Meg & Linus Read online

  I know we’ll most likely be competing for the spot of class valedictorian. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. But I guess that’s a bridge we will cross when we come to it.

  To be honest, the news of Meg and Sophia breaking up really, genuinely freaks me out. You know that Doctor Who episode “Doomsday,” when Rose and Ten are forever separated because she gets sucked into a parallel universe? This shocks me even more than that episode did, and I still can’t watch that one without crying.

  I don’t have any romantic experience of my own to speak of, so I’m not an expert when it comes to relationships. But Meg Montgomery and Sophia Jones just made sense together.

  They weren’t weirdly symbiotic the way you see with couples sometimes—you know, those couples who can’t walk two steps without linking their fingers; those couples who are not even holding hands, just doing this weird tangly thing with their fingers. Those couples who will insist on kissing each other noisily all the time and who can’t sit in chairs next to each other like normal people but are always kind of on top of each other. Those couples that make you kind of uncomfortable all the time and who you won’t hang out with as a single person because it will just make you horribly, horribly depressed.

  Well, Meg and Sophia were not like that. It was more like … Sophia would go over to Meg’s on an afternoon and Meg would help her with her pre-calc homework, and during their homework breaks Sophia would teach Meg the fox-trot or salsa because Sophia was really into dancing. And I know Meg had fun learning to dance even though she never even thought about it before Sophia came along. They complemented each other. Isn’t that what all of us want?

  They talked about the kind of puppy they wanted to adopt once they were married and living together. That’s how serious they were about their relationship.

  They never showed each other off. Maybe it’s the lesbian thing and the fact that people kind of react to that whenever they see it. Like, two girls holding hands or kissing each other in the hallways of a public school? Either they’ll gather an audience of male perverts who’ll try to talk them into a sexy pillow fight (which is seriously just a weird thing to do; do they actually think they carry pillows in their backpacks? Or that they’ll start having sex right in front of them if they just ask nicely enough or shout it at them loudly enough?) or they’ll have people make rude comments about them. It’s pretty much always one of the two.

  But I don’t think it was that. Not just that.

  Their relationship was never about the world. It was about them.

  I just really honestly cannot believe that they broke up.

  If not even they could make it work, that doesn’t make me feel very hopeful about the future.

  And really, hope is pretty much all I have; my own romantic life hasn’t been all that exciting lately.

  That sounds misleading. What I mean to say is, my romantic life has been nonexistent, the same way it has been my entire life previous to this vaguely undefined lately.

  I know that most people probably don’t have half as many relationships in high school as TV makes us believe they do, and I shouldn’t be worried, and I shouldn’t let it get me down.

  But the thing is, I’m a seventeen-year-old boy who has never had a boyfriend and while I do have many other things in my life that make me happy, I just really … want one.

  I know I would be so good at it, at being someone’s boyfriend. If I could just have a chance to prove it!

  There was a guy for a little while whom I met over the Internet, and I’m not going to tell you how because you’ll laugh, but I don’t know, we just connected somehow and started e-mailing and IM-ing a bit and we exchanged pictures and he was really cute and really nice and maybe if he hadn’t been living in Portugal, which is awfully far from here, we might have given it a shot. But in the end, we just started talking less and I know he has a boyfriend now, and maybe that’s for the best.

  It isn’t like I was in love with him or anything anyway. And I know that for a fact because I do have a pretty good idea what being in love feels like after my summer of hanging out at that coffee shop, even if I don’t have a chance with Danny. I doubt he even remembers me.

  But he’s just so cute.

  He’s also in the hallway right in front of me, I realize all of a sudden, and it’s enough to almost make me trip over my feet. He’s standing right there, talking to a girl I recognize immediately as the president of the drama club, and I stop in my tracks as I see him shaking hands with her as she waves her clipboard at him and points down the hall toward the bulletin board, and he nods. Is he thinking about signing up for drama club? That just seems so … fitting. He looks good enough to be an actor, and he’s shy enough that I have no trouble believing he’s probably really sensitive, too.

  I know that I don’t have a shot with him. People like Danny don’t go for short and nerdy guys who prefer working in the library over gym class and get excited about Star Trek reruns. Well, guys like Danny probably don’t go for other guys at all. But I can dream, right?

  At least I realize, as I slide into my chair just as the bell rings, that apparently we have first-period history together this year. He’s right behind me through the door and slides into the chair two seats over to my left. So there is something good about this morning after all, something to maybe help me calm my nerves after Meg’s shocking news this morning.

  I’m going to sit in history class and steal subtle glances at his beautiful brown-skinned profile and pine away in peace. I am really good at pining. It’s one of my strongest talents.

  Chapter 5

  Meg

  PHYSICS CLASS DOES A LOT to calm me down.

  I like science and math, I like numbers; I always have. And being able to focus on something that makes sense to me definitely helps distract me from all the things that currently don’t make much sense at all. Like the fact that I no longer have a girlfriend.

