chapter ten

It’s almost eleven when I arrive at McKinley and Jackie buzzes me in. I trudge up the stairs, my legs feeling like lead. This is just a shit night on top of a shit week and a pretty shit year. Still, I muster up a tired smile when I knock, because I’m Kellan McVey and my life is awesome and I’m an asshole if I don’t know it.

Jackie opens the door and I’m instantly overwhelmed by the camphor smell from her muscle rub.

“Wow,” I say, sneezing twice. “You weren’t kidding.”

She winces. “Sorry. I opened a window, but it got too cold.”

“Don’t apologize. I should be thanking you. I really appreciate this.”

“Absolutely,” she says. “Get in here.”

I step inside and drop my hastily-packed bag on the floor, shrugging out of my jacket. The room is as colorful as I remember it, but instead of headache-inducing it just feels kind of warm and nice. And the smell of camphor is always preferable to urine.

“What did the police say?” Jackie asks, sitting on the bed and scooting back so she’s resting against the wall. She wears yoga capris and a Burnham sweatshirt, her hair twisted back in a complicated braid. She must have reapplied her makeup after practice, because she looks way better than I do after a tough workout.

“They said there’s been a lot of vandalism in the area since school started,” I reply, joining her on the bed. “Some break-ins, cars getting keyed.”

“The fire in here, maybe,” Jackie says. “I heard it was intentional.”

“I don’t know. I think I just got unlucky.”

“Kellan McVey? Unlucky? That sounds blasphemous. Whenever someone hears that I know you they always ask what you’re really like.”

“Do you tell them I’m lucky?”

She laughs. “I just tell them you’re nice.”

I think about the unanswered text to Andi. “I’m not that nice.”

“You’re nice to me.” She puts her hand on my thigh, just above my knee, the gesture oddly self-conscious.

I study her carefully painted nails, pink with baby blue tips. Hands that have probably never caught a snake or knocked out Leo Vargas with a perfect uppercut when he called her the C-word in the high school parking lot. Andi’s three-day suspension was extended to a full week when she not only refused to apologize, but said she’d do it again if he deserved it.

Jackie inches her hand up higher and I’m smiling, but not for the reasons she thinks. “Kellan,” she says softly, shifting onto her knees and leaning toward me. “I think we—”

“Hey,” I say abruptly, making her freeze. “I should put your number in my phone.”

She blinks. “Um... It’s not in there?”

“Not yet.” I scramble off the bed and dig my phone out of my bag. I honestly believe this is the first time in my entire life that I’ve tried to think of a reason not to have sex with someone. Someone beautiful and kind who responds to my texts. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. What am I thinking? I can do this. I can sleep with Jackie. In fact, it’s probably a really good idea. I just need a second to get ready, mentally. It’s been a long day.

“Okay,” I say, phone in hand. I sit on the corner of the bed and shoot Jackie a smile as she stares at me uncertainly. I find her number in the call log and add it to my contacts, typing in her name. “Do you spell it with a ck or a q?”

She hesitates. “What?”

“Your name. Is it J-a-c-q—”

“Oh. Um, it’s J-a-s...m-i-n-e.”

There’s a very, very long pause.

“What?”

She avoids my eye. “My name is Jasmine.”

“Jasmine? But at the party, you said... I mean, I purposely remembered...”

“I said Jazzy,” she says quickly. “But the music was really loud and you misheard and I don’t know, I didn’t want to correct you. I’d just gotten to Burnham and suddenly I was talking to Kellan McVey and it seemed easier to just not say anything.”

“Not even your real name?”

“You were pretty close. Jackie, Jazzy. Is it really that bad?”

“Jackie—Jasmine—Jazzy.” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. “We’ve been hanging out and just now we were going to—maybe going to—”

“We still can,” she says quickly. “I want to.”

“No,” I say, too forcefully. “We can’t. You have to have higher standards than this. Than me. A guy has to know your name. Do you really want to be with someone who calls you the wrong—” I falter as a mental picture of the Student Union bathroom walls come to mind. Then the lists I’d made, to help me remember the girls whose names I either didn’t remember or had just never bothered to learn. Smells Like French Fries. Purple Hair. Green Bikini. I’ve already apologized for that, and I’ve been punished, and I can’t undo it. But I can choose not to do it again.

