You Win

“You’re hiding something from me,” Maggie said at lunch the next day.

I looked behind me, checking if there was someone else there. “Me?” I asked.

“Yes you,” she said, exasperated by my uncooperativeness already. “What do you know? Something happened. I can tell. You’ve been weird for a while now, but it’s getting worse. You keep staring straight through me like I’m not here and then you realize you’re doing it and sit up really straight like you’ve caught yourself—”

She stopped talking and narrowed her eyes at me, then widened them so much they could have rolled onto the table.

“Are you having sexual fantasies about me, Caroline? Tell the truth.”

“I’m—”

“Tell the truth!” she commanded, pounding her fist on the table dramatically. It was a wonder how she could keep a straight face.

I bowed my head in nonexistent shame, playing along. With Maggie, it was always easiest to just play along. “Yes,” I said. “It’s been going on for a while now. I thought I could hide it from you—but I should have realized that you know me better than that.”

She shook her head disapprovingly. “I can’t believe this. Things will never be the same between us.”

I pretended to wipe a tear from my eye.

Maggie held a hand to her heart, as if it had just snapped in two.

I laughed. “It’s a good thing the entire school knows better than to sit with us at lunch,” I said, thinking about our freshman year when we had actually tried to have other friends. All that did was give us more ammunition to make fun of people instead of actually providing us with fulfilling relationships. People didn’t automatically understand us, so we were instantly labeled as weirdos. Of course, we didn’t really do anything to deny such assumptions.

“Remember that time I hit Emily Davidson?” Maggie said with a wistful smile on her face. “I think that pretty much solidified our solitude for the rest of our god-forsaken high school careers.”

“Yes, good times, good times,” I said in a reminiscent voice.

Maggie had punched Emily because Emily had attacked her because Maggie had told her she was a slut for sleeping with her older brother’s friend. Is there some sort of irony in this? Probably. But I decided to pursue other thoughts instead, such as the look on Emily’s face after Maggie had hit her, which was etched into my brain for probably all of eternity.

“Except you got suspended for a week and left me to fend for myself as I took the brunt of your socially unacceptable actions,” I said.

Maggie held up her hands in surrender. “And I told you that if you ever hit anyone and got suspended, I would deal with all the blithering idiots for you. An even trade.”

Yeah, except we both knew I’d never hit anyone unless it was a light jab in the arm or less. I knew how to throw a punch. Carter had taught me after Maggie had hit Emily, because he had thought it was a good idea just in case I ever needed to hit somebody. I honestly couldn’t fathom a time I would ever need to hit anyone except maybe if Carter was being an über-jerk and needed to be put in his place. So he was really only hurting himself in trying to help me. Still, I was glad I could put it on the plentiful list of all my nonskills.

I thought about Carter and how serious he’d been when he’d asked for The Favor. As in, a date with Maggie. The Favor. The only other time I’d seen him that serious was two years ago when the school’s soccer team had made it to the finals, and right before the game he put his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the face, and said, “Do you have the hacky sack?”

The Hacky Sack was Carter’s equivalent of a rabbit’s foot or a horse shoe or whatever people were using for good luck nowadays. I had pulled The Hacky Sack out of my pocket and held it out in front of him. He didn’t touch it, just looked at it solemnly and nodded, then followed his teammates onto the field.

That was the most serious I’d ever seen Carter. Until The Favor. So that was how I knew he wasn’t just being a dick. It was still so weird to think about, but it also kind of made sense.

“You’re doing it again.”

I refocused my eyes on Maggie and straightened my posture.

“Sexual fantasies,” Maggie said, straight-faced.

I rolled my eyes.

“Tell me what you were thinking about or I’ll assume you have erotic fantasies in which I am the main role.”

I shook my head.

“And Luke is a supporting role? Is that what you said? Oh, I should tell him! I’m sure he’d be down for a threesome. Then maybe he’ll realize how sexy and awesome you are and fall madly in love with you.”

I did nothing.

“Or maybe he’ll realize how sexy and awesome I am instead, and you’ll still be kicked to the curb like yesterday’s newspaper.”

“That was uncalled for.”

“I’ll keep going until you tell me what’s going on in your head. You know I will.”

“It’s nothing—”

“Hey, there’s Luke!” she exclaimed, looking over my shoulder and waving at him frantically. “Maybe we should propose the idea of a threesome to him—”

I reached over the table and yanked her arms down to her sides, looking over my shoulder to see Luke give us a questioning look before proceeding to grab his Mountain Dew out of the vending machine like nothing had happened.

“I’m sure Andy would go for the idea right away,” Maggie continued, to my absolute horror. “He’s in this lunch, isn’t he?” She started scanning the surrounding tables for Andy. I had to stop her before this got too far.

“Okay! My God, just stop.”

She looked at me smugly.

I didn’t say anything.

She started scanning the crowd again.

