Meant to Be Read online

  Jason has wandered off down one of the tall, narrow aisles, no doubt in search of the DVD section (which he won’t find in a place like this). I hope he doesn’t knock anything over. I wander down the closest aisle, looking for him.

  The back of the store opens up into a small café area with a stage at the back. There are several people gathered at the tables, drinking coffee and tea out of chipped mugs. A young-looking girl with loose braids is carrying an acoustic guitar offstage, and three raggedy-looking guys push past her onto the tiny stage, where their instruments are waiting. The guitar player turns a few knobs on his Gibson while the drummer closes himself into the corner behind his drum kit. Within minutes, they’ve fired up the amps and the bass player is belting into a mic. Their music is loud and seems kind of out of place in the small, old-looking space, but it’s also joyful. The rhythm starts beating its way through the floor, up through my body.

  I recognize the song from the very first notes, from the ten thousand times I’ve heard it on my parents’ old record player to the time just the other day when Jason played it at the skate park. I lean into a bookshelf in the back of the room, close my eyes, and listen as they begin to sing, “Oh darling …”

  Jason taps me on the shoulder.

  “C’mon,” he says. Before I can protest, he pulls me toward the stage. We weave through the maze of tiny tables and patrons, and at first I’m afraid he’s going to jump onstage and sing (again). He stops short of the stage, though. He bumps an empty table with his hip, scooting it over to make some space for us. Then he holds out his hand.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper. I can feel the audience’s eyes on us. We’re standing in front of the entire room, only a few feet away from the band.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he responds neutrally. “We’re going to dance.” He grabs my hand, pulling me into him, and the next thing I know, he’s got me in a classic ballroom pose. I feel strange in his arms, like I should be on my guard. I anticipate a tickle attack of some kind or kamikaze pantsing at any moment. Or maybe he’ll dissolve into some goofy fox-trot or tango. Instead, he loosens up and starts a slow sway. I giggle into his shoulder.

  “What’s so funny?”

  This is fun, I almost say. But instead, I shake my head and say, “Nothing.” I breathe in the smell of his shirt, which is equal parts detergent and cedar.

  He begins humming along with the bassist. “This should be our song.”

  “Yeah, one where a guy begs for forgiveness,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “He’s not begging for forgiveness,” he says, pulling back a little so he can give me a look. “He’s asking for her trust.”

  “Probably because he broke that trust at some point in the recent past,” I retort. I pull back a little, too.

  “Why so cynical all of a sudden?”

  I feel my cheeks heating up. Jason’s eyes are locked on mine. I can see bits of gold swimming among the blue. “You’re the one that’s suddenly sentimental!”

  “Sorry,” he says breezily. “I thought you were the one that believes in love and all that.” He pulls me back in, eliminating all the space between us. He’s warm. I can feel the heat from his body pulsing through me, from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes.

  “Yeah, I am,” I reply, “but if this is, in fact, our song, then I’m going with the alternative interpretation.”

  “Okay then, Professor Lichtenstein,” he says, chuckling.

  “You don’t see it that way?” I say, my cheek now dangerously close to pressing into his chest. He leans down to my ear.

  “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the heart,” he says. His breath tickles my neck and a chill shoots up my spine. I’m so shocked I end up stamping hard on his foot. Where did that come from?

  “Ow!” he says, hopping a little. “Watch where you stomp those things, okay? They’re small but deadly.”

  “Um, it’s ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,’ ” I say, correcting him, trying to shake off the surprise of hearing him quote Shakespeare, however incorrectly. “ ‘And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.’ ”

  I feel funny saying the lines to him. It’s different from the thousand other times I’ve corrected him on something. This time I feel a little warm, and I can’t look him in the eye. It’s my and Phoebe’s favorite Shakespeare quote, and I’ve always imagined Mark whispering it into my ear right before planting a soft kiss on my lips. Instead, I’m being squeezed a little too tightly by Jason Lippincott, who’s not even saying it right.

