Lola and the Boy Next Door
Page 54

He’s shaking with rage. “Get. Out.”
I grab my purse and throw open his front door.
“I never want to see you again.” His voice is deathly low. “You are nothing to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you for making things so clear.”
Chapter twenty-five
I’m dizzy. Seeing spots. Stumbling. Walk or bus? Walk or bus? I’m walking. Yes, I’ll walk home. But then I see the bus and somehow I’m on the bus and I’m sobbing my guts out. A hipster with an ironic mustache shifts down a row. An elderly man in a baseball cap knits his brows at me, and the woman with the quilted jacket looks as if she actually wants to say something. I twist away and continue weeping.
And then I’m pulling the cord and I’m off the bus and I’m staggering uphill. Toward home. It feels like someone is clawing at my stomach, my chest, my heart. Like my insides are being ripped from my body and stitched to my skin for the world to ridicule.
How could he? How could he say those things?
How could my life change so drastically, so quickly? One minute we were fine. The next . . . oh God. It’s over. I want to crawl into bed and disappear. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to think or do anything.
Max. I clutch my chest. I can’t breathe.
Get inside, Dolores. You’re almost there.
I’m only two houses away when I see them. The Bell family. They’re wrapped in a heated discussion in the center of their small driveway. Mr. Bell—tall and slender like the twins, but with sandy hair—is shaking his head and gesturing at the road. Mrs. Bell—shor ter, but with the twins’ same dark hair—is rubbing her fingers against her temples. Calliope’s back is to me, hands on her hips. And Cricket . . . he’s staring straight at me. He seems shaken, no doubt by both my sudden appearance and how I actually appear. The rest of his body turns to face me, which reveals another surprise.
There’s a baby on his hip.
I hide my face with a curtain of hair and run up the stairs to my house. The Bells have stopped talking. They’re watching me and listening to my choked sobs. I glance over as I’m opening the front door. Alexander is there, too. The twins’ older brother. I didn’t see him because he’s standing behind Cricket, several inches shorter.
The baby. Right. Aleck’s daughter, Abigail.
Max. His name strikes again like whiplash, and the Bells are forgotten, and I’m slamming the door and racing into my bedroom. Nathan hears my pounding footsteps and chases after me. “What is it, Lola? What’s going on, what happened?”
I lock my door and fall against it. I collapse. Nathan is knocking and shouting questions and soon Andy and Norah have joined him. Betsy’s tail thumps rapidly against the wall.
“MAX AND I BROKE UP, OKAY? LEAVE ME ALONE.” The last word is cut off as my throat swells and blocks it. There’s an agitated murmuring on the other side. It sounds like Norah is pulling away my parents, and I hear Betsy’s jingling dog tags follow everyone back downstairs.
The hall is quiet.
I’m alone now. I’m actually alone.
I throw myself into bed, shoes and all. How could Max be so cruel? How could I be so cruel back? He’s right. I’m a liar, and I’m a fake, and . . . I’m not special. There’s nothing special about me. I’m a stupid little girl crying on her bed. Why does my life keep cycling back to this moment? After Cricket, two years ago. After Norah, almost two months ago. And now, after Max. I’ll always be the little girl crying on her bed.
The thought makes me cry harder.
“Lola?” I’m not sure how much time has passed when I hear the faint voice outside my window. “Lola?” Louder. He tries a third time, a minute later, but I don’t get up. How convenient of Cricket to appear now, when I haven’t seen him in two weeks. When he hasn’t returned my calls. When my soul is bluer than blue, blacker than black.
I’m a bad person.
No, Max is a bad person. He’s difficult, he’s condescending, he’s jealous.
But I’m worse. I’m a child playing dress-up, who can’t even recognize herself under her own costume.
Chapter twenty-six
The rational side of me knows that I need some kind of release. But I can’t cry anymore. I’m empty. I’m drained. And I can’t move.
Not that I’d want to.
Because that’s the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed this week.
When you’re asleep, no one asks you to do anything. No one expects anything of you. And you don’t have to face any of your troubles. So I’ve been dragging myself to school, and I’ve been dragging myself to work. And I’ve been sleeping.
Max is gone. And not just gone as in he’s not my boyfriend anymore, but gone as in he’s gone. I asked Lindsey to retrieve a textbook I’d left at his apartment, and his roommate said he left the city on Tuesday. Johnny wouldn’t say where Max went.
He finally ran away. Without me.
I wish it didn’t hurt to think about him. And I’m not upset because I want to be with him, I don’t, but he was so much to me for so long. He was my future. And now he’s nothing. I gave him everything, and now he’s nothing. He was my first, which means I’ll never be able to forget him, but I’ll fade from his memory. Soon I’ll just be another notch on his bedpost.
I didn’t know it was possible to simultaneously hate and ache for someone. I thought Max and I would be together forever. No one believed me. We were going to prove them wrong, but we were the ones who were wrong. Or maybe I’m the only one who was wrong. Did Max think of me as forever?
The question is too painful, either way, to consider.
My parents are worried, but they’ve been leaving me alone so that I can heal. As if it were possible to ever heal from heartbreak.
It’s around midnight—not quite Friday, not quite Saturday—and the moon is full again. Traditionally, farmers called the December full moon the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon. Both feel appropriate tonight. I opened my window to better absorb her coldness and longness, to use it feed it to my own, but it was a dumb mistake. I’m freezing. And I had another long shift at the theater, and I’m exhausted, and I can’t find the energy to shut it.