A Week of Mondays (35 page)

“No,” I mumble.

“Well, I hope you know you're grounded,” my mom goes on. “Starting first thing tomorrow.”

Owen and I share a conspiratorial look.

My mother grabs me by the elbow and steers me toward the parking lot like a toddler.

I don't even have a chance to say goodbye to Owen.

9:45 p.m.

Hugging my newly won poodle to my chest, I sit on my bed and stare at the window. For the past thirty minutes, I've done nothing but wait.

Will Owen even show up?

Or does he only climb through the window after he's seen me cry?

I can't make sense of what happened between us tonight. I'm not sure I even want to try. But I know that I want to see him again. I
have
to see him again.

My phone is still lying in a broken heap at the foot of my mirror, so I keep getting up and checking my laptop screen for the time. At what point does the whole thing reset? Midnight? 7:04 in the morning, when the first text message from Tristan comes through?

What if I don't go to sleep?

Will everything just fade away? Will my vision cloud over? Will it be like fainting?

Tap tap tap.

I jump up and run to the window, yanking it open. Owen falls clumsily inside, like a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time. I laugh and help him to his feet. Then we just stare at each other, neither one of us sure what comes next, or even what to say.

I break the ice first. “I didn't know if you'd come.”

“I didn't know if you'd want me to.”

“I do. I mean, I did.” I huff, feeling flustered. “I'm glad you're here.”

He nods, and then it's that stupid silence again. The kind that never used to exist between us. The kind that makes me feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark looking for a light switch that has always been right there.

“So, are you busted big-time?” he asks, and I'm grateful for the lightheartedness of his tone.

I plop down on the bed and pull the poodle back onto my lap. “Yeah. Good thing they won't remember it tomorrow, huh?”

He sits down next to me, but keeps his gaze glued to the floor. “Yeah. Good thing.” But there's an uncertainty in his words. A hesitation.

“I'm really glad I didn't get the tattoo. I might not be alive right now.”

He laughs, but doesn't respond. We just sit there, awkwardly facing the window, saying nothing. I'm itching to check the clock on my laptop again, convinced that an eternity has passed.

“Why does this feel weird?” Owen finally asks.

I breathe out a sigh. “I don't know.”

“Was it weird the other nights when I climbed through your window?”

“No. It was … you know, like it always is.”

“What did we talk about?”

I smile at the memory. “One night we talked about Hippo.”

“He needs a new name,” Owen declares, grabbing the stuffed animal from behind him. “Calling something by its literal genus is not a real name.”

I smile. “That's what you said before, too.”

“Well, what can I say? Alternate me is a smart guy.”

“And the other night, we talked about what was happening to me.”

“That's only two nights,” he points out. “I thought you said this is your fifth day.”

“It is.”

“So what happened the other nights?”

I pull my legs up and hug them to my chest. “The third night I didn't see you at the carnival so you never came, and last night, we got into that fight.”

“Right,” Owen says, sounding distant. “The fight. You've been doing a lot of fighting lately.”

I laugh. It lightens the mood somewhat. “Tell me about it.”

“We could watch
Assumed Guilty
,” he suggests, nodding at my TV.

“Nah, I'll watch it tomorrow. I'm tired.”

He nods and stands up, heading for the window. “Okay, I'll let you get some sleep.”

I reach for his hand. “O?”

He turns and peers down at me. There's so much going on in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Will you stay?”

His body goes rigid. “You mean, sleep here?”

“Like when we were kids.”

He shifts uncomfortably, and I'm afraid he's going to say no. But he doesn't. He says, “Sure.”

*   *   *

The first summer I went to Camp Awahili, I came back with a best friend. A boy named Owen Reitzman. I never thought I could be friends with a boy. When I was nine, boys were stupid. They were immature and dirty and made fart noises. But Owen was different. He wasn't like the other boys I knew.

He started spending the night in my room when we were ten. He had come over to watch a movie. I wanted to watch
Sleepless in Seattle
for the one-thousandth time. He insisted we watch
The Ring
. Neither of us had seen it before so neither of us knew what a huge mistake it would turn out to be.

I was too afraid to go to sleep that night. Too afraid to even shut off the light. I was convinced some creepy girl was going to come crawling out of my TV screen. I made Owen stay over, and I also made him put my TV in the hallway.

We slept on opposite ends of the bed. His feet next to my head and my feet next to his head. I was so grateful to have him there, I didn't even complain that his socks smelled. We spent a lot of nights like this—mostly in the summers—lying foot to head, making shadow puppets on the wall or practicing our psychic abilities (one of us would think of a number, or an animal, or a country, and the other would try to guess it telepathically).

As soon as we entered middle school, the sleepovers just stopped. We didn't talk about it. We didn't debate the pros and cons. It just wasn't something we did anymore. Like an unspoken rule that had been decided.

When Owen gets into bed with me tonight, he doesn't move the pillow to the other end, like he used to do. He climbs under the covers with his jeans and T-shirt still on and curls onto his side, facing me.

We lie there. Head to head. Feet to feet.

As I start to drift to sleep, his eyes—open, green, beautiful—are the last things I see. His soft, even breath the last thing I hear.

Until …

“Ellie?”

“Yeah?” I murmur, half awake.

“I won't remember any of this tomorrow, will I?”

My throat stings as I feel the tears form behind my closed eyelids. “No.”

Tomorrow I'll wake up, he'll be gone, and I'll be alone again.

I assume he's fallen asleep, because for a long time there's nothing but silence. I feel myself drifting off. I feel the darkness taking me under. I steel myself for what I know will happen next.

The morning light will stream through my window. My phone—back together in one piece—will ding with Tristan's first text message. I'll knock over my water reaching for it. I'll pick up Owen from school and everything—
everything—
will start all over again.

