B00B9FX0F2 EBOK

  For Margot Baron, with love and gratitude.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Preview

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.”

  — John le Carré

  So bored I think I might be dead. Jason wrote the imaginary status update in his head as Ms. Rowen droned on about the properties of iron. He thought about sneaking his phone from his pocket and posting it to Facebook, but Ms. Rowen had hawkish eyes and no patience for rule breakers. Broadcasting the monotony of chemistry to all 248 of his friends wasn’t worth the risk of getting the phone confiscated for the week.

  Two hundred forty-eight friends. Two hundred forty-nine if you included the request from his aunt Sally that he’d been ignoring. The list was like a tour through his utterly pathetic middle and high school career. There was Rachel Keller, the curly-haired saxophone player he had slow danced with at Jacob Cooper’s bar mitzvah. Sadly, that was pretty much the most action he’d had in the past four years. Alex McCoy, a bespectacled kid he’d bunked with at summer camp, flooded his newsfeed with creepy photos of frogs and other unwitting specimens. Sometimes someone like Suzy Garz popped up, though the charismatic captain of the field hockey team hadn’t exchanged actual words with Jason since the fourth grade. Not that he was so unhappy about that — he was pretty sure the inspirational quotes she was posting were from a ’90s edition of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. Either there or the back of a cereal box at Whole Foods.

  Jason’s eyes wandered around the room. To his surprise, his best friend Rakesh’s face was frozen in rapt concentration. It took Jason a minute to realize it was a phone cradled carefully in his hands that had captured his attention. Rakesh could afford to get his iPhone confiscated — he kept a spare one in his locker for just such an occasion. One of the perks of being among the most popular students at Roosevelt High was that girls (and boys and maintenance staff and teachers) were happy to help Rakesh out on the rare occasion he couldn’t charm his way out of a punishment. He had 892 friends last Jason had checked. His wide smile and princely cheekbones populated almost as many photos. Jason knew because he was featured in many of them, but he’d untagged any where you could see light reflecting off his glasses or his hair looked floppy. Which was pretty much all of them.

  Jason forced himself to concentrate on Ms. Rowen as she explained the process of oxidization. He couldn’t afford to get anything less than a B on the approaching midterm. One of the few advantages to leading the world’s quietest social life was that his mother allowed him to do pretty much whatever he pleased so long as he made good grades, but if she had even the slightest inkling he was lying to her, it was only a matter of time before she’d take his car — or worse, his laptop — away. He wasn’t intentionally deceiving her. He’d sit down at his computer intending to focus on schoolwork, but when Lacey was online everything else had a tendency to fade into the background.

  Lacey. His stomach flipped just thinking about her. She had changed everything with two words. “Hey” and “Jason” were things he heard almost every day, but they weren’t usually featured next to a profile picture of a gray-eyed girl with beachy blonde hair. And Lacey was so much more than that, too. Since the first time she’d messaged him six weeks ago, they’d barely gone a day without e-mailing or chatting online, and each time he heard from her he could barely believe his good luck. Like him, she was a nut for indie rock, sending song lyrics or links to old Pitchfork posts on bands he thought only he knew about. She was even learning to play guitar, something Jason spent a lot of time wishing he could do. He’d gotten as far as the cheapest Fenders at Strings, the guitar store in the city, before the tiny tattooed clerk with huge round eyes that made her look like an anime character scared him off by picking up a Gibson and banging out a punk rock riff he didn’t recognize, probably because she’d written it herself. Lacey didn’t seem like the type to frighten easily, and she had a warmth that was conspicuously absent from the ferocious girls who hung around Strings. She was funny — comparing her spacey English teacher to Ms. Frizzle and calling her friends by rapper nicknames like J Money and Funky Dash. Best of all, she seemed to genuinely like Jason.

  He knew he shouldn’t exactly be composing the playlist for their wedding — or even changing his relationship status — but it was hard to contain his excitement now that he finally had something to think about in chemistry other than whether the clock was broken.

  Suddenly, he felt his hip vibrating and was so surprised he bolted to attention. A few of his classmates swiveled in their seats to see what had startled him, and he sat stone still until Ms. Rowen turned back to the whiteboard. His phone rarely rang during the day. He’d sent Lacey his number a few weeks before, and since then, every time his cell buzzed or beeped his heart leapt into his throat. Unfortunately, a sidelong look to his left confirmed it wasn’t worth the excitement. Rakesh did his best to suppress the smile beginning at the corners of his mouth, but when you’ve been friends with someone since you were both in diapers, you get pretty good at recognizing when they’re messing with you.

  Jason’s pocket buzzed again, and he glared at Rakesh before slowly sneaking his phone into his lap.

  Rakesh Adams: Admit it — you think ms. R is sexy when she talks about chemistry like this.

