If We Were Us Read online

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Luke replied, tucking his hands in his pockets.

  I raised an eyebrow. “She’s not your type, I’m guessing?”

  Luke smirked and shook his head. “Not exactly, no.”

  “Good, because she once called Charlie an overrated actor.” I glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “But I think that’s really because she’s jealous of Greer Mortimer.”

  “Why would she be jealous of Greer Mortimer?”

  “Because Greer’s gotten to make out with Charlie for three musicals in a row. They’re always a couple, and Eva’s always a villain. She’s The Witch this year.”

  “Charlie’s Eva’s type too?”

  I smiled. “Charlie is everyone’s type.”

  * * *

  Charlie finally made his way up Simmons’ front pathway a little before 9:00 p.m. He was wearing a light blue checked button-­down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a pair of navy chinos, and his usual Sperrys with the black-­and-­green ribbon belt I’d given him last Christmas.

  “The Prince!” Reese waved him over to the patio, and five seconds later he was in the hammock with me. I hugged him tight, smelling his familiar Irish Spring soap as he slid an arm around me. It felt like we hadn’t seen each other in eons, because the Carmichaels spent the whole summer on Martha’s Vineyard. I’d gone out to visit for a couple of weeks in July, but still.

  “This is only a drive-­by,” Charlie said. “I have to get back to the house soon. The festivities are almost afoot.”

  We laughed. Charlie was a prefect in one of the underclassmen dorms, Daggett House, and had to lead a bunch of bonding activities tonight. We’ve cranked the heat in the common room so we can do hot yoga, he’d joked via text earlier.

  “Well, you just missed Luke,” Reese said as I ran a hand through Charlie’s red-­gold hair.

  “Luke?” Charlie asked, leaning forward a little.

  “Luke Morrissey,” Nina said. “The PG who lives down the street from your cousins.” We’d gotten all the details over spaghetti. “Yeah, I’ve known the Hoppers forever,” Luke told us. “Adelaide, Tate, and Banks, they’re tons of fun.”

  “We’ve been hanging out with him all day,” Reese added. “He left like ten minutes ago.” She shrugged. “Mandatory house meeting.”

  “But you have to meet him, Charlie,” I said. “He’s the coolest.” I looked at the girls, requesting backup. “Right?”

  I knew they would agree with me; we’d all fallen in love at dinner. “Alphabetical order for the win,” Nina had whispered as Luke explained why he was doing a PG year (“I’m calling it my ‘victory lap’ of high school!”).

  “Definitely,” Jennie agreed. “So nice and interesting. And well-­traveled! He just got back from Tokyo. His mom is Japanese, so he’s been there a few times.”

  “He also has this killer sense of humor,” I said. “Bone-­dry sarcasm.”

  “Sounds like he’ll have you fighting over him in no time,” Charlie deadpanned, and then stood. “I better jet. Time for karaoke with the guys.”

  “You said you were baking cookies,” Nina replied.

  “I thought it was mani-­pedis,” Reese said.

  I stood too. “And I was told hot yoga.”

  Charlie winked. “Yeah, a major agenda.”

  “See you tomorrow!” the girls chorused as he took my hand. I’d walk him halfway home to catch up. We said “hey” to a few other seniors sitting in the front lawn’s Adirondack chairs, and they started whispering after Charlie gave them a friendly smile.

  But it slipped away once we reached the chapel, and I felt him lean against me. “Tired?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Waiting for my second wind.”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “You happy to be back, though?”

  Oddly, he dodged the question. “You guys seem seriously obsessed with this new guy,” he said instead. “Should I be worried?”

  “Charlie, I met him…” I paused so I could check my nonexistent watch, “a little over four hours ago. I’m not seriously obsessed.” I smiled. “Just obsessed.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  I laughed. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Ugh, shut up! He’s going to be your new best friend.”

  “I don’t need a new best friend,” Charlie said. “I’ve got you.” He held up his phone to show me at least a dozen missed texts. “Plus all these people.”

  I punched him in the arm. “You’re so full of it.”

