So Much Closer (9 page)

“I wouldn’t know. He’s never home.” It happened again tonight. Dad didn’t even call or leave a note this time. This working-late thing is obviously a permanent condition. He tried to be around more the first few days I was here, but then quickly retreated back into his normal routine. It makes me feel like I’m not even here, like he’s not trying to make me a part of his life the way he said he wanted to.

“Same with mine,” Ree says. “Is yours an investment banker?”

“How’d you know?”

“They’re all like that.”

I guess her life isn’t as sparkly as I thought. Both of our dads ignore us. But I hope her dad didn’t do the horrible things mine did.

When I get home, Dad hardly looks up from his laptop.

“Hey there, kiddo,” he says like nothing’s wrong. “How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

And that’s it. He just goes back to his laptop. No apology for not bothering to tell me he was working late again.

It’s really annoying how he can change my mood from mellow to snarly in two seconds.

I breeze past him on the way to the bathroom. I dump my clothes in the hamper and yank my robe on. I try to keep my anger under control while I take out my contacts. One of them almost gets ripped in half. Then I wash my face, remembering how peaceful everything was in the Zen garden, trying to think relaxing thoughts. Rage bubbles under the surface. Maybe I’ll just go to bed early and escape.

But I can’t. Because I ran out earlier without eating anything, so now I’m really hungry. I encounter a problem in the kitchen. I’m craving cereal, but there’s no milk. What I’m craving even more is a home-cooked meal. Missing Mom’s cooking is the last thing I expected to be doing, but there you go. Takeout was fun for a while. Now it’s sort of sad.

My craving clamors for a bowl of Froot Loops. If I don’t run out to the deli for milk, my craving will clamor even more. So I put on my glasses, throw my hair into a distressed ponytail, and pull on some old sweatpants with my vintage
Late Night with David Letterman
tee. I can’t be bothered to put on any makeup.

Every night I search the neighborhood, hoping to find Scott. I’ve walked up and down his street so many times I know those buildings better than I knew the ones on my old street. But I never just go out looking for Scott without getting ready. Before I leave, I usually try on at least five different outfits. I check myself in the mirror way too many times. The possibility of finding him is always so exciting. Besides sitting next to Scott in class, it’s the best part of my day.

But tonight, all I want to do is grab some milk and come back home and eat cereal and go to bed. I don’t think about what I’m wearing. I don’t think about how I look.

So of course this is when I find Scott.

I’m just leaving the deli when it happens. He’s kind of hard to miss. Since I smack right into him and all.

“Hey!” he goes.

I clutch my deli bag, saving the milk from falling at the last second. I do not look up. I cannot see Scott right now. More specifically, Scott cannot see me right now. I couldn’t possibly look any worse.

“Um.” I focus on the sidewalk. “Hey,” I tell a passing car.

“On your way home?”

“Yeah, I was just ... running out for something.”

“That’s cool.”

“What about you?”

“I just got back from bowling practice. I know, it sounds lame. It’s just there’s no lacrosse team here, so I had to get creative.”

“Makes you miss suburbia.”

“Not exactly.” Scott looks at my deli bag. “You hungry? I’m getting a sandwich—I found this phenomenal place.”

“I didn’t know sandwiches could be phenomenal.”

“Are you kidding? Sandwiches rule.”

Even though I must look like something that just crawled out of a gutter, Scott doesn’t seem repulsed.

“So,” he goes, “you in?”

“That depends. Would you mind if I went home real quick? I’m ...” I gesture at my glasses and sweatpants. “Not exactly presentable.”

“You look good to me,” Scott says. He looks right at me when he says it.

This.

Is.

Happening.

We walk to my place. I try not to freak out that Scott Abrams is walking me home in this whole new city that I followed him to. I run upstairs, commencing the fastest reconstruction job ever. I’m not sure how much better I look five minutes later, but at least I’m presentable enough for a phenomenal sandwich.

On my way out, Dad glances in my general direction. “Going out again?” he asks.

“Just for a little while. I ran into a friend from school.”

“Where are you guys going?”

“Down the street. For a sandwich.”

Dad’s already back on his laptop. “Have fun. Not too late, okay?”

“Okay,” I agree. Even though I don’t know what “too late” is. We skipped the rules part of this arrangement when I moved in. Apparently, a lot of basic information gets left unsaid when there’s so much else you’re not saying.

“Ready?” Scott says when I come out.

“Starving.”

He’s right about the sandwich shop. My BLT extra B is seriously delicious. Scott’s club sandwich is huge. It’s so huge that I can’t believe he can keep it from falling apart.

“That has to be the biggest sandwich ever,” I say. “Is there anything
not
in it?”

“Potato chips.”

“Oh.”

“And cereal.”

Of course he said cereal.

“Did you hear about that guy who dislocated his jaw biting into a big sandwich?” I ask.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yeah, in Georgia. They’re even naming the sandwich after him.”

“I bet the sandwiches here are even bigger.”

“This place is awesome.”

“I know. How nice is it having more options than the fricking Gas ’n’ Sip?”

So true. Back home, there was never anything to do. Everywhere closed early. Here the possibilities are endless. I like knowing I’m not the only one who’s impressed that a sandwich place is open this late. The fact that I could see a movie at midnight—a quality indie movie—blows my mind. Or how crowded the streets are at two in the morning. Not that I’ve been out that late. I leave my windows open, so I can hear all the people outside. I love street noise. The sounds of traffic soothe me to sleep.

