I give her a little nod. I wish I had something good to tell her.
“Yeah, okay.” Jason gets up.
I stay on the swing. I’m surprised at how much I don’t want him to leave.
“So . . .” Jason goes. “Happy birthday. Thanks for having us over. It was fun.”
“Of course. Anytime.”
Anytime?
Why did I say that? It sounds like an invitation to come over and make out or something.
Blake sits on the swing next to me after letting them out. I’m in a total daze. I can’t even get up.
We listen to Jason’s Jeep pulling out of the driveway.
“How’s it going?” Blake says.
“I wish I knew.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened out here?”
“Nothing.”
I’m sure that’s exactly how it felt to Jason. Like nothing happened. I just wish that to me, it didn’t feel like something.
13
We’re doing pointillism
in art. It’s a method of painting where the image you’re creating consists of all these tiny dots. The cool thing is that you can only see the dots up close. When you look at the painting from far away, it just looks like a regular painting. Pointillism is really hard because it takes forever to make all the little dots. And getting the right colors in the right places is key. If your colors are corroded in one little section, it ruins the whole painting.
Naturally, Connor rocks at pointillism.
“You’re so good at everything,” I tell him. “I suck at this.”
“No you don’t,” he says. He’s just being nice. I’m trying to paint an underwater ocean scene. It’s just not working. My queen angelfish is supposed to have these bright yellow eyes and electric-blue stripes along the edge of her fin. Instead, it looks like I’m trying to paint a fried egg with some blue bacon. Maybe I can pass it off as postmodern.
“Are you sure I don’t suck?” I ask.
“Positive.”
“Then what’s this supposed to be?” I slide my paper across the table to Connor.
He turns the paper around and barely looks at it before sliding it back. He goes, “A fish.”
“How did you do that?”
“You’re not as bad as you think. It looks good.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
People are always telling me that I’m too hard on myself. That’s part of being a Taurus. I can be so stubborn about making things perfect that I don’t stop to notice they’re already good enough.
“What do you think of mine?” Sophie asks me. She’s been sitting with me and Connor since that day Ryan harassed her. She doesn’t really say much.
“It’s good!” I say.
“Thanks.” She grins at the table.
Sophie and Connor are so much better at this. I’ve been blending red and blue together for ten minutes and I still can’t get the exact shade of purple I want.
“Maybe it doesn’t exist,” I tell myself. But I say it out loud.
“What?” Connor says.
“This color I’m trying to make. Maybe it’s not an actual color.”
“Kind of lost me there.”
“I mean, have all the colors been invented already? Or are there some new colors that don’t exist yet?”
“Still lost.”
“Like . . . how are colors . . . made?”
“How are they
made
?”
“Yeah.”
“From pigment combinations.”
“Well, where do pigments come from?”
“I think they’re just naturally occurring.”
“Naturally occurring in what?”
“Um . . .”
I hate when questions like this get stuck in my head. They bother me until I can find an answer. The annoying thing is that these kinds of questions usually don’t have definite answers. Like with the whole fate thing. Do we have control over our fate, or will our lives turn out the same way no matter what we do? This is the one question I wish I could know the answer to more than any others. But I’ll probably never know.
Ms. Sheptock lets us out early. This happens sometimes when she has to set up complicated project materials for the advanced art class she has next. I go to get a drink of water near the locker room. I wonder if Danielle’s around. She has gym now.
Just when I’m about to leave, Danielle comes out of the gym with a group of girls. They pass by in a cloud of cherry lip gloss and Secret deodorant, disappearing into the locker room.
“Hey,” she goes. “You got out early from art again?”
“Just in time. I was two seconds away from ripping my pointillism fiasco to shreds.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Only when it’s true.”
“So . . . I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“What?”
Danielle looks behind her, toward the locker room. No one’s around.
“I just . . .” She gets really quiet. “I was wondering if . . . there’s anything going on with you and Jason.”
“What? No! Why would you think that?”
“Because you sit with him every day at lunch.”
“I thought you weren’t mad about that. I told you, it’s—”
“I’m not mad. I just meant . . . I see the way you are with him.”
This is tricky. I could ask exactly what she means by that. Of course I want to know. But then we’ll be talking about it. It’s better to not go there.
“We’re just friends,” I say. “You know he’s with Erin.”
“I know.”
“We have this connection, is all.”
I can tell that Danielle doesn’t believe me. We’re close. She knows me. So because we’re close and she knows me, she’s letting it go. That’s how you know you have a good friend. When they spare you from a conversation you don’t want to have.
When I head to English in a direction that will probably make me late, it’s not a conscious decision. Something is making me walk a different way than I normally would when there’s no reason I should. You know how you’re so used to having the same routine every day that sometimes you’re not even aware of how you got from point A to point B? Like, all of a sudden I’ll be somewhere that I totally don’t remember walking to. I’m used to sort of tuning out like that in between classes. But right now I just have this really strong feeling that I should go down a different hall. So I do.
And there’s Jason. Right around the corner.
“Hey,” he says. “I never see you before fourth.”
“Well . . . here I am.”
“Nice. What do you have now?”
“Um. English.”
“Do you have Mrs. DeFranco?”
“No, Ms. Martin.”
“I hear she’s decent.”
“Yeah, I like her.”
The bell rings.
Jason says, “See you at lunch?”
“Yeah.”
We both go to leave at the same time. I bump right into Jason. Or he bumps into me. It’s hard to tell.
“Oh!” I go. “Sorry!”
“No, it’s my fault. I’m still learning how this whole look-where-you’re-going thing works.”
We try to walk our separate ways without bumping into each other again. We both move to the same side, then the other side.
