Текст книги "Lola and the Boy Next Door"

Автор книги: Stephaie Perkns

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purposefully

watching his room.

One hand fiddles with the bracelets on his other. “Now, that’s a shame. Promise you won’t laugh when you see me in my underwear.”

Lindsey’s eyebrows raise.

“I cut a pathetic figure undressed,” he continues. “Dressed, too, for that matter. Or half dressed. One sock on, one sock off. Just a hat. No hat. You can stop me at any time, you know. Feel free to tell me to shut up.”

“Shut up, Cricket,” I say.

“Thanks. Did you dye your hair? Because you weren’t blond last weekend. Oh, it’s a wig, isn’t it?”

“Ye—”

“Hey, cool shoes. I’ve never seen boots that color before. Except rain boots, of course, but those aren’t rain boots.”

“No—”

The front door opens, and Andy appears in a white apron. He’s holding a flour-dusted wooden spoon as if it were an extension of his arm. “Could I persuade you ladies to sample—”

Cricket pops back onto the porch and stretches his lengthy torso between Lindsey and me to shake my dad’s hand. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Nolan. How are you?”

Lindsey mouths,

What’s he been smoking?

I’m as baffled as she is. He’s like Cricket times ten.

“I’m good.” Andy glances at me, trying to determine if he should throw him off our property. I give my dad the smallest shake of my head, and he turns his attention back to Cricket. Which, frankly, would be impossible not to do, considering the sheer energy radiating off him. “And you? Still inventing mysterious and wondrous objects?”

“Ah.” Cricket hesitates. “There’s not really a market for that sort of thing these days. But I hear you’re running a successful pie operation?”

My father looks flattered that the news has spread. “I was just about to ask the girls if they’d mind testing a new pie. Would you like a slice?”

“I would

love

a slice.” And he springs ahead of Andy, who follows him inside.

The porch is silent. I turn to Lindsey. “What just happened?”

“Your father invited the former love of your life in for pie.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

We’re quiet for a moment.

“There’s still time for an excuse,” she says. “We don’t have to go in there.”

I sigh. “No, we really do.”

“Good. Because that guy demands observation.” And she marches inside.

I take another look at the paint splotch and find that it’s dried. Crap. I spray the last side of my shoes, move the project where it won’t get tripped on, and head inside for whatever torture awaits me. They’re standing around one of the islands in our kitchen. We have an unusually large kitchen for the city, because my parents removed the dining room to add space for Andy’s business. Everyone already has a plate of pie and a glass of milk.

“Unbelievable.” Cricket wipes the crumbs from his lips with his long fingers. “I would have never thought to put kiwi in a pie.”

Andy spots me hovering in the doorway. “Better hurry before this one eats it all.” He nods toward his guest. Outwardly, my dad is collected, but I can tell that inside he’s gloaty beyond belief. How quickly one’s allegiance changes under the influence of a compliment. I smile as if none of this is a big deal. But I’m

freaking out.

Cricket Bell. In my kitchen. Eating kiwi pie. And then I take the empty space beside him, and I’m stunned

again

by his extraordinary height. He towers over me.

Andy points his fork at the other half of the green pie. “Have the rest, Cricket.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t.” But his brightened eyes suggest otherwise.

“I insist.” My dad nudges the dish toward him. “Nathan’s always complaining that I’m trying to make him fat, so it’ll be better if it’s gone before he comes home.”

Cricket turns to me with his entire body—head, shoulders, chest, arms, legs. There are no half gestures with Cricket Bell. “Another slice?”

I motion toward the piece in front of me, which I haven’t even started.

“Lindsey?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “I’m not exactly pie-deprived, visiting here so often.”

Why is he here? Isn’t there some campus party he should be at? The more I think about it, the more incensed I become. How dare he show up and expect me to be friendly? People can’t just

do

that.

“How’s your family?” Andy asks.

