Warm sunlight stripes my face and I roll over in my bed. The clock on my nightstand tells me it’s morning but not so late that I have to get up. I can sleep some more, because it’s the weekend and weekends mean sleeping in.
So the first thought that goes through my head is this: More sleep, please.
The second thought jolts me upright. It brings my shoulders to my ears and my hands to my mouth. That second thought is this: Oliver kissed me.
My third thought of the morning comes almost immediately. It is abrupt and shocking and loud inside my head. It is this: OH, SHIT.
It’s almost noon when Oliver calls. I’m sitting alone at the kitchen counter, trying to force some cheese and crackers past the knot in my chest, when my phone shivers. I see his name on the tiny screen, and I don’t even hesitate before touching the button to silence it, silence him.
I can’t talk to him.
Not yet.
What I can bring myself to do is listen to his voice mail.
“Hey, June. It’s Oliver. Flagg.” He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Which you already know, because I’m calling on your cell phone and cell phones broadcast the caller’s name, so basically everything I’ve said up until this point is completely worthless. I should hang up and start over, except that then I’d be calling twice in a row and that’s super weird and creepy, so…June Rafferty”—he takes a deep breath—“I would never dream of asking you to prom. It would be an insult to your intelligence. That is why…”
This pause is the longest of all.
“That is why I want to let you know that if a certain strong-willed, brilliant feminist intellectual just so happened to take it upon herself to invite a certain behemoth-driving jock to prom…that jock would say yes. He would say it very, very happily.”
The knuckle on my right ring finger hurts, and I realize it’s because I’m clutching the phone so tightly. I loosen my grip and listen to the end of Oliver’s message.
“So I hope she asks him. I also hope she calls him back, because Saturday was…”
A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.
“…the best.” I can hear his smile through the phone. “Call me.”
And then he’s gone. I’m alone with the knowledge that I’ve opened a door that can never be closed—one that leads to a place holding my greatest vulnerabilities, my biggest weaknesses, and everything that terrifies me the most.
No.
Early Monday morning, Mom parks in one of the employee lots on the U of M campus and we get out into the cold morning air. I trudge behind her, sending Oliver a text as I walk.
came in w/Mom today so no need 2 pick me up. srry hvnt called yet. super busy
He writes back immediately.
no problem! see you at school.
Mom has office hours, so she lets me into one of the galleries, where I sit on a bench and stare at a wall of turquoise canvases. I decide that both the bench and my life are hard, and that both the art and my heart are inscrutable. I sit there, feeling self-congratulatory about those poetic thoughts, until it’s time to walk to school.
It starts in homeroom when Lily plops down next to me. “How was your weekend?”
“Fine.” It’s not completely a lie.
“Was the fine part when Oliver almost punched Theo, or was it fine when you rolled around the back of a pickup truck with him?”
“It wasn’t a pickup truck. It was the hood of Oliver’s car.” I drop my head into my hands.
When homeroom is over, Shaun finds us in the hall as we’re all on the way to English. “How was that tequila?”
“We didn’t drink it.”
“They were too busy,” Lily tells him.
“I know,” says Shaun.
“Everyone knows,” says Lily.
“I think I have a migraine,” I tell them, and bolt.
After lying around the nurse’s office for a couple hours, unable to produce either a fever or some vomit, I get sent back to class. I consider ditching—just walking off campus and away from school, my senior year, graduation, life—but can’t bring myself to do it. After all, true escape is so close on the horizon, and then I’ll never have to see any of these people again. Only a few more weeks.
I just have to get through them.
Everyone would have stared at me anyway, because it’s natural to stare when a student walks into class totally late and drops a note on the teacher’s desk, but today—as Mrs. Nelson glances at the slip from the office and dismisses me with a nod—I feel all those eyes like they’re heavy objects dropping on every inch of my skin, turning it hot, pressing against my body.
Judging.
Even though I don’t look toward the back of the classroom, I know that two of the eyes belong to Oliver and they are the heaviest and the hottest of all. I can’t meet them with my own.
Because there’s nothing else to do, I sit by Ainsley, slinging my backpack onto the floor beside my chair. Given that even people who didn’t attend Saturday’s party have heard that I spent it kissing Oliver on some form of vehicle, I know there’s no way Ainsley isn’t in the loop. I take a deep breath before turning to her.
She’s smiling.
At the front of the room, Mrs. Nelson fiddles with a remote control. She’s experiencing some technical difficulties with the movie we’re supposed to watch about momentum and collisions. Apparently it gives the class license to talk, so Kaylie hops up from her lab table and drags her chair to us. “Hey, kids.”
Ainsley and I both tell her hello. My tone is wary; Ainsley’s is chipper.
“So how about that party?” Kaylie waggles her eyebrows up and down at me. She’s about as subtle as Theo.
“I know, right?” says Ainsley. “Thanks for taking one for the team, June.”
I stare at her, trying to figure out her angle.
