Love is Hell Read online

  She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Sometimes, when she can’t stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her. She knows there are other people who have it worse— she isn’t poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Of course, she’s also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her.

  This isn’t to say she doesn’t have qualities.

  She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look.

  And she gets good enough grades. And she doesn’t drink and drive. And she says NO to drugs. And she is always where she says she will be. And she calls when she’s going to be late. And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside. She thinks, You think you know me, but you don’t.

  She thinks, None of you has any idea about all the things in my heart. She thinks, None of you has any idea how really and truly beautiful I am. She thinks, See me. See me. See me.

  Sometimes she thinks she will scream.

  Sometimes she imagines sticking her head in an oven.

  But she doesn’t.

  She just writes it all down in her journal and waits.

  She is waiting for someone to see. he school librarian is new this year and she’s barely older than the students. She wears tight pencil skirts and cashmere sweaters and patent leather Mary Janes. A librarian as styled by Playboy. Freshman boys have been known to invent special library errands just to look at her breasts. The new librarian is filled with ideas and book suggestions and what Paige—did I forget to mention the girl’s name is Paige? No matter, it has happened before—what Paige considers an exhausting enthusiasm. Paige preferred the old librarian (who was also an old librarian), who had skin the same gray as the walls.

  “Hi, Paige,” the pinup librarian whispers conspiratorially.

  “You might like this one. It’s new.” She sets a book on the table in front of Paige. Its jacket is black and shiny.

  No picture, just the title in silver: The Immortals.

  Paige is doubtful. “What’s it about?”

  “It’s a fantasy,” says the librarian.

  “The thing is, Ms. Penn, I sort of hate fantasy.” Paige thinks that fantasy is for losers and people without real lives.

  The librarian laughs. “It’s a romance, too.”

  Paige thinks most modern romance is fluff, but she doesn’t want to burst the pinup’s bubble. “Well . . .”

  The librarian laughs again. She’s the type who’s always laughing. “You don’t have to marry it. Just give it a chance. If it’s not your thing, just return it to the new release shelf on your way out.”

  Paige deigns to read the first paragraph:

  There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in love and those who don’t. I believe in love.

  She closes the book. Indeed, it’s not her thing. For one, Paige puts herself in the

  “nonbeliever” category.

  She trudges over to the new books area to reshelve it.

  (The old librarian never would have made such a presumptuous request.) The author’s last name starts with an R, and there’s a convenient gap on the shelf awaiting The Immortals’s return.

  Paige is about to take her hand off the shelf when she feels someone looking at her. She stays still for a moment, savoring the feeling of being seen. Finally, slowly, she turns. She’s definitely never seen (or been seen by) this boy before. His eyes are a hue she didn’t know eyes came in— dark violet with flecks of silver and gray in the middle. He looks as if he could use a good night’s sleep. His jacket is black and a little glossy, not unlike the book she’s just returned to the shelf. There’s something old-fashioned about him, but she can’t quite place what it is. He is, for the record, distractingly handsome.

  “Was it no good?” he asks.

  “Someone thought I might like it, but it’s not really my kind of story,” she rambles. “I prefer old books. Classics, I guess.”

  “Too bad. I was hoping for a recommendation.”

  “Wuthering Heights,” she suggests.

  “I’ve already read it.”

  “The Tin Drum.”

  Yes, he’s read that, too. She names several other titles, and he’s read all of them.

  “Unless it’s new,” he says finally, “I’ve probably read it. I’ve read everything.”

  He’s a liar, she thinks. Or a braggart. Both probably.

  But the kind of a boy who bothers to brag (or lie) about being well-read piques her interest. “Are you new?” Paige asks.

  The boy smiles, but it’s not a happy one. “Oh, I suppose.

  This is about my millionth school.” The bell rings, and he looks at her for a moment.

  “Shame you don’t like new books, Paige. I was hoping I had found someone to talk to here.” He looks her in the eyes, and for the first time in her life, Paige feels like someone is really and truly seeing her. “It can be lonely being the new kid in school.” He says this last part really fast as if he’d rather not be saying it, but can’t help himself. And then he’s gone.

  Many moons later, when she is replaying this conversation for the millionth or so time in her head, she will wonder how he knew her name without even asking. But right now, what she thinks is, It can be lonely being any kid in school. She takes a pen from her pocket and writes “Everyone’s lonely” on the palm of her hand. It’s a revelation to her. She had thought she was the only one and had always taken pains to conceal her loneliness, the same way you’d hide a particularly gruesome scar. She takes The Immortals off the shelf. She reads the first paragraph again: There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in love and those who don’t. I believe in love.

  Somehow, it seems different, better, even good this time.

  .

  That night in bed, she tries to study but can’t concentrate. She picks up her library book, but that’s no good, either. It just reminds her of strange violet eyes.

  She doesn’t particularly like thinking about him or anyone else. Most people tend to be disappointing once you actually get to know them, and she has been disappointed by so many before.

