Back When You Were Easier to Love (6 page)

He should be here. His arm should be around me and I should be snuggling close, staying warm. He should be reminding me how much he loves my vanilla perfume, how lucky he is to be here with me, how much he wishes he could sleep over, too. I should be punching him playfully right now, rolling my eyes, saying “You’re such a
guy
—you only want one thing!”

Except Zan didn’t want one thing. He wanted everything.

When I finally go inside to brush my teeth, I look through the glazed glass of the bathroom window. I can hear Mattia’s loud, almost-obnoxious laugh, and the chain reaction of Kristine’s giggles. It all feels like another world. I grab my sleeping bag from Charlotte’s bedroom and head outside.

They have already laid their sleeping bags out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. I set my bag where the last spoke should be, an empty space next to Mattia. She is talking, her tone wistful, the effect enhanced by the Japanese lantern casting a slanted glow on her face. “It was over by the late eighties, really.”

“So sad,” Kristine says. “Such a waste. Our generation never had a chance.”

“What about . . . you know . . . a reemergence?” Charlotte sounds hopeful.

I snuggle into my sleeping bag. “What’s the topic of discussion?”

“The gradual demise of Spin the Bottle,” says Mattia.

The demise of Spin the Bottle? “Even when it was in existence, I don’t think Spin the Bottle was exactly popular with the seventeen-year-old set,” I say.

Everybody stares at me.

“I mean, I hate to be the voice of reason here, but . . .” I shrug.

“I think it had to do with the disappearance of bottles,” says Kristine. “When everybody started drinking soda from a can,
that’s
when it tapered off.”

“Non sequitur,” says Mattia. “Which guys got smoking hot over the summer?”

“Sorry, I don’t know anything, but who was that guy in the blue polo shirt with the matching eyes that spent most of the night on the rope swing?” About two-thirds of Charlotte’s questions start out with apologies.

“His two eyes matched each other?” I say. “Sounds like a real catch.” I’m half dreading half hoping she’s talking about who I think she’s talking about.

“Eyes that matched his shirt!” Charlotte throws her teddy bear and it hits me dead-on. It stings more than I expect, due to its beanbaggy backside.

“Blond hair and a tendency toward whistling?” Kristine can identify anyone in the senior class by mannerisms that the average observer doesn’t even pick up on.

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s way good looking. We should hang out with him sometime.” Charlotte doesn’t dare meet new people without our permission and promise we will be there, too. Whether she is shy or just unsure of the social strata, Mattia says Charlotte is dependent to an extreme.

“I don’t know,” says Kristine. “Your whistling fool is Noah Talbot, and he’s not Joy’s bestest bud at the moment.”

“Actually, he is,” I say, pulling my sleeping bag up to cover my arms. “Or at least he wants to be. He thinks we should be ‘friends.’” I air quote the word like Mattia does to show the impossibility of it.

“Noah Talbot.” Charlotte pauses. “
He’s
the guy who’s stalking Joy?”

“What, I don’t deserve a good-looking stalker?” I say, joking, and then curse myself for admitting I think he’s good looking.

Charlotte’s too preoccupied thinking she’s offended me to notice.

“I’m just kidding, Char. But trust me—you don’t want to hang out with Noah Talbot. Even Zan doesn’t want to hang out with Noah Talbot, and they’re best friends.”

“
Were
best friends,” Mattia corrects. “Now Noah wants to be best friends with you instead.”

“No, no—
he
doesn’t want to be friends with me. He thinks Zan wants him to be friends with me. But Zan just wants . . .” What does Zan want? “Zan just wants to be left alone by the Noahs of the world.”

My seventeenth birthday
fell six weeks after I moved to Haven.

Frankly, I hadn’t even planned to have a birthday party. Before the move, I was hoping my parents would fly me back to California. Home to see Gretel, home to see everything I’d left behind.

Six weeks was long enough for my entire world to change. Six weeks was long enough for me to start at a school where the lyrics to the school song sounded suspiciously similar to a Mormon hymn. Six weeks was long enough to become best friends with an outgoing Husky Ambassador and have people to sit with at lunch every day. Six weeks was long enough for me to fall for a boy with a brilliant mind and secondhand shoes. But, according to my parents, six weeks was not long enough to merit a trip back to California.

