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“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
“I want you to do whatever you feel is best for you.”
Too perfect, too scripted, too out of touch with that yearning.
“That’s the wrong answer,” I say.
“Why is it the wrong answer?”
He doesn’t get it. “Because it’s a lie.”
He blinks. “Let’s go back to my original question. What do you want to do?”
How can I tell him that what I want isn’t the point. It’s never the point. I want a million dollars. I want to never return to school and to get a good job anyway. I want to be prettier. I want to be in Hawaii. Want costs you nothing, unless you try to spend it. What do you want to do? isn’t what he should be asking. He should be asking me what I can do.
How can I make him see this? I say, “I don’t want to throw everything away for something uncertain.”
“What about me is uncertain?”
Kidding. He has to be kidding.
“Really?” I say. “Do I have to explain it to you?”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Besides that. You know you are the most important person I’ve ever had in my life. That’s certain.”
“In just two weeks,” I point out. “That’s uncertain.”
“You know more about me than anyone else does.”
“But I can’t say the same for you. Not yet.”
“You can’t deny that there’s something between us.”
I can’t deny it—that’s true. But I can deny that it means what he thinks it means.
“No,” I say. “There is. When I saw you today—I didn’t know I’d been waiting for you until you were there. And then all of that waiting rushed through me in a second. That’s something…but I don’t know if it’s certainty.”
Fourth period isn’t over, but I was planning on studying for history during math, and I still need to do that now. I have to remind myself that here is where my life is, and I can’t afford to screw it up.
“I have to get ready for my test,” I tell A. “And you have another life to get back to.”
Hurt. It crosses his face and dims his eyes. “Don’t you want to see me?” he asks.
Want. Everything about him is want.
“I do,” I say. “And I don’t. You would think it would make things easier, but it actually makes them harder.”
“So I shouldn’t just show up here?”
Is this helping? No, it’s not helping. This is the disruption, because it makes everything else seem lesser.
Instinctively, I know: I can’t show up to school every morning wondering if he’ll be here. I can’t be looking into the eyes of every stranger hoping it will be him.
So I tell him, “Let’s stick to email for now. Okay?”
I can sense all the want pulsing beneath his skin. I can see how badly he’s trying to keep himself together. But there it is. He doesn’t get to choose. I don’t get to choose.
The classroom door opens and a teacher I don’t know comes in. She takes one look at us and says, “You can’t be here. Shouldn’t you be in class?”
