Twenty-Three
I don’t contact Paul or Jack. They don’t contact me. We exist on the same street, twelve houses apart from each other, and do not exchange words for four days. On Tuesday and Thursday morning, new episodes of Unhappy Families go up per usual. It would seem that nothing is amiss.
Except everything is amiss.
The last big fight I got into with Paul and Jack was about whose bike color scheme was cooler. We’ve never had a blowout over something as big and messy and adult as this. Nothing close to Paul telling me he’s loved me since the first time we played on the shoddy jungle gym at Holly Park. Nothing remotely involving sexuality or lack thereof. This is uncharted, unfriendly terrain. There’s no vegetation here, no signs of life. I know I won’t survive if I try to rough it out much longer. Still, I can’t bring myself to call, to text, to break into their basement and fall asleep on the couch. I can’t, and, it seems, they can’t either, and I wonder if this is how friendships end—not with a declaration, but a stalemate, a slow fade.
Not that this is the end of our friendship. I refuse to let that happen. But I can’t pick up the phone. Not yet.
I do text Thom. Not about the fight. Of course not about the fight. He doesn’t know that Jack and Paul are my best friends, let alone what I would fight about with them. We gab about the usual: Thom’s opinion of J. J. Abrams and the most recent episode of Storms of Taffdor .
On Thursday night, I bid au revoir to Leo. It’s an emotional parting. He puts up a good front, attempting to hide the anguish beneath his scowl, but I know he’s heartbroken to see me leave, even if it is only for a few days.
“It’s not exactly on a par with starting a dozen schools for newly emancipated serfs,” I say, “but this nomination is kind of the biggest thing I’ve accomplished in my life so far.”
Leo scowls.
“Hey, stop judging me, okay? I am not superficial for wanting a tuba-shaped piece of hardware.”
Scowl.
“Don’t even. You didn’t have your shit together when you were my age. You were running around being a privileged aristocrat and blowing your inheritance on gambling and dropping out of school and joining the army.”
Scowl, scowl, scowl.
I hoist my shoulders to my ears. “Okay, Leo. But you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
Then I start packing. I’ll be gone only two nights, but I somehow manage to fill my entire suitcase. I keep remembering little things, like my sleep socks and travel perfume and an extra pair of sunglasses.
I’m blaring St. Vincent’s Actor album, and in the silence between two songs, I hear a knock at my door. I open it and find myself nose-to-nose with Jack. From the look on her face, this isn’t her first round of knocking. She’s not wearing any makeup, and she’s still dressed in her sleep clothes—black flannel pants and a Jack Skellington tee. She pushes past me into the room, sits down on the edge of my bed.
She says, “You’ve got so much effing explaining to do.”
There’s a blitz of distorted guitar coming from my laptop speakers. I shut the screen, bringing the song to an abrupt end, and sink into my desk chair, facing Jack.
“Where do you want me to start?” I say.
“Well, while I’m tempted to ask why I found you doing a striptease in front of my brother, I think I got enough information from him. The more pressing matter is this .”
She hands over her phone. The web browser is pulled up to a blog. I recognize the title and logo immediately: It’s Horn-Rimmed Glasses Girl . The page is her most recent blog post, titled “Unhappy Families, Unsatisfying Production.” This must be the Q&A the founder, Heather Lyles, conducted with me in mid-July. I just now remember that I never mentioned it to Jack. For a while, it kept slipping my mind in the usual filming madness. But then I finally decided against telling her at all. Jack doesn’t do well when interacting with strangers, and a joint interview with her would have been so much more of a hassle than answering the questions myself. So I answered the questions, and I told myself I’d let Jack know eventually. Now, eventually is here. She’s holding the interview in front of me. But when I skim the text, I find no back-and-forth text between bolded names, no trace of a Q&A. It’s a post in paragraph form, and it only takes me a few sentences to realize it’s a review of the series. A scathing review.
“I need to know if you actually gave her those quotes,” says Jack. “Because if not, we need to, I dunno, sue for libel or something. And if you did . . .”
I don’t have to say anything; Jack gleans an answer from my silence. Her expression remains blank, but she’s angry. How could she not be? As I read further, things only get worse. Heather Lyles has lambasted the show, and she’s used the quotes I sent her to back up her points. The final paragraph reads:
Young web series “producer” Natasha Zelenka is just seventeen years old and, unfortunately, it shows. The choice of Anna Karenina as subject matter for a lighthearted series is all the proof you need. Others have criticized the series for oversimplifying Tolstoy’s storyline. I’d say it slaughters it. Behind all the Kevin fangirl craze is a meandering plot with none of the drama and passion from the novel. By making the main characters “young adults,” Zelenka and Harlow sacrifice critical elements that make the book work. Anna dumping her long-term boyfriend Alex for new fling Vronsky isn’t anywhere near the heartrending mess of Anna leaving her husband and beloved son to live the life of a social pariah in imperial Russia. And as for the famed end of the novel’s heroine? Zelenka says she “can’t give away the ending, but our hope is that it’s satisfying and does justice to the rest of the story.” Not too hard to do justice to a story of so low a caliber, but if you’re expecting satisfying, don’t hold your breath.
I hand the phone back to Jack and press my lips together, not sure if I’m going to laugh or cry or pass out.
“So,” says Jack, “were you never going to tell me you did an exclusive interview with a well-known blog? Without me?”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Are you? Because this whole thing looks pretty deliberate on your part.”
