Ink Is Thicker Than Water (14 page)

“So you’re not really writing a paper about body modification?”

“No, of course I am. Still, I was trying to get you out of there.”

I pass her my notebook containing the essay I’d jotted down last night. “Can you look at this?”

“Kellie, I’m so proud. Getting this in before deadline!”

I shrug even though I am kind of proud of myself, too. Maybe Oliver is right because it seems possible I might be good at this whole writing thing. Maybe I even could do something real with it someday, not to hate on the
Ticknor Voice,
but let’s be real. Is this what it’s like to be Adelaide or Sara, ambitions and a possible future and all of that?

“It’s not really in,” I say. “Just a rough draft, I guess. I wanted to see what you thought.”

Adelaide has edits for me by lunchtime, so I hang out in Jennifer’s classroom to type up the essay on one of the newspaper computers. And, okay, avoid having to see Kaitlyn gushing all over the Cool Kids about their Cool Exploits over the Cool Weekend. Somehow Adelaide completely left the school grounds because she has Chinese takeout for all of us who are using lunch period to work. I guess when you’re Adelaide, you get away with a lot.

“Fascinating picture?” I ask Mitchell, who’s staring at a shot of the auditorium.

“I’m writing captions.” His eyes never leave the photo. “It’s harder than it looks. And I’m missing eating with Chels.”

“‘Auditorium Remodeled, Theatre Geeks Happy’?”

“Hey.” Adelaide perches on the desk next to me. “Kellie, stop helping. Mitch, we all appreciate your caption-writing sacrifices. So you and Oliver are official, I hear.”

“Official what?” I ask, as Mitchell asks, “Who’s Oliver?” but Adelaide ignores him, takes over my computer, and pulls up Oliver’s online profile stating he is now—“In a relationship?”

“I know, no longer
it’s complicated
with— Are you okay?”

I stare at the words.
Relationship
seems so grown-up. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m good. I’m apparently
in a relationship
.”

Adelaide cocks her head at me. “You guys have been on two dates. Sounds to me like someone jumped the gun.”

“No way, there’s been no gun-jumping,” I say. “Wait, so you think it’s weird? Is it weird?”

“Just talk to him, Kellie.” If Adelaide ever wrote a relationship self-help book, it would definitely be called
Just Talk to Him
.

Instead I log into my own account. I have the relationship confirmation request from Oliver with a message.
Cheesy, yeah, but be Facebook official? Big step taking it to the Internet, I know.

“He’s being cute,” I say to Adelaide, swiveling the computer monitor in her direction. “See?”

“Hmmm,” she says, and she’s already back to her own computer. “Do whatever you want, Brooks.”

Should he have talked to me? Am I bad at boyfriend stuff? Do I even know enough to be bad? I hover my cursor over
Confirm,
but all I can hear in my brain is
just talk to him
, so I log out and decide that my wanting to do so is mature and not the opposite.

Chapter Thirteen

Sara texts me as I’m leaving school the next afternoon.
Mom has Finn; meet me at Barnes & Noble in Ladue?
Even though I’m not really over her lying to Camille or semi-ditching us over the weekend, I text back an affirmative and speed over. Being actually mad at Sara is not a thing my brain knows how to do.

I spot her right away in the literature section. “Gross, Hemingway? Doesn’t he hate women or something?”

Sara laughs really loudly, for her. “I guess he can be misogynistic on occasion. I’m working on my English paper, though; the topic wasn’t up to me.”

“You should just go to the library,” I say. “Books are free there.”

I always tell her that, and she always responds the same way. “The library doesn’t really take kindly to all the highlighting I do. This shouldn’t take long. Then we can get drinks and talk, okay?”

I sort of frown, because for all the time we spend hanging out, we never need to formally request it with
get drinks and talk
. We just, you know, do. “You’re not dying, are you?”

“Not yet.” Her focus is already back on the books. “I’ll find you in a few, if you want to look around.”

I do, and not just because watching someone else shop for books is insanely boring. For once I have extra cash, thanks to my job, so I prowl around for a while and even check out some stuff on essay writing, until Sara walks over with an armful of books.

“Ready?”

I turn away from the section. “Yeah, let’s go.”

We walk to the café where Sara orders hot cocoa for both of us and hands over her books. I watch her pay with a credit card and don’t ask about it until we sit down at the back corner table with our drinks.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “Dad just thought it would be easier, since I spend so much money on things for school.”

That is definitely true, but it’s one more thing Dad would never do for me.

