I was worried she wouldn’t even open the attachment, but my phone rings in less than an hour, her smiling photo flashing on the screen.
“This is amazing,” Caroline says. Her voice sounds happy. Normal. I’m surprised but grateful. “Better than anything you’ve ever written. And I didn’t think that was possible!”
I love it, and that’s what matters. But it feels good to have her approval too.
“I was so bummed it wasn’t finished! You know I’m going to start bugging you for chapters again, right?”
“I don’t know how it will end yet.”
A heavy silence creeps between us, full of all the feelings we haven’t talked about yet, the moments we haven’t shared from these past few weeks. It would be easy, maybe, to slip into the way we used to be, but it would be just hiding the larger problem. Like when you try to cover up major BO with a few more heavy-handed swipes of deodorant, but it doesn’t really fix the problem—what you need is a shower. And that may not be the prettiest simile, but it’s real.
“I meant everything I wrote. I’m so sorry.”
She doesn’t miss a beat, like she was waiting for the chance. “I am too. I was really short with you on the phone.”
“But I deserved it. I was so focused on myself that I was a bad friend to you . . . when you had so much going on.”
“You were. And I do.”
I thought it would hurt to admit what I did wrong, but it feels cleansing, freeing. The tension between us is melting away. “I was just scared that you were moving so far past me. I wanted to hurry up and catch up to you, so I wouldn’t get left behind. But in doing that, I was making myself the center of everything and pushing you out. I was a terrible friend.”
“Oh, Tessa! I will never leave you behind. Even if we’re going through different things in our lives, we will always be side by side.” Her voice switches to its familiar playful tone. “And now that you’re writing again, not gonna lie: I’m gonna need a new story with me in it—or Colette, I mean. Can you write up a love interest who looks like Brandon?”
“Of course!” The ideas are already brewing, and even though my hands are sore, they’re twitching to start typing again. But I need to be honest with her about one more thing. “You know, that’s one of the things that scared me the most about not writing,” I say meekly. “That it could lead to losing you . . . because I know that’s, like, the big reason why you still like me . . . now that I’m not there.”
“Are you kidding me?” she shrieks, so loud I’m surprised her parents don’t come to check on her. “I like you because of way more things than just your stories! I like that I can say anything to you because you won’t judge or think it’s shallow. I like that you’re skinnier than me, so Lola can be distracted with fattening someone else up.” She giggles. “And for real, for real, I like your heart. How you have this delicate baby one that registers every last change of mood and tone, tears apart every comment that someone makes. How you just . . . feel everything so much and so fully. I like your stories, of course! But that’s because I like seeing the world through your eyes, where it’s possible for everyone to have a happy ending.”
I laugh. I can’t help it.
“You’re laughing because you realize how silly you were, right? Because obviously I like you. Love you! You’re my best friend, Tessa, and some stupid distance and a boyfriend isn’t going to change that.”
The words make my whole body hum. I shake my head, even though she can’t see me. “I’m laughing because that sounded like one of those declaration-of-love speeches at the end of a romance novel. You know, when the hot guy shows up to, like, a church or the airport, or whatever, and lists all the reasons why he’s in love with the girl?”
“Hah! Well, I love the way you always order sauce on the side, and then end up using all of it anyway.”
I join in. “I love how you always sigh at the end of The Notebook and say, ‘Well isn’t that nice,’ even though they freakin’ die!”
“I love how you started wearing knee socks after watching To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before but still refused to admit you’d become a Lara Jean stan.”
“I love how instead of blowing your nose, you wrap the tissue around your finger, like some kind of booger glove.”
“I love how you always fart after you eat ice cream but think no one can hear you.”
“I love that you told your dad it was Lola’s copy of Fifty Shades of Grey when it was really yours.”
“Shh! They might hear you!”
We explode into giggles, just like we always do. And I wish we were together right now, so I could wrap her up in a hug. How could I have doubted her, my best friend? I should have known all that she—all that both of us are capable of. I should have given her the chance to be fully herself instead of letting my own insecurities and jealousness take over.
We spend over an hour catching up on our weeks apart, the longest we’ve gone since she assaulted Jesse Fitzgerald for me in first grade. “I know the love story plan is over and everything,” she finally says. “But at least you got your big happily ever after credits-rolling scene after all. Next time I’m down there to visit, I’ll bring signs to the airport, do it up right.”
“The love story plan isn’t over.” It’s been floating around in my head all weekend, but saying it out loud, it’s like I’m making it real for myself.
“What?” she yelps. “But you broke up with Nico. You’re not still hung up on him. . . .”
“No, no. Definitely no. I hope, though, that my chance for a happily ever after isn’t lost with the one who should have been at the center of my love story all along.” I see his messy sandy hair. His deep dimple on his right cheek. His faded red Hawaiian shirt.
“Well, besides myself,” I add quickly. “Because, I think . . . that accepting myself should have come before trying to find the perfect guy. It’s no wonder it didn’t work out with anyone. I needed to love myself first. And I do. I really do.”
“That’s right, girl! I’m pumping my fist in the air. I wish you could see it,” Caroline shouts, as if she hadn’t given me the advice that led me in all kinds of crazy ways this semester. But I took it. And in the end, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with chasing after a happily ever after. As long as it’s the happily ever after that’s full and nuanced and really right for me.
