CHRIS SHOWS UP AT MY house with ombré lavender hair. Pulling her jacket hood all the way off, she asks me, “What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty,” I say.
Kitty mouths, Like an Easter egg.
“I mostly did it to piss off my mom.” There’s the tiniest bit of uncertainty in her voice that she’s trying to conceal.
“It makes you look sophisticated,” I tell her. I reach out and touch the ends, and her hair feels synthetic, like Barbie doll hair after it’s been washed.
Kitty mouths, Like a grandma, and I cut my eyes at her.
“Does it look like shit?” Chris asks her, chewing on her bottom lip nervously.
“Don’t cuss in front of my sister! She’s ten!”
“Sorry. Does it look like crap?”
“Yeah,” Kitty admits. Thank God for Kitty—you can always count on her to tell the hard truths. “Why didn’t you just go to a salon and have them do it for you?”
Chris starts running her fingers through her hair. “I did.” She exhales. “Shi—I mean, crap. Maybe I should just cut off the bottom.”
“I’ve always thought you would look great with short hair,” I say. “But honestly, I don’t think the lavender looks bad. It’s kind of beautiful, actually. Like the inside of a seashell.” If I was as gutsy as Chris, I’d chop my hair off short like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. But I’m not that brave, and also, I’m sure I’d feel immediate remorse for my ponytails and braids and curls.
“All right. Maybe I’ll keep it for a bit.”
“You should try deep-conditioning it and see if that helps,” Kitty suggests, and Chris glares at her.
“I have a Korean hair mask my grandma bought me,” I say, putting my arm around her.
We go upstairs, and Chris goes to my room while I root around in the bathroom for the hair mask. When I get back to my room with the jar, Chris is sitting cross-legged on the floor, sifting through my hatbox.
“Chris! That’s private.”
“It was out in the open!” She holds up Peter’s valentine, the poem he wrote me. “What’s this?”
Proudly I say, “That’s a poem Peter wrote for me for Valentine’s Day.”
Chris looks down at the paper again. “He said he wrote it? He’s so full of shit. This is from an Edgar Allan Poe poem.”
“No, Peter definitely wrote it.”
“It’s from that poem called ‘Annabel Lee’! We studied it in my remedial English class in middle school. I remember because we went to the Edgar Allan Poe museum, and then we went on a riverboat called the Annabel Lee. The poem was framed on the wall!”
I can’t believe this. “But… he told me he wrote it for me.”
She cackles. “Classic Kavinsky.” When Chris sees that I’m not cackling with her, she says, “Eh, whatever. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
“Except it isn’t his thought.” I was so happy to receive that poem. No one had ever written me a love poem before, and now it turns out it was plagiarized. A knockoff.
“Don’t be pissed. I think it’s funny! Clearly he was trying to impress you.”
I should’ve known Peter didn’t write it. He hardly ever reads in his spare time, much less writes poetry. “Well, the necklace is real, at least,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
I shoot her a dirty look.
When Peter and I talk on the phone that night, I’m all set to confront him about the poem, to at least tease him about it. But then we get to talking about his upcoming away game on Friday. “You’re coming, right?” he says.
“I want to, but I promised Stormy I’d dye her hair on Friday night.”
“Can’t you just do it on Saturday?”
“I can’t, the time capsule party is on Saturday, and she has a date that night. That’s why her hair needs to be done on Friday….” It sounds like a weak excuse, I know. But I promised. And also… I wouldn’t be able to ride on the bus with Peter, and I don’t feel comfortable driving forty-five minutes away to a school I’ve never been to. He doesn’t need me there anyway. Not like Stormy needs me.
He’s silent.
“I’ll come to the next one, I promise,” I say.
Peter bursts out, “Gabe’s girlfriend comes to every single game and she paints his jersey number on her face every game day. She doesn’t even go to our school!”
“There have only been four games and I’ve gone to two!” Now I’m annoyed. I know lacrosse is important to him, but it’s no less important than my commitments at Belleview. “And you know what? I know you didn’t write that poem for me on Valentine’s Day. You copied it off of Edgar Allan Poe!”
“I never said I wrote it,” he hedges.
“Yes you did. You acted like you wrote it.”
“I wasn’t going to, but then you were so happy about it! Sorry for trying to make you happy.”
“You know what? I was going to bake you lemon cookies on game day, and now I don’t know.”
“Fine, then I don’t know if I’m going to make it to your tree-house party on Saturday. I might be too tired from the game.”
I gasp. “You’d better be there!” This party is small as it is, and Chris isn’t the most reliable person. It can’t just be me and Trevor and John. Three people does not a party make.
Peter makes a harrumph sound. “Well, then I’d better see some lemon cookies in my locker come game day.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
On Friday I bring his lemon cookies and wear his jersey number on my cheek, which delights Peter. He grabs me and throws me in the air, and his smile is so big. It makes me feel guilty for not doing it sooner, because it took so very little on my part to make him happy. I can see now that it’s the little things, the small efforts, that keep a relationship going. And I know now too that in some small measure I have the power to hurt him and also the power to make it better. This discovery leaves me with an unsettling, queer sort of feeling in my chest for reasons I can’t explain.
