Meg & Linus Page 4

  “I see,” she says, sounding very smug about it.

  “No you don’t,” I try, but she just smirks widely.

  “He’s cute.”

  “I really hadn’t noticed.”

  The way she is able to raise one eyebrow almost to her hairline has always been slightly frightening to me, and it’s even worse when that look is directed at me.

  “Meg—” I start, but she interrupts me.

  “Can it. Is this the coffee shop guy? He’s joining drama club, and you know it, don’t you? He’s sitting with them. And I saw him signing the sign-up sheet this morning. Your secret plot has been revealed.”

  “There is no secret,” I assure her. “Please, just let it go? Maybe joining this particular club isn’t such a great idea after all.”

  “No, we should totally join the drama club,” she says. “Trying new things is good. And it would give you the perfect excuse to talk to him.”

  That makes me laugh. “Like he’d be interested in talking to me.”

  She frowns at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I shrug. “I’m kind of chubby and a bit boring and he is, like, really good-looking and probably has a million friends—”

  “Okay, what does his number of friends have to do with anything?” she asks, confused. “And he’s a drama geek; they’re not exactly popular, either, are they? Plus, he’s the new kid. How could he already be popular? He’s definitely not popular yet! He’ll be happy to make new friends!”

  “He’s more popular than we are. Plus, those drama club kids are actually pretty cool. Aren’t they?”

  “Sophia was in drama club,” Meg reminds me. “And she still dated me. For two years.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Also, you’re cute as a button,” she continues. “He’d be lucky to have you!”

  “I’m not—”

  “And since when are you boring? When have you ever been boring?”

  “My idea of a perfect Friday night is rewatching Firefly and then reading until I fall asleep on the couch.”

  “So?”

  “I own not only a pair of Star Trek pajamas but also Batman pajamas.”

  “Which are both awesome.”

  “The Batman pajamas have a cape attached to them.”

  “Even more awesome!”

  “I actually like going to class.”

  She groans and throws both hands up in frustration. “Because you actually like most things! You’re one of the most passionate and intelligent people I have ever met in my life—how is that a bad thing?”

  I stare sullenly at my pasta that’s slowly getting cold and scowl just to prove her wrong, even if all the nice things she is saying about me just make me want to get up and hug her. “Meg, can you honestly see someone like him even looking at someone like me? If he even likes guys, which I doubt he does!”

  She is quiet for a moment, and when I look up to check her face, she is just watching me, eyes narrowed.

  “Okay,” she says slowly, biting her lip, obviously thinking this through. “True, we don’t know if he’s gay. And it’s not like we can just ask him. And he’s new, isn’t he? So there probably isn’t anyone else we can ask about him; no one will know him well enough yet.… But, anyway, Linus, my point is: If he is … of course I could see him being interested in you. Why wouldn’t I? You two would be adorable together.”

  I lower my eyes back to my lunch and finally pick up my fork and I don’t even know why we’re talking about me all of a sudden.

  “Weren’t we discussing extracurricular activities?” I remind her. “Because one thing I am completely serious about is astronomy club—it’s just so much fun!”

  She sighs. “I know you’re changing the topic on purpose,” she says. “And we’re not done discussing this. But okay. We can talk about astronomy club, too.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her, and I know I have won this round. Meg has a lot of opinions about extracurricular activities, and we both have a lot of opinions about astronomy club. This could take all day.

  Chapter 7

  Meg

  AN IDEA’S STARTED TO TAKE shape in my head ever since lunch with Linus earlier today.

  He thinks I forgot about the coffee shop guy he was looking at and blushing about redder than my mom’s favorite nail polish, before he distracted me with talk of extracurricular activities. And I let him think that he had succeeded in distracting me, because I do have an idea forming, and that idea is going to become a plan. A secret plan.

  I think it’s perfect. Well, it’s going to be, once I figure out all the details.

  You see, Linus is my best friend in the world, but for someone as awesome as he is, he has a spectacularly low opinion of himself when it comes to romantic things.

  I guess part of it is due to the fact that he’s gay and, I don’t know, it’s just difficult to tell if someone else is queer or not, most of the time. Especially at our age. And it’s not as simple as walking up to someone and asking them. First of all, that requires a lot of confidence. But also, and even more important, doing that could mean accidentally outing them, which you don’t want to do. Or they might be offended, which I personally don’t understand at all—people assume I’m straight sometimes and I don’t yell at them. But really, very few people our age are out (and I understand why—there are some real jerks at our school), and as a result, the dating pool is more of a dating … puddle. Very small. That’s why I felt so lucky to find Sophia.

  But I know that Linus mostly assumes no one will like him anyway because he’s not the traditional Popular Guy Type, and movies and books lead us to believe that that is who you need to be if you want to be successful and have a lot of friends. So many teen movies are only about the poor, misunderstood, stereotypical nerds who just need the perfect makeover before people decide to finally notice their existence. Just pluck your eyebrows and change your sweaters and lose ten pounds and suddenly that asshole who was shallow enough to never look at you before will fall madly in love with you. Like that is what matters.

