I Know It's Over

contents

title page

rage on

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter fourteen

chapter fifteen

chapter sixteen

chapter seventeen

chapter eighteen

chapter nineteen

chapter twenty

chapter twenty-one

chapter twenty-two

acknowledgments

about the author

copyright

rage on

one

The first time
Sasha lay spread across my bed, I felt like the world had changed. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a plain white T-shirt, not the tiny, cropped kind lots of girls wear—Sasha never wears that kind of stuff. “So it has to be my rules,” she repeated, propping her head up and peering steadily into my eyes. I stared at her long, tan legs and thought: Don’t screw this up now, Nick.

“Your rules,” I agreed, and I didn’t screw it up, not then anyway. We went on like that for nearly five months, stretching her rules, rewriting them together, until she told me we were getting too serious, that I was too much of a distraction and she had her whole future to think about.

“I want to worry about school,” she said, crossing her arms and frowning like only Sasha can—like the world was coming to an end. “Not about trying to get on the pill.”

Now I know she was wrong about the world, though—either wrong or early—because I can live without Sasha. The past month has proven that. But I don’t know how to deal with what she’s telling me now.

“Say something,” she says urgently, grabbing my arm and squeezing hard. “Don’t do this to me, Nick.”

I glance up the driveway towards my house, at the icicle lights everyone but my mom continually forgets to switch on, and wrench my arm away. Dad will be here to pick me up in less than an hour. Christmas at his place with Bridgette—that was my big problem until thirty seconds ago.

“Nick,” Sasha repeats. Snow is falling on her hair and she’s wearing the leather gloves her mom bought her at the end of October. She still looks beautiful to me, or at least I know she would if I could feel anything.

I run a hand through my snow-crowned hair and say, “This has to be a mistake.” It’s what everybody says and now I know why.

“Don’t you think I checked?” Her hands close into fists. “You think I’d come over here to tell you if I didn’t know for sure?”

“I don’t know what you’d do, Sasha.” I squint in her direction. The sky is filled with white as bright as sunshine. “I don’t know you anymore, remember?”

Sasha laughs like she hates me. She turns in the direction of the road and stands there, motionless. She’s prepared to wait, to become some kind of ice princess at the edge of my lawn. Not a nice fairy tale—the pregnant ex-girlfriend—but then I guess most of them aren’t. Not in the beginning anyway. I glance at the dark hair spilling down the back of Sasha’s coat and shiver. My heart stopped beating at the beginning of this conversation.

“So what do you want me to say?” I snap, taking a step back. Sasha laughs again, shakes her head, and stares down my street. What has she done to deserve this, that’s what she’s thinking, no doubt. There’s snow on her lashes, her cheeks are red from the cold, and suddenly I feel like a complete asshole.

“Does anyone else know?”

“Lindsay was there when I took the test.” She swivels to watch me from the corner of her eyes. It’s not safe to look at me yet. She doesn’t know who I’ll be.

“What about your parents?”

Sasha doesn’t laugh this time. Her parents aren’t a joke to either of us. We spent five months arranging meetings behind their backs and coaching Lindsay and Sasha’s other friends on alibis. We never even came close to getting caught. Or so I thought.

So what happened? Okay, I know what happened, but it barely qualified as a mistake. And it was once, that’s all. I reach out and touch Sasha’s arm—she doesn’t pull away. She’s more mature than I am maybe, at the very least she’s had more time to think. “We should’ve gone—” I begin, but Sasha’s way ahead of me.

“I know we should’ve.” Her cheeks hollow out as the cold steals the word from her lips. “I wish we did. It’s too late now.” Our eyes lock. Freeze. Dart away. “Shit!” Sasha exclaims, her eyes on the road.

Mom is motoring up the street towards us, waving, with her extreme happy face fixed firmly in place. If there’s one thing I can’t deal with now, it’s that lame happy holiday face. The real thing is bad enough, but Mom’s imitation sucks any real life out of the holidays and reminds me of a time when they used to mean something besides trying too hard. Or maybe back then I was too impressed by stuff like company Christmas parties where the boss would dress up as a skinny Santa Claus and dole out cheap board games and action figure knockoffs. I mean, I know it wasn’t perfect. I remember the arguments as well as anyone, but I also remember the four of us driving around looking at Christmas lights for weeks beforehand and my parents taking turns bringing my sister, Holland, and me shopping for each other’s presents. Some of that was real. I can feel the difference.

“Sasha, I have to go,” I say. “My dad’s picking me up soon.”

Sasha shoots me an incredulous glare. “This is important.”

“Yeah, I know.” I take a step back as Mom pulls into the drive. “I’ll call you when I get there, okay?”

Sasha doesn’t wait for my mom to get out of the car. She storms off, kicking up snow and folding her arms in front of her. I know that’s a shitty thing to do—just let her go like that—but I can’t help it. Well, I could, but I don’t want to have to try. I keep thinking maybe she’s wrong about the whole thing. Those tests can’t be a hundred percent accurate—nothing is.

Mom opens the car door, ducks down in front of the passenger seat, and emerges with a collection of bags. “Nicholas, give me a hand,” she says, handing me half her stash. That stupid stale smile is stretched across her face so tight she’s practically mummified. “Get the door, please,” she sings, all nursery rhyme–like. I’m glad I’m not going to be here for Christmas, if you want to know the truth. All the pretending gives me a massive headache, but whenever Holland or I decide to stop, Mom withdraws into a catatonic state.

