Blue Bloods: Keys to the Repository

She walked out and took a deep breath of fresh air. She couldn’t understand him. What did he want? He was bonded to Mimi, wasn’t he? And yet he had kissed her yesterday afternoon, and then had disappeared so quickly she had to assume he was repulsed by her, or perhaps repulsed by his attraction to her, which was just as humiliating. Maybe he only liked her when no one else was looking. . . . Maybe he was just playing a game . . . toying with her emotions while she churned with confusion and desire. . . .

Three stolen kisses—it didn’t add up to anything, really. He was never going to be her boyfriend, she thought as she turned right onto 96th Street. He was never going to sling his arm around her as they walked down the hall, never take her to Winter Ball, never declare his love over the PA system by mangling the lyrics to “Come on Eileen,” as Jamie Kip had done so charmingly last week when he’d serenaded Ally Elly, before the head girl had cut him off. But Schuyler didn’t want any of that—did she? She had never yearned for popularity. It struck her as absurd anyway, to want popularity. Popularity was fickle and elusive, like trying to catch fireflies in a jar. You were either born with it or relegated to wallflower status according to the mysterious and unknowable workings of the universe.

It wasn’t something you strove for or wished for or worked for, no matter how many silly articles and teenage novels and Hollywood movies tried to convince you otherwise. Popularity was something other people decided for you—other people decided you were fun and pretty and interesting and wanted to be your friend. Hence, you were popular. Most people thought Schuyler was weird, and left her alone.

She arrived at school early and ate her breakfast by her locker. She’d brought a yogurt and banana taken from the Forces’ immaculate commercial refrigeration system (nothing so bourgeois as a fridge, of course; this was the size of a small closet). Classes wouldn’t start for another half hour yet, and she relished having the place to herself. Soon enough, the hallways would be filled with the sound of gossip and camaraderie, and Schuyler would feel even lonelier than when she was alone. It was so much easier when no one was around.

As much as she was not the kind of girl who wished he would claim her as his own in front of everyone to see, a little part of her could not help but wish for it nonetheless. The problem with being alienated is that one is never alienated enough, she thought as students began to trickle in before the first bell. She could swath herself in black clothes and hide behind her hair, shut off the rest of the world and listen to angry music on her iPod, but somehow it was all a pose, wasn’t it? Was she just a poser? Because why was she drawn to him, then, the kind of boy that every girl wanted to date? Didn’t that mean she was just like everyone else? If only she didn’t care so much; but she did. At heart, behind the quiet and the scowl and the indifference, she cared very, very much.

And then, there he was. Right in the middle of a group of laughing, joking boys—always right in the center, the tallest and handsomest one—the one you couldn’t help but stare at. . . .

Jack Force. He must have just gotten back from crew practice on the Hudson. She could always tell when he had been rowing; she could smell the sea air on his skin, in his hair, his cheeks were ruddy and flushed. He looked happy.

For the briefest second he caught her eye—but then turned away.

Schuyler bent down to her books, biting her bottom lip. She had just imagined it, hadn’t she? The kisses, everything. They didn’t exist in the real world. In the real world, she and Jack were strangers. She wasn’t looking, and someone jostled her elbow so that she lost her grip on her bookbag, and the book—The Plague—tumbled out, and she thought, If this is what some people think is a love story, they are just kidding themselves.

But aren’t all stories about love in some way?

Schuyler startled to hear Jack’s voice in her head, and looked up, but the hallway was empty. The second bell rang, and she was late.

Only the good ones, only the good stories, she thought, wondering if he could hear her, if he was listening.

The next morning, another book had been slipped underneath her door. What was this all about? Was he building her a library? This time, since the book was too thick to fit completely, it had been shoved, stuffed in the opening between the door and the floor, halfway in and halfway out, so that when Schuyler pulled it out, the paperback was bent in the middle and the pages were creased. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This time, inside the book there was a note.