Cricket swallows. “They’re good. My parents are the same. Dad’s a little too exhausted, Mom’s a little too enthusiastic. But they’re good. And Cal is busy training, of course. It’s a big year with the Olympics coming up. And Aleck is married now.”

“Is he still composing?” Andy asks. Alexander, or Aleck as dictated by the family nickname, is the twins’ older brother. He was already in high school when Calliope started training, so he escaped most of the family drama. I never knew him well, but I do vividly recall the complicated piano concertos that used to glide through our walls. All three Bells could be considered prodigies in their fields.

“And teaching,” Cricket confirms. “And he had his first child last year.”

“Boy or girl?” Lindsey asks.

“A girl. Abigail.”

“Uncle . . . Cricket,” I say.

Lindsey and Andy both let out an uncontrolled snort, but Andy instantly looks horrified for doing it. He glares at me.

“Lola.”

“No, it’s okay,” Cricket says. “It’s completely ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, please. Don’t be.” But there’s a catch in his voice, and he says it so quickly that I look at him in surprise. For the briefest moment, our eyes lock. There’s a flash of pain, and he turns away. He hasn’t forgotten.

Cricket Bell remembers everything.

My face burns. Without thinking, I push away my plate. “I need to . . . get ready for work.”

“Come on.” Lindsey grabs my hand. “You’ll be late.”

Andy glances at the Frida Kahlo wall calendar where I post my schedule. He frowns toward Frida’s unibrow. “You didn’t write it down.”

Lindsey is already pulling me upstairs. “I’m covering for someone!” I say.

“Am I supposed to pick you up?” he hollers.

I lean over the banister and look into the kitchen. Cricket is staring at me, parted mouth and furrowed brow. His difficult equation face. As if

I’m

the problem, not him. I rip away my gaze. “Yeah, the usual time. Thanks, Dad.”

Lindsey and I run the rest of the way into my bedroom. She locks my door. “What’ll you do?” Her voice is low and calm.

“About Cricket?”

She reaches underneath my bed and pulls out the polyester vest. “No. Work.”

I search for the remaining pieces of my uniform, trying not to cry. “I’ll go to Max’s. He can drive me to work before Andy gets there.”

“Okay.” She nods. “That’s a good plan.”

It’s the night before school starts, and I’m working for real this time. Anna and I—and her boyfriend, of course—are inside the box office. The main lobby of our theater is enormous. Eight box-office registers underneath a twenty-five-foot ceiling of carved geometric crosses and stars. Giant white pillars and dark wooden trim add to the historic opulence and mark the building as not originally a chain movie theater. Its first incarnation was a swanky hotel, the second a ritzy automobile showroom.

It’s another slow evening. Anna is writing in a battered, left-handed notebook while St. Clair and I argue across the full length of the box office. She just got another part-time job, unpaid, writing movie reviews for her university’s newspaper. Since she’s a freshman, they’re only giving her the crappy movies. But she doesn’t mind. “It’s fun to write a review if you hate the movie,” she told me earlier. “It’s easy to talk about things we hate, but sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly why we like something.”

“I know you like him,” St. Clair says to me, leaning back in his chair. “But he’s still far too old for you.”

Here we go again. “Max isn’t

old,

” I say

.

“He’s only a few years older than you.”

“Like I said. Too old.”

“Age doesn’t matter.”

He snorts. “Yeah, maybe when you’re middle-aged and—”

“Golfing,” Anna helpfully supplies, without looking up from her notebook.

“Paying the mortgage,” he says.

“Shopping for minivans.”

“With side air bags.”

“And extra cup holders!”

I ignore their laughter. “You’ve never even met him.”

“Because he never comes in here. He drops you off at the curb,” St. Clair says.

I throw up my hands, which I’ve been mehndi-ing with a Bic pen. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to park in this city?”

“I’m just saying that if it were Anna, I’d want to meet her coworkers. See where she’s spending her time.”

I stare at him, hard.

