Love and Other Theories (3 page)

S
helby Chesterfield is never wrong. Not in fourth grade, when she told me that Jell-O was made from horses’ hooves. Not in eighth grade, when she said that Patrick Smith always carried his science book around to cover his boner. Not the first day of freshman year, when she promised me that high school would be better than all the grades before it.

And she wasn’t wrong the night of the homecoming dance junior year. The night we officially learned that everything we’d theorized about boys and high school and love was, in fact, true.

“What time is it?” I’d asked. Again. We were standing
in the middle of the football field. It was dark, but I knew Shelby was rolling her eyes. I heard an annoyed sigh and assumed it was Danica.

“Chill out,” Danica said, her voice muffled. There was a clicking noise, and a flame appeared in front of us, flashing light on Danica’s dark brown eyes and dark, wild curls. Too close for Melissa’s comfort. She backed away, shrieking a little.

“Jesus,” Danica said, lighting the cigarette sandwiched between her lips. Her voice was raspier than normal from the cold and from having spent the past three hours singing along with the music at homecoming, but she also kept it raspy deliberately. “For seduction purposes,” Shelby claimed, but I think that voice just came with Danica and was part of her fierceness. She didn’t move here until fifth grade, but even then, her voice was on the gruffer side. I think that’s why Shelby started talking to her, just to hear her talk back.

“Be careful.” Melissa returned to our huddle but gathered her long blond hair in a side ponytail. Away from Danica.

Danica punished Melissa for this by blowing smoke in her face. But the smoke was warm, so it wasn’t exactly a punishment. The embers from her cigarette fell in flakes, the light fading before it hit the ground. We all watched it flicker in front of us. We didn’t have anything else to watch.

“I don’t think they’re coming,” I finally declared. Someone had to say it. I was sure we were all thinking it.

“I thought you were supposed to be the smartest one out of all of us,” Shelby said. Danica’s cigarette floated a few feet and landed in Shelby’s mouth. She took a long, slow drag. The same amount of time it took for her insult to sink in.

“And speaking as the smart one, I think it’s time to bail before we all get pneumonia,” I said.

“Maybe we should wait in the car?” Melissa offered. Her teeth chattered on the word
the
. She was probably the coldest since she was the skinniest, even though she was almost as tall as Shelby and me, hitting five seven when we were five eight. Shelby claimed to really be five nine. It was because Melissa was such a picky eater—a picky person, really. We knew she’d been born like this, because Shelby and I had known her since kindergarten.

“If we wait in the car, Chiffon won’t see us,” Shelby said. “Were you paying attention to the plan at all?”

“Yes. I was. I just think . . .” But Melissa knew better than to finish.

The plan. For Shelby it was a plan. It might have been a plan for Danica and Melissa, too. For me it was a test. Weeks before, when the four of us had decided to turn down anyone who asked us to homecoming and instead go to the dance with just one another, snag a bottle of champagne (or three) from Shelby’s mom’s stash, and
invite our senior crushes—most of whom already had dates anyway—to meet us at midnight for an exclusive homecoming after party, we didn’t consider the weather. October in the Midwest. Cold with a chance of freezing.

“Maybe we should open the champagne,” Danica suggested. A sedative to shut me up and calm Melissa’s nerves.

“They’ll be here any second,” Shelby said. She frowned at us. “Do you really think they won’t come?”

“Not if they’re at Celine’s.” An indoor after party. I had to make sure Shelby had considered all the options. “Not if they’re getting laid.” Because that’s what boys did after homecoming. Or at least that’s what they tried to do.

“Gross,” Melissa moaned.

“They’re not getting laid,” Shelby said. I could hear a smile in her voice. “Or if they are, they’re probably done by now. It’s not like they need very long.”

We all laughed, even though at the time only Danica and Shelby weren’t virgins. We hadn’t laughed in twenty minutes—a record for the four of us.
You sound like witches cackling
, Celine McGillicutty told us once. We took it as a compliment.

