Literally Page 12

  “No,” I say finally through my chews. “Nothing is going on with me and Elliot.”

  17

  You Think I’m Cute?

  WILL HALE is taking me on another honest-to-goodness date. It’s not a casual hang. It’s not a “What are you up to now?” or a “I heard you needed a ride home,” or a “Hey, do you want to leave this party together and go kiss on the beach?” He planned it all. Every single step. And this time, Elliot won’t be around to ruin it.

  “I realized I was going about it all wrong,” Will said when he called me on Sunday, after I got my phone back from Ava. “I’ve been trying too hard to figure you out. Instead, I should share something with you about myself, but since I just moved here, I don’t really have a lot to show.”

  So he decided the most efficient thing to do would be to create a list of five awesome things I have never done in LA, even though I’ve lived here my entire life.

  “Chances are I won’t have done them, either, so we can be fish out of water together. We can have a completely unique experience!” he announced. He actually emailed me an online survey for it, titled Annabelle & Will’s Unique Experience. He would make the plan; I just had to check off the boxes.

  And right now that plan has landed me one hundred and thirty feet above the Santa Monica Pier, and God knows how many feet above the ocean, on the Pacific Wheel.

  “It’s the only solar-powered Ferris wheel in the world,” Will informs me as I gaze at the views of the Pacific coastline. There’s a slight breeze today, and it feels good, warm air whipping around my skin. I close my eyes and bask in the sun on my face.

  “Interesting,” I say.

  “Are you impressed that I know that?” I hear Will ask, his tone teasing.

  “So impressed,” I tease back. “What else do you know?”

  “Where should I begin?” He laughs, and I giggle.

  “Seriously, though, I play a mean game of trivia. Ask me anything. I know every state capital.”

  “Oh, really?” I say, suddenly interested. I open my eyes and look at him. “Okay, Illinois.”

  “Oooo, toughie.” Will nods. “I see what you’re trying to do there. You think I’ll say Chicago, don’t you? Well, nice try. It’s Springfield. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Impressive.” I cross my arms as we circle around, the crowd on the Pier swarming below us. To be honest, the Santa Monica Pier freaks me out a little bit. From a distance, it’s a wild, quirky landmark. Up close, it’s filled with hot and sweaty tourists, and a variety of characters that range from humorous to downright frightening, like the a guy covered in head-to-toe tattoos, barely an inch of his real skin visible. “How’d you get so good at facts like this?” I ask, trying not to think about it.

  “I just have a knack for it,” he says. “I think I may have a photographic memory. Also”—he makes a face—“I wasn’t very cool growing up.” He makes little quotation marks around the word cool, and I resist telling him there’s nothing very cool about that hand motion. But regardless, what he just said surprised me.

  “Seriously?” I ask, then I correct myself. “Sorry. It’s just that’s kind of hard to believe.” Not only is Will movie-star handsome, he gets along with everyone. It’s impossible to picture him not fitting in.

  Will shrugs. “My body took a while to grow into itself. I was all gangly limbs and no body fat, my hair was really big, my pants were always too short, and as if that wasn’t enough, I was kind of a know-it-all. Always correcting other people. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Hence the comic book obsession.” He casts me a wary look. “Should I not have told you that?”

  “It explains a lot, actually,” I say.

  “Really?” Will laughs. “I’m that much of a jerk, huh?”

  “No, no,” I say, resting a hand on his forearm when I say it, and Will looks down at his arm like I’ve just turned it into gold. “It makes sense that you weren’t super-cool.”

  “Somehow this isn’t getting any better.” Will makes another face.

  Now I am laughing and trying to explain through my giggles. “It’s just that you are, like, you. You know?”

  “I don’t know.” The corner of Will’s mouth turns up.

  “Don’t make me say it,” I whine.

  “Enlighten me.” Will rests his hands behind his head.

  I roll my eyes. “You’re cute and charming. And everyone likes you. But you’re not a jerk. You’ve had to earn it. I’m just saying it makes a lot of sense.”

