Paul has started up a fire and is bundled up in hiking socks and Cate’s purple Snuggie, which he has taken to using way more than she ever did. Cate’s got an old quilt and one half of the couch, so I take up the other corner and sneak my feet under the same quilt. Our toes touch, and she wiggles hers against mine and I don’t stop wanting Joe to text me right this second, but something small in my heart releases from being near them.
I open up my copy of The Secret Garden, but I’m barely reading the actual story. I’m mostly going margin note to margin note and spending extra time on any underlined passage. Luckily, the person who owned this book before me took a lot of notes and underlined a lot of moments. They made an excited squiggly line under one of my favorite passages: “She had never felt sorry for herself; she had only felt tired and cross, because she disliked people and things so much. But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer.”
Sometimes it just takes one tiny thing to make the world seem right again, the note taker writes. Mary’s garden and the way new perspective and experience bring hope. The way a few roses are the difference between ecstasy and depression. Which is great. Because how easy is it to find a few roses, right?
I effing love this girl. I have decided it’s a girl. Mostly because guys don’t really read The Secret Garden. But also because I am falling for Joe, and I don’t have room to be madly in love with a red-pen-using, children’s-literature-reading dude, too.
“Not too many more nights like this,” Paul sighs out. “Once the baby comes, I mean.” I don’t know what he read in his book or tasted in his mug of tea that made him say it, but it breaks the perfect comfort in the room, and my stomach drops.
More things changing.
What if change were the greatest comfort? the Red Pen Note Writer writes in the margin, and my shoulders jump from the creepy relevance. This is why I love books. They so often address exactly what I’m going through at that precise moment.
I close my eyes and try to decide if I agree, that change could be comforting. Maybe I could. I’d like to.
“Bedtime for me,” Cate says, and tucks me into the quilt alone.
“Me too,” Paul says. He gets up and kisses my forehead. He smells like chocolate and honey and aftershave.
“Stay with me,” I say. I almost never ask either Cate or Paul for anything. I’ve never really had to. “I’m having a—I’m feeling sort of—” I feel my voice shaking, and the threat of tears rushing from my throat to my nose and probably inevitably to my eyes. But if I really lose it, I’ll have to explain myself to them, and I’ll let it slip that I am hooking up with a guy in a long-term relationship, and I’ll lose two of my last three allies. I can’t afford any more people thinking I’ve changed and I’m boy crazy and I’m making bad decisions.
So I won’t tell anyone. I’ll let Elise and Cate and Paul keep seeing me as good, even though I know I’m also a little bad.
I shake back the desire to open up with a nod of my head and a few painful swallows, and tell Paul I’m actually probably going to go to bed soon anyway. He looks relieved to not have the burden of sitting with me and talking about my problems. He looks relieved to get to go to his bedroom with his wife and their unborn kid, and I think: This is how it’s going to be.
I’m nearing the end of The Secret Garden. I savor the last few pages and last few amazing observations in the margins. I’m a little heartbroken to not know this stranger. I want her to be someone I can call up and talk through my problems with. I want more books filled with her thoughts. I’m not ready to let go of another friend. Not right now.
I flip through the book, hoping there’s something I’ve missed and trying to memorize the best notes, the ones that make me feel like I could actually be okay. The notes that make me feel like I’m not alone and like maybe I’ll get some of the things I want: love and the one million other things I’m missing. Maybe it’s tiredness, but I feel a little giddy.
On the last page, there’s a website link. Written in her pretty red script, all numbers and random letters, and below it the following words: My own garden of secrets.
Secret:
I wish I were hotter.
—Agnes
Secret:
I drive drunk. Often. There have been some seriously close calls.
—@sshole
Four.
Morning Assembly.
It’s the kind of crap Circle Community Day School comes up with: most days we have a twenty-minute Morning Assembly, where we get school announcements in the auditorium. Every Thursday morning the headmaster hires a speaker for an hour (sometimes academic, sometimes inspirational, always boring), and the tiny student body, all three hundred of us, settles into our squeaky, itchy seats and tries to not get caught napping. So basically, thank God it’s Wednesday.