So can Jackie. Fuck. Jazzy. Jazzy? Really?

I look at her seriously. “You know there’s a list,” I say. “It’s in the Student Union bathroom. And if you sleep with me you’ll end up on it and you deserve better than to be part of some stupid, tasteless tradition.”

“I’m already on it,” she reminds me.

“How is that even possible?”

“Because we’ve been seen together. But it says ‘Jackie,’ so most people don’t actually know it’s me.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, I’m not!”

She sighs. “Kellan, be honest. Would you really know the difference?”

“Of course I would! I know I’ve never slept with you!”

“And if they’d gotten the name right and the list said Jazzy?”

I stand, trembling with a mix of righteous indignation and tiredness. “Maybe not last year, and maybe not first year, but this year—yes, I do know the difference. In fact, I’m going to make a difference.”

Jazzy yawns. “How?”

I falter for a second, but then it hits me. Crosbie had a list, too. And last year that list got him in trouble with Nora, so he fixed it. Biked over to the Student Union building with a bucket of paint and covered up his list. A fresh start.

“Do you have any paint?” I ask.

“Why would I have paint?”

“I don’t know. Do you have...Wite-Out?”

* * *

Jazzy hustles along beside me, more out of curiosity than a shared sense of righteousness. It’s a ten-minute walk through the middle of campus, largely deserted at this time of night. The sidewalks are empty, our shadows trailing briskly behind us as we start toward the Student Union building with two rolls of Wite-Out tape and one black marker in my pocket. It was the best we could do on short notice.

The Student Union building never closes and a grumpy security guard sits in the front lobby reading a book. Two students sleep curled up on nearby couches but otherwise the place is quiet.

“Evening,” the guard grunts, glancing up as we enter.

“Hey,” I say.

“Good evening,” Jazzy calls brightly.

I tug her toward the elevator bank and jab the up arrow. “Don’t be memorable.”

“You’re the one he’s going to remember, not me.”

“Just do your part.”

“I provided the Wite-Out. And the marker!”

“That’s because I was robbed!”

“Really? They took all your stationery?”

The doors open and we enter, riding without interruption to the fourth floor. I march to the women’s bathroom first, since those lists are supposedly the most meticulously maintained.

I knock as a preventative measure, but at quarter to midnight on a Friday the room is empty, as expected. I enter first, Jazzy trailing behind. I haven’t actually been in here since my first year, and the one and only time I saw the list it had six names on it. I’d been ridiculously proud of those names, all of which put one more body between the past and the present and everything I wanted to forget.

I push open the door to the first stall and stare, a little bit gobsmacked, at the neatly detailed lists that cover the walls on each side.

“Here you are,” Jackie calls.

I join her in the third stall. I recognize most of the guys’ names and quickly spot my own lengthy list. I peek at Jazzy from the corner of my eye as she gawks at it. “Well,” she says, sounding a little shaken. “That’s...a lot.”

It’s the longest list in the stall, probably in the whole room, and the fact that I know that none of the more recent names are real hook-ups won’t change what people choose to believe. The first sixty-plus names are legit, I’m pretty sure. But as long as it doesn’t say Andi, it’s not as bad as it could be.

“Let’s start with yours,” I say, crouching and pulling Wite-Out from my pocket. It takes approximately three mediocre strokes to admit that this plan is pitifully lacking. The strands of tape flutter uselessly, like I’m trying to mummify the wall. I switch to the marker. “New plan. I’ll scratch out all the names.”

Jazzy looks doubtful as she watches me drag the marker over the list, scribbling up and down and side to side, the fumes making my nose twitch. But still I can see the names. I narrow down my focus and carefully cover up Jackie, which is at the bottom, then the name above it, and the one above that. My fingers cramp and my arm gets tired.

I don’t even know these girls, I think as I cover up the recently added names. I really never knew them. And the ones above that, the ones I probably did hook up with—I didn’t know them, either. My vision starts to blur, but I’m not sure if it’s due to the fumes or regret.

