“Wait!” he yelled.
I didn’t turn around, I walked faster. Then I heard him slam his fist on the hood of his car. I almost stopped.
Maybe I would have if he’d followed me. But he didn’t. He got in his car and he left, just like he said he would.
The next morning, Steven came to my room and sat at my desk. He’d just gotten home. He was still wearing his tux. “I’m asleep,” I told him, rolling over.
“No, you’re not.” He paused. “Conrad’s not worth it, okay?”
I knew what it cost him to say that to me, and I loved him for it. Steven was Conrad’s number one fan; he always had been. When Steven got up and left, I repeated it to myself.He’s not worth it.
When I came downstairs the next day around lunch-time, my mother said, “Are you all right?”
I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head down. The wood felt cool and smooth against my cheek. I looked up at her and said, “So I guess Steven blabbed.”
Carefully, she said, “Not exactly. I did ask him why Conrad didn’t stay the night like we planned.”
“We broke up,” I said. In a way, it was exciting to hear it said out loud, because if we were broken up, that meant that at one point, we had been together. We were real.
My mother sat down across from me. She sighed. “I was afraid this was going to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s more complicated than just you and Conrad. There are more people involved than just the two of you.”
I wanted to scream at her, to tell her how insensitive, how cruel she was, and couldn’t she see my heart was literally breaking? But when I looked up at her face, I bit back the words and swallowed them down. She was right. There was more to worry about than just my stupidheart. There was Susannah to think of. She was going to be so disappointed. I hated to disappoint her.
“Don’t worry about Beck,” my mother told me, her voice gentle. “I’ll tell her. You want me to fix you something to eat?”
I said yes.
Later, in my room, alone again, I told myself it was better this way. That he’d been wanting to end things all along, so it was better that I said it first. I didn’t believe a word of it. If he’d called and asked for me back, if he’d showed up at the house with flowers or a stereo on his shoulders playing our song—did we even have a song? I didn’t know, but if he’d made even the tiniest gesture, I’d have taken him back, gladly. But Conrad didn’t call.
When I found out Susannah was worse, that she wasn’t going to get any better, I called, once. He didn’t pick up, and I didn’t leave a message. If he had picked up, if he’d called me back, I don’t know what I would have said.
And that was it. We were over.
chapterthirteenJEREMIAH
When my mom found out Conrad was taking Belly to prom, she freaked out. She was insanely happy. You’d have thought they were getting married or something. I hadn’t seen her happy like that in a long time, and part of me was glad that he could give her that. But mostly I was just jealous. My mom kept calling him at school, reminding him of things like to make sure he rented his tux in time. She said maybe he could borrow mine, and I said I doubted it would fit. She left it at that, which I was relieved about. I ended up going to some girl from Collegiate’s prom that night so he couldn’t have worn it anyway. The point is, even if he could have, I wouldn’t have wanted him to.
She made him promise that he’d be sweet to her, the perfect gentleman. She said, “Make it a night she’ll always remember.”
When I got home the afternoon after prom, Conrad’s car was in the driveway, which was weird. I’d thought he was staying at Laurel’s house and then going straight back to school. I stopped by his room, but he was asleep, and pretty soon after, I passed out too.
That night we ordered Chinese food that Mom said she was in the mood for, but when it came, she didn’t eat any.
We ate in the TV room, on the couch, something we never did before she got sick. “So?” she asked, looking at Conrad all eagerly. It was the most energetic I’d seen her all day.
He was shoving a spring roll down his throat, like he was in some big hurry. And he’d brought all this laundry home with him, like he expected Mom to do it. “So what?” he asked.
“So you made me wait all day to hear about the prom! I want to know everything!”
“?‘Oh, that,’?” he said. He had this embarrassed look on his face, and I knew he didn’t want to talk about it. I was sure he’d done something to screw it up.
“?‘Oh, that,’?” my mom teased. “Come on, Connie, give me some details. How did she look in her dress? Did you dance? I want to hear everything. I’m still waiting on Laurel to email me the pictures.”
“It was okay,” Conrad said.
