Nothing Like You (18 page)

“Okay,” said Jeff. He slipped his hand around my neck and pulled me into him. I leaned my head against his shoulder and turned the sound back up on the TV. We stayed like that, my head on his shoulder, for a while. At least until the show was over. Maybe even longer.

The week before graduation
I was lying on my back in the stacks at the library, leafing through
Mexican Cooking Made Easy.
It was my free period.

“A real page-turner. Have you gotten to the part about the measuring cup?”

I dropped the book to my chest and looked up. It was Nils. He held his hand out. I grabbed it and let him pull me so I was sitting upright. “Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” He sat down next to me, dropping two library books and his bag. “I got out of Trig early. Just … returning books.”

I nodded. We didn’t say anything for a little while. I picked at the stiff orange carpeting. “I was looking for recipes for graduation dinner.”

“Big party?”

“Me and Jeff, is all.”

Nils sucked in his cheeks.

“What about you guys? Plans?”

“Mastro’s, I think. Dad wants steak.”

I stretched my legs out in front of me. Nils and I were barely an inch apart. “I decided on Santa Cruz,” I blurted, tucking some loose hair behind my ear.

“You did? Hols, that’s great.” He seemed legitimately happy for me. “Jeff’s fine with it?”

“He’s practically shoving me out the door.” I smiled and bit my top lip, sliding my leg closer, so we were touching. “What about you? You know yet?”

Nils nodded. “NYU.”

“Oh, Nils. Wow. That’s really something.”

I felt my throat constrict. It was really happening. We were leaving home. No time to patch things up. A few months and
poof
, we’d both be gone for good.

“I miss you already,” I said, looking at him, then quickly darting my eyes down. Nils pressed his foot against my foot.

“How’s Eleanor?” I asked, not looking up.

“Eleanor is … fine,” he said.

“What’s gonna happen when you leave?”

“I suppose we’ll break up.”

“Just like that?”

Nils shrugged.

“Is it serious?” I asked, trying to seem neutral.

“Oh, you know. She’s no Holly.”

I blinked. Nils was staring straight at me. My stomach rolled over.

“I really do miss you,” I said.

“You really hurt me, Holly.”

“I know.” I leaned forward and grabbed his leg. “Remember in seventh grade when Mom and Jeff took us to the water park and I peed in the wave pool?”

Nils eyed me blankly.

“Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“We’ve been friends our
whole
lives.”

“Not that long …”

“Fine,
half
our lives, but what, so that’s
it
? We graduate and you go three thousand miles away and then we’re just, like,’bye. Great knowing you. Fun peeing next to you in the wave pool that one time… .’”

Nils laughed. I let my head drop back against the book stacks. “You can’t be alone, can you?” I said.

He flashed his teeth.

“There’s always someone … Nora,
me
, Eleanor … Kim and what’s-her-face—Keri Blumenthal—last year… . You have dependency issues.”

“I’m a romantic.”

“That’s one word for it.”

We stared at each other for a while. Then Nils pulled his legs to his chest, resting his elbows against his knees. “Fine. But it’s not gonna be like it was before. I have a girlfriend now, anyways.”

“I know,” I said.

“It’s not gonna be, like, every night in The Shack or whatever.”

I got up on my shins and bounced a little. “No, I
know
.”

He pushed his bangs to one side and made his eyes into small slits. “I feel like you manipulated me with that wave pool story… .”

I gave him a light shove. The bell rang. Nils stood up and swung his bag across his chest. “So. See you around … ?” he asked, sounding unsure.

I righted myself, grabbing the cookbook and my bag. “Hows about ‘see you later’?” I said.

Nils nodded and took a step back. I pushed past him, touching his arm on my way to the circulation desk.

Mom died last spring
. A week and a half before she passed, when things started to look especially bad, when just saying hello hurt her, and when taking a trip to the toilet had become a near impossibility, Nils’s family, then about to embark on a ten-day trip to Joshua Tree, asked me if I wanted to come away with them.

“What do you think? I shouldn’t go, right? Mom seems worse.”

Jeff and I were on the porch drinking seltzer. I stuck a finger into my cup and pulled out an ice cube, tossing it onto the lawn.

“No, no, I think you
should
go. What else have you got going on? It’ll be nice to get away for a bit.”

“You think?” I asked, looking up really quick. “I mean,
you think Mom … you think she’ll mind?” I asked, pulling a clump of hair to one side and twisting it around my fist.

Jeff picked his cup up off the deck. “Of course Mom won’t mind. I think it’s a great idea, Hols. Go. Relax for a bit. What’s gonna change in ten days?” My eyes shot up toward Jeff. He was staring into his drink, swirling it around and around.

We all knew what might change in ten days. That if I left, I’d possibly come home to
just
Jeff. Mom would be gone.

“Okay, then, I’ll tell Nils I can go.”

“Good. That’ll be good,” Jeff said, touching my shoulder, taking a quick sip of seltzer before getting up and heading back in to the house.

Ballanoff and I
sat side by side in the student center on my open block, drinking tepid tea.

“You ready for this?” he asked, staring forward, not even turning to face me.

“Ready for what?”

“Graduation. Growing up. Leaving home?”

“Sure thing,” I said, playing with the zipper on my hoodie. Dragging it up and down,
up and down
, making my own pretty rhythm.

“How’s Jeff handling you leaving?”

“Good. He’s been really good with things. Surprisingly supportive,” I said, taking a sip of tea. I wanted to tell Ballanoff that I’d miss him. That he’d made this year bearable. That even though, soon, he’d cease to be my teacher, I
still wanted to know him. Instead I said, “What’re you doing with your break this summer?”

