Sixteen

The next month passes by like a glacier—every day just a slow-moving, cold, colorless, and uneventful blob, making it impossible to tell one day from the next. Well, almost uneventful. There are only a few things that make all of January even worth mentioning.

The first is that I give Jamie his Jubjub back.

I haven’t seen him that much. It’s as if he’s made it his mission in life to avoid me. Once, he came around a corner in the hallway, saw me, and fled in the opposite direction. Another time I went to the auditorium to work on my writing samples and he was painting the sets, and the expression on his face was bad enough that I felt like I’d broken his heart all over again, which broke mine all over again, so I left. I saw him out too, at the Donkey. I saw through the windows that he was with someone. Another guy. I don’t know if it was a date, but Jamie was smiling. I hated that someone else was making him smile. I hated knowing that if he saw me, the smile would go away. I didn’t want to face either of those things, so I didn’t go inside.

His friends hate me, obviously. Landon warned me that pretty much all of the art club would have liked to have a public stoning of me, so now I go out of my way to avoid their table at lunch. It’s an extra lap around the cafeteria, but at least I’m too far away to be reached by flying food.

I haul the Jubjub into school, but since I have no place to store it, I go to the art room first thing in the morning. Half of me hopes Jamie’s there so that I can see him and maybe say I’m sorry again. The other half hopes that he’s nowhere to be found and I won’t have to cower with my tail between my legs.

He’s there, though, adorable as always. He’s got on a sweater that seems a few sizes too big and a winter hat that looks hand-knitted and more for style than function. He’s taking a picture of one of his paintings with his phone, and after it snaps, he sees me standing in the doorway.

He looks as if he’d like to run. Or scream at me. Or maybe cry, I can’t tell.

Or maybe I’m giving myself far too much credit and he really just wants me to leave him alone.

I hold up the painting. “I’m just here to give this back.”

Jamie stares at the Jubjub as if it’s the first time he’s seen it, or perhaps as if he’s a little scared of it. Like it might fly off the canvas and nose-dive in his direction.

Since he doesn’t move and doesn’t say anything, I’m left with no option other than to put it on the work table that’s in between us.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, looking at it one last time. Jamie’s looking at me. “You should sell it. I’m sure it would go for a lot of money. Or maybe you should send it to the Institute. I’m a little biased, but I think it’s one of your best.”

He doesn’t say anything at all, and I’m rambling so I need to get out of here. Fast. Otherwise I’m going to break down right in front of him.

So I turn to leave, and it’s then that I look at the painting he’d taken a picture of. It’s new, so new that some of the paint still looks wet. The painting is nearly all gray, in different shades from light silver to dark smoke, and in its center is a dove, suspended in the clouds. The dove isn’t flying, though, not like the birds Jamie usually paints.

It’s falling.

Its right wing is twisted, pointed in an unnatural angle, broken. The bird is struggling, trying to right itself with its one good wing, all in vain as it plummets toward earth.

But the worst part isn’t that the poor creature’s wing is broken. It’s the look in its eye—raw, aching pain and hopelessness, as if it’s almost relieved that the ground is rising so fast to meet it.

I look at Jamie and he turns away like he just can’t look at me. Or won’t.

There’s so much I want to do. I want to pull him close and hold him tight. I want to tell him I’m an idiot and make promises about how I’ll never hurt him again, if only he gives me another chance. I want to kiss him once for every tear I’ve caused, and then a thousand times more to make up for it.

But Jamie probably wouldn’t want any of those things. He just wants me to disappear. So instead, I say, “See you later,” like an idiot and make toward the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want it?”

I stop, hesitating because I’m not sure. I really want that painting. It’s beautiful and it means so much to me, just like Jamie himself. But just like Jamie, I don’t deserve it.

“You should have it,” I say in answer, and leave him there, standing next to his broken dove.

The other important event comes a week later. I look up from my calculus exercises to see Landon hovering in the classroom doorway.

Landon has truly been trying to salvage his grade point average so it’s alarming to see him skipping a class. I grab my books and head to the front of the room, where Mr. Byers is grading last night’s homework at his desk.

“Mr. Byers, may I go to the nurse? I feel really queasy.”