  Why are you only allowed to be happy if you look like you stepped right off the cover of a magazine? Not that there is anything wrong with looking like that, but can we stop making people feel like they have to if they want people to like them?

  When I first met Sophia I was fifteen and I was awkward. But, come on. Honestly! Who isn’t awkward at fifteen?

  Well, Sophia wasn’t very awkward in my eyes. But when you listen to her talk about that time, she didn’t really see herself as especially pretty or elegant, either.

  Still, she was perfect to me. All wild curls and graceful movement when she was walking down the halls.

  Then one day I had to stay late in the library for a study group, and when I was walking out I just happened to walk past the classroom the choir uses to rehearse. They’d apparently just finished rehearsal and she came barreling out of the room carrying a tall stack of sheet music right when I turned the corner.

  I have no idea why she tripped, but she did, and the whole stack went toppling over, paper flying everywhere, and, you know what? Being polite really pays off. She cursed and dropped to her knees to start gathering up the scattered sheets, and I hurried over and just knelt down beside her and said, “Here, let me help you.”

  And she smiled at me and thanked me and together we picked up every piece of paper and restacked it while I tried not to freak out too much, because I’d seen her around school occasionally, and I had always thought she was beautiful, and now I was kneeling next to her on a dirty high school floor.

  “Thank you so much,” she’d said when I finally handed her the pile of only slightly creased paper I had collected.

  “Not a problem.”

  She had sighed. “Now I just need to get these all in the right order again. And there goes my lazy afternoon.”

  To this day I don’t know where I got the courage, but before I could think too much I’d already asked, “Do you need a hand wit
h that?”

  We’d spent maybe fifteen minutes getting the sheet music into its proper order again and then another half hour just talking because apparently the choir was doing a tribute to Queen and I’m such a huge Freddie fan. She tried to get me to join, but I’m not a good singer so I had to decline. Then she sang me a few bars of “A Kind of Magic” and “It’s a Hard Life” and made me promise to come to their concert in November. I’d promised and we’d walked out to the parking lot together.

  After that she’d always smiled at me when we passed each other in the hallway, and sometimes she stopped by my locker when she saw me there and we chatted a bit. It took me three weeks to realize she was flirting with me, because nobody had ever done that before. Once I started to suspect that that was what she was doing, I did my best to flirt back, and when she asked me out a month after the Choir Room Incident I was so happy I could have proposed to her on the spot.

  But yeah, the point is, I didn’t dress very well and I had a terrible haircut and I didn’t even have many friends. But Sophia liked me anyway.

  Call me crazy, but I have always believed that if someone ignores you when you’re wearing a reindeer sweater and clunky sandals, they have no business suddenly liking you just because you come floating down a ridiculously wide staircase in a ball gown and with your glasses exchanged for contact lenses.

  I mean, listen. Not all of us can wear contact lenses. I can’t. My eyes are too dry. They just go all red and itchy when I put lenses in them. It’s the very opposite of attractive. Makes me look like a weird zombie demon. And if I ditch the lenses and the glasses completely—well. The truth is, I’m blind as a bat. I’d come down those stairs in a heap of ball gown and glass slippers.

  Anyway, there is a point to this rant, and it is as follows:

  Linus is not a Popular Guy Type. But he is wonderful. He’s a real catch. He’s smart. As in, genius level of smartness. He has the absolutely greatest sense of humor of anyone I have ever met. He’s kind. He’s the most loyal friend you could imagine.

  So he’s not super skinny. He’s not tall. He has kind of a round face and he’s more than a bit … rotund, but that’s just how he looks. That’s just Linus, and he looks good.

  Besides. It’s not like the guy he was checking out looks like he jumped off a magazine cover. Sure, he has some serious hair game going on, and he’s taller than Linus, and he seemed nice enough when I bumped into him by the bulletin board. But he also looks a little too skinny, almost on the lanky side. Also, I’ve seen him walking toward the lockers after lunch and he is definitely not unawkward; I distinctly remember him slouching along the school hallway as if he had grown too fast and didn’t quite dare stand up straight all the way just yet for fear of finding out he was afraid of heights.

  Well, anyway. My mind is made up more and more the longer I keep thinking about this, the plan already starting to take shape in my head.

  I’m going to set them up with each other.

  Before the first half of this school year is over, Linus will have gone on a date with Danny Singh, Mystery Guy.

  Chapter 8

  Linus

  WE NEVER GET MUCH HOMEWORK the first day back after the summer, so I only have a few things to take care of once I get home and then the afternoon is all mine. While that is most definitely an exciting prospect, I did just have an entire summer off and I don’t really know what to do with myself.

  I try watching TV, but there’s nothing on and I don’t feel like rewatching any of my box sets. I try reading a little, but I’m feeling restless and can’t focus on the book, so after I realize I’ve read the same sentence ten times, I put the book down.

  My parents always come home late these days—work keeps them busy.

  Meg should be here soon, though. And then we can play video games or hang out at the park or go for coffee (maybe Danny will be working?). Or just stay in and watch something, since I don’t know how she feels about going out today; I know she usually prefers to do quiet things when she’s sad.

  She hasn’t seemed too sad, though. Which worries me a bit, if I’m being honest.

