You, Maybe by Rachel Vail Page B

you, Carson, and maybe you’re right, maybe I say no to you too much. I’m sorry. Yes, you scare me. Not because I’m too young. Not because I hate you, though sometimes I wish I did. Sometimes I think, Why did he have to change it, why couldn’t we just hook up sometimes? But then I realize how much I want to see you, be with you, all the time, how much I want to touch your fingers with my skin.”
    He looked up at me then.
    “When you look at me, Carson, I know I belong to you. I know I’ll do anything for you. I love you.”
    There. I said it. I waited, staring back into his eyes, thinking Please say you love me, too .
    “No,” Carson said. “You don’t love me.”
    “How can you say that?”
    “You don’t,” he said, standing up. “You don’t love me. Forget it.”
    He started to leave the laundry room. I grabbed him by the arm. “Why? How can you say that? I left my best friend on his birthday. I broke his heart, to be with you here today, because you asked me to. What do you want from me?”
    He pulled his arm away from mine. “Go back to him, then.”
    “Carson, why are you doing this?”
    “Do you really?” he asked. “You really think you love me?”
    “Yes,” I said. I tried to hug him, but he didn’t bend to me.
    “I thought maybe you did,” he said. “I brought you here, everybody was like, really, a tenth grader? Who dresses up like a clown and runs away from you? But I was like no, you don’t know her. She’s the most extraordinary girl, mature and real and unlike anybody I’ve ever known. I think I’m falling in love with her. I’ve been making an ass of myself.”
    “No.”
    “I . . . God! I sang to you. In the locker room! I have never sung in my life to anybody, not since fourth grade. I made a fool of myself for you. Following you around like your little mouse, toy with me, toy with me. But I was wrong. God help me, I thought I loved you, and I thought you loved me.”
    “I do,” I said.
    “No,” he said. “You don’t love me.”
    He stormed out of the room, almost ripping the door off its hinges on his way out. It swung open and shut in his wake. I stood there alone in the laundry room for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do next.
    And then I knew.
    I went to the bulletin board in the kitchen and found a pen, hanging by a string, and an envelope with an old invitation left over from New Year’s Eve. I crossed out the address on the front and wrote Carson’s name in big letters. I turned over the envelope and inside, in the white space under the flap, I wrote:
     
    Yes. I do.
     
    Then I reached up to my ear and for the first time all year, unfastened my great-grandmother’s diamond stud from my ear. It was beautiful, perfect and round and glittery, the most beautiful and valuable thing I have ever owned. Half of a perfect pair. I screwed the back onto the post and dropped it into the envelope. I sealed it shut and stuck it, with a pig magnet, to the front of Carson’s refrigerator. I grabbed my jacket and left quickly, before I could change my mind.

Nineteen
    LUCKILY MY MOTHER doesn’t look at me all that much so she didn’t notice the missing earring. I had sweated in her yellow sweater so I hid it in my bottom desk drawer, to deal with it during the week, because she and my father were home by the time I got back from Carson’s. No lights were on at Michael’s house, but I figured that meant nothing; he was probably still watching the movies in his room and his parents were probably still at work. I considered going back over there but decided against it. He had made it pretty clear he didn’t want to see me, and before I could deal with him, I figured, it would be better to find out where things stood with Carson. I didn’t even want to call Zandra or Tru. I got in bed and read, to escape my life.
    My stomach was churning so much I couldn’t eat dinner Sunday night or breakfast Monday morning. My mother seemed pleased. Maybe all the stress