four
Colby Gardener was an interesting boy. I had known him since pre-K, and our moms were fairly close. When it came time to choose a high school, my parents had already picked Barnes Academy for me. Colby and Colby’s parents were on the fence between Barnes and our local public school. In the end, they chose Barnes, because if it was good enough for Emily Albert, then it must’ve been good enough for Colby. So the two of us set off for Barnes together. But despite our families’ associations with one another, when we got to Barnes, Colby and I acted like we were more than strangers. “More than strangers” in the sense that we actively didn’t know each other.
During our freshman year, we were placed in a few classes together, but we only interacted if we had to. There was an unspoken mutual agreement between us that we were to keep our distance. Colby wanted to make friends without having the burden of helping me make friends, and I wanted to drift by without having to worry about how Colby was drifting. Our relationship (or really lack thereof) worked, and it wasn’t until sophomore year (when we had both established our given friend groups) that Colby cut the crap and decided to talk to start talking to me again.
I had never had an issue with Colby Gardener. He liked to play basketball and soccer and baseball, and academics weren’t really his thing. During our shared awkward family dinners over the years, we didn’t really talk much, but we didn’t not talk, either. Usually, we would just go down to my basement (looking back, I didn’t even want to know what my parents thought we were doing down there) and flip through some channels until we found a documentary or a sports game to watch. Even when we were younger, we were never really friends. We were both just kind of there and only interacting out of convenience and to make our parents happy. So when Colby started speaking to me during our second year at Barnes, it was safe to say that I was worried about his mental health.
Colby and I happened to possess nothing in common, as we had discovered years ago. I liked to read, and he compared books to the literary version of waterboarding. He liked to be the center of attention, while I preferred the shadows surrounding the spotlight. I neither had nor wanted a lot of friends, and he both had and wanted a lot of friends. He got straight C’s on his report card one semester during seventh grade; I settled for nothing less than an A. I was a girl, and he was a boy. We were basically polar opposites, which was why I was so terribly confused about his newfound interest in me about a year ago.
I couldn’t even remember when it started. Maybe September? October? It could’ve even been as early as late August. Whenever it was, Colby began to weave himself into my life again. He was a good friend of Thalia’s (she was a good friend of a lot of boys in our grade), so he would often swing by our dorm (boys were only prohibited from dorm rooms at night), just for a quick chat, using Thalia as his excuse for popping by. But as I slowly learned, he wasn’t interested in buddying up with Thalia—he was interested in getting closer to me, for whatever bazar reason.
At first, I didn’t really understand it. This was the same boy that I had known since I was three, and only now was he taking notice of me. It made no sense, but I went along with it, because this was Colby Gardener, and the boy was harmless. Or so I thought. Because there was one thing that I often forgot about Colby Gardener: he was a teenaged boy. It was his fatal flaw, like Achilles’ heel, and if I weren’t for that, maybe our short-lived friendship could’ve exceeded a mere season. But then Colby decided to ruin our random talks about how he was failing Algebra and about how I wasn’t the one that he should’ve been talking to about failing Algebra (I was barely surviving Algebra II, myself).
It was during the middle of November, right before Thanksgiving break. I was in my room alone with Colby, because Thalia was in urgent need of a cup of hot chocolate and our room sadly didn’t include a hot-chocolate-making machine. So it was just the two of us—Colby and me. It was kind of like those awkward times after dinner at his house or my house, except this was even more awkward, because he was here by choice, and he didn’t have any intention of leaving so soon.
I was on my bed, trying to read as Colby prattled on and on about how much he hated the new basketball coach. One minute, he was standing up as he ranted, and the next, he was sitting beside me on my bed. I didn’t think much of it, because occasionally Colby did stuff like that. But then when he stopped talking and took the book out of my hand, setting it aside on the floor, well, that was when a few warning signs went off. This wasn’t a typical Colby visit.
“Were you even listening to me, Emily?” he had asked.
“Of course I was,” I had lied.
“Then what’s your answer?”
