Sixteen
SENIOR YEAR
I know I can’t avoid Joel and Noah all day. My plan is to talk to Noah at lunch, but he materializes from nowhere as I’m heading to my first class and tugs me into an empty hallway.
“You got a second?” he says.
“Listen, Noah, about yesterday—”
“Yeah, about that. You seemed kinda shaken up by the whole thing, so if I came on too strong, I’m sorry.” He glances up and down the hall. “I wanted to tell you there’s no pressure for homecoming. If it’s easier, you can pretend I never asked.”
I must look taken aback, because I am. And if I’m being honest, maybe a little relieved, too. “Are you rescinding your invitation?”
“No, not rescinding. I’d definitely like to go with you. But if you want to go with me, I’ll leave it up to you to say so. Even if it’s as friends, I’m cool with that. Otherwise, we’ll pretend it never happened.”
“So if we go together, I have to be the one to ask you?”
Somehow this feels like more pressure, not less.
Noah takes my hand. “Mace, I’m not gonna lie to you. I like you a lot, but I had my own, uh, less-than-honorable reasons for asking you to homecoming.” He threads his fingers through mine and takes a step closer. “I’d really like to see where this goes. But I don’t want to start off being a prick.”
I swallow hard. “So you admit you asked me because you’re trying to piss off Joel?”
“It’s not—it’s not all that simple. But that might’ve been part of it.”
My lips press into a hard line. “And the kiss?”
To my own ears, my voice sounds razor-sharp. But Noah doesn’t seem to notice. He brings our joined hands up to his face. “That’s up to you too.” He traces my fingertips over his bottom lip. “I’m willing to try again.”
That’s so not what I meant. I’m trying to give him a chance to say once and for all if he was the one to kiss me on the football field, and his response is to ooze sex appeal all over the floor. If he’s expecting me to giggle and melt into the linoleum, it’s not going to happen.
In the split second when I hesitate instead of ripping my hand away from his mouth, I hear the squeak of sneakers at the mouth of the hallway. I turn in time to see Ben’s disgusted face, a second before he bolts out the door.
* * *
I head toward the Yearbook Club room with my lunch, because I am so behind on my assignments for the week.
Definitely not because I’m avoiding anybody.
My phone starts to ring, and I’m puzzled to see it’s Jadie. When I pick up, she squeals, “I just ran into Fielding. Guess who won the bid to design the homecoming bulletin board.”
“Oh my God, please say we did.”
“WE DID!”
I do a little celebratory jig in the empty hall. Each year, two members of the yearbook staff are chosen as lead decorators of the bulletin board outside the gym, the first thing people see as they enter for homecoming. We had to present our ideas in a report, and Principal Fielding personally chooses the winning concept.
There’s an extra bounce in my step when I arrive at the empty yearbook room. The first thing I do is pull up the Ridgedale’s Finest page to see what’s worth highlighting. It’s mostly the usual fare: students’ selfies, shots from club meetings and sporting events, groups of friends cheesing for the camera, a few attempts at snaps made to look candid when they’re definitely not.
A lot of homecoming-centric pics are starting to pop up too. Guys posting “she said yes” photos, girls showing off their bouquets of roses, or in one case, a giant heart made of flower petals in the middle of the hall with “Homecoming?” spelled out with stems and more petals in the center.
It’s cute, and yet I frown at the screen. I’ve posted to this page tons of times, because I’ve always thought of pictures as a method of preserving the moments you can’t get back, a way to hold on to something beautiful. And I still think I’m right. But after talking to Joel and Noah, I have to wonder about how much of what people share is for attention. And how big the disparity is between what’s real and what passes for reality.
I plug in my flash drive with a sigh. A second later, my sigh turns into a gasp.
Somehow, I managed to throw the wrong Cruzer into my bag this morning. Because the folder I clicked has opened into hundreds of tiny scenes from junior year.
I scroll through silently, my lips parted in awe. It’s amazing how memories can hide in the corners of your mind, like a favorite old pair of shoes waiting to be unearthed from an overstuffed closet. Treasured but forgotten, until they’re stumbled upon again.
There’s Meredith and me with my brothers at Stone Mountain Park. Some of my first sunset pictures, many of which now hang on my bedroom wall. Joel, mid-leap on the football field, seconds before catching the ball spiraling toward his waiting hands. Jadie in her cheerleading uniform, hands cupped around her mouth, cheering for Tyrell. The promposal at the diner. Ben sitting between my brothers on Aaron’s bed, a guitar across his chest. Ben and Meredith, their cheeks sucked in around their straws in Meredith’s float.
I stop scrolling when I get to a series of streetlamp-lit photographs taken in the parking lot of Snow in Georgia, the slushie stand where everyone congregates before the weather gets too cold.
I let the pictures run in slideshow mode, and can’t help but smile as the images flash by. I’ve barely touched alcohol since that night, and for good reason. Since the photos are sorted from oldest to most recent, it’s like watching the night devolve all over again. But as the frames fade in and out, my smile fades too.
The last pictures of the night are off-center selfies of Joel and me sitting on the hood of his car. My grin is sloppy and unbridled, and both our eyes are bleary. His are bloodshot, almost like he’d been crying.
I hate him.
The words ring through my head again, the same way they did right before the blackout on the football field. Something contracts in my stomach. Because as I study the picture again, I’m certain now that I do remember Joel crying—not before we took this picture, but after.
