From What I Remember (4 page)

“Oh, we get to meet Max Langston at the library?” Mortals like us don’t normally interact with the Max Langstons of the world.

“We?”
Kylie says, shooting me a warning glance.

“I’m coming with.” No better view than staring at Max from a neighboring carrel.

“Will, don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Sadly, no.”

“C’mon, this is only going to make things more difficult.”

“You’ll barely notice me.”

“Impossible.” Kylie sticks her tongue out at me.

I stick my tongue out at her. It’s an interchange we have about seven hundred times a day. I love her. I would give her a lung and a leg if I had to. Hopefully, I won’t have to.

“Okay. Here’s the plan. You have sex with Max over in biographies, and then I can go down on him by the microfiche,” I suggest.

“Gross. I wouldn’t touch Max with a ten-foot pole. I have no interest in sex with Max, at all.”

“Um, hello…you have no interest in sex whatsoever. It’s a problem.”

“Not everyone thinks about sex twenty-four seven,” Kylie says.

“I beg to differ, darling. Most seventeen-year-olds are not only thinking about sex, they’re actually having it, unlike us.”

I think about sex every single minute of every day. Not that it’s getting me anywhere. Kylie and I are both virgins, but for very different reasons. It’s not normal for a seventeen-year-old girl to turn that whole part of herself off. She’s going to explode one day. I just hope I’m there to pick up the pieces.

We take a seat at a table in the library to wait for Max. I reach into my pocket, pull out a fabulous pair of long, gold chandelier earrings, and offer them up to Kylie.

“You
have
to wear these for graduation. You need something that’s going to stand out on the podium. These will look major with your hair all wild, and—”

“Will, you promised me you wouldn’t steal any more of your sisters’ stuff.”

“You’re the valedictorian, darling. You need some kind of something. Annie will never know they’re gone. She has gobs of them.”

“The thought is sweet, and I love you for it, but I won’t take your stolen goods. I’m sorry.”

Damn Kylie and that moral compass she wears around her neck. My sisters have so much stuff, it’s embarrassing. I’m just trying to share the wealth.

“At least let me buy you a dress for graduation.”

“Will, seriously, drop it.”

I do drop it. But I vow to pick it up again before Friday. Kylie deserves a slamming dress when she stands up there at the podium and blows us all away with her speech. Of course, no one will see it under her gown, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts.

Kylie and I are an unlikely pair. I’m one of the richest kids in a school filled with La Jolla’s most moneyed families, while Kylie is one of five scholarship students. We met on the first day of seventh grade, in the far north corner of the cafeteria, having both been pushed out of all the prime real estate. Kylie was new and I was, well, me. We ended up at the same empty table, along with Justin Wang, who just sat there, in a trance, communing with his Nintendo.

Neither of us spoke for about ten minutes. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I turned to Kylie and said, “‘Did you know without trigonometry there’d be no engineering?’”

Without missing a beat or even glancing up from her pizza bagel, Kylie said, “‘Without lamps, there’d be no light.’”

“No way,” I said. What were the chances the new girl could quote
The Breakfast Club
?

“Way,” Kylie said. And then she looked up and smiled at me. Girlfriend has an amazing smile. Her whole face lights up. “
Breakfast Club
is one of my favorite movies of all time.”

“It’s a masterpiece,” I concurred. And we’ve been best friends ever since.

Our family’s relationship, unfortunately, is a whole different story. Our parents have only spent one miserable evening together in the past six years, and it will never happen again. Kylie’s mother insisted on having us over. She made spaghetti with meatballs. It was, how do you say
en anglais
? An unmitigated disaster.

My sisters and my mother are all vegans, so they just nibbled on salad. (You’d think with all our money they’d fill up on lobster, caviar, and filet mignon, just because they can; but no, they spend their money on dried lentils and tempeh.)

Since only beer was on offer (which is to say, there was no wine served, a crime worse than murder in my parents’ opinion), only a handful of words were exchanged all evening, unless you count my incessant blathering, which filled the silence but annoyed everyone to no end, including me.

At some point, toward the end of the long day’s journey into night, Jake, Kylie’s little brother (who I love more than my own siblings, and who is challenged in his own special ways), launched into a thirty-minute exposition on the San Diego bus schedules. I think it was right after that that my parents made some pathetic excuse about a previous engagement they’d forgotten. They were out of there so fast the wind shook the shelves. I stayed and played Yahtzee with Jake and Kylie, rather than head back to Cloudbank (that’s right, our house has a name).

Kylie is staring at the clock in the library, twirling her hair. She’s pissed. We’ve been waiting here for thirty minutes, and still no Max. I’m so not surprised. Kylie springs up from her seat and bolts for the door. And she’s off. Uh-oh.