  Will doesn’t say anything for a moment; he just smirks at me.

  “What?” I finally say.

  “You think I’m cute?” is all he asks, as the chair blows back and forth in the wind.

  After the Ferris wheel, we have lunch at the trendiest restaurant in Beverly Hills, laughing the whole time at how over-the-top fancy it is, how many forks there are to eat with, and the French poodle sitting next to us in an actual chair. Then we follow a star map to all the most absurd mansions on Sunset Boulevard, and even manage to get onto one of the properties before a gardener wielding giant pruning shears kicks us out. We catch a comedy show in Beachwood Canyon, and end the day watching ET at the Hollywood Bowl, while the LA Philharmonic plays along as the soundtrack. It’s a perfect night, and the stars are twinkling above us. And Will planned every single detail of it for me.

  “Hey,” I tell him as we walk out of the venue to his car.

  “Hey what?” he asks, gazing down at me.

  “Thank you for this day. It was pretty awesome.”

  In response, Will just smiles, and carefully takes my hand in his. “Don’t mention it,” he says, and holds my hand the rest of the way. And I let him.

  When Will drops me off that night, I walk in to find the downstairs bathroom seems to have exploded all over the living room. Cabinet doors and pieces of tile lay on every surface, and the toilet is next to the sofa.

  My mom comes in from the kitchen, wielding Napoleon like a weapon.

  “Why is there a toilet next to the sofa?” I ask.

  My mother sets down Napoleon carefully, but he starts growling, so she picks him up again, rolling her eyes. “It needed an upgrade,” she says.

  “Did it really?” I ask. “Everything was working just fine.”

  “Don’t start with me, Annabelle,” she says. “It needed an upgrade for potential buyers.”

  “Don’t start with you?” I blurt out. “Like any of this has anything to do with me?” If I’m correct, a lot of this is being done to me.

  “I have a lot on my plate, AB,” my mother says. “Managing my own projects while trying to get this place in order. Then there is the stuff with your father, which I won’t talk to you about, because it’s none of your business. I don’t want to have this discussion with you anymore. We are selling The House, and that’s that. There are other people affected by this situation, you know.”

  I’m kind of taken aback by this. Then I think that I spend so much time wanting my parents to treat me like an adult, and when they do, I get annoyed by it, and that’s not fair.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know I am not the center of the universe. I know this all must be very hard for you.”

  My mother sighs and gives me a hug as Napoleon growls gently between us. “Thank you for saying that. Now, if you don’t mind taking the general, I have to go take the trash out.”

  I am just turning to head up the stairs with Napoleon when Sam and Elliot burst through the back door, all loud voices and laughter.

  “Oh, hey,” Sam says to me. He gives an awkward glance at Elliot, but doesn’t say anything.

  Elliot just stands there, watching me. He lifts a hand in the air, a silent hi.

  “Hey,” I say back. “I was just heading upstairs. Try to keep the music to a minimum, if you don’t mind. I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

  But twenty minutes later, I am doing no work at all, because I finished it already. I’m lying in my bed staring at the ceiling, feeling sad
and confused. Confused as to how Will could make me feel so warm and happy on our date, and how one silent hand gesture from Elliot could make me feel completely alone.

  Napoleon appears in the doorway, eyeing me.

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  I follow his small, scraggy body as he makes delicate steps across the carpet, and then, after a deliberate pause, launches himself at the duvet.

  Given that I have never seen him do anything of this nature before, I resolve to wait this out. And, like the miracle of a baby that is walking for the very first time, Napoleon tiptoes over my legs, and settles gently down on my blanket-covered stomach, rolling himself into a tight little ball and exhaling an audible sigh.

  My eyes stay locked on Napoleon, once my mortal enemy, and I’m at a complete loss for what to do. I once resolved to hate him from the bottom of my soul, but the feeling of his little body resting on mine soothes me. Some small voice inside me wonders … can he tell I’m upset? Is Napoleon actually trying to make me feel better? I push it from my mind, but it still makes me think: Perhaps we are all capable of change.