“Obviously.”

“Obviously.” He grins.

I scowl back. “Get a job.”

“Perhaps I will.”

Anna finally looks up. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” But she’s smiling at him. She twirls the glass banana on her necklace. “Oh, hey.Your mom called. She wanted to know if we’re still on for dinner tomorrow—”

And they’re off in their own world again. As if they don’t see each other enough as it is. He stays in her dorm on weekdays, and she stays in his on weekends. Though I do admit that their trade-off is appealing. I hope Max and I share something like it someday. Actually, I hope Max and I share

one

place someday—

“Oy !” St. Clair is talking to me again. “I met your friend today.”

“Lindsey?” I sit up straighter.

“No, your old neighbor. Cricket.”

The ornamental ceiling tilts and bends. “And how do you know that Cricket Bell was my neighbor?” My question is strangled.

St. Clair shrugs. “He told me.”

I stare at him.

And?

“He lives on my floor in my dorm. We were talking in the hall, and I mentioned that I was on my way to meet Anna, and where she works—”

His girlfriend beams, and I’m struck by a peculiar twinge of jealousy. Does Max tell people about me?

“—and he said he knew someone who worked here, too. You.”

One week, and already I can’t escape him. It’s just my luck that Cricket would live beside my only Berkeley acquaintance. And how does he know where I work? Did I mention the theater? No. I’m positive that I didn’t. He must have asked Andy after I left.

“He asked about you,” St. Clair continues. “Nice bloke.”

“Huh,” I finally manage.

“There’s a story behind that

huh,

” Anna says.

“There’s no story,” I say. “There is definitely NOT a story.”

Anna pauses in consideration before turning toward St. Clair. “Would you mind making a coffee run?”

He raises an eyebrow. After a moment, he says, “Ah. Of course.” He swoops in for a kiss goodbye, and then she watches his backside leave before turning to me with a mischievous smile.

I huff. “You’ll just tell him later, when you guys are alone.”

Her smile widens. “Yep.”

“Then no way.”

“Dude.” Anna slides into the seat beside me. “You’re dying to spill it.”

She’s right. I spill it.

chapter six

When I was five years old, Cricket Bell built an elevator. It was a marvelous invention made from white string and Tonka truck wheels and a child-size shoe box, and because of it, my Barbies traveled from the first floor of their dollhouse to the second without ever having to walk on their abnormally slanted feet.

The house was built in my bookcase, and I’d desired an elevator for as long as I could remember. The official Barbie Dream House had one made of plastic, but as often as I begged my parents, they wouldn’t budge. No Dream House. Too expensive.

So Cricket took it upon himself to make one for me. And while Calliope and I decorated my bookcase with lamp shades made from toothpaste caps and Persian rugs made from carpet samples, Cricket created a working elevator. Pulleys and levers and gears come to him as naturally as breathing.

The elevator had completed its first run. Pet Doctor Barbie was enjoying the second floor and Calliope was pulling down the elevator to fetch Skipper, when I stood on my tiptoes, puckered my lips, and planted one on her very surprised brother.

Cricket Bell kissed me back.

He tasted like the warm cookies that Andy had brought us. His lips were dusted with blue sugar crystals. And when we parted, he staggered.

But our romance was as quick as our kiss. Calliope proclaimed us “grody” and flounced back to their house, dragging Cricket behind her. And I decided she was right. Because Calliope was the kind of girl you wanted to impress, which meant that she was

always

right. So I decided that boys were gross, and I would never date one.

Certainly not her brother.

Not long after the elevator incident, Calliope decided that I was grody, too, and my friendship with the twins ended. I imagine Cricket complied with the arrangement in the easy way of anyone under the sway of someone with a stronger personality.

For several years, we didn’t talk. Contact was limited to hearing their car doors slam and glimpsing them through windows. Calliope had always been a talented gymnast, but the day she switched to figure skating, she burst into a different league altogether. Her parents bragged to mine about

potential,

and her life turned into one long practice session. And Cricket, too young to stay at home without a parent, went with her.