  I look up. He’s looking right at me, one eyebrow raised and a slight glimmer in his eyes. I worry he’s going to start teasing me about love again, but instead, he starts spinning me around. The band is really winding up now, the amps buzzing with the wailing of the lead singer. Jason spins me faster and faster. I lose my balance and break away from him, stumbling backward into a waiting café chair.

  “I think that’s enough dancing for me,” I say. My fingers clutch the bottom of the chair as the room tilts in front of me. I feel dizzy from the spinning, and maybe a little from the conversation, too.

  Jason’s still staring at me. There’s no glimmer in his eyes now. His expression is totally unreadable. “Whatever you say,” he replies. He puts his hands deep into his pockets, then turns on his squeaky heel and heads for the front of the shop. In a blink, he disappears between the shelves. I take a deep breath. I can still smell him—grape gum and fabric softener and something else, something I can’t identify. My stomach does a little flip, and I tell myself it’s only nausea from the spinning. In the distance, I hear the tinkle of the bell on the front door.

  “Hey, wait up!” I call. I scramble after him, overcome for a moment by that head-rushing blackout sensation. More people turn to stare at me, but I ignore them. I can see Jason through the glass door, his back to me, his red hair curling underneath his ball cap. The butt of his jeans is worn, the ancient outline of a wallet visible in his back left pocket. One of his belt loops is ripped and dangling, causing his brown belt to droop a little near his hip.

  I pause for a second to make sure that all the dizziness is gone. Then I push the door open. When the bell tinkles, he doesn’t turn.

  “I didn’t know you could dance,” I say to his back.

  He pauses for a split second and shoots me a glance over his shoulder. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  i want 2 get 2 know u better. —C

  “Can I sit here?”

  I’m surprised to find Susan standing over me. Her perfectly flatironed hair is held back by a red headband with a dainty little bow. It matches the red in her cardigan and the red patent leather flats on her feet.

  “Uh, sure,” I reply, scooting my notebook closer to give her room at my standard corner table. I’m frankly happy to have her join me. I figured Jason might sit with me at dinner, but he’s been ignoring me since the impromptu dance performance at the bookstore.

  As if on cue, I hear riotous laughter coming from across the dining room. Jason is sitting with a group of guys and they’re launching dinner rolls off their forks. Typical. I notice Ryan is sitting with them. Their table is full, which explains why Susan is sitting with me and not over there, hanging on every “dude” Ryan is uttering.

  Awesome. I’m the reject table.

  “So what have you been—” I say, but Susan has already pulled out a thick copy of British Vogue and is engrossed in its pages. Susan probably joined me at my table because she figured it was the place to page through her magazine without being bothered.

  A dinner roll sails over our table and bounces off the wall behind me. I look up to see Ryan and Jason raising their forks in triumph.

  “Ugh, isn’t he the worst?” Instantly, magazine forgotten, Susan whips around to stare at the boys’ table. “Such a child.”

  “Seriously,” I say. Thank God Susan Morgan and I have something to talk about: our mutual dislik
e for Jason. “It’s like he’s incapable of acting like a normal human. And that gum! What high school boy do you know that chews that much grape gum? So gross.”

  Susan looks slightly puzzled. “What?” she says; then she shakes her head. “Oh, I meant Ryan. He’s, like, so ridiculous.”

  “Oh,” I reply. I guess Susan and I don’t have anything in common.

  “Jason’s actually not that bad,” she continues. “He totally bailed me out last spring when my computer ate my final paper for Freeman’s AP English class. He lent me his computer right away—and his notes were soooo much better than mine! I would have, like, totally failed if it weren’t for him.”

  “Oh,” I say again. Even though I’m sitting down, I feel curiously disoriented. Jason lent Susan his computer just to be nice? Even stranger, Jason takes notes in class?

