Going Vintage (12 page)

He covers the space between us slowly, like he could take this conversation or leave it. “Congrats on your club.”

“Thank you?”

That slow smile creeps up on the right corner of his mouth, like he’s trained his left side to stay cool but the other half keeps rebelling. “Is that a question or statement?”

“I’m not sure.” I jiggle my leg. There’s a punch line coming. I hope I’m not it. “Why did you help? Just then?”

“What, with your club? Why wouldn’t I?” He sounds genuinely confused. “You obviously went through a lot of work to put it together.”

“I did.” I step back. Did Jeremy put him up to this? Is he
trying to lull me into a false sense of security? Is there a video camera in Oliver’s glasses?

“Besides, you’re my cousin’s girlfriend. Figure he’d want you to have your way.”

“I’m not …” I scrunch my eyes at Oliver. Is he really bringing up this stupid joke again? He has to know about the breakup. “Look, you know I’m not his girlfriend, and it’s bothering me that you keep saying that.”

“Ha-ha-ha. Okay, fine. Fiancée. Sorry, I didn’t get the wedding announcement.”

“We broke up.” I intone the words slowly. “Please stop being stupid about it.”

Oliver widens his eyes, and this time it’s with shock. Real, legitimate shock. “Seriously?”

Now I’m the one confused. Maybe Oliver was being nice the other day at lunch, and really
did
want to help me in that meeting. But if Oliver isn’t a tool, then that makes Jeremy a double tool. How did Jeremy sit through an entire lunchroom conversation with his cousin and not mention our breakup? The breakup that had just happened a few periods before, so it was raw and fresh. Here
I
am, still feeling like there’s a knife slicing through my chest, and he forgets to mention that he lost the love of his life? If he respected me at all, he would have at least told his cousin.

Then again, Jeremy wasn’t dealing with the shock of betrayal. He already knew that he was talking to another girl. Our breakup might have just been an inevitability, a formality to him. And it’s not like he’s hiding it. Half of the fight is
broadcast on the World Wide Web. I haven’t seen it, but the breakup news and the way it has played out … it’s big. Or does it just feel big to me? “You didn’t see anything on Friendspace? I swore the whole school saw what he wrote.”

“I’m not on Friendspace. It’s so … obvious.” Oliver takes off his glasses and cleans the lenses. “I don’t want to talk to people that much in real life—forget the cyberworld. Jeremy’s on there all the time, though.”

“I know.” I don’t mean for it to, but my voice comes out harsh. Yes, Jeremy is in the cyber world
plenty
.

Still, it’s refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t measure his worth based on how many friends he has on Friendspace. Refreshing and odd. And I’m starting to think this wasn’t all a joke. Can I trust him? “Anyway, thanks for your help. I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Sooner than you think.” Oliver’s voice has taken on something close to warmth. Or pity. No, please don’t let it be that. I’ve withstood enough lately. Oliver Kimball feeling bad for me might just break me. “I’m going to join.”

“Join what?”

“Pep club.”

“
You
want to join pep club.”

Oliver punches his arm in the air like a cheerleader. “What, you don’t think I have enough pep?”

“I would be surprised to learn that you’re pro-pep.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” He brushes his fingers across his lips, rubbing the half smile away. “But seriously. You’re going to need people with experience in the spirit business.”

“You don’t need to campaign.” I hoist up my backpack on my shoulder. “The club is open membership.”

“And I’d like to be vice president, if that’s okay,” he says. “I won’t lie—I need to pad my résumé if I’m going to get into Stanford. I’ll help you with your presidential duties as much as I can. Here, why don’t you give me your cell and we can figure out logistics?”

“I don’t have a cell.”

He gives me a sympathetic look. “Did your parents take it away?”

We’ve already gotten into the breakup. I don’t need to explain my tech fast. It’s a personal, private decision, like being a vegetarian, or joining some New Age Hollywood religion.

“No. I don’t believe in them. Too obvious.”

He laughs, a surprised, rich burst that feels earned. “That was really funny.”

“That’s usually the reason people laugh.”

“No, it’s not.” Oliver leans against the wall in that effortless way that good-looking people do. He’s not worried that his cardigan will snag on a nail, or he’ll slide down, or that his thigh looks big smooshed against a flat surface. I would have to practice wall leaning in front of a full-length mirror for months to achieve his cool. “People laugh because they’re nervous, or to cover up tension, or to flirt, or because there’s some instant applause meter in their head telling them that it’s the socially acceptable thing to do. Genuine laughter, I don’t even think that happens daily.”

I almost laugh at this, but I would just be proving his point,
because it wouldn’t be a laugh of humor, but a laugh to ward off his crazy. “Laughter is the most natural thing on Earth. Babies laugh.”

“Because they’re trained to.”

“Because it’s in our genetic makeup!”

“So then it’s a reflex,” Oliver says.

“Remind me not to make any more jokes around you.” I see why he drives Jeremy bonkers. Jeremy invented the status quo, or the upper status quo, whatever it is everyone else wants to be. And Oliver’s sitting in the back of the theater, dissecting the laugh tracks like an overthinking freak. “Look, Oliver. You’re right. This group is going to need leadership and you have
leader
written all over you. So I’ll do you one better. You can be the president, but I need to be secretary.”

“Secretary?” He knits his eyebrows together. “Why secretary?”

“Why pep club? I’m full of mystery. Are you in?”

“President. I like it.” He folds his arm over his chest and looks off in the distance, like he’s striking a pose for a magazine announcing his new title. Then he breaks into that halfway grin and says, “Can you tell me one more thing?”

“What?”

“I know I’m not going to get the truth from him, so I’ll ask you. Why did you break up with my cousin?”