“Uh, yes?” I guessed that it was the right one.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep,” I said, even though I had no clue as to what we were talking about.
Colby Gardener then proceeded to inch closer to me on the bed, so much so that it made me uncomfortable. I kept moving away as he drew nearer, and soon my back was pressed against a wall. Colby’s face loomed over mine, and then he shut his eyes and puckered his lips.
“Colby, what the heck are you doing?” I demanded, pushing him away as I jumped off of my bed.
“You said yes!” he argued.
“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to!”
“I asked if you wanted to make out,” he explained, “and you said yes.”
“Why would I want to make out with you, Colby? That’s just—ugh—so gross!”
“You don’t seriously think that I’ve been wasting all my time talking to you because I want to be, like, friends with you, do you, Emily?” he had scoffed so bitterly.
I couldn’t even believe my ears as I processed the situation. “I don’t know what to think, Colby!”
“Okay, well, fuck that. I’m done. I guess Will was wrong—you’re not as easy as he said.” Colby stood up and walked over to the door, but I couldn’t even register his actions, for I was focused on his words. Will was wrong. He had talked to Will (presumably Will Brooks) about me. Which implied that Will happened to mention our little library lip lock that one time, because that was the only thing Will and I shared. It wasn’t like we occasionally stopped by Dunkin’s to share a cup of coffee or were even study buddies. Colby had talked to Will about me, and from what I could gather, Will had said that I was “easy.” Which really wasn’t good, because in addition to the whole Tommy thing, it meant that I was getting a reputation. Me! The girl who would’ve rather dated a book than a boy. It was ludicrous.
Before he completely departed, Colby bid me with a passive aggressive, “See you at Thanksgiving, Albert,” which reminded me that I would, indeed, see him at Thanksgiving. Our parents were really good friends. So much so that we had shared a joint Thanksgiving since Colby and I were seven.
Sufficed to say that I didn’t talk to Colby during that year’s Thanksgiving. Or ever again. Colby was just another example in my growing case study of life as to why boys would forever be dickheads, leaving me in the continual company of books.
*****
“You know, having the capability to contact you whenever kind of takes the fatefulness out of this experience.”
I pulled a silver book off a shelf. “‘Fatefulness?’”
“Yeah,” he nodded, “like when we first met.”
“A month ago,” I couldn’t help but interject.
“Right. It was just the two of us, meeting here my chance. It was fate.”
I rolled my eyes and decided that I wanted to buy the silver book. It was about a man whose only goal in life was to buy a blimp. Somehow, the author managed to slip in a bit of romance to the plot, for a man on a quest to obtain a blimp wasn’t all too exciting. But this particular man lived in 2014, year of our Lord (Jesus, I couldn’t even think that with a straight face. I had read the Bible. After something like that, how couldn’t you be an atheist?), and he was gay. So he met another gay man in a barbershop, and it just sounded like a really wholesome (minus the gay part), cute story. I wanted to read it. But first, I replied to Oliver Dobson: “I’ve read enough Shakespeare to know that I prefer freewill over fate any day.”
“Yes, but do you believe in freewill?” questioned the boy.
“I do.”
“And I bet you’re an atheist, too,” he scoffed.
I wanted to mention how I had just come across a thought in the atheistic realm, but instead I just said, “You’re not?”
“Eh. I’m agnostic, and it’s nothing personal, but I really don’t want to talk to you about religion and all that. Let’s focus on books, yeah?” It was nothing personal, but I, too, didn’t want to delve into all that spiritual stuff with Oliver Dobson. That wasn’t the point of our newfound friendship. And it was a friendship. Well, at least I thought it was.
