Nothing Like You (8 page)

Everything was really great after that. For twenty-four straight hours I walked around feeling super cheery and together. I went home, had dinner with Jeff, slept through the night, made a whole bunch of photocopies at the library before school the next morning … then managed to cut, paste, and distance myself from Saskia Van Wyck all through World History.

That night, Nils and I read next to each other in The Shack for about an hour or so. We picked at a plate of burnt brownies his mom had made—“reject brownies,” she’d called them—and moved around a whole bunch trying to get comfortable on the futon with our novels.

After that I went back to the house. I crawled into bed. I waited for Paul.

Paul’s visits were, for the most part, unplanned, but had become pretty predictable. Monday nights were always no good because of obligatory family crap and weekends were shit because weekends belonged to Saskia. So Tuesdays and Thursdays were gold, Wednesdays, too, but Wednesdays were wild cards and whether he showed up or not usually hinged on his mood. This was a Thursday, and since this had started Paul had never missed a Thursday. So I just sat
in my bed and waited. I lay on the floor and waited. Time ticked by, the moon rose, I listened two and a half times over to a birthday mix Nils had made for me the year before, and then … nothing. It was one thirty a.m. I checked my phone. I looked out the window and checked the driveway. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and when I finally realized he wasn’t going to show, I got Harry out of his stinky little bed on the kitchen floor and made him sleep with me.

The next morning I showered really quick and rushed to get to school early. I had twenty minutes before classes started. I sat on the hill by the parking lot and watched for Paul’s BMW. At last, he showed, at twenty to eight, and I skipped down the hill toward his car.

“Hi,” I said, looking around before leaning in for a kiss.

He pulled back, sinking his body back into the car. “What’re you doing? Holly, seriously, get away.”

I flinched, then quickly covered with a smile. “Why? No one can see us. What’s the big deal?”

He grabbed his bag off the passenger side seat, stood up, and slammed his door shut. “Just, not at school, okay?”

I looked down. I mumbled, “Wouldn’t want your precious Saskia to see …” Then, “Where were you last night, anyway?”

“I was at home.”

“
Home
home?

“
What?
Speak English.” We were walking now. Toward the side entrance by the gym.

“It was a Thursday.”

“
English
, Holly.”

“I just mean you could have called if you weren’t going to come by. I waited up for you.”

He stopped and turned toward me. “Holly. We didn’t have plans. I didn’t ask you to wait up.”

“But you always come by on Thursdays.”

“Holly.” The way he kept saying my name over and over made me feel so totally small. “You’re not my girlfriend.”
You’re not my girlfriend. You’re not my girlfriend.
It echoed in my ear.
I hate you,
I thought as he dragged me across the taupe-colored field to the bleachers. We ducked underneath. “Do we need to set some ground rules?” It was cool now where we stood. Mostly shady save for a few skinny bars of gold light that fell across Paul’s body and onto the dry lawn beneath our feet. “I like you, Holly. I do. But I’m not gonna do all this girlfriend-boyfriend bullshit with you, okay? I already have one relationship I have to manage.” He pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. “What we have should be easy.”

“So
what
? What does that mean? I don’t get to have
any
expectations?”

He lit a cigarette and with the filter pinched between his teeth he said, “Well, when you put it like that, you make me sound like a complete dick.”

I glowered back.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he wheezed, taking a deep drag, then exhaling. “You knew what this was. You knew how this had to be. I’m not making you spend time with me, Holly. You want out, you say the word.”

I looked down at the ground and kicked a pile of dirt.

He slid his pointer finger under my chin. “Why do you have to be so adorable?” he asked, lifting my face up, then pressing his lips to my lips. “… Needy little girl,” he cooed. My stomach turned over.
I’m not needy,
I thought, pulling backward, slipping one hand around his head and grabbing on to this shaggy little chunk of hair he had hanging down the back of his neck. “That feels nice,” he whispered, so I tightened my grip and yanked down. “Fuck, Holly. What the hell?” He let out a small cry, then grabbed my face real quick and kissed me so hard that it hurt.

“Ow,
Christ
,” I squealed, pulling back and stumbling sideways.

He laughed and shook his head, “You’re a funny little girl, you know that, Holly?” He wiped his mouth dry on his shirtsleeve. “See you around,” he said, sucking at the last of his cigarette and chucking it into a baked little patch of crud on the ground.

I spent my open
block fifth period sitting on the basketball court, folding and unfolding that psychic’s business card.
FRAN K GELLAR: PSYCHIC MEDIUM
. I read the words over and over again. Then I riffled around in my bag for my phone, which I found and fondled for one solid, excruciating minute before working up the nerve to finally dial.

“Hi, this is Frank …”
blah blah blah
… My call had gone straight to voice mail. “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can. Thanks and god bless.” I’d expected a pretty pervy-sounding guy. For him to sound the way most new-age dudes around Topanga sound—super breathy and sexed out. Frank, though, just sounded old.

“Hi,” I chirped in response to the mechanical beep. “My name is Holly Hirsh. I got your number from—” and then
I realized I didn’t know the name of the woman I’d gotten his card from, so I said, “well, I got your number and was hoping to make an appointment to … well, I was hoping to make an appointment.” I left my cell number before hanging up.

So Frank was old. I found this comforting.
Old Fran
k
,
I thought, feeling triumphant. I’d called! I’d done something proactive! I’d taken a step in a direction that would lead me somewhere really terrific. Or enlightening. Or something.

In the car after school with Nils and Nora, I told them both what I’d done.

“Jesus, Holly. I thought we talked about this.”