I was okay with that—really. It gave me a chance to have a party and invite Zan. We could hang out together like a real couple. It would solidify us: ZanandJoy. JoyandZan.

Mattia loved the idea and invited everyone she knew. “This is such a great way for you to fully adapt to your new environment!” she squealed, like the psychology-major-in-training she was. She’d already set up a Facebook page to track the party details by the time I thought to double-check with Zan.

“Next Friday?” Zan said when I told him. He furrowed his brow, concerned. “I have class Friday, remember?”

Zan was technically a junior at the same university where my dad taught, as well as a junior at Haven High, so between the two schools he practically always had class. “Yeah, but class only goes until six, right? Plenty of time for you to get back and freshen up.” I smiled at him. “And wrap my birthday present, of course.”

“Of course,” said Zan. “Except that this is the last class before midterms and some of us are having a study group after. It could go pretty late.”

“You don’t need a study group—you’re way smarter than anybody else in that class. You just don’t want to go to a Haven party,” I teased. Six weeks was long enough that I’d already experienced Haven parties, where activities often included Disney movies. Refreshments consisted of two liters of Sprite and peanut-butter cookies with Hershey’s Kisses on top.

“Well,” he said, “I
don’t
want to go to a Haven party.” He gave his signature almost-smile, eyebrows raised. “But I would, for you. I wouldn’t even bother with the study group in the first place, except this prof has a weird testing-style. I really need to do this.”

“I understand,” I said. And being familiar with the world of academia, I did. Not that I wasn’t disappointed. It hurt like losing a contest you had no real intention of winning. You expect to lose, but there’s still that sinking-in-the-chest when you find out.

I wanted him to be there, but the rules of life dictated otherwise. I needed him to know I understood that. I wasn’t some ditzy Haven girl who didn’t get it. “I’ll save you a cookie,” I told him.

I never thought the party would become what it did—a word-of-mouth party—and I was surprised at how happy it made me to fit so well inside this strange, small new world. I could have Zan. I could also have a party where a girl I didn’t know was on the karaoke machine in the family room, belting out some song I’d never heard.

A happy medium—that was the best birthday present I could have gotten. Zan and I could mock Haven all we wanted in our own private moments. We could plan our escape. But I could still have friends, too.

People were playing board games in the living room—Twister, Cranium, Taboo. I was in the kitchen, refilling a bowl of tortilla chips. Mattia and Kristine were at the dining-room table with a few guys, playing a card game involving spoons.

“Happy birthday.”

I stopped pouring, turned around, and there was Noah Talbot.

“Thanks.” I don’t know why I was surprised to see him. It was a word-of-mouth party, after all, and besides, he was Zan’s best friend. I mean, as much as a guy like Zan, who prided himself on being too good for Havenites, could actually have a Havenite best friend.

“Here,” Noah said too quickly, shoving something at me. “This is from Zan.”

I just stared at him. True, he was Zan’s “best friend,” but I hardly knew Noah Talbot. He and Zan lived next door to each other—had forever—which is why they were friends. Proximity. Other than that, they had nothing in common.

I shifted the package from one hand to the other. From the size and shape, I could tell it was a book. “Oh. Well ... thanks for bringing it for him.”

Noah licked his upper lip. It was subtle, but he looked anxious to leave. He probably hadn’t even wanted to be here. No other Soccer Lovin’ Kids were at the party, as far as I knew.

I was sure Noah was going to leave, but instead he said, “Joy, I know you don’t like me.”

And it was true. I
didn’t
like him. But it wasn’t an active kind of dislike. He was a popular kid, and I didn’t feel comfortable around the popular kids.

It was more than that, though. I didn’t like any of the Soccer Lovin’ Kids, just by essence of them being Soccer Lovin’ Kids. I didn’t like how easy it was for all of them, how they all
were
Haven. They knew the sport they were supposed to play, so they did. They knew what they were supposed to look like, so they did. They knew what they were supposed to believe, so they did. But none of them were real to me. Noah wasn’t real to me.

