B00B9FX0MA EBOK (15 page)

Y
ou said you wanted to borrow the gray dress. And besides, it goes with your eyes,” Ingrid said knowledgeably, pulling her knees underneath her oversized striped sweater. We were in Keely’s purple-and-pink room, and Keely was yanking clothes from her closet and throwing them toward me, just as she had five years ago, when we’d all hang out in her room before heading to seventh-grade dances. It felt familiar … and completely bizarre.

“Sure, gray is fine,” I said, barely listening. I’d been dressed, mascaraed, and brought up to date on gossip — both Bainbridge and Hollywood — over the past three days by the three of them. It was nice to not have to think. Within the past seventy-two hours, I felt old barriers break down. My thoughts felt fuzzier, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to them or due to the fact that I could barely sleep. Last night, I’d even convinced the three of them to sleep over at my house, just in case. But I hadn’t heard a word from my twin. I hadn’t heard from Adam, either, but I didn’t care about that. I had way more stuff on my mind — like the fact that I had my upcoming date with Matt, and Keely was taking it upon herself to serve as my personal stylist.

And weirdly, I liked the attention. It was a side of me I hadn’t known existed — a normal teenage girl getting ready for a date with a crush. But it wasn’t just that. It was the fact that finally,
people knew I existed. It hadn’t taken the Ainsworth nomination or the yearbook editor position or all the debate awards. And having people rush up and ask if I was okay, getting a note from Miss Marsted that said she understood my behavior from yesterday, and being excused from a Calc quiz was kind of nice. It was weird — fainting in a pep rally was the opposite of perfect. And yet people liked me more than ever.

I wanted that to be the lesson my twin had been trying to teach me. And even though I didn’t think it was, and I didn’t think I’d heard the last of her, for now, I was ignoring it and concentrating on being Normal Hayley. Datable Hayley.

“Um, Hayley, this is kind of important? Gray dress? Yes? No?” Keely asked, shaking the hanger in front of me.

“I guess so?” I hoped that was the right answer.

“Yes,” Keely said definitively. “It’s sexy.” Ingrid nodded in agreement and snapped a picture to text to Emily, who was at the orthodontist but still demanded a play-by-play of the entire outfit-picking experience.

“So, how much do you like him?” Keely pressed.

“Um, I don’t know. I guess I’m still figuring that out,” I said shyly.

“Where’s he taking you?”

“The Firebird,” I said tentatively. It hadn’t been what I’d expected. It was pretty much the only restaurant in town deemed acceptable by any of the visiting professors, meaning that it served more than pizza and didn’t automatically assume Parmesan sprinkled from a can conveyed authentic.

Keely raised an eyebrow. “Wow. That’s like … clutch.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t tell her I still didn’t know what
clutch
meant.

Just then, the doorbell rang, a three-part chime that echoed through the house. Keely and I exchanged a look, and she burst into a peal of nervous, excited laughter.

“That’s him!” she said loudly, as if it could possibly be anyone else. She raced down the stairs and I followed behind slowly.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I whispered to myself. A fantasy flashed through my mind: Matt and I going to the winter formal, me getting on the train at Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia to greet him. He’d catch the train in Concord, and he’d spend weekends curled up in my bed in my UPenn dorm. Maybe it could work.

“Hey!” Matt pulled Keely into an embrace. I noticed how perfectly they fit together. Whenever I hugged someone, it was awkward — my cheek would hit their shoulder, or my lips would graze their lips instead of their cheeks. But Keely and Matt were naturals, as though they’d always done this.

Matt’s gaze flicked up. “Hey, Hayley,” he said, as if he were seeing me after months away and not only a few hours. He twirled his keys on his finger. I emitted a shaky sigh.
What was I doing?

“Everything all right?” Matt raised an eyebrow. “Your wipe-out the other day was epic. You’ve got to be hurting. I saw you, like, wincing in the hall the other day.”

“I’m perfect.” The word sounded off to my ears. I wondered when Matt had spotted me. Had he seen me darting into the cafeteria and sitting, sentry-like, by the entrance, in hopes of seeing my sister? Drinking an extra-large Coffee Hut coffee to make up for the fact that I’d barely slept? Or just looking all-around terrorized, exhausted, and sleep-deprived? And no
matter what, if he’d
seen
me so upset, why hadn’t he done anything about it?