“Whoa,” Jason says. “Maybe one of us should let the other go first.”
“I’m not moving.”
“Walking away now.”
Jason finally manages to leave.
Kids go to their classrooms. I just stand there, processing it all. What made me walk this way, knowing it would make me late for class? Was the Energy controlling my fate? Or was I controlling my own fate?
14
Today is one
of those typical spring Sundays. Mom is working in the garden, planting sunflower seeds. Dad’s in his recliner with a new crossword-puzzle book. Erin’s over. We’re watching a movie in my room. It’s the same scenario we’ve all played out tons of times before. Except today is different.
Today I feel guilty.
Erin doesn’t care that Jason and I sit together at lunch. She loves that we’re friends now. Before that time we all went out for pizza, she was worried that we wouldn’t like each other, which would have harshed her excitement over all of us doing stuff together. So she’s relieved that Blake approved Jason as worthy and that I like hanging out with him. With all of their staring at us, I don’t know if the Golden Circle has said anything to her. Even if they have, it wouldn’t occur to Erin to take their gossiping seriously. In Erin’s mind, Jason and I only exist in relation to her. She gets like this sometimes—only seeing what she wants. It’s a sort of tunnel vision that makes her oblivious.
Erin wants to know what Jason’s been saying about her. But Jason never really talks about Erin. Whenever I bring her up, he changes the subject three seconds later. Not that I bring her up as much as I should. Which is why I’m having trouble answering Erin’s questions.
“But what did he
say
?” she goes.
“Nothing.”
“You asked him if he liked my hair and he didn’t say anything?” Erin has curly blonde hair. She just started blowing it out straight. I was supposed to ask Jason if he likes Erin’s hair better straight or curly. I mean, I did ask him . . . I think. I’m sure I did. I just can’t remember what he said.
“No, he said it looks nice,” I tell her.
“He likes it better than curly?”
“I think he likes both ways the same.”
“Huh. That’s weird.”
“Why?”
“Guys have strong opinions about how they want girls to look. They usually either like curly hair or straight hair. Not both.”
“I guess Jason’s more open-minded.”
“I know, isn’t he awesome?”
“Totally.”
We go back to watching
Thirteen
. But I have this thing lately where I can’t concentrate on simple activities. Like, I’ll be reading a book and my mind will just drift off and twenty minutes later I’m still on the same page. Or I’ll be watching a movie and a whole scene will go by before I realize that I have no idea what anyone said.
“What do you like best about him?” Erin asks.
“Who?”
“Jason!”
“Oh.” I really don’t think I’m the best person to ask. Not because I don’t have an answer. More like because I have too many answers. “Um . . . he’s funny.”
“
So
funny.”
“And smart.”
“
So
smart.”
Gromit peers at me from around a bit of coral. I go over to the aquarium and press my finger against the glass. She looks at me curiously. Then, concluding that I am not food, she drifts away.
Erin’s like, “Next year’s going to be the best.”
“Totally.”
“We should all do a road trip!”
“Um—”
“We can drive to Arizona and check out that world’s largest solar panel you’ve been dying to see.”
“You mean the wind turbine farm at the Solar Center?”
“Whatever. It’ll be wild! We’ll drive in shifts and stay in random motels. And all those rest stops—you
love
diners!”
I have to laugh at Erin’s excitement. She’s all about the fun times. You have to admire her determination to get everyone else on board.
“What else did he say about me?” Erin goes.
“When?”
“Whenever! What does he talk about?”
“Just . . .” I don’t know what to say. It’s not like I can tell her about the time I showed Jason all those charts and graphs to convince him to recycle (which he said he would do from now on because he was totally convinced, by the way). Or how he showed me his note code. Because what if he never showed Erin? What if the code is this secret just between us? Erin might be jealous that he showed me something he didn’t show her first.
She’s all, “Why won’t you tell me?”
“There’s nothing—”
“Oh my god—did he say something bad about me? Is that why you’re not telling?”
“No! There’s nothing to tell.”
“Swear?”
“Yes. If he says something about you, I will definitely tell you.”
“But shouldn’t he have said something by now? Don’t you guys talk about me?”
“Sometimes. But there’s other stuff going on in the world, you know.”
“Okay, I’m overreacting. I need to chill.”
When you’re in the middle of a situation, sometimes it’s hard to see how things really are. Erin can’t see what I see. She thinks it’s her fate to be with Jason, that they’re building a strong relationship that will last for a long time, that he feels the same way about her. But I see something different. To me, it seems like Jason is having a good time with Erin without getting too heavy. I don’t doubt that he likes her. I just doubt that he likes her as much as she wants him to.
I’m trying to ignore these things I see. They’re the kind of truth you can never tell your best friend.
15
I don’t know
where it comes from. But Jason and I have this connection that’s stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. We have this way together where everything clicks. It’s so easy to be with him. And when I’m not with him, I can’t wait to see him again.
He feels like home to me.
The question is, can you just be friends with a soul mate when you want to be so much more?
It’s not as if there’s one major thing I can point to and say, “Aha! This is why we’re soul mates!” It’s a lot of little things, all together. Things that have no real meaning to anyone else but us.
This one time when Jason got coffee from the vending machine, there was something really familiar about the way he drank it. It was like I was watching myself drink coffee because I would do it the same exact way. Not that I ever realized how I drink coffee until he showed me.
Or a few days ago at lunch, when we suddenly started talking in abbreve. When you talk in abbreve, you can’t just abbreviate any words whatever way you want. There are rules. The weird thing is, I know the rules without ever having learned them. It would be impossible for me to explain these rules to anyone else. But somehow, Jason already knew them.