“You don’t want to hear this,” I started. “You’ll be traumatized for the rest of your life.”

She blinked at me. “Then obviously I must know.”

I didn’t see any way out of it. We still had over twenty-five minutes of lunch left. There was no way I could stall that long without something catastrophic happening at the hand of Maggie.

“Well…” I tried to find the words to say it, but I couldn’t.

“Well, what?”

“I don’t really know how to put this.”

“You could start by just saying it,” Maggie said calmly. “That seems to work ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“What about the other one percent?”

“I strangle you do death before you can get the words out.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. But just remember that you gave me no choice. And don’t come crying to me when Carter finds out that I told you and flips out and denies everything and—”

“This is about Carter?” Maggie asked quickly.

“…Yes.”

She hesitated. “I don’t want to hear it.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“No, actually I do. Tell me. Now.”

“Maggie—”

“Tell me now!” she demanded, but this time she wasn’t putting on a show.

I started talking, afraid she would turn into The Hulk and start throwing people across the lunchroom. “Well, you see, as funny as it is, he’s sort of developed… a little crush on you.”

At her blank stare, I continued. “I think. I mean, I’m not completely sure because. Who knows when to take Carter seriously? You know? So he could just be dicking around. I’m almost sure that’s what it is.” Even though it wasn’t. “And he’ll probably drop it before it even gains any momentum, I’m sure. All these willing vaginas around school, I’m sure he’ll forget about yours in no time!”

That wasn’t helping anything. Her brow furrowed a little, but the rest of her face stayed blank.

“Carter has the attention span of a gnat,” I said. “I’m sure he just convinced himself he likes you, because he sees you all the time. His mind is probably just playing tricks on him. He’s not very bright, you know. Of course you know that. He’ll believe anything his hormones tell him. He’s—”

“How many more of these excuses do you have?” Maggie asked, lifting a brow.

I examined her. She had lifted an eyebrow. Kept the rest of her face blank. Her eyebrow hardly even went up, like this situation wasn’t worth the extra effort of lifting her eyebrow another centimeter or two. That meant she was either not affected by this information at all, or she was pretending not to be affected by this information. I couldn’t tell which.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything for so long, that Maggie, Maggie, grew uncomfortable with the silence and started talking.

“Carter always has to fuck shit up,” she mumbled under her breath, like she was talking to herself. Then her voice got louder, but it still kind of sounded like she was talking to herself. “He does this now. Now, of all times. He doesn’t know what the hell he wants. No guy ever knows what he goddamn wants anymore, and we’re the ones who have to put up with it!” She was looking at me now, and I got the sense that there was more to this than I knew.

“How did you find out this little nugget of golden information?” Maggie asked, once she was done talking to herself.

“Carter said he’d give me information about Luke if I did him a favor, which turned out to be convincing you to go out on one date with him, which I then told him was not going to happen, so I never did find anything out about Luke. Which isn’t very shocking because I never find anything out about Luke.”

Maggie put her chin in her hand and proceeded to look extremely deep in thought. Then a sudden, unexpected grin spread across her face. “So Carter has crush on little old me? I can use that to my advantage.”

“Maggie, no.” I shook my head, thinking about Carter’s serious face. “Don’t.”

She scoffed, her grin disappearing in a flash. “Why not? He’s always the one to fuck things up, now here’s my chance to give him a taste of his own medicine.”

“That’s not—wait. What?”

“What?”

“He’s always fucking things up?” I reiterated.

“What?” Maggie was playing dumb.

“You said that.”

“I said that?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. She squirmed for thirty seconds before she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay! Carter and I… we…”

And that was all I needed to hear. Carter and I. Like they were one unit. We. The guilty expression on her face made it even more obvious.

“When?” I demanded. How could she have kept this from me? She told me everything, from the current color of her mom’s nail polish (black, indicating negative feelings), to her insecurity about the way she pronounced hotdog (like hawtdawg).

“Over the summer.”

“For how long?”

“Like thirty-six hours.”

“You guys didn’t even make it two full days?” I asked, finding it kind of comical in the midst of all the betrayal and confusion I was feeling.

That was when her shoulders slumped like she had been holding the weight of the world on her shoulders but was too tired to pretend she could handle it anymore, and her forehead connected with the fake wood of the table in front of her several times. I had to reach out and stop her before she did any permanent brain damage. At least, any more than what Carter had clearly already done.

“It was really stupid, Caroline. I never should have succumbed to his charms, but with you hung up on Luke all the time it pretty much made Carter always present whether I liked it or not. And after a while, I started to like it. Which is absolutely ridiculous because he’s a total asshole. I deserve so much better than him!”

She looked really distraught about the whole thing, so I decided not to bitch at her.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

She sighed. “I don’t know…” she trailed off, thinking. “I guess—remember when we were fighting about God-knows-what, and I started hanging out with Carter a lot just to piss you off?”