Over the past couple of weeks, Oliver had texted me constantly. The only time my phone wasn’t blowing up with notifications from him was during the school day, and even then he would sometimes manage to throw in a few words during his lunch break. Usually we just discussed nothingness and the regularity of our days and literature. Sometimes Oliver would quote mushy lines from books that he knew I had read (what book hadn’t I read? Besides the one currently in my hand, of course), and I would respond accordingly, either quoting the next passage to the best of my memory or telling him to “shut up.” Thalia thought everything going on between us was “just adorable!” and she also regularly chatted with him. What Oliver Dobson and Thalia Thornton had to discuss was beyond me, so I just tried to pretend that they weren’t connected as tightly through the internet as they actually were. Me talking to Oliver made sense, but Thalia…Thalia didn’t make sense talking to anyone, let alone Oliver Dobson.
Because of this new interaction transaction, the girls I sat with in class and ate lunch with (my friends, though even Thalia felt more like a friend than they) had noticed a shift in my behavior. How couldn’t they? Oliver was relentless. They never really pried, because our linkage wasn’t based on personal information or prying. But occasionally, Hadley would get curious about who was texting me and who I was texting back, so I just told her that it was a friend. Nancy suggestively (well, as suggestively as a girl who wore cat sweaters and was still caught up in the Wizards of Waverly Place fandom could be) joked about it being a “boy” friend, and I neither confirmed nor denied it.
Oliver was my friend. He was the person with whom I got to unload all my pent up aggression in regards to fictional characters and books. While the Y Clique was well versed in books of all kinds, none of them were passionate about their knowledge. Well, not in the way that Oliver was. Even over text, I could still hear his voice as he sent me long paragraphs, explaining why Kurt Vonnegut was a genius, but at the same time why he was probably on drugs while writing at least half of his books. He had once proposed the idea of us taking LSD the next time we read Vonnegut, just to get the whole experience. I told him that I didn’t know where to get LDS, but if I found some, I’d be sure to pass it his way. In response, he sent me a smiling emoji. But the point was that Oliver wasn’t the girls, and I liked that about him. I also happened to like that he was my friend, and just my friend (okay, and kind of Thalia’s, but not really).
I had no doubt that the rest of the Y Clique would get along exceptionally well with Oliver Dobson. They were all polite and nice and nerdy (not nerds, but nerdy). For the most part, Oliver was also polite and nice and nerdy. He was a nerd. Full-fledged, he had admitted to me time and time again. He had accepted his nerd status, probably because his breed of nerd was the cool type (was a cool nerd an oxymoron?). Oliver didn’t like math or science or setting off chemical reactions just for the fun of it. Some of his friends, he told me, were those types of nerds, but not him. Oliver Dobson was gifted with a brain programmed to love English. Because of this, it set him apart from the other nerds whose only vices were numbers and equations. But with Oliver, he could manipulate words and understand. With all of these factors added together, I knew that the girls would like him. Love him, even. But I didn’t want that.
In a sense, Oliver Dobson was like my escape. I could text him during lunch about a short story collection we had both read, and I was instantly transported in this metaphysical bubble that only existed in my mind. There, it was just Oliver and I, discussing books and words until our mouths ran dry. Nobody could touch us. I wasn’t at a lunch table or on a quad with people who I only talked to out of convenience. By allowing the Y Clique to know about Oliver, that meant giving them a key to my bubble (Thalia had one, but that was different), and I didn’t want to do that. I liked having Oliver to myself.
“So, back on the topic of Shakespeare,” Oliver said, taking the silver book out of my hand to diagnosis it for himself, “are you a fan?”
“Depends on the piece.”
“Romeo & Juliet?”
“Brilliant but a bit farfetched.”
“Hamlet?”
“I can’t think of a synonym for brilliant.”
“Macbeth?”
“Eh. Not my favorite.”
He grinned. “Then what is your favorite?”
“There are so many…All’s Well That Ends Well? No…Twelfth Night. Yes. Twelfth Night.”
“But the Sonnets!”
“The Sonnets,” I agreed with a nod, “are spectacularly beautiful, but I really do like Viola.”
“She’s kind of kickass, isn’t she?”
“Just a tad.”