“Well, you crazy kids have fun!” Keely chirped. I tried to shake my weird mood off. I remembered back when Keely used to categorize people by whether they looked like muffins, birds, or horses.
Everyone looks like one of the three!
I’d almost forgotten that beneath her blown-out hair and perfectly rolled field-hockey skirts she had a goofy streak. I gazed quizzically at Matt. He was a muffin, but in a good way. I liked his half smile, the way his hair flopped over his forehead, like the top of a muffin rising from the pan. Which was an observation that made it even more explicitly apparent that I desperately needed sleep.

“Are you ready?” Matt looked up at me strangely.

I nodded.

“All right.” Matt led me toward his car and opened the door. “Sorry it’s kind of a mess,” he said, pushing a pile of books, including an SAT prep guide, to the floor.

“You’re studying?” I asked.

“Yeah. I actually have class for it tomorrow, so I can’t get too crazy tonight. My first try kinda sucked. I’m hoping the next time will be better,” he said.

“Well, just keep trying!” I said. I was surprised to hear an edge in my voice, but Matt didn’t seem to notice. What was my problem? I hadn’t seen my sister in days. I was on a date. Everything was
fine
. “I mean, it’s not bad to take the SAT more than once, if you want to improve your score.”

“Let me guess,” Matt said as he backed out of the driveway. “You got a perfect score the first time.”

“I did all right.” I shrugged. “Um, I like your shirt,” I said, changing the subject. It was a plain blue button-down, paired with khakis. A nothing-special, standard-guy uniform.

“Thanks.” Matt nodded and reached toward his iPod. As the Grateful Dead filled the car, I allowed myself to relax into the seat.
Everything is fine
, I repeated to myself, careful that I didn’t say the words out loud. If Matt called me out, I wasn’t sure I could laugh along with him. At least not until I calmed down some.

I glanced back down at the pile of books. Books were something that made sense. I could talk about books. My eye landed on
One Hundred Years of Solitude
.

“So you’re a Márquez fan?” I asked, pleasantly surprised.

“No, I mean, not yet. It’s actually yours. It fell from your locker the other day.”

“Really?” The familiar, clammy, nervous feeling caused my skin to prickle.
Had
the book been in my locker? I didn’t remember.

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to steal it. I just wanted to look at it. Find out why you like it.” He shrugged.

“So, what do you think?”

“The truth?” Matt asked. “I thought it was kind of stupid. Just, like, a waste of time. This family’s so trippy. Every character has the same name, and then the same crap keeps happening over and over again. It’s like, why don’t they just realize that they’re in over their heads and move someplace else?” Matt asked.

“Because then it wouldn’t be a book,” I teased. “You need conflict!”

“Do you? Because I’m usually fine chilling,” Matt said.

“Me too,” I said as the car crested onto Main Street.

“You never chill, Westin. You’re, like, the opposite of chill.”

“Hot?” The word slipped out of my mouth before I had a chance to think. My face burned bright red as Matt smiled.

“Yeah. Hot.”

Thankfully, before I could embarrass myself further, he turned into the large parking lot in the center of town. He parked, then hurried around the car to open my door.

“I’m really happy we’re hanging out,” Matt said shyly as we walked toward the restaurant.

“Me too.”
Now
everything seemed fine. Better than fine.
This
was what I’d always wanted. Not a perfect SAT score. Not another trophy. I’d spent the last eighteen years running, terrified to ever slow down or stop. And now that I had — and the world hadn’t crumbled and I’d still reached the Ainsworth finals — it made me realize how much I’d missed out on in the past. And how much I didn’t want to miss in the future.

“You know I had a crush on you in kindergarten?” Matt asked.

“You did?” I was glad that the sun had already set so he wouldn’t see me wildly blushing.

“You want to know why?”

“Yes! I mean … if you want to tell me.” I shivered as we walked down the cobblestoned sidewalk. Matt put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into him. I could feel his warmth emanating from his jacket, and his scent — detergent, wood smoke, and toothpaste — was a perfect, tingly-inducing blend. I leaned in more closely.