  18

  What If I Don’t Know What I Want?

  “YOU’RE GETTING better.” Epstein gives an encouraging nod as she slaps our latest assignment down on my desk on the following Monday morning. “You’re not quite there yet, but whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

  I glance at the letter written at the top of the page. B+. It’s about a full grade below what I usually get in my other classes, but in Fiction, it’s a start. If only I knew what got me here. I had a hard time making sense of everything after Clara showed up on Saturday, and nothing seemed to do the trick, so I ended up writing about it. Before I knew it, I was examining three perspectives. Me, coming down the stairs to face Elliot after our fight; my brother, cooking pancakes obliviously; and Elliot, sitting on the countertop, with two girls he had kissed in the same room.

  And yes, I refused to give Clara a perspective. She hardly has a point of view as it is.

  It bugs me that Elliot may have gotten me this B. Aside from that awkward moment with my brother, I haven’t talked to him since that morning. He reached out, once. He sent me some useless Van Morrison song, and “we should talk,” but I didn’t listen to it, and I’m not ready to talk. I don’t know what there is to say.

  And besides, now that Clara’s back, I can only assume they are also back together. Or will be soon. I don’t need him to tell me that. I already know. I am Annabelle, who color-codes her calendar. And she is Clara, who speaks in nonspecific. And he is Elliot, who hates to be put in a box. Guess which girl is the better fit?

  “Ms. Epstein?” I ask. “I have a question.”

  Like many of my teachers, Epstein is wary of me. She had me for sophomore English, and she understands my questions are sometimes complicated, and that I am not easily satisfied, that with one question often comes three to four follow-ups. Even someone as passionate about her work as Epstein can find it tiring.

  “Must we today, Annabelle?” Epstein sighs.

  “I’m afraid we must,” I say solemnly.

  “Fair enough, go ahead,” Epstein says, settling in, and leans her head against her fist.

  “I know you talked to us a little bit about act structure the other day, and the highs and lows. But how does a writer know what those are, exactly? When you’re making it all up, how does it not become some kind of jumbled, tangled mess?”

  To my surprise, Epstein nods. “It’s a great question, as usual, Annabelle.” She gets up and takes a place at the board.

  Margot raises her hand. “Will this be on the test?” she asks.

  “There are no tests in this class, only your final project.” Epstein doesn’t even bother turning from the board to answer.

  “Then why do we take notes?” Margot says stubbornly.

  At this, Epstein does turn around. “To learn something,” she says curtly. “Now as I was saying. When you’re writing a book, or even just a story, you don’t just arbitrarily choose your character, your time, your place. You need to understand your purpose. What are you really trying to say?” She writes the word character on the board, and taps it once with her whiteboard marker. “You need to understand you’re what’s driving them, what their hopes and dreams are. Many believe the best characters are those whose wants contrast directly with their needs. And that juxtaposition, the obstacles the character must face and the highs and lows they encounter while getting there, is what drives the plot.” Beneath character, Epstein has written drive, needs, wants.

  “But what if I don’t know what I want?” I ask, exasperated, and then realize I sound ridiculous. And also, Epstein isn’t the person I’m angry at.

  “I mean, it all just seems so contrived,” I cover. “I thought authors wrote organically, let things come to them. I didn’t realize it was all so … formulaic.”

  Epstein mulls this over for a moment. “I hear what you’re saying,” she says. “But look at it this way. It’s for our benefit, our enjoyment. What you probably don’t realize is that as a reader, a viewer, you come to expect these highs and lows. You look forward to them. And in some cases, if you didn’t get them, you’d lose interest.”

  Epstein goes about splitting us into groups to discuss our favorite books and movies and the narrative arcs within them.

  I stare at my notebook for a few minutes, tapping my pencil against the desk. Then I look across the room where Will is dutifully participating in a group discussion, gesticulating with a smile as the other members of his group lean on their elbows making googly eyes. I’m not the only character in this room. We all are. And maybe, for once, it wouldn’t be so bad to just accept the want that Lucy Keating has created for me.

