Looking across the room at her empty bed and empty walls made me feel even more depressed. Last night I wanted to be alone. Today I thought I would go out of my mind if I didn’t talk to another person.
I went down the hall to Anika’s room. The first thing she said when she saw me was, “What’s wrong?”
I sat on her bed and hugged her pillow to my chest.
I had come to her wanting to talk, wanting to get it out, but now it was hard to say the words. I felt ashamed. Of him and for him. All my friends loved Jeremiah. They thought he was practically perfect. I knew that as soon as I told Anika, all of that would be gone. This would be real.
For some reason, I still wanted to protect him.
“Iz, what happened?”
I’d really thought I was done crying, but a few tears leaked out anyway. I went ahead and said it. “Jeremiah cheated on me.”
Anika sank onto the bed. “Shut the door,” she breathed.
“When? With who?”
“With Lacey Barone, that girl in his sister sorority.
During spring break. When we were broken up.”
She nodded, taking this in.
“I’m so mad at him,” I said. “For hooking up with another girl and then not telling me all this time. Not telling is the same as lying. I feel so stupid.”
Anika handed me the box of tissues on her desk. “Girl, you let yourself feel whatever you need to feel,” she said.
I blew my nose. “I feel … like maybe I don’t know him like I thought I did. I feel like I can’t trust him ever again.”
“Keeping a secret like that from the person you love is probably the worst part,” Anika said.
“You don’t think the actual cheating is the worst part?”
“No. I mean, yeah, that is horrible. But he should have just told you. It was turning it into a secret that gave it power.”
I was silent. I had a secret too. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Anika or Taylor. I had told myself that it was because it wasn’t important, and then I had put it out of my mind.
The past couple of years, I sometimes pulled out a memory I had of Conrad and looked at it, admired it, sort of in the same way I looked at my old shell collection.
There was pleasure in just touching each shell, the ridges, the cool smoothness. Even after Jeremiah and I started dating, every once in a while, sitting in class or waiting for the bus or trying to fall asleep, I would pull out an old memory. The first time I ever beat him in a swimming race. The time he taught me how to dance. The way he used to wet down his hair in the mornings.
But the was one memory in particular, one I didn’t let myself touch. It wasn’t allowed.
Chapter Eight
It was the day after Christmas. My mother had gone on a weeklong trip to Turkey, a trip she’d had to postpone twice—once when Susannah’s cancer came out of remission and then again after Susannah died. My father was with his girlfriend Linda’s family in Washington, DC. Steven was on a ski trip with some friends from school. Jeremiah and Mr. Fisher were visiting relatives in New York.
And me? I was at home, watching A Christmas Story on TV for the third time. I had on my Christmas pajamas, the ones Susannah had sent me a couple of years back—they were red flannel pjs with a jaunty mistletoe print, and they were way too long in the leg. Part of the fun of wearing them was rolling up the sleeves and ankles. I had just finished my dinner—a frozen pepperoni pizza and the rest of the sugar cookies a student had baked for my mother.
I was starting to feel like Kevin in Home Alone. Eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and I was dancing around the living room to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,”
feeling sorry for myself. My fall-semester grades had been eh. My whole family was gone. I was eating frozen pizza alone. And when Steven saw me that first day back home, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Wow, freshman fifteen, huh?” I had punched him in the arm, and he said he was kidding, but he wasn’t kidding. I had gained ten pounds in four months. I guessed eating hot wings and ramen and Dominos pizza at four in the morning with the boys will do that to a girl. But so what? The freshman fifteen was a rite of passage.
I went to the downstairs bathroom and slapped my cheeks like Kevin does in the movie. “So what!” I yelled.
I wasn’t going to let it get me down. Suddenly I had an idea. I ran upstairs and started throwing things into my backpack—the novel my mom had bought me for Christmas, leggings, thick socks. Why should I be at home alone when I could be at my favorite place in the world?
Fifteen minutes later, after I rinsed off my dinner dishes and turned off all the lights, I was in Steven’s car.
His car was nicer than mine, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, that was what he got for bringing up the freshman fifteen.
I was heading to Cousins, rocking out to “Please Come Home for Christmas” (the Bon Jovi version, of course) and snacking on chocolate-covered pretzels with red and green sprinkles (another gift for my mother). I knew I had made the right decision. I would be at the Cousins house in no time. I would light a fire, I would make some hot chocolate to go with my pretzels, I would wake up in the morning to a winter beach. Of course I loved the beach during the summer more, but the winter beach held its own special kind of charm for me. I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone I’d gone. When everyone came back from their trips, it would be my little secret.
I did make it to Cousins in no time. The highway had been pretty much deserted, and I practically flew there.
As I pulled into the driveway, I let out a big whoop. It was good to be back. This was my first time at the house in over a year.
I found the spare set of keys right where they always were—under the loose floorboard on the deck. I felt giddy as I stepped inside and turned on the lights.
The house was freezing cold, and it was a lot harder to get a fire going than I thought it would be. I gave up pretty quickly, and I made myself hot chocolate while I waited for the heat to get working. Then I brought down a bunch of blankets from the linen closet and got all cozy on the couch underneath them, with my 38 · jenny han
chocolate-covered pretzels and my mug of hot chocolate.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas was on, and I fell asleep to the sound of the Whos in Whoville singing “Welcome Christmas.”
I woke up to the sound of someone breaking into the house. I heard banging on the door and then someone messing with the doorknob. At first I just lay there under my blankets, scared out of my mind and trying not to breathe too loud. I kept thinking, oh my God, oh my God, it’s just like in Home Alone. What would Kevin do?