The Book of Us Read online

  “Changing,” said Constance, sounding bored and nodding toward the little blue building.

  “Oh,” said Miranda. “I’ll surprise him.”

  She heard their voices as she approached, male and female inside the tight-quartered change room. His voice had become special to her; Lisa Ann’s was distinctive too, like an alarm to other girls.

  Miranda froze. She listened. Then she turned away, her face grim and down, her feet churning through the sand again, back toward her friends. As she moved, the door of the change room sprang open, loudly this time. Lisa Ann came tumbling out first, Noah behind her, his shirt and bathing suit still in hand, shoving her, though wrapped up in her too. Her hand still gripped his arm. She was dressed in a flowery little bikini.

  “Get away from me!” he said to her.

  Constance, Walker, Rosie, and Bruce stared. The first with a frown, the second with a riveted boy-stare at the flower pattern, and the other two in confusion.

  “Come on, Noah,” said Lisa Ann.

  “Get away from me!” he shouted again.

  Miranda turned on him. “Exactly what I was going to say!” she cried and marched away again, seizing her blanket and her sarong and beginning to move faster.

  “Mir!” said Rosie. “Your book!” She picked it up and held it out to her friend.

  Miranda stopped, hesitated, took a few strides back, ripped the book from Rosie’s hand and started to run.

  “Miranda!” shouted Noah. “Nothing happened! I promise you! I was trying to get away!”

  Constance glanced at Lisa Ann, then back at Noah. “Poor boy,” she said. “Under attack and helpless.” She glared at him. “Creep!”

  “Nothing happened!” shouted Noah again after his vanishing girlfriend. People were staring now.

  “Nothing happened?” said Walker. He gave Lisa Ann Bordeaux and her bikini another look. “Really?”

  “Shut up, Walk!” Noah turned back toward Miranda; an expression of terror appeared to grow on his face.

  “A boy and a girl in a change room together,” said Bruce. “One in a small bathing costume, the other partially clothed.”

  “Are you all right, Noah?” asked Rosie. Her voice was barely audible.

  “Are you serious, Rosie? Is he all right?”

  “Nothing did happen,” said Lisa Ann with her hands on her hips, “unfortunately. Just a bit of fun, no big deal.” She shrugged and began to walk away. “I think it’s what he said,” she said over her shoulder.

  “What did you say?” asked Constance, her eyes now blazing at Noah.

  * * *

  Noah caught up to Miranda on the boardwalk. He reached out and grabbed her arm. She instantly whirled on him and tore herself from his grip.

  “Do not touch me!”

  “Nothing happened! I know it looks bad that we were both in there but she —”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Guys don’t get it, and I thought you were different!”

  “What?”

  “What you said! Do I have to spell it out? Though it’s more than that too!”

  “What did I say?”

  She glared at him.

  “I don’t want to ever see you again, to hear your name, to even look at a book you’ve read; and you will certainly never, ever touch me again! Do you understand me, Noah, you jerk?”

  His face fell.

  “Mir?”

  “Leave me alone for the rest of my life!”

  She stalked away. He stood there desolate for a moment, his world collapsing. When Miranda said something, she meant it. He felt tears coming. Then he remembered something she had said once about girls walking away in anger from boys in movies and the guys running after them, doing whatever it took to get them back. “I know it sounds stupid, but I love the idea of a guy running after me in that way.”

  He ran after her, his heart pounding. He couldn’t believe how desperate he felt. It was as if his life, his very existence, depended on her taking him back. By the time he caught her again, she was off the boardwalk and out on the street near an ice cream stand. There were lots of people around. Everyone seemed happy. It was as if they were aliens. It was as if he were in a movie, a horror story. This time, when he reached out for her, she actually shoved him away, pushed him hard with both her hands on his chest, thrusting him back with Miranda Owens’ undeniable power.

  She wasn’t even crying now. Her face was red and there was hatred in her eyes.

  “I …,” he sputtered, trying to look optimistic, trying to bring her irresistible smile to her face. “I … I’m running after you … calling you back.”

  “Fuck you, Noah Greene.”6 She didn’t move when she said it, didn’t flinch. She stood there and stared right at him.

  He felt panic invade him. He dropped to his knees.

  “I beg you,” he said. “I love you.”

  “Oh, please, that is not possible. No one says what you said about a girl and loves her. You are a fraud. That’s what you are to me: a fraud! You lied to me in the past and I ignored it, but now this! You had to be different, Noah, different from other guys. You had to be. But it turns out you aren’t.”

  This time, she started to sprint. There wasn’t a girl, and only a few boys, in the school who could catch Miranda Owens. Noah got up and ran after her for a while, crying now as he moved, his sense of well-being wrapped up in what would happen next. She ran along the sidewalk and cut dangerously across the main street, almost into the path of cars. On the other side, ripping past pedestrians and familiar stores where they had shopped together, she glanced back a few times to see him chasing her. He kept trying to keep up, though his body would barely obey him. By the time she reached the neighborhood two blocks from the far side of town, a block from her own, he stopped. He leaned on his knees, gasping, sobbing, wounded, embarrassed, and desperate. He thought she looked back for an instant right at the end, one last time, before she disappeared, but he wasn’t sure.