“Oh, is that what that was?” Kaylie asks.
“Yeah, he got a little crazy about Theo and me,” says Ainsley.
“Typical,” says Kaylie.
“Thanks for distracting him,” Ainsley says to me.
“He just needed his ego stroked?” Kaylie says.
“Yeah, his ego.” Ainsley makes a suggestive gesture with her hands.
“Right.” I pull out my textbook. “That’s totally what it was about. Oliver’s ego.” Even with Kaylie’s minimal intellect, I’m certain she can’t miss my sarcasm. I shake my head and make a show out of opening my book. I ignore Ainsley and Kaylie. I shut them out.
I can feel rather than see the glances they exchange with each other. “What’s her problem?” Kaylie whispers.
I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the page.
Ainsley and Theo deserve each other.
It turns out even a superfast athlete can be avoided if one leaps from one’s seat and sprints away when the bell rings, especially if one then takes off in the opposite direction of how one usually goes, and hides in the girls’ bathroom until after the next class has started, even though it means one is then counted as tardy. However, it also turns out that if, an hour after that, one takes one’s lunch to the library and squirrels away into one of the study carrels, one might not be as hidden as one thinks.
I’ve just unwrapped my sandwich when the chair next to me clunks away from the adjacent carrel. Oliver drops into it. “Running, hiding, changing locations. It’s clever. You’re like a rabbit.”
“Thanks.” I don’t think my voice shakes, but I’m not completely sure. “I was actually just leaving.”
“No you weren’t.” He reaches over and turns my chair so I’m facing him. His smile is faint and his eyes are sad, and it’s stupid but I feel dizzy, like I might fall off my seat and right onto him. “I’m aware that it’s lame to ask if you got my message.” I nod and Oliver spreads his hands wide. “So…?”
“Sorry. I was just really busy yesterday.” It’s transparent and flimsy and awful, but it’s all I’ve got. I feel exhausted, but like the exhaustion is happening in my brain instead of my body.
Apparently I’m not hiding it well, because Oliver leans toward me. “June, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to think about how he kissed me, and how I kissed him back, and how everything was perfect and held such promise. I know—I know—that it doesn’t matter, that none of this matters, that promises break and people lie and we’re all going to be moving on to other places.
And I know that when I’m in that other place, Oliver’s not going to be there.
“You deleted your account on Mythteries,” he says, and I shrug, because that’s an easy one to answer.
“I was spending too much time on it.”
A look of relief washes over Oliver’s face. “I was worried you didn’t have wireless anymore or something.”
Heat rises inside me, a mixture of embarrassment and anger and memories I want to erase. “Like we didn’t pay our bill? Like we got cut off?”
“No!” It pops out of Oliver’s mouth too loudly, and I hear a shush from across the library. Oliver lowers his voice. “I just meant it was weird, that’s all.” He swallows, leans in—“June, let’s talk about it”—and I jerk to my feet.
“I have to go.”
Oliver stands, too. He clasps his hand around my elbow, but gently, like he could break my bones.
Or my heart.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me. “I should have asked before I kissed you. But with the lime and everything, I thought it was clear. I thought you wanted to—”
“I did,” I say, but only because I’m aching at the thought of Oliver thinking I didn’t want it to happen when I was the one who led him outside, who pretended to put a lime between my teeth, who tilted my head. “It’s fine, it’s nothing, I wanted to do it. Tequila and starlight are a powerful combination.”
“Tequila and starlight,” Oliver repeats. He stares into my eyes, searching for answers I can’t give him. “How much tequila did you have before I got there?”
“I lost track,” I lie. “And then you arrived and everyone’s emotions were running high.”
Now Oliver looks annoyed. “Are you talking about the thing with Theo? I told you I don’t care about him and Ainsley. It wasn’t about that.”
I make a gesture of dismissal. “I meant the end of the year approaching. Teetering on the precipice of real life, adulthood, everyone leaving. It’s like the days are turning sepia-toned all around us.”
“You’re saying it was nostalgia.”
“Nothing has to change. In fact, I should be thanking you.”
“For what.” The way it comes out of his mouth is flat, not a question. He’s angry. Or hurt.
Or both.
“For Nico Vega,” I tell him.
“Who?”
“ ‘Bang Bang.’ It’s a new song for our playlist.”
“A song.” Oliver crosses his arms. “You want a song. You think you get a win because of Saturday night.”
“Of course. High school life means that even though you can mess around with the girl you drive to school”—I pause, because it’s so hard to say, and yet it’s so true that it must be said—“it doesn’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything at all.”
And that should be it. That should put an end to all of it. All this investment, all these damn feelings—this should be enough to put them on a shelf and shove them away.
But Oliver is an athlete. He’s used to pushing through the defense, to tackling in the final five, to several other football metaphors I don’t understand. Even in the last minute of the game, Oliver doesn’t give up.
And this is definitely the last minute of the game.
