The truth is, I could probably find those things at Juilliard—or anywhere else, for that matter. My mom is hoping it’ll be at the community college Caleb goes to, at least for a year. But I want to go someplace where I can’t hide behind anything—not the town I’ve lived in all my life or my overzealous parents. Not even music.
“So do you think Bus Boy is from Lyndale?” Katy asks, rummaging in the compartment between us for something. The mall parking lot is crowded for a weekday afternoon, but there isn’t much else to do in a town this aggressively on the smaller side of medium, and I fully expect to run into half the people we’ve just been cooped up for hours with at school. “Check the glove box for me?”
I comply, rifling through a mess of insurance cards and hair ties and tiny bottles of lotion, despite the fact that I have no idea what we’re looking for.
I told Katy that I met a cute boy on the bus, even though a minute-long conversation qualifies more as a non-story than anything else. Still, the thing about best friends is that they make you feel like your non-stories matter.
“I have no clue,” I say as we both climb out of Katy’s car. She stands with her hands on her hips, frowning. I can’t tell whether she’s trying to think of where to look next or just unimpressed with the lack of information I have on Bus Boy.
“Well, how do we send out a search party if you can’t give me a less generic description thantall and cute? What did he look like? How tall is tall? What color hair did he have?”
“It was dark and he was wearing a hat!” I say defensively. “Anyway, he’s probably not even from around here.”
“That’s too bad. Now, if only you’d be open to letting me find you a hot guy. Or at least letting us go to places where you could meet one.” To Katy’s disappointment, the fake IDs she got us almost two years ago have gone untouched—mine, Kathleen Kelly, after the character fromYou’ve Got Mail,one of my favorite movies, and Katy’s, Beatrice Lane, Beatrice for the character in the playMuch Ado About Nothing.“I mean, you’re seventeen and you act like the freaking black widow.”
“The spider or the superhero?”
Katy rolls her eyes, pulling open the trunk of her car. “Neither. You act like you’re completely over love.”
“Um,” I say. “I think I’d have to have been under orinit, ever, to be over love. Pretty sure making out with Acrobat-Tongue Grant in seventh grade doesn’t count as love.”
“My point exactly,” Katy says before her head disappears into the trunk of her car.
“What are you looking for?” I ask when she comes up for air a few seconds later.
“My silver bracelet—the one I always wear? I’ve told you that, like, three times,” she says, irritated.
“Oh, right,” I say, though I have no memory of this.
“Just the way Itoldyou we were hanging out after school and then I had to chase down the bus for two blocks to stop you from leaving with it. Exercise-induced asthma is no joke. And what senior even voluntarily takes the bus? God.”
She’s joking, but I can hear the annoyance in Katy’s voice. I have been a little out of it all day. Apparently, two nights tossing and turning will do that to a person.
“It wasnottwo blocks,” I argue. “Anyway, I forgot. Sorry. And taking the bus is not voluntary—I told you my mom wouldn’t let me have the car this morning. She wouldn’t even let me out of her sight all day yesterday.”
“Attachment disorder. I don’t think I’ve seen a more severe case of it,” Katy says in a know-it-all voice, shaking her head as she shuts the trunk. “When one individual is unreasonably and detrimentally attached to another.” Katy’s mother is a clinical psychologist, which is where Katy picks up phrases that sound like they’ve come from some yellowing medical textbook. It really should have turned my best friend into the best-adjusted seventeen-year-old in all of Lyndale, but it has only served as fuel for her lifelong hypochondria. Katy doesn’t get headaches; she gets migraines. Anaphylaxis instead of allergies. Influenza instead of a cold. Everything is a Psychological Episode.
I’ve always suspected this had something to do with Katy’s father leaving, remarrying by the time she was five, and sending gifts in lieu of visiting. Her mother works long, hard hours, but she does respond to crises. If Katy wants attention, she—or someone she knows—had better be On the Brink.
We maneuver our way through the parking lot, sticking close together so we don’t lose each other. There is one other high school in town—Meridian—and it seems their entire student population had the same idea of crashing the mall,too.
I don’t really know anyone from Meridian High, while Katy can’t go anywhere without seeing people she knows.
Within seconds of getting into the movie theater lobby, Katy is kicking a girl in the kneebow, and they are squealing and hugging and talking about community theater stuff. I never feel more out of place than when I’m among Katy’s other friends. They, like Katy, are a certain breed of people: bright, confident, funny. They talk louder than they have to; they grab one another’s shoulders and hands and cheeks. They exclaim and lunge and weep andenunciate.I feel lonely in such a specific way around them—like only half of me has shown up.
Some of Katy’s friends are nice enough—once or twice, someone came up and started talking to me as if we knew each other, though Katy wasn’t even there. I didn’t want to be rude, but I could only stare at them listlessly before mumbling something and escaping. When I told Katy about it, she said it sounded like so-and-so from Meridian, and not to worry about it.
Still, these ones—a girl with white-blond hair and her boyfriend—are acting as if I’m invisible, so I tell Katy I’m going to get our tickets and then head for the concession area. I’m looking around for the shortest line to join when I seehim.
A hundred-watt smile.
Tall. Skinny.
The boy from the bus.
And he’s looking right at me.
Before I think better of it, I am making my way over to him. He’s standing behind the concession counter but not manning a register.