“But . . . I don’t get it. What does that mean you’re going to do?”
“I’m going number eleven. Actually, this conversation was good practice.”
“Is that the Ferris wheel?”
“No.”
“Oh!”
On Monday morning, I pull my rainbow dress out of the back of my closet and pick out my hair as big as it will go. I’ll stand out, and I want to. It doesn’t scare me anymore.
I get to school early. Mom has been driving me to school since I stopped riding with Sam, and she rearranged her schedule so I could be dropped off one hour before the bell today. That’s already cutting it close for how much work has to be done. I slip into the creative writing copy room and scan my pages, making more copies than I can count. And when I’ve used up all the paper I can find, I start to make my way around campus, taping page after page on classroom doors, lockers, throughout the stairwell. It’s exhausting work. Poppy must have really hated me to do what she did. I think again about this whole story from her perspective . . . maybe I’ll try writing that next.
When the stares come during passing periods, I’m ready. I welcome them. At lunch, I walk up to our normal spot on the porch of the Bungalow to find Theodore, Lavon, and Lenore waiting for me. They put their food down and start applauding. It takes everything in me not to cry.
“Now this is art, baby girl!” Lenore shouts, snapping her fingers and then pulling me into a tight hug.
And I don’t deflect or laugh or explain away my achievement. I just say. “Thank you.”
I get to Art of the Novel fifteen minutes early, armed with another stack of copies.
“Ms. McKinney?” I say, and she looks up at me and then looks around quickly, as if I might be talking to another Ms. McKinney.
“Yes?”
I hand her one of the packets I created, selected chapters of an unfinished novella, stapled and perfectly formatted, with one exception: my name is in bold at the top.
“I’m ready to read today. If that’s okay . . . if it fits in the schedule. I know it’s late in the semester, and it probably won’t do much for my grade because, well, as you know . . . I haven’t been submitting anything new. But I need to do this. For myself.”
“I got a preview earlier,” she says, and her face is hard to read. “I look forward to listening.”
The class starts to fill in shortly after, and Ms. McKinney directs them all to sit down. We will be going straight into workshop. I thought it would help with the anxiety, jumping right in. But I still have to push down the fear that’s burning in the back of my throat, the familiar scratchy feeling prickling on my chest and my neck.
I can do this. It will be hard. It will be scary. But I can do this.
As my packets are passed around the circle, I take one more opportunity to look around the room, scanning past the faces of the people who have intimidated me all semester in search of the one I hope to see. Nico is here, his face a mask of indifference, but he’s not who I’m looking for.
This morning, I taped my final pages on the door to the culinary arts studio, accompanied by a note.
Dear Sam,
This is for me, but it’s also for you. Can you meet me in the Bungalow’s basement for conservatory?
Love, Tessa
He’s not here, I see, but I guess I already knew that. I would have felt it if he had entered the room, the tug of his energy on mine. His butter-and-sugar scent. I’m disappointed. I want him to be here, but I also know I will be okay in this moment if he’s not. This is the big finale of two love stories that became intertwined, but when I separate them, really parse them out, the one for myself comes first. I can stand here on my own.
I take a deep breath, look down at my paper, and begin to read.
My body and voice feel huge, like I’m taking up all the space in the room. I imagine if I could see myself, I would look like Alice after she ate that cake in Wonderland, limbs sticking out of windows and chimneys. But it doesn’t terrify me like it always has. For how little I’ve shared this year, I deserve all this space. I deserve the whole room.
I read my love story, what I’ve labored over all weekend. It’s a story of an insecure girl and a dorky boy, though only one had something to overcome. Of dances of romance to Dream Zone, dairy-free ice cream, zip-off cargos, and Hawaiian shirts. Of a sparkly night high above everyone else, toes in the Pacific Ocean, and so many conversations over dessert in a warm car. Of fear and mistakes and risk. Of sugar and brown butter and flour.
It’s fluffy and it has too many adjectives and it veers into the territory of purple prose, but it also makes Angelica swoon next to me. I can hear it in her sigh, feel it in the energy of her fidgety fingers.
I’m intoxicated with the magic of it all, being able to share my words with others. And I wouldn’t have been able to experience this joy, this rush, without first taking the risk of sharing myself. Without saying, Here. This is something I love, please love it too.
I thought I needed a real-life love story of my own to start writing again. And I did find love with Sam—I know that now. But what I really needed, to find my words and my voice again, was to love myself. And I do.
I just have to trust that like I found my way back to myself, I’ll get back to Sam too. And if I don’t, well, I’ll also be okay.
By the time I get to the last page, my voice is hoarse and my face is wet. I’m not sure when that happened. I should feel embarrassed, but instead I feel a tremendous release, like every cell in my body has been traded out for new ones. In this crowded basement, my voice and my words as the catalyst, I have been transformed.
I finally look up, ready—and shockingly—excited to take the criticism of the group. I can’t wait to hear what they think, good or bad, because I know that whatever is said won’t shake me down to nothing. I have a secure foundation holding me up now.
I scan the faces in the room one more time, but my eyes are drawn like magnets to the basement stairs. A flutter in my chest, a catch in my throat. I see him standing there.