I'm Not Your Other Half (16 page)

He shoved his own tray down to make room for mine. I sat down opposite him. “Never saw you eat that much,” said Michael, looking at my loaded plate. “College interviews really require stoking up, huh?”

“I didn't know you wanted to come here,” I said.

“I don't know what I want to do. Dad and I are looking at everything.”

His voice caught at me. Deep. Warm. Our fathers talked about colleges as if
they
were the ones about to attend. Majors, admission requirements, tuition increases.

Michael said, “So how's Kit?”

He had a funny smile on his face. He's asking that right off, I thought, so I can't accuse him of being thoughtless. I smiled back, but my smile was embarrassed, awkward. “She's better. They're going to be able to bring her home in August and do out-patient therapy.”

“That's great,” said Michael. He looked at his empty plate and then at my full one. “You really going to eat all that?”

“Probably not. You want some?”

“That turkey really looks good.”

I gave him the turkey.

“I was proud of you,” said Michael, his mouth full of turkey. “Throwing yourself into raising money for Kit. I liked the mile of pennies.”

“You gave to it?” I said.

“Every week I put a roll in. That didn't really add up to much money. So I bought a Road Rally seat for twenty-five dollars instead of five.”

“Your name wasn't on the list!” I cried. “I'd have seen it. I checked them all, just to see if—”

Michael grinned so widely his whole body seemed to be participating in it. “Just to see if I did?” he said.

My father said, “Well, we didn't go there. It seemed pretty out of the way to me.”

Michael's father said, “It is out of the way. They're
all
out of the way. But I'm told they have an excellent botany department and I know Fraser was quite a botany expert.”

“No, I wasn't,” I said. “I just did an experiment that didn't work out too well but looked impressive.”

“That's half of life,” said Mr. Hollander, laughing.

Michael said, “You want to take a walk around the campus with me, Fraser?”

It's a huge campus. You could walk for hours and still find sidewalks you hadn't used, dorms you hadn't noticed. I said, “Sure.”

We walked everywhere. We talked about college subjects—where we'd find part-time jobs; whether we'd like freshman English; what to do if you don't like your roommate.

“I missed you,” I said.

We were standing in the middle of an enormous graveled area filled with large inexplicable modern sculptures. They seemed to have cutting edges, and whatever they were intended to mean, they were sure of themselves. It made me sure to be among them. I would tell Michael how I felt. I would tell him about Smedes and Jim. About being semi-detached.

“I missed
you
,” he said.

We were still walking, threading among the sculptures. “It wasn't that you weren't perfect,” I told him. “It was that it was too much. Too much of a good thing. I started to drown in all that we did together.”

Michael stared at me. “Too much?”

“I guess I'm not very romantic, Michael,” I said, and the urge to be truthful began to hurt inside, because it sounded so stupid, so dull. Keep going, I thought, you can't stop now. “I loved you, but I didn't love spending all my time in a pair. There were other people. Other things to do.” I was beginning to cry. Damn tears! “I'm sorry,” I said, and I was done. I couldn't have added another syllable if he begged me for it; I had choked myself already.

“It wasn't me?” said Michael. “It was us?”

“Sort of.”

“You might have tried explaining that to me before. I figured you wrote me off because I was this creep who didn't care if little girls died of head injuries.”

“It wasn't that!” I cried. “I just needed more—I don't know—room around me than Annie seemed to. I couldn't share that much. It was terrible. I felt so selfish. I just took it out on you, Michael, but it was my character that didn't work out. Not yours.”

“Oh, Fraser, why didn't you just say so? How do you think I felt? I had to quit Computer Club when I was getting ready to teach my first course. I had to give up skiing half the only snowy weekends of the whole winter. I had to change my whole life to fit you in.”

It's going to happen right here, I thought. We'll break up all over again; we'll cut ourselves on those metal sculptures; we'll burn each other. So much for truth.

“I wanted to,” said Michael. “I wanted you to be in everything I was. It seemed to work so well for Price and Annie. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for us.”

“Smedes and Jim are different. They're semi-detached.”

“They're what?” said Michael. “That sounds like an apartment.”

I explained it to him.

“I don't like that phrase,” said Michael flatly.

Why are we doing this to each other? I thought. He doesn't quite understand what I'm saying, I don't quite understand what he's saying. You can't be
any
kind of attached unless you understand each other.

“I like semi-attached,” said Michael. He grinned at me and put his arms around my waist and swung me around. I had forgotten that he was so much taller and heavier than I. “Half of me wanted to give up everything for you, Fraser,” he said, “and half of me wanted to give up
nothing.
”

“I know those halves,” I said ruefully.

He was holding me too closely for me to see clearly. I pulled back and squinted in the blazing sun, and I could see him. Perhaps it was the first time I really did see him. A person with his own life, whose gears couldn't mesh with mine that often. But when they did mesh, it would perfect.

“Senior year starts in a month,” said Michael.

Senior year? I thought. It was actually a surprise to realize there was still a year of high school left. I had been thinking college, college, all summer, thinking freedom, independence, change. “Do you have lots of plans?” I said to Michael.

“Yes. You?”

“Likewise.”

We were still walking. The sculptures receded. One of the few remaining elms on campus loomed ahead, its symmetry startling, its shade altogether appealing. But the shade was already taken by three couples.

“We could try it,” said Michael, smiling at me. His smile was rather shy, as if he too wanted to walk carefully into another relationship.

“Semi-detached, you mean?” I said.

“Semi-
at
tached, I mean.”

“I can't be your other half, Michael.”

“Nor I yours,” he said.

We will be friends, I thought. Sometimes we'll be in love, and sometimes we'll be too busy to remember. Annie would call it selfish. Smedes would call it sane.

“I call it a good idea,” I said, and we sealed it with a kiss.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney's books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.

The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody's cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

Cooney at age three.

Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.