I pull my keys out of my pocket, unlock the door, drop the bags down by the wall, and prepare to sprint upstairs before Mom can question me about Sasha’s former presence on our lawn. Holland zooms around the corner towards me, her rainbow-colored hair back in a ponytail and her legs drowning in baggy pants, before I can make my escape. “There’s a message from Babette on the machine,” she mutters. “They’re going to be
a little later than expected due to the inclement weather.
” I laugh in spite of everything. If you knew Bridgette, that’s exactly how she sounds, like she was born in a country club.

“Lights,” Holland says abruptly. She rushes past me to flick on the icicle lights, nearly colliding with Mom in the doorway.

“Just once I’d like to come home and find the Christmas lights already on,” Mom complains. “It’s Christmas Eve, for heaven’s sake.” She turns towards me, her lips on the verge of a new sentence: “Nicholas—”

“It’s not even dark yet,” I cut in, doing my best to distract her. “It’s too snowy to really get dark.”

Mom nods and hands her bags to Holland. “What are these?” Holland asks.
Thank you, Holland.
I kick off my shoes and rush upstairs to start packing, Holland’s voice wafting up through the vent under my desk. Sometimes I wonder what Mom would do without Holland and me. Maybe she’d be that sleepwalker person all the time if she never had to pretend.

I start emptying my closet into my backpack. Way too many clothes—I need a bigger backpack. I’ll have to carry Dad’s present. He’ll be disappointed that there’s only one; he’s hinted often enough about buying Bridgette something too. I told him he was lucky I was coming in the first place. Look at Holland, she hasn’t spoken to him since she found out about Bridgette—or Babette, as she prefers to call her—last March.

Bridgette’s not really the Babette type, though; for one thing she’s too old, and for another she’s got too much class. Too much class for her own good actually; she’s plenty stuck-up. Still, Holland has a point. She always does. Holland’s fourteen and a half going on thirty, or so she likes to think. She’d never get herself into Sasha’s situation.

Shit, my hands are shaking. I drop the backpack on my bed and fan the fingers on my right hand out in front of me. I look like some kind of freak who talks to his multiple selves on the street. I don’t know if I can go through with this. How could this happen to me?

I sit down in front of my bed and try to calm down. I can’t think about anything, not right now. No, that’s wrong. I need to think about something else entirely, something distracting. But that makes me think of Sasha too. I was just beginning to deal with the fact that I was an unwanted distraction. Do you know what it feels like to be an unwanted distraction? It was worse than never having been with Sasha. I’d sit there in law class, staring at the back of her head and thinking about all the things I would’ve changed about us. Things could’ve been right, I think. We just needed another chance. But I guess now I’ll never know for sure.

There’s a rapid-fire knock at my door and before I know it, Holland’s bursting into my room. She wrinkles her nose and looks down at me with wide eyes. “What’re you doing?” she asks. “You look like you’re praying.”

“Right,” I say sarcastically. “I’m a closet fanatic.”

“Okay, I don’t want to know,” Holland grumbles. “Mom sent me up to ask if you want anything to eat before you go.”

“No,” I say, scowling. “Get out of here.” Holland studies the pile of clothes half stuffed into my backpack and furrows her eyebrows. “Are you deaf, Holland?”

She gawks back at me like I’m certifiable. “You know it’s only a day and a half, Nick. You don’t need all that stuff.” She tries her X-ray vision out on me, but I guess it doesn’t work because she says, “You are coming back, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m coming back. You think I’d stay there with Dad and Bridgette?”

“What’s with all the clothes, then?” she asks suspiciously.

“Nothing.” I shake my head at her like the idea is ridiculous. It is too. I’d never leave Mom and Holland behind. The guilt would tear me up. Anyway, Dad wouldn’t want me with him and Bridgette all the time. They’re practically living together these days and I would spoil the romantic atmosphere. Nothing like a sixteen-year-old with a pregnant ex-girlfriend to provide a reality check. How would I even tell them?

“My mind was on other things,” I add. “That’s all.” I don’t tell Holland what other things and she doesn’t ask.

“Okay,” she says. I guess she sounds relieved. “So no food, right?”

“I’m not hungry.” I want to add that I wouldn’t go anywhere like that, not without telling them first and probably not at all, but I don’t. It seems like I can’t say any of the right things today.

I jump up, shaking hands and all, as Holland closes the door behind her. She’s right about the clothes. I don’t need a bigger backpack after all. I scoop a bunch of shirts into my arms, fling them into the open closet, and collapse onto the bed. Where’s Sasha now, I wonder. Will she tell her parents? I’m not ready for that. I’m not even ready to know myself.

I switch the stereo on, notch up the volume, and lie facedown on the pillow, listening to Beanie Sigel. The same thing happened to one of my so-called friends last year. Actually, the guy’s pretty much an asshole. He talked his girlfriend into having an abortion. He told her it was better because no one would ever have to know and they could just keep going the way they were. I don’t know what she wanted to do, but she did it and they didn’t keep going either. He broke up with her two months later and then everyone knew.

I lie there thinking about that and about last summer and the months before I became a distraction and Sasha realized she had to get serious about her future. “I don’t want us to get too heavy,” Sasha said at the time. “Do you know what I mean?”