  He smiled. “I should go.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I sighed. “Love you.”

  “I’m aware,” he chirped, already starting to walk away.

  I rolled my eyes, and started to turn back toward Simmons, but Charlie’s voice stopped me, shouting out into the night: “And I love you, Sagey Baby!”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  Yes, I told myself, pretending I didn’t just see his shoulders slump. He’s happy to be back.

  Chapter 2

  Charlie

  My room smelled like death when I woke up. My phone screamed at 6:00 a.m., time to meet Sage for our morning run. I climbed out of bed and threw on a T-­shirt and shorts before lacing up my sneakers.

  “So how’d it go?” Sage asked as we headed toward the Kingdom of Far, Far Away—­the nickname for the farthest athletic fields from main campus, inspired by the greatest sequel ever made: Shrek 2. “Did you puke?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “All my sins have officially been purged.” Last night after the standard Name-­Year-­Hometown icebreaker, the main event in Daggett had been a sickeningly professional chicken nugget-­eating contest. I’d made it to the semis, but this sophomore named Dhiraj Bagaria ended up winning; he’d eaten sixty without breaking a sweat.

  Sage cracked up after I told her the full story. “I can’t believe it.” She shook her head. “I thought Paddy would win for sure.”

  “Well,” I replied, “had he been going at full speed, he probably would’ve.” Paddy Clarke was another Dag prefect, and never sat down at dinner without a minimum of three plates.

  Sage turned and smirked at me, her hazel eyes shining. “I think Paddy needs a girlfriend.”

  “Why? You interested?” I asked, half-­wanting to add, Because he is!

  And like I knew she would, Sage just laughed, something she always did when we talked about stuff like this. Sometimes I baited her: “If you were the Bexley Bachelorette, which four guys would make it to hometowns?” but today, I didn’t push things. Instead, I followed suit when she picked up her pace, and then we ran in silence for a stretch, whipping by pine trees.

  “Are we still on for Pandora’s today?” I asked once we’d slowed back down, turning off the fields and onto Ludlow Lane. Every year on the first day of classes, a totally grueling half day, Sage and I went to Pandora’s Café across from campus for lunch.

  “Of course.” Sage nodded, and as I began to mentally page through the Bible-­length menu, I heard her add, “I was also thinking of inviting Luke, if that’s okay with you.”

  My immediate response was to pretend I’d never heard the name. “Luke who?” I asked, aloof.

  But I had to fight a laugh when Sage responded by reaching over and shoving me.

  * * *

  Mom cried when she and Dad had dropped Nick and me off last week for preseason. The two of us were in different dorms, so we’d gone our separate ways with one parent to execute “Operation Move-­In” before all meeting in The Meadow to say goodbye. “I just can’t believe it,” she whispered, managing to wrap both Nick and me in a single hug. “I can’t believe my twins are seniors.” Dad on the other hand, couldn’t stop smiling. “This is it,” he’d told us. “I remember being where you are…” He clapped
me on the back. “Make it count.”

  To be perfectly melodramatic, the Bexley School was in my blood. It had been up and running since 1816, and from then on, the boarding school had dealt with generations of Carmichaels wreaking havoc across its campus. Great-Granddad hid his homemade moonshine under a floorboard in Mortimer House during Prohibition, while Granddad was responsible for “The Great Daggett House Fire of 1956,” and Dad nearly slept through graduation in the 80s. The latest diploma belonged to my sister, Kitsey. Nick and I always knew we would apply to Bexley, and then go to Bexley. It was how things were done in our family.

  So here we were, back for round four, and as clichéd as it sounds, it was never hard to separate the new students from the returning students on the first day. Freshmen were dressed like their moms picked out their outfits (afraid of breaking dress code) and turtled with their backpacks while they ran across campus as if they were on some mad Easter-egg hunt. “No, sweetie, all math classes are in the Carmichael Science Center,” I overheard Mrs. Leveson telling one girl, and I laughed to myself; Granddad thought of the CSC as his penance for burning down half of Daggett.