  You know what the really frustrating thing is about all of this, though?

  I can’t even really blame Sophia for ending things between us.

  I mean, it sucks. I am not going to pretend that I’m not heartbroken, because I am. I was so sure that Sophia and I were going to last; I had already sort of planned our wedding. I could picture it quite clearly: Sophia’s dark skin against a beautiful white dress. Sunflowers as decoration, and Linus was going to be my best man, of course. We were going to write our own vows, and I was going to talk about how I’d known she was the one since I was sixteen, and it would have made everyone cry.

  Maybe I should have waited to think about all of that until we were actually engaged. I see that now. And it’s not like I had actual plans. More like … daydreams, I guess. But hey, I was really certain that it was going to happen! I had no reason at all to believe otherwise, since the few times I made comments like “I want this cake at our wedding” or “Do you think this should be our first dance at the wedding reception” or something along those lines, Sophia laughed and hugged me and agreed with me!

  But through all of my heartache, I do know that she had a point in saying that long-distance almost never works and that it probably would have been really hard, maintaining our relationship with both of us being in different states.

  What I don’t get is that it would have been only for a year. She wasn’t willing to give it a shot for one year?

  The difference between us, I guess, is that I would have been willing to try. She wasn’t. And even though I don’t want to miss her after she broke my heart, I still do. I miss everything about her, down to the way she used to drum out weird rhythms with her pen against her books when we were doing homework together. It used to drive me up the wall. Now I just want it back so badly.

  And really, when it comes down to it, she did this so we’d both be free to do whatever we wanted if either of us met someone new.

  But what if I don’t want to meet someone new?

  I know, I know. I’m seventeen. How can I possibly know what I wa
nt to do with the entire rest of my life, let alone who I want to be with?

  Well, I mean, I guess you have to know Sophia to understand this. She’s one of a kind. There is no one like her. You can’t know Sophia and not be in love with her. She’s kind, beautiful, smart, funny … and so, so talented.

  She taught herself to play the guitar when she was a kid, and just two years ago she started with clarinet and got so good so fast she even made it into the school orchestra that same year. She always had big roles in the school plays, but she never bragged about it, instead helped everyone else out, running lines with them and making friends. She’s been doing ballet since she was very young, and she’s so graceful, even when she’s just walking, but she has no problem getting silly and just jumping around the room like a crazy person when her favorite song comes on the radio. She gets excited so easily and she loves everything and everyone, and everything and everyone loves her back.

  She is just one of those people who make the sun rise in every room they enter. She makes people happy.

  She always made me happy.

  So yes, I get why she broke up with me, and at the same time I don’t get it at all. I don’t want to meet anyone new. I’d rather still be her girlfriend even though we can’t see each other every day than not be her girlfriend and not even be able to call or text her. Things being as they are, I’m not even able to think of her and imagine how great it will be the next time we do get to see each other. She won’t be coming back now to have a glass of lemonade with me on the back porch, our shoulders leaning together as we look out over the small patch of grass Mom calls a garden and just talking about everything and nothing like we used to. It’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen ever again. And I don’t know how to handle it.

  I’d rather have a little bit of her than nothing at all.

  But, as with every interpersonal relationship, it’s not just my choice who we are together, or if we are anything together at all.

  I don’t even know why I didn’t tell Linus sooner. I know he would have been there for me. I guess I didn’t want to ruin his summer? And also, I didn’t want it to be real, and as soon as you have to admit something to other people, that’s when it starts feeling real. And I just … couldn’t.

  At least this is the one positive thing to come out of this whole mess: I’ll get to spend more time with Linus now. I know I had been a bit neglectful of him in the months leading up to Sophia’s graduation.

  I wanted to soak up as much time as possible with her.

  I miss it now, those last few weeks of the summer when everything was still perfect. I miss her playing with my fingers when we were watching a movie together. I miss walking up behind her to bury my face in her curly hair when she was making coffee. I miss her singing to me in the car when we were driving somewhere together. I miss her.

  In retrospect, it seems like it was a good choice spending so much time with her this summer, seeing as how our time together was so limited. Even if I didn’t know it then.

  Once class ends, I make sure to pack up my things as quickly as I can and hurry out before anyone can get the idea to approach and talk to me. I am not in the mood for small talk today.

  I have English next, which is at the other end of the building, but since I left in such a rush I have time to stop by the bulletin board near the lockers where the sign-up sheets for all kinds of extracurriculars are already up. I haven’t put too much thought into what I want to do this year yet, but I kind of feel like maybe trying something new. Something I haven’t done before. Something a little unexpected. Not cheerleading, though. I admire everyone who can do it, but I’m really not athletic or bendy enough for that. That rules out yoga club, too. And definitely not marching band, because (a) I don’t play an instrument, and (b) their uniforms are red. I don’t look good in red, thanks to my stupid orangey hair.

  But I’m not going to make a decision right now anyway, and not even all the sign-up sheets are up yet, and also I’m gonna be late for English if I don’t get going.