  And then the second:

  U dream about her reciting formulas 2 u

  He was about to respond when Ms. Rowen turned back from the board. He shoved the phone out of sight about half a second before her eyes settled on him. “Is something funny, Mr. Moreland?” she asked sharply.

  “Um, no.” His voice cracked as he answered. As if opening his mouth in front of his entire class wasn’t bad enough on its own.

  “So that smile on your face is a product of your general delight to be alive? A celebration of how great it is to be Jason Moreland, boy wonder?”

  His cheeks burned, and he kept his eyes trained carefully ahead, but he couldn’t block out the snickering around him. “I was just, uh, happy I finally understand the formula.” Jason prayed she wouldn’t ask him to explain — he had no idea what the notes she had copied there meant. She frowned suspiciously, but before she could humiliate him further, the bell rang. Mercifully, class was over.

  Jason and Rakesh both made a beeline for the door. “Dude, why didn’t you answer my texts?” Rakesh, with his artfully rumpled gray backpack slung over his shoulder, ran one hand through his wavy black hair and used the other to greet kids they were passing in the hall, all of whom parted as they passed. Like Miss America, Jason had observed on more than one occasion. And really, if Roosevelt High had its own pageant, Rakesh would be a front-runner for the tiara. He’d probably even manage to pull off faux crystals and inspire half the guys in school to start wearing sashes. I
t’s not that Jason was jealous — if he had his way, he’d be the one making fun of the contestants from home — but he sometimes marveled at the fact that his parents’ choices in early childhood playdates had somehow condemned him to a life as sidekick to the most popular guy in school.

  “I can’t get my phone confiscated just because you got bored in chemistry.”

  “Oh, do you need it in case you get an important call from Laney?”

  “It’s Lacey,” Jason said defensively. They made their way to their lockers to drop off their oversize chemistry textbooks. As they swung the doors shut, Rakesh plucked a tissue paper flower that had been tucked into the vents at the top. Jason raised an eyebrow. “Did I forget your birthday?” he asked.

  Rakesh shrugged. “Oh, you know, every day’s your birthday when it comes to Amy Kastle.”

  They made their way toward the cafeteria, pausing so Rakesh could bump fists with a group of basketball players wearing suits for game day. Jason awkwardly slapped hands with the overly eager Dan Greene and wished them luck against Mason. School spirit, another ritual he would prefer to sit out.

  They took their seats at their usual table, and Rakesh steered the conversation back to Jason. “So you and Lacey have graduated to the phone?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Yo, you need to get on that.”

  Ignoring him, Jason unwrapped his sandwich. Turkey, provolone, mustard on one slice of whole wheat bread, mayo on the other. It was the same sandwich he’d eaten for as long as he could remember. He bit into it. It tasted like yesterday.

  In theory, Jason liked English fine, but then Katie Leigh would open her puckered mouth and say things like “I feel like the identity metaphor of the green light is really prevalent here,” and Dave Jordan would cut her off to add his own analysis of the spectacles from the billboard even though they were both supposed to be talking about Shakespeare. Jason wished they had never been assigned The Great Gatsby over the summer because it was proof that other people could ruin anything, even a great American novel. But the silver lining was that as long as Katie and Dave’s “Who wants to be a Princeton student?” pseudo-intellectual battle continued, Jason could tune out and scribble lyrics in his notebook under the guise of taking notes.

  It was all turning gray

  It was all turning black

  Then you were there

  And you keep coming back

  These things tend to get ugly

  Or so I am told

  But now that you’re here

  Everything’s coming up gold

  Drive out, see the stars, in the car, we’re falling hard

  Wake up, feel the sun, touch your hair, see your heart

  He’d been writing songs over the past year, but he usually got frustrated and gave up before he could finish them. A day or two after he started, Jason would go back to his work and cringe, crumpling up loose leaf or dragging the docs to his trash for that satisfying springy sound. This one was different, though. The song wasn’t ready yet — still too sweet, too tidy, and only half done — but it didn’t make him want to burn the notebook he’d scrawled it in. He was going to keep writing until it was perfect, and then he would show it to Lacey. Maybe she would even write the music for it.

  He looked down at the page in front of him and drew a box around the line “Everything’s coming up gold,” tracing the edges several times until the ink bled through to the next sheet. It was a good note to end the song on. He could hear it, repeated several times, in his head. He half listened as Mrs. Granger highlighted relevant themes from the Hamlet reading he hadn’t done, while one eye rested on the clock. He watched the seconds tick by and waited for the day to end. Like he had yesterday, and the day before that.

  Jason caught a tantalizing whiff of his mother’s lamb chops before he heard her voice. “Babycakes, is that you?”