“I don’t really know you,” is what I said.

“We’ll have to change that,” he said, smiling at me. It was a Haven smile: white, straight teeth, dimples, eye contact. Friendly, yet completely hollow.

“Sure, yeah,” I said. But it’s like in the summer when you run into someone from school and say, “Let’s hang out sometime.” It’s just what you say—no one has any intention of really acting on it.

“Joy.” He reached out and shook my hand, which was weird, even for him. “I hope you have a really great birthday. And I hope this is a really great year.”

“Um . . . thanks.” I tried to smile. “You’re welcome to stay and hang out, have something to drink.” There was a big tub of ice next to me, filled with soda. It was mostly Sprite and I half smiled, thinking of how much Zan would hate this if he were here.

Noah grabbed a can. “I’ll see you around,” he said, shaking off the melted ice before he turned to leave.

“See ya,” I said. “Let’s hang out sometime.”

I believe that
a person should try to understand dreams and take warning from them, which is why I keep coming up crazy on these psychological “personality inventories” Mattia’s always making me take online. Supposedly, these tests are designed to tell you who’s certifiable and who isn’t.

I am.

I’ve dreamed of Zan each night since he’s left. He’s got a hold on me harder now than he did when we were together.

I dream Zan is in the school, staring into the cheap vending machine, deciding on his sugar-snack of choice. I am on the other side of the school, running to him, hoping to get there before he can make the wrong selection. By the time I reach him, panting, it’s too late. He’s chomping on a Reese’s cup, convincing me not to worry.

Of course I do anyway. I know Zan so well he’s an extension of me. His needs are my needs. I know the truth about him.

He’s allergic to peanuts.

I wake—cold above me, cold below me, face wet from tears or dew or sweat. Around me there’s no sound but sleeping, no smell but outside. Go back to sleep.

I don’t sleep. Every shadow I see is Zan. The hand I warm with my hand is Zan’s, even if it is connected to my body.

A person should try to understand dreams. A person should take warning from them.

On Saturday night
my parents have a reservation at Bonjourno, the only nice restaurant in Haven, and I have a reservation with my biology textbook. Bonjourno will no doubt be packed with Homecoming couples tonight, and I hope it won’t make Mom and Dad feel sorry for me when they realize I’m not one of them.

“Have a good time,” I tell them, piling various school supplies on the kitchen table. This is how I love to study—plenty of space, my pink highlighter, and a pineapple–green pepper pizza from Papa John’s on the way. It makes it okay that I’m studying biology, my nemesis.

“Be good,” my mother says. I can tell she feels obligated to say something motherly, but I bet she’s thinking,
Have fun with your cations and lipids!

It truly makes me feel pathetic. But I remember the pizza and the feeling passes.

If you follow the “college track” at Haven High then you take AP biology as a senior, but Zan did things his own way and took microbiology at the community college last year. If only I had taken that as a warning. If only I had realized how badly he wanted to leave. If only I had seen how much he wanted to change himself. If only I had listened when he went on and on about the wonders of mitosis.

I hear a knock: three short, three long, then three more short. Finally. Nourishment. There’s pizza money on the counter, so I grab it and open the door.

It’s not pizza.

On my doorstep, dressed in a dark, oversize suit and holding out a red rose, is Noah Talbot.

The first time
I knew I was really, truly, from-the-depths-of-my-soul in love with Alexander Kirchendorf was the night of our first kiss—the night he called me His Joy.

Prom night and we were rocking on the old-fashioned porch swing outside my house. We had been discussing something, I don’t remember what, when we both stopped talking and stopped listening. I remember thinking:
he is going to kiss you now, move in closer, move
—but being frozen with fright and delight. We both sat there, suspended in something much thicker than silence, for what seemed like a thousand hours. He touched my face, my lips. He whispered to me: “My Joy.” And maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for me, and when I let him kiss me I knew that this was the man I wanted to spend eternity with.