Dear Diary,
I’m not going to write anything down because I will never ever want to remember this time in my life.
Maybe I should just throw you in the fire.
No offense.
M.P.M.
I would have caught a dramatic illness on my dash through the freezing rain. Then at least I would have an excuse to spend the next few months lying pale and wasted in my frigid garret, coughing spots of blood into a lace hankie. Instead, I woke with nothing worse than a headache and swollen eyelids to betray my inner turmoil.
Overnight the precipitation had turned into a solid layer of ice, coating branches and sidewalks. Or so it looked through the window of my bedroom, where I spent most of the day. I would have taken to my bed on a more permanent basis if I thought I could get away with it, but my mother didn’t believe in malingering. There was no way she’d let me skip school just because I’d laid waste to my entire existence in a single miserable evening.
Thus it was that on Monday morning I dragged myself out of bed and dressed in an appropriately gloomy brownish-gray sweater.
“You look very Winter of Our Discontent,” Van commented when I walked into the dining room. Jasper watched this exchange with interest, no doubt waiting to chime in with a helpful observation of his own.
“Don’t forget your father and I are having dinner with the provost,” Mom said, casually stirring a pat of butter into her hot cereal. “There are leftovers in the refrigerator.”
On cue, my siblings began arguing about who got the lentils and who got the stew. I suspected the diversion had been deliberate, especially when Mom flashed me an encouraging smile. Which was all well and good, except that the real challenge was yet to come, and unless I could think of a way to bring my mommy to school with me, I’d be facing the rest of the day on my own.
There was no dramatic confrontation. I avoided my friends, and assumed they were doing the same. Even amid the noise of the hallways, silence surrounded me, slowly thickening until it felt like a solid enclosure, cutting off air and light.
This was how it happened to a fallen woman: once your transgressions came to light, you were walled off from polite society. Invisible. Forgotten. They might as well set you on the SS Disgrace and shove you out to sea. By the end of the week, I could count my social interactions on one hand.
Monday, someone in my English class asked to borrow a pencil.
On Tuesday, I was so hungry by the last bell (having skipped lunch for the second day running) that I found myself detouring to Tome Raider on the way home. Every time a car passed I stiffened, forcing myself not to whip around and check whether it was Arden’s. The balance tipped back and forth between wanting to see them and dreading the possibility. What if they cruised right past me, pretending I wasn’t there—the cut direct? Or gave me dirty looks and whispered behind their hands? Or maybe they would mournfully shake their heads, regretting every second they’d wasted in my company.
“Hello, Mary,” Doug called as I stepped inside, stomping the slush off my feet. “Table for four?”
My bottom lip quivered. “Just one today.” And probably forever. But no, that wasn’t fair. Maybe I could send my former friends an anonymous note, deeding them the rights to Shaggy Doug’s. I would hang out at home instead. In my room. With the curtains drawn.
“No problem,” he replied, a little too heartily. “One is fun!”
I attempted a smile as I slouched across the room. Judging by Doug’s anxious expression, it wasn’t a success.
“I’m doing my Anne of Green Gables menu,” he said, wiping his hands on the towel tucked in his waistband.
All I could think of was ipecac, which Anne gives to some sick kids to make them throw up their phlegm, thereby saving their lives. That was where I’d learned the word expectorant.
“Raspberry cordial,” Doug said, filling the silence. “And mousy pudding. It’s a marzipan mouse. From the scene where Miss Stacy comes over for dinner and the mouse accidentally gets into the dessert?” He looked hopefully at me.
“Sounds great,” I said bleakly, pulling my backpack onto my lap. “Do you mind if I eat my lunch first?”
“Go ahead. I’ll just”—he pointed behind him—“be in the kitchen.”
I inhaled my sandwich so quickly it gave me the hiccups, which made me think the ipecac might not have been such a bad thing.
“Here we are.” Doug bustled over to the table, handing me a goblet of dark pink juice. I swigged the whole thing at once, hoping to rid myself of the hiccups.
“It’s just juice,” he said uncertainly. “Nonalcoholic. Not like in the book.”
He was referring to the scene in which Anne and Diana, her best friend, accidentally get drunk on what they think is fruit juice. Diana’s mom blames Anne, forbidding the girls to see each other. It’s one of the worst tragedies of Anne’s life—losing her dearest friend.
To my horror, my eyes filled with tears. Then I hiccupped. Loudly.
Doug tactfully looked away. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Why, have you been talking to my parents?”
He shook his head. “I simply noticed that, ah—”
“I’m alone?”
“Yes, that and also—”
I closed my eyes. “I look like I’ve been crying.”
“Er, no. Well, yes. But it’s more than that. You seem . . . blue.” He gestured to an empty chair. “May I?”
We sat in silence, Doug with his hands threaded in front of him on the table. I would have liked to eat the apple in my lunch, but it seemed rude with an audience. Also, I was still hiccupping.
