A week later Oliver apparently has had enough. “It’s none of your damn business,” he says as soon as I climb into the behemoth. He’s staring straight at me, not putting the car into reverse, not heading toward school, nothing. “Yes, taking that bet was a dick move, but I can’t explain it to you. I don’t want to explain it to you. It’s not something you can understand.”
I find my voice. “Being on the receiving end of a jerk is universal. It’s a global experience.”
“You and I live in two different worlds,” Oliver snaps. He leans across the seat, so I know he means business. “And my world might seem stupid to you, it might seem basic and dumb and boring—”
“I didn’t say that—”
“But you don’t know that world.” Oliver glares at me. “And apparently you don’t know me, either.”
But I thought that by now I did know him.
“You could have told me,” I say. “Back at the very beginning, before we were friends. At least then I…”
I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
“You what?” he asks. “What would have been different?”
I stare into his brown eyes, ringed in gray and outrage, and it hits me: nothing would have been different. It’s all one big cruel trick of fate. I could have taken any other road—the one where I stayed with Itch, the one where I took the bus, the one where I didn’t help with the prank—and it wouldn’t have mattered. All those other roads, they still would have led to the same place. I was always going to fall for this boy.
And he was always going to break my heart.
“Fine,” I tell him, because the truth isn’t an option.
“Fine?”
“Fine-I’ll-make-a-concerted-effort-to-stop-judging-you-for-the-bet.” I spit it out all as one word, retreating into the corner of my seat. Trying to put as much distance between us as possible.
“Fine.” Oliver frowns at me. “Besides, there’s something else we need to talk about.”
His voice is still hard and the sound of it jolts my sadness into panic. He’s been mad at me all this time—this whole week—and I haven’t known why. Maybe it was more than a reaction to my anger. Maybe it was something else.
His parents.
Oliver could know about his parents, which would mean he knows I know about his parents, and now he might hate me, and—
“Oliver,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. He has taken out his phone and is sliding a finger over the screen.
“Here’s the deal,” he says. “It’s not a big thing, so don’t freak out or make a huge fuss, and I definitely don’t want to have a whole conversation about it, but for today—just today—we are going to listen to my music and my music only.” He starts a song—I think it’s Warrant but it’s not one from our playlist—and finally looks at me. “Ainsley and I broke up.”
The news sends my heart racing. Oliver sees me open my mouth—although I’m not sure what I’m going to say—and he hastens to add: “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
So that’s why he’s been such a mess ever since getting back from spring break.
Oliver backs out of my driveway and heads toward Plymouth. He stares straight ahead, but I’m gawking right at him. He shakes his head. “I knew you’d be like this.” He glances at me and sighs. “Don’t, June. Just…don’t. The only reason I’m even telling you is because I don’t want to repeat your bullshit when you and Itch broke up.”
I turn away and look out my window. Yep, Oliver definitely has the ability to hurt my feelings. Beside me, I hear him shift in his seat, and I wonder if he’s going to say something, but instead, his stupid music blares louder. He’s only turning up the volume.
As I watch the fields blur by, I realize I’m not unhappy only because Oliver’s acting like a douche. It’s because the rules just changed again and I’m surprised by that. No, worse. I’m rattled.
I don’t know how to do this whole friendship/not-friendship with Oliver if he’s single.
I’m waiting for physics to start when a pink notebook plops onto the lab table. I look up to see Ainsley standing beside me. She gives me a wry smile. “Can I sit here?”
“Sure.” Part of me is painfully curious about what happened between her and Oliver. The smarter—but smaller—part of me thinks I should stay blissfully unaware. Besides, the less we talk, the less guilty I feel about not telling her about the bet.
She sits down and sets her elbow on the table, leaning her head against her hand so she’s gazing up at me. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.” She keeps looking at me, so I elaborate. “It felt awkward.” At least that part was true.
“How is he?”
I’m not sure what the right answer is, so I reply truthfully. “I don’t know. He didn’t say much.”
Ainsley nods. “But he told you we broke up.”
This time I can’t keep myself from asking: “What happened?”
She presses her lips together before answering. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Being his girlfriend stopped being fun.”
Wow. It wasn’t a mutual breakup; it was a dumping. Which means Oliver is heartbroken. It sure explains his behavior when we got back from spring break.
“How did he take it?” I ask Ainsley.
“He was quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry or what. How was Itch when you broke up with him?”
At least that’s an easy question to answer. “He was really mad.”
As the bell rings for class to start, a last group of kids hurdles through the door, Oliver among them. He stalks right past my (our) lab table without a look.
Ainsley sighs. “I think Oliver is mad, too.”
“Here.” Oliver juts his phone at me as I strap myself in. “Add a song.”
“Why?” I look at him warily. “Did I prove something that I somehow missed?”
“No, but you will. You are amazingly competitive, so as soon as you think it’s been long enough, you’re going to use my breakup as a reason that high school doesn’t matter. Since I won’t really feel like fighting about it or taking it up with Shaun, you’ll win, so here.” He shoves his phone into my hands. “Go ahead. Add your song.”
He cranks the car into reverse and I look down at the phone in my hands. The opening screen used to feature a photo of him and Ainsley smiling at the camera, but now it’s blank.
“I need a second,” I tell him, and pick up my own phone.
A few minutes of purchasing and texting and sending later, our “Sunrise Songs” playlist has one new addition. I touch a final screen and the opening drumbeats reverberate out of the speakers, followed by an acoustic guitar and piano. A moment later, a melodic voice floats over us both.
Oliver frowns. “This doesn’t sound like your usual screamo.”
“It’s not.”
He glances at me. “Then what gives? Who is this?”
“Carly Simon. Seems appropriate.”
I sit back in my seat and cross my arms over my chest just as the chorus of “You’re So Vain” hits the air. Oliver takes the turn onto Plymouth with a little more vehemence than usual. “Cute, Rafferty. Really cute.”
It’s the fourth day of nothing but music on the way to school. I want to have an actual conversation with Oliver, to see how he’s doing, friend to friend. To try to get past this crap about the bet and the breakup. I want to comfort him, to talk it out, to slide my arms around his waist and hug him hard, to feel his breath in my—
No, wait! Not that. Never that.
I just want us to be normal again.
But we’re not.
“Hey, Oliver,” I say over the music as we pull into the parking lot. “I was wondering—”
I stop, because of course Oliver is waving to someone, and of course that someone is Theo, who is strutting across the asphalt toward us. So much for any last hope of reasonable discourse today.
Theo is there by the time we get out. He gives me a very obvious and obnoxious once-over before head-bobbing at Oliver. “You check out that link I sent you?” He cuts his eyes toward me and drops his voice. “The one about literature.”
Yeah, right.
Oliver nods. “The literature was very…well rounded.”
Then some high-fiving and fist-bumping occur, after which Theo makes hand motions that leave nothing to the imagination in terms of what this website link was actually about. It’s definitely—definitely—not literature.
“Bye, guys.” I head toward the school. Unfortunately, Oliver and Theo follow right behind me. They don’t even bother to lower their voices.
“I’d like to try some of that,” Theo tells Oliver, apparently still talking about their gross website. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Who says I haven’t?” Oliver asks, and a sour taste crawls up the back of my throat. My attraction to him shrivels up, turns to dust, and blows away in the spring wind. I know some girls are inexplicably into guys who are pricks, but I am 100 percent not.
Which means, now that I think about it, maybe it’s a good thing Oliver has reverted to his jock-hole ways.