The Difference Between You and Me Read online

  They’ve reached the library and Wyatt starts to head up the sidewalk to the front door, but Jesse grabs his arm to stop him.

  “Excuse me, but what are you talking about? I mean, what are you talking about, Denmark? You can’t go to Denmark next semester, that’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not ridiculous, it’s intercultural exchange. The American Field Service runs it. My mom thought it might be a good thing for me.” Wyatt’s trying to sound breezy, but he just sounds guilty and strained. He hasn’t made eye contact with Jesse since he dropped this bomb—he keeps looking over her head or just past her shoulder.

  “But Denmark is, like, practically a socialist country! You’d hate it there!”

  Despite the distance that has grown up between them, Jesse still can’t imagine making it through sophomore year without talking to Wyatt every night and seeing him at least a couple of times a week.

  “Just because they have the wrong idea about how to run their government doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy their fjords and clean public transit and herring-based cuisine,” Wyatt says. “If they even have fjords. I believe they have fjords. Anyway, I probably won’t even get accepted. I have to write an essay for the application about what I personally am willing to do to promote equality between nations. Obviously, my real opinions on that topic are unlikely to impress anyone at the American Field Service. As you know, I believe that all countries are equal, but some countries are more equal than others. I may have to lie about my beliefs.”

  Wyatt chunks open the heavy library door, and Jesse follows him inside.

  The Minot Public Library is one of the places Jesse knows best in the world. Before they renovated it, it was just like a big, old, funky Victorian house overflowing with books from floor to ceiling, with worn, blood-red Oriental carpets on the floors and mismatched chairs and tables set out here and there for patrons to sit at. There were so many books that some of them were just laid out in stacks on side tables, or shelved in weird cabinets like where you’d keep dishes in your dining room. Some of the categories were strange, too—traces of the curious mind of some long-lost librarian who ignored the Library of Congress and organized the place according to her own interests and predilections: Cowboy Romances, Science FACTion, Travel Guides for the Elderly and Infirm, Intergalactic Adventure Stories. If you wanted to find anything, you had to already know where it was.

  Growing up, Jesse knew every corner of every room. She knew exactly where to find her favorite picture books in the children’s room, and she even had favorite toys she would visit on a regular basis. The stuffed animals were overloved and overhandled—communally owned by every kid in town—and they smelled like mold and sand when she brought them up to her face to kiss them, but she adored them anyway: the long, rainbow-striped worm; the thin-furred, floppy-necked dog. As a kid, every time she walked in the front door she would rub the belly of the statue of the bronze boy holding his fishing rod on his shoulder that stood in the corner of the foyer next to the creaky stairs. It was a ritual; it didn’t feel right to pass him without greeting him that way. For a long time he was taller than she was. Then she was taller than he was. Then one day she read the little bronze plaque on the base by his bare feet and realized that he wasn’t just some random country boy going fishing, he was supposed to be Huck Finn, from the books by Mark Twain. Somehow after that she didn’t feel close to him anymore, and she never rubbed his belly again.

  A couple of years ago, the library had a massive fund drive and raised the money to tear off the back half of the building and add on a big, bright new addition—three stories of stacks, a new community room in the basement, an airy atrium for the periodicals section with couches and armchairs for people to sit and read the newspaper in. It’s nice and everything, and much tidier and easier to find things in than the old building, but Jesse feels like the renovation kind of killed the library. The gloomy, odd-shaped rooms, the toffee-dark wood of the old banister, the secret place to hide under the stairs that were the best parts of the library’s back half have all been replaced by an impersonal, featureless newness. The new part of the building feels like a chain hotel. She never goes back there unless she absolutely has to.

  But this is where Wyatt leads her today. He loves the big communal reading table in the periodicals room, right in the center of the new atrium. Jesse hates to sit here—it feels so public, so glaringly bright—but Wyatt is determined. He’s not even finished unpacking his stuff to work when she jumps up from the seat beside him.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she whispers apologetically. “I’ll be right back. Save my seat.”

