“It’s up to you girls,” my mother sighed.
“How long will it be?” Heidi asked.
“Well, a few months at least… three perhaps.”
I couldn’t believe it. My mother had to go back to New Jersey. Because of all the excess work she’d been doing, they nominated her to go teach some stuff to the office folks she’d left when we moved here. She said we could come back with her, or that, because Heidi and I had already planned on taking classes in at the college, we could stay home alone.
“When are you leaving?” I asked glumly.
“About a week and a half. I’m sorry I sprang this on you so quickly, but I’ve been trying to get out of it for a while.”
I wanted to go back. There was nothing here for me anymore. However, I knew that my mother would probably sell our house or lease it out or something if I came with her… and what about Heidi? She’d come with us because she wanted to get away from New York. I knew that she has major issues with her father, and that she would probably want to stay here. I felt bad about that.
After dinner, I didn’t know what to do, and so I went up to my room and locked myself in. Janelle, my best friend in the world other than Heidi, lived in New York, and so if my mother and I went back to New Jersey, I could see her. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. My mother said that the company was going to pay for her housing and stuff, and they would even like, pay off our Oklahoma house and sell it, too. But then again, Dave and Taylor and Isaac and Zac weren’t in New Jersey. However, I probably was never going to talk to any of them again. Since I’d spent so much time with Dave, Brixella and Odessa, my friends from school here, and I lost touch. They were both going away to school anyway. In New Jersey, I would have most of my family, and my dad, and all of my old places, and all the people I knew…
The phone rang, and a few seconds later, my mother was calling up the stairs for me to pick it up. “Hello?” I asked distractedly.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I repeated, not quite sure who it was.
“It’s Isaac.”
“Ike!” I nearly shrieked, “How are you?!”
“Good,” he laughed, “We’re having fun.”
“That’s good,” I lost some of my enthusiasm over the word “we.” As if I wasn’t confused and upset enough, then I started to think about Taylor.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Umm… okay I guess,” I didn’t know whether to tell him that I wanted to talk to his brother and gush out on the phone how sorry and wrong I was.
“What have you been up to?” he asked.
“Well…” I told him the whole story about my mother and my possible relocation, needing desperately to unburden myself.
“That sounds like quite the conundrum you’ve got there.”
“Yes,” I sounded all whiny.
“And I feel horrible about the whole Heidi thing. I mean, if she wants to stay, then I don’t want to be the one who’s stopping her.”
“But you really want to go back?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “I really do.”
Ike was silent. He’d made his point. I totally had to talk to Heidi about all this. My mind was whirling, “So how are Tay and Zac and the rest of your family?” I wished I hadn’t asked.
“They’re pretty good,” he sounded as if the question hadn’t fazed him. Why was he calling? Did Tay ask him to? Did he feel bad for me?
“That’s good,” I choked out.
“Zac wants to talk to you, hold on a sec,” Ike said.
“Robinson!” Zac screamed into the phone.
“Zac!”
“What’s up?!” he kept screaming.
“Nothing?” I laughed.
“Cool.”
“Yourself?”
“Super.”
“So what have you been doing?” he asked.
“Nothing as exciting as what you’ve been doing, I’m sure,” this conversation reminded me of old times.
“What, getting laid?”
“You have not!” I gasped.
He erupted into laughter, “No, sadly, I haven’t.”
“You’re such a dork.”
“But Taylor has…”
I didn’t breathe. Please be joking, please be joking… I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. My voice was caught in my throat. It felt like an eternity, but it must have only been a second.
“Shut up, @$$hole,” I heard a voice in the background. I got chills up and down my spine. Taylor.
Zac was still laughing, oblivious to my silence, “Sorry, that must be a sensitive subject.”
“Must be,” I said, my voice still tight and whispery.
“Wanna talk to Tay?” Zac asked.
Hadn’t Taylor told them? How could he have kept it a secret? Did it not matter to him? What was I supposed to say? I felt like I’d throw up and cry and die all at the same time. But still, I responded coolly, “Sure.”
I’d dug my own grave. There was no going back now, short of hanging up. I wouldn’t do that to him, anyway. I was crazy about him, right?
“Hello?”
“Hi, Tay,” I couldn’t help melting. “How are you?” I hoped I didn’t sound too eager to hear him talk more.
“I’m… all right… How are you?”
The question has never been harder to answer. “Kinda sucky,” I said.
“How come?”
If I said it was because I loved him and I missed him and I wanted him to be home more than anything, I would have been undoing everything that I had tried to do by breaking up with him in the first place.
“Oh, well… there’s this whole thing with my mom… We might be moving back to New Jersey…”
“Really?”
“I dunno… it’s really weird.”
“That sucks,” his voice was sympathetic.
God, do I want to jump his bones… AH! I couldn’t think like that… “Yea,” I said, taking a deep breath. “So,” I started. I don’t know why I continued, “I miss you…”
“Uh huh,” he sounded unaffected, “I gotta go… I’m sorry, but you know… the phone bill…”
“No problem.”
He thought I was a bitch. He thought I wasn’t worth the phone bill. They had millions of dollars… I barely made it into the bathroom before I threw up my dinner. I couldn’t believe what I had done to him… to myself. I made him hate me. He was like, my favorite person in the world… I slumped down to the cold tile floor thinking, “What have I done to myself?”