“Kellan,” Jazzy says tiredly. “This is a great gesture, but I don’t think it’s working.”

“Where do they sell paint?” I ask, continuing to scribble, pressing so hard in places that excess ink drips down the wall.

“At midnight? Probably just the internet.”

She sounds so incredibly disinterested that I stand and stare at her. “Don’t you care?” I demand. “Your name—or something close to it—is on there! Doesn’t it bother you? Aren’t you offended?” I don’t how I’ve suddenly gone from being a guy who’d hook up with anybody to one who tries to convince young women of their rights and values, but it feels important that Jackie—Jazzy, dammit—understand this.

She shrugs. “Not really. I mean, I just want to enjoy college, you know? I come from a town of like, twenty-five people, and when I got here I got swallowed up into the crowd. Then I met you and you were so popular and so much nicer than I expected and suddenly people knew who I was and that was pretty great. I want to live, you know?”

“Jazzy,” I say seriously. “Living is overrated. I lived it up in my first year and you know what that got me?”

“This list?”

“Gonnorhea.”

“Right. But that’s gone now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that living isn’t just about racking up meaningless points on a meaningless scorecard. You should be looking for things with value. Guys who mean something to you and care about you in return. They’re out there.”

She arches a brow and looks at the scrawled names that cover every square inch of the stall walls. “Huh.”

“Maybe not right here,” I amend. “But...somewhere else.”

She sighs. “Kellan. This is very sweet. And I can tell it really means something to you. And I know I may seem young and naïve, but I’m not looking for your guidance on what it means to be a woman. I’m not trying to live up to anybody’s standards but my own, and I thought you were hot and I wanted to hook up. But this...” She cringes as she takes in my poorly eradicated list. “This has made me reconsider. You’re not really the guy I thought you were.”

“But I’m better now.”

She makes a maybe-yes-maybe-no face. “Eh.”

The bathroom door swings open, banging against the wall with a loud thud. Jazzy and I both leap out of the stall to see the surly security guard enter.

“What are you up to?” he asks, scrutinizing us. It’s clear he expected to see bit more bare skin and is disappointed not to, but then his gaze locks on the marker in my hand. “More vandalism? Is there even any room left in there?”

“It’s the opposite of vandalism,” I tell him. “I’m erasing it.”

“What?” He stomps to the stall and peers inside, immediately spotting my improvements. “That’s just more vandalism!”

“Vandalism is throwing someone’s dining table down the stairs and peeing in their closet!” I inform him. “This is progress!”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Have you been drinking?”

“No.”

He looks at Jazzy. “Why do you smell funny?”

“It’s just muscle—”

“The two of you stay put. I’m calling campus police.”

“Um...” I raise a hand. “Could you call the actual police, then? I met a couple of nice officers earlier, they’ll understand better.”

He’s already speaking into his radio. I hear him mumble some sort of code, then the word “bathroom,” then “sniffing markers.”

“I haven’t been—” I stop talking when it’s clear the argument is falling on deaf ears. I look at Jazzy, who is not taking this at all in stride. Tears stream down her face and she manages to look impossibly younger. “Don’t cry,” I tell her. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“It’s not a misunderstanding!” she exclaims. “It’s perfectly understood! You’re still holding the marker! You have Wite-Out in your pocket!”

The guard raises a brow. “That’s you too? Good to know.”

“I didn’t have any paint,” I explain.

“Stop talking,” he suggests.

The three of us loiter in the bathroom, the guard resting against the wall near the door, Jazzy sobbing near the sinks, me scrutinizing the lists. How did Crosbie make it in here with an entire can of paint and not get caught? It seems unfair.

The campus police arrive, take in the scene and assure the guard they’ll deal with it. They lead us wordlessly down to their patrol car and usher us into the backseat. There are no handcuffs and no flashing lights.

“Where do you live?” they ask Jazzy.

“M-McKinley,” she sniffles.

We pull away from the Student Union building and start the slow crawl toward the residences.

“Are we under arrest?” Jazzy asks.