“So? You think every action I take has to be filtered through you? I can make my own decisions.” I turned up Pawnee Lane. “It felt right.”

“Oh, well … if it
feels
right.”

Nora reached into the backseat and slapped Nils on the thigh. “Don’t be a dick, I think it’s great.”

I glanced to my side. “You do?”

“Yeah. I love that guy on TV. What’s his name? Who helps all those people talk to their dead family members? There was this one episode where this lady’s son had killed himself and she was just really hysterical, like, crying and crying. But then her son came through in the reading and talked about this little private joke they’d had about Gruyère? You know,
the cheese? And the lady was just, like, at
peace
after that. Really amazing.”

I glanced back at Nils in my rearview. He was shaking his head.

“Do you have, like, specific questions you wanna ask the guy?”

“Specific questions?”

“Yeah, like, I mean, do you want to ask your mom something specific? Or maybe you want to ask about your future? I always want to know about my love life. My cousin took me to this guy once who does Tarot. Incredible. So crazy accurate. He totally predicted I was gonna date this guy—I can’t tell you
who
because you guys sort of know him—but anyways, I did, I dated him. And he had predicted our problems and everything. So crazy.”

I pushed down on the brake, then shifted the car into first. “I don’t have any specific questions, I don’t think. I just want to know if she exists still.” I turned into Nora’s driveway and pulled the car to a stop.

“Well, good luck, Holly. Let me know how it goes.” Nora got out of the car. Nils stayed put. “You coming?” she asked. She was standing in her driveway now, one hand resting on her hip, her body bent over so she could see inside my backseat.

“I don’t feel great,” Nils said, stepping out of the car and onto Nora’s pebble paved driveway. “I’ll call you later.”

“You’re seriously not gonna come in?”

Nils opened the passenger side door, then slid in next to me. “I’ll call you,” he said again.

She nodded. But then she just stood there. I waved sheepishly, pushing down on the gas, watching her shrink smaller and smaller in my rearview the farther away we drove.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?” said Nils, buckling his seat belt.

“Why’d you just leave her there like that? Didn’t you guys have plans?”

“I guess.” He picked at a microscopic zit on his chin. “We have plans every day, though. And she was annoying me.”

“Annoying you how?”

“Holly, it’s not that big a deal. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t just the psychic thing. She’s been bugging me all week.” He rolled up his window. “Anyways, I’ll see her tomorrow.”

We drove and we drove and we drove without talking, then I slowed the car to a stop, slipped the stick shift into neutral and tugged on the emergency brake. We were home. “Do
I
annoy you?” I asked, laughing in an effort to undercut the desperation in my voice.

Nils unbuckled his seat belt and turned his whole body toward me. “Why would you ask me that?”

I shrugged, turning off the ignition. “Just suddenly feeling a little … I dunno. I need a boost, please.”

“Holly. You don’t ever annoy me. You could never annoy me.”

I looked at him.

“Day after day and I never get sick of seeing your face,” he said, grabbing me by my chin. Then he looked at me in this funny way that made my stomach go bananas. I don’t know why. And he must have felt it too, because after that he snatched his hand away superquick and got out of the car.

Most of that weekend I kept to myself. I lay on the couch with Harry and watched
Mystery!
on PBS. I went to the farmers’ market with Jeff and bought corn and heirloom tomatoes and homemade soap.

I hadn’t spoken to Paul since Friday under the bleachers. So when it came time for World History/arts and crafts, Monday morning, I made it a point to be super friendly to Saskia. Just to spite him, I guess.

“How was your weekend?” I asked, looking down at our collage.

“Oh, good. I just … I went shopping with my mom and my brother on Saturday,” she said, shaking a bottle of Elmer’s glue down and around, slamming the narrow orange bottle tip against her desk. “Is this thing empty?” she asked, unscrewing its lid and peering inside. “It’s empty,” she concluded, tossing the bottle aside. “Sunday was fun, though.” She was grinning now, absentmindedly running
her fingertip over the pointy corner on our poster board. “I spent the day with Paul.”

My stomach lurched.

“What about you?” she asked. She was wearing this tattered gray sweatshirt that was sort of frayed at the collar and I wondered whether it had been distressed by some trendy clothes manufacturer or by good old-fashioned time and abuse.

“Oh, I don’t—it was quiet.” I shrugged. “I just hung out with my dad and the dog.”

Saskia flashed her teeth and handed me a photocopied cutout from our textbook. I coated the back with rubber cement and flattened it to the collage.

“What about your boyfriend?” she asked.

“Boyfriend?” I knew she couldn’t have been asking about Paul. Still, I got goose bumps.

“Yeah, that guy Nils.”

I exhaled, relieved. “Nils isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Really?”

“Nope.”

Saskia pursed her lips and then I held our collage out at arm’s length. We were halfway through our time line. “Now that right there …”

“A masterpiece,” she deadpanned, grabbing the rubber cement off my desk.

This is the exact moment when I really started liking her,
watching her push her hair behind her ears, painting paper with rubber cement. She was nothing like I thought she’d be. She had a personality. “You’re nothing like I thought,” I said.

She looked at me crooked, raising an eyebrow. “Why? What’d you think I was like?”

“You know.” I touched my hair. “The hair and the clothes. I just thought …”

“You thought what?” She screwed the cap back on the glue, her whole body going stiff.

“No! No, I mean, you’re just so put together. I didn’t think you’d be so nice, is all.”

She relaxed. “Oh. Thanks. I think.”

I can’t explain why I suddenly loved her so much. It’s not like we’d reached deep inside each other’s souls or hearts or whatever. I still didn’t know anything about her.