I remembered it. It was before Luke and I had straightened things out between us. In my mind, there was a Before Forgiveness and an After Forgiveness. This happened in the Before period. I remembered her hanging out with Carter and all his idiot friends, and I remembered trying not to be mad about it but secretly being livid and jealous and really, really frustrated.

“Well…” Maggie said hesitantly. “We just started talking a lot and it was weird because I really hated him, and I hated you at the time, and I just really hated everything at that point in my life. But it was like Carter became a different person when we talked and he was like a shining beacon of non-hate that I could focus on for a few hours a day. Even though I did hate him.”

She let out a heavy sigh, full of unspoken words.

“I don’t know,” she continued. “Part of me knew that always saying the right thing came so easily to him because he’s done it to every girl who has working ears and existent breasts, but then another part of me thought that maybe I was different, you know? Like I was more than just a girl whose heart needed to be captured. Yeah. Stupid, I know. Really stupid. Because after approximately thirty-six hours of hopefulness, he decided it was a good idea to show up at my house and pressure me to sneak out with him, even though my mom was being a super-bitch and wasn’t letting me have human contact because I had forgotten to water the plants, which is such a sad excuse for “parenting” that I actually convinced myself that sneaking out with Carter was a good thing because if my mom found out, then at least she’d have a legitimate reason to punish me. Plus he called me a wimp and I couldn’t just let him say that to me.”

She looked down at her hands and played with one of her bracelets. At this point, I was all ears. Every ounce of my body and mind was invested in the words coming out of her mouth.

“Keep going,” I prompted.

She kept playing with her bracelet. “So we snuck out. And the whole time I felt so guilty because I kept picturing my mom watching TV in the living room and glancing at the dying plants during the commercials and shaking her head. And I kept thinking about you and how you were probably trying to read some book but kept getting distracted by your thoughts and you were probably talking to Clark the Super Fish because I wasn’t there for you because I was with your brother and it all just felt so wrong. So I told him that and he freaked out. He was a total asshole about it. He said it didn't matter what you thought because we had nothing to do with you. I couldn’t believe he said that. And we just got in a really huge fight, which is way too easy for us to do, and he ended up driving home and leaving me alone at the skate park with a bunch of losers, so I had to call my mom to pick me up because I sure as hell wasn’t calling you, and I didn’t really have any other options because I’m such a fucking bitch to everyone else. So my mom picked me up and reminded me of what a fucking disappointment I am and how it was just so like my father to do and there’s no way I got this stupidity gene from her.”

She looked at the oblivious students around us, going on with their days like normal. Like this wasn’t the most monumental lunch conversation we’d ever had, and would probably ever have.

“God, Caroline. It was the worst night of my life and I couldn’t even tell you about it because you would have freaked out. And I don’t have a Super Fish or a sibling to talk to. It was just so bad and it made me hate Carter so much. I got so psychotic about my hate for him that I’m pretty sure he was the reason my skin started itching all the time, and I blamed him for all my problems with my mom and the dying plants and just everything. Everything that went wrong was his fault. And then my hate got to be so huge and uncontainable that it started turning into something that wasn’t hate and I started to like him again and oh God, you look so terrified right now. Why am I even telling you all of this? You didn’t ask for the whole entire story. I shouldn’t have told you all of that. God.”

She was shaking her head and I could tell she was on the brink of bawling her eyes out. I’d never seen Maggie cry before, and I didn’t want the first time to be while we were surrounded by people who didn’t give a shit.

“I just had to get it out. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I wanted to, but you were dealing with Luke and I didn’t know how you’d react and I didn’t want to make things worse for you or for me and—”

“Stop talking!” I shrieked. I lowered my voice so as not to draw any unwanted attention from nosy passersby. “I don’t even know how to compute this. I’m mad at you because you didn’t tell me earlier. How could you keep this from me? This is huge! But I understand why you didn’t want to tell me, so calm the fuck down, okay?”

She focused on breathing for a few seconds, and only when the crazed look in her eye died down a little did I continue.

“I wish you had told me all this earlier. He’s my brother, Maggie. My brother! And goddammit, he’s a douche. But…” I paused, thinking about the little things I had picked up from Carter since The Favor, things that I usually wouldn’t have acknowledged. “Nevermind.” I didn’t want to seem like I was siding with Carter just because I kind of understood why he’d acted like that.

Maggie didn’t even press for more. She just slumped in her seat and ate the rest of her lunch. However, by the end of her TV dinner pasta thing, she had perked up again.

“I think the best thing to do is ignore Carter and put all my energy into the Jonah situation,” she said. “We’re hanging out after school today anyway.”

I nodded my head slowly, not sure what to say to that. The bell rang, and we separated with so many words left unsaid that they stretched like an impossibly long slinky between us as we each walked toward our next class. I could feel it tugging on me, pulling my thoughts back to Maggie and Carter and Maggie and Carter, over and over and over again.