Julia looked over Marroney’s shoulder at the always-blue sky, slightly tinged this morning by a few streaks of dark fog clouds coming in from the bay. She rested her cheek on the top of her knees. Julia hadn’t ever felt nauseated by sadness before. “I don’t know how you can be best friends with someone for so long, be in love with each other, and have things fall apart so quickly.”
Marroney nodded. He leaned back against the counter, his legs stretched out in front of him, a large coffee stain on his pants. A quiet moment passed, and Julia thought that maybe he had nothing else to say. She closed her eyes and thought of Dave in homeroom, not listening to music the way they always did, thought of their literal lack of connection, the days it had been since the white cord of her earphones had stretched between them. She thought of his hands, thought of Gretchen. Then Marroney spoke. “Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more more or less than we are anything.” He massaged his mustache for a second. “We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely. Just like things are rarely always true or never true, we aren’t ever exactly one thing or another. We are more or less.
“It’s like that in our love lives, too. We like to think we’re formulas that even out exactly, that we are perfect matches with each other. But we’re not. We match up with lots of people, more or less.”
Julia groaned. “That’s deep, but how is that helpful?”
Marroney laughed, just as the bell rang, the sound muted by the tree house walls but still an insistent cue to leave. Julia stood up, brushed herself off as Marroney uncapped his pen. “The equation might not balance out, even if you and Dave are more or less a match.” He gave her a smile, then turned back to his papers. “Think about it.”
o o o
School let out and Julia had not listened to music since the morning. All day long, she’d been turning over Marroney’s words. She’d written down formulas in her notebook that made no sense, even to herself. She’d crossed out her writing and torn the pages out and then gone searching for the crumpled sheets in her classroom’s trash bins, only to toss them again. By lunch, though she kept trying to organize her thoughts, she knew exactly what she was going to do.
She gave herself the last two periods of the day to think it over. She repeated the phrase “more or less” so many times to herself that the meaning attached to the sounds was starting to fall apart. She read her mom’s e-mail fully, then deleted it without a response.
When school let out, she searched the crowd for a blond ponytail. She spotted Gretchen headed toward the exit, a black backpack bouncing on her shoulders. Julia squeezed past the crowd of slow movers, saying, “Excuse me,” and immediately pushing through the oblivious groupings of people blocking the hallways. Before she could second-guess what she was doing, she found herself walking right behind Gretchen. She needed to say what she had to say before she lost her conviction to do what was right.
When Gretchen turned around, Julia knew right away that she was getting exactly as much (or as little) sleep as Julia was.
“He’s yours,” Julia said, unable to stop herself. Despite the pain at the sound of the words, there was an enormous relief. “I don’t want to give him up. But I know him better than anyone else. I could have had him, once. I almost did for a little while. But you have him now. No matter how I feel, he wants you.”
Gretchen’s mouth opened slightly. Dozens of people passed by them, oblivious to the conversation. Julia wondered where Dave was, what he was thinking or doing or hoping. She missed the sound of his laugh, though it’d only been a few days since she’d felt him do it right against the side of her neck, the warm exhalations turning into a series of kisses that had seemed endless at the time. “You two are the better equation.”