“Here’s the thing, Mary. I’m not going to tell you it gets easier, or pretend you ever stop missing them,” Doug said. “Because it’s miserable to be alone. We both know that.”
“Uh, okay.” I wondered if that was the extent of his pep talk.
“But you have to keep hope alive. Like me and Noreen.”
This wasn’t the first time Doug had brought up his relationship woes in front of me, but usually one of my parents was around to serve as a buffer. I thought of reminding him that I was barely sixteen but had a feeling it wouldn’t make much difference.
“I made up my mind a long time ago to stand firm. Keep the dream alive. Whatever it takes, that’s what I do.” He sniffled and I desperately hoped it wasn’t a precursor to tears. If he started, I was sure to crumble, and I still had to walk the rest of the way home.
“Like what?” I asked, hoping to shift the conversation onto less mawkish ground.
“I wrote her a letter. Put my heart on the line. Told her I’d be here, faithfully, waiting.”
Many people would have been swayed by that level of devotion. Sadly, Noreen was not among them. In my experience, displeasure was pretty much her defining characteristic. “What did she say?”
He became very interested in a crusty blotch on his half apron. “Don’t know. I’m still waiting.”
“How long has it been?”
Doug sighed. “Coming up on six years.”
Wednesday it snowed all morning, big fluffy flakes that blanketed the world in white. Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t enough accumulation to cancel school. On the way to third period I caught a glimpse of Arden in the distance, wearing a burgundy scarf I’d never seen before. It clashed wonderfully with her hair. I would have loved to tell her so, instead of concealing myself behind a bank of lockers until she passed out of sight. Had she and Lydia mended the breach in their friendship? Perhaps they’d united against a common enemy. Namely: me. I would probably never know.
Later that afternoon, I was slipping along the haphazardly shoveled sidewalks of my neighborhood when a door closed on the opposite side of the street. Dropping to a crouch, I peered around the bumper of a parked car as Alex exited his piano teacher’s house. He paused to adjust his winter gear. Had everyone in the universe gotten a new scarf except me? His was black. Like his mood, perhaps.
A breeze swirled icy crystals into the air, and his cheeks reddened in the cold. Suddenly I thought of Anna and Vronsky on that winter evening before their affair began, when their train stopped in the middle of nowhere and they found themselves alone in the snowy dark, staring longingly at each other.
Not that Alex was looking at me.
He stopped suddenly at the bottom of the stairs. I shrank farther out of sight, hunching down until I was practically squatting in the snow. Had he sensed my attention? Or was he thinking about the fact that my house was down the block? Maybe today’s piano playing had been suffused with melan-choly grandeur, a storm of angry notes with an undercurrent of yearning? Holding my breath, I risked another peek. A sign, however small, that he hadn’t forgotten me would mean so much.
Frowning, Alex glanced behind him. Then he looked down, shuffling through the stack of music books in his hand. Near the bottom of the pile, his brow smoothed.
Apparently he’d found what he was looking for.
Nothing happened Thursday. Not a blessed thing—unless you count dwelling on unhappy thoughts as a pastime.
By evening, the loneliness was suffocating. It shouldn’t have been possible to feel that way in a house full of people, but I wasn’t just at-home Mary anymore. I’d had a taste of another life, and it was this version of me—the one with my own friends, separate from my family—that was starved for contact. Did that Mary still exist, or was I a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear?
After everyone else went to bed, I crept into my parents’ office and booted up the desktop computer. It was hard to say what I hoped to find: a peek at my friends’ lives? That they’d continued the Scoundrel Guide without me—or worse, taken it down, erasing all trace of our shared existence? A shard of ice lodged in my chest.
No, there it was, loading at last. I stared at the screen, questioning the evidence of my eyes. How could there be a new entry, without me? It felt like a betrayal, even though I knew I had no right to complain. Why should they leave it frozen in time like a sad memorial to our past? It was obvious they didn’t need me anymore; they didn’t even miss my presence. Their lives had carried on, as if I’d never been part of them.
Even as these thoughts crashed over me in sickening waves, my brain skimmed the text. It was about Miles; I knew that much. It hadn’t been so long that I’d entirely lost track of their affairs.
Another Way to Break a Heart, read the scrolling cursive at the top of the page, superimposed over a black-and-white photo of a girl staring through a rain-streaked window. Off to one side there was another caption, in a different font:
When they decide extracurriculars matter more than you do, because no one is going to give them a trophy for being a good boyfriend.
Ouch. Did Miles know about the Guide—and if so, had he recognized himself? Then again, he might not be sitting at home digging for crumbs of information about what Arden and her friends had been up to lately.
I scrolled down a little farther. There was a picture of a book, lying open on the ground in the middle of a forest. A single black feather had fallen onto the page. Holding my breath, I read the final note:
Maybe there’s a story like that. It’s impossible to know, when the person you trusted to tell you those things is gone, and everything you thought was true turns out to be an illusion.
With shaking hands, I closed the browser and logged off.
On Friday, I found someone else to offend.