  I spent my free period in Knowles Basement, Bexley’s student center. It was an open floor plan, all glass and warm woods, and the only closed-­off spaces were the newspaper and yearbook offices at one end and the Tuck Shop at the other. I’d met up there with Dove earlier this morning during teacher consultation for a snack, and unsurprisingly, the place had been packed, its line twisting and turning. I’d draped an arm around her and pretended to fall asleep while we waited to pay. She giggled and buried her face in my shoulder, and I’d noticed her perfume smelled like sugar cookies and that it didn’t take much to make her laugh.

  But now class was in session, so the basement had pretty much emptied out. I set up camp on one of the black couches near Tuck’s end zone, facing a floor-­to-­ceiling window in the corner. My usual setup. Sometimes I studied, sometimes I watched Netflix, and sometimes I took naps. Today was one of the nap days. I collapsed onto the couch and stretched out on my back, wishing I hadn’t forgotten my headphones in my room. There was no choice but to be carried away by the click-­clack of people’s laptop keyboards.

  A voice woke me up ten, possibly forty-­five, minutes later. Some kid was talking nearby, and even though I couldn’t see him—­the back of my couch put me in stealth mode—­I put it together that he was on the phone.

  I wasn’t an eavesdropper, but this kid had a nice voice, so I lay there listening. “Yeah, I guess I slept okay,” he said. “It was just different. You can hear everything. People walking up and down the hall, and the toilets flushing…” He sighed. “No, Mom, do not send Bec’s noise machine. I’ve been here one night. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

  No! I wanted to shout. Have her send the noise machine! You will want the noise machine! Because I had one, and it was a game-­changer. I’d gotten it sophomore year, when Paddy and I ended up with a shitty room assignment: second floor, right next to the bathroom. Paddy had been skeptical at first, but by night three, he’d changed his tune. We also found that combining it with our big box fans was even more effective. We called it The Vortex.

  “Classes were fine,” the guy continued. “Today’s a half day, so we go to all of them. It turns out my chemistry teacher knows exactly where we live. She used to teach at…”

  What year is he? I wondered. He was obviously new but sounded older than a freshman. Plus, he hadn’t mentioned getting lost yet. Maybe a new sophomore? That was pretty common at Bexley, for your class to multiply your second year. Most of the recruits were New England kids who’d gone to day schools that capped off at ninth grade. In fact, if Nana (Dad’s mother) had any influence over Mom, Nick and I probably would’ve been in that boat. Dad had gone to private school his whole life, but Mom was public all the way. “Part of the reason we live in Connecticut,” she told Nana, “is because of the school system. It’s important to Jay and me that our children experience both.” So we did, and Darien’s hockey coach had been less than excited when he found out we were going elsewhere for high school.

  “And,” the new sophomore added, “I think you’d really like my math teacher, Mrs. Shepherd. She reminds me of…”

  Smooth, I thought. His voice was smooth, but also subtle, with this coolness to it. It made me want to close my eyes and risk drifting off to sleep again. Not because his voice was boring or anything, but because it was…well, soothing. I felt strangely relaxed listening to this random kid tell his mom about his day, a day that wasn’t even half over.

  “But English was a total CFS,” he said, now in a tone with a little more urgency. What did CFS mean? “That class I was put in? It’s the English department’s equivalent of ‘Rocks for Jocks.’ It’s the class for…”

  And that’s when it dawned on me. I knew exactly what he was talking about: Bexley’s Senior Writing Seminar, always with a roster heavily skewed toward PG guys, a demographic that was remarkably athletically inclined. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots, and when I did, I smiled to myself.

  I wasn’t eavesdropping on a new sophomore.

  “No, Mom, you don’t need to do anything. It’s handled.”

  So, this is him, I mused. This is Tater Tot’s future husband. “I’m going to marry him, Charlie,” my six-­going-­on-­sixteen-­year-­old cousin had informed me last Thanksgiving. “And you can’t object!”

  “Yes,” Tate’s beloved went on. “I went to the registrar and asked to be put in a different one.”

  Which one?

