School Wounds: The Art of Mending

I make a beeline for Archie’s place. I’ve gotta get this out or I’ll just lie down and die of humiliation.

I find him in the kitchen, eating breakfast.

“Archie, he… they…” I’m practically gasping for air, and it all comes spilling out in under a minute. How I went to the Steeles’. How Jax was quoting my texts back at me, and that crap about me ‘helping’ Zane after I stayed over—I just can’t believe Zane told him everything!

It’s only when I finally have to stop to breathe that movement catches my eye. Nikki is standing in the doorway, phone in hand.

She’s staring at me, completely stunned. Her eyes are wide, her face total disbelief at what she just heard.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she cuts into my meltdown, raising a hand to stop me. “Are you seriously telling me you and Carter… had a sleepover… at his place… alone?”

The sheer, genuine disbelief in her voice hits me like a bucket of ice water. My eyes snap to Archie. He just widens his eyes, stays dead silent, and shoots a sharp, warning look in Nikki’s direction.

“Nikki, for god’s sake...” I slump over the table, burying my face in my hands.

“Oh my god,” she snorts, and she actually sounds hurt. “What, you guys keeping secrets from me now!?”

“Nik, that was, like, weeks ago,” Archie jumps in, finally finding his words. “There was no reason to even bring it up! And nothing went down! She was just dropping off math notes for Carter, and his stupid apartment door slammed shut and locked. I mean, come on, a ‘sleepover’? They just… uh… killed a couple of hours waiting, and then Ian showed up with the keys. Big deal. It was Ian’s idea for her to bring the notes in the first place! Those two aren’t even speaking after that whole mess. They totally can’t stand each other!”

“And how come you’re in on it and I’m not?”

I hear a cup scrape toward me.

I lower my hands from my face. A beautiful green-robed English bone china cup sits before me.

I lift my eyes to my friends.

Archie is still staring at me, desperate for backup.

“Yeah. Can’t stand each other,” I mutter, defeated. “Right.”

Nikki explodes:

“You know what?! Whatever. Keep your secrets! I’ll take the bus.”

She snatches her backpack and makes for the door.

“Nikki, wait!” Archie is the first to react.

“Nikki!” I join in, spinning around in my chair.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to let you know the second any rumors about Rask and Carter start flying at school. Since that’s obviously all you care about.”

“Nikki!”

She storms out, ignoring our shouts.

The slam of the door makes Archie and me lock eyes.

“Arch?!”

“Dude, I don’t blab your secrets. To anyone. Nikki included.”

“Uh-huh. Except for Slade and Raf.”

“I said I was sorry a million times! I was, like, next-level wasted,” he takes a loud bite of the crunchy toast and stares me down, chewing. “Well? Spill. Come on.”

“Shit, Arch. I’m messing up everything. Everything! I should’ve told Nikki— she’s my friend, for god’s sake. I should’ve talked to Zane back after the fight, like Raf told me to. You get it? All these two years, I thought he was worse than he is.Hearing his side of things... it made me see what an idiot I’ve been. I’m just... shocked to realize it. And what was I thinking, going to Jax? I’m just... doing all these random, weird things. I’m doing stuff I shouldn’t be doing, and I’m not doing the stuff I actually should.”

“I don’t believe in right and wrong moves. Sometimes you don’t know if it was the right call until after you’ve made it.” He says, meticulously spreading apricot jam on a piece of toast.

“Well, rolling up to the Steeles’ was a seriously dumb move,” I admit.

“When I heard you were stuck at Carter’s, I figured not snitching to Jen was the play. And look, you two actually talked. But then you said I was being a jerk and that it was, like, the wrong move.

“That wasn’t a ‘talk,’” I say bitterly. “It was surgery. Without anesthesia.”

“Whatever,” he counters, shrugging. “You still lanced a wound that’s been festering for years. Got all that crap out in the open.”

“Lanced it, alright. Only to find out that for him, back in freshman year, it was ‘not that deep.’ That line made me feel like a total idiot.” I pull my mug of tea toward me and take a sip, leaning over it. “And not just that one.”

I can still hear his “What fucking everything?” in my ears. It was like he just deleted my whole story. Made two years of my pain feel fake. Like I’d been trying to make our past into some big thing that it never was for him. His “a couple kisses and a movie date” versus, like, my actual feelings? All my hope and missing him? That whole conversation just showed the massive gap between how he saw it and how I saw it. I’ve been walking around thinking we had something real, and he just... he just erased it.

