“I’ll play for you next time we’re together and I have my guitar,” I promise, but inside, I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. “What about you, Callie? What do you want when you get out of school?”
“To get away,” she says almost instantly. “I know that probably sounds horrible, because my mom is sick, but I just want to get away. My mom is a good person, but you know about my dad. There are days I’m just so tired. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“It doesn’t make you sound horrible, Callie. It just means you’re human. I feel the same way. The difference is that I think the only reason I want to stay here is because of my mom.” I silently add Callie to that list, but I don’t guess she needs to hear that—especially if she’s not planning on staying.
“See? You’re being noble and here I am, selfish and—”
“The difference here is your dad doesn’t try to beat your mother bloody,” I remind her, grabbing her shoulders trying to pull her from her thoughts. “You’re not horrible. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“I’m sorry, Reed,” she says, curling into me and putting her head on my shoulder.
I hold her close, taking a minute to just feel her in my arms and enjoy it.
“I’m sorry, too,” I tell her and I’m not just talking about my mom. I’m sorry I ever made a bargain with Callie to be her friend. I’m sorry that I didn’t just kiss her and tell her I wanted her right then and there.
Now I feel trapped.
“Look, Reed,” she says, her voice full of awe as she points to the sky. “It’s a falling star. Quick, we have to close our eyes and make a wish.”
“We do?” I ask, trying to hold back my laughter.
“Yes! If we make a wish on a falling star, it will come true.”
“Bluebird,” I laugh.
“Just do it, Reed,” she grumbles, gently nudging me in the ribs with her elbow.
“Fine,” I respond with a smirk.
“Close your eyes!”
I do—although I roll them first.
In the end, I do make a wish—a wish I know will never come true.
I wish that someday—someway—Callie Street will be mine.
12 Reed
Six Months Later
“Hey, Reed.”
“Hey, Chas,” I respond when I see Chasity Newberg walking toward me. Chas is a junior. I’ve seen her around, mostly because she dated Mitch for a while—although I’m not sure you can call what the two of them do together dating. Still, she’s nice enough. She’s got a rough home life like Mitch and I do, so I figured the two of them bonded over that shit.
“I was wondering if you’d like to go to the prom with me.”
Surprise and uneasiness hit me all at once. I want to go to the senior prom. I don’t have a ticket since I’m only a junior and so far, Callie hasn’t asked me. If anything, the two of us seem to have moved more firmly into the friend zone. We’ve even started dating other people. I did it out of desperation, hoping to spark some semblance of jealousy inside of Callie.
It didn’t work.
“I thought you and my brother were seeing one another?” I remind her. “It’d be kind of weird if you and I go out.”
“Nah, Mitch and I are just buddies who scratch an itch from time to time. You know how it is,” she says matter-of-factly.
I kind of smile. Chas kind of says it like it is and doesn’t give a damn what others think. I actually like that about her. Other than Callie, most girls play some kind of role and never turn out to be who they say they are.
“I don’t know. Can you let me think about it? I’d like to make sure Mitch is cool with it.”
“Sure, but I don’t see why he cares. He’s going to the prom already.”
“He is?” I ask, because this is the first that I’m hearing about it.
“Yeah, he told me that him and Callie Street are going together,” she says and my heart slams in my chest painfully hard before it feels like the bottom falls out beneath me.
“I…didn’t know,” I respond when I finally find my voice. Still, it feels like my throat is full of sand and glass when I force myself to speak.
“Yeah, but you can talk to him about it. I just didn’t want to go alone like some kind of freak.”
“Cool. I’ll let you know after sixth period.”
“Sounds good,” she says. Then, she puts her hand on my shoulder and smiles at me, her eyes dancing in a way that I understand what she’s about to say—even before she says it.
“I think you and I can have a real good time, Reed.”
I exhale, unsure how to answer. “I’ll, uh, get back with you on it, Chas.”
“Don’t wait too long,” she says, walking off. Then, she stops and turns around. “Oh, and Reed, come by tonight and I’ll give you a preview of the fun we’ll have together at prom,” she says, then turns away again. I turn back around without answering. Instead, I take off walking down the opposite way. I’m not thinking about her offer or anything to do with Chas.
I’m too busy wondering when the fuck Callie was going to tell me she was going out with Mitch.
13 Callie
Things have calmed down. It’s almost become routine. I’m counting down the days until school is out and I can go away to college. It will just be a community college because I will have to pay my own way with the help of some grants. Still, there is on-campus housing and that excites the hell out of me.
Reed and I have fallen into a pattern. We’re still best friends. We still spend a lot of time together, but Reed has started dating and that hurt like hell. I tried but the two I went out on were less than stellar. I would have rather stayed home—and with the life I have at home, that’s saying something.
Prom is fast approaching, and everyone is all excited about it. Even Katie is happy because she and Jake have gotten back together. I don’t know if it’s going to work out. Jake still doesn’t seem happy and talks about leaving Macon all the time. Katie turns deaf whenever he says anything, though.
I don’t really care if I go to the prom, but I don’t want to be the only person in the entire senior class not to go. I don’t want to make a date and pretend to have a good time, however. I guess I could go stag, but that doesn’t sound fun either. I’ve been kicking around the idea of asking Reed. I know he wants friendship, and I also know that’s my fault. I still like him, however—probably more than ever. Which means, I need to either tell him how I feel, or regret it forever. Maybe it will never work out. Maybe he will never feel the same. I’ve thought about both of those things happening, but the truth is that if I don’t tell him, I’ll always regret it.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to ask him to the prom. I’ll just tell him how I feel but tell him I can deal if he doesn’t feel the same. We can still be friends—no harm, no foul. That’s easy, right?
Except, it doesn’t feel easy. My stomach is churning.
“Hey, Callie.”