Been Here All Along (20 page)

I need to make this right.

People are seriously dragging Gideon through the mud. I don't know how he even had the nerve to show up at school today. Kyle didn't bother coming, but there's Gideon, trudging through the halls, trying to stay out of everyone's way. He's doing a pretty decent job, but every once in a while you'll see a group of people just stop in the middle of the hallway and talk about him. Pointing and whispering, not bothering to be a little bit subtle about it.

Gideon's a social pariah and I legit feel bad for him. Even Maddie and Sawyer don't seem to be talking to him. It's entirely my fault. I don't want to be the kind of person who puts the blame on other people. I don't want to be like that anymore. That's what I've been doing for months.

I've been telling myself the same sad story that my life sucks because my dad lost his job and because Kyle broke up with me and because Josh was mean. No, my life sucks because life sucks sometimes. I need to take responsibility for myself and my own happiness. And step number one is talking to Gideon and getting this all out in the open.

During lunch I make it my mission to track down Gideon. It's not like I want to go sit with those assholes I call my friends anyway. Better to find Gideon and try to make peace with him.

After looking all over the place, I find him in the student activity office. He's not even doing anything. He's just sitting there with his head in his hands. It's basically the worst thing I've ever seen.

“Feel free to rip my face off,” I say. My voice startles him.

“I'm not going to rip your face off,” he says. He's sad in a way that I've never seen anyone be sad. Gideon has always been the kind of guy who squares his shoulders and does what he needs to do. But today he looks so defeated.

“Well, do something to me, because I feel like complete crap about the whole thing,” I say, taking a seat next to him.

“It's just as much my fault as it is yours,” he says.

“And Lilah's, since she's the one who sent the text.” I groan. “No, forget I said that. I literally just gave myself a stern talking-to about how I need to take responsibility for my actions, and then I come in here blaming Lilah.”

“Lilah sent the text?”

“Yeah, but I never deleted the lists from my phone. Even though I obviously should have. And then she found them on Friday. I probably should have done more, but I was so upset about Josh.”

“That thing with Josh was kind of terrible,” Gideon says.

“I'm sorry I was a bitch to you in the hallway.”

“Whatever, you were just lashing out.”

“And then I made everything worse.”

“It's over. It doesn't matter,” he says.

“Of course it matters.” I put my hand on his, and he looks surprised.

“I sent Kyle like eight hundred texts yesterday, and he ignored every single one of them. He probably blocked my number.”

He looks so sad that I don't even know what to do, so I decide to tell him everything.

“All right, listen. I'm gonna come clean with you. I was so sad that day at your house. And so jealous of everything you have. And then I went home and I found out my dad lost his job. You already had Kyle for a best friend, and I was so jealous of the thought of you also getting him as a boyfriend. Because I knew he would choose you over me. I just knew it.”

“I didn't know it. I wasn't trying to steal him from you.”

“I get that now. But back then it just seemed like you were going to end up with everything. And I was going to end up sharing a room with my sister for the rest of my life while I went to community college and worked full-time at Walgreens.”

“I'm sorry. That sucks.”

We're both quiet for a few minutes.

“There's no way I'm ever going to make this up to him,” he says.

“Of course you will.”

“How?”

“Where's the binder, Gideon?”

“I don't know,” he says. “For a second I thought you had it.”

“You thought I stole it?” I'm shocked. I've done some crappy things, but I definitely wouldn't have stolen his binder.

“Not stole it, but just kept it or something. I realize now that you didn't have anything to do with this.” He shakes his head.

“So, then where is it?”

“It's missing. I put it under my bed in a box and it's gone.”

“We need to find it. Because believe me, it was very convincing and showed me just how much you liked him. Even without being able to read Elvish, I was ready to fight for him. So maybe, if he reads it, he'll understand.”

“You're gonna help me?”

“Hell yes.”

When the bell rings signaling the end of lunch, I decide that maybe it's time for me to cut class. It's not something I've ever actually done before, but it feels like the right day. Maybe I can go talk to Kyle.

Or maybe there's someone else who might be able to help out.

Ezra

I should probably get a job.

Or maybe go to college.

I should probably work on a pro/con list and try to figure this out. I sit down at the kitchen table with a notebook and a pencil at the same second my phone dings with a text from an unknown number.

“Hey, Ezra. I need your help,” it says.

“New phone. Who dis?” I write back.

“It's Ruby. Kyle and Gideon had a terrible argument and it's at least partially my fault and I was hoping you might be willing to help me get them back together.”

“I had a feeling something bad was going down. Gideon spent all day yesterday in his room.”

“Yeah, it's not good.”

“What do you need me to do?” I type back.

“Well, first of all, there's this binder that Gideon had, and it's all full of lists that he wrote about Kyle.”

“Gideon's ‘I love Kyle' binder? I have it. I hid it. I had a feeling he couldn't be trusted with it. He kept hiding it in obvious places. First under the couch, then in a Monopoly box under his bed. Bad idea.”

“I'm on my way over,” she writes back.

Five minutes later the doorbell rings.

“Hey,” I say, opening the door. “Shouldn't you be in school?”

“Technically yes, but I'm hoping since I'm a senior and I'm graduating in a couple weeks, no one will notice I'm gone. Just this once.”

“Someone will notice. I mean, I would totally notice,” I say. It's been a while since I did any kind of real flirting. I'm obviously rusty.

She smiles and punches me lightly on the shoulder.

“So, where's this binder?” she asks.

I lead her back through the hallway and out to the garage.

“I'd seen the binder around a couple of times, including the night I came home.”

“Did you read it?” Ruby asks.

“Not so much. There was some stuff in Elvish and I was out of practice.”

“You're all gigantic nerds,” she says.

