Read Back When You Were Easier to Love Online

Authors: Wing Smith Emily

Back When You Were Easier to Love (17 page)

BOOK: Back When You Were Easier to Love
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Mattia gave everyone a pen. “First, you write down a question on the sheet of paper Joy gives you.”
“A question starting with What if,” said Kristine. “And it has to be a good one. Not like ‘What if the Moors were never driven out of Spain?’”
She was talking about one disastrous weekend last spring, near the end of school, when a couple of random guys had raided a sleepover at Kristine’s while we were playing What If? They insisted on joining in, and I called Zan begging him to come over, too.
The guys made a total mockery of the game, of course. I remember reading Zan’s question and knowing it was his, recognizing his combination of caps and lowercase. At the time I rolled my eyes, throwing a crumpled piece of paper at his forehead. “Lame!”
But that night making fun of him was out of the question. It’s easier to be loyal to someone who’s far away. I said, “All guys are bad at What If?, not just Zan.”
“Yeah, but Zan was the only one whose question was a
historical reference
,” said Kristine, smirking.
Mattia was laughing, but Charlotte looked confused. She fiddled with her pen, drawing black lines across her palm.
“So, just stay away from school subjects,” I continued, smiling at Charlotte so she’d relax and stop drawing before her hand became a giant black mass. “Then put your question in the middle of the circle. Then we all draw a question from the pile and answer it on a second piece of paper. The answers go in a separate pile. Then we each draw a random question and a random answer and read them out loud.”
“It’s funny, I promise,” said Kristine, because Charlotte looked like she needed convincing.
“It really is,” I seconded. “You’ll see once we start playing.”
Charlotte looked at me, nodded, and smiled. “I’m game,” she said.
 
What if Mattia FINALLY stopped with the drive-bys?
Then I’d start singing “Mandy” at the top of my lungs, baby!
 
What if Kristine actually hooked up with Rigby instead of just threatening to?
In what universe would that even happen?
 
What if Joy got to meet Barry in person??
Then we would all simultaneously chant “Get thee hence, Satan!”
 
