Page 79 of Jar of Hearts
“Start talking to other girls,” she said, pivoting in front of a three-way mirror, her glossy black hair swinging as she turned this way and that. She was wearing a pink dress that looked great on her, but judging by the displeasure on her face, great wasn’t good enough. “You’re a junior now. You’re not my type, but you’re cute. You’ll have girls lining up this year. Start asking some of them out. See how it feels.”
Angela disappeared a couple of months later. It was hard to believe at first. There was a rumor that she ran away, but that didn’t make sense to Kaiser, because his friend had zero reason to leave her life. The only theory that did make sense was that something bad had happened to her, but nobody wanted to accept that. It was incomprehensible.
The sudden absence of Angela Wong created a huge hole where she had once been, and the only person in the world who could understand the unique sense of loss that Kaiser felt was Georgina. They should have freaked out about it together, supported each other, held each other up. Instead, Georgina pulled away. It started the Monday after Chad Fenton’s party, which was the last time anyone could remember seeing Angela, and the night Kaiser decided to ignore their best friend’s advice and take his shot.
After that weekend, Geo started avoiding him. It was subtle at first—not returning his calls, sitting in the library instead of eating lunch in the cafeteria, going straight home after school instead of finding him so they could go to the 7-Eleven. He chalked it up to her being upset about Angela and feeling awkward because of their kiss. But a couple of weeks later, it grew worse. She’d change directions if she saw him coming down the hallway. The few times they did speak, her responses were curt.
“Is it because of the kiss?” he finally asked her a couple of weeks later. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up, but not talking to her was like not breathing. He cornered her outside the front entrance of the school. He didn’t understand any of it. Their best friend had disappeared. Who better to help each other through it than each other?
She had laughed at him.Laughed. “As if,” she answered, and walked away.
Over the next month, Kaiser watched, helpless, as she spiraled. In the first few weeks after their friend went missing, Georgina was edgy, skittish, constantly looking over her shoulder, as if she half-expected that whatever had snatched Angela out of their lives might come for her, too. She was bothered by the rumors, defending her best friend vigorously against stories that Angela left of her own accord, that Angela had a secret boyfriend, that Angela wanted to be famous. By mid-December, Kaiser barely recognized Geo. Her hair was greasy, her skin was broken out. Once, she even ran out of the cafeteria because she had to throw up.
She didn’t return after Christmas break. When he tried calling her house, her father told him that she was being treated for depression, and that he’d arranged for her to finish her junior year at home via tutor. They spoke for ten minutes, Walter Shaw telling Kaiser that Angela’s disappearance seemed to have triggered feelings of abandonment, loss, and grief from her childhood, as her mother died of cancer when she was five.
Kaiser continued to call every few weeks to see how she wasdoing, but if her father wasn’t home, the phone was never answered. On two occasions, he stopped by her house on the way home from school. The first time, Walter told him that his daughter wasn’t up for company. The second and last time, nobody answered the door. But as he was walking away, he looked up and saw Georgina’s face in the window, peeking out from behind her pink lace curtains. Pale. Exhausted. And terrified.
Whatever she was going through, it was hell; that much was certain.
The following September, Geo was back at St. Martin’s for her senior year. It was like the previous year had never happened. She seemed quieter and more contemplative, but she was smiling again, looking more or less like her old self, even though she’d gained a little weight. She didn’t try out for cheer or volleyball, opting instead to take extra classes to make up for the ones she’d failed in the first semester of the year before. She skipped all of the parties, and could be found in the library most lunch periods, doing homework. With no extracurricular activities, she was able to work a part-time job after school at Jamba Juice, where she was nice to the customers.
He stopped into the store one Saturday midway through the year, forgetting that she worked there. She took his order.
“How’s it going?” he asked her.
“Good,” she said, handing him his change, and it was like they were strangers. She turned to make his smoothie. There was no one else in the place.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey.”
She stopped, turned to him, her visor shading her face just enough that he couldn’t read her gaze.
“I’m okay, Kai,” she said. “That’s what you want to know, right? I’m okay. But I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to hang out. I have to keep moving forward, okay? That’s what’s best for me.”
“I understand,” he said, his hands on the counter, leaning forward. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends. I lost her, too, you know. Or did you forget that part?”
She walked back to the counter. Touched his hand gently, offered him a smile. “I know you did. And I am so sorry for your loss. But you remind me of her, okay? You remind me of who we used to be. And I can’t be reminded of that. It nearly killed me. So, please. If I ever meant anything to you, you’ll leave me alone.”
He left without taking his smoothie, hurt in a way that went much deeper than a broken heart. He didn’t know her anymore; that much was obvious.
He never tried to talk to her again. He didn’t wave to her or even attempt eye contact if he saw her in the hallway at school. Once, when he was with the girl he dated briefly at the end of senior year, she was craving a smoothie and they stopped in at Jamba Juice. Georgina took their order, the both of them pretending they didn’t know each other.
“Whatever happened to you guys? Weren’t you good friends last year?” the girl said as they walked away with their drinks.
“Yeah,” he said. “We were best friends. At least, I thought we were.”
“We see what we want to see,” the girl said, sipping her smoothie. “Not what’s there.”
Kaiser can’t even recall that girl’s name now. Rachel something, or maybe it was Renée. They’d only gone on three or four dates before it ended over something stupid, the details of which he also can’t remember now. But he’ll never forget her words that day, which, cheesy and clichéas they were, sounded so profound to his not-quite-eighteen-year-old ears.
He knows now what happened to Georgina. He knows why she stayed away from St. Martin’s junior year, why she hid at home, why she refused to see him. Nineteen years later, it all makes complete sense, and Kaiser wants to punch himself for not figuring it out sooner, when it should have been so goddamned obvious.
You see what you want to see, not what’s there.
PART FIVE
ACCEPTANCE
“I know I can’t take one more step towards you
