righteous, debating-in-class tone.
“I don’t know what you’re planning. You once informed me about your talent for living in the now. I assumed that meant you couldn’t be bothered to look more than a few weeks ahead of anything.”
“Right, well…” I falter, unable to decide whether that insult works to bolster my argument or not. “Let’s just say I haven’t exactly been going around writing my name with your last name, drawing hearts all over my homework, Truman. When I first saw what was on that site, I thought there was no way in hell I’d be with you in the next month, let alone the next however many years.”
Truman looks offended. “Thanks a lot.”
“And now you’re insulted by something that’s not even supposed to happen for a freaking decade. Do you see how messed up that is?”
“This whole thing is messed up, Skyler. It’s too much.”
I’m close to tears again. My throat feels raw and sandpapery. “You asked me what was wrong. I didn’t have to show you this.”
“To be honest, I wish you hadn’t. I’m not sure anything will be the same between us again.”
“No, you know what? It will be the same. It will be the same as always, because I have absolutely no problem going back to hating you, Truman. Forget anything ever happened between us. I’m in charge of my future, and it will not be with you.”
The flood of tears I worried about earlier has been replaced by an avalanche of angry words. I keep on talking, stabbing around for whatever will hurt most.
“I don’t want to put up with your hyperfocused, overachieving nonsense. I don’t want to be a part of your family, which sounds like a perfectly awful mess of money-grubbing snobs. And most of all, I don’t want to listen to your soul-crushingly self-important voice for the rest of my life.”
I wait for him to lob something equally as hurtful back. I’m prepared for whatever he might say. I’d welcome it, even, because arguing might help us get back to something that feels like normal.
Instead, he walks out of the room. I hear him make his way down the hall; then the front door opens and closes.
I go to the sink and splash water on my face. I put the soda glasses in the sink and the chips back in the pantry; then I shuffle into the den and curl up on the couch. Picking up the remote, I hover a finger over the keypad. So many choices in a day: What to watch, what to wear, what to do when a guy you might like reacts the wrong way to something you shared out of a mistaken sense of trust…My phone still sits on the kitchen table. I leave it there until I can’t stand it any longer. I go get it, open my Instagram, and the first thing I notice is that there are no more dog photos. There aren’t as many hiking ones either, but there are as many—if not more—shots of food.
The fact that my IG has changed makes me hurry to open the reunion site to see what might have changed there, too. I search my name, and every photo that pops up shows me with Jordan or Harper, or both. I search Truman, and all that comes up is a yearbook photo in a section titled Wish You Were Here:
When I search for Eli, I find him in a bunch of photos with Mitch. That’s it.
Something twinges inside me as I look through this updated site—something that feels remarkably like regret. First of all, I miss the dog, which is weird because I never really knew him. And second of all…no. There is no second of all. I’m glad Truman’s gone. I didn’t want him anyway.
But there is where the problem lies. It’s one thing to not want someone in your future. Finding out they don’t want you in theirs? That’s one of the loneliest feelings I’ve ever had.