Kylie’s temper is not something to mess with. She looks like she’s going to blow, in a big, operatic way. I live for these scenes. As we’re getting precariously close to graduation, this could be Kylie’s final performance. I race to catch up with her, no small task in these crazy platform shoes. I seriously need to get some sneakers.

hate when people are late. It’s at the top of the list among my many pet peeves. I am also infuriated by selfishness, narcissism, and stupidity. Hard as it is to believe, Max appears to have all of these traits in spades. He cannot get away with this. I don’t care how hot or popular he is. A force beyond my control seizes me, and before I know it, I’m running toward the sports center. For anyone else it would be social suicide, but I was dead on arrival years ago. I’m working hard at controlling my anger, but it has been sorely tested at Freiburg. Just this year, I’ve had minor eruptions at least three times: when Isabel Tornet cheated off of me in AP Calculus and then tried to pin it on me when she got caught; when Oscar Mezlow taunted Will for being gay; and when I saw Jemma Pembolt teasing Anna Salington about being overweight.

I rush across the quad, pretty sure I’ll find Max on the squash court. Will weaves and bobs behind me in his ridiculous shoes. I hope at Berkeley he will feel less of a need to display his sexuality like a merit badge. I know for a fact Will loves tailored suits and his old worn-in Levi’s. Maybe someday he’ll feel comfortable enough in his skin to wear them. Or, at the very least, choose more sensible shoes.

A Frisbee slams into my head. A bunch of kids stare at me, pissed. I realize I’ve just crashed the Ultimate Frisbee championships. I apologize and veer off, out of the line of fire. I know I should appreciate the beauty all around me, but something about the blazing green lawn and the stately brick buildings, surrounded by towering palm trees, makes me want to hurl. I watch for a beat as Lauren Jacobs leaps into the air to snatch the Frisbee. She’s wearing such short shorts I can see her butt cheeks, and a pink T-shirt so tight her nipples are practically visible. Why must Lauren constantly dress like a stripper? She’s hot. I get it.

Lauren tosses the Frisbee back to Chase Palmer, whose white-blond hair glistens in the sun and whose perfect teeth sparkle like diamonds. All these happy, shiny people. I will never adjust to this world, ever.

“Hey, Kylie, wait up,” Harriet Zoles yells to me. I pretend not to hear her and pick up the pace. Harriet Zoles is one of the precious few people at Freiburg who relentlessly seek out my company. Her and a few other Crofties. Crofties are so named because they spend their time in the undercroft, an inside archway beneath the main building. Will and I tried to hang with them for a while. As it turned out, aside from being unpopular, we had very little in common with them. They’re kind of extreme geeks. I’m sure they’ll go on to create the next Facebook or Google, and I’ll be kicking myself that I didn’t cozy up to them more when I had the chance. But as much as Will and I tried, we just couldn’t make the connection happen. Talking to Harriet Zoles is like torture, or “water-boring,” as Will would say. And, unlike Franklin Peterson, I don’t build elaborate, historically accurate structures out of Legos competitively. Nor do I think Mandarin is the
only
way to get ahead in this “global rat race” we now live in, as Sheila Nollins insists, every chance she gets.

No woman is an island, but together, Will and I are a very tiny atoll, floating peacefully off the Southern California coast. Sure, it can get lonely. And maybe in a different place, at a different time, we’ll visit the mainland. But for now, island living suits us just fine, thank you very much.

I yank open the door to the sports center and march down the stairs, toward the squash courts. Will takes a step, his heel gives, and he tumbles down the stairs, landing in a heap outside the court.

Lily looks down at Will and snickers. “Maybe that’s why men don’t wear heels, William.” Lily’s two BFFs, Stokely Eagleton and Jemma Pembolt, sitting at her side, giggle on cue.

If this were some kick-ass action movie, the main character—that being me—would yank up her pencil skirt and, with one long sweep of her leg, incapacitate all three of these girls with a swift kick to their heads. Then she’d straighten her skirt, freshen her lipstick, brush a little lint off her sleeve, and saunter off with a wink and a smile. But this is not a movie. This is my dismal life. And I’m no hero.

So I glare at Lily and company, and then look down at Will and ask, “You okay?” Hardly Oscar-worthy.

“Never better.”

I help Will up and onto the bench. He bites his lower lip and rubs his leg.

“You sure?” I ask again.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t stop the show on my account. You know how I live for the climactic second act break,” Will says to me.

I leave Will and march onto the squash court, where Max is in the middle of a heated match with Charlie. I know this is such a bad idea, but I’m so over it. Max Langston and his crew do whatever they want, whenever they please, to whomever they choose. Enough already.

I’m so caught up in my fight for justice, I am completely oblivious to the squash ball flying around the court until it smacks me in the butt.

I hear Lily and her harpies laugh hysterically.

“Kylie, what the hell are you doing?” Charlie asks. He and Max continue to whack at the ball as if I’m not there.

For the second time today, Max looks at me and rolls his eyes.

I feel naked and ridiculous standing in the middle of the court, the ball whizzing around me.

“Max and I were supposed to meet forty minutes ago,” I say, holding my ground in what is increasingly becoming one of my worst ideas ever.

“Oops, my bad. The game went long. Obviously we’re not going to do it now. So can you get off the court?” Max asks.