It’s kind of a lame lie, but the great thing about being a “good kid” is that when you need to lie, most adults are willing to believe you. Then I’m out the door and into Landon’s arms. Landon hugs me so hard that I know something bad is coming, something really bad.

“What, Landon? Are you okay? Are your parents all right?”

“It’s Meg,” he says as he pulls away. He wipes at his temples, which I can see are beaded with sweat. “Hurry. I don’t know what to do.”

I have to jog to keep up with him, and we run down the long corridors of the school until we’re almost in the music wing, to the bathrooms right between the cafeteria and the doors out to the student parking lot. Meg’s curled up on her side underneath the sinks, hugging herself tight, mascara and eyeliner dripping down her face in sad, curving paths. I kneel on the floor in front of her.

“Meg, what’s wrong?”

She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head and continues to cry, so I lay a hand on her shoulder and look up to Landon for help.

“She was running an errand for Madame Vinson and caught Michael with Gillian Carlisle.”

“Right in the middle of the hallway,” Meg whimpers.

“They were making out in the middle of the hallway?” I ask, and want to say something about how tacky that is, never mind that Landon and I thought nothing of playing a little tonsil hockey at our lockers after school. Besides, the point is that the bastard is cheating on Meg. “Did he see you?”

Landon answers. “She kind of . . . went off. The entire foreign language hallway and the English hallway heard. Which is how I found out.”

“My throat hurts,” Meg says, and I can only assume she means from the screaming.

“Gillian Carlisle?” I ask, incredulous. I knew Michael had no taste, but this is just ridiculous. “But she’s so slutty.”

“Exactly.” Meg sniffles. “And I’m not.”

“Should have known the line about waiting for you was too good to be true.”

“And I fell for it. I’m such an idiot.”

I don’t agree with that assessment, at least not yet. There’s something I want to know first. “Please tell me in all the yelling you did at Michael that you actually broke up with him and told him you never wanted to see his ugly face again?”

Meg looks up at me, blinking through unshed tears, and shakes her head with a whimper. Then a sob escapes her, and all bets are off. She loses it again, sobbing and yelling and sometimes wailing, the way Italian widows do at funerals. So I drop my books and crawl underneath the sinks with her so that I can wrap my whole body around hers. She curls into me and continues to yell out nonsense, or hateful things at Michael and Gillian, and as she cries I feel Landon’s hand on me, steadying me as I steady Meg.

When she pauses, I say the only thing I can think to say. “You’re better off without him, you know that, don’t you?”

Meg shakes her head again, and then she says, “I know you don’t understand it, but I love him.”

I know she loves him. I know because he’s the only guy I’ve ever heard her talk about beyond a flip “He’s cute.” I know because she’s put up with his bullshit for a solid two years now and forgives him for everything. I know because in spite of her proclamations that sex is a natural instinct, her Catholic beliefs still linger and even considering it with Michael was a huge step. I know she loves him because he’s become the person who makes her smile, who can always cheer her up, and whom she wants to talk to, when I used to be that sole person for her. And I’ve been jealous of that. Perhaps too jealous.

“I know.”

She stills in my arms and then, after a moment, twists around so that she’s on her back, looking up at me with bloodshot eyes. “Why do I love him so much when he keeps hurting me?”

I know exactly the feeling she’s describing—an addiction. How the sweetest, tastiest fruit in the world can be poisonous, how the thing you love most can be the most harmful. I can’t help but glance at Landon, meeting his eye for one awful, aching second before saying, “You have to let him go, Meg. He’ll never make you happy.”

There’s a sudden shuffle and I look up. Landon’s on his feet. He doesn’t look at me when he says, “I’m going to go get my keys. Let’s get out of here.”

“Landon,” I start, but he’s already gone. I push off the tile floor, untangling myself from Meg with a whispered apology and a promise to be right back, and run after him. He’s halfway down the hallway before I catch up to him. “Landon. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound so—”

“So what? Pointed?” he snaps, rounding on me. He turns his head away quickly but it’s too late, I see the wetness in his eyes. “Go back to Meg, Sam. Help her.”

“No, listen. I didn’t—”

“Stop,” Landon hisses at me, and when I reach out to touch his arm he dodges me. “Just leave it, okay? Go back to Meg.”

He sprints away from me, and I curse at myself before going back to Meg. She’s up and about in the bathroom, splashing her face with cold water. She turns around, giving me a sheepish smile as she tears off a paper towel and dries her face.