“Don’t,” she says really quickly. “Whatever you’re thinking. Dad’s just—”

“Easy for you to say.” I pick up a copy of some crappy tabloid from the next table and leaf through it.

“I know,” she says. “But you know how Dad is.”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “I definitely do.”

“Kell, this isn’t a thing. I’d be on your side if it was, but it’s only a credit card, and I’m not getting anything fun with it at all.” She smiles at me in the way that means I’m supposed to forgive her for being Dad’s favorite when she can’t help being inherently better-suited for that job. And of course I always do. “Except our drinks. Which was my first breaking of that rule.”

I roll my eyes, but I shouldn’t get annoyed with her when it is Dad who’s behind this. Also, for anyone else cocoa would hardly be seen as a badass move, but for Sara it actually is. “You’re such a rebel.”

“Anyway.” She folds her hands on top of the table. Serious Sara again. “I texted you because I saw—well, maybe it’s a joke, considering he used to have that thing about it being complicated with counterculture movements but—”

Oh, crap. I hadn’t accepted his request yet, but people had commented and he’d mentioned me.

“Are you and Oliver going out?”

“Why, would that be a problem?” I ask.

“Is that a yes?” she asks in a tone that indicates it very much would be.

“Um, yeah,” I say. “I guess we are.”

“How do you even know each other? I didn’t think you two even spoke the other week at the City Diner.”

“It’s sort of a long story,” I say instead of,
Well, Sara, back on Memorial Day we sort of almost had sex, and we didn’t talk for months, but ever since running into each other, something kind of clicked, and he’s funny and smart and he’s interested in my life, and when he kisses me, I feel a little explodey inside
.

“Hmm,” is all she says in her very Sara way.

“I know what you’re thinking.” I’m desperate to cut her off before she can say what I’ve been dreading this whole time. Okay, yeah, it isn’t like I don’t ever worry this smart college guy needs someone more on Sara’s level, intellectually or whatever. Weirdly enough, though, we make a lot of sense, at least to me. Oliver laughs so much at the goofy things I say, things I could never imagine Sara coming up with. And Sara would never understand how Oliver feels compared to Dexter, considering it’s the way I sometimes feel compared to Sara.

Of course that doesn’t mean anyone else would understand us, though.

“Kell, I was just surprised—”

“Is it that shocking that someone who isn’t perfect like you could still have someone interested?”

Sara blinks a bunch of times. “What? I didn’t say anything like—Why would you—”

“Then what
are
you saying?” I don’t like being mad at Sara, beyond dumb stuff like hogging the bathroom or occasionally conveniently having plans on nights she was supposed to watch Finn. But I hog the bathroom and have convenient plans sometimes, too. Stuff like lying to Camille and thinking Oliver is too good for me…this is all new. It’s like Sara isn’t safe anymore. Sara’s as big and unknown as the rest of the world.

“I just don’t know if it’s a good idea or—”

“It’s not up to you.” I very calmly stand and grab my purse from the floor. “I’m going home. See you later.”

“You really don’t have to—”

I slide into my green corduroy jacket and loop my scarf around my neck. “I really think I do.” I head out the little side door so I can walk straight to my car. Of course I text Oliver right away, but he’s too busy with homework to hang out, a fact I can’t hold against him but one that still disappoints me. I’m so used to texting Kaitlyn when I’m annoyed with Sara that I start the message before realizing how royally dumb that is.

Even though she is probably walking pit bulls or handing out condoms or blogging about any number of things, I decide to text Adelaide. She responds right away:
Come over if you want. I’m just stuffing envelopes
.

I laugh aloud at that and take off for Adelaide’s house. She opens the front door, and I—remembering the forty-five-second rule—hurry inside. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She holds out a hand to take my jacket and scarf. “Can you help me with these envelopes?”

“Sure. Is it weird I texted? I mean, we haven’t hung out much.”

Adelaide shrugs, bounding up the giant staircase in her living room and down a hallway to her room. It’s easily twice as big as mine, though painted a similar green and wallpapered with posters (of course hers are mainly of the saving the world variety whereas mine are only capable of saving the world through good music). Her bookcases are jam-packed, just like Sara’s, and a retro-looking avocado green desk takes up almost an entire wall.

“I like your room,” I say. Good rooms deserve props.

“Thanks.” She points to a pile of fliers and envelopes on the floor. “Start stuffing.”

I sit down and study a flier. “It seems kind of oxymoronic to send out a bunch of fliers about saving the earth.”

“It’s recycled paper,” she says. “But
I know
.”

