IT’S RAINING AGAIN. I’D HAD the thought that I might take Kitty and Jamie to the park after school, but that’s out now. Instead I sit in bed and curl my hair and watch the rain shoot down like silver pellets. Weather to match my mood, I suppose.
In the midst of our breakup, I forgot about the game. Well, now I’m remembering all too well. I will win. I will take her out. She can’t have Peter and win the game. It’s too unfair. And I will think of some perfect wish, some perfect something to take from her. If only I knew what to wish for!
I need help. I call Chris, and she doesn’t pick up. I’m about to call again, but at the last second I text John:
Will you help me take out Genevieve?
It takes a few minutes for him to write back.
It would be my honor.
John settles into the couch and leans forward, looking at me intently. “All right, so how do you want to do this? Do you want to flush her out? Go black ops on her?”
I set down a glass of sweet tea in front of him. Sitting next to him, I say, “I think we have to run surveillance on her first. I don’t even know what her schedule is like.” And… if in winning this game, I find out her big secret, well, that would be a nice bonus.
“I like where your head is at,” John says, tipping his head back and drinking his tea.
“I know where they keep the emergency key. Chris and I had to pick up a vacuum cleaner from her house once. What if… what if I try to get under her skin? Like I could leave a note on her pillow that says I’m watching you. That would really creep her out.”
John nearly chokes on his iced tea. “Wait, what would that even get you?”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert at this!”
“Expert? How am I an expert? If I was really any good, I’d still be in the game.”
“There’s no way you could have known I’d be at Belleview,” I point out. “That was just your bad luck.”
“We have a lot of coincidences. Belleview. You being at Model UN that day.”
I look down at my hands. “That… wasn’t a total coincidence. It actually wasn’t a coincidence at all. I went there looking for you. I wanted to see how you turned out. I knew you’d be in Model UN. I remembered how much you liked it in middle school.”
“The only reason I joined was so I could work on my public speaking. For my stutter.” He stops. “Wait. Did you say you went there for me? To see how I turned out?”
“Yeah. I… I always wondered.”
John’s not saying anything; he’s just staring at me. He sets down his glass abruptly. Then he picks it back up and puts a coaster under it. “You haven’t said what happened with you and Kavinsky that night after I left.”
“Oh. We broke up.”
“You broke up,” he repeats, his face blank.
That’s when I notice Kitty lurking in the doorway like a little spy. “What do you want, Kitty?”
“Um… is there any red pepper hummus left?” she asks.
“I don’t know—go check.”
John is wide-eyed. “This is your little sister?” To Kitty he says, “The last time I saw you, you were still a little kid.”
“Yeah, I grew up,” she says, not even a little bit nicely.
I throw her a look. “Be polite to our guest.” Kitty turns on her heels and runs upstairs. “Sorry about my sister. She’s really close with Peter and she gets crazy ideas….”
“Crazy ideas?” John repeats.
I could slap myself. “Yeah, I mean, she thinks that something’s going on with us. But obviously there isn’t, and you don’t, like, like me like that, so, yeah, it’s crazy.” Like, why do I speak? Why did God give me a mouth if I’m just going to say dumb stuff with it?
It’s so quiet I open my mouth to say more dumb stuff, but then he says, “Well… it’s not that crazy.”
“Right! I mean, I didn’t mean crazy—” My mouth snaps shut, and I stare straight ahead.
“Do you remember that time we played spin the bottle in my basement?”
I nod.
“I was nervous to kiss you, because I’d never kissed a girl before,” he says, and picks up the glass of sweet tea again. He takes a swig, but there’s no tea left, just ice. His eyes meet mine, and he grins. “All the guys gave me such a hard time afterward for whiffing it.”
“You didn’t whiff it,” I say.
“I think that was around when Trevor’s old brother told us he made a girl…” John hesitates, and I nod eagerly so he’ll go on. “He claimed he gave a girl an orgasm just by kissing her.”
I let out a shrieky laugh and clap my hands to my mouth. “That’s the biggest lie I ever heard! I never saw him talk to even one girl. Besides, I don’t think that’s even possible. And if it was possible, I highly doubt Sean Pike was capable of it.”
John laughs too. “Well, I know it’s a lie now, but at the time we all believed him.”
“I mean, was it a great kiss? No, it wasn’t.” John winces and I quickly continue. “But it wasn’t an altogether terrible one. I swear. And listen, it’s not like I’m an expert on kissing anyway. Who am I to say?”
“Okay okay, you can stop trying to make me feel better.” He sets down his glass. “I’ve gotten much better at it. That’s what the girls tell me.”
This conversation has taken a strange and confessional turn, and I’m nervous but not in a bad way. I like sharing secrets, being coconspirators. “Oh, so you’ve kissed that many, huh?”
He laughs again. “A respectable number.” He pauses. “I’m surprised you even remember that day. You were so into Kavinsky, I don’t think you even noticed who else was there.”
I push him in the shoulder. “I was not ‘so into Kavinsky’!”
“Yes you were. You kept your eyes on that bottle the whole game, like this.” John picks up the bottle and lasers his eyes at it. “Waiting for your moment.”
I’m bright red, I know I am. “Oh, be quiet.”
Laughing, he says, “Like a hawk on its prey.”
“Shut up!” Now I’m laughing too. “How do you even remember that?”
“Because I was doing the same thing,” he says.
“You were staring at Peter too?” I say it like a joke, to tease, because this is fun. For the first time in days I’m having fun.
He looks right at me, navy-blue eyes sure and steady, and my breath catches in my chest. “No. I was looking at you.”
There’s a humming in my ears, and it’s the sound of my heart beating in triple measure. In memory, everything seems to happen to music. One of my favorite lines from The Glass Menagerie. If I close my eyes I can almost hear it, that day in John Ambrose McClaren’s basement. Years from now, when I look back on this moment, what music will I hear then?
His eyes hold mine, and I feel a flutter that starts in my throat and moves across my collarbone and chest. “I like you, Lara Jean. I liked you then and I like you even more now. I know you and Kavinsky just broke up, and you’re still sad, but I just want to make it unequivocally clear.”
“Um… okay,” I whisper. His words—they come clearly; they don’t miss in either direction. Not even a trace of a stutter. Just—unequivocally clear.
“Okay, then. Let’s win you a wish.” He takes out his phone and pulls up Google Maps. “I looked up Gen’s address before I came over here. I think you’re right—we should take our time, assess the situation. Not go in half-cocked.”
“Mm-hm.” I’m in a sort of dream state; it’s hard to concentrate. John Ambrose McClaren wants to make it unequivocally clear.
I snap out of it when Kitty jostles her way back into the living room, balancing a glass of orange soda, the tub of red pepper hummus, and a bag of pita chips. She makes her way over to the couch and plonks down right between us. Holding out the bag, she asks, “Do you guys want some?”
“Sure,” John says, taking a chip. “Hey, I hear you’re pretty good at schemes. Is that true?”
Warily she says, “What makes you say that?”
“You’re the one who sent out Lara Jean’s letters, aren’t you?” Kitty nods. “Then I’d say you’re pretty good at schemes.”
“I mean, yeah. I guess.”
“Awesome. We need your help.”
Kitty’s ideas are a bit too extreme—like slashing Genevieve’s tires, or throwing a stink bomb in her house to smoke her out, but John writes down every one of Kitty’s suggestions, which does not go unnoticed by Kitty. Very little does.
