Undecided (29 page)

I eat the
last limp piece of pasta from the cardboard container. “Great.”

“I’m
sorry, Nora,” he adds, when I stand up to throw away my trash and head for my
room. “For everything.”

“Me too,”
I say.

* * *

“He threw
you out?” Marcela looks like she’s utterly confounded by the news.

“Not
‘threw out,’ exactly,” I clarify, wiping down a table. “But the ‘sooner the
better’ part was pretty strongly implied. The worst part is, I should have been
the one to initiate the conversation. Obviously I should leave. I never should
have moved in.”

“There’s
no way you could have predicted how this would play out,” she argues. “Was it
your best idea to move in with Kellan McVey? No, of course not. But how were
you to know you’d fall for Crosbie and that stupid little May Madness mistake
would come back to bite you in the ass?”

I shrug.
“Life’s not fair.” And it’s really not. How is it that I hook up with five guys
and one of them winds up being my future boyfriend’s best friend and I end up
the villain? How is it that Kellan can have sex with sixty-two women, catch an
STI, and have his problems cured with a week’s worth of antibiotics? Crosbie
literally covered up his regrets with a coat of blue paint; I tried to keep
mine under the radar but that blew up in spectacular fashion. It’s the whole
balance thing, all over again. In my effort to make up for being invisible in
high school, I’d raced from the Nora Bora end of the spectrum right over to the
Red Corset side. And for all my trouble to see and be seen, the only person
who’d spotted me at all last year was a middle-aged peace officer with a
flashlight and a frown.

“Enough
about me,” I say determinedly. “What’s going on with you and Nate?”

Instead
of their usual sniping, they’ve been studiously ignoring each other all
afternoon, and Celestia has yet to make an appearance.

Marcela
studies her fingernails, painted to look like clouds. “Nothing.”

 
“Nothing?” I narrow my eyes.

She holds
up her hands defensively. “Nothing, I swear. But…”

I wait
her out.

“But
there’s something to be said for having things out in the open,” she adds
hastily. “I mean, last year with the secret admirer stuff—it was easy to
pretend I didn’t know who it was. And I think it was easier for him to pretend
he believed I didn’t know. And this year, as bad as it’s been seeing them
together, it was easier than admitting that maybe I’d made a mistake not
acknowledging him.”

I blow
out a breath. “Wow.”

“Yeah.
So, who knows what—if anything—will happen next. But you started fresh this
year, and I’m going to start fresh in January. That’s my resolution. No
secrets, no mixed messages.”

“You’re
going to tell Nate you like him?”

“No, of
course not. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t, either.”

“I really
feel like maybe you’re missing the point.”

She bites
the back legs off a sugar cookie shaped like a reindeer. “Well, look what
happened here. You and Crosbie put it all on the line, and that flopped.”

“You’re
very sensitive.”

“I’m just
saying, maybe the truth is a little more than we can handle right now, but
lying only makes it worse.”

“You can
say that again.”

“And you
can hear me say it,” she says, “whenever you want, since we’ll be roommates.”

I stop
polishing the silverware I’d picked up. “Come again?”

She licks
the red sprinkles off the reindeer’s nose. “Well, you’re homeless, and I have a
spare bedroom. What kind of friend am I if I don’t insist on having you move
in?”

“Are you
serious?”

“Of
course. It’ll be a boy-free zone. Kind of like what you and Kellan had, except
without all the lying and gonorrhea.”

“You know
how to woo a girl.”

“I’m
going to Tahiti for two weeks; I’ll leave you my keys and you can move your
stuff in. We’re talking, what? A duffel bag and a milk crate?”

“
Two
milk crates.”

“Look at
you,” she coos, chucking me under the chin. “All grown up.”

* * *

To a
perfect stranger, I’d look like anything but a grown up. In my efforts to keep
my mind off Crosbie, I throw myself into studying, forsaking pretty much
everything except my shifts at Beans, since I’ll now need the money more than
ever. My hair is in a perpetual straggly bun, my daily uniform is the same pair
of ratty jeans paired with a T-shirt and a hoodie. I haven’t made my bed since
Chrisgiving, and the fitted sheet is just a crumpled ball lost under the duvet
somewhere. It’s only when the last exam is written and it’s time to pack my
bags to head home for the week that I survey the situation and realize what a
mess I am. Perhaps it’s for the best that Crosbie’s been ignoring me since that
awful night—if he came by and saw this, he’d hightail it right back out of
here.

I blow
out a heavy breath and grab my hamper, resolutely filling it with every
washable item in the room. Every item of clothing, save the pair of sweatpants
and T-shirt I’m currently wearing, every piece of bedding—nothing is safe. I
march the entire thing into the kitchen and start what will probably be the
first of five loads, doubling up on detergent. I won’t lie: it’s starting to
smell, and I’m not going to take this mess with me into either the new year or
my new apartment. It will be a fresh, clean start, in more ways than one.

My bus
leaves at noon tomorrow and since Kellan’s in California until January second,
I’ve booked a ticket back for New Year’s Eve to give myself a day and a half to
finish packing and get everything carted over to Marcela’s before his return.
With the room largely empty, there’s no way to ignore the obvious, and I stare
at my desk and bed until my lower lip trembles, and not just because it’s sad
to think about dismantling them only to rebuild them a week and a half from
now. It’s sad because they make me think about Crosbie; this whole room makes
me think about him. Everything does. I’ve taken to leaving my phone in my sock
drawer so I can’t text him whenever the urge hits, which is still with
embarrassing frequency. I know I can’t afford to go down this depressing road,
so I trudge back into the kitchen to collect Kellan’s toolbox and decide the
bed will be my first victim.

