Back When You Were Easier to Love (8 page)

“Joy,” he says. “Zan doesn’t want to be found.”

“Maybe not. But I need closure.”

I think of Noah’s serious eyes when he said, “Just because I have a lot of friends doesn’t mean I care about each one of them any less.” I know he understands even before I ask him if he does.

I can’t read his expression.

“I’m going with or without you,” I say. But I’m not going without him. I know it even before he sighs and nods his head.

“You’re crazy, you know that? It’s like you go out looking for ways to get hurt.”

Does Noah look disappointed? Even if he does, I don’t care.

I’m going to Claremont with Noah. I saw it in a dream.

As hard as
I try, I’ll never be as cool as Gretel Addison. She’s witty, sophisticated, and just counterculture enough to remain someone I aspire to be, but will never reach.

Gretel is the type who gives henna tattoos, burns patchouli incense, and drinks all-natural soda. She’ll put purple streaks in her hair just for fun. When we were little, we’d always come up with stupid get-rich-quick schemes. We sold lemonade, snickerdoodles, and fudge that was always burned. Once we even made perfume, throwing in tea bags and vanilla extract. Now jasmine is her signature scent.

We take advantage of our free weekend minutes every Sunday night, but this Sunday night is different. This Sunday night I tell her: “I’m coming to Claremont, and I need a place to crash.”

“Yeah, of course,” she says. Gretel’s quick to process—I love that about her. “Now give me the details—in descending order of importance.”

“First detail,” I say, “is that I need closure.”

She’s quiet for just two seconds too long. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning that in three days I’ll be at Pitzer, finding Zan and getting my life back.”

“How is that closure?” She exhales, long and deep, and I know she thinks this is a bad idea but isn’t going to say so because she knows it’s useless. There’s so much comfort in knowing exactly what someone will do, exactly how someone will react, not because you saw it in a dream but because you know them so well. “So, basically you’re planning to come here and get him back, right? In fact, don’t answer that. I already know I’m right.”

“Gretel,” I say, tracing the pattern on my bedspread, “I took this personality analysis last week that gave me a score of ninety-six on neuroticism. Do you think it was out of a hundred?”

“Undoubtedly,” she says without missing a beat. “So when do you get here?”

Charlotte is my
alibi.

“Okay,” she says when I ask. No annoying questions. No remarks about Zan. Ditto about Noah. Ditto about the trip. She just says she’ll cover for me, say I’m staying with her at her mom’s over the break, and we make a plan.

“Your parents won’t care if you tell them you’re staying with me while I visit my mom for the long weekend,” she says. “Trust me. Nothing ever happens in my old neighborhood. It’s a parent’s dream-come-true vacation destination.” She bites her lip, thinking, making sure we have our bases covered. Charlotte is nothing if not thorough. “If your mom or dad calls you, they probably won’t want to talk to me, but if they do just tell them I’m in the shower. That always seems to work on TV.”

“Thanks, Char.”

“You need this, Joy.” I know she really gets it. “But why don’t you just tell your parents you’re going to Claremont with Noah? You know, so you wouldn’t have to lie.” She’s not saying it like a judgment; she’s just saying it because she knows that generally I’m in favor of telling the truth. “I mean, aren’t you worried they’re going to find out? And they seem cool.”

And for the most part, they are cool. That’s the problem. I like my parents. I care what they think. If I told them I was going to visit colleges, they’d be hurt that I didn’t want them to come along. If I told them I was going to find Zan, I don’t know if they’d disapprove or not, but I know without a doubt they’d think less of me. I just can’t handle that right now. Then, throw Noah into the whole equation and . . . “It’s too complicated.”

“More complicated than this?” She looks unconvinced.

“Just trust me.”

“I do,” she says. “That’s the problem. I think I might be the only one.”

I am dreaming.
It is that point in a dream when you know it’s a dream. You know it’s temporary. You know it isn’t real. But you still don’t wake yourself.

