other. Not without stepping through a metal detector.”
“I know.”
“And Diane’s moving to Nashville in a month. Less than a month. And it sucks! Everything just sucks and that’s life and life just sucks,” I sputter out. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. Val is the calm one here, and I’m chock full of crazy. It’s a new dynamic for us.
“I’m going to miss you next year,” she says, now with her own set of tears.
“I’m going to miss you, too. Everything’s changing, and I don’t feel ready.”
“Neither do I.” Val rests her head on my shoulder. “But we’ll still be friends. I swear, Becca, if you come back next Thanksgiving with a Midwestern accent and calling soda ‘pop,’ I’m going to rip out your tongue Avox-style.”
“Good.”
“Instead of worrying about everything changing, let’s make the rest of this year awesome. Leave Ashland in a blaze of glory, not a trail of tears.”
She sounds like Brock’s quote. Who knew Val and Buddha had so much in common? But maybe they’re right. Maybe there is something to be said for living in the present. Truly enjoying the now. It’s the only part of my life that I control, so maybe I should let myself enjoy it.
“Ahem, don’t you mean blazin’ and bangin’ in glory?”
“Yes! Speaking of that, I got us another appointment at that perfume placeat the end of January.”
“Perfect. I can’t wait.” I really can’t. Since Val won’t be around next year, I can at least have a smell to remember her by. In a non-creepy way.
“But first, we’re going to do what you set out to do as the matchmaker.” She pulls down my notecards and checks herself in the mirror.
“Engineer relationships?”
She dumps the notecards into the trash. “We’re going to help people.” She taps her fingertips together and laughs to herself. “That’s right. This time, I have a plan.”
“Thank you all for coming in early today.”
I sit on a teacher’s desk and address Bari, Jake and Leo in a semicircle of desks. It’s still dark out, even though school is starting in a half-hour. Hello, winter.
“I want to apologize. I discovered that someone has been going around breaking up couples, and you’ve all been the victims.”
I pick up a stack of thick, manila envelopes from my side. Val distributes them to the proper people. “Inside, you’ll find evidence that proves that all of your relationships were purposely messed with. No one here sabotaged someone’s fantasy football league or wrote someone’s sister an email or stole someone’s private journal.”
Leo slumps down into his seat. “Can’t people just leave everyone alone?”
“Do you think this will work?” Jake asks, his eyes wide and pleading.
“I don’t know.”
“We’re screwed,” Bari says. She shoves her envelope into her oversized bag and gets up. The rest follow. No thank yous. No gratitude. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected that.
“Wait!” They stop and silence hits the room. “I didn’t hand you get-out-of-jail free cards. You all are innocent, but it may not be enough.”
“Why not?” Leo asks. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But you didn’t do everything right, either. Don’t expect your significant others to jump into your arms, or vice versa, the second they see the evidence. Relationships don’t work that way. Whether it was your fault or not, stuff happened, and this is only the first step to working things out. It’s a process.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Bari says. She continues to leave.
“She’s right,” Jake says. He stares at all of us with newfound determination, a clarity I’d like to think I had something to do with.
“Please,” Bari says. “Why are you taking her side? You got hit the hardest with that email rumor.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jake says. “If I want Paulina back, then I have to do it myself.” He looks at the manila envelope, then walks over to the teacher’s lab desk. He hooks up the Bunsen burner in the corner. “Twelve letters. Eternal flame question mark.”
“Jake, what are you doing?” I ask slowly, hoping this isn’t some mass suicide he’s engineering.
Jake turns on the burner and lights it. He holds the envelope over the flame for a few seconds. Fire crackles at the corner and inches up to his hands. He quickly pulls over a bucket to catch the falling particles. We stand there slack-jawed. Val seems a bit worried, but I know Jake is fine. He seems to know exactly what he’s doing and what he wants.
He looks up at us and smiles. “No use trying to fix the past. What do you