ME: Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, they suck.
RYDER: Ha.
RYDER: They don’t, really. That’s the worst part. I get it. It’s easy to drift apart. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I’d actually managed to make friends here. If I’d moved on, too.
ME: Not to harp on this, but if you’d just ease up on the constant Hamilton bashing, you might be surprised how many friends you’d make.
RYDER: I know. I really am trying.
RYDER: But even if I stopped, I don’t know how simple it would be to make friends. Hamilton’s a small school. You all have known each other forever. I’m an outsider here.
ME: Maybe, but it wouldn’t be too difficult for you. If you’d be cool, people at Hamilton would love you. Especially the girls. You’re fresh meat, a boy we’ve never seen throw up on the school bus or go through the worst parts of puberty. Plus, you’re not a bad-looking guy, you know.
I could not believe I’d just typed that. Mortified doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was true, of course. He was hot, and if he wasn’t such a dick about our hometown, girls probably would have thrown themselves at him. No, not probably. Most definitely.
But I didn’t have to tell him that.
Ryder sent back a smiley face emoji. I sent back one rolling its eyes. And eventually this devolved into an oh-so-sophisticated emoji war. The battle was long and there were many casualties, but eventually, with the peace offering of emoji sushi, a cease-fire was called.
If only it were so easy in real life.
* * *
The next day, though, Ryder was back to being unbearable.
“Mr. Buckley,” he said, raising his hand. “When are we going to start practicing DBQs?”
“Excuse me?”
“DBQs,” Ryder repeated. “It stands for data-based questions. They’ll be on the AP test in the spring.”
“I’m aware what a DBQ is, Mr. Cross. I am the teacher here, after all.”
I expected Ryder to make a snide comment about this, but he managed to restrain himself and instead asked, “So when will we start practicing them?”
“After Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t you think that’s awfully late?”
“Oh dear,” I said. I was less able to restrain myself. “That’s far too late. Did you know that in DC, students start preparing for AP tests just out of utero?”
Ryder turned to face me, mid-eye-roll. “While your hyperbole is ridiculous, we do start preparing way in advance. And our AP test results reflect it.”
“If only you’d spent as much time working on your social skills.”
“You are going to lecture me on social skills?”
“I’m sorry. Do us ignorant country folk here in Hamilton not communicate to your liking?”
“It’s not a problem with everyone in Hamilton.”
“Enough,” Mr. Buckley said. I was actually amazed at how long he’d let this go on. I suspected he got as much entertainment out of the sparring as the rest of the class did.
And … I think I kind of enjoyed it, too.
Honestly, though, it was amazing how funny and pleasant Ryder could be over IM, only to turn around and be a pompous jerk in real life. I was getting some serious whiplash.
Which was why I couldn’t respond to his IMs anymore. No más. I was done. It was already weird enough since, both times, I’d been on Amy’s account. She didn’t know about the second conversation, and I’d had to lie when she asked me if I knew why Ryder had given her a mixtape (seriously? Who has tapes anymore?) of some weird, poorly recorded band and asked if she’d sit with him at lunch.
“No idea,” I’d said. “I mean, we know he likes you…. What did you say?”
“Thank you, but that I always sit with you,” she’d replied.
Well, that was easy enough. Ryder would never sit at a lunch table with me. So I just shrugged.
Lying was easy. What was worse was that these conversations had totally confused my once unwavering disdain for Ryder Cross.
It had been easier when I hated him.
I would. Not. Respond.
Once again, insomnia had me sitting in the Rushes’ rec room well after midnight, only this time I didn’t have any homework left to do. Instead, I was torturing myself by looking up how far all of the colleges Amy was applying to were from Hamilton.
Answer: Really freaking far.
What the hell was I going to do? I hadn’t heard back from any of the jobs I’d applied for, I had no money, and when Amy left for college, I’d essentially be homeless. It wasn’t as if I could keep sneaking into her parents’ house.
Needless to say, I was already feeling a bit depressed and a little lonely when I heard the ping.
“Not falling for it this time, Ryder,” I mumbled.
Ping.
Nope.
Ping.
“Damn it.”
I told myself I was just going to log out of Amy’s e-mail. I told myself I wasn’t going to look at the message. But, as we’ve established, I am a liar, even when I’m talking to myself.
RYDER: Hey, Amy, are you there?
RYDER: I’m sorry. It’s late, and you’re probably not even near your computer. But I just found something out and I need to talk to someone. You were the only person I could think of.
RYDER: Sorry. Never mind.
As much as I wanted to ignore him, I couldn’t. There was something sort of desperate in those messages that I couldn’t just walk away from.