Take Me There (3 page)

“I mean I don’t ingest toxic substances.”

“Well, then I guess I didn’t have to hide the rat poison after all.” Keith laughs hysterically again. “Yo!” he gasps. “I crack myself up!”

We stare at him.

“Anyway,” Keith continues smoothly, as if we all have a sense of humor in common. “That sucks about you and Steve, but . . . if you ever feel like hanging out . . .”

“Um.” I can’t believe he’s actually asking me out like this. I glance at James.

“Oh,” Keith goes. “Are you two . . . ?”

“No!” I say. “We’re just friends.”

“That’s what I thought.” Keith inspects me. He actually does that sleazy guy thing where they slowly rake their eyes up and down your body.

Then Keith’s like, “Well . . . you know where to find me.” And he slithers away like the snake that he is.

James mumbles something.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He looks bothered. “I’m getting a Coke.”

Standing there with the party swirling all around me, I get this really intense alone feeling. Even with James here and Nicole coming later, being at a party with friends instead of a boyfriend is always sort of sad. Especially when you thought you’d have a boyfriend to do couple things with for the rest of junior year. And maybe even longer if Steve came back from college to take me to the prom and stuff. Before The Incident, this year felt like it was going by really fast. Now it’s taking forever, even though we only have four more weeks left.

I’m itching to check my voice mail, but James made me leave my cell at home. He knew that if I brought it with me, I’d be checking to see if Steve called like every three seconds.

“Hey, Ree,” Nicole says, suddenly here. She hugs me.

I hug her back, clinging to her like Velcro. Nicole is the type of person that’s great in a crisis. She can figure out your problem before you’re even done explaining it. And she always knows exactly what to say to make you feel better.

“Are you okay?” Nicole is worried about me. She knows it’s too soon to be over it. She knows I think about him all the time.

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean . . . no. You know.”

She knows. She’s been here.

Nicole bites her lip. “If it makes you feel better, we can go over it again.”

That’s another thing about Nicole. She comes off all wild like with how she dresses, but she’s not really like that. She’s actually super sensitive and sweet.

But still. It must take an enormous amount of strength for her to say that. We’ve analyzed the whole thing to the point of exhaustion, until there’s nothing left to say. But why he dumped me is the most annoying unsolved mystery
ever.
So of course I want to go over everything he said for the millionth time.

I’m like, “Only if it’s truly okay with you and you’re not just saying that because you feel sorry for me because—”

“It’s okay.”

“So . . . well, at first he seemed the same as always . . .”

The whole thing was so strange. The entire four months we were going out, I thought we had this amazing connection, right from the start. No, I
knew
we did.

But then.

“I, um . . . I don’t think we should go out anymore.”

“What?”
He couldn’t be serious. There was no way. “What are you talking about?”

“I just don’t feel it anymore,” Steve said. All casual. As if he was saying, “I don’t feel like going to the park.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” I kept expecting the joke to be over.

Steve just shook his head, looking at the floor.

“What happened?” I said. My eyes filled with tears.

“Nothing. I just . . . I’m leaving for college anyway, so—”

“But that’s not until August!”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“So that’s why?” I wiped my cheek. “I thought you said you wanted to try a long-distance relationship.”

“Look. I know this is hard to hear, but . . . I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

I watched Steve. He didn’t even look sad. How was that possible? This is a boy who said he loved me. Who stayed in my room all day when I was sick, playing cards and making me smoothies in the blender, even though he didn’t know how and the blender got jammed. The same boy who put his hands all over my body, kissed me for hours . . .

And then suddenly it was over. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

I cried harder.

Steve got up.

“Where are you going?” You could hear how scared I was. I was like,
This is it. He’s leaving already. He can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. I’m that repulsive.

Steve sat back down on the couch with the tissue box. He held one out.

“Here,” he said.

I wiped my nose. “Do you still love me?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“It’s not you. It’s me. I’m . . .”

“You’re what?”

“I just have to do this, is all.”

“But I still love you.”

Steve cracked his knuckles. I always hated when he did that, but now I would give anything to be back together with him. If he would just take it all back, he could crack his knuckles all he wanted and I wouldn’t care.