“That is bullshit.” He stabs his finger at me, and the circles around his irises go coal black. “You’re a coward. All this crap about how nothing this year matters, it’s an excuse.”
The fire inside me flames brighter, threatening to burn me alive. I picture my ashes dancing up and away in a giant black cloud of pain.
“You don’t care about anything.” Oliver raises his voice and I tense to meet his anger. “Not about traditions, not about memories, not even about the people who like you the most. That’s your problem. It’s not that you think high school doesn’t matter. It’s that you think nothing matters!”
“Which is way better than thinking that every tiny, stupid moment has to matter!” The vitriol explodes from me and I can’t do anything to stop it. “God, you can’t blow your nose without adding the tissue to your mental yearbook. Every move you make is the Most Important Thing!” Somewhere in the back of my fire-scorched brain, I clock the librarian—Miss Emily—standing up from her desk and moving toward us. But I don’t care. Oliver thinks I don’t care about anything anyway. “It doesn’t count, Oliver!”
“What the hell does that mean?” He glares at me, his muscles tightening, the tendons in his neck rising.
“Nothing can ever live up to your expectations, because what you think this year is supposed to be, it’s too much! None of it is real.” It’s an eruption now. All flame and smoke and heat. I’m furious and I’m letting all that fury blaze through me, right out at Oliver. “You’re going to get your diploma and throw your hat in the air, and it’ll all just be done. I don’t want to be a part of that!”
“You don’t want to be a part of anything!” Oliver yells back.
Miss Emily is now fluttering nearby. She is young and sweet and I think she has a toddler at home. Judging by the terrified look on her face, she has never dealt with two teenagers in an all-out verbal war.
“You have no idea,” I tell Oliver. “You literally know nothing about me.”
“I know that you’re a coward. I know you’re so terrified of every pothole that you don’t ever take the ride. Actually”—he stops, mouth open, palms facing upward—“you don’t even learn to drive the car!” Oliver laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that rings out among the books. I part my lips to speak, to tell him what an ass he’s being, or maybe to find a reset button so everything can go back to how it was, but Oliver is on a roll. An enraged roll. “When? When, June?”
“When what?” I spit out. “When will you shut up and go away?”
“In your superior estimation, when does it start to matter? College? Do you start giving a shit in college? Do you have any idea how many people don’t use their college degree as adults? Tell you what, I’ll look that up. I’ll get an extra effing Aerosmith song because some percentage of the global population doesn’t use their degree!”
Miss Emily makes a clucking noise and we both ignore her.
“You need to calm down,” I tell Oliver, but he’s not even close to listening.
“Look at my parents, June! They didn’t start dating in high school. They got together in college. And now here they are, two kids later, and they’re splitting up, making your opinion crap. You don’t have a philosophy. You have a permission slip! It’s your lame way of getting yourself off the hook for anything you do. It’s license to be an asshole.” He pauses, and it’s like he’s suddenly been doused with a giant, sobering wave. All his fire and heat cools down at once. “But, June, you’re not an asshole, are you? Say it. Please say it.” His eyes are killing me. “Say that you’re not an asshole.”
But I can’t say that. I can’t say it because I have to do something that is so much harder, so much more painful. I can’t say it because my ashes are already blowing away, down the street and out into the world. Instead, I say something else. I say the thing that finally puts an end to it all.
“The night of the prank, when you had to drive your mom home, do you know what our moms were drinking?” The next words fly out of my mouth like arrows. “Several bottles of your dad’s best wine.”
There’s no waiting. The realization breaks hard and ugly across Oliver’s face. “You knew,” he breathes. “You knew about my parents.”
“I knew way before that.” The nail slides into the coffin of us like it’s going home. “Remember the morning you came to get me and you were eating something out of a napkin because your mother slept in and didn’t make you breakfast, even though she always makes you breakfast, and you thought she was upstairs with a headache?”
“No,” says Oliver, not because he can’t remember it, but because he can and he doesn’t want it to be true.
“She was at my house. That’s the night she found out your dad was cheating on her. That’s how long it’s been. That’s how long I’ve known. So I guess you’re right, Oliver. You win, like you always win. I’m an asshole.”
I watch as the debris of his rage washes out to sea, and the waves of what is left crash over him, one by mind-numbing one.
Disbelief. Realization. Acceptance.
Betrayal.
“I’m sorry.” It’s Miss Emily. She’s stepped closer, and now she’s cracking her slender knuckles and speaking in a voice just over a whisper. “You seem to be in the middle of something, but I have to ask you to take it outside.”
“I’m going,” Oliver tells her. “Sorry we disturbed the library.” He turns back to me, and for just a second, I wonder if maybe someone did find that reset button, and maybe this can become a bad dream, a nightmare that never happened. But then Oliver’s face twists with a new emotion, one I’ve never seen before when he’s looked at me.
Disgust.
“You used the word ‘literally’ wrong,” he spits out, and then he whirls and stalks away.
This time, I know it’s for good.
It’s for the best.