The Last Best Story, page 2
Here’s your trophy, he’d say, and Oh! Thank you so much! she’d say back. And her eyes would light up, and she’d remember all the work that had gone into the paper that had led to the award, all the ways that Grant himself had helped her win it, and then she’d shake her head as if awakening from a highly realistic dream and say, I didn’t really quit the paper, did I? And he’d say, No, you didn’t.
Right. That’s exactly what would happen.
He re-covered the award and closed the desk.
There was no reason for him to be at the Gazette. They were days away from graduating, and he had no official responsibilities at the paper. Still, he’d basically put together the entire grad issue himself—with Nick’s help. It would be printed tomorrow, ready to be handed out at graduation on Monday.
Every closing for the past four years, he’d stayed late, obsessing over every headline, every punctuation mark. The new editor in chief had declared at 5:45 p.m that they were finished. If she wanted to settle for mediocrity and typos, well, it wasn’t Grant’s name at the top of the masthead anymore . . . but he couldn’t help checking up on it.
He closed the Gazette-room door and felt in his pocket for the key. “Right,” he said out loud, recalling that he’d had to turn it over to the new editor in chief last week. In a way it was lucky for him that she was so careless with her responsibilities, otherwise the door would’ve been locked and he never would’ve been able to get in. Not to mention that if she’d cared more, she certainly would’ve kicked Grant out of the room after her first story meeting a month ago, which he refused to allow her to lead.
He knew he was being a jerk, but she had a whole year more to lead the paper. He only had this last issue.
He didn’t see Rosie or her date in the hall outside of the gym, so they must’ve sneaked back inside without any trouble. The pounding bass echoed through the empty hall. He held the door handle and took a long breath before swinging the door open and ducking into the light and music and sweat smell and humidity.
Strands of Chrismas lights hung on the folded-up bleachers. Large circular tables surrounded a makeshift dance floor, and the DJ had set up his table, speakers, and portable laser lighting rig on the stage.
Nick and Oliver sat at a table near the stage. Grant made a beeline for it.
“Everything’s fine at the Gazette,” he announced. Nick and Oliver looked up at him, surprised.
“What did you do?” Nick asked.
“Nothing,” Grant said, and sat, then attempted to lean back in his chair casually. “I said everything’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “Ran into Rosie. She was looking for her award.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I . . . she decided she didn’t want it.”
“Her dress is adorable,” Oliver said.
“Oliver, don’t be a cliché,” Grant said.
“Don’t tell my boyfriend not to be a cliché,” Nick said, and then turned to Oliver. “You can be as cliché as you want. Grant’s not your boss.”
“Okay,” Oliver said, smiling sweetly at Nick. “Then I’d also like to say that Rose’s boyfriend looks like Michael B. Jordan’s long-lost twin, and it’s really working for me.”
Nick frowned. “All right, no need to lean into it.”
Grant tried to straighten his cummerbund without making it look like he was straightening his cummerbund. It felt like it was riding up, but who the hell knew where a cummerbund was supposed to sit? He should’ve gone with a vest—every other guy at the prom seemed to have gone with a vest and tie—but he had thought the cummerbund and bow tie would be more classic. Classic, or out of date. Hard to tell the difference.
“She seems bored, doesn’t she?” he asked.
Nick had his arm around the back of Oliver’s chair, Oliver leaned his head on Nick’s biceps, and Oliver’s cane rested in the crook of his elbow. Canes as accessories were against the prom dress code, but that didn’t apply to Oliver’s cane, which helped him walk. It had even gotten dressed up for the occasion with green craft tape that matched Oliver’s tie.
Nick and Oliver looked cozy. If Grant tried to put his arm around someone or something, he’d lose control of the cummerbund situation entirely.
“I don’t know, Grant,” Nick said.
“She must be bored. I don’t see how she couldn’t be. She has nothing in common with that guy.”
“Maybe it’s interesting for her to be around people not exactly like her.”
“She’ll be back.”