  Jesse bounds up the back stairs two at a time and emerges into the dark of the third floor. The upstairs of the Minot is untouched by the renovation, and the big third-floor room still houses the old Mystery and True Crime section, the Local Revolutionary War History section, and the Cookbook Memoir section. Around a corner and down a long, narrow hall lined with dormer windows is the upstairs handicapped restroom. It’s the dumbest place in the world for a handicapped restroom (up a flight of stairs? down a narrow hall?), which is maybe why no one ever goes in there. And why it’s the perfect place for Jesse and Emily’s weekly meetings.

  Emily works as a circulation assistant, shelving books, after school on Tuesday afternoons. She’s the one who found this place for them, and she’s already in there today, waiting impatiently, when Jesse knocks the secret knock (knock knock, pause, knock knock, pause, knock). Emily opens the door a crack, grasps Jesse’s hand, and pulls her inside.

  “You’re late,” she says before Jesse can even say hello. “I only have a few minutes left on my break, and I’ve been dying to see you. I’ve been waiting all week for you to walk in that door.”

  Jesse has planned to say, We have to talk about what happened on Friday. She has planned to say, From now on, I don’t want to pretend we don’t know each other when we see each other in public. She has planned to say, I don’t know how much longer I can do this. But Emily pulls Jesse close, slips her arms around her neck, and presses her sweet, soft mouth against Jesse’s.

  Jesse dissolves.

  Kissing Emily is literally the best thing Jesse has ever done. In her life. There is no feeling more right or more perfect than the feeling of having Emily in her arms. It makes Jesse feel larger than life—superpowerful—to touch this girl and be touched by her.

  Every time they kiss, no matter how into it Emily seems, she always starts out a little tense, a little jumpy, and it’s Jesse’s job to soothe her, coax her closer, seduce her into the deep making out. Jesse holds her tightly and kisses her gently, and at a certain point, every time, she feels the little latch holding Emily together give way. Then Emily’s head falls back, her neck loosens, her shoulders drop, her fingers relax—she comes a little bit undone in Jesse’s arms. Jesse gathers her up and pushes her back against a handy wall (or tree, or window, or car door—but usually wall, almost always a bathroom wall) and feels Emily open up to her, draw her in with her entire body.

  Emily’s face, so sunny-cheerful in everyday life, so bright and cute and alert, deepens and darkens when Jesse is kissing her. Her eyes fill with smoke and fall half closed, her cheeks flush. Sometimes she slurs her words. A lazy, wicked expression comes over her face, like she’s a little bit hungry and a little bit dangerous—good for nothing, ready to do damage. She can stop Jesse’s heart when she looks at her like this.

  When Jesse is kissing Emily, it is all she wants to do for as long as she lives. The kissing becomes her first and last name, her only skill, the reason she was born and the way she wants to die. Most of the time while they’re kissing, it’s impossible for her to imagine how she even made this happen in the first place. How can she have gotten this girl—Emily Miller!—to kiss her at all, let alone to keep kissing her, to come and meet her in secret every week to kiss her? It’s a miracle. It’s the best thing that has ever happened. While it’s happening.

  “I have five minutes,” Emily
breathes, and Jesse slips two fingers into Emily’s ponytail holder and tugs it off, Emily pulling free from it and then shaking out her thick, caramel hair so Jesse can wind her fingers through it. Emily’s hair smells like coconut and pears; Jesse hugs her close and buries her face in the hair at the back of her neck, breathes in the smell deeply. While she’s there she kisses Emily’s hairline, then moves her lips down along the warm ridge of her shoulder, then along the satin curve of her collarbone in the front. Emily exhales and drops her head back, giving Jesse room. Jesse reaches up with her left hand and undoes the top button of Emily’s sweater, then the second button. (It’s the pink J.Crew cardigan with the fake pearl buttons.) She folds the neck of the sweater back and exposes the line of Emily’s white cotton bra, kisses down along the swell of the top of her breast, the delicate skin there as light and sweet as meringue against Jesse’s tongue as she kisses lower and closer.

  Emily breathes, then breathes deeper. Her breath catches in her throat as Jesse kisses into the V at the center of her bra, then slips her whole hand up over Emily’s right breast. Emily leans into Jesse’s palm and whispers, “Yes.” Jesse pushes Emily back against the wall and looks up at her face; it is a picture of total surrender, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her chin tipped up so her long, pale neck is exposed. In a burst of desire, Jesse peels Emily’s bra back to expose her naked breast. Emily pulls back abruptly and stands up straight, shaking her head.