“No,” the driver says. “Just don’t vandalize anything else.”

“Is it really vandalism if it’s already vandalized?” I ask. “And if it’s for a good cause?”

He catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “Yes.”

“Hmm.” I sit back in my seat and stay quiet until we reach the dorm.

“Never contact me again,” Jazzy orders, swiping a hand across her puffy eyes. “Got it?”

“Yep.”

They let her out and she runs into the building like she’s being chased.

“Where do you live?” they ask.

I give them my address without thinking, only realizing the mistake when we pull up outside of my ransacked apartment.

“What happened here?”

We squint through the darkness at what’s supposed to be a door but is now just a sheet of plywood tacked over the entrance.

I slump in my seat. “I got robbed.” And now that I think about it, the bag I packed is sitting in Jazzy’s room, along with my keys, my phone, my everything.

“Do you have somewhere else to go?” they ask.

“Can you take me back to McKinley, please?”

“She just told you never to contact her.”

“I’m not going to see her. There’s another girl.”

They exchange a look.

“It’s not like that,” I say hastily. “I mean, it’s complicated, but she’s my childhood friend—” 

“Give us a different address,” the driver says. “I’m not dropping you at a building you were just asked not to visit.”

“But all my stuff...” His face is resolute and I know he won’t budge, so I sigh and ask him to take me to the Frat Farm.

I press my nose to the cold glass and watch the dark houses roll by, pondering my miserable situation. I get robbed, but somehow I’m the one in the back seat of a police car. I’m the most popular guy on campus, but I have nowhere to go and no one to call, even if I had a phone from which to call them. Or any idea what their phone numbers were.

We turn into the Frat Farm and immediately I can feel and hear the bass thudding from half a dozen houses on the street. Instantly my head starts to throb and all I want is to lie down and fall asleep and wake up when everything’s better.

“Which house?” the driver asks.

“Are those tiki torches?” the other one mutters. “There must be a hundred!”

“I can get you a good deal if you buy in multiples of ten thousand,” I say, mostly to amuse myself.

They turn to look at me sharply. “What?”

“Um, nothing. Can you let me out at the corner, please?” I pull up my hood to hide my face as best I can, then wait as we come to a stop and one of the officers gets out to open my door.

It’s too cold for many people to be loitering outside, and fortunately those that are are too drunk to notice my arrival.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t vandalize things,” the officer says firmly. “Even if you think it’s for a good cause.”

“Right.”

“And give me the marker.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out the marker and Wite-Out. I put all three items into his waiting hand, leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back.

“Behave,” they call as they pull away and abandon me.

I could go to any one of these parties, plaster on a smile and find a place to spend the night. But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to fake a smile. I don’t want to pretend to be somebody I’m not. Not anymore.

I start a slow trudge toward campus, keeping an eye out for the patrol car in case they see me skulking back and stop me again. I’m numb to the cold by the time I reach McKinley residence and push the button for Andi’s room. I wait ten seconds, but no answer.

I back up to look at her window, but it’s dark. I check my watch. Closing in on one o’clock. I hope she’s not out living too late.

A couple of students stumble drunkenly up the walkway so I snag the door as it swings shut and slip inside after them, making my way to the stairwell. There’s no need for a confrontation with Jackie because my bag is sitting in the hall outside her room, where she must have ditched it. I sniff warily in case she, too, wants to piss on my stuff, but it just smells vaguely of camphor. I pick it up and dig out my phone, but two letters into a text to Andi, the screen goes dark and the battery dies.

Fuck.

* * *

Andi wakes me at two-thirty. I blink slowly, confused and groggy, as I take in her concerned face and my strange surroundings.

“What the...” I mumble.

“That’s my line,” she replies.

I blink again and her face comes into sharper focus, as stern and pretty and familiar as I remember it, her hair twisted into a knot at the base of her neck, long strands framing her face.

“I got robbed,” I tell her as the memories come flooding back. “Then I got arrested.”

She purses her lips. “What?”

“It’s been a bad day.”

“Right. Why are you in the stairwell?”

