The Myth of You and Me A Novel by Leah Stewart

Author:Leah Stewart
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2005-09-20T07:00:00+00:00

What my father didn’t know was that I wasn’t only envious of Sonia. I was a snake and a crybaby in other ways as well—I was envious of Will. Because of him, Sonia’s time was no longer automatically mine. I didn’t drop by her house unannounced anymore, because sometimes Will would be there, and, worse, their faces would be flushed, their lips red and swollen. We were often a threesome, but it was hard to endure the ends of those evenings, when they drove off together while I walked to my front door alone. I made some halfhearted efforts to spend time with other girls I knew from school. They were willing to include me, inviting me along when they cruised Main. But they knew why I was with them—that I had, essentially, been dumped—and I felt like a stowaway, squeezed into the backseat of some stranger’s tiny car.

At the beginning of junior year, I started dating a boy named Dustin, because he asked me out and because I hoped if I said yes I’d fall in love with him. He was a Southern Baptist, and our relationship consisted mostly of our fumblings in the dark of my living room or his car, his guilt about these fumblings, and his attempts to bring me to Christ. Still, being with him was preferable to playing chaperone to Sonia and Will. He gave me a Bible with my name printed on it in gold, wanting me to read the Gospels, but the first time I touched it, it fell open to Song of Songs: “For love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.”

“You know what my mother says?” Sonia asked me. It was toward the end of Christmas break, and I was spending the night at her house. “She says we’re too young for love, that in a year Will and I won’t remember each other’s names. She says this isn’t love.” She sighed. “If this isn’t love, what does love feel like?”

I had no idea. I’d had no luck falling in love with Dustin, and I couldn’t give that name to what I felt for Will. I shrugged. “It feels like what it feels like,” I said.

She stared at me for a moment like I’d posed her a riddle, and then she laughed. “I can always count on you for the answer,” she said.

I didn’t particularly want to talk about love. So far this night hadn’t gone the way I’d anticipated. Sonia had been calling it a girls’ night, a night when we wouldn’t even talk to our boyfriends on the phone. We hadn’t spent enough time together lately, she’d said, and I’d agreed, repressing the impulse to be sarcastic in response. I’d imagined we’d draw pictures, watch movies, make up dance routines in celebration of how we used to be, but so far all we’d done was talk about Will.

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