You Win

The school library was pathetic. My small collection of books was ten times better. It was depressing to go in there, but I needed to return a book that I’d used for an English paper. It was on the way to my next class, so I decided to swing by for a second.

I was trying to make sense of everything Maggie had just told me, so when I put the book on the librarian’s counter, I didn’t even hear her say my name.

“There’s water damage to this book,” she said once she had my attention. “I’m going to have to fine you for this…” She sighed and opened a drawer in her filing cabinet. But before she could fish out the pink slip of paper, I heard a distinct laugh from behind me. I looked but didn’t see anyone. I heard the laugh again. It was far away, but I knew it was Elizabeth and I knew it didn’t mean anything good. My spidey senses were tingling.

I left the librarian with her water damaged book and her pink slip, and wove through several bookshelves, keeping my ears alert the whole time. The library wasn’t that big (we didn’t have a big emphasis on reading here), so it didn’t take very long to find Elizabeth and Marybeth. Elizabeth was propped up on a table that Tulip was sitting at, and Marybeth was standing with her arms crossed in front of her.

It was one of those moments where, instead of being electrified by the sight, I just realized how extremely tired I was. I didn’t want to deal with this. Why should I? It was really none of my business. Tulip should be able to fend for herself—

What was I thinking? I saw the look on Tulip’s face, and I realized that feeling a little tired was nothing compared to what she had to go through.

“And where does ham come from?” Elizabeth asked condescendingly. I hid behind a book to eavesdrop. I didn’t want to interfere if there wasn’t any reason to.

Tulip didn’t say anything.

“You don’t even know that?” Elizabeth scoffed. But there was still a smile on her face. She had a pretty smile, it made sense that she wore it all the time even when it didn’t match her actions. “Ham comes from a pig, Tulip!” she chirped. “I don’t really prefer it, I guess. Marybeth likes it.”

Marybeth nodded.

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. Either Elizabeth was running out of ideas to torture people, or her standards were slipping.

“We have ham every Easter in my family. It’s a tradition,” Elizabeth continued.

I almost left—if I didn’t, I would be late for class. But I didn’t know where this was leading and I wanted to find out.

“My Aunt Julia never comes over for Easter because of it. She says that if you eat ham you’ll go to hell. It’s in the Bible, she even showed me. Do you want me to show you, Tulip?”

Tulip shook her head then stood up. “We’re going to be late for class,” she said softly.

Elizabeth waved it off. “We don’t want you to go to hell, Tulip!”

Marybeth laughed.

Elizabeth sent her a look.

Tulip sat down.

“We’re just worried about you, with the pink hair and eating that ham sandwich. All this disobedience, what’s next?”

Marybeth nodded.

“And with the Bible being so weird sometimes, you have to watch everything! Like, wearing those shoes is probably a sin,” Elizabeth said, pointing to Tulip’s black flats.

For a moment, Tulip looked like she wanted to take her flats and chuck them at Elizabeth’s face. She tilted her head forward so that her hair could cover most of her face.

“Forget the shoes, that shirt is a sin,” Elizabeth said.

Marybeth snorted.

“You’re not even clever,” Tulip said. I was taken a little aback by it, and peered closer through the bookshelf. “You just sound stupid.”

There was a tense pause. Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest tightly. “What was that?” she asked, like she hadn’t heard correctly.

Tulip shrugged and didn’t say anything more.

“Oh, Tulip,” Elizabeth cooed, grabbing Tulip’s shoulder and digging her nails into it. I could see it from my place behind the bookshelf, Elizabeth’s long pink nails disappearing to the fabric of Tulip’s white cardigan. “You want me to be more clever?” She smiled. “Okay. We can do that, right, Marybeth?”

Marybeth nodded her head.

“I mean, we have all year. And next year,” Elizabeth said, shaking Tulip’s shoulder a little. “So much to look forward to!”

Tulip just sat there until Elizabeth finally slid off the table and left, Marybeth following in her path. I didn’t know what to do. Go to class or talk to Tulip? It hadn’t been that terrible. Elizabeth had done much worse before. Tulip just stared at the table where Elizabeth had been moments ago. We were both late for class. I was supposed to be in Trigonometry, which was taught by Mr. Goodman, who didn’t really care if you showed up to his class or not so as long as he didn’t run out of dry-erase markers in the middle of an equation that I didn’t understand.

I could have stayed and talked to Tulip, and I probably should have, but I convinced myself that she looked just fine and headed back to the librarian’s desk to get my pink slip, and then set off to math hell.

---

Maggie caught up with me after school by my locker, surprising me. She usually used the avoid-any-and-all-problematic-situations tactic with me, which usually left it up to me to confront any issues that threatened our friendship. I started to notice this about her in our sophomore year, and it had puzzled me ever since. She had no problem confronting other people when it came to problematic situations, but when it was me, she left her confrontational skills behind in favor of the lesser skills of avoidance and sweeping things under the rug.

However, there are exceptions to every rule, and a major one took place at my locker that day. She walked right up to me, slammed my locker closed, grabbed my shoulders, and turned me toward her.

“I have to clarify something,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows in expectation.

“I don’t like Carter.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t,” she insisted. “How could I? He has like, no redeeming qualities. And I have Jonah now. Kind of. But I mean, it’s pretty much a done deal with him anyway. I haven’t exactly captured his heart yet, but it will happen in due time.”

I still didn’t say anything. Yes, I was mad at her for keeping such a huge secret. It made me feel incredibly left out. And before that point, the thought of Maggie keeping something from me was inconceivable. Now that I knew she was capable of keeping things from me, I couldn’t help but wonder what else she hadn’t clued me in on.