  She knows nothing much happened between them; nothing important was said. And yet . . .

  She tosses the book aside.

  She looks at herself in the mirror and wonders if she looks different than she did that morning.

  Her father knocks on the door: Paige’s mother is on the phone and would like to speak to her.

  “I’m reading,” Paige says. “I’ll call her back.”

  Paige decides that she is different. From now on, she will part her hair on the left side.

  .

  He is different, which means she doesn’t do the things she’d normally do in a situation like this.

  She doesn’t go back to the library the next day to try to find him. She decides to take it slow. It’s like reading a really good book—a pretty good book you want to rush through, but a really good book you want to read slowly, delaying the moment when you will reach that last page, sentence, word as long as possible. She believes . . . no, she knows she will see him again. Or he will see her. She just has to be patient.

  She doesn’t ask her friends about the “new boy,” either.

  If she talks about him, the others will try to track him down and then he won’t be hers anymore. She doesn’t want to share. She wants him to be her secret. It’s lovely to have a secret, she thinks.

  At lunch, Polly, the one she calls her best friend, says to Paige, “You seem different.”

  “It’s her hair,” another girl says. “She’s parting it on the left.”

  It’s lovely to have a secret, Paige thinks.

  .

  He manages to wait three more days before returning to the library. Ms. Penn hands Paige a flyer as she is walking past the checkout desk. “I’m starting an all-girl’s book club,” she says. “Get your friends to come, okay,
Paige?”

  Paige nods. She wants to ask Ms. Penn if he’s here in the library, but then Paige remembers that she doesn’t even know his name.

  “The first book’s gonna be that one I told you about, The Immortals. I thought it’d be fun to start with something new. Now I know you aren’t a ‘fantasy’ girl, but I’m telling you, Paige, I read it over the weekend and I didn’t even want to stop to eat. I read it while I was driving. It’s that good. And you’re going to love the boy in it—”

  “Ms. Penn, I really have to go.”

  “Oh, okay, take a bunch of flyers to pass out, would you?”

  Paige stuffs the flyers in her bag and walks to the new books row. All of a sudden, she feels nervous. What if he isn’t there? Or what if he is there and he doesn’t even remember who she is? It would almost be worse to be forgotten by him than to never see him again. And why had she even thought he’d come back there in the first place? And why had she waited three days and given him all that time to disappear? And why hadn’t she given him her number that first day?

  Aside from books, the row is empty when she gets there.

  She crouches down and pretends to be considering a novel on the bottom shelf. But really what she’s doing is crying.

  I’m an idiot, she thinks.

  You didn’t even know this boy’s name, she thinks.

  And then, there’s a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’d almost given up hope,” he says. “I’ve been here every day since we met.”

  She turns and, if anything, he is more handsome than she remembered. Paige bites her lip to stop from giggling—his looks are ridiculous really, like something out of a storybook. He offers his hand to help her up. “My name’s Aaron.”

  They talk for the rest of lunch. At first, it’s just about books, but it expands to other things, too. She finds herself telling him things she has never told anyone. She even talks about her mother. “She left my dad last year. She says she fell in love with someone else, but I don’t believe it. I think she just fell out of love with my dad. I think it’s sort of messed me up for relationships actually.”

  He laughs. “Everyone’s messed up.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I’ve vowed not to have any more relationships, if you want to know the truth.”

  She wonders what his story is.

  She wonders what he’s doing with her.

  And without her even having to ask, he tells her, “I’m here because you’re the most interesting person in this whole damn place.

  “I’m here because, despite everything, I still believe,” he says. He doesn’t say what he still believes, and she doesn’t ask. The bell rings, and Paige stands instinctively—a Pavlovian good girl to her very core.

  “I bet if we stay real quiet, no one will even notice us here,” he says. Paige thinks, He’s right. No one’s ever noticed me before.

  He reads her mind. “They just weren’t looking close enough.”

  “Am I so easy for you to read?” she asks, a bit embarrassed.

  “Yes, but only because I’m really paying attention.”

  The warning bell rings, but this time she sits back down among Aaron and the books.

  “I’m glad you came here,” Paige says.

  “I’m glad I did, too.”

  He takes her hand in his. What she had written on her palm is almost completely faded away.

  They hide out in the library for the rest of the day, even though Paige is most definitely not the kind of girl to skip. Ms. Penn doesn’t notice them, or at least, that’s what Ms. Penn pretends. Ms. Penn, you see, likes Paige.

  She likes Paige because she’s been Paige. She used to part her hair in the middle, too. Without really knowing how they got there, they end up at her house after school. In her room.

  The first thing he does is go over to her bookshelf where he considers all her titles. “You really are a reader,” he says, pleased. Paige blushes—reading has never gotten her anything in life except, maybe, personal enjoyment.

  It has certainly never gotten her a boyfriend.

  “I sometimes prefer books to people,” she admits.

