My mother, who’d pretended the whole threatening-to-sue-the-school thing wasn’t happening junior year, except to walk around the house muttering about how no daughter of hers should want to go to school looking like a freak show.
Maybe I should find some excuse to stay on campus for every break over the next four years. After all, it’s not like I need to come back to Maryland to see Gretchen.
Audrey, though... I’d hate to leave my sister in that house alone for good.
“Hey, T.” Chris fist-bumps me. Chris has gotten really muscly over the past couple of soccer and basketball seasons. Whenever we fist-bump now, I’m afraid this is going to be the time Chris forgets to exercise self-restraint and I wind up with a dislocated shoulder. “You ready? Starting tomorrow we’re mortal enemies.”
“I’m so ready,” I say. “When’s the game?”
“Right before Thanksgiving. Remember, we have to hate each other on game day. It’s the rules.”
“Are you guys seriously going to the Harvard-Yale football game?” Audrey asks. “That’s got to be the nerdiest event of all time.”
“Actually I think it’s less about nerdiness and more about drinking cheap alcohol in a field with your buddies,” Chris says.
“Gross,” Audrey says.
“Oh, because you’ve never done that,” Gretchen says. Audrey laughs.
“How are you holding out after yesterday?” I ask Chris.
“Oh, I’m great. We got back together this morning, actually.” Chris grins big. I sigh.
Last night I got an epic series of texts about Chris’s latest breakup with Steven. They were on and off for pretty much our whole senior year. They kept saying they were going to break up for good before the end of the summer—they still believe that old wives’ tale about how you shouldn’t start college in a long-distance relationship—but they could never stay apart for long.
Chris says it’s because their love is pure and true. I say it’s because they’re hormonal teenagers who don’t know how to keep it in their pants. Not that I’m one to talk.
My friends are always fighting with their boyfriends or girlfriends about the littlest things. My friend Renee, who was my date for Homecoming junior year, realized she was bi and got together with this girl named Liz soon after the dance. Then they spent the entire year fighting about what movie to see that weekend, or whose music to plug into the car stereo, or which of the guys on the lacrosse team was the most obnoxious. Then they broke up. Now Renee’s going out with the lacrosse guy they rated third on their list.
Gretchen and I, though—we never fight. We take turns listening to each other’s music. We only like dramas or highbrow comedies that don’t have any Saturday Night Live stars in them. I think all the guys on the lacrosse team are obnoxious, but Gretchen thinks that’s only because I never took the time to get to know them. I think Gretchen only thinks that because Gretchen’s too nice to think anything bad about anyone.
The thing is, who cares what music you listen to on a random Tuesday afternoon? The stuff that really matters runs way deeper than any of that.
And when it comes to the deep stuff—the really deep stuff, the things we can only tell each other, the things no one else could understand—Gretchen and I are golden.
“Well, good luck,” I tell Chris with a shrug.
Audrey pokes me in the side. “Chris, please ignore my sister’s indifferent tone. She’s still learning how to function in our normal human society.”
“Hey.” I flick Audrey on the shoulder. “Don’t call me an abnormal human.”
“I call them like I see them,” Audrey says, flicking me back.
“Whatever. We’ll be fine,” Chris says. “I leave tomorrow and he leaves the day after. I’ll be in Connecticut and he’ll be in California. This is why they invented texting and video chat.”
“I know you two will make it work,” Gretchen says, smiling as big as ever.
“Thank you, Gretchen,” Chris says. I’m not nearly as sure, and I’m about to say so when Chris adds, “I mean, you guys are doing it, right?”
“Well, it’s not like that for us,” I say. “We’ll be in the same city. It’ll be a pain to go across town, but we’ll deal.”
Chris makes a weird face. “You are? I thought—”
“Actually, hang on.” Gretchen bounds over to where I’m sitting on the bed and grabs my hand. “Let’s go talk outside for a sec.”
“What?” There’s something going on that I don’t know about. I hate not knowing things. “Why?”
“Just for a second.” Gretchen pulls me up and through the door. I get a quick glimpse of my sister’s face as we leave the room. Audrey won’t meet my eyes.
I have a really bad feeling about this.