“So have you acclimated to West Village Community yet?” Scott asks facetiously.

“Hardly.”

“Didn’t you join that peer-tutoring thing?”

“How do you know?”

“Leslie told me. She’s friends with a tutor who knows Sadie.”

“Oh.” I don’t know which is more disturbing—that Leslie knows my personal business or that she told Scott about it. I want to ask if he’s going out with Leslie, but it’s obvious he is.

“She told me you guys ran into each other at some coffeehouse?”

Okay. This is strange. Why is she telling him all this stuff about me?

“Yeah,” I say. “Sort of.”

“That’s cool about tutoring. At least you have goals. I have no clue where my life is going.”

“Neither do I.”

“Really?”

“Why, does it seem like I do?”

Scott nods. “You come off like you have it all together.”

“Yeah, right,” I harrumph. “I wish I knew what I want to be. It’s so annoying how everyone’s always asking me that.”

“Exactly! Like we’re supposed to automatically know what we’ll be doing for the rest of our lives. Guess I missed the memo on that one.”

Scott finishes the first half of his sandwich. I stare at his arms. His sleeves are pushed up to right below his elbows. His arms are still tan from summer, all toned with sun-bleached blond hair. I don’t know what it is, but I’m, like, hypnotized by certain parts of his body.

Note to self: stop staring at Scott’s arms.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says.

Does he mean here in the sandwich shop? Or here in New York?

“Me, too,” I say, blushing. I never blush. That’s how much power he has over me.

“Transferring to a new school senior year sucks. Why couldn’t my dad have waited until I was in college?”

“I thought you said he had to move for his job.”

“Yeah, but I think he had a choice when to do it. He thought now would be better for everyone.”

“Except you.”

“Exactly.”

Should I tell him? It’s the first time we’ve ever been alone like this. I may not get another chance. Leslie could dig her claws in even deeper and then it would be hopeless. But what if he totally freaks out that I moved here for him? I mean, who does that? Telling him would be a huge risk. It feels like we’ve been getting closer. If I scare him off, I could ruin my chances forever.

We talk into the night. I dreamed about being with Scott like this so many times, writing notes about him for my wish box, thinking up ways to get him to notice me. Now this night is here. It’s real. And I have a feeling it’s just the beginning.

“
Let’s go to
the High Line!” John says with way more excitement than I can take right now. The combination of attempting to navigate my way through the social structure of a new school, actually being required to get work done, and staying up too late has resulted in a catastrophic energy crash. After my sandwich shop interlude with Scott last night, so much adrenaline was zinging through my body that it took forever to fall asleep. I barely had the strength to drag myself to tutoring today. I desperately wanted to go home and take a nap after school, but there’s no way Sadie would have let me get away with that.

“It’s tutoring time,” I remind John. “As in time for you to be tutored. Did you get that trig test back?”

“Dude. It’s precisely
because
it’s tutoring time that we have to get out of here! What’s the first rule of tutoring again?”

“Throw out all previous rules.”

“Yes! Who says we have to stay in here all the time?”

“Mr. Peterson.”

“Mr. Peterson also said we could relocate if we were so inclined.”

“Really? He didn’t tell me that.”

“Go ask if you don’t believe me.” John leans back in his chair, putting in one earbud and firing up his music. His expression says,
I’ll wait
.

I go find Mr. Peterson. He confirms that we can have tutoring somewhere else as long as actual work is getting done. He’s counting on me to make that happen.

“We can go,” I report back to John.

“Like I said. Why would we even want to stay inside? Soon it’ll be way too cold to go out and what kind of absurd waste of a perfectly good High Line would that be?”

“Just one question.”

“Hit me.”

“What’s the High Line?”

John slams back against his chair so hard I think it’s going to tip over. He drops his iPod, yanking the earbud out of his ear.

“‘What’s the High Line?’”
he breathes, all incredulous.

“I’m new, remember?”

John puts his hand up like,
Give me a minute
. He struggles for composure.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” he says.

As we walk northwest (or “up and over,” as John described), he tells me all about the High Line. It’s a park, but it used to be an old branch of elevated train tracks that hadn’t been used in a long time. The train tracks are still there, except now trees and flowers are growing all around them. They put in wooden lounge chairs that roll along the tracks and an area with bleachers where you can watch the street below through a glass wall. John even knows that the type of wood they used is called ipe, which was sustainably harvested from a managed forest.

“It sounds incredible,” I say.

“Look up,” John says.

There’s an industrial metal structure elevated a few stories above Gansevoort Street. It’s already impressive from over here. I’m also impressed by this triangular intersection we’re crossing.

“Wait,” I say. “I recognize this place.” I look down Gansevoort Street at the cobblestones extending into the distance. The river glints against the horizon. We’re right by a storefront that for some reason I think might have once been a flower shop.
Lewis King of Plants, 12½ Gansevoort Street.
Everything’s coming back to me now. A scene from
Bed of Roses
was filmed here. It’s this nineties movie where two typical New Yorkers (i.e. lonely people with baggage) find each other. Which I saw a long time ago, but of course I remember all sorts of details from it.

John goes, “How?”

“This was a flower shop in a movie. I can’t believe it.”

“Yeah. Lots of movies are filmed around here.”

“That’s so cool.”

“I know! Dude, I love how you’re stoked about this! Everyone else is so jaded. They’re all been-there-done-that by the time they’re seven. You tell them about the High Line and they’re like, ‘Who cares about some old train tracks?’ It’s tragic.”