Chapter 13
The next time I ran into Ryder outside of class wasn’t the result of any scheming — for once. This time, on a chilly Saturday in the beginning of December, we both ended up at the Hamilton Public Library by sheer coincidence.
I was walking around the first floor, scanning the shelves, when a familiar voice called my name. I looked up and saw him sitting at one of the wooden tables in the corner, a legal pad and a huge, leather-bound book in front of him. He was wearing giant retro-style headphones. When he raised a hand to wave me over, my heart began pounding just a little too hard.
“Hey,” I said, approaching the desk. “What are you doing here?”
“Research,” he said, tugging his headphones down so they hung around his neck. “For the history essay, actually.” He tapped the leather-bound book next to him. “Taking some notes on the French Revolution.”
“Yay guillotines.”
“A sentence that has oft been uttered.”
I smiled and picked up the book. It was massive and heavy. “Are you actually reading this whole thing?” I asked. “You know, they have this new invention. It’s called the Internet. It contains all of this and more — without the paper cuts.”
“Paper cuts are like battle scars for the academic,” he said, smiling back. “I guess I’m old school. I like to get my information from a real book, and I take my notes by hand.”
“I, on the other hand, am best friends with Wikipedia.”
“You know that site is woefully inaccurate a lot of the time, right? Because anyone can change the information.”
“Yep. I’m the girl changing the information to make it woefully inaccurate.”
“So half the high schoolers around the country have you to thank for their failing grades on research papers.”
“Yes, sir. I’m practically a celebrity. Or, I would be if it wasn’t anonymous.”
He laughed, and even though there were still butterflies in my stomach, I felt relaxed. This felt natural. It felt like it had when we were instant messaging all those weeks ago. Like it did in our text messages, which, admittedly, I’d been sending again.
I hadn’t slept in Amy’s room since the Black Friday debacle, and the silence of the guest room had contributed to my insomnia. And to my recurring nightmare, which I’d had at least three times in the past two weeks. When I woke up, panicked and alone, it was easy to text him. To reach out and know someone else would answer.
I kept telling myself I would stop soon. Or that it wasn’t actually detrimental for the plan — that maybe, somehow, it made Amy seem even flakier to be texting him when she was so weird in person.
I’d told myself so many lies, I didn’t even know what to believe anymore. I just knew that I liked him. A lot.
And finally, after more than a month of inching closer and closer, we were having that same connection face-to-face.
“So what are you doing here?” he asked. “If you’re such a denizen of the twenty-first century.”
“Dropping off some books for Amy,” I said. “My one day off from the bookstore job and I still find myself surrounded by books.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Ryder asked.
“No. Just ironic. I actually applied for a job here, too. Unfortunately, I was informed that the last time the librarian hired teenagers to help her, they were caught making out between the shelves … multiple times.”
“Interesting,” Ryder said, tapping his chin with the end of his pen. “Who knew the Hamilton Library was such a scandalous place.”
“Right? I should hang out here more often.”
He nodded, and then we just stared at each other for this long, intense moment. At least, I thought it was intense. A little voice in my head was silently calling out to him: See me. Figure out that it’s been me all along. Of course, that would be a disaster. It had been long enough that any hope of Ryder not being pissed that I’d been sort of, accidentally, and then deliberately catfishing him was out of the question.
I didn’t want him to know that it was me sending all those messages.
I did want him to know that I was the girl he should be with.
If I hadn’t been sabotaging myself with those text messages, maybe he would have by now.
“Hey,” he said, after a second. “Would you want to get out of here? Go for a walk or something?”
I thought my brain might explode. He wanted to go somewhere with me. He wanted to take a walk with me. There was no Amy, no reason we should talk about school. It was just Ryder asking me to hang out with him.
Finally.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Let’s go.”
However, my exuberance faded pretty much as soon as we stepped out into the cold afternoon and Ryder said:
“I was hoping to talk to you about Amy.”
Fuck.
Of course.
What was wrong with this boy? As far as he was concerned, Amy had been leading him on for over a month with IMs and texts, only to be a completely different person (literally) in real life.
I knew it was partly my fault for keeping up the correspondence, but come on. Was that really enough to keep him clinging to the idea of her? They hadn’t even kissed. Hell, they hadn’t even touched.
“Amy. Right.” I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my old, battered coat. “What about her?”
“It’s just … I’m confused. Really confused.” He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk, and I watched as it rolled away from us, wishing I could follow it, away from this conversation. “Do you know why she avoids or ignores me when we’re in the same room?”
I shrugged. “That sounds like a question for Amy.”
“I’ve asked,” he said. “A thousand times. I never get a straight answer.”
It was true. Ever since our first bout of texting back at the start of November, Ryder had sent multiple messages, asking why I (read: Amy) didn’t talk to him in person. Why they hadn’t been on a date yet. Why things were so different in texts and IMs than they were in real life.
Most of the time, I ignored these messages. They’d come midconversation, and they’d serve as the end of the correspondence. Sometimes I’d respond with something vague — a simple I don’t know or a blatantly untrue I don’t avoid you!
I was hoping all the inconsistencies would scare him away from Amy.
But he just kept trying, in real life and via text message.
“You’re her best friend,” he said. “I figured if anyone would know what’s going on with her, you would. And since you and I are friends now….”
Friends.
He thought we were friends. A smile fluttered onto my lips, and I had to hurry to hide it. At least it hadn’t all been in vain.
“Do you have any idea why she’d avoid me?” he asked. “Does she … does she even like me? No. No, I know she does. Of course she does. It’s just that when we’re together, she’s so … different.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She seems pretty normal to me.”
“She doesn’t act like the Amy I know.”
“Then maybe you don’t know her that well.”
“I do, though,” he insisted. “Or I think I do. When we’re texting or talking online, she’s so … She’s great. She’s funny and smart and it’s so easy to talk to her. The virtual Amy is incredible.”
I got all shivery when he said that, and not just because it was cold.
“I just wish the Amy I saw in real life was more like that.”
My hands balled into fists in my pockets. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to come clean so bad. That person he thought was “incredible,” the person he’d fallen for, was standing right here.
Instead I said, “I’m sorry, Ryder. I don’t know what to tell you.”