I peer around. I have indeed fallen asleep in the McKinley residence stairwell. “So Jazzy doesn’t see me.”

“You finally learned her name, huh?”

“I learned a lot of things, Andi.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“They peed in my room.”

“Who did?”

“The vandals. The real vandals, not the good vandals, like me.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No. But I might be high off marker fumes.”

Her brows tug together, her mouth tight as she studies me. I know she wants to send me away, to tell me she doesn’t care and she hates me—and that may very well be true. But I have nowhere else to go.

“And my phone died,” I add.

She sighs. “Come on, Kellan.”

I shove to my feet and follow her down the hall to her room. She closes and locks the door behind me. “If you try anything,” she says, “you’re out of here.”

“I know. I won’t.”

“You look like shit.”

“My outside matches my inside.”

She’s unmoved. “How introspective. Watch your feet.”

I step back as she pulls the top mattress off the bed and wedges it into the small amount of floor space, then divides the blankets so she has the flat sheet and the duvet, and I have the fitted sheet and the worn wool blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed. I recognize it from her room in Avilla.

“Where were you?” I ask, taking her in. She’s wearing black leggings with boots and some sort of long tunic top with a glittery neckline.

“Volleyball team party,” she says, yawning into the crook of her arm.

“How’s the team doing?”

“Absolutely horribly. Last in the division. How else do you think I got on?”

“Because you’re good?”

“Because I was willing.” With her back to me, she pulls off her top so I can see the white straps of her sports bra crossing between her shoulder blades. Just as quickly she pulls on an old Athletics T-shirt then crawls into bed. I pretend to be busy with my own sleeping arrangements, squishing down a corner of the mattress that’s curved up against the desk, fluffing the spare pillow she tosses me. I arrange it so my head is near her feet, then pull off my sweater and jeans so I’m in boxers and a T-shirt. I hear Andi fumbling beneath the duvet before her pants come off and she wrestles on a pair of shorts.

“I should brush my teeth,” she says, flopping back onto her pillow.

“Me too,” I say.

She reaches over and turns off the desk lamp, enclosing us in darkness. “Good night, Kellan.”

“Good night, Andi.”

I stare up at the invisible ceiling, every fiber in my body eager for the chance to sleep, but my mind is not on board with the plan. It’s whirring furiously, dazed and confused and somehow keenly aware that this moment is an opportunity not to be missed. An opportunity in a girl’s bedroom that has nothing to do with sex.

“Andi,” I say into the dark.

“What?”

I open my mouth, then close it. Maybe the guys were right—maybe I don’t know how to apologize. Or maybe I just don’t know how to apologize to Andi. We fought a lot as children and our parents would force us to say we were sorry, bitter, mumbled apologies that mostly meant “I’ll get you next time.” But there’s no one here now to force my hand, just me.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She’s quiet for a long time. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry for leaving.”

“Okay, Kellan.”

“For leaving last week without saying anything, but also for leaving Avilla with things the way they were between us,” I add, without realizing I’m going to. I’ve always been sorry about that, but I’ve never really thought about just telling her so. I chew on my lip as I work up the courage to ask the question I’ve put off for so long. “What happened at the baseball game?”

Her sharp laugh startles me. That is not the response I was expecting.

“What’s funny? What am I missing?”

“Nothing and everything,” she says. “God, Kellan. What happened at the baseball game? Really?”

“Yes, really,” I insist. “I thought we were awesome and then suddenly you put the brakes on. No, you did more than that—you fucking killed us.”

“I killed us?” she echoes, her disbelief clear, even in the dark. “I killed us?”

“Yes! And I don’t know why.”

“God, Kellan. If you don’t know the answer to this, then you’re the one person out of 42,000 who doesn’t.”

I still don’t know what the problem is, but I do know that 42,000 is the approximate capacity of Petco Park, where the Giants play. “You’re really that mad that the A’s lost?” I ask. “Because yeah, I was praying for it, but I had nothing to do with the final score.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she says harshly. “I can’t believe I ever—”

“Ever what?”

She answers my first question instead. “The Kiss Cam, you fuckwit!”