It is lunchtime and Zan and I are outside the Haven High library. There is me; there is Zan; there is silence. A sophomore punk is cursing the stuck Milky Way in the cheap vending machine, and I know I should hear him, but I don’t. I only hear Zan. Zan says: “Joy, when did you love me?”

I am swimming in his eyes, in his hot-chocolate eyes. “Now, Zan. I love you now.”

Mattia and Charlotte and Kristine walk by, and I know they’re laughing, but I can’t hear them. They don’t see me. They don’t see Zan.

“When did you love me?” Zan asks, more urgent this time. “When did you love me?”

I don’t want to answer, so I start kissing him instead. I kiss him hard—too hard, maybe. He pushes me away from him, and I stumble backward, into Noah.

“Joy?” Noah says it in a voice much deeper than his regular one. “What’s going on? I thought you two had broken up.”

Broken up. Broken up. Broken up. The words swirl around my head until they sound foreign. Broken up. Broken up.

The bell rings, and I don’t hear it, I feel it. I can’t move. Broken up. Broken up. Broken up.

Now the bell is loud enough to hear and I hear it but I still can’t move. Broken up. Broken up.

It’s not the bell. It’s the alarm clock.

Time for school.

After school I
go to Phil’s Market. Slightly dangerous, since approximately eighty-two percent of Haven High’s student body works at Phil’s.

I purchase Pop-Tarts and trail mix and Chips Ahoy! and granola bars and potato chips and pretzels and cheese and crackers. I buy tiny bottles of orange juice and big bottles of Sprite.

“Having a party?” the checker says, scanning my items. I recognize him from school, think his name is Chris. His name tag reads: I’M JOSE, HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

This roundup of road-trip food would make for a pretty lame party, even by Haven High standards, but I just smile; just keep a low profile. “Party weekend,” I say, nodding, trying out my “enthusiastic look.”

“Don’t I know it!” Either the look’s pure gold or Chris/ Jose is pure clueless. “Paper or plastic?”

“I got your
note,” says Noah. “Way to be old school, having Mattia deliver it during calculus.”

I stop packing the groceries in my pink gym duffel and readjust my phone, which is slipping off my shoulder. “And?”

“Kudos on not leaving your phone number, by the way,” he goes on, like I didn’t say anything. “Very PI, very hard to trace, et cetera. You’re lucky I even bothered tracking it down. Oh, and expect a call from Mattia.”

“So are we on?” I ask, shoving some packages of fruit snacks to fill the extra space between my clothes. “I’m very busy here, you know.”

“I’m sure you are,” Noah says. Sometimes I’m thankful for the phone world, where I don’t have to see everybody’s body language when they talk. I can imagine Noah rolling his eyes, scoffing. But thanks to my being nowhere near him, I can just as easily imagine him looking all excited and on board.

“I’m taking that as a yes,” I say. “So Thursday morning, pick me up at seven o’ clock.” It pains me to say it, but I have to be practical. “We have a solid ten-hour drive and we want to get there before it’s too dark. I’ll be waiting for you on my front porch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and because I can imagine him any way I want to, I picture him saluting.

“What phone plan
on this good green earth doesn’t have call waiting?” Mattia calls exactly two-point-one seconds after I hang up with Noah. “That was him, right? What did he want?”

“Hi, Mattia. I’m fine, thanks, how are you?”

“Seriously, Joy. I gave Noah that note this morning. Did I open it first?
No
. Did I ask questions?
No.
I was but your humble messenger.”

I groan and fall onto my bed. “And I thanked you.”

“Then,” she continues, “after class, Noah asked me for your number. Did I ask why he wanted it?
No
. Did I mock him about being into you?
No
. Again, I simply delivered the requested information.”

“And I bet
he
thanked you, too.”

“I don’t want thanks, I want answers. And I want them now.”

I sigh, slowly sitting up. “It’s not a phone kind of conversation.”

“Fine. Tomorrow on the way to school.”

“It’s not a way-to-school conversation, either.”

“What kind of conversation is it?”

