Absently, I wonder if Oliver likes the Lumineers. Without thinking, I open my contacts and call him. My stomach is in so many knots from being in Jackson’s truck that I’m feeling dizzy.
“Hello?” I hear a shout of music in the background and then it goes quiet, and then it’s just road sounds.
“Are you on your way to work?” It doesn’t even occur to me to tell him it’s me. We’ve been texting back and forth about music so much lately, I know I’m saved in his phone.
“Yeah. Going in early to set up displays before open. Want to help?”
I find myself smiling down at the wet concrete beneath my feet. “Wish I could, but I have AP bio.”
All he does is make a little humming noise, and I’m surprised at how intimate the sound is. How it sends a chill up my spine. But maybe that’s just the cold.
I plunge forward because I did actually call him for a reason. “Do you like the Lumineers?”
There’s a silence, and I realize I might have switched subjects too fast. “The Lumineers are good. Why? Have something awful to say about them?”
This makes me laugh, and I hear the first bell ring inside, so I move around the side of the building, toward the front door, my eyes scanning for Jackson as I go. “No. They’re my favorite band. I bought tickets to see them in June, but I don’t have anyone to go with. I thought maybe you’d want to.”
I hear shuffling, the gentle click of a turn signal, the slide of his hands across the steering wheel. “Don’t you have other friends who’ll want to go with you?”
I bite my lip. That would be a no. “If you don’t want to go—”
“I want to go,” he says over me, and I feel everything in my chest unclench. “I can pay for the ticket if you—”
“No,” I say over him, a little too loudly. I’m almost inside now, and I stop just outside the door. “No, that’s okay. I already bought the tickets.” I don’t mention that my parents bought me the tickets for my birthday.
We’re quiet for a minute, and then he says, “What’s the last concert you went to?” I’m very aware of how low his voice is, like he’s whispering to me, and it makes me stop, makes me pay attention.
“Amber Run, back in September.”
“I don’t know them.”
I gasp, trying to be playful, but something about this moment doesn’t feel playful. “They’re essential, Oliver. I’ll bring you an album next time I see you.”
He goes quiet again, and then he says, “Okay, Amy,” in a weird way. The steps in front of the school are completely empty now, and I’m fairly certain I’m going to be late.
“Gotta go, Oli. See you at the Valentine’s Day party on Sunday.”
I don’t wait for him to answer because I don’t think I can handle hearing his voice all low and quiet like that again, so I hang up and rush inside.
“What took you so long?” Jackson asks when I drop down in my seat beside him in AP bio.
“Nothing,” I say, but for some reason, I’m avoiding his eyes.
AMY
VALENTINE’S DAY. THE day when people who are in couples get showered with presents and affection and special favors while the single people of the world, like me, have to just … take it.
Homeroom is fourth period, and I’m exhausted by all the love and cheer and human-size teddy bears by the time I get there, only to be reminded that we still have to do Valentine-grams. And it’s not even Valentine’s Day. That’s not until Sunday. But God forbid we don’t celebrate at school. Luckily, since I manned the Valentine-gram table more than once, I don’t have to do the delivery, which is the job everyone wants anyway because it means they don’t have to sit in homeroom.
“Make it quick,” Mr. Pearson grunts at the gram deliverers when the time comes, and I set my head down on my desk because I can’t watch.
Last year, Jackson asked me out on a gram. Go to the V-Day after-party with me, it read, the party after the basketball game that Bryce threw. I get a prickly feeling down my arms when I remember that I still have the gram, in the top drawer of my nightstand.
I listen to people murmur as they read their grams, some people trying to figure out who could have sent grams from secret admirers. There are sighs and giggles, and I could puke.
“Here you go, Amy.”
I lift my head and look up at the person blocking the light. It’s a freshman whose name I don’t remember, and she’s holding a carnation out to me, which I take quickly, surprised.
But how could I forget? He wrote it right in front of me.
Sure enough, there’s Jackson’s chicken-scratch handwriting, so messy that I almost can’t read it.
Do you remember Valentine’s Day last year? I couldn’t stop looking at you, all night.
It’s a hard thing to forget.
We went to the party and halfway through the night, Jackson became attached to my hip. Before the night was over, he was whispering in my ear about how he wanted to make me his, about how much he liked me, about how beautiful I was. And then he kissed me.
I take a deep breath and stare at the carnation. It’s a beautiful orange-y pink, and I blush, thinking about the fact that Petra was on the other side of the table with me while Jackson wrote this, that she might have read it before tucking it away.
And now I’m more confused than ever. Because he wrote this after the party, he wrote it seconds before telling me that I shouldn’t have kissed him. But these aren’t the words of someone who’s finished with what we had. My feelings are all jumbled. And maybe he’s just as confused as I am.
I press the flower to my lips, close my eyes, and pray for clarity, because if he keeps this up, I don’t know if I can stay away from him.
OLIVER
MY MOTHER AND I are silent at dinner, but I know it can’t last. She sits up straight, and I prepare myself. I pray that it doesn’t have to do with MBU. What if they called her? What if she found out that I never sent that application? The deadline hasn’t passed, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be completely fine with the idea of my lying to her for the past month.
“Oliver, we should talk about your father.”
There are about a million different things that she could have said, but nothing is as surprising as this. My parents never speak. They rarely even acknowledge that the other exists. In my mind, they’re so far removed from each other that I can’t even imagine them ever being in the same room, much less being in a relationship.
My mother stabs at her salad for a minute. But I can’t tell if she’s angry at me about something or if she’s angry at Dad about something. Chances are good she’s equally pissed off at both of us. “When was the last time you saw your father sober?”
If I’m being completely honest, I can’t think of a single time in my entire life when Dad was 100 percent sober. For as long as I can remember, being with Dad was kind of like hanging out with a toddler: I can’t keep his attention, he often rambles, and sometimes he won’t stop touching things.
“Mom, it doesn’t matter. Dad’s never going to change. You know that.”