  They have some rules that they haven’t ever said out loud to each other but that they both always follow. Jesse just broke one.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily says, pulling her sweater closed at the neck. She seems flustered, but mostly genuinely apologetic. “I want to. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “I know,” Jesse mumbles, furiously embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, it’s okay.” Emily turns away from Jesse to re-button her sweater.

  “It was dumb. It was stupid.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I have to go back to work anyway.”

  Emily bends at the waist sharply, flipping her tousled hair forward, then whips back up into a standing position so her hair fans out straight and neat down her back. Jesse looks down at her rubber boots dully, at the dingy, tessellated tiles on the floor beneath them.

  “I’m so glad I got to see you, even for a second,” Emily says pleasantly, in a voice a bank teller might use with a well-liked regular customer. She turns back toward Jesse as she regathers her hair into a ponytail—the same pony-tail Jesse disassembled just moments ago. She looks past Jesse at her own reflection in the mirror as she twists her perfumed mane up into a single cable, swift and sure, snaps it through its stretchy tie and tightens it up.

  “I kind of, actually, wanted to talk to you about something,” Jesse says, low, halting.

  “Yeah?” Emily smiles. “About what? I only have a few seconds, so… but what?”

  She gives Jesse a look that exactly matches the one she gave her in the girls’ room on Friday morning—brightly lit emptiness, like a sunny, unfurnished room. In a flash, Jesse pictures herself reaching for Emily in a dozen different bathrooms, a hundred different closets, a thousand different hidden secret stairwells forever….

  “I…”

  “Yeah?” Emily’s expression doesn’t change, doesn’t expand or contract even a fraction of an inch.

  “I feel like, I don’t know, I feel like…”

  Now Emily tips her head to the side and scrunches up her eyes and nose into her pity face.

  “I so want to talk to you about whatever you want to talk to me about?” she promises, hyper-sincere. “But I’m already late coming off break, I have to go back and clock in with Carol. Is it, like, something that can wait for next time? Or maybe you can email me about it?”

  “I feel like we can’t do this anymore,” Jesse blurts out, and as soon as she’s said it she feels both relieved and crushed with sadness.

  A ripple of something passes through Emily’s face, something strong and violent that Jesse can’t quite identify—panic? terror? rage?—and then it’s gone, dissolved into the shimmering sunshine of her perpetual smile.

  “Okay, that’s crazy,” Emily says firmly but lightly. “I know it’s hard right now, but it’s fine, we’re fine.”

  “I’m not.” Jesse feels like she’s talking like a caveman—grunts and monosyllables. It’s so hard to get out complete sentences when she’s talking to Emily Miller. What she really wants to say is, It’s not hard right now, it’s always been hard, and it’s never going to get any easier. You’re going to go to this year’s Fall Formal with Mike McDade instead of me, and you’re going to go to next year’s Fall Formal with Mike McDade instead of me, and you’re going to go to college with Mike McDade and get married to Mike McDade and have babies with Mike McDade instead of me, and I’m sorry but I’m not fine about it!

  “You are totally fine.” Emily gives her reflection a brisk, final once-over in the mirror, then steps up to Jesse and takes hold of her by the shoulders. “Listen,” she says seriously, looking deep into Jesse’s eyes and reaching up to stroke her jawline with two fingers. “I know this isn’t perfect, I know it’s super complicated, but it’s the best we can do now, right? And I actually think it’s pretty good. We have a really good time together, don’t we?”

  Jesse just nods.

  “We have an incredible time together, because we’re incredible together. We have something incredible between us, you and me.”

  Jesse nods again.

  “I mean, it sucks not to see each other more, I miss you all the time and I’m always wishing I could be with you more, but when we do see each other, it’s totally amazing, right?”

  Nod.

  “Because you’re amazing. You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever known. You’re not like anyone else in the world.”

  Jesse rolls her eyes but she can feel herself blushing. The skin where Emily is stroking her tingles under her feathery touch.

  “I know I’m really busy and that makes it hard for us to find time to be alone together, but I have to say, I’m not even that upset about it right now, because I have a really good feeling about this fall. I feel like everything is going to work itself out. Really exciting new things are happening, and I just know that everything’s going to change this year.”