It’s a let’s-not-have-it-at-all kind of conversation, and I’m trying to put that tactfully when Mattia says: “Okay, I’ve got it. Sleepover tomorrow. Just you and me, to kick off the superlong weekend. And you can let me in on all your juicy but conflicted feelings toward Noah.”

How sad is it that Mattia uses the term “conflicted feelings” in about half of her conversations? “Sorry, I can’t,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Plans.”

“Can you be a little more vague?”

“Plans to go to Claremont. I’m making a campus visit.”

“Without me?”

“You said you didn’t want to go!” I
so
don’t want to get into this. Mentally, I recalculate. “Fine, we’ll have a sleepover.”

“Okay, okay, don’t sound so excited.” Mattia is thoroughly confused, like
I’m
the one being all codependent. “See you tomorrow morning, right? Minus the attitude.”

“Okay,” I say, shaking my head.

I need a vacation.

In English sophomore
year I had to write an essay called “This I Believe.”

It was based on some idea from National Public Radio, where people wrote in about their beliefs. The essays weren’t necessarily supposed to be about your religious beliefs, but mine was.

Because the thing is I do believe. I believe in God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, and I believe in my religion. I go to church every week, pray every day, read the Book of Mormon and the Bible. I don’t drink alcohol, tea, coffee—even caffeinated soda.

I believe in waiting, so I’m okay with the rules—nothing even
resembling
sex until I’m married. No dating before the age of sixteen, no wearing clothes that might give guys the wrong idea, being very careful with kisses—I believe all of that. I believe in repentance, forgiveness, integrity.

Even now that I live in a town where it’s hard to tell where belief ends and culture begins—I don’t like the culture, but I do like the belief. That was never an issue with me. It was too late before I realized it was an issue with Zan.

It’s never just
one thing. If it were, U.S. history would be a two-week course, not something you study your whole life. The Civil War wasn’t just about slavery, and the Revolutionary War wasn’t just about freedom. World War I wasn’t just because some guy got assassinated, and World War II wasn’t just because of Nazis, and the Beatles didn’t break up just because of Yoko Ono. It’s never just one thing.

That’s how it was with Zan leaving. Zan leaving high school, Zan leaving Haven, Zan leaving me. It wasn’t just one big, concrete thing. He didn’t stop loving me. He didn’t stop believing in the church. That’s too easy, and too easy isn’t Zan. Zan’s never simple.

Instead, it’s just bits and pieces that I try to put together into a story that makes sense.

I remember that Sunday last summer. Zan and I usually didn’t go to church together since we lived in different wards, but that day was different because Greg Weyland, a guy in my ward who’d just graduated, was leaving on a mission to Brazil. Greg would be delivering his farewell address in church, and I persuaded Zan to come with me, even though he didn’t even know Greg that well.

I remember sharing a church pew with Zan, his white shirt wrinkle-free and spotless, his navy tie crisp against it. I remember the sacrament tray moving from hand to hand down the bench, everyone taking a cube of bread before passing it along. We swallowed it in quiet reflection, or at least in an attempt at quiet reflection since between the occasional baby’s scream and toddler’s tantrum there were a lot of interruptions.

And Zan handed me the tray without letting it linger over his lap. Not that I was supposed to notice. Taking the sacrament was personal, not something anyone should look at or judge. But I’d noticed, and he hadn’t taken it, and why? The only reason you don’t take the sacrament is if you’re unworthy.

My heart started pumping ice-blood, the way it did whenever I was terrified, or just really cold. Zan said it was physically impossible for a mammal to produce ice-blood, but I told him science was always wrong, anyway, so why wouldn’t it be wrong about ice-blood?

I looked at him but kept my head bowed so he wouldn’t notice. Nothing in his face told his secret. Sure, he wasn’t freshly shaven—the scruff around his chin had grown past the pokey stage, into the long, soft stage my legs sometimes got to when I hadn’t shaved all winter. It was customary for men to shave before church (most men in Haven didn’t even have beards or mustaches) but it was just cultural. It didn’t have anything to do with our religion, not really.