“Come on,” Shelby said, taking a deep breath. “You know they don’t want to spend the entire night with those girls.” Those girls. Who wouldn’t dream of attending homecoming without a date. Those girls who wanted too much, an
I love you
after sweating in the backseat of
the car, to be taken to breakfast, to be kissed tenderly and promised,
You’re the only one.
Those girls we were not.

Before I could doubt Shelby again, bright lights shone on us through the chain link fence. Headlights from a vintage blue-and-white pickup.

We stood in a line, staring. I imagined we looked like withering ice queens. Long formal dresses covered by puffy coats, our breath vaporizing around us, our faces white, our noses red. The cold had made our styled hair go flat. The jewels that were once on top of Melissa’s head had drooped with the fallen strands dangling around her face. The bottom of my green dress was muddy.

“Let’s go,” Shelby whispered. She almost sounded surprised. She approached the guys, shaking the bottle of champagne and smiling.

“Shelby!” called a voice I couldn’t place but still knew belonged to one of the invited.

Melissa and Danica sauntered toward the figures staggering in the headlights. They were just a few feet away, walking through the open fence connecting the football field to the parking lot, but I was frozen in place.

J. D. Donovan, Forest Lester, Liam Poole, and Trip Chapman. Everyone was accounted for. I watched as Shelby sprayed them with champagne and the boys ran after her. They picked her up and turned the champagne bottle on her, soaking her and leaving wet spots that looked like pools of tar on her silver dress.

Trip stared at me and I stared back. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to hug him and kiss him and be as free with him as Shelby was with Forest Lester. But I couldn’t. It had been two hours since he’d winked at me across the dance floor. Three days since he’d leaned against my locker and complained to me about the knee he’d sprained during football practice and made me feel the places where he thought the muscle was torn. One day since he’d whispered in my ear after German class,
You look beautiful in green
.

It had been a week since I’d kissed Trip in the hallway at Dion Matthews’s party. It was the first party of junior year and I’d left him midkiss, Shelby dragging me away so I’d make it home in time for my curfew, all the while reminding me of what didn’t feel true at the time but what we now know to be an irrefutable fact: if you want more, you’ve got to give less.

“Brey, get over here!” Shelby yelled, tangled up in Forest, who was using one hand to hold the champagne bottle and the other to hold Shelby.

I was grinning like an idiot as I jogged toward them. Trip was smirking at me, so I slowed my pace.

Past Trip, another figure appeared, a girl in a pink dress and a red coat, with dishwater blond hair pulled back in a French twist. At first I thought I was the only one who’d noticed her, but then Shelby asked with faux innocence, “Hey, Chiffon, what are you doing here?”
Chiffon took one more step, putting herself right in the brightness of the headlights. She was probably more visible to us than we were to her.

Chiffon’s face paled and she stumbled back a little, tripping on her dress. She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but we knew Chiffon was horrible at firing out comebacks on the spot. Especially when the boy she liked was around. Especially when that same boy had his arms around Shelby.

“Did anyone invite her?” Shelby asked, her eyebrows raised, an expression of exaggerated naïveté on her face. Shelby is most insulting when she’s playing dumb. “I know Melissa certainly didn’t.” Melissa shook her head, her jeweled hair swinging around her. She enjoyed this. “And I didn’t, of course. Forest, did you?” Shelby shifted to face him, giving him an evil grin, but she stared at him only for a moment before she turned to see Chiffon’s reaction.

Chiffon didn’t give her this satisfaction. She ran away, bolting into the dark night.

Shelby laughed. “Oh, don’t leave angry!”

“You’re such a bitch,” Forest said to Shelby, but he was smiling, pulling her closer.

“Harmless fun.” Shelby said. It was the same thing she’d told us when we’d slipped the fake note from Forest into Chiffon’s locker, inviting her to meet him here after homecoming. “Besides, she deserves it.”

Everyone knows we hate Chiffon Dillon. They just don’t know why.