I drag
off the mattresses and stash them in the living room, and that small act has my
muscles burning and my breath coming in harsh pants, making me consider
abandoning the bed altogether and crashing on the couch until I leave. But I
don’t. Loose ends are my newest nemesis, and I’m going to see this thing
through. At least, that’s the plan until I crouch next to the bed, wrench in
hand, and spot the small red box on the floor.

I’ve
definitely never seen it before. It’s flat and square, not quite as large as a
CD, the velvet smooth and soft under my fingers. The wrench clatters when I
drop it back into the toolbox, but I barely register the noise over the
thudding of my heart. I know this room was empty when I moved in; I know I have
never seen this box before. Sometime between Labor Day and today, this
thing…materialized.

Equally
frantic parts of me are warring over whether or not I should hope it’s
something from Crosbie or just something Kellan accidentally tossed in here.
He’s forever throwing things from the couch into the kitchen, swearing he can
land them in the sink. Why he would do that with a red velvet box—

Okay. I’m
just going to open it.

I take a
deep breath and lift the lid, feeling the strong fight of the springs, as
though it’s never been opened before. When I see the fine gold chain bearing a
tiny book pendant, I know this has nothing to do with Kellan. Nothing does.
I’ve known this for a long time; the one person who needs to know it is the
only one who doesn’t.

If I were
smarter and saner, I’d snap this box shut and leave it in Kellan’s room, asking
him to return it to Crosbie when—and if—he sees him again. But I’m not feeling
even remotely smart or sane right now, and instead I lift the necklace from the
box and study the delicate little book, half open to reveal dainty gold pages.
It’s small enough that I have to squint to read the characters etched on the
cover, but when I finally make them out, I confirm what I have known for a
while: I have made a huge mistake.

I love
you
.

The tears
that have been threatening for days take advantage and pour forth, stupid and
sloppy, until I’m just a sobbing mess on the floor. I cram the necklace back
into the box and slide it away, as unreachable as the guy who put it here in
the first place. It must have been a Christmas present; he must have brought it
that last night and hidden it under my pillow, and sometime in the terrible
aftermath it must have slid down between the mattress and the wall and gone
unnoticed.

Until
now.

Which is
ironic, because now that it’s found, everything it represents is farther away
than ever.

The buzz
of the washer finishing its cycle nearly gives me a heart attack, and I lurch
to my feet and swipe at my eyes, grateful for something to do beyond sitting
here weeping foolishly.

I stick
the wet clothes in the dryer and load up another batch, then take a seat at the
breakfast bar and stare at my room like it’s the mouth of a dark, terrifying
cave.

Poor
Crosbie. Always working so hard to present the perfect, strong image to the
world. The exercise, the studying, the sweet gestures no one saw because I
insisted he remain a secret. He gets so much attention being the guy people think
he is, but the guy at keg parties and on bathroom walls isn’t the real Crosbie
at all. It’s the person behind those ideas, the guy who works so diligently to
keep the wheels turning, that counts.

I, on the
other hand, worked so hard to be seen that I let all the other things slip
away. Study, be responsible, be honest, be kind. I didn’t study; I got
arrested. I lied to Kellan and Crosbie; I unfriended Marcela because I needed a
scapegoat to justify last year’s stupidity. Everything I did was to cultivate
some ridiculous phony image, either a party girl or a studious homebody, but
I’d never taken the time to shore up my defenses, to make sure the person
inside was solid and sound. And to what end? The one person who finally noticed
me saw past the façade to the real me and liked me anyway. Long before I was
smart enough to realize it.

I think
of Nate sending those gifts to Marcela last year, her not-so-secret admirer. I
think of all the times he’d listened to us recount our weekend exploits, all
the times he must have wished it were him in those stories, that he could be
that guy. But still he’d loved her, supported her, admired her. Until he
couldn’t anymore. And then these past months, the furtive looks they’d
exchanged, the not-so-significant others they’d paraded around when really it
was the things they weren’t saying, they weren’t doing, that spoke volumes.

I think
of my parents, their lives together but not, residing in separate halves of a
home. They insist on presenting a united front for my benefit, but nobody
benefits from this arrangement. When my back is turned they resume hating one
another, a festering and unnecessary contempt that should have ended long ago.

We can
scream and fight and cry and ignore, but really, it’s the things we do when we
think nobody’s watching that reveal the most. Well, I’m done. No more messes,
no more lies.

Starting now.

* * *

Snow crunches under the tires as we pull into the dingy bus depot in
Grayson, Washington, and I see my parents fighting for top billing as they
stand clustered with the small crowd gathered just inside the terminal doors.
In typical fashion they’d both dressed in neon colors to try to stand out more
than the other: my mother in pink, my father in yellow. I’m pretty sure I
remember those jackets from an ill-fated ski trip when I was six. In any case,
they’re effective: there’s not a single person on the bus who hasn’t noticed
them.

“Hi!” my
mom exclaims, folding me in a hug when I enter.

“Hi,” I
say, the words muffled against the rayon fabric of her jacket. I extricate
myself from her grip only to be pulled into my father’s hug.

“How you
doing, Nora Bora?” he asks. “Got anymore luggage?”

“No,” I
say, stepping away and hefting my backpack onto my shoulder. “Just this.”

“That’s
not very much for a week.”

“I don’t
need much.” There’s not a whole lot to do in Grayson, and given my non-existent
high school popularity, I don’t have many friends to catch up with or places to
go. Unfortunately, the same can currently be said about Burnham.

“You look
great,” my mom says, leading the way to the parking lot.

“Thanks.”
I shiver in the damp air and zip my coat to my chin. Then I sigh as we reach
the cars. Two of them. Parked side by side, ready for me to make a choice.