Page 7 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

brYCE

Six months passed. Things were great until I realized how great things were.

Courtney and I were uncomplicated. When we saw each other, we didn’t wave; we flipped each other off.

Every morning, I’d wait out on the porch to greet her with a preplanned insult as she left for work.

Every evening, she’d get her revenge by being the worst neighbor she could—playing music too loud, blocking my half of the driveway with her car, leaving dog turds in my yard…

which was an impressive feat, considering she didn’t own a dog.

On special occasions, she’d pop up with some hilarious heinous prank.

Unearthing the weaknesses of my enemy required me to get to know her to some extent, which sometimes felt disturbingly like dating, except it was more honest. For instance, my enemy didn’t try to hide how much she spent online shopping, nor was she particularly shy about revealing all her gross habits.

She once cheerfully informed me she forgot to wash her feet in the shower nine out of ten times, simply because she knew that knowledge would keep me up at night, thinking about gritty sheets and fungus.

All thoughts of dating soon vanished because everything I learned only fueled the special contempt I reserved in my heart for her particular brand of awful.

Once, we ran into each other at our mailboxes, and for a dangerous moment, my heart almost softened as I watched her pull a birthday card out of a shopping bag.

I couldn’t believe I was actually witnessing her do something kind for someone.

That feeling lasted right up until she crammed the card into its envelope without even bothering to sign it or write a message inside before she addressed it and shoved it in the box.

It was the birthday equivalent of tipping someone a dollar.

A way to say, I acknowledge your existence, but only with my middle finger .

Of course, all of her character traits weren’t completely cold and uncaring.

Some were just annoying. Last month, by listening through the wall, I learned the correct pronunciation of the word croissant made her irrationally furious after she spent twenty minutes trying to order a bakery delivery, stubbornly interrupting every two seconds to correct the cashier’s presumably already correct pronunciation of the word.

That evening, I sat outside in my car, waiting for her to come home from work so I could hop out and pretend like I, too, had just returned from an errand, just so I’d have a reason to meet her on our porch.

“I think I’m going to have chicken salad on a croissant for dinner,” I remarked as we both unlocked our doors, really slathering the French accent on thick around the word croissant . “What do you think?”

Courtney responded that she thought I was a fucking asshole, and as soon as she was gone, I burst into laughter. After that, I dedicated my life to using the word croissant as much as possible.

But then, slowly, a few weeks ago, I began to sense trouble brewing.

Courtney had this way of saying all the rude things I thought but kept quiet, which had a disconcerting way of making me feel like no one had ever understood me more.

Like the other day, she acknowledged how weird all the messages were that Larry down the street kept leaving on the community bulletin board (he kept leaving free lemons for people to take, then getting pissed when people took too many lemons).

I’d had a pathetic urge to jump up and shout I thought the same thing!

like a total dork who needed to impress her by proving how much we had in common.

She made me feel a morbid companionship that only came from finding someone to hate things with, something lodged firmly between happiness and misery.

It all came to a head on my birthday. I’d been celebrating in my traditional way—by reading old birthday cards from my mother and expecting her to call, even though she never called.

Then my doorbell rang.

My heart skipped, and it took me approximately two seconds to convince myself my mother had come back to reunite with me. I rushed to the door, opened it, and found nothing.

What a day for Courtney to play Ding Dong Ditch.

When I went to slam my door, my eyes landed on a package sitting on my porch.

It was the worst-wrapped present I’d ever seen, parts of a brown box peeking through a clumsy mess of tape and what looked like wrinkled, pre-used wrapping paper.

Taking it inside, I set it on my kitchen table before tearing the paper off and sliding the flaps of the box open.

On top lay a card. The picture on the front was of a serene landscape with the words My Condolences printed across it.

Opening it, I found some generic sympathy message printed inside, but beneath it, spelled out with magazine cuttings like a message from a kidnapper, were the words Happy Birthday .

Inside the box was a tub of cookie dough ice cream.

Pulse thundering in my ears, I pulled it out and opened the lid.

The seal was already broken. The ice cream inside was a gloppy mess, like someone had sorted through it and picked out all the cookie dough, which I assumed was exactly what had happened.

Courtney.

She must have figured out I hated ice cream, either by the way I closed my blinds every time the ice cream truck drove by like I was warding off evil, or because she noticed all the ice cream coupons I viciously crumpled and threw away.

Using that knowledge, she’d given me the worst gift she could possibly think of.

But she’d somehow known it was my birthday.

And she’d given me a gift. A personalized one.

I scrambled to my computer, and sure enough, there it was: the final nail in my heart’s coffin, her new Wi-Fi name and a mostly accurate acknowledgment of my birthday: BryceEST.5/18/1945.

It was the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for me. Maybe not thoughtful in the normal way—her thoughts weren’t busy considering other people’s feelings; her thoughts were full of schemes and malicious intentions. Still, it was a type of thoughtfulness.

A sudden desperation to see her took hold of me. I wanted to run to her door and knock until she answered and then… and then what? Yell at her? Hug her for the next hundred years or so?

And that was when I recognized the feeling that had secretly crept into my heart over the past few months. Happiness. Courtney had made me feel happy. Then she’d given me ice cream.

I knew what came next.

I could practically feel sticky ice cream melting down my child-sized fingers while hot tears rolled down my baby-fat cheeks. Could practically hear the words She’s not coming back . Could practically feel the happiness bleeding out of my heart.

I’d done everything I could to ensure we would not form a happy relationship, and yet we had. Kinda. I didn’t know what to call her. Friend? Enemy? Frenemy? It made no sense, and it was infuriating.

I smacked the lid back on the ice cream, swiped it off the table, and took it to the trash can.

Maybe I could move away, but the likelihood of finding a rental as cheap as this one was slim.

No, she had to go. Soon. Before she had the audacity to make me feel full-fledged joy.

This girl would wreck me if given the chance, and I needed to put a stop to it.