  “Me, too,” he says.

  When her dad gets home from work, Paige asks Aaron if he wants to meet her father. Aaron shakes his head. “Some other time. I’m not that good with families. My own or other people’s.” And then, he slips out her window with a wink that Paige wishes was something else.

  .

  It’s not perfect.

  For one, there are things he doesn’t talk about.

  His family.

  His past.

  Why he left those other schools.

  Other places he’s lived.

  Other girls he’s loved.

  And then, there are all the things about him that don’t add up. He’s seventeen, a senior, a reader, but has no plans to go to college. He never eats.

  He’s absent from school more than he’s there.

  She’s never seen his house.

  And of course, she’s never met anyone in his family.

  But everyone has problems, Paige thinks. No one is perfect, and what she knows for certain is that he is beautiful and he makes her feel beautiful. And when she talks, he really listens. And when he looks at her, he sees.

  And—

  Paige is in her science class when someone taps her on the shoulder. “You haven’t been at lunch in ages,” says April, one of Paige’s lunchtime friends. “What happened?”

  “I was in the library. I’m helping with this book club thing,” Paige lies. She doesn’t know why she lied. She did it without even thinking. She grabs one of those crumpled book club flyers that have been cluttering the bottom of her bag for about two weeks—has it really only been two weeks since she met him? She feels like she’s known him forever—

  and gives it to April.

  “Cool,” says April without even looking at it. “Ms.

  Penn already gave me one. The thing is, I needed to talk to you about something. You know how Homecoming’s next month?”

  Paige had forgotten. She’s been distracted for obvious reasons. “Uh, yeah.”

  “My brother wanted to know if you’d go with him.”

  April’s brother is, for lack of a better word, a nerd.

  For one, he’s a grade below Paige. For two, he’s kind of overweight. For three, he’s very into role-playing games.

  Paige suspects he’d probably want to play them with her at the dance. Paige laughs at the thought.

  “Why are you laughing?” April asks. “It’s mean of you to laugh.”

  Paige doesn’t want to be mean. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else. . . . Honestly. Something funny that happened earlier.”

  “What was it?” April looks at Paige with hard eyes.

  “It was this joke. It was this thing. It was . . . It was . . .”

  Paige can’t come up with anything funny that doesn’t involve role-playing, so she returns to the subject at hand. “The point is, I’m not laughing at your brother. It’s just . . . if he wanted to go with me why didn’t he ask me himself?”

  April’s eyes soften. For the moment, Paige has pacified her. “He’s shy, Paige! You know that! So, will you go with him?”

  “I’m kind of seeing someone,” Paige says.

  “You never mentioned anyone before,” April says coldly.

  “It’s early.”

  “So, will he be taking you to Homecoming?”

  “We haven’t talked about it yet,” Paige admits.

  “It can’t be that serious if you haven’t talked about it.”

  Paige doesn’t answer. She knows what she has with Aaron and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

  “Well, don’t mention this to anyone, okay?” says April.

  “You weren’t my brother’s first choice anyway. I was the one who told him to ask you. I thought you’d say yes.”

  Despite the fact that Paige keeps her promise and
tells no one about the embarrassing incident with April’s brother (as if she would!), April tells everyone that Paige is seeing someone. And that night, Paige gets a call from Polly. “When are we going to meet him?” Polly demands.

  “It’s early,” Paige repeats. “We’re not quite there.” Paige promises that when the time is right, the best friend will be the first.

  “Just give me a little something to tide me over, okay?”

  Polly insists. “Just tell me his name. You don’t even have to say the last. Just the first.”

  “Aaron,” Paige says hoarsely.

  “Does he go here?”

  Paige says that she isn’t ready to talk about him yet.

  “You’ve got to ask him to Homecoming, Paige! We can all go together—me and Luke, and you and Aaron.”

  Paige hates even hearing the best friend say his name.

  “It’s not like that,” she says. “He’s not like other boys.”

  “Gawd, Paige, this sounds serious.”

  Paige concedes that yes, it, sort of, is.

  Even though she knows she probably shouldn’t, Paige broaches the subject of Homecoming with him that night in her room. “I know it’s kind of lame, but do you think you might want to go?”

  He doesn’t. He says he’s been to a hundred Homecoming dances before.

  “Oh.” Paige tries to mask her disappointment by silently reading titles from her bookshelf—Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein . . .

  “Why do you need some stupid dance anyway? Don’t you know what you are to me?”

  In point of fact, Paige doesn’t. In point of fact, Paige would very much like to be seen at the dance with someone as handsome as Aaron. Let’s just say that she has spent more than her share of dances with people’s brothers and the equivalent.

  “Look, Paige,” he says, “I want us to be together, but I can’t do the things that other boyfriends can.”

  It is the first time he has called himself that—her boyfriend. She wishes it had been some other time, the way it would have happened in the kind of books Paige claims not to read.

  “Do you understand?” he asks.