a humiliating interlude in the guidance counselor’s office
Hang in there! read a poster on Mrs. Channing’s wall, a stock image of an upside-down cat suspended on monkey bars. Next to it was a photo of a cat crumpled on the ground, white block letters over it: haynging n ther is overated.
“Is everything okay with you, Gael?”
Gael pressed his feet firmly into the dingy tiles of the tiny office and crumpled the tissue in his hand. His breathing was shaky. That morning, things had been so good—or as good as they could be, under the circumstances. He was a senior. He had a decent shot of getting accepted to UNC. He had Anika. He had Mason.
Sure, he was hoping against hope that his parents would get their act together and his dad would move back in, but his relationship with Anika had distracted him from all that.
It had distracted him from everything.
Normally, Gael took after his dad in the anxiety department—he always seemed to be worrying about something: whether he was taking the right number of AP classes; whether he was practicing his tenor sax enough; whether his little sister, Piper, would ever make friends her own age (she was just so smart and so uninterested in normal eight-year-old things); whether the occasional constellation of zits on his forehead made him wholly undateable. And on and on and on.
But when he and Anika had finally started dating, it was like none of the stressful things mattered. Because even though it was arguably at the worst time of his life, even though it had only been just over a month since his parents had broken the still-difficult-to-comprehend news, he suddenly felt . . . good.
His family might be falling apart, but Gael and Anika were just beginning.
And now she’d dumped him.
And he was somehow supposed to believe that it was all because of Mason? Mason, who’d been raiding their freezer for Bagel Bites since they were both Piper’s age. Mason, who routinely accompanied Gael to indie movies even though he was an action-and-shitty-dialogue sort of guy.
Mason, who knew more than anyone how much his parents’ split had hurt him.
“Gael?”
“Everything is fine,” he stammered, scowling at the floor.
“What was going on between you and Anika?”
“We were just talking.” He spoke the words slowly. If he said too much, he’d lose it.
“One sec,” Mrs. Channing said. She shuffled through the chaos of her desk—stacks of papers, two empty coffee cups patterned with caked lipstick. It was nice how Anika wore gloss instead, Gael thought automatically, before pushing it quickly away.
Mrs. Channing opened her file cabinet, flipped through the bloated folders, then pushed two pamphlets across the desk.
Pamphlet #1 Breaking Up and Breaking Down: Coping with the Highs and Lows of High School Romance
Pamphlet #2 No Means No: A Primer on Relationships and Consent
Gael stared in disbelief. “My mom’s a women’s studies professor at UNC,” he told her. “I know all about that no-means-no stuff. I just wanted to talk. She’s my girlfriend.”
Mrs. Channing took a deep breath. “I know it’s hard, Gael, but it didn’t look like Anika wanted to talk.”
Mrs. Channing didn’t get it. Gael was the ultimate respecter of women. He never ogled girls like Mason did, that shithead. He loved Anika.
“Can I please go?” he asked. His voice cracked, midsentence.
“Yes.” She scribbled a note for his teacher and set it on top of the pamphlets. “Off to class.”
Gael grabbed the stack and moved for the door.
“Oh, and Gael,” she called.
“Yeah?”
“It happens to all of us.”
“What?”
“A broken heart.”
I watched in agony as Gael stomped out of her office, wadded up the papers in his hand—note for his teacher and all—tossed them into the trash, pushed through the front door of the building, and stepped out into the sun.
the second-worst day of gael’s life, continued
Gael spent the rest of the day hiding out in his car in the school parking lot, eating a half-full bag of stale chips he’d found in the glove compartment, moping as he flipped through fuzzy radio stations, and angrily picking off the crumpled petals of the stupid $6.99 bunch of carnations until the flowers were all destroyed.
Gael had nowhere else to wallow. His mom was home, since she didn’t teach her first class until 2:00 P.M., and she had a great bullshit detector. And the thought of sitting alone in his dad’s dingy apartment was even more depressing than this.