“Do you remember anything about that day?” I ask. I don’t have to specify what day I’m talking about. The way she bites her lip now tells me she knows what I’m asking.
Sydney grabs one of my feet out of the tub and begins to file my toenails before looking up at me from her stool.
“I had a feeling you were going to be curious.” She eventually sighs. “And I really wish I could remember more.”
You and me both, I think. There has to be something she remembers.
“Well, was there anything Carmen and I were talking about?” I ask.
“Carmen?”
“Sorry, the friend I was with,” I answer.
She shakes her head. “I’ve seen you here with another girl before, but that day you came alone.”
Alone? Why wouldn’t Carmen have come with me? That doesn’t even make any sense.
She must see the confusion on my face, because she offers a small smile.
“I do remember one thing,” she says, dipping my foot back in the water and grabbing the other to file. “You were texting some boy even while I was trying to give you a manicure—that’s why I remember it.”
A boy? But I broke up with Pete three weeks before the dance.
“Was his name Pete?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I wish I knew, darling, but we didn’t talk about it. I was just worried about you not messing up your nails with all the texting.”
I nod. “Sorry for being a brat on my phone while you were trying to work. You must have thought I was really rude.”
“Oh, I didn’t think that. No,” she says, looking at me with a glimmer in her eyes. “Actually, I thought you were just in love.”
“That can’t be right,” I say, mainly because I know I’ve never been in love—not really. But also because Pete and I had been broken up by then.
She shrugs. “You asked me what I remembered, darling. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
With that, I’m left speechless. I sit through the rest of my pedicure in pure shock. As she paints my nails with Scavenger Hunt, all I can do is wonder why my admirer wanted me to come here. Was it so I could hear that?
After my manicure, I’m so dazed, I don’t even realize that I’m leaving the spa without a new paper heart.
Chapter 11
Carmen doesn’t text me back the whole weekend. At first I try to pretend that she just didn’t see my message…but I know she’s glued to her phone if she’s talking to Anthony, so it’s official: Carmen’s ignoring me.
I can’t remember the last time she was this mad at me. She’s been annoyed at me before plenty of times–whenever I can’t have a sleepover because my parents want to have a family game night, or that time I refused to coordinate our outfits for Spirit Week because I already had put together one for myself. Even when I accidentally revealed her crush to another friend in the eighth grade, she got over it.
But she has never gone on a full-on texting strike…especially not when I need her the most.
I have so many things I want to say to her. I’ve asked you about the night of the dance before and all you said was you didn’t know why I left early. Why did you conveniently leave out the fact that we didn’t even get ready together? Were we fighting? Did I leave early because of you? Is that why you won’t tell me…do you feel guilty? Whenever I begin to text these questions, I can’t bring myself to push send.
My biggest question for her, though, is about what Sydney said at the spa about being in love. Was it with Pete? Was that possible, when we had broken up three weeks before?
If I was being honest with myself, while Pete makes the most sense, he also doesn’t.
When Pete first told me after the accident that I’d broken up with him, he’d said the reason I gave him was simple—my heart wasn’t in it anymore. But coming to that realization wasn’t so simple. In fact, as he said it, I was proud of my past self for finally putting to words the feelings I’d been having for a while…the ones I tried to push away.
People at school always call Pete by his full name because Pete Yearling rolls off the tongue. To me, though, he was just Pete. Everyone would say we were the it couple, or goals. But to me we were just us.
The first time I officially talked to Pete was after a basketball game at the diner. I didn’t even think he knew who I was at the time. Did you have fun? he asked me. It was such a striking question to me. He was the one who’d played his heart out, and he was checking to see if I had enjoyed myself. It was the first of many moments that proved he was different.
Pete is kind and selfless, unexpectedly so for being Pete Yearling—people would still like him if he wasn’t. He has this happy glow to him all the time, but I guess I’d be happy too if I was as good at everything as he is and everyone liked me. But why did they like him in the first place? There’s just something about him that you can’t dislike. Maybe it’s because he’s the opposite of egotistical and can make people feel special, like he did with me that day after the game, when he’s the real star.
But as much as everyone likes Pete, could I honestly say I loved him? When I was with him I felt really comfortable…like a caterpillar wrapped up in a cocoon, but I was constantly waiting for butterflies.
Maybe our breakup was some sort of catalyst, though. Maybe it took setting Pete free to realize I really did love him. People say that can happen sometimes. The classic you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
I also knew a couple of things about Sydney. One, she could be exaggerating. And two, she could be flat-out wrong—maybe I wasn’t in love with anyone. Maybe I was just excited to go to the dance and I was texting someone in the nervous, giddy way you get when you’re first talking to someone new, like Carmen is with Anthony. Or maybe the person I was texting was Carmen, and she had some logical reason why she couldn’t get her nails done with me that day—a dentist appointment or something. I bet it’s that simple, and the only reason my mind keeps racing all over the place is because she’s giving me the silent treatment.
The worst part is that I can’t exactly tell her I need her right now. I can see her just rolling her eyes at me and saying isn’t that ironic? in the sassy voice she has perfected. She’d be right—the whole reason Carmen’s mad at me is because she needed me at the game. She had asked me to go with her, and I completely bailed.
I know I screwed up, which is why I’m surprised Monday morning when a one-word text appears under my rows of apologies.
Outside