What if I hadn’t been obsessed with Zan? What if I hadn’t gone off to find him over UEA break? What if I was with my friends right now, frosting cookies and making fun of Mattia’s taste in movies?
What if my mind hadn’t left to find Zan months ago?
When you lose your best friend it’s not always because they go somewhere, like Noah’s best friend did. Sometimes you’re the one who goes somewhere. What if you go somewhere and you don’t know it?
How do you make it better when you went somewhere and you didn’t know it then, but you do now?
LABEL MAKER
I was in
the hospital once. For three days. I had to get my appendix out. I was eleven years old.
I had three different nurses. Two of them were the kind of nurses you think of when you think of nurses: gentle, smile-eyed ladies who look good in scrubs. One was a guy who looked just like Kramer on that show
Seinfeld
. He made jokes I didn’t get and watched TV with me when he was bored. His name was Oliver.
The nurses had to track when I went to the bathroom, which is embarrassing at any age but mortifying when you’re eleven. I was a good patient and told the nurses every time I went, just like I was supposed to. They never said anything about it, like it was the same as examining my IV or my heart rate.
Except Oliver. He told me, “You have an exceptionally large bladder, you know that?”
I did not know that. But at a time when it seemed like every other part of my body had something wrong with it, I clung to the idea that one part of me not only worked, it was exceptional.
Thing is, I don’t even know if I have an exceptionally large bladder anymore; after six years, maybe it’s shrunk. Maybe Oliver didn’t know what he was talking about in the first place. But it’s still part of how I identify myself, part of what I think about when I think about who I am.
If I’d been standing on the stage at that dance recital, the voice above me would have said: Brunette. Confused. Exceptionally large-bladdered.
Zan’s girlfriend. The voice would have said that, too, because being Zan’s girlfriend was so much of me. And I worked for that label. I thought it made me better. It didn’t, of course, didn’t make me better or worse, but I still didn’t want to let it go. I couldn’t let it go. But now I can. Now I want to. Because it’s not true.
THREE LITTLE WORDS
“If you could
describe me in three words, what would they be?”
I ask Noah this completely out of the blue, so when his mouth opens immediately, I know it can’t be good. Raising his nose in the air, he says, “Oh, I don’t believe in labels.” His high, affected voice sounds nothing like Ismene’s, but the impression is still hilarious.
I have to wait to stop giggling before I say, “Seriously, though. Really think about it. If you only had three adjectives to tell the world who I am, which ones would you choose?”
I expect him to ask why I’m asking, but he doesn’t. He’s just quiet. The eleven o’clock sun is heating up the car with light like an Easy-Bake Oven, and at this point the sunglasses Noah wears are more like safety goggles. His hidden eyes make the quiet more unsettling than regular quiet, so I answer him even though he didn’t ask.
“You know at the recital? How the narrator described each of the dancers?” I give him time to recollect, in case he’s repressed the memory. “I was thinking about the words I’d use to describe myself then. How they’re different than the words I’d use now.”
I expect Noah to be proud of my emotional growth, to pat me on the shoulder or something, but he doesn’t. He’s just quiet. Finally he says, “I don’t know. It’s hard to describe someone in just three words. Impossible, maybe.” He pauses. “Every word I think of sounds wrong.”
I try to think of three words for Noah. “Nice” is too generic for him, even if it’s accurate. As far as physical traits, “blue-eyed,” of course. Maybe mention “vegetarian” for uniqueness?
But Noah’s right. Because even though they’re the three words I came up with, it’s like I’ve just described a total stranger.
SOLID FOOD
I think the
aching in my chest is hunger. Over the last fifteen hours I have forgotten how to distinguish different kinds of aching, but this one feels familiar enough that it might be hunger. I long to feel full.
As I see the green, white-lettered signs for Las Vegas on the side of the road, the number of miles getting smaller and smaller, I start formulating a plan. I need a plan. If I tell Noah I’m hungry, he’ll just tell me to have snacks out of the duffel. If I tell him I want to stop in Vegas, he won’t. So I bring it up all casual. “Noah, have you ever been to Las Vegas before?”
I still can’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses and I still hate it. I hate not seeing how he’s looking at me, or if he’s looking at me, or how soft or hard his eyes are when he speaks. “Um . . . I think I think we might’ve stopped in Vegas on the way back from a family trip to Disney-land when I was little, but I don’t remember. It might’ve been somewhere else. We needed food.”
Even though Noah hasn’t told me much about his family, I can still imagine them in a silver minivan, the girls dressed up like Cinderella and Snow White, watching
Aladdin
on DVD. Saying “I’m hungry,” and eating at a cheesy diner. The image isn’t real, but it makes me smile anyway.
“What about you?” Noah asks back, because I guess I’ve been silent long enough that he realizes he should.
“Never been. Which is totally humiliating, because I used to live so close. Everyone goes to Vegas.”
“Not everyone,” he says, probably thinking about all the Mormons who think of Vegas as literal Sin City.
“But haven’t you ever wanted to eat at a Vegas buffet?”
His eyebrows wrinkle, and I’m absolutely positive that behind those glasses, his eyes are rolling. “No, I’ve never wanted to eat at a Vegas buffet. I’ve never even thought about Vegas buffets.”
“But buffets are the best part of Vegas for people who don’t gamble!”
“Okay, what’s with the Vegas buffet obsession?”
“I want to stop there for lunch. Please? We’re way ahead of schedule.”
“Can’t we just go home? I’m exhausted. This trip hasn’t exactly been relaxing . . . or—”
“Fun?” I interrupt. “This trip hasn’t been relaxing or fun. And all trips are supposed to be one or the other: relaxing or fun. I know from personal experience that seeing a bunch of half-naked dancers sounds like more fun than it is. Vegas buffets would be an upgrade.”
Noah laughs. Making him laugh makes me feel better.
“I mean, what are we going to say when people ask us what we did over the break? Tell them we drove to California, stayed there one day, got burned by our former friend, and then went home? Are we seriously that pathetic?”
I can see Noah creating a scene in his head. He gets the same look I get. “‘So, Noah, what you do over UEA?’ ‘Went to Vegas, baby!’”
“Yes! That’s
exactly
what I’m talking about. Living it up.” Living at all. Because I feel like I’m not living at all. I feel like ice has been running through me since last night at the poetry reading and that if I’m not careful, I’ll freeze solid.
But I can’t freeze solid, not now, not deep in desert with warm streaming in on me from all sides and the bicep of my right arm turning pink. I will not allow myself to freeze solid in the sun.
“So are we going to live it up? Because to be honest, I need to eat. I haven’t had anything since . . .” I trail off, because I can’t remember the last time I ate something. “Lunch yesterday. At the Ballad.”
“You haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday?”
“Unless you count the hot chocolate from open-mike night.”
“I don’t.” Noah pauses. “Do you think they have vegetarian options?”
“Of course,” I say like it’s obvious, even though really, how would I know? “And they’ll definitely have Sprite. Including all the free refills you want. In fact, it will all be free. I’ll pay.” I owe him a heck of a lot more than a meal at a Vegas buffet, but it’s the best I can do.
“We’ll go Dutch,” says Noah.
GOING TO VEGAS, BABY!
From the freeway,
the Strip looks like it does on postcards and in movies. Here you are, driving through miles and miles of nothing, and then there’s this carnival in front of you, appearing like a mirage.
The landscape is familiar, even though it’s one I’m seeing for the first time. And for some reason, that comforts me. It’s a place I know but also don’t know and that’s just about right. “Let’s park in one of those big Strip hotel parking lots. Then we can look around for somewhere to eat.”
Noah nods. “This exit?”
“Sure.”
The streets in Las Vegas are as crowded now as they are in every movie about Vegas. “Where do I go?” asks Noah.
“The first place you can go, go there.”
We end up in a hotel parking lot surrounded by an insane amount of palm trees.
“Do palm trees even grow in Vegas?” Noah asks, pulling into the garage. “Or are they yet another part of Vegas that’s fake?”
“Of course they’re real. Do you think they would bother putting up this many plastic palm trees?” I can’t keep that certain tone I use with Noah out of my voice. I’ve grown kind of fond of that “duh” tone.
Noah starts laughing. “I didn’t mean they were plastic,” he says, finally. “I meant do they grow here as native plants, or did Vegas have to introduce them to the environment?”
“Oh.” By the time I realize I’m embarrassed, I’m already blushing. “Right.”
Noah smiles, but doesn’t say anything. “Should we check out the buffet in this hotel?”
 
