I look at my hands. “He’s not important.”
Max waits, jaw tense.
“He just hurt me, that’s all. It was a long time ago. I don’t like talking about him.”
He turns to me, struggling to stay calm. “He hurt you?”
I sink into my seat, wanting anything
but
this conversation. “No. Not like that. We used to be friends, and we had a falling-out, and now he’s back, and I’m running into him everywhere—”
“You’ve run into him before.” He’s staring at the road again. His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel.
“Just . . . in the neighborhood. He’s not important, okay, Max?”
“Seems like a glaring omission to me.”
I shake my head. “Cricket means nothing to me, I swear.”
“He wants to take you out
every night,
and you expect me to believe there’s nothing going on?”
“There’s not!”
The van jerks to a halt in front of my house, and Max pounds on the steering wheel. “Tell me the truth, Lola! Why can’t you tell me the truth for once?”
My eyes sting with tears. “I
am
telling the truth.”
He stares at me.
“I love you.” I’m getting desperate. He has to believe me. “I don’t love him, I don’t even like him! I love
you.
”
Max closes his eyes for what feels like an eternity. The muscles in his neck are tense and rigid. At last, they relax. He opens his eyes again. “I’m sorry. I love you, too.”
“And you believe me?” My voice is tiny.
He tilts my chin toward his and answers me with a kiss. His lips press hard against mine. I push back even harder against his. When we break apart, he looks deep into my eyes. “I believe you.”
Max speeds away in his van, the Misfits blasting in a musical cloud of dust behind him. I slump. So much for my day off.
“Who was that?”
I startle at the sharp voice behind me. And then I turn to face her for the first time in two years. Her dark hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she’s wearing warm-up clothes.Yet she still manages to look more beautiful than I ever will.
“Hey, Calliope.”
She stares at me as if to say,
Why haven’t you answered my question?
“That was my boyfriend.”
Calliope looks surprised. “Interesting,” she says, after a moment. And I can tell she is, in fact, interested. “Did my brother find you? He went out looking for you.”
“He did.” I speak the words cautiously. She’s waiting for more, but I’m not giving it to her. I don’t even know what
more
would be. “Nice seeing you again.” I move toward the stairs.
I’m halfway to my front door when she says, “You look different.”
“And you look the same.”
I shut the door, and Nathan is waiting on the other side. “You didn’t call.”
Oh, no.
He’s furious. “You were supposed to check in over an hour ago. I called five times, and it went straight to your voice mail. Where have you been?”
“I forgot. I’m sorry, Dad, I forgot.”
“Was that Max’s van? Did he get a new car?”
“You were WATCHING?”
“I was worried, Lola.”
“SO YOU DECIDED TO SPY ON ME?”
“Do you know why guys buy vans? Do you?”
“TO HOLD THEIR GUITARS AND DRUMS? To go on TOUR?” I storm past him, upstairs and into my bedroom.
My dad pounds up the stairs behind me. “This conversation isn’t over. We have an agreement when you go out with Max. You check in with us.”
“What do you think will happen? Why don’t you trust me?” I rip off the pink wig and throw it across my room. “I’m not getting drunk or doing drugs or breaking windows. I’m not
her.
I’m not Norah.”
I’ve taken it too far. At the mention of his sister, Nathan’s face grows so hurt and twisted that I know I’ve hit bull’s-eye. I brace for him to tear into me. Instead, he turns without a word. Which, somehow, is worse. But it’s his fault for punishing me for things that I haven’t done, for things SHE’S done.
How did this day get so awful? When did this happen?
Cricket.
His name explodes inside of me like cannon fire. I move toward our windows. His curtains are open. The bags he brought home are still on his floor, but there’s no sign of him. What am I supposed to say the next time we see each other? Why won’t he stop ruining my life?
Why does he have to ask me out
now
?
And Max knows about him. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Max isn’t the type to keep bringing it up, but he is the type to hold on to it. Save it for when he needs it. Did he believe me when I told him that I love him? That I don’t even like Cricket?
Yes, he did.
And I’m in love with Max. So why don’t I know if the other half was a lie?
I’m not the only one with guy problems. Lindsey has been remarkably distracted this week. She didn’t notice when our math teacher misused the quadratic formula on Monday. Or when Marta Velazquez, the most popular girl in school, forgot to peel the size sticker off her jeans on Tuesday. Her leg said: 12 12 12 12 12. How could Lindsey not notice that when she sat behind it for
an entire hour
in American history?
It’s not until Thursday at lunch when Charlie Harrison-Ming walks past us and says, “Hi, Lindsey,” and she stutters her “Hey, Charlie” back, that I realize the issue. And then I realize they’re wearing the exact same red Chucks. Lindsey’s great at solving other people’s problems, but her own? Hopeless.
“You could say something about the shoes,” I suggest.
“You’re the clothes girl,” she says miserably. “I sound dumb talking about that stuff.”
Today I’m wearing cat-eye glasses and a cheetah-print dress I made last spring. I’ve pinned oversize red brooches like bullet wounds to the front of the dress, and I have bloodred ribbons tied up and down my arms and throughout my natural hair. I’m protesting big-game hunting in Africa.
“You never sound dumb,” I say. “And I’m not the one wearing his sneakers.”
“I told you, I don’t want to date.” But she doesn’t sound so convinced anymore.
“I’ll support you no matter what you choose.You know that, right?”
Lindsey plants her nose inside a hard-boiled detective novel, and our conversation is over. But she’s not reading it. She’s staring through the pages. The look gives me a familiar jolt—the expression on Cricket’s face the last time I saw him. He never came back home last weekend. His curtains are still open, and his bags are still on his floor. I’ve been strangely fascinated by the shoulder bag. It’s an old, brown leather satchel, the kind that should be worn by a university professor or a jungle explorer. I wonder what’s in it. Probably just a toothbrush and a change of underwear.
Still. It looks lonely. Even the mesh laundry bag is sad, only half full.
My phone vibrates once against my leg, through the backpack at my feet, signaling a text. Whoops. We’re supposed to have them turned off at school. But who’d text me now, anyway? I bend over to reach for it, and my glasses—a vintage pair that doesn’t fit well—clatter to the cement. They’ve got to be right beneath me, but I can’t see them. I can’t see anything. I hear the loud prattle of a mob of girls heading our way.
“Oh crud, oh crud, oh crud—”