On the rare occasions that he

was

at home, he busied himself inside his bedroom, building peculiar contraptions that flew and chimed and buzzed. Sometimes he’d test one in the small space between our houses. I’d hear an explosion that would bring me racing to my window. And then, but only then, would we exchange friendly, secretive smiles.

When I was twelve, the Bell family moved away for two years. Training for Calliope. And when they came back, the twins were different. Older.

Calliope had blossomed into the beauty our neighborhood had expected. Confidence radiated from every pore, every squaring of her shoulders. I was awed. Too intimidated to talk to her, but I chatted occasionally with Cricket. He wasn’t beautiful like his sister. Where the twins’ matching slenderness made Calliope look ballet-esque, Cricket looked gawky. And he had acne and the peculiar habits of someone unused to socializing. He talked too fast, too much. But I enjoyed his company, and he appeared to enjoy mine. We were on the verge of actual friendship when the Bells moved again.

They returned only a few months later, on the first day of summer before my freshman year. I would be turning fifteen that August, and the twins sixteen that September. Calliope looked exactly as she had before they left.

But, once again, Cricket had changed.

Lindsey and I were on my porch, licking Cherry Garcia in waffle cones, when a car pulled up next door and out stepped Cricket Bell as I’d never seen him before—one beautifully long pinstriped leg after another.

Something deep inside of me

lurched

.

The stirring was as startling and unpleasant as it was thrilling and revolutionary. I already knew that this image—his legs, those pants—would be imprinted in my mind for the rest of my life. The moment was that profound. Lindsey called out a sunny hello. Cricket looked up, disconcerted, and his eyes met mine.

That was it. I was gone.

We held our gaze longer than the acceptable, normal amount of time before he shifted to Lindsey and raised one hand in a quiet wave. His family materialized from the car, everyone talking at once, and his attention jerked back to them. But not without another glance toward me. And then another, even quicker, before disappearing into the lavender Victorian.

I took Lindsey’s hand and gripped it tightly. Our fingers were sticky with ice cream. She knew. Everything that needed to be said was spoken in the way I held on to her.

She smiled. “Uh-oh.”

Verbal contact happened that same night. The odd thing is that I no longer remember what I wore, but I know I chose it carefully, anticipating a meeting. When I finally pulled aside my curtains, I wasn’t surprised to discover him standing before his window, staring into mine. Of course he was. But he was taken aback by my appearance. Even his hair seemed more startled than usual.

“I was . . . getting some fresh air,” I said.

“Me, too.” Cricket nodded and added a great, exaggerated inhalation.

I’m still not sure if it was a joke, but I laughed. He gave me a nervous smile in return, which quickly broke into his fullwattage grin. He’s never had any control over it. Up close, I saw that his acne had disappeared, and his face had grown older. We stood there, smiling like fools. What do you say to someone who is not the same and yet completely the same? Had I changed, too, or had it just been him?

Cricket ducked away first. Some excuse about helping his mom unpack dishes. I vowed to initiate a real conversation the next day, but . . . his close proximity fizzled my brain, tied my tongue. He didn’t fare any better.

So we waved.

We’d never waved through our windows before, but it was unavoidably clear that we were aware of each other’s presence. So we were forced to acknowledge each other all day and all night, still having nothing to say but wanting to say

everything.

It took weeks before this torturous situation changed. Betsy and I were leaving the house as he was strolling home, those pinstriped pants and his hair looking like it was trying to touch the sky.

We stopped shyly.

“It’s nice to see you,” he said. “Outside. Instead of inside.You know.”

I smiled so that he’d know I knew. “I’m taking her for a walk. You wouldn’t want to join—”

“Yes.”

“—us?” My heart thrummed.

Cricket looked away. “Yeah, we could catch up. Should catch up.”