“I liked the way you pronounced
animal
,” he said finally. “You said it like —”

“Aminal, I know.” My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bradley, had made me say the word over and over again in front of the class.
How can you not hear the difference? It’s obvious to everyone
, she said. But it wasn’t to me. That night, I’d come home, crying, and had stayed up the whole night, hugging Pandemonium, my stuffed panda, as I whispered the word over and over to myself, stopping only when I was one hundred percent sure I was pronouncing it the correct way. The next morning, I’d marched to Mrs. Bradley’s desk, told her that her behavior was
animalistic
, and sat down to do a worksheet. I smiled at the memory, then wondered … would my twin have done that when she was seven?

“It was cute.”

“Maybe it was to you. To me it was pretty much the single worst experience of my childhood. If I need years of therapy in the future, I’m sending the bill to Mrs. Bradley,” I joked.

“And what if you became a billionaire? Would you send her some stock options? Because it goes both ways. What if your destiny was a life of crime, until her early humiliating intervention made you realize that you didn’t want to break the rules — pronunciation-related or otherwise? Maybe that made you into the driven overachiever you are today. If anything, I think you should be
thanking
her.”

“Maybe …” Wasn’t it the same thing with my twin? I could either blame her or thank her, but one thing was for sure: She’d been impacting my life for the past seventeen years. And the worst part was, I’d never even known.

“Just kidding,” Matt said quickly, misunderstanding my silence as disapproval. “Mrs. Bradley was a total jerk.”

“You can’t call a sixty-five-year-old lady names!” I reached my arm up to good-naturedly punch him on the shoulder, then dropped it to my side. We’d reached the Firebird’s red-and-gold awning. I felt a tug of disappointment. Going inside meant that the date was that much closer to ending. And I didn’t want it to end.

The interior of the restaurant was cozy and redbrick, with the crackling fireplace, wall sconces, and sprays of delicate flower arrangements on each table proving its position as one of Bainbridge’s most expensive spots.

“Hello.” The host stepped in front of us.

“What’s up, bro?” Matt asked. I smiled, loving how Matt was so comfortable in his own skin that he could simultaneously set up a reservation at a high-end restaurant and call everyone “bro.”

“Is this all right?” Matt asked anxiously as we were led to a table.

“It’s perfect. No,” I said quickly. “I mean, it
is
perfect, but that wasn’t what I meant to say. I meant to say it’s … magic,” I decided. I’d had enough of perfect.

“To magic,” he said gently, raising his water glass. I raised mine, too, and we clinked, but it was too hard, and a constellation of water spilled on my — Keely’s — dress.

I instantly stood up and started to wipe it off but Matt only smiled.

“You know, in some cultures, spilling on yourself means you’re going to have good luck.”

“Yeah? Where?” I asked.

“What, you don’t know?” he teased.

“Contrary to what you seem to think, I definitely don’t know everything.” I realized that the water was seeping into my tights. “Why don’t you use this time to look up what culture thinks spilling on yourself is good luck, and I’ll clean up.”

It wasn’t the smoothest exit, but it wasn’t terrible. I hurried to the back of the restaurant, where I was thankful to realize that I was the only one in the bathroom. I hastily began wiping the wet spot on the fabric, but the napkin caused little white lint balls to shed on the gray.

Finally, once I’d done as much damage control as was possible, I left the restroom, ready to head back and talk to Matt about a subject that didn’t make me seem super-smart or super-weird. Like hockey. Or Spotify.

But just as I was coming up with a list of Keely-like conversation topics, I stopped in my tracks.

A girl was sitting opposite Matt. Gray dress. Shoulder-skimming brown hair pulled into a low ponytail. The barest hint of lip gloss. It was me.

My heart surged. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. What was I supposed to do? All I could do was watch as she raised her hand to push her hair back from her forehead. Her blue eyes were wide and her cheekbones stood out from her heart-shaped face. Her bangs — the forever-too-long ones that always seemed to stick to my forehead or hook awkwardly behind my ears — had hints of gold in the strands. The dress hugged her curves in a way that I didn’t see when I’d looked in the mirror. She was beautiful.

And it wasn’t a word that I was using as some self-compliment. I knew what I looked like, and I knew that I could be cute. But
even though she looked like me, the way she moved was far different. I was mesmerized by the way her hand glided over the rough-hewn wooden table and toward Matt’s forearm, the way she tilted her head so the shadows of the candle flame flickered across her skin, the way she seemed preternaturally aware that everyone in the room was giving them a second glance. And why shouldn’t they have been? They looked like the perfect couple.