Oliver glanced at Grant. “Back where? To you?” He raised one eyebrow, in a way Grant was sure he’d practiced in the mirror. Oliver was an actor. They all had their favorite faces.
“No, not to me,” Grant said. Because Rose and Grant had never really been together—which Nick and Oliver knew perfectly well. “I mean the paper.”
“Dude,” Oliver said. “Didn’t she quit months ago?”
Nick joined in the pileup. “And school is over. There’s nothing to come back to.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Grant gave the side of the cummerbund a yank. “Still. She’ll be back.”
Neither Nick nor Oliver deigned to respond to that. Grant was well aware that he was running out of time. There was only graduation left, and the blank months of summer, and then he’d go to Northwestern and Rosie would go to the University of Michigan, and if they didn’t figure things out before then, they might never see each other again.
That was a future that did not make sense to Grant. He refused to accept it.
Oliver popped up his cane with the back of his elbow and went to talk to some of his theater friends, and Grant scooted his chair closer to Nick’s. “We could tell Rose the printer’s server crashed and we have to redo the entire grad issue in one night.”
“Absolutely not,” Nick said. “First of all, totally implausible, because I’ve never not had a backup in my life. And secondly, no way am I redoing three weeks of work so you can entrap your ex.”
“We could plant some weed on JB,” Grant said.
“Whoa, way to make a leap.”
“I’m spitballing.”
“Well, stop. It’s not fair to JB. And where exactly did you plan on getting weed?”
“I heard that Owen Pettibone sells—”
Oliver shook his head. “You’d never dare.”
“How about Mairead Callahan’s stalker? She posted that she’s afraid he’s going to show up.”
“No one cares about Mairead’s probably imaginary stalker.”
“Okay. We could phone in a bomb threat?”
“Grant. On the off chance you’re serious: No.”
Grant sighed and leaned his elbows on the table. “I don’t appreciate having all my best ideas shot down. Why don’t you come up with something?”
“How about we have a nice prom and let Rose have one, too?”
Grant narrowed his eyes at Nick. “Since when are you totally chill and unworried?”
Nick shifted in his seat. The shot had hit its target, but Grant didn’t feel particularly satisfied. It wasn’t fair to pick on Nick, who was at risk of worrying himself into a small, miserable life. As Nick’s best friend, Grant should be building him up instead of cutting him down, because if Grant wasn’t careful, Nick would have a nervous breakdown before the first day of college.
“Hey,” Grant said, feigning jollity, “you two look like you’re having a good time tonight. I like Oliver’s tie.”
Nick frowned. “Don’t try to distract me. All I’m saying is let go for the night. Leave Rose alone. Have some fun. Dance with someone else, maybe, instead of moping around after her.”
“I have never moped a minute in my life.”
Nick patted Grant’s shoulder. “Keep believing that.”
“Something will happen,” Grant said. “You’ll see. Something always happens.”
HOPEFUL JUNIOR TAKES A ROMANTIC LEAP
Grant patted Nick’s shoulder. It was October of their junior year and they were sitting in Grant’s driveway in Nick’s father’s car. “Don’t worry,” Grant said. “Nothing awful’s going to happen. You’re going on a date. It’s, like, a thing people do.”
“Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.” Nick curled over the steering wheel. “I don’t have time for this. I can’t afford to spend every second of my life freaking out about a guy. I have things I need to do. The paper! SATs! College!”
“Well, that’s a positive spin, then,” Grant said. “If it’s a total garbage fire, at least you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Nick moaned.
“Listen,” Grant said. “That first date was fine, right? You guys had a good time?”
Two weeks earlier, Grant had assigned Nick to review the fall play. The lead was played by a sophomore named Oliver Murdoch. Grant had heard from Rose, who had heard from Rose’s best friend Jenna, that this Oliver Murdoch was a member of the LGBTQ and Allies Club, identifying G. Nick had never joined the LGBTQ & A because he was busy with the paper and he had a hard time warming to people, as a rule. Grant had always been the exception, but even between the two of them Nick wasn’t exactly bubbly.
