Forever for a Year Page 5

  But I never walked. Never. Might as well have, but still. By the time I got to the steps of the gym where we started, two sophomores had caught me. Then a half dozen others. Didn’t care. Couldn’t care. I collapsed to my knees, hard into the gravel of the cement. If you had asked me in that moment if I would ever, ever run with the cross-country team again, I would have said, “Fuck no.”

  But Pasquini walked fast toward me, mumbling, “I thought so, I thought so.” Then he crouched down because I was on my hands and knees, dry heaving, and lifted up my chin and said, “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but when you do learn, you might be dangerous.” He was giving me a compliment in his way. It felt good. I wished it didn’t. But it did.

  I was planning on taking the late bus home, but when I finally had the energy to stand up, and after Pasquini had given the team a cornball pep speech, I saw my mom’s Infiniti SUV waiting in the parking lot. Unfortunately, it had not driven itself.

  9

  Carolina will stop boy obsessing tomorrow

  “I-have-to-call-Peggy-I’ll-be-right-back,” I said to my mom exactly one second after I saw the request from Trevor Santos. I went to the basement laundry room because my room was too close to the living room and no way did I want her to hear my conversation.

  “He sent me a friend request!” I said, except I probably screamed it, as soon as Peggy answered. Why was I screaming this? This is not a big deal. Not. At. All.

  “Who?” she said.

  “The new boy!” I screamed again. I was out of control. I didn’t know who the heck I was anymore. “His name is Trevor Santos.”

  “I can’t hear you, hold on.” In the background, I could hear Katherine yelling at their mom. They were always yelling at each other. Peggy found someplace quiet, then said, “So what’s his name?”

  “Trevor Santos.”

  “That’s a sexy name,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, even though I hadn’t thought about it and didn’t even know what would make a name sexy. “What should I do?” my voice felt almost normal. I was starting to calm down instead of acting like some hysterical girl in love with a boy band.

  “About what?” said Peggy, who was having a “space-out night,” which sometimes happened. Especially when her sister and mom were yelling a lot.

  “About the friend request he sent, Peggy.”

  “Accept it, right?”

  “But … Okay. Yeah. But…” Should I admit it? I had to. Even though it completely ruined my vow. Just ruined it. So I said, “What if I like him?”

  “Then for sure accept it, right?”

  “But … maybe I should wait.”

  “Maybe you should,” Peggy said, not really listening. Or listening but not really thinking. Peggy was the greatest friend, except sometimes she just told you what you wanted to hear instead of real advice. So I changed the subject to talk about homework, and then about her sister’s party, and then we said good-bye. After I hung up, I really wanted a new friend. Not to replace Peggy, but a second friend, so I could have someone else to call when something so major was happening, like now. With Trevor Santos. Maybe his name was sexy.

  I said it out loud—“Trevor Santos”—but I felt like the silliest person ever and couldn’t bear to spend one more second alone with my own brain.

  So I called Kendra, because I had her number, and because I talked to her the second most today.

  “Hello,” she said, her voice very quiet, like always.

  “Kendra, it’s Carolina.”

  “Hi.”

  “So what did you think of our first day of high school?”

  “It was good.” Kendra spoke her words really fast, like she didn’t like the way they tasted and wanted to get them out of her mouth as soon as she possibly could.

  “You ever have a boyfriend?”

  She didn’t say anything. I almost said my mom was calling, which would be a lie, it’s just that Kendra was not easy to talk to like Peggy, even when Peggy was being space-out Peggy. But then she finally said, “No, I’ve never had a boyfriend. Have you ever had one?” Which was the exact question I wanted her to ask.

  “No. Never. But this boy I met today. I might like him. And he sent me a Facebook friend request. What do you think that means?”

  “He likes you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “REALLY?”

  She was quiet again. I felt stupid for getting so excited. Which I should. Because it was stupid. The stupidest. Definitely. Then Kendra said, “Why are you so excited?” And I felt one hundred times more stupid, until Kendra somehow said the most amazing thing ever. “It’s just that you’re so pretty. Lots of boys must have liked you before.”

  I couldn’t breathe for a second, and my eyes got watery, not sad but happy, so not tears, just so emotional because no had ever called me pretty before. I mean, my mom and dad had, and my brother, Heath, but no one else, ever. Even though Kendra was a girl, it’s almost better to come from a girl, because boys can be morons a lot, but girls are usually very smart. Then I said, because I didn’t want her to think I was conceited, “You’re so pretty too.” And this was TOTALLY true! You should see Kendra. She has skin with no pimples, and lips that old actresses have to pay for, and big, bright eyes, like they could be white suns, but smaller. Duh. But I worried she wouldn’t believe me because I said it right after she said it to me, and then I worried she thought I liked girls in a romantic way, and then I was silent.

  But she said, fast but nice, “Thank you,” and then changed the subject, which was great, by saying, “So are you going to accept his friend request?”

  “Yes. I don’t know. Maybe. What do you think?”

  “If you just want to be his friend, do it right away. But if you want to be more than friends, then you could wait. Boys like girls more when you make them wait. That’s what my dad says. But it makes sense.”