I wait for it.

I wait for it.

I wait for it.

And just as sleep pulls me under and the last glimmers of consciousness flicker out, I hear Owen say, “Then I won't remember telling you that I've been in love with you since middle school.”

 

The Way We Were (Part 5)

Four months ago …

You have no idea how fast news can spread in high school until you become that news. The Monday after Tristan kissed me in his bedroom and took me out for pizza, I became a different person. I became a known entity. My name didn't matter. All that mattered was my new status: “Tristan Wheeler's Girlfriend.”

For the first half of the day, I thought I had put my clothes on backward, stepped in dog poop, broken out in hives, been the victim of a social media hack. Hundreds of explanations for the sudden attention flooded through my mind. None of them were the right one. Because never, in a million years, would I have ever guessed that dating Tristan Wheeler would attract this much attention. People whispered about me in the hallways, girls sized me up in the bathroom, I got at least twenty new followers on Instagram in a matter of hours.

I felt like the mistress in a political scandal.

I was grateful when school let out for summer break a month later. The sudden interest was unnerving me. I had started taking longer routes to class to avoid inquisitive eyes. I had stopped using the bathroom at school, convinced that girls were judging the sound of my pee.

The entire time, I don't think Tristan ever knew.

This was his life. The attention was part of his existence. It never occurred to him that it wasn't part of mine. And I never mentioned it. I dealt with it myself, in private. I didn't want to be the girl who complained about her boyfriend's popularity and its adverse effect on her.

The first time I witnessed Tristan's influence over people—namely girls—was the first Whack-a-Mole gig I ever attended. It was on the last night of school, at a small club two towns over that allowed minors inside before eleven p.m.

The place was packed. I didn't know how my entire school could fit into this cramped space, but somehow they managed.

“You know you're my good luck charm,” Tristan said to me backstage, a few minutes before they went on. He was tuning his guitar and I was sitting on a black drum case, fiddling with the metal snap, flicking it open and closed and open and closed.

“You probably say that to all the girls you take backstage.”

He stopped tuning and looked at me, his blue eyes serious. “I've never taken anyone backstage.”

My fingers froze against the snap.

“It's true,” Jackson, the drummer, vouched. “You're the first.” He patted my side, urging me off the case so he could pull something out of it.

I hopped down. “Really?”

Tristan flashed me his killer dimple. “Really.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “I didn't want to be distracted right before a show. I wanted time to focus.”

I walked up to him, tilting my chin up to look into his eyes. “Am I not a distraction?” I asked coyly.

He bent down to graze his lips against mine. “You are the very best kind of distraction.”

“Maybe you should kick me out then,” I murmured into his mouth.

His hands fell from the strings and wrapped around my waist, pulling me into him. The guitar banged against my hip but I didn't complain. “Never,” he said, and then he kissed me hard. I tasted the adrenaline on him. I tasted the excitement of the upcoming gig. He put it all into me, and the kiss left me feeling dizzy and breathless.

“Okay, lovebirds,” Lance, the bass player, said. “We have a set to play.”

Tristan released me and then instantly yanked me back. “This summer is going to be amazing.”

I felt my throat go dry. I still hadn't told him that I was signed up to work at Camp Awahili again this year, and that I would be gone for three months—basically the entire summer. I was supposed to leave the very next week.

“About that—” I began, but I immediately knew it was the wrong time. I couldn't lay this on him right before he went on stage. I'd never been a groupie before but some knowledge is just instinctual.

He nuzzled my nose. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, and pushed him away. “Now, go … you know … rock the house.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Rock the house?”

“Yeah. Knock 'em dead. Punch 'em in the gut. Whatever it is you do up there.”

Tristan shook his head. “Oh, I have much to teach you.”

I flashed him a winning smile. “I'll be in the back, trying not to plug my ears from all the noise.”

“Hey!” Lance and Jackson said at the same time.

Tristan held up a hand. “She's joking. It's an inside joke.” Then he gave me a playful warning look.

I started to leave but Tristan grabbed my hand. “Wait. You can't stand in the back. You have to be in the front.”

Butterflies took flight in my stomach. No one had said anything about standing in the front. He just asked me to come to the gig. He didn't say I had to be in the front row.

“I don't know,” I faltered. The idea of being up there, with all those people behind me, was terrifying. I got claustrophobic just thinking about it. “I'll have a better view from the back.”

“But then how will I know that you're there?”

I laughed. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“I want to see you. I want to look in your eyes when I sing ‘Mind of the Girl.'”

His words were like a vise squeezing around my chest. I wanted so badly to say yes to him. To give him everything he wanted. Everything he asked for. I'd already given him my heart. What else did I have to lose?

“I'll try to find a space up front,” I promised him.

His smile brightened the whole room and I thought,
Why do they even need stage lights with a smile like that?

An emcee introduced them and they charged the stage like bulls. I scurried through the door that led back into the front of the club and watched them take their positions. I eyed the space in front of the stage. It was packed wall-to-wall with people—mostly girls. I would need a helicopter to even get there, and the thought of elbowing my way through was enough to make my legs give out.

Making sure Tristan's gaze was trained on the crowd, I sidled my way around the edge of the room until I reached the bar. I ordered a cranberry and soda water and clutched the tumbler like a life preserver.

I was so nervous. Nervous for Tristan. Nervous for the guys. Nervous that I would hate the show, hate the way they sounded, and I'd have to spend the rest of our relationship lying to him.

Then Jackson kicked off on the drums and suddenly the energy of the club changed. It was like someone had run a live wire through the whole room and it could blow us all to smithereens any minute. That was the anticipation. That was the thrill. That was the edge I lived on for the entire forty-five-minute set.