“There you are,” Trip said, pulling on the bottom of my jacket. Pulling me closer. “Are you cold?” he asked, even though I was in a coat and he was only in his tux jacket, wet from the champagne.

I shook my head. Trip slowly pulled my hands away from their position clasped in front of me. He put his hands on my face, and even though they were freezing, I didn’t flinch. “I’ve been waiting to see you.” He leaned in closer, like he might kiss me.

Melissa’s voice rang in the distance, high and easy to hear amid the light country music coming from the truck, and over the laughing and flirting. “We need more champagne!” Melissa was the hardest to get. That’s why she drank the most. She was standoffish and easily offended by anyone who wasn’t us, and she hated being looked at. Shelby said it was because Melissa watched one too many episodes of
Dateline
with her mother and thought that if someone—a guy especially—was looking at her for too long, he was devising something evil. This was a problem, considering Melissa was always attracting the usual suspects with her looks. Long, layered, California-blond hair, a paid-for nose, and big brown doe eyes. If a guy was going to get with her, he had to be someone Melissa didn’t mind having stare at her—someone who was exactly her type, the way Ronnie Adams
had been sophomore year, or persistently charming, the way Liam Poole was being that night. Normally, though, they’d have to catch her right after her third drink, post-cigarette, before she took three sips of her fourth and started puking or passed out—a moment that had to be perfectly timed and therefore hardly ever occurred.

“We left the other bottles on the field,” Danica said.

“I’ll get them,” I said, breaking away from Trip. He sighed. It was the same noise I’d heard him make when Shelby had pulled me away from him in the hallway at Dion’s party. This time the noise didn’t disappoint me. It
excited
me. And the sound of footsteps, of Trip coming after me, was even more thrilling.

Keep moving and he’ll keep following. Stand still and he could be the one to move away.

My name was what stopped me. Made me turn around. “Aubrey.” He said my name so carefully, like it was breakable. He was a few paces behind me and getting closer still. When he caught up to me and stepped in front of me, he was looking at me like I was a million miles away. He stared at me like I was the only person he’d ever wanted.

I picked up both bottles of champagne and brushed past him as I walked back to the group. It wasn’t as hard to walk away as you might think. I knew for certain by then that what I liked more than kissing Trip was being pursued by him.

He caught my arm, took the bottles from me, and carried them by their tops with one hand. His free hand he put around me as we walked back to our laughing friends.

“I’ve been looking forward to this all night,” he whispered into my hair.

I’d been looking forward to this my whole life. But Trip had never been attainable—none of those boys had, with their lean muscles, perfect hair, and pensive smiles.

Now that we finally understood the only thing we needed to know about high school boys and love and how you couldn’t have both, we could have anyone we wanted.
If you want more, you have to give less
. This logic seemed backward compared to the you-get-what-you-give crap we’d always heard, but it worked. Maybe it was a backward time in our lives and that’s why. High school brought people together; graduation tore them apart. Love wasn’t forever; it was for a moment. And the only thing that made anyone special was the ability to spread out the moments of bliss. To savor them instead of gorging on them.

All our theories were right—tonight had proved that. Maybe I was the last one to really understand because I didn’t get to go to all the parties the three of them went to. I’d hear the stories the next morning, when they’d stumble into the French Roll hankering for coffee and a cinnamon twist, with tales that provided me with a
collage of all the fun I was missing and gave me a glimpse into the teetering, fleeting, reckless, selfish people these boys turned into when they were mesmerized by a girl—correction:
girls
.

I was there that summer afternoon sitting on a blanket on Shelby’s front lawn, just weeks before the start of our junior year, when we came up with the theories. Melissa wrote them down on the back of a magazine and Shelby laughed, telling her that writing them down was such an Aubrey thing to do. She asked me why I didn’t think to write them down. She didn’t expect an answer; she was joking. But the real answer was that writing them down would make them official. And I wasn’t sure these theories were more than that.
Theories
. The night of the homecoming dance proved they were everything.