I don’t know how to answer that, and Jack doesn’t let me.
“I thought you should know this shit is out there,” she says, “especially before you head for Orlando. You left me out, so you get your own quotes used against you. I think that’s what you call karma?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry .”
Jack shakes her head. “What the hell is wrong with you, Tash? I get that things are weird here with your family because of the baby and Klaudie leaving. But you don’t ever get an excuse to treat Paul like that. Only I can treat Paul like that, and only on very special occasions, when he deserves it. So, you want to tell me your side? Did he deserve it?”
“No.” My voice is crumbling away into dust. “No, of course he didn’t.”
“Know what? I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve figured it out: You take us for granted. Him especially, but me too. I dealt with all your self-indulgence about going to a hyped-up, preppy college. Even when that’s not remotely an option for me. Even when you didn’t once mention that you’d be leaving me behind. Like living in another city without me was nothing, like it wouldn’t affect you. I’ve put up with your plans and your schedules because I think it’s great you care that much about the series. But how much do you care about me , Tash? About either of us?”
My chest is shuddering. There are only a few remaining particles of my voice left when I say, “Paul said he’s in love with me.”
Jack throws her hands up, as though I’ve made some wildly inappropriate joke. “Well, fucking duh , Tash. Of course he’s in love with you. What did you expect? You grew up together and, bonus, you’re not related. It was kind of inevitable.”
She kicks the leg of my desk chair, reflective for a moment before adding, “He was going to ask you to winter formal. Isn’t that priceless? He spent a whole damn year whining to me about you after he broke up with Stephanie. ‘Oh, Jack, does she like me? It’ll screw things up forever,’ blah, blah. So he finally comes up with this elaborate plan. He was going to buy fifteen pumpkins and carve a letter into each of them, and he was going to light them all outside your window so they’d say ‘DANCE WITH ME, TASH .’ And I couldn’t stop him, no matter how nauseating the whole thing was. And then, I swear, not a week after he concocts the proposal, you tell us your news.”
“Jack. I had no idea.”
“Yes, well, you’re kind of oblivious to anyone’s feelings but your own.”
That’s harsh, but I take it. I think I deserve way harsher at this point.
“We were . . . confused,” Jack says. “The way you told us, I thought you didn’t like guys, period. Like, you weren’t attracted to anyone. It was something neither of us felt like we could bring up with you. We were both scared we would say something wrong. Which I know was messed up in its own way, but . . . I mean, you’ve got to understand, it threw Paul for a loop.”
“Because he thought I was a normal girl before.”
If Jack is allowed to be harsh, I figure I’m allowed some melodramatic self-loathing. But Jack flings me a look that informs me she’s not having any of it.
“He was beginning to come to grips with it, and then you got into this . . . whatever you have with Internet Thom. All this new information that sounded different from what you told us in September. I’m not saying it’s your fault for not liking Paul back. But you have to see things from his perspective. You really twisted him up.”
“No, I—I get that now. God. He . . . he was really going to carve fifteen pumpkins?”
Jack nods.
“Fifteen? He could’ve just spelled ‘Dance.’ ”
“Yeah, well he thought you deserved fifteen.”
I slump in my chair. There’s a puncture wound somewhere in my skin, slowly letting out all the air inside. I deflate faster and faster by the second.
“It’s not that I don’t like him,” I whisper. “I had a crush on him when we were younger too. Like you said, it was inevitable. But then . . . I don’t know. It’s impossible now. It wouldn’t work.”
“Because . . . he likes sex?”
“Jack. We are not actually having this conversation.”
Jack throws her hands up again, like What’re you gonna do?
“I know him,” I say. “I know the girls he’s gone on dates with. The things he’s said about them. Stephanie Crewe, all of that. I know what he wants. It won’t work.”
“Okay, yeah, but maybe that’s a little close-minded? I’m not saying it will work, but if he wants to try. . . . And anyway, what makes him any different than Thom? Just because you don’t know Thom as well, you think, what, he’ll be magically perfect for you?”
“N-no.”
I can’t tell Jack she’s put her finger on it. She’s called it out exactly. Even though I know it’s impossible, that it doesn’t work that way, I’ve been hoping that as long as Thom and I don’t talk about sex, it won’t become an issue between us. Ever. It’s so stupid. It’s stupid, and Jack can sniff it out from a mile away.
“Okay.” Jack scoots down the bed, closer to me. “Look. I’m not blaming you for feeling the way you do. You know that, right? You can feel or want whatever, whoever. I mean that. I just don’t get why half your clothes were off your body the other night.”
“I wanted to prove him wrong,” I say, even though that makes no sense in the rational light of day. “I don’t know, I can’t . . .”
“Well, can you not do it again? Can you not purposefully twist him up?”
She cuts me off before I can answer. “Look, I can’t get mad at you for effing up coming out when I’ve never had to do it myself. But I can be mad at you for plenty of other stuff. Like going behind my back with this blogger. And treating Paul like shit. Treating us both like shit.”
“Jack, I—”
Jack shakes her head viciously as she cuts me short. “No. I’m not done being mad at you. Especially because I don’t think you get it yet.”
Then she leaves me. I watch from the front porch as she heads down Edgehill, past those twelve front lawns that separate us. This time tomorrow, it won’t be twelve lawns but eight hundred miles.