  “The only class that worked with my schedule was Frontier Literature. Fingers crossed Huck Finn isn’t on the syllabus.”

  I smirked. It is.

  “I should go, though. I have history in fifteen minutes.” He paused, then laughed. “No, I haven’t gotten lost yet. This girl I met yesterday gave me a tour after dinner last night, and I annotated my campus map.” Another chuckle. “Yeah, you know me.”

  Sage, I realized. She had been a tour guide since freshman year, usually the admissions office’s first call. It was one of the things I loved most about her, how bright and friendly she was—­sunshine in human form.

  I heard him sigh, getting ready to embark on his journey to history. “Uh-­huh, talk later. I love—­oh, no, I haven’t met them yet.”

  Patience, young Padawan, I thought. Patience.

  “Yeah, I know, but I think they’ve been busy. They’re a pretty big deal here.”

  Well, yes.

  “But I’m meeting Charlie today.”

  Yeah, you are, I thought, because after all, it was my duty to make sure he was good enough for Tate. She deserved only the best.

  * * *

  The Meadow was where we’d rendezvous. All the brick sophomore-­junior houses and a few academic buildings overlooked the green space, which was perpetually flooded with students. It was the universal shortcut to literally anyplace on campus, and when the weather was nice, girls spread out blankets and did homework, while Nick and I and some of our friends played a round of campus golf. Today was no different. It was at least eighty degrees and sunny, pockets of people all over. “Hey, Charlie!” Quinn Bailey, my ex-­girlfriend who didn’t really get that she was my ex-­girlfriend, shouted from over by Wexler Hall’s front steps. It looked like she was restringing her lacrosse stick. I waved at her, feeling people’s eyes on me. Yeah, The Meadow was, without a doubt, Bexley’s center stage.

  So I did what I did best.

  I put on a show.

  “Fiancée!” I called when I zeroed in on Sage, her long, wavy blond hair in its usual ponytail. I broke into a cheesy slow-­motion run. She flashed me a smile, and, a blink later, she was heading toward me, her lack of speed right on point.

  “My intended!” she called back. When we were little, she and I always said that we would get married someday. We’d spent an entire afternoon plann
ing our wedding, agreeing on a coconut-­flavored cake and a honeymoon in Hawaii. Even today, we still talked about it (lately I’d been pitching a Bermuda honeymoon). The idea always made my parents smile.

  As soon as we met in the middle, I picked her up and spun her around.

  “Come meet Luke.” Sage tugged my sleeve.

  Luke.

  “Lead the way.” I draped an arm around her shoulders as we walked.

  Sage took a deep breath and then kicked things off, exclaiming: “Luke Morrissey, meet Charlie Carmichael, my best friend since birth!”

  He was young-­looking, but tall. Classic black Ray-­Bans matching his floppy black hair. Thin, dark blue button-­down, Bermuda shorts, and Adidas Sambas. His feet looked a little pigeon-­toed.

  Here he is, I thought, and realized it had been two seconds too long when I felt Sage nudge me.

  Do something.

  I took a page out of Nick’s book, extending a fist for him to bump. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “Sage literally hasn’t shut up about you.”

  Luke glanced at my fist before bumping it back with his own, so fast that I didn’t even feel his knuckles touch mine. “You too.” He reached up to adjust his sunglasses. It sort of seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.

  “Well!” Sage clapped her hands together. “I’m starving! Off to Pandora’s we go!”

  * * *

  “So, Morrissey,” I said after we ordered, “what’s the reasoning behind your victory lap of high school?” (That’s what I’d call it if I had to do a PG year.)

  Next to Sage, Luke unrolled his utensils from his napkin and told me what I already knew. “He’s not sure what he wants to do for college,” Aunt Caro explained back in the spring. “I suggested he do a PG year, so he could gain some new experiences, and take time to figure things out. You’ll look out for him, won’t you?”

  “A.k.a. you aren’t satisfied with your test scores?” I asked without even thinking about it. Sage nailed my shin under the table.

  Luke looked at me, and suddenly I needed to shift around in my seat. Something was creeping up my spine.