I let it sink in for a minute, trying to dredge up more details from the sea of booze I drowned them in. There’s so much more that I need to know about that night. I sit perfectly still, afraid the memories will scatter like spooked birds if I move a muscle. I stare for so long that the screen goes dark.
As I’m about to reach for the mouse, a voice says, “Can we talk for a sec?” and I almost hit the ceiling. Meredith is standing in the doorframe. I do my best to look collected and motion toward the empty chair next to me.
“Of course. I’m just working on something for yearbook. Grab a seat.”
Meredith settles into it and crosses her long legs. “So I heard Joel asked you to homecoming.”
“How did you—” I start to say, but then I realize. “Ben told you.”
She nods. “Did you accept?”
“Not yet. He said he wants to make up for what happened last year, but I don’t know.” My hand moves absently to the locket Joel gave me. “He’s still adamant that he had nothing to do with the fire.” I look at the floor. “But I guess I don’t need to tell you that.”
“Fire or no fire, you don’t have to justify it to me, Macy. It’s your decision.”
Okay. That wasn’t the response I expected. Meredith shifts and sits on her hands. It hits me that she’s not acting agitated and aloof the way she did when I cornered her in the courtyard. She seems uncomfortable, nervous about something. “And as far as trying to make up for last year . . . I think Ben is doing the same thing. Which is why I wanted to talk to you first.”
“First? As in . . . ?” I leave the question open and wait for her to fill in the blank, even though I have a feeling I know what’s coming next.
“He asked me to homecoming.” Yep, I knew it. There’s an odd heaviness in my chest, like someone punctured my lungs with a pin. “I totally didn’t expect it, but I think he feels bad too, about the way the last one ended, and it sort of happened.” She smooths a piece of hair behind her ear. “But I didn’t want to say yes without talking to you first.”
“Why is that?”
She fixes a hard stare on me. “Macy. You’re sure nothing happened between you and Ben last year?”
The look on Ben’s face when he saw Noah and me in the hall flashes through my mind, and so does the way he reacted to my locket from Joel.
I think we should talk about what didn’t happen that night, he said.
And yet he asked Meredith to the dance. It’s the same as saying that the window of opportunity for that conversation is closed, locked, and boarded up. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“Nothing. I swear.”
“See, that’s the part I’m not so sure about. Even if it was nothing to you, I think it was something to him.”
“I don’t get it,” I say softly. “If that’s what you thought, then . . . why is he the one you forgave?”
Her shoulders slump, and she’s quiet for a few beats. “Because it was easier to blame you than to admit I didn’t have a chance.”
I start to reach for her arm, but think better of it.
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. We’re friends, Ben and I, and I’m learning to be okay with it.” She turns a shaky smile on me. “I guess there are some people I’d rather not live without.”
I don’t bother to ask if she’s saying what I think she’s saying. I practically jump into her lap and wrap my arms around her. She laughs, and the sound is like slipping on a comfy old sweatshirt. I love it. She must be thinking the same thing, because she wraps her arms around my shoulders and squeezes.
“I got into UNC,” she says.
“So did I.” I detach myself from her, my long-abandoned visions of us taking UNC by storm together coming back to life inside my head. Maybe things can change.
Which reminds me: “I have to know, though,” I say. “Why the change of heart about Joel?”
“Well, this might be hard to believe, but . . . I’m not always right about everything.”
I laugh, even though it’s a non-answer. There’s something she’s not telling me, but I’m not about to rock the boat when the water might finally be settling. “And whether he set the fire or not, the school still isn’t going to bring back the parade this year. Even if they did”—she gives me a meaningful look—“it wouldn’t be the same.”
I can’t meet her eyes when I answer. “You guys seem fine without me on the team.”
“Macy, how could you think that? You and I have been cheering together since we were kids. It was like the start of an institution.”
“Exactly. An institution I didn’t know how to be part of without you. Let’s face it, Meredith; we were a team, but the squad was always yours. There was no place for me after . . .” I trail off, not wanting to say after you shut me out, even though it’s the truth.
“But don’t you miss it?”
I falter under her expectant stare. For a long time, cheerleading was my world, and Meredith was like the sun it revolved around. But things have changed, and to be honest, it hasn’t all been terrible. I don’t know how to tell her that I’m not sure how much of me is still wrapped up in us.
She stands and slings her bag over one shoulder. “It’s okay. I get that you have a new thing. I’m just glad we talked.” She hesitates a second. “And, Mace? Seriously. Go to the dance with whoever makes you happy. If there’s anything I learned from last year, it’s that you can’t let other people’s bullshit drag you down.” She taps her fingers against the strap of her bag, like she’s trying to choose her next words, or debating whether to say them at all. “But be careful, okay?”
When she steps back, the bulk of her bag knocks against my mouse. The screen comes to life as the slideshow lands once again on the picture of Meredith and Ben sharing the float at the diner.
Meredith’s eyebrows lift, then pull together. “I thought you were working on stuff for the yearbook.”
“Oh.” I wave my hand at the screen. “I brought the wrong flash drive and ended up taking an unexpected trip down memory lane.”
I give her a No big deal look, but the sad, far-off way she’s staring at the computer is so intent that I wonder if she’s still aware that I’m here.
“I remember that day,” she finally says. “Ben talked about you a lot after that.” She readjusts her shoulder strap, and the smile she attempts doesn’t hide the sadness in her eyes. “I’ll see you later, Macy.”
She turns and heads out the door, face turned toward the floor. That picture shook her way more than I would’ve expected. Maybe putting the past behind us isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.