“I know,” he says softly, sounding helpless. “What can I do?”
“You can’t do anything,” I say firmly. “I said I needed space to figure this out, and if you really care about me, you’ll respect that.”
I wince and think he might have, too, although I can’t be sure. He’s silent for a few seconds.
“Okay, London,” he says finally, with a sadness that breaks my heart a little. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Instead of telling him “never mind,” like I desperately want to, I simply say, “Thank you, Luke,” and disconnect before I make any promises I might not be able to keep.
Leaning against my bed with the gutted hatbox before me and chronicles of our relationship littering the floor, I can’t help but cry. I don’t want to be sensible. I don’t want to think about things. I don’t want to have to forgive him.
I don’t want him to have lied in the first place.
I shove the debris off my legs and climb up onto my bed, lying facedown in my pillow and sobbing for who knows how long. I don’t hear her come in but my mom appears, smoothing my hair and patting my back and telling me it’ll all be okay.
No, it won’t, I think to myself.
It won’t be okay at all.
29
Life blindsided me this morning.
It’s barely past seven o’clock on a Wednesday, and already I’m tired. It seems everything is wrong, so I focus on something small.
Page Thomas.
Yesterday’s note says that she served as a captain in gym class. When I was the last person on the bench, Page told Ms. Martinez and the class that she’d rather play one person short than have me on her team.
Nice.
I moved on to reading about Luke, but then something in a note from four months ago caught my attention. It was around the time Luke moved to town:
Bring yoga pants, T-shirt for gym (had to borrow clothes from Page Fri.)
Yesterday, Page wouldn’t have lent me a square of toilet paper, let alone a shirt. I remember her tomorrow and there’s no way she’d lend me anything then, either. Curious, I spend the next hour searching through notes for entries about her. And what I realize is this:
I saved Page Thomas.
Okay, sure, it wasn’t from a forty-story building sent up in flames or anything. But, looking back now, I see clearly there was a time when I remembered Brad breaking Page’s heart. Demolishing it, actually.
But this morning, when I think of Page and Brad, I remember them together until I can’t remember them at all. I’ll hear at the senior party that they’re going to college together; that’s the last they’ll be in my life.
As far as I can tell from notes, things changed when I lied about Brad not liking girls. Page was forced to find another way into Brad’s arms, and it seems to have made all the difference.
So, yes, I am friendless. And, yes, I’ve been wronged by an apparently gorgeous and wonderful guy. I’m living with a mom I can’t trust and dreading the worst kind of heartbreak imaginable in the form of a dead child.
My life is screwed up, to say the least.
But the tiny smidgen of a tidbit of a crumb of a shaving of sunshine on this bleak Wednesday morning is that I saved Page Thomas from heartbreak. With one simple decision months ago, I changed something for the better.
And if I can help her, surely I can help myself.
I have the metal door positioned in a way that allows me to keep watch on Jamie Connor’s locker across the hall without being obvious about it. I’m staring into the magnetic vanity mirror, waiting. Of course, I look like I’m in love with myself, but no one is paying attention to me anyway.
Because I can see what’s behind me, I know that the boy I’m assuming is Luke, thanks to photos in my bedroom this morning, walked by earlier, slowly, hesitantly, like he wanted to stop.
But he didn’t.