I frown. “The Kiss Cam?” Saying the words is like opening a tiny window into the past, that late summer game, the sun still high in the sky, the energy in the stands thrumming. I had Andi on my left and Lacey McRae on my right. Lacey was a friend’s older sister, a baseball fan, and the only person any adult trusted to drive their car. At the end of the eighth inning Andi was deep in conversation with the man on her left, debating the merits of designated hitters, when the crowd around us started to applaud. It took me a second to realize we were on the Kiss Cam—all three of us. Me, Andi, and Lacey. I looked at Andi first—I know I did, because I remember wanting to kiss her and also being legitimately afraid of what she might do to me if I did. She was still talking to that guy, so I looked at Lacey, who grabbed the front of my Giants jersey and planted one on me. A kiss significant enough that the crowd exploded and Andi’s attention was finally drawn to the camera. My eyes were open the whole time and I can suddenly see that whole tableau like it’s happening right now: me kissing Lacey while Andi watches, stunned, from six inches away.

“That was nothing!” I exclaim. But even as I say it I know I’m just trying to convince myself. Because I saw the same broken expression on her face mirrored on my own for weeks afterward.

“Did you know Lacey McRae won Miss Avilla Homegrown three years in a row?”

“Er...maybe?”

“I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised you picked her, but I thought we had an understanding. And I thought I could handle it.”

“Andi—”

“You asked me to practice, Kellan. And then you put all that practice to use on the prettiest girl in Avilla, while I sat there like an idiot.”

“I just—”

“You were supposed to wait!”

“It just started out as practice, Andi. You know it turned into more than that.”

“I was stupid enough to hope it could.”

“And I was stupid enough to hope it wouldn’t. But it did. I’m sorry about how it ended but I don’t regret it. I’ve never had anything better.”

“How can you say that when there’s a list of all the girls that prove it didn’t matter at all?”

“That list was after you, and before you. There’s never been a during. You drive me fucking insane but when you’re in the picture, you’re the whole thing. You’re all I see.”

“How many girls have you used that line on?”

“Like, seventeen. Was it good?”

She laughs reluctantly. “It was okay.”

I prop myself up onto my elbows, even though I know she can’t see me. “I mean it, Andi. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry I ever made you feel like practice. You’re more like that horrible boot camp that everyone hates but in the end when they’re at war they see how it prepared them for life.”

“What?”

“And you’re like that scene in Citizen Kane, where I’ve only been looking at the foreground without paying attention to what’s going on in the background, when that’s the whole heart of the story.”

“Kellan, stop trying to be poetic. I’m getting confused.”

“Are you hooking up with Crick?”

“Oh my God.”

“Want me to say it poetically?”

“Are you hooking up with Jazzy?”

The question throws me for a loop, but at least I know I have the right answer for once. “No,” I say firmly. “I never have. And after tonight, I definitely never will.”

“I didn’t hook up with Crick.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because he doesn’t deserve you. And I’d be...jealous.”

“You don’t get jealous.”

“I didn’t think I did.”

“Did you just admit you were wrong and jealous?”

“Whatever’s said in the dark stays in the dark.” So many times we’d had conversations like this, through our opened bedroom windows in the night, falling asleep mid-sentence, picking up the next day without ever missing a beat. So constant and natural I just assumed we’d never stop.

“I wish you’d told me,” I add.

“Which part?”

“About why you were so mad after the baseball game.”

“It should have been incredibly obvious.”

“Tell me now.”

“I just did.”

“Tell me whatever you would have said that night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

There’s such a long pause that I don’t actually think she’s going to do it, then I hear her take a deep breath. “You’re an asshole,” she says softly.

Then there’s another really long pause.

“Is that it?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“I know there’s more.”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Why not?”

Another pause. “I think you know, Kellan.”

My heart kicks in my chest and I want to press her for answers, for clarification, for articulation. I want her to say that I wasn’t the only one who ended that summer with a heart so shattered I didn’t think there was any point in even trying to put it back together. But she’s gone her whole life without ever telling me she loves me because she knows I’m not ready to say it back, and that’s one unspoken moment we could never recover from.