  “Yeah. Jason’s kind of the best, actually,” Susan chirps. Then she returns to her magazine, and just like that, I’m alone again.

  I turn to my own notes, trying to make sense of all the madness I’ve been writing. I’m going to have to crank out a reflection paper later, and there’s no way I can be thorough with the mess I’ve got in front of me. My brain feels like it’s doing freestyle laps through a pool of lime Jell-O. Well, maybe I can’t blame my notes entirely. It was a long walk from the café to our hotel, but we somehow made it all the way back without ever mentioning a word of what had just happened.

  I’m not even sure what did happen—whether we had some kind of a moment, like we did in the record store, or whether I imagined the whole thing.

  And then there’s the text I got from Chris, which of course binged onto my phone as soon as we got back to the hotel. I was tempted to show it to Jason, but after the dancing, I felt funny about it. And what did he mean, ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me’? What is he hiding? Why can’t he just be normal? One second we’re friends, the next second he acts like I have leprosy. It’s enough to give a girl whiplash. It’s like he gets off on confusing me, like it’s some little game.

  Well, I don’t want to play anymore.

  But I do want to get to know Chris better. Or more accurately, now that I’ve seen him, I want him to get to know me better so that when I finally work up the courage to meet him, he may not be too dismayed or shocked to find out that I’m a five-foot-tall swimmer and not a six-foot-tall supermodel. Even if he weren’t the single hottest guy I’ve ever seen (after Mark, of course), he seems totally perfect. I mean, he was reading Shakespeare. In a café. The same book I was reading.

  I glance up at Susan, who’s completely engrossed in an article about the return of the feather boa. She probably wouldn’t care in the least if I walked away, but I still feel bad abandoning her.

  “Do you mind?” I ask, nodding toward the elevator. “I need to get a jump on this paper, and that tour guide was completely useless today.”

  “Whatever, totally fine,” she says. She glances back at Ryan’s table, where a seat has opened up. She grabs her stuff and bolts for it. So much for thinking he’s a child.

  While I ride the glacially slow elevator to my floor, I pull out my phone and stare at the text from Chris. As the elevator dings past each floor, I take a deep breath and type out a reply.

  Definitely. Same. —J

  I figure my best bet is to keep it short and simple. That way, I can’t screw anything up … hopefully. I’ve just arrived at my floor when my phone buzzes with a reply.

  Ready to meet up? —C

  I gasp and flip my phone shut. I can’t reply to this in the hallway. I need to do some thinking. I get back to my room and I flop down on my big fluffy bed, my laptop open and ready for another reflection paper. Only I still can’t reflect. I can’t think at all. I keep seeing those glasses and that shaggy hair. He’s so hot. This is worse than when I had no idea who he was. Now I can perfectly visualize his face … and his inevitable look of disappointment when I approach him.

  What on earth will I say to him? Oh—hey, Chris! Here’s the thing. When I said “supermodel,” what I really meant was “high school student.” And when I mentioned “photo shoots,” I was actually referring to a field trip. So essentially, I’m a dirty liar. I’m from Massachusetts, not Manhattan, but please still fall madly in love with me, okay?

  I slam my laptop with enough force that my cell phone bounces onto the floor. I pick it up and look back at the text from Chris. He wants to get to know me better. So I’m guessing now is not the time to let him know I’ve been basically stalking him all over the city. I want to be flirty or witty, but I’m too scared, so instead I go with Plan B: honesty.

  not yet. things are complicated.

  “Complicated” is the understatement of the year, but if I were to try to describe how things are on the T9 keyboard of my crappy little loaner cell phone, it would take me days. And even then I probably wouldn’t have it right. Because I have no idea.

  I pull my laptop back into my lap and stare at the blank screen. I take another stab at my notes, this time attacking them with my favorite green highlighter. I flip through the pages of my script, trying to pull out themes, or even a starting point. As my flipping gets more manic, I cram the highlighter into my mouth, running my fingers along the lines to find something, anything I can write about. The further I get from a finished paper, the closer I get to a full-on breakdown. This is useless.

