Love You Hate You Miss You (14 page)

150 days

J—

I thought some stuff about you the other day, but I didn’t mean it. I should have said so sooner, but it’s just—after everything that happened with Patrick two days ago, I haven’t been…

I wasn’t myself then.

I wasn’t.

Look, I know sex was a big deal to you, that you liked being with someone you thought you’d connected with, but I don’t want that. I don’t want a connection. It’s a stupid word.

What does it mean, really? Connection.

Nothing. That’s what it means, and I didn’t connect with him. What happened didn’t mean anything. It didn’t, it doesn’t, and I don’t—I don’t want to be thinking about
it. About him. I don’t want to wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s doing, if he’s thinking of me—

God! Look what you’ve done to me. Look what you’ve made me into. I don’t know why you—

We were both in your car. We both had our seat belts on. What was so different for you? That you were driving? You always drove. Why was that night so different? Why did you have to leave me?

Patrick was right, J. I hate myself.

But I hate you too.

152 days

J,

I meant what I said the other day. I hate you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

And knowing that—Julia, knowing that makes everything so much worse. I hate you for
dying
. It’s beyond screwed up. If I was the one who’d died you’d miss me and maybe talk to that picture of us you kept tacked up on your dresser mirror, the one from Splash World, but you wouldn’t write letters to me, boring wah-wah-wah letters.

You wouldn’t blame me.

I miss you all the time; how you’d henna your hair because it was a Tuesday, the way you’d laugh and say, “A, you mope,” when I said something stupid, how you somehow always knew when I needed a bag of salt-and-
vinegar potato chips from the vending machine to get me through the last few periods of school, but the past couple of days I’ve missed you so much it’s felt like missing you is all I am.

Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn’t be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There’d just be memories of you and all the things I’ve tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can’t because I don’t have the words. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. How can you? I can’t even begin to say.

I don’t know what to do about Patrick. It’s been four days, J. I haven’t spoken to him since that afternoon. He hasn’t spoken to me either. I should be happy about that.

I shouldn’t be keeping track of how many days it’s been. I shouldn’t care if he ever speaks to me again or not. It was just sex, and I shouldn’t even be writing about him. But I—

I keep thinking about him. His skin. His voice. The way—listen to me! It’s like I’m in some freaking romance novel. It. Was. Just. Sex. What is wrong with me?

I have spoken to Mel. It was just once, two days afterward. The last time I wrote to you.

He came up to me after English and said, “You know why I asked you all those questions, right? And why
I brought Patrick to the movies?” an odd note in his voice.

“What?” I said, and looked around for Patrick before I could stop myself. He wasn’t with Mel. In class, he’d sat at his desk (all the way across the room, now that our group project is over) staring at the door. He never looked at me, not once.

“Patrick,” Mel said. “He’s my friend, he likes you, and I thought that if I talked to you, asked all the questions I knew he wanted to, that maybe he’d get to the point where he’d talk to you himself. But—look, I don’t know what happened, but I saw you two talking after our presentation, and whatever you said to him, you need to do something about it, take it back or whatever, because he’s acting really strange now.”

I walked away. What else could I do? What could I say? “Well, actually, Mel, I did more than talk to him. We had sex. And I can’t really take that back, can I?”

This is insanity. A couple of minutes of someone grunting over you is just that and nothing more. You thought you were supposed to have feelings about it, about the guy. You couldn’t see sex for what it is, a random moment with someone, a moment that has meaning only if you let it.

I can’t believe that’s what I used to say to you. That I said it whenever you were upset about a guy. I said it a lot
to you about Kevin, didn’t I? “This is insanity,” and “it has meaning only if you let it.” No wonder you always rolled your eyes and said I didn’t understand.

I thought I did, but I didn’t. I so didn’t. Even though Kevin was a total ass because he cheated on you and lied about it (badly), he still meant something to you. When you were with him, it was always more than a random moment to you, and meaning wasn’t something you could put there if you wanted to. It was just there, and you felt it.

I wish I’d gotten that before now. You don’t know how much I wish it.

THIS AFTERNOON
I went to Caro’s after school, and her sister came over to show her a picture of the bridesmaid dresses. They were hideous, a weird orange-pink with ruffles everywhere. Plus there were matching hats.

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh, and Caro said, “Please tell me the hat has ruffles on it too, Jane. I don’t think I can be in your wedding looking like a diseased piece of citrus fruit if I don’t have a hat with ruffles to wear.”

“I like the hats,” Jane said. “And no, they don’t have ruffles. Yet.” She smiled at me, and then said, “And Caro, I love your hair,” as she left.