  “It DOES make sense,” I said, and I was sooo happy I called Kendra, and was sooo excited to have a new friend, especially one who was really smart and gave good advice.

  “Have you done the history homework yet?” Kendra asked, which was great, because it let us talk about school and not just boys, but then we talked about boys again, and Kendra said she had only kissed three boys, which was two more than I’d kissed. And the one I kissed was in sixth grade when kids still had birthday parties, and I was still invited, and we played Spin the Bottle, even though it was a shoe not a bottle, and I kissed Nicholas Durant, who was not very cute. Everyone calls him Licker now, and I don’t even know why. It was fine that it was my first kiss, I just wish it wasn’t my only kiss.

  I wondered if Kendra had done more than kiss boys. Shannon Shunton, supposedly, had had sex with a senior over the summer, but I only heard it once from Peggy, who heard it from one of Katherine’s friends, who hates Elizabeth Shunton, so it might not be true. But it was definitely true that Shannon and the other popular girls had done more than kissing, like letting boys go up their shirts and down their pants. But I didn’t ask Kendra about this because I worried I would want to talk about it forever, and I would never get my homework done, and then I would fail out of school and not be able to see Trevor Santos ever again.

  So we said good-bye and then I ran upstairs to talk to my mom, but she wasn’t on the couch anymore. She was watching TV in bed, which made me think she was missing my dad, and I felt bad because if it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have to be missing him.

  Yep. Okay. Gosh. Okay.

  Maybe tomorrow morning I would tell her it was okay to let Dad move back in.

  * * *

  I went back to the living room to finish my homework, except I couldn’t stop thinking about the new boy. Snap out of this, Carolina! You must do your homework! You are a good student! You are not going to become one of those dumb girls who only feels good about herself because boys like her!

  But I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. I so wished I could. But I
couldn’t.

  Tomorrow, I promised myself, I would stop with the boy obsessing. I really would. It was a new vow. I never broke two vows in a row.

  So I signed back on to Facebook and went through and looked at all of Trevor’s pictures, even though he had, like, only twenty, and most of them were grainy, and some not even of him or people, just dead birds in front of windows, but there was this one picture where he was sitting with a little girl—his sister, Lily, the caption said. And he had this look in his eyes, facing the camera, that he just could see through you and everyone and was probably the most interesting person ever born. Plus, he looked sooo attractive. Like he could be a model for some mysterious new designer. But even better than that, because he was probably smart and deep.

  I wanted to message him that I was in love with him and for him to message me back and tell me he loved me too. But then I realized I would never do this, and if I did, he would never message me back: He would laugh at me and tell Henry McCarthy and the rest of the stupid boys that always hated me and made fun of me. And then I realized Trevor Santos was probably a horrible person just like them, and that I should just do my homework.

  I also realized no way—NO WAY—would I let my mom let my dad move back in. Never. Never. Never.

  10

  Trevor doesn’t want to hear it

  None of the boy cross-country runners showered after practice. Strange. But whatever. So I didn’t either.

  First thing my mom says to me when I get in her SUV? “You smell, Trevor.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Do they not have showers at the school?”

  “My first day at school was great, Mom. Thanks for asking,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. How was your first day?”

  “Can we just go home, please.”

  “I’m sorry. Please tell me about your day,” she said as she started driving back toward our house. Except I refused. She kept asking me to talk, saying sorry over and over, but I just ignored her. Sometimes that was the only weapon I had against her.

  * * *

  My mom went to Riverbend High School. She was a legend twenty-five years ago. A cheerleader when it was still cool to be a cheerleader. Lead in the musical. (They did My Fair Lady just because of her.) She got straight As. She didn’t win homecoming queen, but trust me, it wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty, but probably because she was a bit of a snob. She was valedictorian, and she gave a speech about how life is too precious not to believe in your dreams and follow them no matter what. Everyone in our family, and everyone in this town, expected her to become a famous novelist or the first female president, except she wanted to be an actress. She didn’t go to Princeton University, even though her parents wanted her to. Instead she went to New York University and eventually dropped out to move to Los Angeles because she wanted to be a movie star and that’s where people move to become movie stars.

  Nobody has ever told me this, certainly not her, but I think she just assumed she would be this super-famous actress-celebrity right up until she was about twenty-nine. Then, boom, I think she panicked she would never make it, so she found my dad, who was this boring but successful business guy, and she quit acting, got married and pregnant with me before she turned thirty.

  My mom told me the reason she stopped acting was that her first love, before high school, was writing, and she wanted to get back to that. I’ve seen her scribbling in a notebook a bit but she’s never finished anything except a couple short stories that she won’t let me read. So I think my mom tried to kill herself because she knows she failed. She gave this big speech at the end of high school about following your dream, yet she gave up following hers. And knowing that made her want to be dead.

  I will tell you, there is this picture in her senior yearbook that I’ve studied a lot. You should see it. It takes up a whole page when nobody else even got a half of one by themselves. In it she’s reading a book in an empty auditorium, spread over three chairs, her long blond hair all glowing. My mom looks so beautiful. But more than that, she looks like she’s so in control. Anything she wanted, all she had to do was ask and she would get it.

