Page 78 of 16 Forever

“But what?”

Maggie looks to Shana, then back to me. “Nothing. That’s great. I’m glad for you.”

I nod a few times. “Okay, then. Peace out!”

I move thirty steps across the bleachers toward Tatiana, Bodhi, and Lizzy as the basketball gets inbounded and the second half begins.

“Carter!” Maggie says. Nearly shouts, actually.

I turn back.

“I’m not... I’m not sure apologizing to Layla would actually work. To, you know, unstick you.”

I walk closer to her, doing my best to crouch so I don’t block the view of the people behind me. “Well,” I say. “Whether it does or doesn’t, it can’t hurt to try and make things right. Right?”

Maggie opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before words come out. “I guess. Making things right is probably good. So. Yeah.”

It looks like she might say more, so I hover there, waiting.

“Sit down!” some girl behind me shouts.

Maggie gives me a silent shrug. Weird. I give her a shrug back and skitter to my seat in between Bodhi and Tatiana, just in time to see Janessa Suher fire a pass to Elise Alexander that’s so powerful, it bounces off Elise’s fingers and tumbles out of bounds.

I do not get a picture.

Maggie

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Something happened when I saw Carter sitting there all cuddly with Tatiana.

What happened was this:

I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it at all.

Which, I know, is incredibly unfair. I’m the one who’s made it very clear Carter should not be associating with me, and now I see the vaguest wisp of a new relationship forming, and I’m ready to destroy it, a sandbox bully kicking down barely begun castles.

It’s demented.

Because I wasn’t lying when I said things are going great with Chord. He’s sweet, he’s smart, and, sure, he gets a little trigger happy with the social media, but I really like spending time with him.

There’s only one major problem, as far as I’m concerned:

He’s not Carter.

It’s also possible that seeing Carter with Tatiana took me back in time.

Back to a summer day many moons ago.

When I first saw Carter with Vivian.

Maggie

I was eleven years old when I first learned of the existence of one Carter Cohen.

It was the beginning of August, and I’d just gotten home from four weeks at sleepaway camp. They were good weeks for me, very good weeks, and I felt like a new person: more confident, more empowered, more worldly-wise. I’d had my first relationship, a week and a half of steamy hand-holding with Ryan Fischer, topped off the last night by a slobbery kiss in the shadows outside my bunk—yes, myfirst kiss—followed by a promise to stay in touch on the interwebs. In retrospect, Ryan was not at all my dream guy, and he was overly obsessed with talking about the stars and pointing out the same constellations every freaking night, but at the time, he wasit,man.