“Thanks,” I say, then lean in closer. “By the way, what’s a succulent wall?”
Celeste pulls out a blue sketchbook covered in ink drawings and opens to a page with pasted photos. They’re of beautiful murals on the sides of buildings, but made entirely out of cactus-like plants, in shades of purple and green and gray-blue. Bordering the images are sketches of flowers and vines, long tendrils reaching from one page to another.
“Cool,” I say, and I mean it.
“They are pretty cool.” Celeste nods, putting her sketchbook away. “So, why did you pick this club if you didn’t even know what a succulent was?” she asks. It’s not accusatory; it’s interested.
“Honestly? Mrs. Weatherbee told me I had to choose three clubs, and this was one of the first I saw.” I shrug. “How about you?”
“My parents have a farm about forty-five minutes outside town,” Celeste says. “That’s where we live. I’ve had my own garden since I was practically old enough to carry a watering can. And I’m pretty into design . . . it just seemed like kind of a cool comingling of the two.”
I study Celeste’s gorgeous olive skin and her earnest, deep brown eyes, and I realize with only mild dismay that she is, like, the coolest of cool. And more importantly, she’s nice. The idea of her and Max forming some superhuman dynamic duo is easier to picture than I’d like to admit.
“So, I feel like we should talk about something,” Celeste says as she removes some soil from a bag and puts a thin layer in the base of her orb. I follow her lead, my hand jerking involuntarily and spilling some on the table. Celeste doesn’t even comment on it. Here it comes. Has Max told her something?
“It’s about Max,” she says, giving a shy smile.
Oh God. I put down my bag of potting soil. “You don’t need to worry—” I start to say.
“No, no, let me finish,” Celeste says. “I just feel like he gave you a really dumb impression on the quad the first day of school. Oliver just brings out a . . . pretty unattractive side of him.”
“Oh?” I say, relieved that this isn’t about me. “Why?”
“They used to be friends a few years back, but then they started to grow apart. It’s kind of a long story, but Max was different then. More reserved.”
I run my tongue along the inside of my bottom teeth, something to distract my mouth from saying I know. That he told me all about it last week, right before he broke my heart. But explaining to Celeste that Max and I were hanging out would require me to also explain where, and I am definitely not getting into CDD with her. It’s the only thing I share with him that’s just ours . . . besides the dreams, of course. And if she ever shows up in one of those, I will resolve to never fall asleep again.
Celeste is still explaining the history. “Anyway, one day he started to change. He started to focus more on school, joined the soccer team—which, turns out, he’s really good at!” She laughs like it’s the craziest thing ever, like, Oh, that Max, isn’t he a hoot? and I force myself to laugh, too. It comes out more like a chest cough. “And then he got a whole different group of friends . . . I don’t think Oliver was very happy about that. And Max was disappointed that Oliver didn’t want him to be happy.”
“Wow.” I feel like I’m reading a story where Oliver and Max are fictional characters. I’ve never even heard of the book, but Celeste knows it all. And she’s really nice. And I am a horrible person for even entertaining the idea that her boyfriend should be mine.
Except he was mine first, whispers a tiny voice in the back of my mind.
“Anyway,” Celeste says. “I know I’m talking your ear off. I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression of Max. He’s actually great, once you get to know him.”
Is this really happening? Celeste is giving me advice about a guy I’ve known longer than she’s been able to spell her own name? But the irony is that she’s kind of right. I’m beginning to realize that maybe I never knew him. Not entirely anyway. And that dreams and reality are far from the same.
13
Welcome to the Bat Cave
“HEY, ALICE!” I hear Celeste call out after Terrarium Club, just as I’m unlocking Frank to head home. It’s moments like these when I really wish I had my earbuds in and could peel out of the parking lot and never look back like I hadn’t heard her at all. I’m exhausted. Between the dean and Delilah and Celeste, there’s a lot I need to process. But my earbuds are, as always, tangled in an impossible knot at the bottom of my bag.
“Hey!” I say, turning and putting on my biggest smile.