  Miranda Owens, the Miranda Owens, the most amazing person he would ever meet, the most amazing love he had ever known and would ever know, had run out of his life. It was because of what he said.7

  * * *

  2 I don’t mean to objectify Lisa Ann in any way. I hope this doesn’t. I’m just saying what everyone saw, you know, from the outside.

  3 Rosie told me all this: about what she was thinking, her swimsuit, even the boy’s torsos thing that comes later, turned red when she did. I am not pretending I know what goes on in a girl’s head.

  4 Constance explained a thing called the “male gaze” to me. Interesting stuff. This is my version of that, I guess.

  5 Pretty sure it was The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. She loved that book.

  6 That is a direct quote.

  7 Obviously can’t reveal this quite yet — I’d be a dunce if I let it out here. It’s coming, though.

  2

  Where to Start?

  It was because of who he was too. Noah Greene knew that.

  He hadn’t known who he was a few years ago. If the truth be told, he hadn’t known who he was over the last eleven months either. That time had seemed like a dream, a fast, unbelievably happy dream. Before then, he had been living in reality, unmoored, but at least with some hope, however small, for the future. Now his dream was shattered and things were much worse. It was as if he were in hell. It had been a harsh world before her; it was going to be so much worse having lost her.

  * * *

  The moment he first saw her was like the first day of his life, and he had thought about it every day since then. Actually, it wasn’t just seeing her. That was how it was different with Miranda. There was so much more than her physical presence that was overwhelming.

  English class, first day of school, September 7.

  “Hey,” he said to the kid next to him, who was redhea
ded, dressed perfectly in a casual, black NBA logo tee, with rust-colored pants, tight at the ankles.

  “Walker Jones,” said the kid, looking up from his phone. He reached out and gave Noah one of those handshakes that come at you from an angle, gripping thumbs, palms slapping together — one that asks you to believe that its instigator is not a boring white guy. “Who are you?”

  “Noah Greene. I’m new.”

  “No kidding. You’re not in the cool section.”

  “Good.”

  Walker appeared to be unsure about how to react to that. He offered a weak smile.

  “People call me Walk.”

  “Your crew?”

  “They are legion.”

  That didn’t seem to be true. Noah had sat in this particular spot in his homeroom because it was toward the back but not at the very back and because he was a little late and there was a seat available, beside Walker Jones. Students were still settling in, some still texting on their cells; the room was loud, the teacher still at the door talking to another one.

  “I’ll give you the lay of the land,” said Walk. “Let’s go around the clock.” He dropped his voice and motioned to his left. “A few jocks at one o’clock; quarterback, first-line center, shooting guard, Lisa Ann in the middle of them. A couple of brains at three, some nerds at six, Miranda and her friends at nine, then us. We’re at midnight, pumpkins.”

  Noah had stopped listening when he mentioned her name.

  “Miranda who?”

  “Oh,” said Walker, smirking. “Forget about her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s Miranda Owens. She’s out of your league. She’s perfect, but perfect in a not uncool way. That’s nearly impossible, you know. She’s smarter than the brains, at least in English, and cooler than the cool girls. She doesn’t give a shit about what anybody thinks of her. She has her friends, weird friends if you ask me, and that’s it.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “I guess so. I think the better word is hot. You’re right if that’s what you mean. She sure doesn’t flaunt it, though she could. She doesn’t need to.”

  “Is she unfriendly?”

  “No, no. Not at all. Very nice, but she mostly keeps to her friends, doesn’t date anyone. A lot of the guys say gross stuff about her, but not a single one has the guts to say it anywhere near her or ask her out. I don’t think she’s ever had a boyfriend. No one is qualified. She’s weird too, in other ways. She’s got a cellphone, but no data — she only uses it like a phone!”

  Noah tried not to stare at her. She was wearing loose-fitting clothing, unusual in a room where so many of the girls looked like they had nearly ironed-on their tops and pants. She didn’t wear a speck of makeup, either.8 Her hair was short, as if cut for practical reasons, not to impress anyone. Unusual too, among rows of long-flowing, product-adjusted stylings. Her nose was a little long, she seemed tall, almost gangly when she was seated; her blue eyes, somehow, appeared to sparkle. On top of everything, she was paying attention.

  By the end of the day, Noah knew exactly how many classes he shared with Miranda Owens: four out of six. History, Art, Civics, and English. The last one was the most interesting, or at least it became the most interesting to Noah because it was the most interesting to Miranda.