“He’s pissed at you.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean it to sound like I was talking about him.”

“You didn’t?” she asks, not all that innocently, but I don’t get to defend myself because Landon is back, keys in hand. He looks only at Meg.

“Where do you want to go?”

Meg turns around and blots her eyes in the mirror, sopping up traces of errant mascara. She’s looking more like Meg, not just because she cleaned up, but because there’s a light there in her eyes again, one that was too dim minutes ago. “Let’s go to the cemetery. I want to do a ritual.”

Landon’s eyes go wide. “Are we finally going to get to use a voodoo doll?”

Meg groans, a kind of soggy sound. “I wish. Unfortunately, we Wiccans vow to do no harm. I just want to ask the Goddess to make me strong enough to let him go.”

My chest tightens when she says it, and I feel that urge to punch things again, preferably Michael’s stupid face. But Landon, who is far more passive than I am, rolls along with it. “What do you need? Candles? Incense? A, um . . . spell book thingy?”

Meg lays a hand on his arm, touched by his effort. “Just a white candle and a lighter. I’ve got both in my book bag. Let’s go.”

In five minutes we’re parked at Saint Catherine’s, on the hill where I worked my magic with the list in October. We scramble through the snow until we’re at the top, behind the mausoleum with the stained-glass Jesus. Meg has a thin pillar candle, white as the snow around us, and she grips it in both hands, turning to us so that we make an awkward little circle. Landon is refusing to make eye contact with me still, and every time he looks away from me, my stomach twists into a tighter knot.

“What do we do? Don’t you need a spell or something?”

Meg’s lips curve up at Landon. “The great thing about Wicca is that you don’t need any fancy spells or words if you don’t want to. You just have to speak from the heart. Cheesy, I know.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to get into the spirit of things. “So how can we help?”

“Grab the candle,” Meg instructs. “And get rid of the doubt, okay? I know you think this is all nonsense, but it works for me, and I need you with me on this.”

“I’m with you,” Landon and I say in unison, and for the first time since I made that comment to Meg in the bathroom, he looks at me. To my relief, his eyes are soft. Not angry, but not happy either. He jerks a shoulder at me as if to say, “Whatever.” Then we grab the candle, and it’s just a touch too short for all of us to get our hands around it, so we end up basically joining hands in a web between us. Then Meg starts to speak.

“Earth, air, fire, and water, elements of the Goddess, purify this circle and make it a welcoming place for the divine. I ask that when the circle is ready, the Goddess attend.”

There’s no wind like there was for my spell in October, but there’s something far more meaningful. I close my eyes and feel it—a stillness, a calm, a little stir. When I open my eyes, Meg’s watching me, a knowing smile on her face, and we both glance at Landon, who keeps his eyes shut. Meg continues.

“Goddess, you are the power that gives life and brings death. You are the start and the end. You bring both love and heartache. Help me to understand that losing Michael is part of the never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and help me to be reborn. Help me to learn the lessons you are trying to teach me. Help me to understand the roles everyone must play as I journey down this path. Help me to be reborn with clarity and openness, so that I can love again.”

The talk of rebirth and the cycle of life reminds me of Jamie’s phoenix, and I see it so vividly in my mind’s eye that it’s more an apparition than a memory. I see it living, breathing, stretching its wings into the sky with new feathers, new life, a burst of ashes in its wake. And I don’t know if Meg meant to make these words so strangely appropriate for me as well, but regardless, I find myself whispering them back to myself, voice catching and hovering on the phrase “so that I can love again.”

Meg’s hand tightens around mine, then Landon’s, and I open my eyes to see both of them looking at me. Meg then turns to Landon and says, “I’m going to light the candle. I want us to send all of our negative feelings into it and fill it up. We’ll let it burn down to our fingers or until it goes out on its own, whatever comes first, and when it goes out, all our negative energy will go out with it, okay?”

Landon and I nod, and Meg lights the candle. I stare at the flame, thinking of all the utter crap I’ve been through this year, and even before that, and do my best to visualize putting it into the candle. I put in my loneliness, the hurt I felt over Gus, the stupid `decisions I made with Travis, and the heartbreak I feel over losing Jamie. I put in all the leftover feelings I have about Landon too. At least all the bad ones, like hurt and resentment and fear. In the end, it feels like I’m pushing those thoughts away, and when the candle flickers from the unbalanced grip we’ve got on it and goes out, drowning in its own wax, there’s a sense that those thoughts are gone with it. Gone. Not forgotten, but gone.

