And since then I've been hanging out with them a lot. Mostly Theo. Seniors get a free period, and his is during my study hall, and mine is supervised by the drama teacher who adores him, so he comes in a lot and does my homework with me. I bring my iPod and we share a set of earbuds and he makes fun of my taste in music and I poke him with mechanical pencils. A few days ago after school we checked out this boutique candy store he told me about, and I grossed him out by devouring enormous marshmallows and he grossed me out by devouring licorice.
I mostly only see Josey in the cafeteria. They're never affectionate in front of me anymore. I flirt with Theo more than she does. The whole thing is just so weird. I don't know how to talk to a girl whose boyfriend I have a crush on, when I'm the one making the rule that I'm not allowed to have a crush on him. And I also just don't know how to talk to a girl who's a shoe-in for valedictorian, and has polyamorous parents, and speaks fluent German, Swedish, and almost Japanese, and whose hair always looks amazing and whose hipster-grunge clothes only have wrinkles exactly where they're supposed to and who has no problem sitting across the table from you at lunch absorbed in a book, completely ignoring both you and her boyfriend while you flirt with each other.
How do you talk to that person?
How do you be in any kind of relationship with that person?
I follow Jake down the hallway to the kitchen, where I hug Aanya's parents and small-talk with them a little, trying to act like every cell of my body isn't pulling me out the back door where my Aanya is, and then I go out to the yard and there she is, wearing a stripey summer dress, surrounded by her cousins and our school friends and the girls in her youth group. She sees me and positively shrieks, and I swear it brightens up the whole world.
She wraps her arms around me and heaves me up in the air. “You look beautiful, holy shit!”
“Happy birthday,” I say. “I didn't get you a present.” I did, of course. I got her a pair of jangly earrings and I made her a hideous bracelet out of legos just to piss her off. It's not as if she has to wear it; even if I lived here, I wouldn't make her, and now of course I wouldn't even know if she did.
I've seen her for all of ninety seconds and I'm already getting sad about leaving.
She smacks a big kiss on the cheek. “Liar. How was the drive?”
“A lot faster this time than on the way up, I wonder why.”
She laughs. “Let's get you some cake.”
“Yes pleeeease.”
I spend some time mingling, telling people I missed them whether I did or not, and then Aanya is a terrible hostess and ignores them all for me, but I'm pretty sure they expected that was going to happen, and they all know each other anyway. They're probably better friends among themselves than any of them really are with Aanya, since Aanya was always too wrapped up in me and Jake to prioritize spending time with anyone else. She and Jake and I flop down on the grass next to a picnic table full of youth group girls playing Apples to Apples and devour strawberry shortcake and root beer floats.
“Karen and Shay broke up,” Aanya tells me.
“Whoa.”
“Mmmhmm. Jake and I are now the longest-running couple in our grade.”
“So you're going to break up now,” I say, “Right? You were only in it for the record.”
Aanya says, “Don't even joke about that!” She makes an aww noise at Jake's puppy-face face and bends down to kiss whipped cream off his lips.
(Theo would have said oh, yeah, absolutely, and planned out an elaborate and theatrical fake-break up. We would have kept going and going and deadpanning and deadpanning to see who cracked up first. And it probably would have been me. And I would have loved it.)
Aanya breaks the kiss off and smiles at me. “So how about youuuu. Boys?”
“Not really. I have this friend from swim team who I think likes me.” He and Elisha still talk to me, despite my social suicide. They're very swim focused; it's all we really talk about, and as long as I keep my times up I don't think they really care what else I do. After I turned them down two or three times they don't invite me over anymore.
“Ooh, swimmer body.”
“Dude, he's sixteen,” I say. “He has a sixteen-year-old body. They can swim four miles or lie around eating Doritos after school and they all look the same.”
“Mmmm Doritos,” Jake says.
I point at skinny Jake. “My point exactly.”
“What's his name?” Aanya says.
“Mike. So exciting. He acts like a Mike.”
“Awww,” Anya says.
“He's fine,” I say. “He's harmless. Thinks some of the strange things he says are compliments. The other day he told me my bathing suit was really red.”
“Was it?”
“Indeed.”
“Well, at least he's not colorblind.”
“Yeah, boring's fine, but I draw the line at dating the colorblind.”
“You should give him a chance,” Aanya says. “Remember, you didn't really like Kyle at first.”
“Which, it turns out, is an opinion I should have stuck with.”
“Oh, Kyle was fine.”
“I guess.” Kyle was my boyfriend for the first half of ninth grade. He...was fine, until I walked in on him making out with Laura March at Jake's fifteenth birthday party. Aanya hugged me while I alternated between bemoaning what a cliché it all was and bawling my eyes out.
I can't believe I'm considering a polyamorous relationship when I