We laughed and then Oliver gave me back my book. I deemed it an appropriate time to end this round of book hunting, so I suggested that we head over to the register. Oliver was fine with that (he hadn’t found anything worth reading today), and then we went over to the girl who we often joked accidentally applied for a job at The Bookstore. I paid for my blimp book and then the two of us exited The Bookstore, skirting past The Diner. (I had explained to Oliver during one of our texting conversations why I didn’t like The Diner, and he understood).
Today was a Sunday, and since yesterday I was holed up in my room helping Thalia study for a Spanish test (English was already hard enough for her, so I didn’t know why she tortured herself with Spanish) all day, Oliver and I agreed to meet at The Bookstore. We weren’t sure what the rest of our day would consist of, save for each other. As long as I was with Oliver, there was a ghost of a smile on my face. He was just so easy to talk to. Normally I wasn’t as talkative with people, but Oliver got me, and it had been a long time since I met someone like that. In fact, the last person who got me was probably my childhood best friend, Gale, and the only reason I gave her any credit was because she was as obsessed with unicorns as I was. But Oliver didn’t like unicorns. At least, as far as I knew, he didn’t like unicorns. He liked books. And I liked books. We got each other.
We were milling about Main Street, continuing to talk about Shakespeare (Shakespeare was the type of author one could never get tired of talking about), and it occurred to me that I had never really explored this area. Thalia often raved about this particular street, claiming that it was her “only connection with the real world,” because it possessed overpriced clothing stores and overpriced cafés and overpriced salons. Everything in this town was overpriced. Despite its high reviews, however, I hadn’t spent much time on Main Street, in all my time attending Barnes. Which was odd, because in order to get to The Bookstore, you had to walk along Main Street, but that part had always seemed kind of subconscious to me. I had a destination and I was going someplace; I didn’t have time to process how I got there. But now, I was with Oliver Dobson, discussing Shakespeare, and Main Street was our destination.
“How much time do you spend around here?” I suddenly asked, cutting our analysis of Mercutio short.
Oliver stopped walking. So did I. “Like, specifically on this slab of concrete?”
I rolled my eyes and then flicked his shoulder for good measure.
“Well, I’ve lived here my whole life and—sorry to break it to you, but—I have other friends, so I don’t know…a lot, I guess?” He ran a hand through his messy hair and then while his hand was in the general vicinity, he also fixed his glasses. “We’re talking about Main Street, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded my head a bit.
“Well, I don’t think that I actually spend that much time on Main Street, per se, but I do spend a lot of time around Main Street.” I wasn’t really sure what he meant, so I didn’t say anything and allowed him to continue: “To get anywhere on foot, you have to go on Main Street. So, if I want to go to The Bookstore or The Diner or Panera or Dunkin’s or even the library, then I have to go on Main Street.”
“What library?”
Oliver eyed me wearily, probably wondering if I was putting him on. I wasn’t. “Uh, the public one?”
“There’s a public library in this town?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Seriously, Oliver! This is important! How didn’t I know about this?” I demanded, my mind wandering with all the possibilities.
“Uh, because you’re stuck in the Barnes Bubble, and nothing outside of Main Street and Barnes exists to you,” he took a nice jab at my education. “How didn’t you know about the library?”
“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up, internally wondering if it was a good library or a bad one. The one at school was pretty good, but sometimes I would come across a super old book from when the school was founded and that always bothered me because it was just so pretentious. “I always use The Academy’s library, I guess.”
“Barnes has a library?” Now it was Oliver’s turn to be surprised.
“The next time we hang out—”
“I love the sound of that,” he grinned. “Carry on.”
“—we’re going to this public library that you speak of.”
“And the time after that”—I loved the sound of that—“we’re going to your private school library.”
I stretched out my hand for him, and he took it. “Deal,” I said as we shook. I tried to remove my hand from Oliver’s, but he wasn’t too keen on letting go. So he continued to hold my hand, and then he started walking down the sidewalk once more as he held my hand, and the only thing I could do was go along with it. So I did. I strolled down Main Street with Oliver Dobson holding my hand captive, and we resumed our debate on the greats.