I want to explain it away, to tell myself that it’s all mind tricks and easy meditation, but there’s a part of me that knows it’s not as simple as that.

Meg whispers a thank-you to the Goddess and releases the elements from our little circle, then drops our hands so that she can put the candle back in her bag.

Landon and I let our hands fall to our sides but don’t let go.

I can feel the warmth of his skin through his knitted gloves, and he weaves his fingers between mine. My hand is tucked under his, just like we did a million times as freshmen. Even when Meg zips her bag and hoists it on her shoulder, then walks toward the car with a knowing little smile, he doesn’t let go. He walks slowly, holding back until Meg is way ahead of us.

“I’m sorry about what I said,” I say.

“I was a bad boyfriend,” he says in response.

“You weren’t,” I start to argue, then amend that. “At least, you were no worse than I was.”

“No. It was me, Sam. I was jealous and possessive and . . . at times not even kind. There was a fight where you asked me to just be kind to you, and I couldn’t even give you that.”

I glance over at him, see his memories there in his eyes, see what it was like from his side. “You were scared.”

“To lose you? Yes. Terrified. My mistake was believing that I was acting that way because I loved you so much. And I did love you, Sam, but that’s not why I acted like that.”

Interesting, because that was my mistake too.

“But I understand all that now. And I’m still insecure, but at least I know that about myself and . . .” Landon shrugs. “I’ve changed. I mean, I think I would be a better boyfriend now.”

I stop walking, pulling him to a halt as well. “What are you saying?”

He takes my other hand in his and squeezes them both. “You know that thing that Meg said in the ritual? About keeping open?” I nod. “I know you’re giving yourself this break and you want to figure some stuff out, but I think you should be open too. And not just to new stuff. Maybe some of the old stuff isn’t so bad either.”

I stare at him, puzzled. “I’m not sure I follow . . .”

“I’m saying don’t count me out.” Landon smiles, one of his rare shy ones. “I know I don’t have a lot of those things on your list. I’m not as stylish as Gus, or as hot as Travis, or as talented as Jamie. But I make you laugh, and I’m a good friend, and I do have pretty eyes.”

I laugh a little, but to be honest, I’m a bit too overwhelmed with what he’s saying and it comes out all weird.

“And I’m in love with you, and that has to count for something, right?”

That completely levels me, and I hear myself suck in a breath. “What? Again? But . . . when did you . . . ?”

Landon chuckles a little, as if he can’t believe how clueless I am. “I never fell out, Sam. But I screwed up. Majorly. And I figured you’d never give me another shot. But then when you started talking about changing your list I knew I had to take a chance, because if thick hair gets crossed off the list and you put ‘batshit insanely in love with me’ in its place, then I’m closer to being your Perfect Ten. And maybe you’ll consider me again.”

I’m so floored that I can’t say anything in response. I can’t even think. My face is frozen in what I’m sure must be the stupidest, most stunned expression in history. Luckily, Landon doesn’t seem to want words from me.

Instead, he kisses me.

My reaction is automatic—a habit, a replaying memory. I lean into him, wrapping him up in my arms just like I used to do. His lips are as warm and inviting as I remember, maybe even more so now, but the rush of love and want is different. I still love him, and yes, my body is burning for him, but it lacks sharp edges, lacks the urgency. I’m not just kissing Landon now, I’m kissing the boy who hurt me irrevocably before but also helped me heal; I’m kissing the boy who once held my vulnerable heart in his hands and both cherished it and bruised it. I’m kissing my best friend.

When he pulls away, he stays close so that I feel the heat of his cheek next to mine, the subtle scratch of light stubble against light stubble, and I can’t help myself: I sigh.

I hear Landon do the same, and he’s smiling bright and proud when I open my eyes.

“So you’ll consider it?” he asks.

My lips, my skin, my hands—they’re all tingling and warm from his touch. It’s nice, and familiar, and wonderful. And wow, I love that feeling. I want to keep feeling it.

Which is why I hear myself say, “Yes.”