Take Me There (4 page)

I push the covers down to the bottom of my bed. Snickers meows and leaps away onto the floor with his legs sticking out in all different directions. It’s those negative vibes of desperation I keep giving off. They’re repelling everyone and everything around me.

I go over to my desk to check my e-mail. Still nothing from Steve. And my cell’s been on all night, so I know he didn’t call.

This is torture. It’s just torture.

Question: If you were happy with your boyfriend but he wasn’t happy with you, was that happiness real?

Sundays blow. There’s never anything on. But I have to kill time so I can get to the part where I feel better faster. So I go over to the DVD shelf and pick out
13 Going on 30
. I just want to lose myself in a fantasy that I’m still hoping will come true.

When I’m at the part where Jenna and Matt get Razzles, Brooke strides into the living room. She goes, “God!” and flings herself dramatically over the other couch. “New York guys are such . . .
children
.”

I don’t know what it is with her and interrupting my busy movie schedule. I press PAUSE on the remote. This won’t be short.

“There’s this total manwhore phenomenon happening, where even the geeks are players now. It’s like Manhattan is this giant playground and guys want to keep playing forever.”

I gaze at the TV wistfully.

“They’re all totally neurotic and miserable. Working these eighty-hour weeks to pay for a bunch of stuff they don’t even have time to enjoy.”

The sad thing about all this is that Brooke won’t meet her soul mate in a bar. He’ll probably be standing next to her in Wal-greens, getting toothpaste or something. Or maybe he’s been living next door this whole time. Like when Nicole liked this guy she kept seeing at the Barnes & Noble café? She’d go back to Barnes & Noble around the same time every Saturday and he was there a lot of the times. But after all that stalking, it turned out that he lived in her building right above her.

But it’s hard to find your soul mate when everyone’s so anonymous and living in their own private bubble worlds. It’s not like you can just go up to a boy you like and say, “Are you my soul mate?”

Brooke is oblivious that some of us are trying to watch a movie here. She keeps ranting about how unfair it is.

I pick up the remote, hoping she’ll take a hint.

“Even if you’re pretty, it still doesn’t matter.” Brooke sinks back against the cushions, deflated. “They’ll buy you a drink, but they’ll be looking over your shoulder the whole time they’re talking to you. Looking for something better to come along. Because you know. Angelina Jolie might be just around the corner.”

“And she might actually like them.”

“I just want a boyfriend,” Brooke says miserably.

I press PLAY. If I keep listening to Brooke complain, all that hope I was feeling might start feeling more like desperation.

The thing about New York weather is that lots of times it’s too cold or too hot or too humid or too something. We don’t get a lot of absolutely perfect weather, where you just want to be outside all day. But now it’s the last week of May and gorgeous out.

I’m chilling in the park near my house, waiting for James. This is a really cool park because it’s right on the Hudson River. There are piers sticking out over the water and paths to ride your bike and it’s the ultimate place to come at night and do moon observations. I have three whole journals with moon sketches. Or sometimes I just sit and think about stuff, watching the city lights glitter across the river in New Jersey.

There’s still some of my granita left. It’s the best, most refreshing drink in the world, and I get them from my fave coffeehouse, Joe the Art of Coffee. I love being there, just sipping my granita and reading. Everyone thinks it’s named after the owner, but his name is Jonathan. He’s this super friendly guy who comes around and talks to you. This one time we had a really intense conversation about when he started Joe. He said it never occurred to him that he would fail. I wish I felt that confident now.

My iPod is playing a really cool song by the Watchmen, this random Canadian group James told me about. I’m lying on my back on the grass with my eyes closed. I found a spot in the shade, so it feels like the air and my skin are exactly the same temperature. Like I’m completely blended in with the environment. Maybe this is what it feels like to get reincarnated as a flower, the way Nicole wants to.

But I can’t really appreciate how good this should feel. Because every place I go, it’s like I can still feel the energy of being there with Steve. Just like in the movie
Serendipity.
And I can’t stand it, because every time I think I’m improving, I realize there’s no way to completely get my life back. If I were a flower, none of this would be happening.

The last time Steve and I were here, it was on my birthday. He gave me this huge present. But it actually wasn’t. Because when I opened the box, there was another box inside. And another box inside that one. There were, like, six boxes altogether, and each one was wrapped in a different type of paper. It must have taken him forever.

