Page 20 of The Way I Used to Be
I can’t help but smile.
“Is that a yes?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Maybe.”
He looks at me more seriously now. “What, do you have a boyfriend or something?”
“No.”
We just stand there, saying nothing.
“All right,” he finally says with an exhale. “I guess, let me know then.”
As I watch him walk away, God, I wish I would’ve just said yes. I step out from the aisle to see if I can still catch him. But just as he walks out the door, I see Amanda standing there at one of the shelves, absently touching the spines of books. She’s looking back and forth between me and Josh. This time I glare at her. Pretending she doesn’t see me, she pulls a book and starts randomly thumbing the pages.
SITTING IN THE GRASSnext to the tennis courts, I pick those fuzzy white dandelions, absently blowing the little seeds off into the wind. Almost October, this is probably one of the last truly nice days of the year. There’s a chill, but the sun feels so warm, it makes the actual coldness of the air inconsequential. I want to breathe it in. Hold it there in my lungs forever.
Mara’s staying after with Cameron to work on something for their art class. I guess I could go home, but I really don’t want to be there, either. So I wait for her instead, whether she wants me to or not.
“I hope you’re making wishes when you do that,” I hear someone call out behind me. I turn around, shielding my eyes from the sun. It’s the silhouette of a boy, and a blazing pink and orange sky behind him. A tall boy in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and a knee brace, toting a duffel bag and a water bottle. He’s wearing this old, beat-up black cap that makes it hard to see his face, but as he steps closer, his features gradually come into focus. “Otherwise you’re just making more weeds,” he finishes.
I clear my throat, try to sound casual. “You’re always sneaking up on me, aren’t you?”
“Notalways—just twice.” He smiles.
It had been almost two weeks since I’d seen him at the library. I’m shocked he’s even talking to me. I figured I’d pretty much blown it.
“So, what are you wishing for?” he asks, taking off his hat as he drops down on the ground next to me, uninvited. His face is flushed, hair damp. And his eyes are slightly glazed, like he’s really tired. I remember my brother always having that look when he came home from practice.
I think about my answer for a second while I watch him settle in next to me.
“I don’t wish,” I decide. Not for things that can be taken care of by delicate white pixies surfing aimlessly on haphazard currents of air, anyway. He looks disappointed—I’m not playing right. I’m supposed to make up some cute thing I want more than anything in the world. And then he’s supposed to spin me a web of bullshit about all the ways he could make that thing happen. Of course, he couldn’t. And I wouldn’t. So, we’re left to our own devices.
“Everyone wishes,” he insists.
“Not me.” I would look so much tougher if I had a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I’m not to be messed with, that’s the impression I want to give him. I’m not naive or stupid. In fact, I’m not even nice.
Now he looks more than disappointed. He looks like he wants to wish on a weed that he hadn’t just sat down next to me. He doesn’t say anything as he looks out at the nothing, at all the people who are not here, and thus will not rescue him.
“Well, okay—” I start. Out of the corner of my eye I can see that he’s stopped sweeping the deck for a life jacket and faces me now. “Even if I did wish for something—and I’m not saying that that’s what I was doing—I still wouldn’t tell you what it is.” I steal a glance. He’s grinning. He’s cute, and he knows it too. The sun filters through his irises, pulling out all these kaleidoscopic caramel and mahogany colors that had been hiding behind chocolate. I have to force myself to stop looking. He inches closer. I feel my heart accelerate.
“Because then it won’t come true, right?” he asks.
I nod. “Exactly.”
“Yeah, but do they ever really come true anyway, even when you don’t tell?” Interesting tactic—playing to my cynicism. He’s good.
“You have a point,” I admit. I can see his mind working as he looks at me, deciding which move, which play to make in order to win, to beat me.
“You know, I did a project once on the life cycle of dandelions,” he tells me, nodding toward the now empty stem in my hand. “Second grade or something like that.”
I don’t think this is in the script. I rack my brain. No, I don’t have anything to say to that. He reaches somewhere behind us and picks something out of the ground; I hear the flimsy stem snap. I just silently tap my shoe against the yellow weed at my foot.
“Well, you know how they’re yellow at first? And then after the petals fall off you get that white, fluffy stuff so the seeds can float away?” he asks, examining the one he just plucked from the ground.
I nod.
“See, this one... is sort of in between.” He holds it close to my face so I can get a better look. “The yellow petals are gone, and the white’s starting to come through, but they’re not really light enough to start flying away yet.” He blows at it, but nothing happens.