“See?” I said, and Caro rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling too. The other day I’d dragged her to the
drugstore to get some temporary hair color because she’d mentioned it like eight hundred times.

It turned out pretty good—I made her get purple—and this morning I heard Beth telling her how great it looked in the bathroom. Of course, it was a Beth compliment because she said, “Caro, your hair actually looks really nice for once!” Caro just smiled, but as they were walking out, she glanced at me and whispered, “Is it wrong that I want to jam a fork in her face?”

When we were waiting for the hair dye to process, I told Caro what Patrick had told me in the library, about Beth and the things she’d said to Mel. I thought she’d be surprised but she wasn’t. She just sighed and said, “I know.”

“You know?”

“Well, not exactly know, but it figures,” Caro said. “See, back in September, right after school started, I got really drunk at a party and ran into Mel. We went outside and were standing around, just the two of us, and he looked so good that before I knew it, I told him I liked him. Then I ran off and threw up. I thought—he was drunk too, so I figured he didn’t remember. I mean, he never said anything. But I was still so
embarrassed I couldn’t even look at him until we ended up in that group in English. And then it was like…I don’t know. The way he talked to me, I thought maybe he liked me too. But then Beth said she liked him, and—”

“And that meant you couldn’t.”

“Yeah,” Caro said. “But…okay. If I tell you something, will you be honest with me? I mean, will you tell me what you really think?”

“Yes. Beth’s a complete shit.”

She laughed. “Besides that. Remember when Beth told me to ask Mel if Joe was going to a party, and I told Mel I thought Joe was hot and acted like I—?”

“Wanted to hook up with him?”

Caro nodded. “Right. Beth did all that for a reason.”

“Because she wanted Mel to think you liked Joe instead of him.”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing. I never told Beth what happened with Mel. I didn’t tell anyone because it was so humiliating. So Beth never knew I liked Mel, which means—”

“Crap,” I said. “It means Mel remembers what happened at the party—and told Beth about it. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. But I guess when he and I talked in English and stuff, it was just talking. I guess he’s always liked Beth.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. That one time he asked me to go to the movies with him, I could tell he liked you.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter now,” she said. “And, okay, what exactly was that movie thing about? Not that you aren’t—I mean, it was just—”

“Very random?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged. I knew why Mel had asked me to the movies. He’d done it for Patrick, just like he’d asked me all those questions. No wonder he’d never looked interested in my answers. “I think your hair’s done.”

Caro looked at me, and for a second I thought she was going to say something. That maybe she had an idea of what had happened with me and Patrick. But she didn’t say anything, and we just rinsed her hair out.

“It looks good,” I told her when it was done.

“Thanks,” she said, and I made a face at her.

“No, for real,” she said. “Thank you.”

I knew what she meant. She was thanking me for being there, for listening.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said, but it kind of was to me. For me. No one has said thank you to me for real in a long, long time.

152 days

J—

There’s some other stuff I need to tell you, okay?

Caro and I are still talking. I’ve even gone to her house a couple of times. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I tell her stuff or anything like that. I know she’s Corn Syrup, who trails Beth around school like a whipped loser. But she makes fun of herself for it, and…I don’t know. She’s not that bad.

God, this—just doing this, just writing to you—it’s hard. I’ve never been nervous talking to you before, but I am now. I’ve wanted to tell you everything, but I would look at this notebook and think of what I said to you before and hate myself.

Talking to you used to be so easy and now…now I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

I wish I wasn’t so angry. I wish I was a stronger person, a better one.

Mom and I talked the day after…after Patrick. She picked me up from school and drove me home. She followed me into the study when I went in there to do my homework and started talking. She said she was sorry she’d pushed me to go to the mall, that if she’d hurt me by talking about getting a haircut she didn’t mean it.

You should have heard her, J. I always wanted her to sound the way she did then. I wanted that pleading note in her voice. I always wanted her and Dad to feel the way I did around them. I wanted them to realize that you can be in a room with someone and yet not really be there to them.

And yeah, it felt okay. But it didn’t feel great. I sat there, watching her talk and trying so hard, and I—I felt sorry for her. For Dad. Things had changed so much for them so fast, and here she was stuck at home with me in the middle of the afternoon. She wasn’t working on a paper or going over stuff for a class or talking to Dad or doing the things that used to make her glow.

She and Dad might not have noticed me before, but hell, at least they were happy.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m—this really sucks.”

“Amy,” she said, her face crumpling. “Please don’t say that. Your father and I are trying so hard, and if you would just let us—”

“No, I mean, I’m sorry for you. It sucks that you have to do all this. It must be really hard.”

She started to cry. Like, really cry. She just stood there, face in her hands, her whole body shaking.