I looked away, too, trying to control my blush. “Do you need to drop that off?”

He was carrying a paper bag from the hardware store. “OH. Yeah. Hold on.” Cricket shot up his stairs but then stopped halfway. “Wait right there,” he added. He bounded inside and came back only seconds later. He held out two Blow Pops.

“It’s so lame,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I love these!” And then I did blush, for using the word

love.

Our tongues turned green-apple green, but we talked for so long that by the time we returned home, they were pink again. The feeling inside of me grew. We began bumping into each other at the same time every afternoon. He’d pretend to be running an errand, I’d pretend to be surprised, and then he’d join Betsy and me on our walk.

One day, he didn’t appear. I paused before his house, disappointed, and looked up and down our street. Betsy strained forward on her leash. The Bells’ door burst open, and Cricket flew down so quickly that he almost toppled into me.

I smiled. “You’re late.”

“You waited.” He wrung his hands.

We stopped pretending.

Cricket defined the hours of my day. The hour I opened my curtains—the same time he opened his—so that we could share a morning hello. The hour I ate my lunch so that I could watch him eat his. The hour I left my house for our walk. The hour I called Lindsey to dissect our walk. And the hour after dinner when Cricket and I chatted before closing our curtains again.

At night, I lay in bed and pictured him lying in his. Was he thinking about me, too? Did he imagine sneaking into my bedroom like I imagined sneaking into his? If we were alone in the dark instead of daylight, would he find the courage to kiss me? I wanted him to kiss me. He was the boy. He was

supposed

to make the first move.

Why wasn’t he making the first move? How long would I have to wait?

These feverish thoughts kept me awake all summer. I’d rise in the morning, covered in sweat, with no recollection of when I’d finally fallen asleep and no recollection of my dreams, apart from three words echoing in my head, in his voice.

I need you.

Need.

What a powerful, frightening word. It represented my feelings toward him, but every night, my dreams placed it inside his mouth.

I needed him to touch me. I was obsessed with the way his hands never stopped moving. The way he rubbed them together when he was excited, the way he sometimes couldn’t help but clap. The way he had secret messages written on the back of his left. And his fingers. Long, enthusiastic, wild, but I knew from watching him build his machines that they were also delicate, careful, precise. I fantasized about those fingers.

And I was consumed by the way that whenever he spoke, his eyes twinkled as if it were the best day of his life. And the way his whole body leaned toward mine when I spoke, a gesture that showed he was interested, he was listening. No one had ever moved their body to face me like that.

The summer sprawled forward, each day more agonizing and wonderful than the last. He began hanging out with Lindsey and my parents, even with Norah, when she was around. He was entering my world. But every time I tried to enter his, Calliope was hostile. Cold. Sometimes she pretended that I wasn’t in the room, sometimes she’d even leave while I was speaking. This was the first time he’d chosen someone over her, and she resented me for it. I was stealing her best friend. I was a threat.

Rather than confront her, we retreated to the safety of my house.

But . . . he still wasn’t making any moves. Lindsey supposed he was waiting for the right moment, something significant. Maybe my birthday. His is exactly one month after mine, also on the twentieth, so he’d always remembered. That morning, I was heartened to see a sign taped to his glass: HAPPY LOLA DAY! WE’RE THE SAME AGE AGAIN!

I leaned out my window. “For a month!”

He appeared with a smile, his hands rubbing together. “It’s a good month.”

“You’ll forget about me when you turn sixteen,” I teased.

“Impossible.” His voice cracked on the word, and it shook my heart.

Andy took over Betsy’s afternoon walk so that we could have complete freedom. Cricket greeted me at the usual time, raising two pizza boxes over his head. I was about to say I was still stuffed from lunch when . . . “Are those empty or full?” My question was sly. I had a feeling this wasn’t about pizza.

He opened up a box and smiled. “Empty.”

“I haven’t been there in years!”

“Same here. Calliope and I were probably with you the last time I went.”