“Renovating. Nancy wants another office. So we’re knocking down one wall and building another.” He looked at me. Then he turned back to his bottle.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, watching his profile, wondering what kind of dad he might have been, if things would have gone differently, if Mom might still be around had Ballanoff and Mom dated longer, loved each other, gotten married.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, meeting my gaze.

“You really think I’m that much like her? I mean, when she was my age? Are we really that much the same?”

Ballanoff shook his head. “You’re your own person, Holly. I mean, sure, you look like her, but you’re
not
her, you’re
you
.”

I nodded, grateful. “I wish it made me happy, hearing I look like her. I used to really love it, you know? Before she got sick?”

He dropped his bottle and scooched his chair back so we were facing each other. “You’re
you
,” he said. “You know, your mom made certain choices that I can pretty much guarantee, if faced with a similar crossroads, you wouldn’t have made.”

I nodded.

“Her path … that’s not yours to follow. Okay?”

I resisted the urge to cry.

“Worst-case scenario, you face something similar … you fight, right?” He looked at me sympathetically. “Hey, you’re your own person.”

I swiped a hand over one wet cheek. We locked eyes.

“Besides, your mom?
Much
friendlier, much less
sass
.” Ballanoff scrunched up his nose, smiling wryly.

I laughed,
relieved
to be laughing, using a napkin off the table to blow my nose. “You always know the right thing to say.”

“I do, right? Ballanoff nudged my arm softly. “I totally do.”

It’s August
and I’m on my way up north, to school. An hour ago I loaded the last box into my backseat and said good-bye to Jeff and Harry. I cried and Jeff cried and Harry licked my cheeks and my ears. Nils came by with mixes. Two for the road. The one he told me to play first, I’m listening to right now. “Aqualung,” “Vienna,” “Dust in the Wind.” All Mom’s favorites.

“I’ll call you when I get to New York,” he said. Jeff and Harry had gone inside and Nils and I were standing in my driveway, leaning against my car door looking grim.

“Okay.” I tucked a longish chunk of wayward hair behind one ear. I looked at the ground.

My summer had ended up being better than I’d expected: lots of reading and packing and beach-time and Jeff-time.
Harry had turned four. Nils and I had somehow managed to make the past the past and our friendship was just now starting to look pretty close to how it had looked pre-Holly-senior-year-mental-breakdown.

“We could write letters?” I suggested.

“You won’t write me actual letters.”

“I will!”

“Actual letters? On paper with pen?”

“Actual letters,” I said firmly, nodding my head and catching his eye. He looked so squinty and sad. I was certain I looked the same.

“Well …” I checked my watch. It was eleven. I needed to be up at school by five. “Time to go,” I said, opening my arms extra wide.

“What’s that for?” Nils asked, batting at my arms.

“You’re not gonna hug me good-bye?”

“Holly.” He stepped forward and slipped his hands around my waist. He pulled me closer, tighter, until we were locked in a snug embrace. “Don’t go,” he whispered.

I dug my chin into his bony shoulder. “Okay,” I said, pulling back a bit, then mashing my forehead against his forehead. “Screw college! I’ll stay right here forever.”

He exhaled and I could feel his breath on my face. I shut my eyes.

Nils and Eleanor are still together. She’s going to Brown in Rhode Island, a four-hour drive from Manhattan, so she and
Nils are gonna give the whole long-distance thing a whirl.

“Hols?”

“Hmm?”

… I give it three months.
Tops.

“Come closer.”

We were staring.
Staring staring
with our heads stuck together and then Nils pressed his nose to my nose and I reached up and put both hands on his face. The air smelled like grass and exhaust and it was sunny out, it’s
always
sunny, and I wondered for a second if Jeff could see us standing this way—head to head—from the window facing the driveway in our kitchen.

“See you when I see you?” Nils asked, backing away, tugging at a loose thread hanging off the waistband of his jeans.

“See you when I see you,” I said, watching him walk backward. Past The Shack, across the lawn, and back to his house on the other side of the stone wall that divides our pretty properties.

I’ve got four and a half hours till I reach sunny Santa Cruz. I roll down my windows and turn up the volume on my stereo.

The ocean is on my left.

Enormous thanks
to Michelle Andelman, for her invaluable
feedback and steadfast belief in this book; to Anica Rissi, for her passion,
enthusiasm, and for loving Holly just as much as I do;
to the entire team at Simon Pulse, for their hard work
and support; and to Jen Rofé, for taking in a stray.

Thank you Adeline Colangelo, for early encouragement;
Jordan Press, for keeping the faith; and Alisa Libby, for leading the way.

Lovely ladies of Juniper Lake: Amanda Yates, Milly Sanders, Margaret
Wappler, Anna Spanos, Justine Schroeder Garrett, and Jenna Blough.
You make life better. I love you all.

Thank you Jade Chang and Bruce Bauman.

Lastly, endless thanks go to my father,
Ken Strasnick, for being the most awesome dad around;
and to my brother, Aaron: you fifty-pound miracle, you.

Lauren Strasnick
grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, now lives in Los Angeles, California, and is a graduate of Emerson College and the California Institute of the Arts MFA Writing Program. She wrote her first short story, “Yours Truly, the Girls from Bunk Six” in a cloth-bound 5x4 journal, in the fifth grade.
Nothing Like You
is Lauren’s first novel. Find out more at
LaurenStrasnick.com
.