Archie’s dad walks into the kitchen. He’s a broad, solid man with a wild mop of red hair, looking more like a Tolkien dwarf than a human. Instead of saying ‘hi’, he does this ridiculously deep bow — the kind you’d imagine from a Renaissance courtier—and winks at me. Then he picks up a tiny coffee mug with a rose pattern, fills it with coffee, scoops up a handful of cookies from the jar with his massive paw, gives me a beaming, ear-to-ear smile, and vanishes from the kitchen.

“Hey, can you ask your dad if he’ll adopt me?”

Archie acts like he didn’t even notice his dad coming in, and just ignores my question.

“Okay, T., look. I’ll own the ‘luring you to Carter’s’ thing. I thought you guys needed to talk—for your sake, and hell, I felt sorry for the guy. But then you had to go and bring him your notes, and then actually go to the Steeles’? Oh, that’s aaaaall you, Rask. Don’t even look at me.” He props his head up with his hand and takes a sip from his mug. “You’re going off the deep end, girl. What’s next? Motorcycles? Bungee jumping? Hard drugs?”

“Yeah, ‘all me,’” I mutter, with a pout as I take a cookie from the same jar as Archie’s dad. “I just… damn… when my emotions take over… Arch, my head and my heart are just... they’re telling me different things...” I admit, my eyes locking with his. “…when it’s about Carter.”

“And what about when it’s me?” Archie’s tone turns playful, his eyebrows doing a silly little dance.

I feel so wrecked I can’t even smile, but I force out the words to joke: “In your special case, the deciding vote is cast by my stomach.” I finish chewing the delicious chocolate chip cookie. “And all these three of my corrupt organs are insane about you.”

Archie grins, pops two slices of bread into the toaster, and sets the dial to three.

I run my fingers through my hair and press my palms hard against my temples. Strangely, the sheer panic I felt an hour ago about the gossip and everything... it’s just gone.

“Arch... How do I get him out of my head? He’s been living in my thoughts again since our two-day imprisonment. It’s like some kind of sick addiction, these feelings I can’t even put into words! And without him feeling the same, I’m crumbling from the inside. And now… god, I miss him all over again.”

All of a sudden, the tears start to well up.

“Jesus, this is so fucked up.”

I take a deep, steadying breath and tilt my head back to stare at the stark, white kitchen ceiling, so empty it feels like a perfect reflection of my own head now.

“Okay, look. I’m gonna give you the worst, most clichéd advice in the book,” Archie looks at me as if he’s not sure about his own advice, “but all the books say the way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

“Get under someone else?”

“Yeah, I mean... to fall in love with someone else.”

“And who, pray tell, am I supposed to ‘get under’? I barely go anywhere! It’s School, Home, Your Kitchen. My options are beyond limited.”

“You’re just not paying attention. What about Ian? Or Stefan? Scratch Ian, he’s Zane’s shadow. So, Stefan.”

“Why Stefan?”

“He seems like a good guy. Always coming up with fun stuff for the whole class. Seems like he’d be a fun time.” Archie pauses, as if lining up his final argument. “Strikes me as the same type as Raf and Slade...” He trails off for a beat, then tacks on, “...Ian and Zane. You know. Your type.”

“This is insane. You know what? I’d have a better shot with Slade.”

Archie snorts, almost choking on his toast. “Won’t work. You need a real, flesh-and-blood guy, not a mythical creature.”

“He is real. He’s just—”

“—and given the fact that Slade’s already into you? And he’s your brother’s friend? I’d strongly advise against it.”

“You’re so full of it, Arch.”

“Nope. I’m a certified specialist in unrequited love. I’ve seen more will-they-won’t-they storylines than there are reruns of Friends, so trust me, I have a PhD in this stuff. In your professional diagnosis from Dr. Heartbreak, I’m prescribing Stefan. Also, a complete and total embargo on Zane and his entire crew. No more rescue missions. Stop psychoanalyzing his every word. Live your own life. Get back to your friends, your homework, just… have fun. Prove to yourself that your world doesn’t orbit Zane Carter.”

“You’re a quack. You don’t have a license, doctor.”

“I still can’t believe you actually went through with it and went to see him after that text. I don’t get how you even had the guts to do that. And not just him—you went to the Steele house!”