We took off running down the hill, toward the park at the other end of our street—the one that barely counted because it was tiny and sandwiched between two houses—back up another hill, past the spray-painted sign warning NO ADULTS ALLOWED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY CHILDREN, and to the top of the Seward Street slides.

“Oh God.” I had a jolt of terror. “Were they always this steep?”

Cricket unfolded the boxes and laid them long and greasy side down, one on each narrow concrete slide. “I claim left.”

I sat down on my box. “Sucks to be you. The right side is faster.”

“No way! The left side always wins.”

“Says the guy who hasn’t been here since he was six. Keep your arms tucked in.”

He grinned. “There’s no way I’ve forgotten

those

scrapes and burns.”

On the count of three, we took off. The slides are short and fast, and we flew to the bottom, holding in our screams so as not to disturb the Seward Witch, the mean old lady who shouted obscenities at people enjoying themselves too loudly and just another reason why the slides were so much fun. Cricket’s feet flew off first, followed quickly by his bottom. He hit the ground with a

smack

that had us rolling with laughter.

“I think my ass is actually smoking,” he said.

I bit down the obvious comment, that his pants had made this fact abundantly clear in June.

We stayed for half an hour, sharing the slides with two guys in their twenties who were high and a playgroup of moms and preschoolers. We were waiting behind the moms, about to go down for the last time, when I heard snickering. I looked over my shoulder and discovered the arrival of three girls from school. My heart sank.

“Nice dress,” Marta Velazquez said. “Is it your mommy’s?”

I was wearing a vintage polka-dot swing dress—two sizes too large that I’d tightened with safety pins—over a longsleeved striped shirt and jeans rolled greaser-style. I wanted to look pretty for my birthday.

I no longer felt pretty.

Cricket turned around, confused. And then . . . he did something that changed everything. He stepped deliberately in front of them and blocked my view. “Don’t listen to them. I like how you dress.”

He liked me just as I was.

I sat down quietly on my pizza box. “It’s our turn.”

But what I ached to say was,

I need you.

On the walk home, he had me joking and laughing about the people who’d tormented me for years. I finally realized how absurd it was that I’d worried so much about what my classmates thought about me. It’s not like I wanted to look like

them.

“Cricket!” Andy said, when he saw us approaching. “You’re coming over for the birthday dinner, right?”

I looked at Cricket hopefully. He put his hands in his pockets. “Sure.”

It was simple and perfect. My only guests were Nathan, Andy, Lindsey, and Cricket. We ate Margherita pizza, followed by an extravagant cake shaped like a crown. I ate the first piece, Cricket ate the biggest. Afterward, I walked my friends outside. Lindsey gave me a nudge in the back and disappeared.

Cricket shuffled his feet. “I’m not great with gifts.”

My heart leaped. But instead of a kiss, he removed a fistful of watch parts and candy wrappers from his pocket. Cricket sifted through the pile until he found a soda-bottle cap, metallic pink. He held it up. “Your first.”

Perhaps most girls would’ve been disappointed, but I am not most girls. We’d recently seen a belt made out of bottle caps in a store window, and I’d said that I wanted to make one. “You remembered!”

Cricket smiled in relief. “I thought it was a good one. Colorful.” And as he placed it in my open palm, I reread the message scrawled onto the back of his hand for the hundredth time that day: FUSE NOW.

This

was the moment.

I gripped the cap and stepped forward. His breathing quickened. So did mine.

“You promised you’d be there!”

We jumped apart. Calliope was on the porch next door, seemingly on the verge of tears. “I needed you, and you weren’t there.”

An unmistakable flash of panic in his eyes. “Oh God, Cal. I can’t believe I forgot.”

She was wearing a delicate cardigan, but the way she crossed her arms was anything but soft. “You’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately.”

“I’m sorry. It slipped my mind, I’m so sorry.” He tried to shake the wrappers and watch parts back into his pocket, but they spilled onto my porch.