  I can’t keep my thoughts from continually returning to the entire Sophia Situation.

  I get up from my seat on the couch and walk into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee that I am going to enjoy in my solitude while I wait for Meg to get here. It’s hard feeling sorry for myself for having a slightly boring evening when Meg has been sitting at home these past few days all by herself doing whatever it is people do who just got dumped.

  I know that I have to do something.

  I know Meg and Sophia. I know that whatever happened between them, it probably can be fixed. And they’re my friends—I don’t want them to be unhappy.

  If I could just find out what happened … maybe I could fix it? Or at least help them figure it out.

  But I cannot ask Meg about this. I wanted to ask more about the circumstances of their breakup a few times during the day, but every time she just got this hurt look in her eyes and changed the topic. And I really don’t want to upset her, even if I do think she is deflecting a bit. She does that. It’s usually not a good sign.

  Maybe this is my own lack of romantic experience talking, but I swear, I do believe that they don’t want to be broken up. I know Meg doesn’t. And if I know Sophia at all, she’s probably sitting in her dorm room at college crying into her pillow because she misses Meg.

  Okay, maybe not. But I really did think that they were the real deal. And maybe I just need to understand it for myself. I just have to be really careful about it because I don’t want to upset either of them and they probably don’t need a creepy friend poking around in their business when they just want to move on.

  So I fill the coffeemaker, press the button. Nothing cheers Meg up like coffee, so I’ll have it ready for her when she gets here. After this summer, coffee has some awfully good associations for me, too, and I already was a fan to begin with. Once the coffeemaker is gurgling away merrily on the counter, I go back to the living room to retrieve my laptop and carry it back into the kitchen, where I sit down at the table.

  If I can’t fix my friends’ relationship, I can at least check social media, where people share everything no one wants to know about completely freely. Maybe spending a few minutes reading about what other people had for breakfast will make me feel less lonely. Who knows?

  The smell of coffee filling our tiny kitchen, I make myself comfortable in my chair and click to a new tab in my browser.

  I have barely opened my timeline and scrolled through just the first few posts (picture of a cat, a weird poem, a guy from astronomy club is buying a croissant at his favorite bakery, another picture of a cat), when the chat window interrupts my solitary socializing.

  I sigh deeply and take a look in the bottom right corner, then promptly suck in a breath, holding it in, trying not to panic.

  Because.

  What do I do what do I do what do I do?

  It’s Sophia.

  Talking to me.

  Via chat.

  Her message contains no greeting, no pleasantries, nothing I could easily respond to should I choose that that was the right course of action in this particular situation.

  What it says is, quite simply:

  How is she?

  And I sit there, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and I don’t know what to do, until there’s a knock at the kitchen window and Meg is smiling at me through the glass. I slam the lid of my laptop shut, and I swear I can feel my heart leap its way right into my throat.

  At least this afternoon suddenly isn’t boring anymore.

  Chapter 9

  Meg

  LINUS LOOKS LIKE A STARTLED puppy as he stares at me through the kitchen window and it makes me laugh out loud even if that’s a bit mean.

  I make my way over to the front door and he lets me in, still looking weirdly guilty. Who knows what he was doing on his laptop. But hey, he knew I was coming over this afternoon.


  “I smell coffee,” I say in lieu of a greeting.

  “Of course you do,” he answers, laughing nervously. “What kind of a friend do you think I am?”

  He looks like the kind of friend who’s currently hiding something or being embarrassed about something. I narrow my eyes at him and tilt my head, but he just keeps avoiding my eyes and bouncing on his feet and I decide to take pity on him and not make him tell me what’s going on. “Backyard?” I ask instead. “The weather is beautiful.”

  “Sure.” He seems relieved. “We can make an episode list for our Star Trek rewatch.”

  I clap my hands together excitedly. “Yes! Go grab a notepad and a pen; I’ll get the coffee.”

  “Meet you outside,” he agrees, and almost falls over his own feet as he scurries for the stairs.

  I shake my head at him fondly and walk off in the direction of his kitchen at a far more dignified pace. I know his kitchen as well as my own by now, so I quickly get two mugs and fill them for us, then carry them out through the living room, careful not to spill anything onto his parents’ carpet. I have to set them down on the small end table next to the back door, on top of a stack of magazines, to nudge the door open.

  It’s beautiful outside. Sunny and warm, birds singing, the air full of that late-summer smell of cut grass and wet leaves and earth. It’s such a lovely afternoon and it makes my chest ache because Sophia always used to drag me outside when the weather was like this. Just to walk around or get ice cream or go for a swim. She would have loved this day.

  She probably is loving this day, if it’s the same weather in her college town. I just won’t get to hear about it.

  “Okay, we’re all set.” Linus shows up behind me, legal pad and pen clutched to his chest. “Let the list making begin!”

  “Yay!” I hand him his mug and he takes a sip immediately before walking past me toward the wooden set of garden furniture on the far end of the porch, setting down his writing utensils and pulling out one of the chairs for himself.

  I follow and sit down across from him, force a smile onto my face. “Do we go chronologically or are we just randomly brainstorming first?”