  My broken travel alarm clock glares at me with angry red cracked lights, taunting me for how long I’ve been grinding away at this assignment. I jump up from the bed, charge over to the wall and lean against it, then drop into a low squat. Wall sits. A good burn in my thighs ought to take the burn out of my brain. I start counting the seconds. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety. They tick by, but nothing is happening. I get to nearly two minutes, and my thighs start to quiver, but I’m still feeling crazy. Somewhere around the three-minute mark, my legs give out, and I plop to the floor right on my butt. I massage my thigh, breathing heavily and trying to figure out what to do.

  It’s like I’m groping around in my brain with two hands and a flashlight, yet I can’t find a single word to name what I’m feeling. All I know is there’s no way I can write two of these stupid reflection papers, especially since Jason has been little or no help to me lately. In fact, he has been the exact opposite of helpful (help-empty?).

  If he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal, I won’t hold up mine.

  And I’m going to tell him so. Now.

  I run my hands over my stomach, smoothing my wrinkled shirt, take a deep breath, and then slip into the hall, wedging a shoe in the door so it doesn’t lock closed behind me, since Mrs. Tennison has already collected key cards for the night.

  I stop in front of Jason’s door, and before I can think or talk myself out of it, I give it a hard knock.

  Nothing.

  I press my ear against the door, but I don’t hear music or the television or any rustling around. Maybe he’s asleep? I glance at my watch. It’s ten-thirty already. Jason must have snuck out.

  I knock again. I lean close as if I’m going to see in through the peephole, and my forehead smacks on the door.

  “Ow,” I mutter, rubbing my forehead.

  “Dude, he’s not in there.” The voice startles me, and I whirl around to see Quentin Phillips, lacrosse player and stoner extraordinaire, poking his head out of the room directly across the hall.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dude, you have … stuff … on your …” He can barely get the words out between laughs.

  “What? What is it?” I snap.

  “Your lips are green,” he says, and raises a finger to point directly at my face. Suddenly, the memory of the green highlighter, stuck between my teeth while I was trying to write my reflection paper, comes flooding back. Excellent. I lick my fingers and rub furiously, but without a mirror I have no idea if I really got it off.

  “Where did he go?” I ask, and Quentin doesn’t laugh, so I assume the green is mostly gone.

  “He�
��s out,” Quentin says in his bizarre surfer accent. (I know for a fact the kid was born and raised in Boston.)

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Not sure, dude,” Quentin says slowly, watching me through eyes narrowed to slits. “Some kind of anti-liquor protest, I think.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” I don’t speak faux surfer, so I must have misunderstood.

  “I dunno, dude,” Quentin says, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “He was talking about prohibition, and I was kinda tired at the time, but I’m pretty sure that’s where they, like, think booze is the devil, right?”

  “Are you sure about that?” I ask. Prohibition? For real? What in the world is this kid smoking? I mean, even if there were some kind of throwback anti-liquor rally going on in London, I think Jason would sooner set his hair on fire than participate. He seemed to be pretty pro-alcohol the other night.

  “Look, man, I was getting back from a run and I saw him in the hall and I was all like, ‘Hey, dude, where ya going?’ and he was all like, ‘I’m going to prohibition,’ ” Quentin says, getting a little testy. “I’m not his keeper or whatever. Isn’t that your job?”

  A lightbulb goes on in my brain. It’s not a protest; it’s that expat bar we passed on our first day here. It’s called Prohibition. Of course Jason went out drinking. He snuck out again, and this time he didn’t even bother to tell me.

  I stomp back to my room and give the door the hardest slam I can muster. The gilded mirror rattles on the wall. I grab one of the heavy silk-covered pillows off my bed, bury my face in it, and let out the loudest, longest scream I think I’ve ever heard.