“And you should also know that I’m really sorry for not telling you about the Carter thing sooner. And I wanted to let you know how sorry I was before you had the opportunity to think about it too much and let your hate for me multiply over and over because you’ll be staring at your fish and over-thinking while I’ll be out with Jonah and—you should just know that I’m sorry.” She released me, and I felt much lighter without the pressure of her hands on my shoulders.

I didn’t say anything for another moment, and a dejected look started forming on Maggie’s face. But then I laughed, because how could I let Carter come between Maggie and me? How could I let him ruin the best relationship I had going for me? I laughed some more, but the tension didn’t leave Maggie’s face.

“Are you laughing at me, or…?” she asked meekly.

I shook my head. “I don’t hate you. But I would appreciate it if you at least mentioned major things like this…”

“I will, from now on.” She looked grateful, almost like she had expected me to shun her for the rest of eternity and was now forever indebted to me for not hating her.

We hugged and there was a sense that everything was fine between us again. It was nice. I re-opened my locker, grabbed my things, and together we made our way out to the parking lot. I was silent for a while, but I couldn’t help prying a little.

“So…” I said ultra-casually. “You’re just going to ignore the fact that Carter likes you?”

She shrugged. “What else am I supposed to do? I don’t like him, and plus, we’d never work out anyway.”

I looked at her. “You’re kind of breaking his heart.”

She laughed, like what I had said was utterly absurd. “No I’m not.”

“I live with him. Believe me. You kind of are.”

“Okay, we need to clear this up before it gets out of hand.” She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Carter doesn’t like me. He only thinks he likes me. He’s convinced himself that he likes me, for reasons beyond my comprehension. He’ll move on once he realizes there’s no hope for us, and all of this will be soon forgotten.”

“If you say so…” I was extremely doubtful of her prediction, and I didn’t even try to hide it.

“I’m serious, Caroline. You’re an idiot if you think Carter actually likes me. It’s not real. Nothing’s ever real with him. He doesn’t know what he wants…” Etc, etc. I tuned her out because I had heard it all before.

We were coming up to Carter’s car but Maggie didn’t seem to notice, so enraptured in her own theory was she. She also didn’t notice that Carter was leaning against his car, talking to Luke, who was pretending to listen to him but really wasn’t. Luke saw us coming but did nothing to warn Carter of it. I liked to think that it was because he was stunned silent by my glowing beauty, but it was more probably because he just didn’t care, which seemed to be the case with him lately.

When your brother allegedly likes your best friend and you’re completely obsessed with his best friend but both are seemingly unrequited, there are bound to be awkward moments. When Maggie and I were dangerously close to Carter’s car, she finally shut up, realizing that the person she was going on and on and on about, was the same person that was standing mere feet away from her. Carter looked at us and immediately stopped talking, the last words coming out of his mouth barely discernible, but Maggie’s name was definitely there.

It was one of those moments where you knew someone had been talking about you just by the look on their face and the fact that they abruptly stopped talking when they realized you were within hearing distance. Except this time it was twice as bad.

I looked at Luke and he was trying not to laugh, so that made me want to laugh except I didn’t really want to laugh because it wasn’t supposed to be funny.

“So, uh, Caroline,” Luke said in attempt to break the impenetrable awkwardness. “Lily’s really excited about making cookies with you tomorrow.”

It took me a moment to remember my promise to bake cookies with his little sister the day before her birthday. “She gets excited about everything,” I said. “Especially when it involves food.”

“When it involves you,” he corrected.

Tulip arrived at our quasi-party then, bringing me back to reality before I could even begin to drift away in all the possible/impossible implications of Luke’s statement. She stood among our awkwardness for a moment before asking if we were going to leave soon because she had to prepare for a piano recital. Luke said bye to Carter, and was gracious enough to send me a wave.

“Do you need a ride home?” I asked Maggie, because she was still standing next to me.

“No, Jonah said—” She was cut off by the sound of a car horn. My eyes followed the sound to see none other than Jonah Hoff, sitting behind the wheel of a small-but-cute Kia something-or-another. She squealed and turned to me. “Wish me luck!”

She didn’t bother looking at Carter as she skipped toward Jonah, and Carter didn’t bother looking at her. Now that I knew what I knew about them, I always made sure to pay special attention when they were near each other, but the only conclusion I had come to was that they were both very good actors. For all I knew, they had taken a summer course together at the local community college on How to Pretend Like You Don’t Care: From Amateur to Expert in Two Short Weeks!

“What’s Maggie doing with that Jonah kid?” Carter asked after we dropped Tulip off. I decided not to scrutinize his tone and simply answer his question.

“They’re going on a ‘date,’ or so she tells me.”

His response was not to pretend he didn’t care. It wasn’t even to get a little jealous. No, Carter’s response to this information was to laugh. And not even in the uncomfortable I-hate-my-life kind of way, but in the actual comedic, this-is-incredibly-amusing-to-me kind of way.

“I didn’t realize this was such a humorous thing,” I said, thoroughly annoyed by his apparent insensitivity and immaturity.

“That’s because you don’t know that Jonah is gay,” Carter said with the leftovers of his laugh still woven into his words. Words that I couldn’t comprehend for a moment or two.

“He’s… what?”

“You heard me. The kid’s a total homo—”

“Is this just your uninformed opinion, or is this actual common knowledge?”

“It’s not really common knowledge, but it’s pretty obvious—”

“Is this your idiotic way of being jealous?” I interrupted, sure that’s what it was. Obviously Carter couldn’t be jealous like a normal person. He was better than that. So obviously Jonah was gay because he just couldn’t be interested in Maggie, because Carter was interested in her and that meant nobody else could have her.

“Fine, don’t believe me,” he said as he pulled into our driveway. “I don’t really care.”

“Of course you don’t,” I mumbled.