“Smooth, Cricket.” She looked at me and scowled. “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time.”

But she was still talking to

him

.

“Thanks for dinner,” he mumbled, shoving everything back into his pockets. “Happy birthday.” He left without looking at me. From their porch, Calliope was still glaring. I felt slapped in the face. Ashamed. I didn’t have anything to be ashamed about, but she had that effect. If she wanted you to feel something, you would.

Later, Cricket told me that he was supposed to have gone to some meeting. He was vague about it. After that, it was as if we’d taken a small step backward. We started school. He hung out with Lindsey and me, while Calliope made new friends. There was a quiet tension between the twins. Cricket didn’t talk about it, but I knew he was upset.

One Friday after school, he showed me a video of the Swiss Jolly Ball—a mechanical wonder he’d seen while visiting a museum in Chicago. I hadn’t been inside his house since Calliope’s icy behavior at the beginning of summer. I’d hoped this was an excuse to go into his bedroom, but his laptop was in the living room. He sat on one side of a love seat, leaving space to sit beside him. Was it an invitation? Or a gesture of kindness, in that he was offering me the room’s larger couch?

WHY WAS THIS SO HARD?

I took a chance and sat beside him. Cricket pulled up the video, and I scooted closer, under the guise of seeing it better. I couldn’t concentrate, but as the machine’s silver ball shot through tunnels, set off whistles, and zoomed across tracks, I laughed in delight anyway. I inched closer until I was in the dip between the cushions. I smelled the faintest twinge of his sweat, but it wasn’t bad. It was very far from bad. And then the side of my hand brushed the side of his, and my heart

collapsed.

He was very still.

I cleared my throat. “Are you doing anything special for your birthday tomorrow?”

“No.” He moved his hand into his lap, flustered. “Nothing. I’m not doing anything.”

“Okay . . .” I stared at his hand.

“Actually, Calliope has some skating thing. So it’ll be another afternoon of bad rink food, skating vendors, and squealing girls.”

Was that an excuse to avoid me? Had I been wrong this whole time? I went home upset and called Lindsey. “No way,” she said. “He likes you.”

“You didn’t see him. He’s been acting so weird and cagey.”

But the next morning, I met up with Lindsey to find a present for him. I wasn’t ready to give up. I

couldn’t

give up. I knew he needed an obscurely sized wrench for a project, and I also knew he was having trouble finding it online. We spent the entire day hunting the city’s specialty shops, and as I walked home that night so proud of procuring one, I felt a nervous hope again. And then I saw it.

A party in full swing.

The Bell house was loud and packed, and there were strings of tiki lights hanging in their bay windows. This wasn’t a party that happened at the last second. It was a planned party. A planned party that I had not been invited to.

I froze there, devastated, holding the tiny wrench and taking in the spectacle. A pack of girls rushed past me and up the stairs. How had the twins made so many new friends so quickly? The girls knocked on the door, and Calliope opened it and greeted them with happy laughter. They moved past her and into the house. And that’s when she saw me, staring up from the sidewalk.

She paused, and then made a face. “So what? Too good for our party?”

“Wh-what?”

“You know, after spending so much time with my brother, it seems like the least you could do is pop your head in and wish him a happy birthday.”

My mind reeled. “I wasn’t invited.”

Calliope’s expression changed to surprise. “But Cricket said you couldn’t come.”

Explosion.

Pain.

“I . . . he didn’t ask. No.”

“Huh.” She eyed me nervously. “Well. Bye.”

The lavender door slammed shut. I stared at it, burning with hurt and humiliation. Why didn’t he want me at his party? I stumbled inside my house, yanked my curtains closed, and burst into racking sobs. What happened? What was wrong with me? Why didn’t he like me anymore?

His light turned on at midnight. He called my name.

I tried to focus on the catastrophic blow inside my chest. He called my name again. I wanted to ignore him, but how could I? I opened my window.