  I am just grabbing my calculus book out of my locker the next day, when suddenly the usual math equations turn into words:

  Suddenly, Will was by Annabelle’s side. “I was thinking of going to the library,” he whispered in her ear.

  “I was thinking of going to the library” I hear in my ear now, and notice Will has indeed snuck up next to me.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” I say with a small smile, also not looking at him, and trying to tune out the narrative in front of me.

  “I was thinking it would be more enjoyable if you were also there,” he adds.

  I smile bigger, still not making eye contact. “I was going to swing by the paper, but I could probably arrange that,” I tell him.

  “Excellent …” Will leans in closer. “Do you think, if it’s not too much trouble, you could also arrange to hold my hand?”

  “I think I could probably arrange that also,” I say back as we make our way up the stairs to the library.

  And I do.

  19

  That Was Sarcasm

  “DID I see Will Hale holding your hand this morning?” Lee asks at lunch that day. I look up, eyes wide, and the whole table inhales in one collective gasp.

  “Oh my God,” Ava says. “She did. She told me at first period and I didn’t believe her.”

  “It’s nothing,” I say, mixing my fruit yogurt about twenty stirs more than necessary. It’s beginning to look like pink-flecked whipped cream.

  “It’s not nothing,” Nisha says.

  “He is such a smoke show!” Lee shakes her head like she can’t believe his hotness.

  “So you’re dating him?” Ava asks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m not dating him. We haven’t even kissed,” I say. “We’re just spending time together.”

  “If I was spending time with him, I would take out an ad on television to make sure the world knew,” Nisha says, raising her eyebrows as she spears a piece of lettuce on her fork.

  Before I can respond, I look up and watch as Elliot strides in our direction, his eyes locked on me the whole way.

  “Oh, boy,” Ava mutters.

  “Remember when Annabelle had no love life to speak of?” Nisha whispers, chewing on a piece of carrot.<
br />
  “Ladies,” Elliot calls as he approaches the table.

  “Elliot,” my friends mumble disdainfully.

  “Annabelle,” he says.

  “Elliot?” I say expectantly.

  “You’ve been ignoring me,” Elliot says.

  “I’ve been ignoring you?” I ask. “You didn’t even speak to me at The House yesterday.”

  “That’s because you never responded to my text. And you didn’t speak to me, either.”

  “A YouTube video of Van Morrison live in concert does not exactly count as reaching out,” I tell him. My friends shoot one another wide-eyed glances.

  Elliot sighs. “Can we talk somewhere in private?” he asks.

  “Anything you want to say to me you can say in front of them,” I say stubbornly.

  “No, I know I can; I just don’t want to.” Elliot crosses his arms in front of his chest, his demeanor hardening. And then he says nothing. Neither do I. We stare at each other for a solid sixty seconds before I finally break.

  “Oh my God, fine,” I say, standing up, my heartbeat picking up and this weird tingling sensation creeping up my neck. Elliot has on worn black jeans and a blue T-shirt with a chest pocket. He looks pretty hot. I start packing my stuff.

  “You haven’t finished your lunch.” He points at the food in front of me.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say, picking up my tray.

  Elliot’s shoulders fall.

  “Come on, Annabelle, can’t we just talk?”

  I set my tray down and shrug. “Okay,” I say. “Talk.”

  Elliot shuffles his feet for a second. “I would like you to come to my show on Friday night. I’m asking in advance. Not as an excuse. I genuinely want you to be there. I …” He casts a look back at my friends before leaning close to me. “I just really want you to be there. Okay?”

  I exhale out of my nose as I look over his face, his brows knitted together, his bottom lip tucked under his front teeth. He’s trying.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  “I can live with that,” he replies.

  I nod, and then, because I don’t feel like standing here next to him any longer, I turn to go. A million thoughts swim in my head. The fact that I shouldn’t go, but I want to. The fact that I held Will’s hand this morning, but Elliot still has a power over me I can’t explain.