111
ON THE FIRST DAY BACK FROM spring break, Steven came to Art wearing a crown of daisies in his hair, and a chain of tiny bells around his ankle that he’d found on the street.
“I just want to be springtime,” he said to me. “Don’t you?”
He seemed floatier than usual, not quite okay. He wouldn’t answer my questions about his grandpa. Finally, I dragged him to the bathroom and sat him down on the edge of the sink.
“Steven,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” he sang, and then he dropped his head onto my shoulder and began to weep.
112
SPRING BREAK HAD BEEN A DISASTER.
On his second day in Connecticut, Noe had chatted him, saying all this stuff about how concerned she and Darla were about Steven going off to NYU, and encouraging him to stay closer to home.
“Concerned why?” I said.
“I’m depressed,” he said. “Remember? If Noe’s not there to monitor me, I could tumble into a downward spiral and end up like my uncle.”
“What’s wrong with your uncle?”
“He’s a writer. He smokes pot. He wears pretty shoes.”
“He sounds cool.”
“He is.”
After an hour and a half of discussing Steven’s “depression,” she’d finally gotten to the point: she’d gone for a walk with Senior Leader Alex and discovered the true meaning of romance.
Steven took out his phone and showed me the chat transcript. I cringed, skimming the long exchange.
we haven’t really been together since new years, Noe had said.
what do you mean? Steven had said.
what about the valentines ball?
and that day we played chess in the library?
and all the notes?
you spent half the valentines thing at margot and dominic’s table
i hardly even saw you
and we haven’t kissed since rhiannon’s party
we’ve hardly had lunch together since last semester
i figured we’d reverted
?!?!?!
“reverted”
?
i thought it was mutual
i didn’t think it needed some big discussion
we said “i love you.”
you don’t revert from “i love you” without a big discussion
that’s what “i love you” means
Steven’s tears and snot were soaking into my sweater. The daisies in his hair were getting crushed, the white petals curling in. I pulled the vial of lavender oil out of my pocket and quietly anointed him on the wrists, forehead, and heart, thinking that the mysterious thing about love is that you don’t have to know what you’re doing in order to do it exactly right.
113
I THOUGHT THAT STEVEN WOULD BE shattered by the sight of Noe and Alex holding hands in the hall and studying together in the library. Already, the gym birds were chirping about them like they were the Couple of the Year. Every minute I wasn’t beside Steven, I was worrying about him. But after a few days, he actually seemed happier. There was a spring in his step, and a freshness to the way he clicked open his pencil box to draw. At lunch, he dragged me to a table where Win from my drama class was sitting.
“You two should be friends,” he said. “Win, Annabeth. Annabeth, Win. You should do your one-act play together.”
Win and I exchanged glances and mutually rolled our eyes as if to say, Crazy old Steven McNeil.
“I’m serious,” said Steven. “You’re perfect for each other. You’re both insanely smart, you both love trees. You should write a play together. I demand it.”
“What is this, Steven, your last will and testament?” joked Win.
He said nothing, but put one of his hands on Win’s and one on mine and piled the hands together.
“Be friends,” he said. “Sit together at lunch.”
The cafeteria rattled around us. Sun poured through the window, the weak sun of almost-spring, slung low in the treetops. All I knew was I was happy to see Steven okay.
For the next few days, Steven glowed brighter than ever. He shined his shoes. They glowed too. They looked like Magic 8 Balls. When we passed each other in the hall, he would slip his arm through mine and twirl me around. Or he would be singing a Gershwin song, and he would smile and widen his eyes at me without breaking pace. He didn’t seem like a boy who had just had his heart broken. He seemed like a boy in love. After he’d cried on my shoulder in the bathroom, I’d started to plan a whole consoling afternoon. I had an idea that we would skip art class and drink gin and smoke cigars and ride the SkyTram over the river. That seemed like a good post-breakup thing to do, a good distraction.
But Steven didn’t seem like he needed distraction. His resilience threw me off. I didn’t know how to broach the subject of the breakup with him.
At our newly founded lunch table, he seemed almost manic, piling up the salt and pepper shakers into towers twenty shakers tall. He talked incessantly, comic prattle about books and teachers and food and theater and the tutor his parents had hired to stop him from failing math. He didn’t mention Noe at all. It was like he had forgotten her, or was immune to her.
I couldn’t imagine being immune to Noe.
Even now, several weeks after the incident, I still winced when I passed her in the hall. I still felt a stab in my heart when my eyes fell on one of the ten thousand tokens of her that cluttered my desk and my bedroom walls, or when I overheard other girls making plans to go to Paris, or open funny restaurants together, or get matching tattoos on the day after graduation. It felt like a certain key bone in my skeletal system had been deleted, and I was still learning how to walk without it.
Or maybe I’d been limping all along, and this was just what it felt like to find my stride.
114
WIN AND I STARTED SMILING AT each other in the halls, as if we had a shared joke and that joke was the ridiculousness that was Steven. It felt good to have another person to smile at in the hall; with Steven, that made two. I liked it. It wasn’t much, but it anchored me. I started looking forward to it. I started preparing funny expressions for when I passed Win. She started making goofy faces at me, too.
It sort of became our thing. Goofy faces, no words.
Steven caught us doing it once.
“You two,” he said, and he sounded pleased.
I didn’t suspect a thing.
I really didn’t suspect a thing.
115
I HAD NO IDEA HOW WRAPPED around the rails Steven was about Noe until one afternoon in art class almost three weeks after he and Noe had broken up. He seemed miraculously intact. Like a friendly universe had granted him a reprieve. I’d seen him campaigning for Pee Sisters in the hall, accompanying this freshman named Kris to the boys’ bathroom, playing matchmaker like crazy. It wasn’t just me and Win. He spent lunch flitting around the cafeteria, introducing everybody he knew to someone they had to meet. It was like he wanted everyone he cared about to be provided for.