  I turn around and almost collide with a guy standing there staring at the drama club sheet.

  “Oh,” I say. “So sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he says, smiles, and I smile back, staring impolitely for just another second before he’s the first to hurry off. I know this kid. Well, I don’t know him. But he’s one of the baristas at Linus’s favorite coffee shop, I am sure of it. Average height, spiky hair. Kind of cute, for a guy. I know Linus has had a crush on one of the baristas there all summer and this might just be the guy. He fits Linus’s description perfectly, vague as that had been. His name is Danny, according to the last name scribbled onto the drama club sign-up sheet. Danny Singh.

  Well, I think I’ve figured out what club Linus and I should join.

  Chapter 6

  Linus

  MEG IS ALREADY SITTING IN our usual back corner of the cafeteria by the time I manage to get my own lunch.

  I walk over to her, drop into the seat opposite hers. It’s weird that it’s just us this year; usually Sophia was always here with us. Her absence feels strange to me now, not only because I’m used to having her around but also because I’m not sure I should mention that I miss her. I don’t want to upset Meg.

  When I sit down, she looks up from the book she has propped open against a pile of other books and frowns at me, hand pushing at an errant lock of red hair that has escaped from her ponytail. “You’re late!”

  I shrug. “Sorry. Had to stop by my locker.”

  It’s not exactly the entire truth. Well, I did have to go by my locker to get rid of my disgustingly heavy physics book. But I would have been here faster if I hadn’t spent an extra few minutes pretending to sort through some papers while I was really very secretly watching Danny talking to someone a few lockers down. He is just so cute when he talks, waving his hands around wildly when he gets excited about something.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and sighs. “I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. I guess I just have separation anxiety after—you know.”

  I smile and try to look as reassuring as I can manage. “You know I wouldn’t leave you without a heartfelt text message consisting of at least one hundred characters and a really vague emoticon.”

  She puts a hand over her heart. “Stop it, you’re too good to me! You’re going to make me cry!”

  “Maybe I would even slip a note in your locker.”

  “As long as you didn’t write me a poem.”

  “Not even if it’s a really moving one about the power of friendship and the optimistically idealistic message that no matter where we are in the world, we’ll always totally be besties for life, exclamation point, smiley face, less-than-three?”

  She laughs. “Especially not if it’s anything like that.”

  I sigh deeply and shake my head at her. “Your strange aversion to poetry is really baffling. What happened to you as a kid that makes you reject beautiful, emotional word imagery?”

  She rolls her eyes at me and kicks me under the table. “Shut your face and eat your lunch before it gets cold.”

  “I’ll actually have to open my face for that, though,” I point out.

  “Besides, I am not categorically against poetry per se,” she tells me. “I just like it better when it’s set to music.”

  I nod. “That’s what we call a ‘song’ among experts.”

  “Smarty-pants.”

  “I’m just trying to help!”

  “By the way,” she says, “have you given any thought to your extracurriculars for this year? Because I thought we could maybe sign up for something together.”

  “I like that idea.” I take a sip of my soda and consider all the clubs at this school, and then I catch a glimpse of familiar spiky black hair a few tables over, right in the middle of the usual drama club crowd, and I can’t control the way my face heats up. It just makes me wish I was a little less fair-skinned so that not everyone could see me blush all the time. “I was
thinking of maybe trying something new this year,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

  Meg squints at me and I know she can see the way my face has turned red. I’m just hoping she’ll let it go.

  “New?” she asks. “Like what, for example? Drama club?”

  I pretend to think about it, even though that was exactly what I was going to suggest. She must have seen me glancing over at the drama club lunch table just now. I nod slowly so that I won’t seem too excited about this. “Yeah, why not? That could be interesting.”

  She stares at me for a bit and I try to keep my face as blank as possible so that she won’t guess at my true motivation. Which she can’t, because she doesn’t know about Danny. Well, she knows there’s a guy. She even knows where he works because I can’t help it, he’s so cute, I couldn’t keep it all inside all summer, I had to mention him to her eventually. Repeatedly. But … it’s not like it matters. Nothing’s going to happen with him anyway.

  I know I should tell her I want to join drama club because of him. I feel weird not telling her. But I do know that I have set my sights way too high with this, so … I guess it’s going to stay my little secret.

  Of course, just at that moment I hear him laughing over at his table with the people I assume are his new friends, and my eyes have already darted in his direction before I can stop myself. Have I mentioned yet that he has a really cute smile? Because he has. It’s the kind of smile you don’t want to miss seeing, because it’s like Lembas bread—one tiny morsel of it can sustain you for quite a while.

  I quickly look back at my lunch tray as soon as I realize what I’ve been doing, but it’s too late—Meg has already turned her head to see what captured my attention and when she looks back at me, there’s this little gleam in her eyes that rarely means anything good.

  To make matters worse, I can feel myself blushing quite furiously.