  The English class was called Twentieth Century English Literature and it started out with the usual suspects like Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, and moved all the way up to Toni Morrison and writers who are still alive, like Margaret Atwood and John Irving. The teacher seemed like a cool guy, wearing black-and-white Keds and a black T-shirt with a picture of Edgar Allan Poe and a raven on it.9 He was actually asking everyone how they felt about the course and if they could think of any novels that might be added, and most of the students were saying things like “I don’t know” or “I guess it’s good” or Noah’s gem, which was “It sounds interesting.” A couple of people giggled at Noah’s assessment, not knowing that he was being genuine. Noah had peeked at a few of the novels the teacher had mentioned when he used to get stuck in a library in the city last year waiting to meet his father, who always came past the building as he slouched home from whatever he was doing on any given evening. The waits could be long, so Noah had even read some of these novels almost all the way through, picking up about where he’d left off each time he was in the library. Some of the writing had seemed amazing to him. He had a bit of a thing for stories. He could understand where they were going and what made them tick. He always got good marks in English class. He could have gotten better ones, but he didn’t want to stand out too much.

  Miranda though, she was different, way different. When her turn came, she lit up. She launched into all sorts of ideas about things that could make the course better. She mentioned a bunch of female writers who might be added. “Right on,” said this other girl, loud enough for all to hear, a girl with long, black curly hair and pale skin. Miranda said that maybe the teacher could add some “more challenging work” too, and mentioned a couple of “literary” novelists none of the others seemed to have heard of. She said it made sense because there was a grade twelve course offered next year called “Contemporary Literature” that was going to deal with important and complicated current writers like Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace. She said that last guy’s name slightly louder, as if he were an especially intriguing one to consider. No one appeared to have heard of him either.

  The funny thing about her short speech was that it wasn’t like a speech at all and no one made a peep while she talked. Normally, at least in any of the other schools Noah had been in — and he had been in a boatload — half the class would have muttered snide comments under their breaths or snickered or rolled their eyes at anyone who said anything remotely like what Miranda Owens was saying. It wasn’t that way at all with her. She spoke in an intense and passionate manner and yet did not seem to be showing off at all. She believed what she was saying. She didn’t seem like a nerd or a brown-noser either. She was this sincere, interesting person, telling you how she really felt. At least, that was how Noah saw it.

  He wanted to talk to her but couldn’t work up the courage. He felt so far below her. It stayed that way for about a month.

  * * *

  The day they first broke the ice was auspicious in many ways. Noah had woken up in a good mood. That was a rare thing, especially on Thursdays, which that day was, and the other two days of the week when he was up late working at the grocery store. (Sometimes he felt like he could still smell the meat on his skin, which was impossible, since everyone in the freezer room wore aprons and gloves.) The apartment was always quiet in the morning. His father slept in every day and Mary Jane had been gone for several years, had left in between one of their moves in the city, so Noah rose alone and made his breakfast alone and made his way out the door alone every single time.

  His eyes opened that day staring at his mother. She glowed back at him in black and white. He moved the photograph every night, hoping for this to happen, but it seldom did.

  “Good sign,” he said and immediately got up. That was a rare thing too. Usually, he lay in bed for a while, sometimes a long while, thinking and thinking, his mind going in circles. He knew that wasn’t a good thing. He had read somewhere online that moiling over things at night was a perfect way to sink yourself into depression or bring on anxiety. Sometimes, though, you can’t stop yourself from doing the things that are bad for you. At least, that was what he used to think in those days, in the days “Before Miranda” and “During Miranda” and even during a good stretch of “After Miranda” too.

  He looked around his bare room and felt his mood flatten. Same world as before. He didn’t feel like showering. What was the point, really? He had showered yesterday. He pulled some jeans and a sweater over his slim frame — losing himself inside his clothes — slouched
out into the little kitchen, and checked out the breadbox. It creaked as he opened it, so he stopped and peeked inside. Three slices of white bread, spots of mold like snot on the crust of every one. He would have to eat the Nutella straight from the jar.

  His phone buzzed.

  Come 4 breakfast. Mom is putting on a spread! B here or B square. U live kinda close, don’t u?

  Walker Jones to the rescue. Still his only real friend. Noah popped his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. He didn’t have any data either, not something he was about to broadcast, though he’d had to tell Walk, said it was a choice. Noah squeezed his feet into his old black Vans and pulled on the jacket he was going to have to wear all winter. It was warm enough; many people had worse, people he had seen on the streets in the city. He opened the door gently and eased it shut behind him before stepping out into the hallway. There was a little echo and then silence. It seemed like no one else was up yet. He headed toward the elevator, padding along the bare carpet. “How long am I going to be able to keep Walk away from here?” He pressed the button; there was a little “ding” and a good minute or two later the door slid noisily open. Empty. He got inside and the door closed, and the elevator groaned, shrugged, and headed downward. “Maybe I’ll tell him how much I like going to his house, no need to come here.”

  Outside in the crisp air he could see his breath, just about right for mid-to-late October. Noah started toward Walk’s place.