I sniffed.

“I was wondering,” he said, “if . . . we could maybe . . . like, be friends?”

Was he serious? In what twisted universe would a girl who’s just been dumped still want to be friends with the boy who dumped her?

“I don’t get this,” I said. “I thought you were happy with me.”

“I was.”

“So why are you doing this?”

Steve got up.

“Don’t go!” I yelled. I was crying so hard.

“I’m sorry. . . .”

“Please don’t go!” I wanted him to sit next to me and hug me and say that he was still mine. That I’m the only girl in the world who could make him happy. That we belong together.

But Steve just walked away. He walked right out of my house. And then I was completely alone.

“I want him back,” I reveal to Nicole.

“Huh?”

“I’m getting him back.”

“How?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

Nicole stares.

“I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m not this strong. I still think about him all the time. It’s driving me insane.”

“You’ll get through this. And I know it’s impossible to believe right now, but it gets better. Trust me.”

It’s so weird how Nicole and I always go through the same things at the same time. So of course both of our relationships just ended. Nicole and Danny broke up three weeks ago. And Steve dumped me last week. Or seven days, nine hours, and twenty-three minutes ago. Not that I’m counting.

Before Danny, she was seeing this guy Jared. And Jared dumped her so hard she wouldn’t get out of bed. So I would go over to her place after school with all her favorite snacks. Butterscotch Krimpets (which you can only get at this one deli nowhere near either of our neighborhoods). Lemonheads (candy section, middle shelf, Rite Aid). Entenmann’s Ultimate Crumb Cake (available everywhere). Chocolate-covered cherries (strictly Godiva, no discount type allowed). Nicole was totally destroyed. And then one day she decided that she was completely over Jared. And she started dating Danny the next day.

Nicole thinks the same thing will happen to me. That once I start liking someone else, this will all go away. But I’m still in love with Steve. And I’ll never feel this way about anyone else. He just needs me to remind him of what he had.

“Don’t you think I can get him back?” I panic.

“No, it’s just . . . why would you want to after what he did?”

“Because I still love him. You can’t just turn love off. You still feel it.”

“But that’ll go away and—”

“But I don’t want it to go away,” I interrupt. “I want to be with him.”

“Hello, sexy ladies,” Sheila says.

“Hey,” I go.

Nicole’s like, “Where’s Brad?”

“He’s coming later. I’m going up to see the pool. Want to come with?”

“Sure,” I tell her. I assume Nicole will also come, but then I notice her watching Danny. Who’s walking over here. “Let’s go.”

Sheila’s talking about Brad and this problem they’re having, but I’m not being a good friend. I manage to steer the conversation back to me and Steve by doing one of those sorry-ass moves where you take something the other person just said and go, “Oh, yeah! That’s just like what happened with me when . . .” When, really, the two things aren’t even related. You’re just using it as an excuse to talk about yourself more.

I want to get Sheila’s advice. So I’m about to tell her about the whole Steve dilemma when I notice Joni. She’s standing really close to our lounge chairs. Too close. All pretending not to listen. When it’s totally obvious that she’s majorly listening.

The conversation shifts back to Sheila’s stuff. I don’t say anything else about Steve. I don’t really need the whole school knowing my business.

The first thing I do when I get home is zoom to my room to check my messages and e-mail. Snick-Snick follows me in. I close my door and peek at the answering machine. The red light stares back at me defiantly. Not blinking. There’s nothing on my cell, either.

I press the start button on my iBook and go to the closet. I take out a soft white tank top and pink pajama bottoms from my dresser. I watch my screen saver of Topher Grace come on while I change. James always teases me about it whenever he comes over. He’s all like, “Where’s the screen saver of me?”

I click my Gmail widget and see that I have five new messages. I get this adrenaline rush of anticipation.

But none of them are from Steve.

I can’t wait anymore. If I wait around for him to realize how lame he’s being, I’ll probably be waiting forever.

I click on “Compose Mail.” Here’s what I write:

I click the DISCARD button.

I start again.

I click DISCARD.

I start again.

DISCARD.

Again.

I don’t send that one, either.