I shrug. She's not wrong. “Anyway, I haven't had much of a social life since I got home, so I was actually sitting down to play a rousing game of Monopoly with my parents several weeks back, so I went searching for it under Gideon's bed because he tends to hoard all the board games. Lo and behold, there was his secret binder. So I put it in an actual safe place.”

I pull out the Rubbermaid bin where our mom stores our baby blankets and dig out the binder. I'm about to hand it to her, and then I pull back. “Why do you want this?”

“I want to show it to Kyle.”

“Yeah, no. That sounds wrong.” I hug the notebook to my chest as if I can protect it and Gideon at the same time.

“I took pictures of all the lists, and one of my friends found the one where Gideon lists all the things he doesn't like about Kyle and she texted it to everyone in her phone and it got around to basically everyone at school. I'm hoping that if Kyle sees the rest of the lists, he'll understand that Gideon likes him a lot, probably even loves him. And that one list was just a way for Gideon to try to talk himself out of Kyle.”

“Does Gideon know about this?”

“Yes. It's totally Gideon sanctioned. He doesn't know that you had the binder this whole time, but he wants Kyle to see the other stuff in it.”

I hand it to her. “All right. Fair enough.”

She gets out her phone and starts texting. “I need to show it to Kyle right away. He didn't even come to school today.”

“Why are you so invested in this?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I'm trying to right my wrongs, be a better person, all that good shit.” Her phone buzzes. “Cool, he says to come over.”

I follow her to the front door.

“So, listen. I don't know if you'd be into this, but maybe you want to hang out sometime?” I ask. “I'm getting a little tired of Monopoly with my parents.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe,” she says. “You have my number.”

And then she's gone.

It's definitely time for me to get on with my life.

 

twenty-four

Kyle

Everything is literally the worst. I lied to my mom about having a headache to get out of going to school today. I just couldn't face the people at school. Any of them. Not Gideon, not my friends, not Ruby. Everyone knows. The only good thing is that back when Gideon wrote the list, he didn't know what was wrong with me, so it's not like the whole school knows about my LD. But still. It feels like they do.

Oh God, and now Ruby's texting me. Is this just going to be her rubbing it in that I made the wrong choice? I don't even really want to look. But I should. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

“Can I come over?” the text says.

That's not what I was expecting.

“Um. Sure,” I write back, even though I'm not sure at all. Even though I feel like I'm falling into a trap that I'm too dumb to even recognize.

The doorbell rings almost immediately, and I'm completely confused because technically Ruby should be in gym class right now and not at my front door.

I open it up, not even checking my hair or anything. I know how terrible I look. No reason to hide it. I haven't showered since Saturday. It just feels like nothing matters anymore. Who do I even have to impress?

“You need to read this,” she says, shoving a navy-blue binder into my hands and walking through the front door, sliding her shoes off like she owns the place.

“Did you text me from outside?” I ask.

“No, I was next door getting that binder.”

I examine it like it has some kind of disease. “It's Gideon's.”

“Yes. And you need to read what's in there.”

“I would rather not read anything else about how awkward and pathetic I am. But thanks for thinking of me.” I try to hand the binder back to her, but she waves it away and takes a seat on the couch.

“You need to read it, Kyle. I'm not joking. He's your best friend. He loves you.”

“He really doesn't,” I say, flopping into the easy chair and tossing the binder on the coffee table.

“What if I tell you he loves you so much he had to make a list about the things he doesn't like about you, just to talk himself out of it?”

“I'd say that he's brainwashed you, because he tried to tell me the same thing the other night, but I didn't believe him.”

“Kyle, read these lists. Or else I'm going to read them out loud to you.”

I definitely don't want to have to hear all the mean things read aloud by my ex-girlfriend, so I might as well get this over with.

I pick up the binder and flip to the first page. It's a to-do list, a very Gideon-like to-do list. The words swim a little, as they do thanks to my brain being broken. I can feel Ruby watching me.

“Could you maybe stop staring at me? It's not making any of this easier,” I say.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she says, picking up a copy of
Weight Watchers
magazine from the coffee table.

Some of the lists are very logical.
Am I gay or just Kyle-sexual?
makes me laugh because it's so Gideon. Then another one is ways to hide his feelings for me, followed by a list of reasons we'll never work. Most of the things on that list are related to the fact that Gideon seemed to think back then that he wasn't my type. I especially like the part where he says he's like Danny DeVito to my Chris Evans.

Everything in this binder is basically the opposite of the terrible, horrible, no-good list. It's everything that makes me feel good about myself. It's everything that makes me remember why Gideon's my best friend.

Ruby is not-so-subtly watching me over the top of her magazine.

“Where's the bad list?” I ask, flipping back through the binder but not finding it.

“Apparently Gideon had a fit of guilt about it several weeks ago and burned it.”

“Why did you text that list?” I ask her.

“In the interest of full disclosure, it wasn't me. But I shouldn't have taken pictures of it to begin with. I'm very sorry.”

“This doesn't fix everything,” I say.

“No, I know. But it seemed like something you should see.”

I nod. “I think I need more time.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. But I wanted to make sure you had a sense of the whole picture.”

“Maybe I should keep this,” I say.

“Sure, I don't think Gideon would mind.”

“Did he know you were doing this?”

“I talked to him, but he didn't know where the binder was. Turns out Ezra had hidden it from him.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. “That's so Ezra.”

“It is,” she says, getting up to leave.

I walk her to the door. “Thanks, Ru.”

“You're totally welcome.”

 

twenty-five

Gideon

Kyle comes back to school the next day. He doesn't talk to me, but at least he's there. The good news is that slowly but surely other people start talking to me again. Ruby starts sitting with me at lunch, and as the week goes on Sawyer and Maddie come back, along with some other people from student council.