Page 36 of My (Not So) Perfect Plan

“I don’t believe it,” I say. “Not for a second. You manage to make time for Rachel, Tamara, and Raven, but developing a relationship with me is too time consuming? It interferes with your plans for a perfect future?”

I blink as my eyes burn with tears, but I refuse to let them fall. She has been my bright spot in all this chaos and now even she has failed me. Just goes to prove, the only person you can ever rely on is yourself.

She’s crying softly into her hands, and it’s killing me. I hate seeing her cry. I don’t know that I ever have before. I want to hold her and comfort her, but I can’t and I’m hurting. I want to be sorry, but I’m not. I clench my fists and turn away to stare out the window.

“Just forget it,” I whisper, not trusting my voice to speak normally. “Shut the door on your way out, please.”

A few moments later, I close my eyes as I hear her get up and step closer. She places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

“Evan, for what it’s worth, I really am sorry. I enjoyed your company. I wish it could be different.”

As she heads for the door I keep my tongue under wraps even though I want to yell, ‘Itcouldbe different, if you would just let it.’

By the time I’m discharged, I am worn out and numb with trying to fend off all the anger and sadness. I just want to go home and sleep but they have me on this machine that helps me exercise my leg to a specific angle of degrees for a set number of times. My knee is loaded up with ice changes as much as I can stand, and I have enough pain killers that I don’t feel any pain physically. But emotionally, I‘ve ceased to care.

My mother is the only one who seems to really care without qualification. I love her, but it’s not enough to sustain me.

When we get home I shake off her help and use my crutches to navigate into my room where I carefully lay down. I can already feel that the leg has improved in its range of motion, but I’m not holding out hope for it to return to normal.

I realize that somehow, in the midst of everything going on, I’ve managed to fall in love with Claire. My mother had been worried aboutmebreakingherheart. Had any of us imagined that Claire Brown would be the one to break mine?

EIGHT

CLAIRE

“Yes, okay. I admit it. I’m a coward. There. That make you happy?” I pause in the process of painting my toenails a shade that cannot naturally be found on this earth. Tamara has the biggest collection of nail polish any of us have ever seen, and since we’re at her house while my friends attempt to help me unravel what happened Monday afternoon, glittery green toenails it is.

Normally, I would have had to beg, bribe, or steal to be able to get with my friends on a week night, but after seeing how miserable I’ve been for the past two days, my parents relented and allowed me to spend the night at Tamara’s house.

“No, it doesn’t make us happy,” Rachel says. They both scowl at me.

“Maybe he screwed up with Tina, you’ll never know unless you trust him, but maybe he didn’t,” Tamara said. “You’re letting fear rule your life in a way your parents never have. You already have pending acceptance letters from two different unis. What more do you want? How is dating him going to change anything?”

I almost laugh at Tamara. DatingEvan Carmichaelwould change everything.

“You make it sound like it wouldn’t matter if it was Evan or that gamer in our computers class – um, Jerome or whatever it is,” I say. “This is different. It’s Evan, who I have liked since second grade and who happens to have the biggest witch in theschool as his psycho fan club. He’s a ladies man and a flirt, which makes dating him a bad idea. But the more I’m around him, the more I lose strength and lose focus.”

“Find the balance,” Rachel says. She reaches across the bed to gather me into a hug, careful of the nail polish and my drying toes. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know your plan is important to you, but have you ever considered maybe rewriting your plan to include a love life?”

I shake my head. There is just no room in my heart or my head for sentimentality. At least not right now. Not if I am going to be smart and focus on the dream.

I dread seeing Evan at school again. I haven’t heard from him ever since I ‘broke up’ with him. Looking back, I wish I had handled it differently. Like, not dumping all this extra stress on him right after he woke up from surgery. Pretty sure his mom probably hates me for doing that to him. I wouldn’t blame her, I kinda hate myself for doing that to him.

The truth was, I panicked. Saturday night I had driven to Tina’s, hoping to surprise Evan with my unexpected arrival. But instead of him waiting for me like a guy who actually has his heart attached, he and Tina were almost smooching on the porch. I asked Tamara to keep driving instead of be humiliated for being the cuckhold.

By Monday, the gossip had transitioned to some freshman who walked in on Derek doing the nasty with her little sister’s college age baby sitter. I was happy not to be the gossip du jour, but that hadn’t stopped Tina from going claws in bat crap crazy on me. Every chance she got, she was manipulating, humiliating, or straight up lying about me – to the point thatin a single day, I had racked up several sets of demerits from teachers.

So I panicked. Between knowing that Evan didn’t really want me for me, that he just wanted a warm body to touch and hold, and the fact that Tina was ready to crucify me over this, everything felt like it was on the brink of tumbling down. I was desperate, so after school I called all the people necessary – Joanna at PT, Mr. Henderson (who promised to switch my Trig tutor), and Evan’s mom (who I promised to return the money since I was backing out before the job was done).

Mrs. Carmichael wasn’t pleased, as I expected she wouldn’t be, but she seemed to understand that personal issues were preventing me from continuing to work with Evan. She insisted that I keep what I was paid, since it was hourly and wished me the best, which made me feel like a dog.

What I hadn’t counted on was the look of complete devastation that had been so apparent on Evan’s face when I told him what I was doing. I hadn’t counted on the hurt in his eyes staying with me day and night. Or the way his face closed up and left me feeling cold and dead inside.

I felt like I betrayed him, even though, I shouldn’t have felt like that. Hadn’t he betrayed me with Tina? And why was it so wrong to do what I needed to do for myself?

He still has many months of recovery, but knowing that he will be back in school within a few days, that I’ll have to see him, blows. I had written up a thank you note to him for helping me get my driver’s license, but it sounded so cold and impersonal. I left the note in his truck, locked the door, and gave the keys to his mom, which meant taking the note back was out of the question.

I got back into my regular schedule of school and home or school and physical therapy. I try to distract myself by throwing myself into fall gala planning and do my darnedest to avoid Tina. The fall gala is only a month away, but there is so much I still want to do with it. My fellow committee members, like Steph and Harmony, catch onto my enthusiasm and rope the theater department into creating some pretty elaborate Venetian inspired backdrops for the ‘A Night in Venice’ theme we’ve settled on.

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