  “Really?” Jesse can’t help herself. She knows she shouldn’t hear this as Emily saying I’ll be with you for real by the end of this year. She shouldn’t hear her saying I swear I’m going to break up with Mike and make you my girlfriend and take you to prom in the spring. Of course that’s crazy. Of course that’s not what she means. But somewhere in the secret inner fibers of what she’s saying, Jesse feels like maybe… that is what she means?

  “Totally.” Emily beams. “I can feel it. This is going to be a big year for everyone. It’s going to be a huge year for Vander. Everything’s going to be different by the time this year’s over.”

  Dumb with hope, Jesse smiles, and Emily leans in and kisses her smile. As their lips touch, Jesse feels her whole midsection melt into stars.

  In a second it will be over. In two seconds Emily will be saying, Wait at least a minute before you come out after me. In a minute Emily will be gone, and in two minutes Jesse will be trudging downstairs alone, sitting back down next to Wyatt, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for why she was gone for so long. In an hour she’ll be yearning so hard for Emily and feeling so rotten about herself that she’ll be swearing to never see Emily again, swearing that she’s just going to stop showing up for their meetings and not even bother to explain why, just cut off all communication with Emily once and for all, to save the last tiny shreds of her pride.

  But for now, in this moment, Emily is still kissing her. Her tongue is alive in Jesse’s mouth, her hands are clasped behind Jesse’s neck, and while it’s happening, it’s eternal. While it’s happening, it will never end.

  8

  Emily

&
nbsp; It’s hard for me to tear myself away from Jesse once we start kissing. I’m not going to lie about it, I get really clingy with her sometimes. We don’t get that many minutes together in a normal week, and sometimes I just wish I could call in sick to work one Tuesday and we could spend the whole afternoon in the bathroom there together. Or somewhere else, somewhere nicer. Sometimes I daydream about taking her someplace, like on a camping trip somewhere, or up to the lake house someday in the off-season when no one else is there—someplace where I can have as many hours with her as I want. To do whatever I want with her, for as long as I want to do it.

  But then I also think that I’m lucky we can only see each other for short amounts of time. I feel like there are certain things that I can’t do with Jesse without betraying Michael, and we don’t do them ever, but I get so carried away when we’re together… if I didn’t have to tear myself away from her and go back to work after fifteen minutes or half an hour, I don’t know if I could trust myself to stop. Who knows what might happen if we had, like, a whole hour or more alone. I can hardly bear to think about it.

  This last time we were together I felt like she was getting sort of sad about the reality of our situation, and I really wanted to reassure her as much as I could, so much so that I almost came out and told her everything about what’s been going on with me and the corporate sponsorship thing. Honestly, I don’t know, but I feel like this is one of the most exciting new things ever to happen to our school, it’s such an incredible opportunity for us, and it feels to me like a sign that everything’s going to be okay this year. Better than okay—everything’s going to be fantastic.

  I was this close to telling Jesse all about the totally incredible meeting I had with Howard Willette, director of corporate communications for NorthStar Enterprises, and Martha Rinaldi, assistant director of corporate communications, on Monday afternoon. They were so amazing to me, so nice and welcoming, and so professional at the same time. They referred to me as “Ms. Miller” throughout the entire meeting. On the phone when we talked last week, Mr. Willette had suggested that I write up a brief proposal of possible ways NorthStar Enterprises could get involved with Vander, so I did, like, a whole presentation about what kinds of projects student council could use help with. I started out trying to be realistic and modest in my first draft, like I said they could maybe provide hot chocolate for the volunteers who staff the outdoor drop-off sites for our winter clothing drive in the fall, or I suggested they could pay for student-designed, screen-printed T-shirts for the senior class to strengthen class unity and spirit. But when I showed my first draft to my mom, she suggested that I really try to dream big on the page, really aim high, because this meeting was my one chance to impress this large, significant, and, to be honest, very wealthy company, and I had to make my time with them count. So I went back and revised the proposal and I just went to town imagining everything I could think of that a company like NorthStar could possibly do to support our school, academically, artistically, and athletically. The proposal ended up being nine pages; I had to put it in a plastic sleeve. I titled it “VANDER’S DREAMS” in a 24-point font on the first page, and broke all my ideas down into short-term and long-term goals with, like, subheadings and charts. It was pretty amazing by the time I was done.