“And who gave me the address? Oh, screw you, Archie! I’m a woman, we have a whole different hemisphere for making bad decisions.” I take another sip of tea, then reach over and snatch the jam-covered toast right out of his hand. “Seriously, I have no clue. A couple of hours ago it just seemed like the only logical way to get him the clinic’s info. And his clothes.”

Archie is looking at me like that was the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. He reaches for the jam jar and another piece of toast.

“Hell, maybe I was still asleep and thought I was acting out a dream. I only snapped out of it when Lacey opened the door.”

“Look, with Carter, you’ve gone above and beyond what any other girl would’ve done. “You literally texted him ‘Let’s start over,’ and he said no. That’s it. You can’t ignore a ‘no.’ If you were a guy and he was a girl, I’d be the first one telling you to storm the castle, believe me. ‘Don’t surrender, no matter the casualties.’ But he’s the guy. And he made it crystal clear he’s not interested. So I’m seriously prescribing a target switch. For therapeutic purposes. Go on one damn date, at least! Consider it chemo for your Carter addiction.”

“A date?” I let out a bitter sigh, my eyes dropping to the table. “I’ve only ever had one date. With Zane.”

“All the more reason. It’s therapy,” he shoots back, not missing a beat.

“With who? I officially have a mythical boyfriend, remember?”

“Well... damn, I don’t know. First thought: we start a rumor that you two broke up. And hey, if a rumor about you and Carter starts making the rounds now, it actually plays right into our hands!” Archie concludes, a triumphant gleam in his eye.

“Jesus, Arch? Are you for real?” I stare at him, searching for a hint of a joke. “So if the rumor doesn’t take off, I should just... launch it myself?”

“Whoa, hold up! Let’s not go off the deep end here.” Archie raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll set you up on a couple of dates myself. You just tell me who you’d go for.”

I sigh, coming to the disappointing conclusion. “That’s the whole problem. Besides Zane—and maybe Slade—no one else even interests me. With Carter... there’s no going back. But Slade? I just think he’s perfect in every way. Slade’s... great.”

“You can’t use Slade. He’s falling for you.”

“You keep saying that like a mantra,” I say, voicing what I’ve really been feeling, “and I think I’m actually starting to buy it.”

“T., he’s a real person,” Archie says, quieter now but dead serious. “It’d gut him just as much as it guts you if you try to use him as a Zane replacement. That’s a seriously shitty thing to do.” He holds my gaze, not a trace of a smile left.

“Okay, okay,” I surrender. “Fine. Anyone who’s not in Jax’s crew or isn’t Andrew Sumner.”

“Order accepted!” Archie slams his palm on the table, making the cups rattle. “Let’s move—we’re late!”

“How are you planning to do that?” I grab my backpack and hurry after Archie. “What if nobody even wants to go on a date with me?”

“I’ll just pay them, don’t worry. Let’s take my car?” he says, pulling me by the hand towards his vehicle.

“Yeah, let’s take yours,” I reply, and then stop dead in my tracks. “What!? You’re going to pay someone to go on a date with me?!”

Archie bursts out laughing, practically doubling over before he manages to open the passenger door and stands there, waiting with an exaggerated gesture for me to get in.

“You’re such a jerk,” I grumble, sliding into the car.

We’re in the car when I decide to come clean.

“Arch, I can’t do this dating thing. I’d have to kiss some random guy. I just can’t.”

Archie shoots me a disapproving look, his hand freezing on the ignition key.

“T, trust me—no decent guy wants a kiss from a girl who’s just following the script. Nobody wants a kiss like that. Well, I sure wouldn’t,” he corrects himself.

“Okay, fine,” I say. But if I have to suffer, he’s suffering with me. “Then you have to go on some dates too.”

Archie makes an exaggeratedly pitiful face at me.

“Have you even tried asking Lena out? Or are you just gonna keep dreaming?”

“Nah, I’m scared shitless. If she says no... this way, at least I can pretend I still have a shot.”

“Okay, so here’s the deal—I’ll do some recon, see who might be into you, and then you ask them out. Deal?”

“That’s only fair!” I press him.

“Anyone but Andrew Sumner, promise?!”

Now I’m the one smiling: “Well, if there’s anyone left besides him, then yeah, I promise.”

Archie shakes his head, still laughing.

“Okay, Plan B is a go. Now for the hard part.”

I give him a blank look. “The hard part?”

“Making up with Nikki,” Archie sighs, and pulls away from the curb.