  When I think of that picture, I feel sorry for her. Must be hard to think you can accomplish anything you want and then one day wake up and think you’ll never accomplish anything at all.

  “Trevor?” she said, for, like, the twentieth time.

  “It was fine, Mom. It was boring but not too painful.”

  “What was your favorite class?”

  “Biology probably.”

  “Did Henry introduce you to his friends?”

  “Yeah, but Henry and his friends are assholes.”

  “Don’t use that word,” she said. Except then she smiled and said, “My brother is an asshole, so you’re probably right about Henry.”

  I smiled too. My mom is the greatest at moments like this. When most adults would keep pretending to be mature and know-it-all, she can let the truth out. For the first time in a long time, and just for a second or two, I felt safe with her.

  By the time we got home, which was only ten minutes later, my mom said she was exhausted and needed to rest. I’m sure she hadn’t been up for more than four hours. But whatever. She asked me to walk down to our neighbor’s to get Lily, which I would’ve wanted to do anyway.

  Except after I started walking, I realized that Lily had two new friends on our block. (She made friends faster than anyone.) So I walked back in to ask my mom which neighbor and she was on the phone in her bedroom. I wanted to yell to interrupt her phone call, but I didn’t. Instead, I got really quiet. I don’t even know why, but I stayed that way and kept inching closer to her bedroom door. That’s when I heard her, very clearly:

  “I miss you too.… I can’t visit.… You know I can’t.… Because I need to stay in Chicago with my family … Of course I love them.… It’s different with you.… I have to go.… No, I can’t Skype again.… I have to go.… Bye, Dylan.”

  Then the phone call ended. And I waited. For a couple seconds but it felt longer. Like my whole life just fast-forwarded to the end and then rewound. Then I yelled, “Mom!” And I opened her bedroom door.

  The look on her face let me know what I thought I knew. But I didn’t want her to say anything. I couldn’t stand to hear it just then. So, super quick, I said, “What neighbors? The Thuressons or the Hammans?”

  “The Hammans,” she said. She opened her mouth to keep talking, but I just turned and walked away.

  * * *

  “Hi, Trevor, did you have a great first day of school?” Lily said the moment she saw me, strapping on her blue backpack. Then she turned back to our neighbors and her kid friend, and said, “Thank you so much for hosting me, and you have a wonderful home. I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”

  After they closed the door, I said, “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  “I’m being gracious.”

  “It’s strange that a seven-year-old girl talks like that.”

  “I think people like it.”

  “They do.”

  “So then why shouldn’t I do it?”

  “You should. It’s just strange having your younger sister talk like she’s older than you.”

  “You’re hilarious, Trevor. Enough about me, how was your first day?”

  “Mostly pointless,” I said, but then I realized I was bored with talking about things being pointless and Lily was the best to talk to about important stuff. Except I couldn’t talk about Mom’s phone call I just overheard. I just couldn’t do that to her. She wouldn’t even understand. So instead I said, “I think I met a girl.”

  “Really? Really!” she screeched, jumping up and down and acting like a seven-year-old for once. “Goodness! What’s her name? Is she as pretty as Dakota?”

  “Her name’s Carolina. And she’s pretty, but in a different way than Dakota.”

  “This is very exciting! I want to meet her. When do I get to meet her?”

  “Well, we didn’t real
ly talk yet.” I shouldn’t have brought Carolina up. Big mistake.

  “But why not? You just have to talk to her, Trevor! Don’t be afraid.”

  “You don’t talk to boys.”

  “Yes, I do. Don’t be hilarious,” she said. (She was using the word “hilarious” all the time lately, even when it didn’t make that much sense.) “But I don’t like them yet because I’m seven. I’ll like them when I’m ten. Are you Facebook friends?”

  “Facebook isn’t cool anymore,” I said.

  “But you look at it every day,” Lily said. I didn’t say anything back. “Just ask her to be friends on that. I think she would like that.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  “You’re so hilarious.” And then she made herself laugh, which made me laugh, which made her laugh for real, which made me forget all the shitty things that happened today.

  Lily was magical that way.

  11

  Carolina dies of a heart attack

  “Point him out,” Katherine said after she followed Peggy and me to our first-period biology class Tuesday morning. Peggy had told her about Trevor Santos’s friend request, so then Katherine said she would decide for me whether I should accept it. What kind of person does that?

  So originally I didn’t accept his request right away because Kendra and I decided it was better to make a boy that you like wait to know that you like him back. But then after thinking about it longer and my whole body hurting at the thought of him, I realized that Trevor was probably just asking me because he wanted to collect girls’ friendships but not really care about any one of us. So I couldn’t be his friend if I thought that, right?

  But then I just wished I’d gone ahead and accepted it so that Katherine couldn’t make it a million times worse. But it was too late for that.

  I saw Trevor turn down the hall, walking right toward us. The worst part? He looked so amazing, like he was in a music video and moving in slow motion. Gosh, I’m even thinking like an airhead because of this boy. Everything’s ruined.