The buffet is, of course, located in the middle of the casino, and I am petrified that someone is going to spot us, notice how young we are, and cart us off to wherever it is they take underage gamblers.
“Why do you keep looking up?” asks Noah, after I stumble into him for the third time.
“Checking for surveillance cameras. There are cameras everywhere in Vegas.”
“
Hidden
cameras,” Noah says. “Don’t you think security might find it suspicious that you’re actually searching them out?”
“Fine.” I look back down and I see we’ve gotten to the buffet. On the other side of the thick glass facing us, fancy dessert trays and a cotton-candy machine shine.
“You ready for this?” asks Noah, seeing the way the food beckons me.
I stretch my arms in front of me, then behind me. “Oh, I was born ready.”
MY MEAL AT THE BUFFET
Round 1
Pineapple/ham pizza
Tomato/green pepper pizza
Garlic knot
Pulled pork
Mac ’n’ cheese
Sweet potatoes
Round 2
Bow-tie pasta with aribiatta
(half marinara, half red pepper) sauce
Fried rice
Baked root vegetables
Shrimp lo mein
Round 3
Stuffing
Cornbread pudding
Collard greens
Mashed potatoes
Corn on the cob
Pork ribs with barbecue sauce
Dessert
Mini pineapple upside-down cake
Tart with fresh berries
Chocolate chip muffin
Cinnamon-sugar doughnut
ALL THAT REMAINS
I eat. I
eat and I eat and I eat and do not stop. I do not stop to talk to Noah. I do not stop to take proper breaths. If I stop I might realize I’m no longer hungry, and if I realize I’m no longer hungry, I’ll have to admit to myself that all the buffets in Las Vegas won’t fill the hole in my heart.
“You miss Zan, don’t you?” Noah asks quietly.
BOOK: Back When You Were Easier to Love
11.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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