I try to fold the paper into neat thirds, like Adelaide is doing, but it takes me a few attempts. She waves an envelope in my direction. “There’s a machine that seals everything, so don’t worry about that.”

That’s a relief; this glue isn’t exactly tasty. “So my sister thinks I’m an idiot.”

“I doubt that.” Adelaide folds a few papers in succession like a miniature assembly line. It isn’t the response I want at all; Kaitlyn would have helped me bitch about Sara as long as I needed to. “What are you writing about for next week’s column?”

“I have no idea.” I really doubt my afternoon would have been any worse if I’d just gone home instead of deducing the best methods for folding recycled paper in perfect thirds. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Adelaide looks up from her mailings. “What are we even talking about? No, Brooks, you’re not an idiot, but you know that. And so does your sister, I’m sure.”

Considering that Adelaide doesn’t seem to be very good at telling anything but the very direct truth, I force myself to accept all of that and move on. I stay just long enough to get all the papers into envelopes. Adelaide’s mom arrives home and invites me to stay to eat, but I’d just gotten a text from Mom that dinner was
one of [my] favorites!!
so I figure I should head home.

Mom insists she doesn’t need any help in the kitchen, and Finn is hard at work drawing on a giant piece of paper that’s spread out on the kitchen floor (I have no idea how Mom is managing to navigate). That unfortunately means I can’t really delay my homework any longer, even if cracking open my geometry book doesn’t mean I’ll automatically understand it.

“You okay over there, Kell-belle?” Mom asks, probably because I’ve been sighing really loudly as I try to figure out what a postulate is and therefore, if one is being applied.

“Geometry is ridiculous.” I get up to look through the refrigerator for juice. “And there’s no way I’ll ever use it in my real life, so don’t even try that.”

“I wasn’t about to. Sara’s in her room, why don’t you ask her for help?”

“Help with what?” Sara walks in, holding out a Barnes & Noble bag. “Here.”

“What is it?”

“You could open it and find out.”

I reach inside and find the essay book I’d been considering earlier. “What’s this for?”

“Sorry if I seemed rude earlier, okay?” She touches my arm just how Mom does sometimes. “I didn’t mean to.”

I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive her, but it is a pretty decent gesture, plus I do need her help to get through my homework. “It’s okay. Did you put this on Dad’s card?”

She grins at me in a way that I know she did. Rule-bending Sara, I like it a lot.

“Can you help me with this after supper?” I ask.

Sara glances over my shoulder at my textbook. “Yeah, sure. If you help me pack.”

It’s like my brain wouldn’t let me accept that Sara’s actually going away with Camille. But I don’t want any more fighting or acting weird between us.

“Ooh, I’m good at packing. I can fold clothes really tiny.” A skill of mine that has very little use in the real world, though probably no less so than geometry. People go on trips more often than they need to prove how they’d figured out the area of a cylinder.

“I think that’s a fair exchange.”

So after dinner I take my geometry to Sara’s desk while she flips through her closet. The clothes are organized by color, which I have to admit looks pretty awesome.

“Are you mad I didn’t say something about Oliver sooner?” I ask. “I wasn’t trying to be dishonest or anything.”

“I’m not mad,” she says. “What about this dress? I think San Francisco is pretty casual, but I still want to look nice when I meet him. You’re better with clothes than I am.”

I nod at the sapphire blue dress she holds out. “It’s really good. And, no, I’m not.”

“By default you are,” she says. “Given that I wear a uniform most of the time. You always look cute.”

It isn’t that Sara never says nice things to me, but this is an especially good-to-hear one. “Seriously?”

“I’m bad at joking, so
of course
seriously.”

“Kaitlyn said—”

“Kaitlyn isn’t always very fair to you,” she says. “I can say that now, right?”

I hold up my notebook. “Will you check this?”

“Yeah, go find some other things for me to take.”

I hop up, handing off the notebook, and pull out two sweaters and a dress she’d already passed up. “The thing with Oliver sort of started back at that picnic. Not really, but…well, it’s when we met. He texted me after we saw each other at the diner the other night; I don’t even know how he got my number.”

“
That’s
why Dexter was messing with my phone,” she says. “You can blame him.”

“No, it’s a good thing,” I say more emphatically than I’d planned. But it is
such a good thing
, after all. “Do you think it’s weird Oliver likes me?”

“No, and I never said that. Why would I? You’re cute and funny, and people always like you. No one would be shocked
you’re
dating someone.”

I think about how bizarre I’d found it when Sara and Dexter first started going out and feel a little guilty. “No one was shocked when—”