  “If by you, you mean Jason,” he shouted from the hall, tossing his book bag down at the foot of the stairs. His mom was always using cutesy nicknames that embarrassed him. As if being called “dumpling” in public wasn’t bad enough, she used the same terms of endearment to address her husband, Mark. Jason was loath to be too closely associated with his stepdad, a mustachioed real estate agent whose boisterous and borderline slimy personality would fit right in at a used car lot. Jason and Mark got along fine so long as they weren’t speaking to each other. But when they had to interact beyond polite dinner table conversation, Mark quickly grew frustrated with Jason’s indifference to professional hockey and unwillingness to act like one of Mark’s poker buddies. For his part, Jason was reminded of how much he missed his dad, who was always traveling for work.

  His mom, clad in black yoga pants and a loose T-shirt, was standing over the stove, tending to a frying pan. “Sweet pea, will you try these and tell me if they need more salt?” As a radiologist at the Oakdale Hospital, Claudia Moreland wasn’t some sort of Suzy Homemaker offering Jason fresh-baked chocolate cookies as he did his homework, but she prepared dinner almost every night, and Jason loved her cooking. He speared a thinly sliced potato with a fork and popped it in his mouth, scalding his tongue with oil.

  “Hot, hot!” he gasped, fanning his open mouth.

  His mom couldn’t refrain from laughing. “What did you think was going to happen?”

  “You couldn’t have warned me?” he asked when he’d finally swallowed.

  “You couldn’t have noticed you were eating them straight out of a frying pan that’s still cooking over high heat?” she shot back. “Now tell me, are they okay?”

  “Yeah, Mom, they’re great.” He grabbed another forkful, and this time blew on it before taking a bite.

  “How was your day?”

  “It was okay,” Jason replied. “The same.”

  “All right, well, I think we’ll eat when Mark gets home. Do you have homework to do until then?”

  “Sure, yeah, I’ll be in my room.”

  Jason did have homework, but as soon as his door was shut he logged in to Facebook. The little red “1” at the top of his screen made his breath shorten.

  Hi J,

  I’m supposed to be studying right now, but I can’t make myself open my history book. So instead of working, I keep watching the video you sent me of Stephen Colbert singing “This Year” with the Mountain Goats. Oh. Em. Gee. Are you kidding me? WHERE did you find that? Obsessed.

  I think I’ve watched it like 20 times to the point where I’m singing along and everyone in this computer lab is looking at me like I’m crazy, but I don’t even care. If I get kicked out of school for this, it will be worth it because tMG videos are literally my favorite thing in the entire world.

  How was your weekend? Did you go out or did you lock yourself in your bedroom and listen to emo? I’m not judging unless you were wearing guyliner in which case we’re in a fight. Write me back soon, because if you don’t, then I have to do my homeworks and UGH.

  Xo

  Lacey

  PS: Watch this one!

  Jason clicked the link Lacey sent and saw that it was a video of the Mountain Goats covering the Jawbreaker song “Boxcar.” He’d seen it before, which wasn’t surprising. They were his favorite band, if you could call the Mountain Goats a band. It was sort of just one guy with a guitar, John Darnielle, though recently he’d been recording and touring with a bassist and a drummer. The music was both darker and less whiny than guys with acoustic guitars usually were, and Lacey loved it every bit as much as Jason did.

  As the video played, he pictured Lacey watching it in her school’s computer lab, imagining her mouthing the words and bobbing her head, squealing quietly with glee as soon as the song ended, while a disapproving teacher looked on.

  He read the note again, savoring every word. These messages were like a window showing him a narrow sliver of Lacey’s life. Sometimes he wanted to pry the window open with a crowbar and take in the entire picture. He’d never say it out loud for fear of sounding like a creepy stalker, but he wanted
to know how she spent every waking moment — everything she said, who she sat next to in class, what she ate for lunch, the most-played songs on her iPod.

  When he’d first messaged her, he’d known it was a long shot. It was her quote that caught his eye.

  but none of the money we spend

  seems to do us much good in the end

  i got a cracked engine block, both of us do.

  yeah, the house and the jewels, the Italian race car

  they don’t make us feel better about who we are.

  i got termites in the framework — so do you.

  It was the same one he had on his page, from one of his favorite Mountain Goats songs. They weren’t the only two people on Facebook who listed it, but Lacey was definitely the prettiest. Something about her sleepy smile caught his eye. Her profile picture was a candid shot, not posed or stiff like the pictures of lots of girls Jason went to school with. Her eyes weren’t fully open and she looked like she was about to burst into laughter. The moment was so genuine, Jason felt like he knew her instantly — and instantly wanted to know more. Brighton wasn’t far from Oakdale. Plus, what did he have to lose? A pretty girl he didn’t know might reject him, so what else was new?

  It had taken three months for her to respond. By the time the message came, he almost deleted it because the name Lacey Gray meant nothing to him at first. But she had a face that was hard to forget, and images of it flooded into his head when he reread the notification e-mail. Yet when he clicked the link to her message, she was almost exactly as he remembered, looking simultaneously carefree and wise. What he wouldn’t give to be the person who put that smile on her face.