One week after the play, Nick and Oliver had met at the bookstore and then moved on to browse for comics at the comics shop. And now they were supposed to be going to a movie. Nick should have picked up Oliver ten minutes ago, but he was still sitting in Grant’s driveway, frozen with panic.
“That first thing was fine, because it was barely even a date really, and I thought there was no chance he actually liked me, so I could relax.” Nick sighed into the leather steering wheel. “Now he’s going to want to talk to that cool, unworried guy who doesn’t really care what people think of him, and he’ll be stuck with me instead.”
“Yikes,” Grant said.
“I know. I suck.”
“No, Nick, yikes for the epically low self-assessment. First of all, no one’s ‘stuck’ with you. If he thinks he’s ‘stuck’ with you, he can go fuck himself.”
“Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh.”
“And second of all, you’re a couple of human beings getting to know each other. What do you want to bet he’s really nervous, too? You’ve got nothing to lose by going for it.”
Nick turned his head to glare up at Grant with bloodshot eyes. “Do you even believe the stuff you’re saying? Live life to the fullest, grab the bull by the horns, all that crap—like, really?”
Grant thought about it. He stared up at his house, where his dad and stepmom and younger brothers were eating their dinner, and where he’d only been living as a permanent resident for the past two months. Across town his mom was eating dinner alone. If Grant had still been living with her, he would’ve had a hard time taking the question seriously. Of course all that stuff was bullshit, his mom would say. Those time-worn lines were comforting lies we told ourselves so that we could live through humiliation after humiliation. No amount of positive thinking meant anything against the forces of fate and the rotten core of most human nature.
She’d say it in a loving way, with a conspiratorial us-against-them grin, but yeah. Even though she taught yoga, his mom didn’t really go for inspirational moments. And neither did Grant, usually.
But Grant lived with his dad now. His dad and stepmom were both lawyers, and they were intensely practical. They’d have no idea what to say if he asked them about believing he should seize the day. But he’d chosen to live here. Rosie had told him it was going to be okay and in general it was. He’d thought at the time that Rosie’s saying it was going to be okay was a clichéd platitude, but it had turned out to be true. Maybe they’re only clichés when you tell them to yourself, but when other people tell them to you they’re real.
(His fingers twitched toward his phone so he could text Rosie. Lately he’d get anxious if he hadn’t heard from her in a few hours. Not, like, Nick-level anxious. But he’d feel a tingling on his skin, like the touch of a mosquito a second after it takes off, as if he’d missed something important that was going to bother him later.)
“Yeah, I do believe in all that crap,” Grant said. “All you have to do is show up and be you. If it doesn’t work, that’s not a judgment on who you are as a person. It only means it doesn’t work. And if that’s the worst thing that happens, that’s nothing.”
“Oh yeah? Is that why you’re always going on so many dates?”
Grant shrugged off Nick’s sarcarm. Nick wasn’t wrong. Grant had been busy with the paper and getting decent enough grades for Northwestern and for his parents to relax and his mom’s illness and everything else; he hadn’t really had the time to think about girls in, like, a concrete way, that wasn’t just thinking about how nice they looked in tank top weather. He certainly hadn’t thought about asking one of them out in a long time. He’d thought about dating like Nick had: a distraction from what was really important. The Gazette. Getting into Northwestern. Taking over the world. But hearing his own excuses come out of Nick’s mouth made it sound less like focused determination and more . . . Nick-like. Neurotic. (Sorry, Nick.)
If he did ask someone out, it would have to be a specific girl, not a Girl Walking By, or Girl Ringing Up His Order of Cheese Fries, or Girl on TV. A girl who would want to talk to him and if he was lucky kiss him and if he was really really lucky . . . more. For a moment he thought he might catch Nick’s wave of panic, and then he told himself to get a grip.
“Okay, dude,” Grant said, smiling. “If you do this, I’ll ask someone on a date.”