My voice catches in my throat. It’s not the question I expected. This whole conversation is not what I expected. I didn’t even expect a conversation
period
. “How do you know I broke up with him?”

“Five minutes of talking to you is more entertaining than a lifetime knowing Jeremy. So either you came to your senses, or he did something stupid.”

Door number two. “I’ll see you at pep club, Oliver.” I turn and walk down the hallway. Five minutes of what? That was just me being me. He’s never noticed me, never talked to me. You can’t just go around laughing a special laugh and complimenting people like you know them. I turn around to tell him that, to get a few things straight, but Oliver is already gone, back to Blake, the ASB, and the gavel of truth.

Chapter 9

Favorite beach destinations of Orange County:

1. Tide pools at Corona del Mar

2. Bonfires on Huntington

3. Surfers at Laguna

4. Balboa Pier at Newport

On Wednesday at 6:20 a.m., Dad drops me off at the parking lot by Balboa Pier. Grandma is already sitting on a bench, the fourth one down on the right. I slide in next to her as she wordlessly offers me a beignet out of the paper sack she picked up from our favorite bakery in Newport. It’s a healthy eating day for me, but this is a tradition. Her top lip has a dusty mustache of powdered sugar. “Do you have your Rumination?” Grandma whispers.

I nod and we turn our faces to the promise of morning. Grandma always said that you can find the answer to any question in a sunrise, and so she calls these meditative sessions Ruminations. During our weekend sleepovers, she used to kick me out of bed and drag me to the back porch of her town house near the top of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, her home before San Luis Opispo. At first she’d give me a Rumination, like
Who do you want to be, Mallory?
Or
If you could fly anywhere, where would you go?
But as I got older, she made me pick my own thoughts, and in those moments I would ask myself things I never had the courage to consider during regular life.

But I can’t settle on a clear Rumination today. I have to comb through all the doubt and whining, the
Why would Jeremy do that?
and
Will I ever find love again?
to The List and what it means. I’m two beignets in when I finally settle my mind on what I really want from The List: understanding. I don’t know if I’ll figure out what happened with Jeremy, or who I really am, or who my grandma was. But if only one of these questions is answered, it will be a win.

The sun awakens and the clouds stretch their dusky pink arms into the morning. A sunrise is one of those frequent snapshots that you take for granted because it’s on a million dollar-store calendars. But here, next to my grandma, with sugar on my lips and so many thoughts in my heart, I know that this dewy moment matters.

A fisherman plops his bucket down on a weathered plank, perching his pole on his knee as he digs through his tackle box. Grandma wipes her hands on her bohemian-style skirt. “Thanks for meeting me here. I haven’t had a good Rumination in a while.”

As busy as my grandma was being a Very Important Person, she always made time to make Ginnie and me feel special. Well, I suppose that hasn’t quite been the case for the past year or two, not since Grandpa’s life ended and Grandma’s dreams seemed to die with him. This retirement community must be her new dream, and although she hasn’t seen us as much as usual, I can’t blame her for the separation. “I really needed this today, Grandma. Thanks.”

“Is there a reason you needed this?” Grandma asks. The sky is completely blue now, the sun illuminating the worried lines around her eyes. “When you were over with Ginnie the other day, it seemed like there was something wrong, something besides a homecoming dress. I’m here if you need to talk about it.”

This is my opening to tell her about Jeremy. This is my chance to talk to someone who meditates during sunrises, who loved the same person for forty years, who never questions me like my mom does. But it’s her compassion that stops me. She’s been all around the world, seen children literally die from preventable diseases. How can I tell her I’m upset because my boyfriend fell in love with a computer avatar? No, she would think it’s stupid and that I’m stupid by extension. I want to pretend that I’m as wonderful as she thinks I am.

“I’m fine. I’ve … gotten into history some more, you know? It probably comes from digging through your stuff with Dad. Looking at your yearbook, it just seemed like … like that was the perfect time to be a teenager, before the sixties got all crazy. I wish I could time-travel back to that.” I can’t help but
get a little misty-eyed, like I’m the old one here, remembering my cherished youth. “You wore gowns to a dance, not skanky dresses. And you went on real dates, not the hang out and hookups that we do. And! You went steady and gave class rings and passed notes, not texts, and—”

“I think I’m going to barf.” Grandma crumples the empty beignet bag into a ball. “I wasn’t living in
Happy Days
.”

“You weren’t happy?” I ask.

“No, it was an old TV show. You know, the Fonz?” Grandma asks.

I shake my head. I would Wikipedia the Fonz right now if I could.

“My point is, we still had issues back then.” Grandma folds her arms over her chest. “Communism, Cuban missile crisis, repression, segregation, race riots. But nothing catastrophic like broken cell phones, right?”

“I … it was just different. Being a teen is hard now, Grandma.”

“Sweetie. Being a teen is
always
hard.” She swallows, and it’s clear she wants to say more but doesn’t think she can. She starts to walk away with the expectation that I’ll follow. I swear Grandma and Ginnie are twins, separated by a generation.

“Now,” she says. “I need to get you to school by eight, so let me figure out what I’m working with here. What kind of experience do you have sewing?”

I gaze at a runner as he races past us. He’s shirtless, and he has those weird hip muscles that are like arrows to a guy’s goods. He’s almost as glorious as the sunset. “Experience. I wouldn’t say experience so much as … exposure.”

“Fine. How much exposure do you have?”

“That would be … none.”

Grandma stops walking and smacks my shoulder. “You expect to sew a homecoming dress in just over a week and you can’t sew.”

“That was my Rumination today. I ruminated really hard.”

She laughs and veers me toward the parking lot. “Fine. I’ll help you, but only if you help yourself. Take a sewing class, practice, do something proactive. You don’t learn through
delegation
, you learn through
participation
.”