“This is never what I wanted for you,” she said after a while, the words muffled by her fingers. I wanted to hug her, but I was afraid to. What do I know about comfort, about making things better? I only know how to make them worse.

158 DAYS,
and I saw Laurie this afternoon.

For once, I’d actually been looking forward to seeing her. I figured if anyone would be willing to point out how horrible I am for what I’ve been thinking about J, it’s her.

“I’m mad at Julia,” I said as soon as I walked in, and waited for the pen clicking to start.

When it didn’t, I sat down and added, “I’m mad at her for dying. I’m mad at her for listening to me that night. I…sometimes I hate her.”

Laurie nodded. That was it. She
nodded
.

I stared at her. She stared back at me.

“Did you hear me?” I said. “My best friend died because of me, and sometimes I hate her.”

“Why do you hate her? For dying? Or because she listened to you?”

“Both!” I said, almost shouting. “I made sure she saw her boyfriend cheating on her. Made sure she saw it, and didn’t just hear about it. Then I told her we should go because she…she didn’t tell him to go to hell like I thought she finally would. She didn’t…she was so sad, and I did that. I broke her heart.”

“Amy—”

“There’s more,” I said. “You know it. I know it. I told her to get in the car. I told her to drive. She did all that, she listened to me, and I hate her for that. She died and I hate her for that too. What’s wrong with me?”

Laurie sighed. “Did Julia always do what people told her to?”

“You didn’t listen to anything I said about her at all, did you? She always did her own thing. But that—” I broke off and glared at Laurie, because I knew what she was doing and I was sick of it, sick of her. “I know what you’re going to say, I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t—it doesn’t mean what you think it does. Julia didn’t choose to die.” My voice was shaking. My whole body was shaking.

“No, she didn’t. But she chose to get into her car and drive, just like you chose to drink.”

“That’s it?” I said, and I was yelling now, full of fury and something else, something I didn’t want to think about. “Just like that, just that simple, you say she chose to get into the car and I’m supposed to…what? Forget what I did? Say ‘I see it now, I do, and yay! Laurie’s made everything’s okay!’ and move on?”

“If you can see your choices, why can’t you see hers?”

“Because it’s not that simple. Because you can’t—you can’t make everything all right,” I said, and stood up. I walked out of her office, and I slammed the door behind me so hard it shook. I wished it would crack in half. I wished Laurie’s office would crumble around her.

To my surprise, she came right out after me.

“No one ever said what happened was simple,” she said, her voice firm. She motioned for me to come back inside.

“Why?” I said. “So you can tell me more about choices?”

“Because you’re right,” she said. “I can’t make everything okay for you.”

I hadn’t expected that, so I went back in and sat down.

She followed me, and as soon as she was in her chair, she picked up her pen. I knew it was coming at some point, but now? I glared at her and started to stand up again, but then stopped, frozen. Frozen because I knew what I’d felt right before I left. I was angry, so angry, but I also wanted—I wanted to believe her too. But like she said, she couldn’t make everything okay.

“You know what?” I said, staring at that stupid pen and hating myself for wanting to believe her. For wanting to think I didn’t kill Julia. “Here’s something new for you. I had sex with someone. Why don’t you tell me how I should feel about that?”

Laurie just looked at me.

“Go on,” I said, my voice rising again, and she said, “How do you want to feel about it?”

“I don’t feel anything,” I said, but my voice cracked a little. “It was just—it was the first time I did it when I wasn’t drunk and it was…it was different. That’s all.”

Laurie uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Different how?”

“I don’t know. Just different.”

“I see.” Laurie clicked her pen, finally. And when she did, when I heard that click, something clicked in me,
and I got why she did it. Why I’d heard all that pen clicking time after time after time.

Laurie clicks her pen when she thinks I’m lying to her. When she thinks I’m lying to myself.

“It was different—it was different because I liked it,” I said after a moment, my voice quiet. Saying what I knew but hadn’t been able to let myself say before. Hadn’t even been able to let myself see before. “I liked being with him. I never cared about being with guys before. But with him it was—it meant something to me, and I…I don’t know.”

I waited for her to say something. Anything. I’d told her everything, I’d told her the truth I hadn’t wanted to see.

She just looked at me.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” I finally asked.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t make everything okay for you, Amy. You said it yourself. But I can tell you this. What you told me just now isn’t about Julia. It’s about you. And you have to make choices of your own, choices only you can make, so I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to answer honestly. Can you do that?”

“No.”

For a second, I swear she almost smiled. “Do you want to be happy?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. What kind of question is that?”

“A simple one,” she said. “Do you want to be happy?”

“I don’t—I don’t think I know how.”

“So you can learn,” she said.