Nick turned sharply. “For real?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
Nick blinked slowly and took a deep breath. “Well. I need to see that. So I guess I’m going.” He ran his hands through his hair and then smoothed it down. He looked in the mirror in the visor, made a face, and snapped the visor back to the ceiling. “Thanks, Grant.”
“Not a problem. Maybe it’ll be fun.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, this is a real barrel of laughs so far.”
Grant got out of the car and gave Nick a cheesy thumbs-up as Nick backed out the driveway. Grant had his phone out and was texting by the time Nick turned the corner.
Nick safely on his way. If this doesn’t work, I think we all may need to change schools.
Rose’s response appeared almost immediately.
How’d you get him to go? Xanax, hypnosis, extortion?
I said if he went through with it I would ask someone on a date.
There was a pause, and Rose’s response, when it arrived, was shorter than he’d expected based on the typing time.
You did what?
Yeah, I told him it was no big deal.
It’s no big deal?
Am I typing in cyrillic? Yeah, no big deal. It’s a date. Idiots go on dates; I think I can handle it.
Rose didn’t respond. Grant let himself into the house and heard his brothers screaming in the living room. It was comforting to come home to noise and chaos instead of waiting, watchful silence. He felt good. The paper was going well. He was getting the grades he needed. He had one best friend off safely on a date. He had another best friend on the other end of the phone. And soon he would have a girlfriend, too.
I’m thinking of asking Mer Montez, he typed.
Mer—Mercedes, technically, though no one called her that—had been smiling at him more than usual in the precalc class they shared. Since there was no other reason in the history of the world for anyone to smile in precalc, Grant felt pretty secure that she’d say yes. Now that Grant had finally grown six inches, he wouldn’t feel like he was a child asking his babysitter to marry him. And everyone agreed Mer Montez was beautiful. It felt superficial to consider that, but by what other metric did people decide who they wanted to ask out? He didn’t see the point in asking someone he thought was plain, simply out of principle.
Are you joking? Rose texted.
The table in the kitchen had been cleared, and his dad had left Grant a plate of mac and cheese, but it was cold. He sat in front of the dish and ignored it while he texted.
Rose couldn’t have thought he meant to ask her out. That would be entirely unnecessary, since they already spent every second together and were better together than boyfriend/girlfriend. She understood that. They transcended all that crap. And what if he asked and she said no? He couldn’t even contemplate it.
Not joking. Mer + Grant = twu luv.
Pause for response.
I ship it. Grer forever. Or do you prefer Mant?
Grant relaxed. He knew she wouldn’t have thought he meant to ask her out. All was well.
BTW I missed dinner. Pick me up in ten minutes for the diner?
Grant could practically hear her sigh through the phone. He could practically see the wry smile on her face.
Fine. But you’re paying for my fries.
Rose hated to admit it, but she wished she’d gotten the trophy from the Gazette room. The Midwest Regional Excellence in Journalism Award was the one concrete thing she’d accomplished in her four years at the Gazette, and it had been given to her personally (“For Excellence in Feature Reporting and Writing”), not the Gazette as a whole or her-and-Grant as a team. So much of her time at the Gazette felt muddled or unsatisfying in retrospect, but the MREJ had been a pure victory. Even Grant couldn’t ruin that.
And she wouldn’t allow him to ruin prom. She was going to make herself happy no matter what. Prom would be awesome, and not another replay of Northwestern.
She had the thought and immediately tried to forget it. Thinking about how she wasn’t going to go to Northwestern after years of planning for it would bring bad juju. Forget Northwestern, forget the MREJ. Relax. Have the time of her life.
“Rose!” Jenna Chen threw her arms around Rose’s neck, and Rose turned to hug her best friend, who held her at arm’s length to look her up and down. “Oh, you look amazing. Ugh. Not fair.”
Rose was alarmed to notice that Jenna had started crying already, her mascara pooling underneath her eyes like a football player’s face paint. “What’s the matter?” Rose asked.
Jenna shook her head and tried to smile. They sat at the nearest empty table. “It’s just . . . Marty’s not here. I shouldn’t have come.”
