internet says Nash is into Kels, but that can’t be true if he wants to go with me. He wants me. In this moment, thinking about being at a dance with Nash, Kels has never felt further away.
Maybe this is what we need. Maybe if we do this, he’ll figure it out without me having to say anything.
“Fine,” I say, before I can change my mind. “Okay, I’ll go.”
Molly sucks in a breath. “Really?”
I nod.
She throws her arms around me.
Molly has an impossible way of always getting her way.
* * *
Ollie raises his eyebrows when I show him the dress.
“You’re going?”
“Molly coerced me.”
He sits up on his bed, closing his laptop and sliding his headphones down so they’re around his neck.
“But how? I, your own flesh and blood, have yet to achieve such a feat.”
“Nash wants to take me.”
Ollie narrows his eyes at me. “Halle.”
I sit on the end of Ollie’s bed, legs crisscrossed. “I know. How do I do this?”
“You don’t?” Ollie says.
“Thanks,” I say. “Really supportive.”
“Sorry, I just—what the hell, Hal? Is this a date? Are you, like, trying to mess with him now?”
I stand. I’m already insecure enough about this whole ordeal. I don’t need shit from Ollie.
“Okay, bye.”
I leave Ollie to his Star Trek marathon and he slams the door behind me. I fully plan to collapse onto my mattress belly first, wondering what the hell I got myself into. Does Nash want to take me as, like, a date? Or as friends? The way Molly said it, well, it sounded like a date. But now I’m wondering if she meant as friends.
Either way, it’s complicated.
I kind of hate how much I want it to be a date.
Across the hall, my bedroom door is shut tight, which is weird because I never leave it closed, mostly because I love coming home to find Scout curled up in a ball on my bed. There’s a piece of paper taped to the door.
SURPRISE! is scrawled in black Sharpie.
I instantly tense because I don’t do surprises. But its Gramps’s handwriting, so I twist the doorknob, and push.
Disbelief smacks me in the face.
Grams’s bookcases line my lavender walls—and they’re filled with her books. Placed side by side, they take up an entire wall, just as I imagined they would in the floor-plan sketch of my dream room. Five matching mahogany bookcases with six shelves each.
I can barely breathe, but I step closer and see they’re organized in reverse alphabetical order like Grams would have them, because A should know what it feels like to be last sometimes. I take a tour of the shelves, my fingers brushing along the spines. Her library is truly a force—featuring classic and contemporary YA fiction, heart-pounding mysteries, and the most epic collection of foreign editions of Harry Potter. I haven’t read all these books, not even close.
Now, they’re mine.
I sink to the ground and cover my mouth with my hand to keep my sob inside because this was Gramps’s project. It must’ve taken him all day, and it must’ve been so hard—but he built her shelves for me.
“Whoa.”
I look up and Ollie is there. Even though I know he’s pissed at me, he holds out his hand and I take it, letting him pull me up to my feet.
“This was the super-secret Halle project?”
“You knew?” I ask.
Ollie shrugs. “Sort of. Not really; he wouldn’t say. But I didn’t think he’d be able to do this.”
I know what he means. Every day, I worry that Okay Gramps will revert back to Super Sad Gramps. But maybe I haven’t been giving him enough credit.
Downstairs, Gramps is watching Jeopardy! on the couch, Scout curled up in his lap.
I sit down next to him. If I look at him, I’ll sob and make it awkward.
So I say, “Thank you.”
Gramps just squeezes my hand, then asks me if I know the question to a Hamilton answer before someone buzzes in and says, “Who is Lin-Manuel Miranda?”
We spend the rest of the night shouting the questions to Alex Trebek’s answers.
Nash to Kels, at the dance
Nash Stevens
So. I don’t think Halle’s gonna show.
7:15 PM
This is why I don’t go to school-sponsored programs …
7:15 PM
The music blows.
7:16 PM
This blows.
7:16 PM
Sometimes I think it’d be cool if, like, we went to the same school.
7:16 PM
We’d totally make fun of this together.
7:17 PM
Maybe I’d even dance with you.
7:17 PM
FOURTEEN
With my red pumps and matching lipstick, I look fierce.
Except all the lipstick in the world isn’t going to make me feel fierce.