Back When You Were Easier to Love

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Emily Wing Smith

eISBN : 978-1-101-51409-2

 

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Smith, Emily Wing, date.-

 

Published in the United States by Dutton Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Over the summer
my best friend, Mattia, and I were the token teenage patrons of Haven Public Library. I guess all the other kids figured that since we were out of school, it meant we were exempt from “required reading” which, in their minds, meant any reading at all.

Honestly, I think Mattia went less because she liked to read and more because she liked to make fun of a library with a set of encyclopedias claiming that Hawaii had yet to become a state. We would mock the skimpy selection of bestsellers and pore over the card catalog because the handful of computers in the place were always down.

But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me—nature’s not what I cling to. I cling to books.

Books have always been there, whether as copies of Aristotle and Hegel lining my philosophy-professor father’s office walls or volumes of
This Fabulous Century
shoved into random closets for my social-history-obsessed mother. Some people remember their life in landscapes. I remember mine in titles.

Of course I’d never admit it to anyone, but the aspect of the Haven Public Library I found most fascinating was the bulletin board. The entire back wall was covered in corkboard, and it was plastered with flyers detailing community announcements.

I loved reading about what was for sale. “Antique” wicker rockers. Some kid’s old teddy bear selling for thirty-seven dollars (or best offer). My favorite: a 1977 Impala that ran “like new.” That ad has been up ever since I moved to Haven nine-and-a-half months ago.

But more than I liked the for-sale section, more than I liked the help-wanted posters, I liked the Calendar of Events.

One event on the calendar that dry August afternoon was the workshop “Grief and the Adolescent.” I knew as soon as I read it that this workshop was created specifically to help me through my time of need. I continued reading the description. Had I become lonely?
Check.
Despondent?
More often than I wanted to admit.
Did I want to feel a sense of closure and inner peace?
Obviously.

“Mattia,” I said, jabbing her in the ribs, “look at this.”

She stared at it, puzzled. “But you don’t have any children. Why would you need to attend a parenting class?” She faked concern. “There isn’t anything you need to tell me, is there?”

“Not that,” I said. “The one next to it.”

Mattia started to read again. After a long moment, she looked up. “Yeah, I can see how you might think that could help you.” She paused. “I know you miss him. But Joy, Zan didn’t die.”

Now it’s the
end of September. Daytime highs are still over a hundred degrees. My boyfriend is no closer to home than he was back then.

I’m sick of this school already. At first I thought I’d stop hating the maze of unlabeled hallways once I figured them out. I thought I’d learn to love the clean, Disneylandstyle environment. I thought I’d get used to Haven High’s unique brands of cliquedom: the all-female Color Guard, the all-male A Cappella Singers, the ultrapopular Soccer Lovin’ Kids.

Without Zan, none of this is worth it.

Everything seems exactly the same as it was last year: gross plastic furniture in bright, awkward colors; the smell of fried food and antiseptic; insanely long lines. An outsider wouldn’t notice Zan’s not being here, but it changes the whole feel of this place. I slump down into an orange chair.

“Noah was asking about you again in calculus,” says Mattia. She drops to our lunch table, holding a slice of pizza and a carton of Tampico. “It’s getting pretty stalker-esque, Joy. You should talk to him.”

“No thanks.” The cafeteria is already crowded, and I scan the faces. I don’t know who I’m looking for. On the surface I’d say Charlotte, or Kristine, but deep down I’m longing to see Zan, longing to breathe again at the familiarity of his not-quite smile.

Over Mattia’s shoulder I spot a group of perky sophomores a few tables over. One of them is standing up, and her T-shirt has MODEST IS HOTTEST silk-screened across the front.

Maybe Zan wouldn’t have left if the girls here didn’t wear
Modest Is Hottest
T-shirts.

The sophomores burst into giggles; each of their smiles could be on a dental brochure for capping or bonding. “Girls with yellow teeth don’t stand a chance at this school,” I say, mainly to myself. “Is teeth-bleaching mandatory on this campus?”

Maybe Zan wouldn’t have left if my teeth were whiter.

“Hey, guys.” Charlotte sets her tray on our table carefully: an apple, green beans, spaghetti, and skim milk. Very balanced; very Charlotte. “Kristine’s still in line,” she says, then glances at me. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Not hungry,” I tell her.

She and Mattia share a glance.

“Eating disorder,” Mattia says to me, like it’s a threat.

I remember the
first time I saw Alexander Kirchendorf. My heart has never stopped like that, before or since. It was one moment, that fast. Second lunch my second day at Haven. I was sitting, giggling with Mattia and Kristine, pretending to be happy. I don’t remember what we were discussing, but I saw him and stopped talking, stopped listening.