When I finally opened the last box, there was this superball inside that lights up when you bounce it. And it wasn’t just any old superball, either. It was this special one we saw at the MoMA Design Store when I was bouncing it all around and yelling about how awesome the lights were. Which totally made the security guard come over and guard my area, like I was going to start bouncing the ball against people instead of the floor or something. Anyway, Steve remembered all that, and he went back and got the exact same superball.

A breeze blows over me, smelling like summer. Summer is almost here. I should be happy.

I open my eyes and look up at the sky and there’s James, looking down at me.

“Hey,” he says. “Did I scare you?”

“No.”

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Ready?”

I hold out my hand. And he helps me up.

“Did you see if they have pink ones?”

“Oh, come on. They always have pink ones.”

I point at James. “But did you
see
pink ones?”

“Not exactly,” he admits. “But don’t worry. It’s all good.”

The line at Magnolia isn’t too long today. We’re almost up to the window. That’s where you can look in to see what cupcakes they have and with what color icing.

“So,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Keith was so random last night—”

“I know! It’s like,
Hello! My boyfriend just broke up with me!
”

“What’s up with that?”

“Seriously.”

We move up a few steps in line. I still can’t see in.

“As if I’d ever go out with him,” I add.

James smiles. “What’s so bad about Keith?”

“Like he’s anywhere
near
my type.”

“And what’s your type?”

“Oooh!” I can see in the window now. “
Yes!
They have the pink ones! Plus your green ones. Bonus!”

“What sprinkles?”

“I think yours are . . . yeah, yellow circles.”

“Nice.”

“And mine have blue flowers!”

We slap a high five.

We always walk to the pier and eat our cupcakes there. It’s amazing how you can do something like this a million times and never get sick of it. As usual, James inhales his cupcake in three bites while I’m still peeling the paper off mine.

He’s like, “You never told me.” Some crumbs fly out of his mouth.

“Told you what?”

“What your type is.”

“You’ve been my best friend for four years. How can you not know this?”

“Um, maybe because you never told me?”

Which is true. We’ve both dated a few people since middle school, but Steve is the first boy I’ve been serious about. And James never takes the risk of asking a girl out unless he knows she likes him first. He does pretty good for a computer geek, though. He’s even dated a couple hotties. But for some reason it never lasts. And he always has the lamest excuse for why it didn’t work out. He was going out with Jessica for a while, but I don’t know what happened with that. If he wasn’t such a good person, I’d suspect that he’s a closet manwhore. But James is way too sensitive and deep for that. It must be a standards thing.

“Okay, well . . . you know I like Topher Grace.”

“Ah, yes. Of the infamous screen saver.”

“Jealous much?”

“Not to negate my heterosexuality, but he doesn’t exactly seem like the most attractive candidate out there.”

“He’s not,” I explain. “That’s the whole point of him.”

“Obviously.”

“I mean, it’s something about him that’s the attractive part. Like, I think he’s cute and all, but it’s more about his personality. Something in his eyes.” I take a huge bite of my cupcake. Sprinkles fall off.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this.”

“What?”

James leans over and whispers, “You don’t actually
know
Topher Grace.”

I throw a flower sprinkle at him. It bounces off his nose.

“You know what I mean,” I say. “There’s something about him that’s—I just know what I like.”

James is watching the skyline sparkle as more lights blink on. My favorite thing is how the pink sunset light reflects off all the building glass. I try to concentrate on this, on being here. I don’t want to think about Steve anymore. Somewhere underneath it all, I know he doesn’t deserve to take up space in my brain.

One way I know James and I are going to be friends for a long time is that we both love board games. And who else loves board games anymore? All my other friends switched to video games or being glued to the computer sometime around fifth grade. But James never changed. And neither did I.

So now we’re at his place, playing Parcheesi. I always feel really comfy when I’m over, because it’s so colorful and warm and cluttered with his mom’s pottery and knickknacks. This is what a home is supposed to feel like. Not like mine, which feels too empty. And big. You could probably fit this whole apartment in my living room. I used to feel really guilty about it when I came over, like I don’t deserve to live in a brownstone while James doesn’t even get his own room. But now I just feel relaxed. We sometimes have these sweet family dinners with his parents and little brother and real comfort food. Not gourmet cuisine like the complicated, exotic stuff my mom always gets. And then we sit around after, playing games or talking or watching TV. Or just doing our own things, together.